The wraparound jacket band on new volumes of the Full Metal Panic! Sigma manga is announcing that Kadokawa’s Fujimi Fantasia Bunko imprint will launch a new Full Metal Panic! spinoff novel project this summer. The previously revealed collection of Full Metal Panic! short stories will also be published in the same timeframe. The story of the new novel project is set over a decade after the story in the original light novel series.
Shoji Gatoh, the author of the original Full Metal Panic! novel series, drafted and supervised the new novel project, but Naoto Ōguro will be writing the actual text. Shikidouji is reprising her role as the novel illustrator, and Kanetake Ebikawa is contributing to the mechanical designs. Gatoh had indicated in January that “a little interesting project related to Full Metal is in the works.”
Last June, the North American publisher Tokyopop revealed its plans to publish the fourth and fifth volumes of the original Full Metal Panic! novel series in 2011. Tokyopop shipped the two volumes in one book in February before announcing that it will close its North American publishing operations this month. Full Metal Panic! centers around a mercenary group called Mithril on a parallel Earth in which the Cold War did not end in 1991. The final main volumes in the original novel series shipped in Japan last summer.