The Darwin Incident is a Japanese suspense-action manga series by Shun Umezawa, serialized in Kodansha’s Monthly Afternoon magazine since August 2020.
It follows Charlie Stein, a human–chimpanzee hybrid “humanzee,” as he navigates high school life, terrorism, and questions of human and animal rights in the United States.
The Darwin Incident began serialization in the August 2020 issue of Monthly Afternoon, released on June 25, 2020.
The series is published by Kodansha under the Afternoon KC imprint and has reached 10 collected volumes as of December 23, 2025.
When the series launched, Monthly Afternoon’s official site released the entire first chapter data under a Creative Commons license.
This experiment came from editor Koji Terayama, who wanted to “do everything possible so that as many people as possible can read it,” encouraging free sharing and discussion.
During the 2022 June issue, it was announced that the series would go on hiatus due to Umezawa’s illness.
It paused from the July 2022 issue, resumed in the November 2022 issue, then entered a second hiatus from the March 2023 issue and restarted again with the July 2023 issue.
At Anime NYC, Kodansha USA announced that it had licensed The Darwin Incident for English publication starting in fall 2023.
This brought the series to a wider international audience through print editions in North America.
To promote volume 5 in March 2023, a promotional video was produced in which voice actor Yuki Kaji performed all 13 roles.
This PV drew attention for its theatrical reading style and highlighted the intense emotional shifts of the story.
On May 22, 2024, a television anime adaptation was officially announced.
The anime airs from January 7, 2026, on TV Tokyo and other TXN network stations.
The story is set in the contemporary United States, mainly in Missouri and later New York and Washington, D.C.
Umezawa deliberately chose the U.S. because he felt discussions of discrimination, terrorism, and civil rights could be depicted more directly there than in Japan.
Fifteen years before the main story, an animal rights terrorist group called ALA (Animal Liberation Alliance) raids a laboratory to free experimental animals.
A pregnant chimpanzee is taken out and gives birth at a nearby veterinary clinic.
The child is a genetically engineered human–chimpanzee hybrid, dubbed a “humanzee.”
Media frenzy erupts, and the newborn becomes a global symbol of bot
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