Corpse Princess Has 23 Manga Volumes — And the Series Is Complete
Here’s the short answer: Corpse Princess (Shikabane Hime) runs for 23 volumes in both the original Japanese and the English edition. The series is finished — no cliffhangers, no indefinite hiatuses, no “maybe they’ll continue it someday.” It’s done.
The manga was created by Yoshiichi Akahito (赤人義一) and published chapter-by-chapter in Monthly Shonen Gangan — a manga magazine from Square Enix, the Japanese publishing and game company also behind series like Fullmetal Alchemist and Soul Eater. (“Shonen” refers to manga aimed at a teen male audience, though readership skews far broader in practice.) That’s solid company for a dark supernatural action series, and Corpse Princess fits right in with that magazine’s identity.
The premise is grim and compelling: undead girls known as Shikabane Hime are bound by contracts with Buddhist monks to hunt down rogue corpses — reanimated dead who pose a threat to the living. It’s a world where death isn’t the end of anything. Instead, death is where the real problems start. The monk-and-corpse-princess partnerships give the series an unusual emotional backbone. These aren’t just standalone, one-enemy-per-chapter fights. The relationships between the living and the undead carry real weight, and the story uses that dynamic to explore grief, duty, and what it means to keep fighting when you’ve already lost everything.
For dark fantasy readers, this is a series that delivers on atmosphere. If you like action horror with a supernatural framework and aren’t afraid of some bleak character journeys, Corpse Princess has a lot to offer across its 23-volume run.
All 23 Corpse Princess Manga Volumes at a Glance
The Japanese volumes were published by Square Enix between 2005 and 2014 — roughly a nine-year run. Here’s a snapshot of the series progression using six representative volumes to give you a sense of how the story develops:
| Volume | JP Release Year | What’s Happening |
|---|---|---|
| Vol. 1 | 2005 | The world of Shikabane Hime is introduced — Makina Hoshimura and her contracted monk Keisei Tagami begin hunting rogue corpses. The rules of this undead world get established fast. |
| Vol. 5 | 2007 | The story expands beyond individual hunts. Larger threats emerge and the organization behind the Shikabane Hime system starts to show cracks. Stakes get personal. |
| Vol. 10 | 2009 | The series hits its mid-point stride. Alliances shift, and the cost of the contract system becomes impossible to ignore. The consequences start hitting hard. |
| Vol. 15 | 2011 | Deep into the back half of the series. The moral territory gets increasingly gray — the line between the “good” undead and the “bad” ones blurs in ways that make simple answers impossible. |
| Vol. 20 | 2013 | Final stretch territory. The story pulls its remaining threads together and pushes toward confrontation with the biggest threats introduced throughout the series. |
| Vol. 23 | 2014 | The finale. Everything resolves — no loose ends dangling, no sequel bait. The series commits to its ending. |
The pacing across these 23 volumes is fairly steady. Akahito didn’t rush to a conclusion or drag things out — the series found a natural stopping point and took it. That’s not something every long-running manga manages to do, and it makes the complete reading experience feel satisfying rather than bloated.
One thing worth noting: since the first Japanese volume came out in September 2005 and the last arrived in November 2014, this is a series that grew and evolved over nearly a decade. Early volumes have a slightly different energy than later ones — the art tightens up, the storytelling gets more ambitious, and the emotional stakes climb steadily.
How Dark Does Corpse Princess Get?
This is a dark fantasy site, so let’s talk about what “dark” actually means for Corpse Princess.
The series deals in body horror, undead combat, and themes of grief and loss from the very first volume. The Shikabane Hime themselves are dead girls who keep fighting — that premise alone carries inherent tragedy. But Akahito doesn’t just use the undead concept as a cool aesthetic. The manga genuinely engages with what it would mean to exist in that state, to fight alongside someone who’s already died, and to face enemies who were once ordinary people.
Violence and Creature Design
The combat in Corpse Princess is graphic. Rogue corpses come in disturbing forms — twisted, grotesque designs that lean hard into horror. The fights aren’t sanitized. Characters get hurt badly, and the manga doesn’t shy away from showing the physical consequences of battling monsters.
