Cipher Academy

Cipher Academy (Japanese: 暗号学園のいろは, Hepburn: Angō Gakuen no Iroha) is a Japanese manga series written by Nisio Isin and illustrated by Yūji Iwasaki. It was serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine from November 2022 to February 2024, with its chapters collected in seven tankōbon volumes.

The series takes place at the eponymous Cipher Academy, a former all girls' military academy focused on the study of cryptography, telling the story of Iroha Irohazaka, the sole boy in his class. While dealing with a spartan homework puzzle on his first day in class, Iroha comes across Kogoe Horagatoge, a student from a different class on the run from Kyora Toshusai, a fellow student of Iroha's and the heiress to a weapons manufacturer. Iroha helps Kogoe hide, and she gives him a pair of glasses embedded with technology that allows him to see the "hints" to codes. After Kyora bullies Iroha into a cipher-based battle and Iroha uses the glasses to win, he is thrown into a conspiracy involving 50 billion morg hidden at the academy—a stash of cryptocurrency so valuable that it could end half the wars in the world, or, conversely, double them.

Written by Nisio Isin and illustrated by Yūji Iwasaki, Cipher Academy was serialized in Shueisha's Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine from November 21, 2022, to February 5, 2024. A voice comic featuring Rina Satō, Ayane Sakura, and Saori Ōnishi was released on YouTube. Shueisha released the first tankōbon volume on March 3, 2023, and the seventh and last on May 2, 2024.

Viz Media and Manga Plus published the series in English. However, the series' original English translator, Kumar Sivasubramanian, announced he would stop translating the series following the release of the thirteenth chapter; he also linked to an article by Screen Rant, which described the series as "impossible to translate". He was replaced by a new translator, Dan Luffey.

The series ranked fourth in the 2023 Next Manga Award in the print manga category. The series ranked tenth in the Nationwide Bookstore Employees' Recommended Comics of 2024 list.

Carlyle Edmundson of Screen Rant praised the use of purposeful censorship to illustrate points about contemporary Japan.

• Sockol, Ben (February 17, 2023). "A New Shonen Jump Manga Just Became Impossible to Translate". Screen Rant.

• Official website (in Japanese)
• Cipher Academy (manga) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia