‘Overwatch’ Art Director Arnold Tsang Launches Original Manga ‘Azuki’

Arnold Tsang, the artist who shaped the visual identity of “Overwatch” during his time at Blizzard Entertainment, is stepping into a new creative chapter. Azuki Labs has officially unveiled Azuki, an original manga series written and illustrated entirely by Tsang, marking his first major comics project since his work on “Street Fighter” years ago.

The announcement gives fans their first real look at a story Tsang has been quietly building, and it arrives with a clear rollout plan spanning a convention debut and a free digital release later this year.

Arnold Tsang’s Manga: Key Details

Tsang served as the original Character Art Director at Blizzard Entertainment, where he was a foundational creative force behind “Overwatch,” shaping its hero roster and the visual language that came to define the game. With Azuki, he returns to comics for the first time since contributing to Udon Entertainment’s “Street Fighter” series.

Tsang is both writing and illustrating the series, a rare combination that lets him control the project from concept to final art, much as he did while shaping characters and lore during his run on “Overwatch.”

What Azuki Is About

The manga follows Shao, a guarded girl from a place known as the Alley, whose life is upended when her sister Rei disappears during a relic-smuggling operation. Rei vanishes into the Garden, a sacred realm cut off from the Alley and accessible only through rare red beans, setting Shao on a path to find her.

The setup gives Tsang room to build the kind of layered world and character-driven stakes he became known for in the gaming industry, translated now into a serialized manga format.

Release Plan: Anime Expo and Beyond

Azuki will make its world premiere at Anime Expo in Los Angeles, running from July 2 to July 5. Convention attendees will get an exclusive first look at the manga’s opening chapter at the Azuki Labs booth, located at WH-424, ahead of its wider public release.

Tsang himself will be present throughout the convention, taking part in live drawing sessions for fans attending the event. After the convention run, the series moves to a public launch on Azuki.com in September, where new chapters will be released monthly at no cost through a mobile-first reading platform designed to make the series accessible across devices.

Tsang’s Journey Back to Comics

In comments about the project, Tsang described manga as his first creative love, noting that his early career included work in comics before a long detour through the video game industry. He explained that his years working on titles like “Overwatch” taught him how to build immersive worlds filled with characters that resonate emotionally with audiences, lessons he says he is now carrying back into manga.

According to Tsang, the more time he spent developing Shao and the wider world of Azuki, the clearer it became that manga, not games, was always the right medium to tell this particular story.

A Universe Built Beyond the Page

Azuki isn’t just a standalone comic. The characters, factions, and lore established in the manga also serve as the foundation for Azuki TCG, Azuki Labs’ companion trading card game. That card game has already generated strong commercial interest, having crossed $1 million in direct-to-player presales ahead of its retail launch.

This dual-format approach mirrors a broader trend of building expansive transmedia universes around original IP rather than confining a story to a single platform, giving fans multiple ways to engage with the world Tsang has created.

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