Falcom was a hot computer and video publisher back in the 1980s and early 1990s, with many of its games getting manga adaptations. Here is a look at a handful of them.

Xanadu

The original Xanadu doesn’t have much of a story beyond the same type you’d find in most 80s CRPGs – explore dungeons, beat up enemies, get stronger, and look for a powerful sword. This obviously wasn’t enough for a manga, so in-house Falcom artist Kazuhiko Tsuzuki created his own. Melding elements of fantasy and sci-fi, the main character is Fieg, a soldier from the near-future who’s zapped into the world of Xanadu, where he becomes embroiled in a magical war. He teams up with the beautiful warrior princess Rieru to fight the evil Reichswar. The fabled Dragon Slayer sword is referenced, and a few of the enemies from the game appear, but otherwise there is no real relation to the game. Nonetheless, Falcom used the manga cover art for certain ports of the Xanadu game. This was also adapted into an anime OVA in 1988, which never officially left Japan.

The title of the manga refers to it as “Xanadu 1”, implying there would be more volumes, but only the first one came out. According to a tweet by Tsuzuki, since he created the manga while he was a salaried employee, he wasn’t entitled to any royalties nor any ownership, so it was canceled after this first volume.

Romancia

Unlike Xanadu, Romancia actually has characters and a simple story, starring prince Fan Freddie as he saves a neighboring kingdom from monsters and rescues the princess Selina. However, the manga still goes its own direction, in a unique way – rather than focusing on Fan Freddie, as in the game, it instead stars Selina, who’s been upgraded from “kidnapped maiden” to “warrior princess”. This was written by Kenji Terada, an extremely prolific writer across many mediums, who wrote the scenarios for the first three Final Fantasy games as well as the Sega CD SRPG Dark Wizard, among many others. It was illustrated by Hidetomo Tsubura, who also worked on the El Hazard manga. It was also adapted into a drama CD.

Sorcerian

Sorcerian only has a barely overarching story, and instead focuses on mini-scenarios starring player created characters. For its manga adaptations, each scenario was adapted by different authors, giving each a unique style. Pictured here are The Curse of Medusa by Yuusaku Toyoshima and The Gods in the Heavens by Joji Manabe.

Yuusake Toyoshima was famous among the 1980s doujin scene for his anthro art, though none of them appears in his Sorcerian manga. Joji Manabe is most known about Westerners for the manga Outlanders, as well as other fantasy works like Drakuun, Caravan Kid, and Capricorn. As of 2025, he’s been working on Rise of the Outlaw Tamer and His Wild S-Rank Cat Girl.

Popful Mail

Rather than a video game sequel, Popful Mail received a follow-up in a series of drama CDs released by King Records. These feature Megumi Hayashibara in the title role, which she also played in the Mega CD version. A manga was serialized in Monthly Dengeki Comic Gao and compiled into a single volume. Written and illustrated by Yu Aizaki, these continue along the same line as the drama CDs, with plenty of characters that were only in the drama CDs.

Ys

The Ys comic series began in 1989, written and illustrated by Show Hagoromo. He didn’t know much of anything about the game, so he took the basic concept and its characters, and created his own fantasy story, resulting in something wildly different from the games it’s purportedly based on. For starters, Adol finds Feena washed up on a shore, and the two join together to hunt for the books of Ys. Plenty of characters have changed from the game like the old woman Jeva, who is now an attractive younger girl, and Reah now has blond hair instead of matching her twin sister’s blue.  There are also plenty of new characters like Maria, a warrior girl from Rance village. Despite not being all that faithful, it was a relatively popular series that originated in Kadokawa Shoten’s Monthly Comptiq magazine (which covered video games, anime, and pretty anime girls) and was compiled into seven volumes.

Hagoromo also did one of the Sorcerian volumes titled The Dark Mage. The characters for these later appeared in the Ys manga, making for a not-entirely-official crossover between Falcom’s series. The character’s adventures continued in another story, The Amazon’s Sword, which is included in the seventh and last volume of the Ys manga. The Dark Mage manga has also been released digitally without the Sorcerian branding.

Ys: Mask of the Sun

Illustrated by Hitoshi Okuda (the Tenchi Muyo manga), this is an adaptation of the Super Famicom version Ys IV. The cover credits Kenichi Itoi of Micro Cabin for the story, who was the developer of the game, indicating that this was staying more faithful to its plot compared to Hagoromo’s manga. Obviously the story had to be altered a bit to fit into a single manga volume. There was also an adaptation of Ys V by Akiko Ikegami.

Beyond these, there’s also another Ys manga adaptation by Hidenori Maeda. I haven’t been able to get any copies of these, but all sources point to this also being a much more faithful adaptation of the original two games than Hagoromo’s work.

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Falcom Manga was first posted on May 23, 2025 at 10:10 am.
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A group of Bathurst Street business owners in Toronto is using AI-generated personas to oppose a proposed bus lane project that would eliminate parking spaces in favor of faster transit. "This may be the first Toronto transit controversy involving angry AI, but tensions have been simmering between drivers and, well, everyone else for some time," reports Toronto Life. Critics argue that better transit is essential for a livable city, while opponents claim the change threatens small businesses and accessibility. From the report: A group of Bathurst business owners are bent out of shape over a recent proposal for priority transit lanes between Eglinton Avenue and Lake Shore Boulevard, part of the city's new RapidTO program. According to the city, the transit lanes would shave up to 7 minutes off some trips during peak commuting hours. It's good news for anyone who has ever cursed the TTC while waiting to catch a bus in inclement weather. Of course, the added convenience for transit commuters would come at a slight cost for drivers, requiring the removal of at least 138 paid street parking spaces to make way for the new lanes. Opposition to the development has sprung up under the banner of Protect Bathurst, a group of hopping mad local business owners claiming that the lack of street parking will make shopping a nightmare for car-bound customers and will cause problems for people with mobility issues. Notably, Protect Bathurst has no spokesperson or contact info listed on its website. The page is registered to a food marketing consultant employed by Summerhill Market and looks eerily similar to Protect Dufferin, another group of "concerned residents" advocating for the same cause. But this cookie-cutter approach goes even further: author and urbanist Shawn Micallef has found that the people speaking out in the group's allegedly grassroots videos appear to be AI-generated. Brad McMullen, the president of Summerhill Market, which opened an outpost on Bathurst in 2019, says he doesn't know anything about the campaign's use of AI. He says he isn't necessarily opposed to the new bus lanes but believes that three weeks' notice from the city is not enough time for his business to adapt. "We purchased and invested in this location because of the available street parking, and then we figured out the loading situation, which happens on the street," he says. "I don't think Summerhill Market would work here with these bus lanes."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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