If you grew up watching the Kochikame anime on television — that perpetually broke Officer Ryotsu stumbling from one harebrained money-making scheme to the next — 2026 is the year to pay attention. The franchise is turning 50, and Shueisha is marking the milestone with a new anime, a new game and a fresh one-shot chapter, all at once.
A New Anime for a New Generation
Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Kōen-mae Hashutsujo — better known as Kochikame — began in 1976 and ran for an extraordinary 40 years in Weekly Shonen Jump, ending in September 2016 with 200 volumes and the record for the longest-running manga in the magazine’s history. Its anime ran from 1996 to 2004, racking up 373 episodes, and became a fixture across Asia.
Now it is coming back. Shin Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Kōen-mae Hashutsujo (New Kochikame) was announced at Jump Festa 2026, with Studio Gallop — the same studio behind the original anime — returning for production. The new series features an entirely fresh cast; the new voice actors for the four lead roles — Ryotsu Kankichi, Nakagawa Keiichi, Akimoto Reiko and Ohara Daijiro — will be revealed at a special event in Tokyo on 5 September 2026. Applications for 50 lucky pairs of tickets opened on 3 August and close 10 August. Release date for the anime is still to be confirmed.
The Kairosoft Game: Build Ryo-san’s Shopping Empire
The game side of the anniversary is being handled by Kairosoft, the studio behind Game Dev Story, Grand Prix Story and dozens of other beloved management sims — and the fit is perfect. KochiKame: Ryo-san’s Billion-yen Beat (published by Shueisha Games) drops Ryotsu into his natural habitat of wild financial schemes, this time as a pixel-art shopping district simulation. Players scrape together seed money through gambling and part-time jobs, then invest it into storefronts — a convenience store here, a game shop there, a camera shop, a model kit store — and watch the customers roll in.
The game features over 200 characters from the manga — almost every recurring face from 40 years of the series — and episodic storylines drawn from classic chapters. Kairosoft’s signature pixel aesthetic suits the material well; Kameari has never looked so charmingly retro.
For Singapore and Southeast Asia fans, the key detail is that the Steam version will support English and Traditional Chinese at launch, alongside Japanese. The game is planned for Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, iOS and Android. A release date has not yet been announced.
The 50th-Anniversary One-Shot
The celebrations kicked off in print on 3 August with a special one-shot chapter published in Weekly Shonen Jump #36. Written by original creator Osamu Akimoto, it sees Ryo-san getting caught up in a certain money-making opportunity in 2026 — entirely in character for the perennially scheme-prone officer. Two new tankobon volumes collecting post-series material are also due out in September and October 2026, the first new physical volumes in five years.
Why It Matters for Fans in Singapore
The original Kochikame anime had long runs across Asian television markets, and many Singapore fans discovered the franchise through Chinese-dubbed broadcasts in the late 1990s and 2000s. The new anime, new game and new volumes all launching in the same anniversary year is a bigger celebration than most long-running franchises get, and the confirmed English and Traditional Chinese support for Billion-yen Beat signals Shueisha and Kairosoft are thinking beyond Japan for this one. Keep an eye on the Manga & Anime section here for cast and release date news as September’s reveal approaches.
