Making the Jump

The Summer of Sales begins now, so let us…Make the Jump!


The first thing to examine is this week’s Jump’s Table of Contents. As you know, a table of contents is a list of what to expect inside whatever literature you’re currently reading, and Jump’s no different. It gives us the order of how series appear in that week’s Jump issue, what series received a center color page (or CP for short), among other things. This isn’t an exact representation of a series standing in Shonen Jump, but it can give us a close look at how Shueisha views a series based on patterns and the like. That’s generally why people view the TOC as a ranking of sort.

A series “rank” is just where they appear in the magazine (for example, a series that ranked 4th that week means it’s the fourth series to appear in that week’s Jump, excluding CPs). It’s the closest approximation we can get on a series’ popularity before its first volume is released. While readers in Japan can vote on their top 3 series for a week, ultimately it is up to the editors to decide the order of the TOC (though those viewer votes obviously have a huge factor in the editors’ decision making). New series aren’t “ranked” right away. We don’t know how far back TOC’s are made or how many weeks back they’re meant to reflect a series status, but it is a general rule of thumb that a new series doesn’t start “ranking” until its 8th chapter (or the first chapter where it does not receive a CP if chapter 8 receives one).

Here is the TOC for Issue #27 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 6/6/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue(s) Preview:

Been awhile since the TOC itself has some things to talk about, but there is quite a bit to unpack. Where should we start? I guess the obvious place to begin is with the newest series to place. Blue Box landed at that sixth-place magic spot it appears. That was Elusive Samurai’s first placement as well as SAKAMOTO’s and those two look like the next hits in the lineup (we’ll see though). I didn’t really talk about it last time, but I figured Blue Box was going to get sixth, maybe fifth this week since they seem to have a set list of series to put in the Top 6 at the moment and I thought there was no way a romcom was beating like four of them in its first rank. Still though, that’s a good first rank for the series and I hope it goes up from here and considering the online reception (people who do nothing but complain about every single romance manga aside), the hype the series got even pre-release, and the color page this early, I have faith it will.

From the most recent batch to the second most recent one, it’s time for our weekly look at how they’re doing. Nine Dragon’s and i tell c doing as awful as always I see. Nothing interesting there other than Nine Dragon’s getting extra pages yet again. The fact it’s getting the TPGW treatment tells me that it is definitely over for the series at this point. Slightly more interesting is Elusive Samurai’s placement. This is the lowest it’s ever gotten, but I also feel like that’s just a fluke. It was bound to be lower because Blue Box was almost definitely going to start out good and in a gag vs good manga faceoff, the gag manga is always going to be the one placed higher (thank you, hack). It’s also getting color pages next week so it’s fine.

Which brings us to Witch Watch, the only actual wildcard of this group of series. The second week in a row where it ended up in the bottom 5. I listed out the most likely reasons for this, but I never actually said what I thought was most likely. In my opinion, I thought the likeliest scenario was that Blue Box is affecting its rankings and I have a few reasons for that. First, I think Blue Box is just flat out a better romance manga than Witch Watch at the moment, so people who only vote one series a week or who like romance but not enough to dedicate all three of their votes to it probably voted for BB instead of WW. That’s subjective, but I also feel like that’s how places like Twitter and Reddit feel since I’ve been seeing a lot of people put Blue Box in their top 5 and even top 3 of chapters of the week every time Jump comes out while I don’t for Witch Watch. On top of that, Witch Watch got rid of the “rom” part of romcom for like the past seven chapters and became pure gag so people who vote for the romance stories in the magazine surveys might have dropped it just because of that. Second, despite what the TOC tells you most weeks, the editor in charge of making the TOC tends to arrange it in a way that’s most enjoyable for a reader. As a result, they “try” to not put similar series near each other in the magazine so that they all have room to breathe. In the case of Blue Box and Witch Watch, once I saw that bottom 5 last week, I sort of figured they were going to do this with the series because the premises for both ARE similar. Third, Witch Watch is by a vet, a very successful one at that. If one series was to sink while the other could use the higher TOC placement, you stick the vet’s series down there because people are more likely to read it if it’s stuck there. Saying all this, I wouldn’t say Witch Watch is doomed or anything yet. Realistically, it’s going to go up or get more color pages after the volume goes out since there’s a 99% it does really well, but I’m not going to be shocked if it does end up being a bottom dweller now that we’re on the verge of losing the bottom 3.

Undead, once again, we have crossed the boundary of “I have no clue how they feel about the series”. Another week, another bottom 5 placement and honestly? I don’t know if it’s going to improve. If we just assume Candy Flurry flops right away (and honestly? I feel like this is going to surprise people next week…), and that our failure three are gone…what’s blocking Undead from bottom 3 every week? Magu-chan is getting reprints for every volume and despite being middling, still does decent on the TOC. I hope Roboco falls, but I’m not expecting it. High School Family might go back if (when) volume 2 flops. Is Witch Watch going to be bottom 3 every week now too? Ayakashi is in a similar position as Undead but it does better than it on the TOC almost every week. In this scenario, Candy Flurry is the only “guaranteed” buffer for bottom 3 (and that’s just a hypothetical. In reality, Candy Flurry could go anywhere from bottom 3 to sixth as well…). There’s a realistic chance Undead is just a bottom 3 series now. If that’s the case, that naturally leads to the question of why that’s the situation. Is it established enough to the point where they don’t feel the need to promote it? If that’s the case, why would they feel the need to not promote it? By this logic, Yozakura should be in the same boat as its older but it’s quite the opposite situation for Yozakura as it has the most color pages of any series in Jump this year (or it’s tied with Mashle, I need to count again) and it got a cover really recently (and probably will get at least one more by the end of summer, maybe even two if an anime announcement is on the horizon), so why are they leaving Undead to dry? It must be struggling in the surveys and not meeting expectations sales wise. Volume 6 declined from volume 5’s sales to the point where Yozakura and its glacial rate of growing is now within 10k of outselling it and at the point where if it beats it in July, I wouldn’t be surprised. The series, even if I don’t like it, I feel like it’s not been what the series was previously (in that, it feels like Andy and Fuuko don’t matter nearly as much when they were the main focus earlier) and that may have caused people to not care about it anymore (contrast that with Yozakura which stayed true to itself despite doing a serious really long arc and it grew a lot as a result). I don’t think it’s the end for Undead (there’s too much bigger flops for that to be the case), but I will say that in the next promotional material for WSJ, don’t be shocked if they rearranged the “rising star”/ “established” series lineup.

This is a bit of a smaller scale, but I do feel like it’s notable all the same. Me and Roboco is also in that “how’s it doing?” phase of its life. It’s been hovering around 7-11 range for quite a bit now while not showing signs of growth in the volume department. On top of that, they’ve been giving out covers like candy to newer series and yet they didn’t give it to Roboco yet, and there’s probably a new series batch happening during Roboco’s anniversary, it’s not going to get the cover then either. That’s fine though, series can last awhile without getting the cover as long as there’s enough flops…but remember that problem I talked about with Undead earlier? I think it’s even worse for Roboco because at least Undead has good sales and online presence…does Roboco actually have anything besides Viz shilling it every week for some reason? Not really. Once you take out the soon to be cancelled series, this is what you’re left with for most likely bottom 3/5 candidates:
Undead, Magu-chan, Me and Roboco, Witch Watch, (also Candy Flurry, but at this point, I don’t think it’s fair to say any fresh series is a safe bottom 5 candidate). High School Family is also a maybe.

So looking at that…there’s really nothing stopping Roboco’s fall from getting worse. Getting constant color pages can only delay the inevitable for so long if you don’t also produce results. At this rate, I wouldn’t be shocked if Roboco was gone by 2021’s end, maybe the first part of 2022 if not many new series happen for the rest of the year. I definitely think it has at most 3 batches left before facing the axe.

That’s it for this TOC, so let’s talk about next week instead. First, let’s look at these quotes I said in the past:  

“Even SAKAMOTO DAYS I think can warrant one. I think one thing Jump needs to do more is push series with potential MASSIVELY after they show signs of life.”

