Act-Age (partially lost production material of cancelled Weekly Shonen Jump manga and other projects; 2018-2020)
Act-Age was a series published by Weekly Shonen Jump from January 2018 to August 2020 and was written by Tatsuya Matsuki and Illustrated by Shiro Usazaki. The series is set in modern-day Tokyo and follows Shiro Usazaki, a girl who is so talented at method acting, she starts to lose the ability to tell reality from the characters she becomes.
This psychological thriller became hugely successful selling over 3 million copies over the course of 12 volumes. The series was published by Viz Media in America starting in December 2018.
Cancelation and controversy
In August of 2020, author Tatsuya Matsuki was arrested for inappropriately touching two female middle school students. Due to this crime, the series was immediately canceled by Shueisha in the middle of a story arc, leaving all work on the future of the series on the cutting room floor.[1]
Cancelled Volumes and the Viz Media release
After the arrest was made, Viz Media deleted all chapters from their website, although they were reuploaded and still can be found. any plans to release the chapters in volume format were canceled both in English and in Japanese. The English release of this series ended at volume 3, leaving 102 chapters to go unreleased in that format. In Japan 16 chapters were never released in this format.
Live Stage Play and Graphic Novels
a graphic novel version and a live stage play version of Act-Age were also planned and in development, though how far they both were is unconfirmed. These two projects were announced in June of 2020, just months before the series' cancellation.[2]