The Current State of Shonen Jump

If you've been invested in manga or anime for any length of time Chances are, you've at some point fallen in love with a title from Shonen Jump The now legendary publication first began in 1968 and since then has consistently published titles both widely popular and critically acclaimed One such title was 2008's meta-fictional Bakuman A series about a young artist-writer duo trying to get their manga published in a fictional version of Shonen Jump while the actual manga itself was published in Shonen Jump in real life It gave a fascinating inside into how the legendary publication worked as each of the character fight for the number 1 spot in the Shonen Jump Weekly Popularity Polls which was a survey sent out to the readers of Jump, asking to rate their favorite titles from best to worst With popular series regularly receiving anime adaptation, featured films, and merchandise while those that scored low quickly disappearing from its pages While Bakuman ended in 2012, the same weekly war still takes place in Shonen Jump today and after re-reading a little Bakuman recently I've been wondering: What are the popular titles in Jump right now? And how is the magazine itself doing? In other words, what is the current state of Shonen Jump The best place we could start with this question is with our old friend, the Shonen Jump ranking data If you'd like to see a full breakdown on how I came to these figures, just go to my following Bleach video But suffice to say, it's a pretty arduous task involving a lot of numbers and spreadsheets based of the previously mentioned ranking of the Shonen Jump titles as seen in their index This graph represents the performance of Shonen Jump top 10 manga in 2016 and if we average them out of the course of the year, we got a list that looks a little like this At number 10, we have World Trigger. A sci-fi battle series which I have not yet have a chance to read But it's apparently pretty good but was also unfortunately the subject of a pretty lackluster anime adaptation Number 9 is the Disastrous Life of Saiki K. A gag manga about a high-schooler with psychic powers trying and failing to live a normal life At number 8, we have Samon-kun wa Summoner A gag/vaguely action-oriented series about a highschool boy adept at summoning demons and tormenting his friends In at number 7, we have Food Wars. A rather beautifully illustrated battle/cooking manga with an extreme penchant for fanservice In at number 6, we have Hanamaru Zumo I've only had the chance to read the first couple of chapters in this one, but what really stands out is the spectacular artwork really making the sumo matches feel like intense, desperate struggles Coming in at number 5, we have the Promised Neverland which chronicles the life of a group of young children growing up in an orphanage, where things are...

Really bad. There's some bad things going on in that orphanage I'm currently up to date with this series, and I'm kinda in two minds about it The plot set-up is really strong, but the characters feel, well, a little flat and the art ranges from absolutely stellar, to pretty weak and inconsistent But this is also one of the freshest and newest feeling manga starting mid-2016 and as you can tell by the rank, it's quickly building in popularity Coming in at number 4 is Jump's premiere, beautiful-boys-doing-things-well manga, volleyball edition: Haikyuu Number 3 is a relatively newcomer starting in 2015 and it is the story of Black Clover For what I've read, this feels like a totally serviceable battle manga The main character's fun and the artwork is decent But it also has the air of a series heavily influenced by its contemporaries and whether it's going to be able to raise above that and carved out an identity on its own... Remains to be seen At number 2, we have Boku no Hero Academia Following the life of Deku, a boy born without superpower in a world of superheroes only to have that power mysteriously bestowed on him by his hero, All Might I'm going to leave my personal thoughts on this series for another day, but the artwork is godamn spectacular and I think that, combined with its clever premise does a lot to account for the monstrous rise of this series and shockingly, One Piece dominates the number 1 spot for its tenth year in a row I've already talked about One Piece a lot in the previous video and I'm planning on doing so again in the future upload But for now, all you really need to know is it's still the reigning king of Shonen storytelling And so business is usual for Weekly Shonen Jump, right? Well... Kind of The last 2 odd years have seen some rather unusual occurrences take place within Jump For one, two thirds of the once legendary big three are no longer in publication, leaving only One Piece And that's not the only thing that makes it feel like something is very much afoot in the weekly magazine If we returned to our yearly chart, we can see several examples of once popular series that seems to be under decline while newer ones seemed to be gaining popularity And not only that, but long standing titles like Toriko and Gintama didn't even make it into the yearly top 10, holding a rank of 12 and 14 respectively Even more curious, Toriko actually ended in volume of 51 of Jump making it one of the 9 other titles cancelled or concluded in 2016 which isn't an especially a high amount by itself but what's unusual isn't the amount of manga being cancelled but the type of manga, long running series that were once considered a mainstay in the magazine Toriko, Nisekoi, Bleach, Assassination Classroom, and possibly most notably: This is the Police Station in front of Kameari Park in Katsushika Ward A title that had been running for 40 years All mainstays at one point in their run...

