News: Your lie in April author’s early football manga released by Kodansha

An early manga by Your lie in April author Naoshi Arakawa has been given a digital release on iTunes by Kadokawa this week. The series Sayonara, Football was originally published in Magazine E-no in 2009, so it predates Your lie in April by a good two years, and seems to have an empowering outset, as middle-school girl Nozomi Onda is determined to play football despite being outnumbered by domineering boys.

In its iTunes listing, the manga’s story is given the following summary:

14-year-old Nozomi Onda has only one thing on her mind: playing beautiful football. There’s just one problem: no matter how much she longs to participate in official matches, she’d have physically superior boys as opponents. But when a boy from her past confronts her on the street, she decides she can’t wait any longer.