“And if we get crazy things like a SAKAMOTO cover, I’d think it would be after a new batch of series and after volume 2 shows signs of growth (if it does).”

Ya boy strikes again! They’re actually doing what I wanted them to do! And even though teecccchnnnicallyyy they haven’t seen signs of growth for volume 2 yet (probably), realistically there’s no reason to assume SAKAMOTO has stunted yet. I’m glad for the series; it deserves the world right now. This does make me wonder though…is One Piece going to get that cover at this rate? It always gets one around this time, but it’s not getting one for #28, I think it going on break is more likely for #29, and I think the new batch of series is going to be #30. It’s looking really unlikely at this point…but I don’t think they’re waiting till the anniversary before giving it a cover. Oh well, this year’s rotation of covers has been far better than previous ones since they’re willing to give things covers early again.

Also, I already said I’m expecting a new batch at #29 or #30, probably #30, so I’m calling my shot now (or I guess you can view this as my wishlist).

Yugen’s All-Ghouls Homeroom (Yuto Tsukuda and Shun Saeki) I think is going to show up if not this batch, sometime this year. Whatever you may feel about Food Wars, there’s no doubt that the duo are big names so any series they make will have eyes on it, naturally making it the biggest series in whatever batch they come back in. I make fun of exorcist series all the time, but realistically? The only exorcist manga in the lineup at the moment are Jujustu Kaisen and Ayakashi Triangle. Yugen is different enough from Kaisen where I think both can coexist in the magazine and Ayakashi seems like a sinking ship at this point, so I wouldn’t blame Jump if they went a different direction for their next “ecchi” series. Also, Phantom Seer is still fresh on people’s minds, so I wouldn’t be shocked if Shueisha was like “Well, they missed that series. Let’s try a similar series that will have more polish” and Tsukuda has been working on something for at least a year now, he has to be almost ready at this point.
 
Someone from 2018-19 that failed coming back – If I have to say one name, I’d want Hokami (Hell Warden Higuma) since I feel like he’s the only mangaka from that period who is still unaccounted for and if he quit the industry, we would have heard about it by now. But I think we’re now far along enough to give the 18/19 failures their second chances.

Soccer manga – We tried baseball and it failed. We tried basketball and so far, Blue Box is going well. Might as well try the other king of spokons. Plus, Blue Lock is popping off in WSM, Ao Aoshi is a popular soccer manga and it got an anime announced recently, I can see other magazines trying to capitalize on it. I don’t know who would write it or what it would be about, but I think it’s time (plus the World Cup is next year. Gotta at least try to take advantage!)

I think there’s only going to be three series this time, but if there’s a fourth, it’s going to be a gag manga no one likes and probably isn’t funny.

   

And now let’s shine some light on the most recent chapter of some series currently featured in Weekly Shonen Jump. These aren’t my top five chapters of a week necessarily, but they are ones that I want to highlight and talk about a little.


Wow, when the series decides to be a romcom series instead of a straight up gag, it actually is good, who would have thought?! This chapter was everything I liked about the series: Niko being a dork who doesn’t know when using magic is the right thing, Moi being a serious guy who may or may not know he likes Niko, silly hijinks that serve to develop the relationship rather than just being funny for the sake of comedic relief. Shinohara’s specialty is developing relationship between characters, and he just so happens to be funny usually, but he was missing a lot more with the jokes in Witch Watch so I’m glad that he went back to what works. The question then becomes, is this going to last? The last two TOC placements weren’t the best, but the sales so far look like they’re good enough to last awhile (plus he’s a vet so he’ll get more leeway) and maybe suggests that people DO like what he’s doing. It’s too soon to tell what direction to go from here, so I’m cautious for now.  


A fantastic wrap-up to a fantastic arc. This had basically everything I wanted out of a conclusion chapter with a peak at return to everyday life at Yozakura Manor, Mutsumi being the adorable dork she is, and a great romantic moment between our married couple (okay, our MAIN married couple. The other married couple, the grandparents, also had a cute bonding moment with Shion too tho, rest in peace moles T_T ). The ending seems to indicate that we’re returning back to slice of life chapters for a little bit, and I’m perfectly okay with that. That action arc was amazing, but I’ve been missing Mutsumi being physically there for chapters. That wasn’t the only thing that happened though. The first half of the chapter was insanely intriguing between Momo and Ban. It showed the dynamic between father and son-in-law, also hinting that Momo has a terrible relationship with the Yozakura family in general. I wonder if he’s in it for himself (and his dead wife) or if he sides with Tsubomi and also wants to destroy the Yozakura bloodline because it ended up killing his wife, maybe there’s another secret side to this too. In other words, IT’S NOT ENDING. STOP TRYING TO PUSH THIS IDEA WHEN IT IS SO CLEAR THAT THERE’S MORE HAPPENING LATER.


This was exactly why I didn’t write off Candy Flurry right away despite the awkward start. It might have been a cliché way to do it, but cliches are that for a reason. An exam arc usually does work (let’s ignore Build King where it’s clear that only happened because he already got canned and was just shoving as much crap as he could to show his future plans) in getting a battle manga established and set up. The Boss’ son isn’t the most original character, but he is by far a better contrast to Tsumugi than the stupid guy they introduced in chapter 1 (who they still have only named once and I don’t remember what it was). He was the adrenaline shot the series I needed I think, because he plays off Tsumugi better than Irie or the idiot guy, plus he’s shown as being capable even if he too is (surprise surprise) stupid. Again, I feel like that Shueisha had more expectations for this series and I’m not going to say this series is living up to it yet, but it definitely deserved some time to find its footing and I believe it is now. I think it’s picking up steam and I genuinely would not be shocked if this was a decent performer in the TOC (we’ll see what happens come August for volume 1).


Yabuki has awakened his Haki with this chapter. He’s getting all the “cultured” tropes in here with the swimsuit chapter, the Suzu fanservice, the losing the top for Matsuuri, we’re getting it all here. I think this is the start of a mini arc (maybe heat Ayakashi is resolved next chapter, idk), but it definitely is the start of a regular arc in dealing with those three major Ayakashi. So far, I’m liking what we’re getting out of it, more plot (not “plot”) development and the fetish stuff is at least helping characterize Matsuuri, even if it’s just for the purpose of pandering to people that probably won’t change their mind on the series at this point. I don’t know long term where we’re going, but I definitely think right now, things are looking fine for Ayakashi heading into its first anniversary.


Of the four pre 2018 manga still in the lineup, I feel like generally I’ve been the most positive about Black Clover (my Spotlights on STONE I think generally just boil down to “it’s as good as always” but never really deep dives into the chapter or arc, and I genuinely don’t remember the last time I liked a My Hero chapter and I complain about One Piece almost every time). The reason for this is because out of these four, it’s the only series I feel like that still tries to challenge itself and improves constantly. I genuinely don’t think 100 chapters ago, Tabata wouldn’t have been able to write a fight that feels so personal like this faceoff for Noelle does here. He doesn’t become complacent when people say that he handled x character well or “y plotline was resolved great”; he continues developing them and showing new sides to them. Noelle has come so far from the girl that just wanted to be accepted by her family and I can define her way beyond her crush on Asta. It’s really hard to argue a manga that goes on for more than 140 chapters is still constantly evolving past it’s greatest past self, but that’s exactly what Black Clover does. At this point, if you weren’t on board before, you probably won’t be in now. However, if you were always open to Black Clover, it will reward you by showing big improvement whenever it seems like it’s peaked.



Another month, another batch of new volume releases for Jump. This time we’re in June, and releasing we have: One Piece volume 99, DR. STONE volume 21, Jujutsu Kaisen volume 16, Ayakashi Triangle volume 4, Magu-chan: God of Destruction volume 4, SAKAMOTO DAYS volume 2, and the debuts of Witch Watch and Nine Dragon’s Ball Parade! Build King volume 2 is also this month, but we already know that’s flopping, so I decided to do Kaiju No.8 volume 3 instead since that’s bound to be way more interesting (imagine if it opens over One Piece). Also High School Family volume 2 is releasing, but I don’t think it deserved a spot on the graph since it’s realistically going to sell less than 5k copies still and I don’t see a point of having a confirmed nothing series there when there’s already 9 other series.