Now gone And so what's going on at Jump? Well, the problem with using just ranking data to try and answer this question is two-fold For one, we are basically just taking Jump's worth on these figures while we have no real reason to suspect that Shonen Jump would fabricate these numbers there's also zero transparency to if the actual ranking shown in their index accurately reflects the surveys And second's, they can only really tell us how well a Jump manga is doing within the context of the magazine itself and so I decided to start doing a little bit of research outside Jump, namely with things like circulation and sales figures And when I did, things started to become a little clearer and what I came back to... Was One Piece Here are One Piece's sales in 2010, and here they are in 2016 And as you can see, there's a massive decline of 20 million units sold In fact, in 2014 One Piece dropped to 11.8 Million meaning that Attack on Titan that year came a paltry 150,000 units within outselling One Piece which would have been the first time a series had done so in 7 years On top of this, if we compare the top 10 manga sales of 2010 to 2016 respectively we can see a drop in a round 20 million units sold which can be entirely accounted for in the drop in One Piece's sales alone which means, manga in general are selling as much as they ever have but One Piece is in decline and if One Piece is in decline, so to is Shonen Jump And backing this up is Shonen Jump circulation has dropped from 2.9 Million units in 2010, to 2.1 In 2016 And if this trend were to continue, Shonen Jump could risk losing its place at top of the world of manga And this is the reason why they've been so decisive in cancelling and concluding so many old series Shonen Jump doesn't need old series to perform well it needs new ones to perform exceptionally which is why in the first quarter of 2017... Jump started six brand new series That's double the amount for the same period in 2015, and triple for that period in 2016 And so to round up our assessment of Weekly Shonen Jump, let's take a brief look at these 6 new titles The first of these new series is Dr. Stone The world suffers a bizarre catastrophe in which the earth's population is turned into stone Our protagonist, Taiju awakens thousands of years in the future alone except for his genius scientist friend, Senkuu Together, the two find a very limited way to unpetrified people and must carefully choose who to bring back in order to help them restart human civilization which goes well until they restore what is essentially a cross between Jesus Christ and Hannibal Lecter It's got quite a distinctive well-drawn art style, which I think takes a little getting used to but once you do, it really infused this series with a bold energy The good: strong, well executed premise with unique artwork and a great villain The bad: characters feel a little flat Hungry Marie A gender-swapping romance action series in which a highschool student is...