That said, the violence serves the story rather than existing just for shock. Each escalation in brutality tends to coincide with an escalation in emotional stakes. When a fight gets ugly, it’s usually because something important is on the line.
Emotional Darkness
This is where Corpse Princess really hits hardest as a dark fantasy series. The story is built on loss. Characters die — and not just villains or side characters. The contract system between monks and Shikabane Hime means that every partnership carries the weight of what’s already been lost. Later sections of the story push into increasingly bleak moral territory, where the “right” choice isn’t always clear and the system the protagonists serve isn’t necessarily just.
The series occupies a tone somewhere between action-driven shonen manga and the darker, more psychologically intense style of “seinen” manga — a category aimed at older readers that tends to be grittier and more morally ambiguous. Even though Corpse Princess ran in a shonen magazine, it pushes the darkness further than most series in that space. If you’ve read other supernatural action manga that mix combat with serious emotional themes, expect Corpse Princess to lean harder into the bleak end of that spectrum.
Content and Age Guidance
The series contains graphic violence, disturbing creature designs, and tragic character fates. The themes of death and grief are handled with weight, not played for laughs, and some of the later story developments are genuinely harrowing. This information is here so you can make your own call about whether the content fits what you’re looking for — most readers drawn to dark fantasy will be right at home.
Is Corpse Princess Finished?
Yes — completely finished. The manga concluded in 2014 at 23 volumes in Japan. The English edition is also complete at 23 volumes. There is no ongoing continuation, no announced spinoff, and no sequel in any stage of development.
This is a done deal. You can start volume 1 today and read straight through to volume 23 knowing that the story has a proper conclusion waiting for you. For readers who’ve been burned by series that get cancelled without resolution or stall out on indefinite hiatus, that certainty is worth a lot.
What About the Anime?
An anime adaptation of Corpse Princess does exist, but it only covers a portion of the manga’s story. If you’ve seen the anime and want to know what happens next, the manga is the only way to get the full narrative. The anime is a reasonable introduction to the world and characters, but the manga goes significantly further in both plot and character development. If you watched the anime and want to continue in manga form, you’ll still want to start from volume 1 — the anime rearranges and condenses material, so jumping in mid-series from where the anime ends tends to leave gaps.
Where to Buy Corpse Princess in English
Here’s the practical side: how do you actually get your hands on this series in English?
Digital Is Your Best Bet
The full 23-volume English edition is available digitally. This is currently the most reliable way to collect the complete series. All 23 volumes can be purchased individually through major digital storefronts, which means you can start reading within minutes of deciding to pick the series up.
Volume 23 — the final volume — is available digitally and wraps up the entire story.
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Physical Editions
Physical print availability for the English edition is less straightforward. There’s no known omnibus edition (a collected format that bundles multiple volumes into one larger book), deluxe edition, or box set for Corpse Princess in English. The series was released in single-volume format, and physical copies of individual volumes may be harder to track down depending on current stock. If physical editions are important to you, check availability at retailers and used-book platforms before committing to collecting all 23 volumes in print — digital may end up being the more practical path to completing the set.
No Special Editions to Wait For
Unlike some completed series that eventually get re-released in omnibus or hardcover formats, Corpse Princess hasn’t received that treatment in English. What you see is what you get: 23 individual volumes, primarily available digitally. That’s not necessarily a downside — it keeps things simple. You don’t need to research which edition is “best” or wait for a deluxe reprint. Just start at volume 1 and go.
Reading the Full Series
At 23 volumes, Corpse Princess is a moderate-length commitment. It’s longer than a quick weekend read but shorter than mega-series that run 30, 40, or 70+ volumes. You can pace yourself comfortably — a few volumes a week will get you through the whole thing in about a month or two, which is a sweet spot for binge-reading a completed dark fantasy series.
The fact that the entire English run is available right now, with no gaps or out-of-print volumes blocking your progress digitally, makes this one of the easier completed series to collect in full. No hunting for rare volumes, no waiting for reprints — just 23 volumes ready to go.