Sales Data for May 31st - June 6th:

NOTE: One Piece 99 was 1st on Shoseki for 6/3 as well, which is day 0.

NOTE 2: Logically, if Witch Watch or Nine Dragon’s (by some miracle) show up on Oricon, then volume 1’s sales would also be the series sales since there’s nothing else that could be accounted for from the number.

I’m glad Nine Dragon’s finally released. Now that the volume is out, maybe the fans can finally accept that it flopped and can move on to the mourning phase. It did worse than i tell c’s first week. It did worse than last year’s flops Mitama, GotW, Bone Collection, etc. Hell, it did worse than Yozakura volume 8 THIS WEEK (which mind you, is almost a month and a half old at this point). I swear this better not cause another Phantom Seer level outcry once it gets axed…

For a long while, being as steady as ever was good enough, but the lineup is slowly filling up with new series that are doing better as they release more volumes. Being steady isn’t enough at this point, so the last thing Magu-chan needed was to start declining. It went from 8400 in 5 days to 9500 in 7 (which essentially means it didn’t grow) to 6,826 in 4 to this. We’re reaching one year of serialization now, which was when they decided enough was enough for AGRAVITY BOYS (a series I think is very comparable to Magu-chan) and cancelled it. Most of the buffers for Magu-chan are gone now too (not counting stuff that hasn’t released yet and the three about to be departed series, Magu-chan is the second worst selling series in the lineup), so if it’s not improving…it can only really be cut at this point. This is just sad man. Volume 3 was a great place to end (I think that’s where Ruru’s mom comes to visit), seeing the series just limping in an attempt to catch up with the others and survive, only to flounder…it’s just so sad

High School Family since volume 1 has gotten: a vomic, LINE stickers, a second campaign asking viewers to submit things, a recommendation from HARUICHI FURUDATE (aka Haikyu!!’s creator and one of the most well respected Jump writers in the past ten years), a color page in the magazine, a rise in the TOC that most series can only dream of getting after flaming out originally, outlived series that performed far better than it, and in all likelihood the right to celebrate it’s one year anniversary when many other series in Jump’s history don’t get that (with one of them confirmed to be ending the issue right before it), and for what? 3,312 sales in three days. Volume 1? 3,636. In four days. It got THREE EXTRA MONTHS and all that crap I just said to get more people to buy volume 2 when it came out and it couldn’t even do that. It either stunted completely or worse, declined. If we’re being truthful, this deserves to be cut before Dolphin, but it’s not going to be. All I can really hope for is that when Dolphin, i tell c, and Nine Dragon’s get axed in the coming weeks, Jump somehow come to the right decision and realize that there’s no future for HSF. They did this last year with Mitama and eventually found it within themselves to release the guillotine on a loved one, they can do it again.

SAKAMOTO DAYS is looking like a breakout hit. It nearly doubled its sales from volume 1 with one less day and volume 1 also ended up doing decently in the weekly rankings (#265. Bare minimum it did 3k which is surprisingly decent for backlog whenever a new series new volume releases lately). Last time I compared SAKAMOTO to Undead Unluck’s start, and it’s becoming even more similar as time goes on…and you know, the Tsugi Manga Awards are coming up…and realistically SAKAMATO is the big favorite from WSJ to do the best in it I have to imagine. I honestly wouldn’t be shocked if SAKAMOTO ended up going to around 20k for volume 3’s release whenever, if it did win the Tsugi Manga Award this year and copying Undead’s curve even more (unfortunately though, there’s no nearby series to pair it up with for a BOOST Generation since Build King flopped). Obviously we need to keep looking at how it’s doing, but week 1, things are looking bright for Mr. Sakamoto and crew I’d say.

Man, Witch Watch is a weird series. It seems like it’s always doing good, but then random factors make you doubt if that’s true or not, and that’s reflected with its first volume sales. For all intents and purposes, 15k is good for most volume 1s from Jump these days. Mashle is the breakout hit of this generation so far, and it debuted with 15k…but is that enough for Witch Watch to be considered great instead of just good? Hajime Komoto is a rookie and has never done a series before Mashle, so doing that for a first time is commendable. Kento Shinohara did SKET Dance and Astra Lost in Space, two critically acclaimed manga that got anime and is a respected author in the industry. The volume also had stock issues to the point that Jump’s official account tweeted about it, so that would make you think that it was doing amazing…but 15k doesn’t really sound amazing considering Shinohara’s resume. I honestly don’t know. If they only printed enough where 15k causes stock issues…did they not believe in Shinohara? Did they give him only slightly more than the average newbie for a first print? Like I said, this is usually a really good start for a new series and in all likelihood it’s enough to prop up Witch Watch to at least “safe” status for the time being in the magazine, but is this what Jump expected from it? Did this go beyond what they hoped for? We’re just gonna have to wait and see, I guess. I really want to know how week 2 goes for this series in particular (and I guess also whenever the inevitable reprints make it to stores).

Ayakashi has finally returned to Oricon! And it’s still at 34k first week…Yep, we reached the stagnation phase for Ayakashi. Granted, it might be able to surpass previous totals in the monthly…but considering that it’s been at around 65k since volume 2 as well and it’s doing about the same in the daily rankings as always…I’m not going to predict that. So, what do you do here? It’s bigger than over half the lineup, but it’s not furthering that gap, to the point where it might legitimately be surpassed by Yozakura and Undead by the end of next year. Do you give it an anime in hopes that Yabuki’s name will draw To Love Ru and Darling in the Franxxanime fans to it and raise the ceiling? Do you just give up on pushing it? Do you just cut it off so that Yabuki can try again with something more successful in a different magazine? I don’t know. I’d probably keep it just because Jump needs as many 30k+ sellers they can get at the moment and it does offer something unique to the lineup, but I also don’t think it should be safe enough where if you need to make a super hard decision, it should make you question axing it. I think we’re just going to see the same from Ayakashi until an anime announcement at this point.

…Kaiju No. 8 is an actual menace. It’s still absolutely impressive every time I see it destroy the competition in under three volumes. Just compare it to DR. STONE, a series that might have started out “slow” but eventually became a solid seller in its own right. It just completely destroyed STONE. Spy x Family is still terrifying and it’s now basically at 500k after only three days…but watch out for Kaiju No. 8. It has a lot going for it that could lead to surpassing Smug Anya.  

Which leads us to the top of the mountain. I sort of figured this was likely after following sales this year, but we’re finally here. Jujutsu Kaisen finished above One Piece’s newest volume. Keep in mind that One Piece had an extra day where it finished 1st in Shoseki over Kaisen and it still lost by around half a million. I knew it was possible for another Jump title to do it obviously since Kimetsu no Yaiba did it last year, but actually seeing it done by a series I’ve been following since the literal beginning, that makes it feel more special to me. They grow up so fast T_T. Anyway, I don’t know how this will do long term, but I think One Piece 99 is essentially on par with 98. Only 200k difference between 98’s four day first week and this one’s three days, which it probably would have made up if they were the same amount of days.

More sports, with Haikyu!! opening 3!



Next time, We may have seen the next hit be born. Till then, remember: support the official release!

This week’s a bit of a bummer, for a few reasons, so I don’t want to beat around the bush. It’s time to Make the Jump.


The first thing to examine is this week’s Jump’s Table of Contents. As you know, a table of contents is a list of what to expect inside whatever literature you’re currently reading, and Jump’s no different. It gives us the order of how series appear in that week’s Jump issue, what series received a center color page (or CP for short), among other things. This isn’t an exact representation of a series standing in Shonen Jump, but it can give us a close look at how Shueisha views a series based on patterns and the like. That’s generally why people view the TOC as a ranking of sort.

A series “rank” is just where they appear in the magazine (for example, a series that ranked 4th that week means it’s the fourth series to appear in that week’s Jump, excluding CPs). It’s the closest approximation we can get on a series’ popularity before its first volume is released. While readers in Japan can vote on their top 3 series for a week, ultimately it is up to the editors to decide the order of the TOC (though those viewer votes obviously have a huge factor in the editors’ decision making). New series aren’t “ranked” right away. We don’t know how far back TOC’s are made or how many weeks back they’re meant to reflect a series status, but it is a general rule of thumb that a new series doesn’t start “ranking” until its 8th chapter (or the first chapter where it does not receive a CP if chapter 8 receives one).