*Sighs* possessed by the former queen of France, Marie Theresa Charlotte and body swapping ensues It's a little more complicated than that, but honestly I find it hard to talk about much of anything given the extremely poor construction of this manga If you want to see a near perfect example of how not to layout a page, this is it Reading it is a messy frustrating chore, and not helping matters is an uninspired premise some weak character writing, and some really lackluster art Positive: If you squint, it kinda looks like a martial arts Yuri Negative: terrible page layout and Ranma already exists Robot x Laserbeam Golf is really lame Everyone knows it. We can all accept it, it's fine But it's also the subject of the misleadingly titled Robot x Laserbeam A story about a highschooler nicknamed 'robot' with the uncanny talent to hit ball with a precision of a laser I say this without a hint of mockery or ridicule, but our protagonist here is heavily implied to have either autism or asperger's syndrome And this really works into the series advantage, as his extreme  natural talent at golf is only surpassed with his complete indifferent to it and the world surround him They can create some really humorous endearing character writing And it's a lot of fun watching Robot slowly warms up to the game It's well drawn, it's well laid out, and it actually kind of makes me give a shit about golf and that fact alone means it deserved a lot of credit The upside: unique, likeable main character, well put together, manages to make gold seems interesting The downside: ... GOLF! U19 After reading the first three chapters, it's difficult to even really get into what exactly U19 is about Set in the fictional future of 2036, where adults rule the worlds? It's a dystopian love story where people are genetically tested to determine their lot in life and when our main character, Kudo's girlfriend is deemed a triple S rank She's taken away which causes him to develop a different set of genetic, which leads him to having a sewing-related superpowers and becoming entangled with a group of teenage terrorist who wants to kidnap Japanese Prime Minister... *Sighs* Nothing about U19 is aggressively bad, but it just doesn't really come together in a way that feels coherent And this inherent lack of focus can be seen in everything, from the difficult to understand premise to the busy, cluttered page layouts Not terrible by any means, but pretty difficult to recommend Plus: some of the romance is conveyed pretty okay, and there's some touching moments in there Minus: cluttered, unfocused feel, lackluster character designs We Can't Study Ogata is a genius at mathematics and Furuhashi is a genius at literature The only problem is that they both want to attend college in the areas that the other one is good at And so it's down to the main character, Yuiga to tutor them both in their weaknesses to help them get into the college of their choice Despite how contrive the premise might seems, I actually find myself really enjoying this one The first couple of chapters do a great job of establishing the three main characters And the artwork has a consistently beautiful, polished feel to it And this helps pushing it beyond the average highschool romance Strengths: beautiful artwork, endearing characters Weakness: a hair-breath of becoming a very typical harem affair Demon Prince Poro's Diaries At the time of writing, there was only 1 chapter of Demon Prince available So it's still early days, but my initial impression is that, it's pretty okay Telling the story of the titularly young demon prince, who wishes to escape the barbaric ways of his violent demon home world and pursues the life of a regular highschooler There's a nice, varied quality of the artwork, and overall the first chapter was a pleasant to read But honestly, there's just isn't enough of it out to form a solid opinion, but that's it I think you can definitely do worse, and I'm interested to see where it goes Heaven: some solid gags, nice range of art styles, simple, well-executed premise Hell: so far it feels maybe a little standard And so with all these in mind, what is the current state of Shonen Jump? Well, despite some of the issues we've talked about, it's hard not to see Jump's position as anything but positive While circulation and sales of its primary products are down the fact is, that they're still light-years ahead of its competitors And with fresh new title like My Hero Academia quickly becoming sales juggernaut it's difficult to really paint the company in a negative light While I think it's always sad to see classic series disappeared from its pages, I also have to respect the drive to invest in new series Titles like the Promised Neverland and Dr.

Stone feel fresh in a way that Jump titles haven't for years and I'll be very curious to see how both series do in the coming months Whether this new approach will actually pay off or not, remains to be seen, but I think suffice to say the next year in Jump... Is going to be an interesting one Friends, thank you for joining me today I want to apologize if the sound for this episode is a little rough I'm working off a new machine, and there's been some tedious problem with the audio but it's all sorted now and it won't be an issue for future uploads I want to give a special thank you to everyone who's been supporting me on Patreon You guys are the absolute best, and the entire reason I can do this If you too would like to help support the channel then consider heading over to Patreon.Com/supereyepatchwolf I'll be back soon with another video, but in the meantime why not come hangout at the Let's Fight A Boss video game podcast We're going to talking about Hunter x Hunter, Near, and many, many other things or you can come check me down on Twitter, @eyepatchwolf Friends, take care of yourselves, and I'll see you next time.

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