Here is the TOC for Issue #28 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 6/13/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue(s) Preview:

We’ll start off with the bad news first: after this issue, Jujutsu Kaisen is going to be on indefinite hiatus. According to Akutami-sensei’s author comment for this week  as well as an official statement from Shueisha, he says his health issue isn’t that serious and he’s doing fine mentally (as well as a mangaka can mentally anyway). He thinks the break will be approximately one month so let’s hope he gets better in that timeframe. Like I said previously, it’d suck to not have Kaisen for like a month, but Akutami-sensei’s health obviously comes first. Wish you the best!

As for the TOC itself this week, I think I’m comfortable saying Blue Box is safe for the time being. No one knows how this thing works completely, but generally the idea is that the stuff they want to promote is closer to the top while the flopping series are closer to the end with the worst off series at the very bottom. Sometimes, new series start high and then collapse before floundering and eventually getting axed. My theory that I’ve been working on is that a new series that gradually falls to the lower part is probably a safe series while one that just completely collapses and tumbles to the bottom is in danger. Elusive Samurai, obviously started high and then stayed up with a lot of color pages and eventually a cover, Witch Watch was steady on the top for a bit before getting color pages and then the “newbie plummet” happened, Yozakura started at 5th back in 2019, then drifted into the mid-tier before slowly (very slowly) making it to the bottom before the rise, similar story for Undead, Mashle never made it to the complete bottom but it had a similar curve. All the could-have-beens like Moriking, Bone Collection, even i tell c and Nine Dragon’s had one or two good placements and then just sank directly to the bottom. The reason why I think this is that the survey results do play a role in the TOC making, so while Blue Box for example might not have had the fifth most total votes of a series whenever they calculated the results for the surveys, I am at least willing to believe it had a good amount of people voting it in their top 3. Then as a series slowly goes down the TOC, it’s more of a reflection that the voters for the series get overwhelmed by the number of people voting established series after giving the newbie some support for a bit but them still liking the newbie, where as if a series just drops completely, it might suggest people were voting for it when it was new since it was a new series in Jump and it’s nice to support a new series, but they stopped doing it. In other words, a series that slowly falls in the TOC may imply that a new series has a small but still existent following with the magazine readers while a new series that drops hard so suddenly doesn’t have any kind of fans; that’s my theory. While Blue Box only has two placements so far, I do think the fact that it actually increased from week one to two (and if we’re being truthful, it’s probably going to be at least 4th next issue since One Piece is on break, Jujutsu Kaisen is on hiatus, Mashle and STONE aren’t getting ranked, and it’s gotten higher than Elusive Samurai before), it got a color page at chapter 7, and it’s being well received online makes me think that it won’t suddenly drop to bottom 5 out of nowhere. We’re in the “wait for volume 1 to confirm” stage now.

That’s not the only new series ranking here however! Candy Flurry is on track now with a respectable 8th! I was right. I knew that this was going to be higher than what most people expected. Will it fall apart…maybe? Chapter 2 was the worst chapter in the series and it doesn’t really come together until like chapter 6, but I also would not be shocked if it continued being a mid-tier series until volume 1 comes out. I think this one will definitely require more patience to get some kind of read.

…You know what we’re doing now. Nine Dragon’s and i tell c are still in the bottom 3, but for once, Nine Dragon’s receives a reprise as it’s now only third from last instead of the usual last or second to last. That still means nothing, but funny all the same. This might be the last time i tell c is dead last because Dolphin ends next week and presumably i tell c is after it, and they at least have the decency to not make a cancelled series’ finale chapter the bottom 1. So, there’s that at least. Which brings us to Witch Watch. Once again, bottom 5. I’m becoming more and more convinced that the Blue Box theory is actually right, because it can’t be a coincidence that this drop started the week Blue Box got color pages and it hasn’t risen while Blue Box essentially replaced Witch Watch’s spot at the top. Not only that, but it’s getting another color page next week so it clearly isn’t struggling that badly. I think it’s becoming clear that they’re just keeping those two away from each other and that if one of them could afford to be in the bottom, it’s Witch Watch.

No clue if this is coincidence or not, but hmm, High School Family drops like a rock the week after volume 2 flops completely. I wonder if that means anything. Naw probably not, as much as I hope it does.

So next week…no One Piece cover. In fact, it’s on break next week. The anniversary is the end of July and coincidently, we’re running out of series to give covers to (with My Hero being the only other real option but not really since its anniversary is right after One Piece’s. They could do Undead but they don’t remember that series exists for some reason). Also coincidentally, a one shot campaign is ending issue #29, meaning there’s nothing for #30 as of right now. Even more coincidently, #30 has no anniversary since Dolphin ends next week (probably), and #31 is Roboco, which isn’t important enough to get an anniversary cover. Even further beyond coincidence, a new batch of series is usually three series long and there would be three issues between next week’s issue and the week of One Piece’s anniversary. If you still don’t feel me yet, I’m basically saying a new batch of series is almost 100% starting at #30. They always do one around this time of year, every major series in the lineup have gotten a cover this rotation except for One Piece and My Hero (but at this point, it seems like they’re waiting for the anniversaries to do that. Plus, generally, if One Piece gets cover and lead color pages on the issue it comes back from break, they announce that in the issue they announce One Piece is going on break, but they haven’t done that here), Ayakashi (but it got consecutive color pages and the anniversary just passed, so I doubt it’s getting the cover at this point), and Undead…which is the only one that’s actually strange but they act like it’s failing now so maybe not that strange (in that, that explains why it hasn’t gotten the cover this rotation. It’s still weird that they’re treating it like an outcast). So, unless Burn the Witch is coming back with no hype at all, they basically HAVE to be starting a new batch of series in #30.

Well, next issue is Magu-chan’s anniversary…and it got nothing. Granted, this time last year had one more issue than we do this year at the moment I think, so maayyybbbeeee they’re going to follow it by date instead of issue number, but I highly doubt it since Ayakashi’s color page this week is for the anniversary. It getting nothing, to essentially becoming the second worst selling series in the magazine with even more decline…yeah, not good. I think the writing is on the wall for it. Once the ones that shall be departed starting next week are gone, it and I hope HSF are next in line.

Mashle is getting that cover and lead color page for no reason…just like I said it would eventually! Man I’m good at this. Good for the series and maybe that means the arc is reaching the climax soon. Not much else to say other that it’s interesting that Undead didn’t get the cover before Mashle did for the first time ever. I think this might be a sign that they’re done promoting those two as equals. It’s going to be at least a month/month in a half before Undead gets a chance at another cover, and I think there is some meaning to it being the only established (or almost established) series in the lineup that had no explanation for being skipped. It seems like it lost all its steam completely.

   

And now let’s shine some light on the most recent chapter of some series currently featured in Weekly Shonen Jump. These aren’t my top five chapters of a week necessarily, but they are ones that I want to highlight and talk about a little.


This secret technique Tokiyuki learned to beat opponent’s despite being a gentle soul reminds me of Nagisa learning the assassin clap thing he learned to beat the most vile of scum in Assassination Classroom. Elusive Samurai has clicked on everything ever since the second color page and I’m glad it has. In Matsui we trust. The thing that sticks out here compared to his previous works though is that while I’ve liked his previous casts a lot, they generally didn’t do much. Assassination Classroom is my favorite manga of all time, but I can’t lie about the fact that Nagisa is the only student that really accomplished anything major in the series. Here though, even if Ayako and Kojiro aren’t quite on Tokiyuki’s level yet, they still matter and contribute to the resolution of plot points. Side characters are stepping up and helping Tokiyuki develop his army. This is just something I like reading every week.


Yeah, Blue Box is definitely safe till August bare minimum. You don’t do slice of life plots like this in chapter 9 of your Jump manga unless you’re sure you are already popular at some level. As for the content itself, I’m still really liking the vibes this series lets off. We haven’t gotten much of Chinatsu so far, but it’s a Jump romance manga, even if it seems so un-Jump-like, so I should have figured we’d get more development and insight of Taiki instead. While I’m still hopeful of Chinatsu development, I’m satisfied with what we’re getting from Taiki, Hina has been great, and Haryu is a great senpai now that the “secret” aura he was emitting is gone. The only character I don’t like so far is Kyo, and that’s because he isn’t a character. He’s just a plot device that’s used to discuss the relationship. The only things he ever talks with Taiki about is badminton and Chinatsu; Haryu’s under his breath comment about liking Monster Hunter has given him more depth than Kyo has after nine chapters. I wish he would get an actual character or just disappear if this is all he contributes to the plot. At least with Shun from Nisekoi, he was a massive troll about Raku’s relationship issues. He’s relatively small compared to the rest of the manga though, and everyone else is a joy to see.  


So, this is going to be the last Jujutsu Kaisen chapter for a little bit. I’ll miss you And uh yeah, this chapter proved that Akutami-sensei definitely needed that break. It felt really short and I feel like that ending text panels, while effective, probably would have been at least drawn if he wasn’t struggling keeping up.

What we did get here though…man what a heart wrencher that was. You know, maybe this was the issue of heartbreak because Yozakura was heart wrenching today too, and Dolphin’s chapter is outright heart destroying. The moment between Momo and Mai’s dead body, that’s really sad when you consider half of Momo’s classmates are dead, missing, or really injured now. This chapter did a great job of showing how dark and twisted both the Zen’in Family and the exorcist world in general can be. It set up future possibilities and plotlines, and most importantly, it showed how dangerous Maki is. She is an absolute threat now and look forward to seeing what she does against major players in the future.  


What a way to celebrate one year of serialization with vintage Yabuki. God bless. Anyway, this chapter also announced the popularity poll and that voting lasts till September, so there’s at least one more color page coming this year. Also, leave it to Yabuki to somehow get a plot out of the “plot” and make something I’m interested in seeing how it plays out. It was sort of a theory previously, but now it’s been essentially outright confirmed that that Matsuri’s mom is #TeamReo so I wonder if the main conflict of the series is going to switch to Matsuri vs his mom about who ends up with. As for what’s going on right now, probably going to be resolved in a chapter or two. Probably more ecchi hijinks. Nothing to special. Happy anniversary Ayakashi, wouldn’t mind seeing you again next year.    


I really like the cover; the lead color page was kind of meh for me. Hopefully the series gets more opportunities to change my mind on them. I think this was a great action chapter and helped show that there’s more dangerous threats in the assassin world aside from the now retired Mr. Sakamoto. I think this was the first time we really got to see other people with cool powers that’s possible in this world, because before this, aside from Shin, I think all the assassins weren’t actually superpowered but just highly skilled assassins. Here though, we got Wolverine and Invisible Man and it was cool. I don’t think Suzuki-sensei quite took advantage of the extra pages like Gondaira-sensei did with Yozakura’s lead color page a few chapters ago, and this felt more like two chapters combined into one a bit awkwardly, but I guess that’s something you improve on over a serialization. Overall good first showing for a cover/lead color chapter post chapter 1 debut.  



Another month, another batch of new volume releases for Jump. This time we’re in June, and releasing we have: One Piece volume 99, DR. STONE volume 21, Jujutsu Kaisen volume 16, Ayakashi Triangle volume 4, Magu-chan: God of Destruction volume 4, SAKAMOTO DAYS volume 2, and the debuts of Witch Watch and Nine Dragon’s Ball Parade! Build King volume 2 is also this month, but we already know that’s flopping, so I decided to do Kaiju No.8 volume 3 instead since that’s bound to be way more interesting. Also High School Family volume 2 is releasing, but I don’t think it deserved a spot on the graph since it’s realistically going to sell less than 5k copies still and I don’t see a point of having a nothing series there when there’s already 9 other series.

Sales Data for June 7th-13th:

NOTE: Witch Watch got a reprint that’s apparently nearly double its initial print scheduled for June 24th. So apparently that “Is only 15k? impressive enough for Shueisha to be happy?” question from last week has an answer: Yes, yes it was.

This was about what I expected from most series. The flops don’t chart or barely make it, Kaisen and One Piece are neck and neck, DR. STONE being as steady as ever, Ayakashi looking unlikely to make it to 70k sales in a month once more, the only exciting things are SAKAMOTO and Witch Watch. Witch Watch is already outpacing SAKAMOTO DAYS which is always a decent sign for a new series, while SAKAMOTO made it to 20k in 10 days when it took a month last volume, so good for it. Let’s see if either of these shoot up even more come…September, I guess? I don’t know.

Also, these numbers are not saving High School Family. It charted a second week, barely, but it only made it to 5.6k sales. If Jump sees THAT, and justify keeping it cause of “growth”, Nakano legitimately needs to be fired.


We eagerly await Akutami-sensei’s return so let’s listen to Jujutsu Kaisen’s first opening! Get well soon!

Next time, the waiting room for new series continues. Till then, remember: support the official release!

It's the dawn of a new era once again in Weekly Shonen Jump. It’s time to Make the Jump.


The first thing to examine is this week’s Jump’s Table of Contents. As you know, a table of contents is a list of what to expect inside whatever literature you’re currently reading, and Jump’s no different. It gives us the order of how series appear in that week’s Jump issue, what series received a center color page (or CP for short), among other things. This isn’t an exact representation of a series standing in Shonen Jump, but it can give us a close look at how Shueisha views a series based on patterns and the like. That’s generally why people view the TOC as a ranking of sort.

A series “rank” is just where they appear in the magazine (for example, a series that ranked 4th that week means it’s the fourth series to appear in that week’s Jump, excluding CPs). It’s the closest approximation we can get on a series’ popularity before its first volume is released. While readers in Japan can vote on their top 3 series for a week, ultimately it is up to the editors to decide the order of the TOC (though those viewer votes obviously have a huge factor in the editors’ decision making). New series aren’t “ranked” right away. We don’t know how far back TOC’s are made or how many weeks back they’re meant to reflect a series status, but it is a general rule of thumb that a new series doesn’t start “ranking” until its 8th chapter (or the first chapter where it does not receive a CP if chapter 8 receives one).

Here is the TOC for Issue #29 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 6/20/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue(s) Preview:

Hey, look at that, an eventful TOC! Before we get into everything, I want to talk about something general. I think it’s because the lineup is slowly filling up with successes, but it’s felt like that TOC has suddenly become more important again. If you were to tell me a year ago if Undead got these same placements, I would not have believed for a second that anything was wrong. If you told me that Phantom Seer sold way way way more than Magu-chan, Dolphin, High School Family, etc. and it got cancelled MONTHS before those did? Wouldn’t have thought that TOC placements meant anything and that you were wrong about PS’s sales. I wouldn’t have faith in Blue Box or Elusive Samurai doing really good for their volume debut a year ago if I just looked at TOC placements. It feels like avoiding the bottom actually matters again and that making it to the top actually means something again (whether it be genuine popularity or an editorial push; at least it actually shows that it is doing well unlike last year when you had Roboco constantly being top 5 and even top 3 just cause nothing else was actually important enough to be a constant top 6 series). Even if the rankings don’t look interesting, it does feel good knowing in the back of my head that they at least matter.

With that out of the way, let’s go down the list…or up it since I think the bottom reveals more stuff than the top. First off, yep, Dolphin is finally concluding. I’ll talk about the series more later, but it does feel a little surreal seeing it actually end. That was the cover and first new series I ever talked about for Making the Jump, so it ending reminds me how long we’ve been doing this, if nothing else. It’s a shame that it ended up like this, because once this arc started, it genuinely found its footing and become a good manga. It also won’t be able to celebrate one year of serialization which always sucks, but this one is extra hurtful because he was literally one week away from the anniversary; they didn’t even do Mitama or Samurai 8 that dirty. I want to say that this is for the best since Tamura ended up writing a satisfying short series and it probably would have gone to crap if he got a long run, but honestly, a dragged out and awkward Dolphin is still probably better than most of the flops that came out after it (hell, the manga that debuted the week right after it is a far inferior series). Oh well, unlike most vets that fail upon a return to WSJ, I probably would actually still care for a Tamura manga if someone did an English translation for it and follow it. I’ll do a proper send off soon, but farewell for now.

This is what the bottom five SHOULD have been months ago, but better late than never; there was only one “undeserved” (and it was more less deserving than flat out undeserved) axe from this taking that long to get here. We all know about i tell c and Nine Dragon’s at this point, but Magu-chan and High School Family are the two obvious axes now that these three are about to depart our lives. Undead has obtained temporary peace from the bottom 5, but we’ll see how long that lasts once we lose the bottom 3 series…or only two of them. We’ll get into why later, but we got hit with a curveball. Only one of i tell c and Nine Dragon’s is getting canned. I heard i tell c is safe, but have not seen anything that outright confirms it, but if that’s the case, Dolphin got screwed. There’s no other way to describe it then Dolphin got screwed. It did better than both of these failures, is by a vet so it has at least SOME fanbase unlike these two failures, it ranks higher than these two failures, the quality of the series itself is better than these two failures. I was ready to accept Dolphin’s death, but this is just bullcrap.

…Anyway, I’m not going to say it’s a GOOD sign yet, but the fact that Candy Flurry didn’t completely collapse after its first ranking is encouraging. Chapter 2 was by far the worst part of the manga, so as long as it didn’t completely turn off people, it should be relatively smooth sailing from here. I’d probably start getting worried if it dropped below Undead but that hasn’t happened yet. And now that at least one of i tell c and Nine Dragon’s is sticking around, it’s probably not going to be last place often. I guess that’s one positive for one of them surviving longer than they deserve; it acts as a cushion for Candy Flurry, a series I actually like and think deserves a chance.

Blue Box…is actually first place on the TOC. I love the series so much, but wow…I didn’t think it would actually manage this so quickly. Without a doubt, that is the most impressive showing from a Jump newbie author in a long time. I think the last time a series by a newbie got first this quickly was like…Hinomaru Zumo back in 2014! Zumo is way more impressive since it ranked first for its first placement, but still, chapter 10 and already a first place on the TOC? That’s pretty good, Miura-sensei. I wondered how someone could be so good for their first WSJ serialization. I know she’s not really a rookie or anything, but most veterans don’t have a series this polished in their second attempt in Jump, let alone their first ones. That’s when this little tidbit came out. Suddenly, thinks make way more sense. Still though, good work Blue Box! I thought I was being a little hasty calling it safe after last issue upon some reflection, but this week made my rash decision making justified . I really hope this translates to good sales.

For next issue, let’s talk about the color pages before we get to the big stuff. Yozakura is getting color pages and extra pages . I assume this is for either a new arc, or for the popularity of the previous one. Also, I guess it’s promotion for volume 9 because this issue comes out the week that does. Seeing this series get love always makes me happy. Black Clover getting a color page is expected. New volume is also going out the same day Yozakura’s is, and it’s popular. No need to overthink it. Which leads us to Magu-chan…this is just odd. I’m going to guess that this is for the anniversary because they already did a color page for reprints of the entire series…and let’s not lie, it definitely isn’t popular enough to get one as thanks for popularity. If that’s the case though…why didn’t it get it this week? This issue is the anniversary for it, and we know for this batch they’re acknowledging anniversaries by issue number and not date because Ayakashi got those two color pages for the anniversary. It’s just very odd. It’s also getting a popularity poll and I’m just like…what? I honestly don’t think a popularity poll means much nowadays if something like Magu-chan can get one (Yozakura popularity poll when).

Since we’re saying goodbye to old series, naturally that probably means we say hello to new ones, and that’s the case this time. Our new batch of series total two this time, headlined by Red Hood by Yuuki Kawaguchi…rest in peace Yugen, your time will come and you’ll save the exorcism genre soon enough. If that sounds familiar, Red Hood was the winner of the most recent Golden Future Cup! Yuuki Kawaguchi broke the curse! He actually got his series in a timely manner; he won the competition in January I think, and he’s getting it now five months later. Now he has two other curses to overcome: the GFC winner curse. Once you actually get your series, and it’s a full series version of the one shot, typically it goes disastrous for the series post Beelzebub. I think Phantom Seer might actually be the most successful GFC series, since Beelzebub, and it lasted 30 chapters. The other curse is the curse of Taguchi. Taguchi is one of WSJ’s editors. He launched Hell Warden Higuma (a 19-chapter series), Samurai 8 (a disaster), AGRAVITY BOYS I think (a 50 chapter drag of a series) and he’s the current editor for My Hero Academia (during the arc that made me question if I even like the series anymore) …Red Hood has a lot going against it. Honestly though, I don’t really care if this succeeds or not. It’d be funny if the GFC curse meme lives on, but the only real stand out thing from the Red Hood one shot for me was the panel work and how it conveyed action. I didn’t really care about the world or the characters, which could change for the serialization (I did like Phantom Seer’s cast better than Honomieru Shonen’s), and this wasn’t even my favorite one shot from the GFC (if you remember, what I wanted to win was Popo), but my hype isn’t quite there yet. I’m more excited for Red Hood because it’s new and some of the garbage is getting cut from Jump, rather than because it’s Red Hood, if that makes sense.

There is a second series though, and this one I’m excited for, if not a little cautiously optimistic. Martial Arts Road – NERU is the second of our new series, and it might also sound familiar, and that’s because it should. This was originally a digital exclusive miniseries that ran in WSJ back in September of last year. I didn’t read it and of the four digital exclusives, it was the only one that was a complete unknown to me (I knew of the authors for two of them, and the other one I read and the mangaka was i tell c’s). However, I thought the color pages for it looked nice and a martial arts manga sounds nice at the moment. I have two worries about this series though. First, this was originally a digital exclusive miniseries. Back in 2018-19, Jump did this thing where they took some Jump GIGA miniseries and made them into full series. That’s how we got Jujutsu Kaisen…but also Momiji no Kisetsu, Invade You, Hell Warden Higuma, and neO;lation. So, one success and then two of the most forgettable series ever, one series that held back the artist immensely, and one series I actually do like but still died quickly. Not exactly the best track record and doing this “make series based on digital exclusive miniseries” feels like the same idea. The other is…I have trust issues after i tell c. Like I mentioned, Inaoka wrote a digital miniseries I actually did like…and still made i tell c. If you remember, he’s also the mangaka of Invade You…which I just said was another miniseries turned flop. This isn’t quite the same because NERU is still the same series and I like what I saw, but I just have some doubt within. I’m going to head into this with a positive attitude though and I’m looking forward to this way more than Red Hood.

To conclude this, I’d like to just touch up on this year’s Tsugi Manga Award since I think there’s some implications there about certain series. The nominees are up now and these are the Jump manga that made it to the “Print Manga Category” (I’d also do “Web Manga” and list the Jump+ manga nominees, but let’s be real, Kaiju No. 8 is winning that by a landslide):

1. Blue Box
2. Witch Watch
3. The Elusive Samurai
4. SAKAMOTO DAYS
5. Magu-chan: God of Destruction
6. Me and Roboco

First off, I want to reiterate, being nominated for this is great, but it’s not the be all end all. AGRAVITY BOYS got nominated and finished SIXTH in the final results, and it did nothing for the sales. Mitama Secureity got nominated last year and it got axed by the time results came out. 100 Girlfriends finished 2nd and it got an initial bump but still hasn’t sold all that well considering the online popularity. Undead Unluck WON last year, and got a boost from it, but in the long run it ended up stagnating and declining.

That being said…Blue Box made it and there weren’t even 10 chapters by the time nomination ended LUL. I’d say that should be an amazing sign for its chances of winning and selling well but two things: 1) I’m not familiar with all 40 manga in the “Print Manga Category”, but I saw Matchmaking of Amagami Household made the cut and that has less chapters. So, it’s not necessarily a huge advantage and 2) Frieren: Beyond the Journey’s End is there and that is by far the favorite to win the thing (it’s winning like everything else already). Who knows though! I thought Couple of Cuckoos was the favorite last year and it didn’t win. I don’t know how much you can extract from this beyond Blue Box is popular online, but I would also say that Candy Flurry is nowhere near Blue Box in terms of online popularity. THAT’S FINE THOUGH, Blue Box is the abnormity here, not Candy Flurry.

Witch Watch and Elusive Samurai making the cut, as well as i tell c and Nine Dragon’s Ball Parade missing it, weren’t surprising. These were Jump’s big new successes in 2021 (before Blue Box apparently), and while WW only has one volume and ES hasn’t even released one yet, it was pretty obvious that they were going to make it because the hype new Jump manga always makes it this far as long as it’s not brand new (…then again Blue Box is brand new and made it so who knows). That being said, I think these two are the Jump series most likely to underperform in this competition. People could nominate stuff starting in I think February, and people were HIGH on the hype of new manga by the creators of SKET Dance and Assassination Classroom respectively. Three months is a long time in the manga world, so are those same people going to still vote for these series now? Early on, Elusive Samurai’s “hype” came from Matsui, not the quality of the series itself, so a lot of the early nominations might be off the train now. Conversely, Witch Watch’s hype came more from being the lone true romance-based Jump manga, but a) it abandoned that for awhile and b) Blue Box has debuted since, so a lot of that hype also could disappear. I think both of these will still be top 20, but I would not be shocked if they both end up in the Mashle range of 13 despite being the actual up and coming Jump manga of the year (I genuinely don’t know how Blue Box will factor into this).

Magu-chan and Me and Roboco both made it this far. I’m going to be real; I think Magu-chan might actually be the AGRAVITY BOYS of this year’s competition. It sells awful, but it continues having an online presence from the fanbase and is clearly more popular than the sales say it is. Plus, looking at the full list, I think there’s an obvious top 4, but beyond that? Honestly, I think it’s completely open. There’s only two manga I would be flabbergasted if they made top 10 and Magu-chan isn’t one of them. Roboco on the other hand screams “the Yozakura” of this year’s crop, aka it somehow made it this far despite not having anywhere near the same amount of presence as the other Jump series and is definitely not making top 20. A common misconception with this award is that basically any Weekly Shonen Jump series is going to make the final list just because they’re a WSJ series. That doesn’t actually happen, but every year there’s always one obligatory WSJ series that’s there because it actually does decent sales wise so it’s bound to get nominations, but people aren’t going to actually vote for it during the final round. That is 100% Roboco in this round (plus, from what I’ve seen on the interwebs, people generally agree that the series isn’t as funny as it used to be even if they do like the series). I would be surprised if it made Top 20 and outright shocked if it made Top 10.

Before we get to the big one, I want to talk about the omissions from WSJ. Already mentioned Candy Flurry, i tell c, and Nine Dragon’s, and Dolphin is obvious. High School Family didn’t make the cut, and Ayakashi Triangle didn’t make the cut. I really hope Shueisha is paying attention because if THIS doesn’t tell them that no one gives a crap about High School Family, they’re intentionally blocking their ears at this point. The ONLY way to “justify” HSF’s existence for this long was that it has this huge following that just don’t buy the volumes, but the fact it couldn’t even get THIS FAR in the Tsugi Manga Awards, when Yozakura pre-Twitter account did? That should tell you that literally no one likes this series. As for Ayakashi…I really don’t think it can be explained why it missed the cut other than it’s just not popular online. I don’t think it has too many volumes out, it’s one week older than Magu-chan and it came out in the same month so it can’t be something weird like “anything pre x 1st is ineligible” keeping it out (they also clearly don't care about volume debut since Samurai and Blue Box didn't even have volumes out when nomination ended. I don’t think there’s a sales limit, otherwise Kaiju No. 8 would be disqualified, and Shangri Frontier should be out because they sell around the same amount (I mean, I think Shangri shouldn’t be here because it’s awful, but it didn’t break any rules as far as I know). I don’t think it’s because it’s ecchi because there’s a bunch of bloody series and it’s still a Shonen manga, so content wise it isn’t anything worse than the competition (plus, there’s 80 total manga here, at least one of them has to be an ecchi series that’s disguised as something else). Yozakura’s fanbase carried it to the final stages of last year’s competition, and its online presence was nonexistent at that point. It showed that at the very least, it had a loyal fanbase that will stick by it, no matter how small. Does Ayakashi even have that? I think I have to take this as Ayakashi is a seller, but it’s not actually popular. Online at least. If that’s true, I honestly don’t know how long term the series’ future can be. If all people do is buy the manga…is that worth keeping around? They won’t be excited for an anime, won’t buy merch probably. It still does well above half the magazine in terms of sales, but will that always be the case? Once a majority of WSJ does pass it, is there any reason to actually keep it if it’s not really popular?

Well, there’s one entry left and I saved it for last for a reason. I alluded to it before in past Making the Jump’s, but I think of all the WSJ nominees, SAKAMOTO DAYS has the best chance of winning the entire thing. It’s a newer WSJ manga, but it’s not THE newest so people have time to get attached to it and it’s been around long enough to get their attention, it’s already selling well and growing a good amount from volume 1 to 2, the online presence it already has is MASSIVE compared to the others with almost all of its videos and ones related to the mangaka being the best performers on Jump’s YouTube channel and being among the most talked about series on social media, it has exposure since it’s been on the cover of WSJ since its debut already and that can’t be explained as anything but popularity, and in general it just has buzz around it. It feels exactly like Undead’s situation from last year, where it feels like there should be bigger favorites, but if you actually think about it, it’s not THAT shocking it won the award. I’d be happy if it won, but that’s not necessarily what I want (I would WANT Amagami to win out of every manga here, but that’s not happening. Of the WSJ manga, I’d want Blue Box or Elusive Samurai to win more), but I am confident that SAKAMOTO bare minimum is going to be top 4 along with Frieren, Oshi no Ko (Kaguya writer hype and it was in that awkward zone of being a big new manga last year, but it came out just a bit too late for it to really make a mark in the nomination phase, so hungry voters can push it), and Kubo-san (it finished 19th last year and it made it here again. It blasted past 100 Girlfriends in terms of sales and people are taking note of the series this time).
   

And now let’s shine some light on the most recent chapter of some series currently featured in Weekly Shonen Jump. These aren’t my top five chapters of a week necessarily, but they are ones that I want to highlight and talk about a little.


Well, since this doesn’t appear to be the end, I guess I have to catch you up on how I feel about the series. tl;dr: I hate it. It’s probably my least favorite non gag manga in the magazine at the moment. I think it’s become beyond terrible ever since that “plot twist” in chapter 8 and it’s just pathetic at this point. I hated this mART arc and I’m upset that we’re doing another case now. This isn’t even comically bad like Double Taisei was back in 2019 (even if I personally didn’t find it that bad, just completely boring), this is just terrible.  

As for this chapter…why did people think this is guaranteed safe? This can easily resolve next chapter and just be the same unsatisfying conclusion series in WSJ that get axed early that we always get. Apparently the password is solvable, according to the author’s comments this week on the TOC, but I’m not going to bother solving it and it’s a complex puzzle if it is solvable, and this series is not popular in the slightest so I doubt some rando online is going to bother, so I guess that password is going to be lost to time forever if it isn’t revealed next chapter. I’m still going to say that this isn’t ending next week, but I really hope I’m wrong because this garbage has not improved at all and doesn’t deserve to live.


Well, that’s an interesting way to give a progress report on Why-man. I love that our not modern characters are picking up modern ideas like Morse Code (well…morse code is also very old…you get what I mean) so that they can continue to be relevant. Why-man being on the moon though and their continual planning on making it to space and actually going out there, not just be in a ship and float forever, does make me wonder…is Reboot actually hinting at something? If you don’t know what that is, basically back in 2019, Boichi did a spinoff for the series called DR. STONE Reboot: Byakura based on Senku’s dad's crew and what they were doing when they came back to Earth. The reason I brought this up though was because there was this drone thing in the spinoff that transforms into an Android anime girl thing by the end (Boichi is weird, you get used to it though) that shines a message down that Senku sees (I believe the ending of Reboot is meant to be while they’re in the middle of making glass for the first time). Rei is losing power during the ending though and her messages became really short. Is it possible, that Why-man is another drone that is losing power, but instead of passing down Byakura’s message to his son, that Why-man was corrupted and is passing down whoever froze the Earth the first time hateful will? Is it possible that Why-man doesn’t actually exist and is just a leftover from the long past? I don’t know, but thoughts like this make this arc feel more exciting even if nothing major happens necessarily in chapters like these.


This was a weird chapter. This should have been one of my favorite ones in the series; I’m a sucker for emotional tearjerker moments like this…but it just feels completely off. It was another fitting one because it’s Father’s Day when this was released…but it also feels like that was the sole purpose for this chapter, I guess is how I would put it. This was an emotional chapter, but it felt like the only reason why this plotline even happened was because Shinohara wanted to write something related to Father’s Day since that’s when it was getting released. That’s fine in theory, Magu-chan did the same thing this week and I thought that was a good chapter, but it just felt out of place here because a) Magu-chan has done that for basically every holiday so it’s not strange it would do that again and b) Magu-chan’s plot for the chapter was based around facts we basically already knew or assumed were true the entire time while Witch Watch’s came out of complete nowhere (there was not a single hint to Kara’s parents not being blood related to her, her mom dying recently, her being sad that happened, nothing). This felt like cheap emotional payoff than a genuine one. It’s really odd because SKET Dance wasn’t like that based on my memory (to be fair, it’s been like…6 years since I read it…dear god I’m old). Witch Watch doesn’t feel like something that tries to play off of Shinohara’s strengths.

Hardboiled Cop and Dolphin Depth 47: epilogos (END)

Farewell, Shark. You deserved better than this. You found your footing after all this time so at least I can recommend you as a good short manga even if you were cancelled.

As for the ending itself…I liked it. This being the chapter that Chako finally acknowledges Shark as her dad and even ten years later, she loves Orfie enough to consider him her dad too, felt fitting considering it came out on Father’s Day. The characters conclusion to their stories I felt were satisfying, and this chapter captured what this series does best really well, the relationship between Chako and Shark. I liked the fakeout of Shark being a shark gag, I thought it was a nice touch that Shark and Umi basically being a thing was confirmed in this chapter since one thing Tamura usually does is ignore the romance elements of his relationships (which makes the premise of Hungry Marie fall apart…but I digress), but here he acknowledged that this was a thing and that they probably would end up together. I also appreciate that he had the wherewithal to not do a stupid boob joke with Umi in this chapter since it was a somber tone the entire time. I love that Shark actually valued his friendship with Orfie and named his personal dolphin after him. This felt satisfying, which to be honest, Tamura wasn’t able to do with Beelzebub or Hungry Marie, so good work my guy! We’ll talk more about you later, but I’ll look forward to your next work, wherever it may be.


Another day, another one shot victory for Mash that makes me not care. To give credit, this is without a doubt the best cover page in the series (Cell War is one of the worst names I’ve ever seen in manga tho) and that lead color page is actually amazing, so Komoto is clearly capable of making interesting color pages if he’s interested…just like he can make good chapters if he cares, early Mashle clearly shows he’s actually funny but he just gave up on that because more people liked the generic battle route. That’s fine, I get the appeal of seeing hot magic boys (and hot Mash) fight in magical battles… makes the series popularity even more strange though because Mash gets the most fights in the series by far and he doesn’t do anything magical and his attacks are the blandest of them all. This chapter was the epitome of that though. Cell War did all these neat magic things, but he got one shot by the boringest of techniques and an overly scientific explanation (that I don’t even know is accurate, but that’s okay this is manga) to justify how Mash was able to CHOKE OUT DIAMOND. I assume something major is going to happen between Adam and the headmaster (aka, the headmaster dies and shakes up the state of the world), otherwise I’m going to be severely annoyed if this arc ends up being completely pointless.
 
Oh well, he’s still a man after my heart with this reference.



Another month, another batch of new volume releases for Jump. This time we’re in June, and releasing we have: One Piece volume 99, DR. STONE volume 21, Jujutsu Kaisen volume 16, Ayakashi Triangle volume 4, Magu-chan: God of Destruction volume 4, SAKAMOTO DAYS volume 2, and the debuts of Witch Watch and Nine Dragon’s Ball Parade! Build King volume 2 is also this month, but we already know that’s flopping, so I decided to do Kaiju No.8 volume 3 instead since that’s bound to be way more interesting (imagine if it opens over One Piece). Also High School Family volume 2 is releasing, but I don’t think it deserved a spot on the graph since it’s realistically going to sell less than 5k copies still and I don’t see a point of having a nothing series there when there’s already 9 other series.

Sales Data for June 14-20:

SAKAMOTO and Witch Watch still going at it I see. I’m really interested if Witch Watch will keep up the momentum for volume 2, because that’s around when the series started losing steam for me personally. Ayakashi, once again, is not going to make it to 70k in a month, and probably not 65k. It has definitely hit the wall at this point.  


I think this part from last chapter is fitting as any to start. I think this moment embodies how I feel about Tamura perfectly: I want to believe that Tamura will eventually find a success after Beelzebub, I want to believe that he’s still positive and hopeful for his career, but I think about how his works post Beelzebub have not worked out for him and it makes my heart weep for him because deep down, I know there’s a good chance that it won’t happen. I fear that his failures might weigh to hard on him and he decides it’s too hard to keep going and retire. Much like Chako, I’m heartbroken because someone I really like might be gone forever, as much as I want him to return. I’m probably reading too much into things, but that’s how I feel at the moment.

I didn’t read Beelzebub before Hardboiled Cop and Dolphin was announced back in June of 2020. I read Hungry Marie and it was bad, but I decided to use this as an excuse to finally check out Beelzebub and ended up digging it. So when the first chapters were reminiscent of Beelzebub, but without the in your face “this is a Beelzebub reference” parts of Hungry Marie’s beginning, I was okay with the series even if I thought what he wanted to do with this series wasn’t clear at first. Ultimately, I think that initial not knowing what the purpose of this series was, is what ultimately killed this. In Beelzebub, it was clear from the start that he wanted the series to be a comedy based around the bond of a delinquent and baby that could be serious if needed. In Hungry Marie, it was clear he was trying a comedic situation played straight; he did it badly but it was clear that was the intent from the start. Here? I don’t know if Tamura intended this to be a typical cop comedy with a straight man and wacky partner, another bond based comedy with Chako and Shark, a serious dive into a cop fighting an underwater cult, or what. That’s why the series had a strong start in the TOC before dropping; it initially had the Beelzebub charm (way more than Marie ever did), but once they realized Tamura didn’t know what he was doing, they gave up on it. That’s also why the mid teen to early twenties chapters felt so meandering and pointless; cause Tamura didn’t know what he wanted out of the series. I’ve seen this argument all the time that Beelzebub switched genres constantly, that’s just a Tamura staple and he’s masterful at doing this great, and while there’s truth to that, I feel like that’s a somewhat shallow understanding of what makes Beelzebub great and his other series not that much. Beelzebub did do that, and switched up the scenarios all the time, but each arc still stayed true to the core essence of the series: the bond between the main characters of the arc. Marie…ignored its core theme in its arc, which made the arcs feel disjointed and random instead of charming and out there. Dolphin though? Its problem was that there was nothing there in the first place to stay true to. That introduces a different problem: what was happening in those chapters were now just happening for the sake of it. What Beelzebub did great that Tamura hasn’t done since is make the characters loveable from the start because he had a clear idea about what he wanted the series to be and stuck with it, Dolphin didn’t have that, so the characters were much more shallow even if Chako was a cutie patootie.

However, once this final arc started around chapter 24, everything changed. Tamura finally realized what he should centralize the story around: Chako and Shark’s relationship. Once that happened, everything was pieced together and he made a great arc. I started caring about characters aside from Chako, and as a result, that moment I linked at the start of this, it hit me extremely hard. Partly because I can relate to that feeling very well, but also because I could tell how much Chako loved Orphie and how devastated Shark is that he has to break the news that Orphie isn’t coming back. It made me feel that even if it’s probably a better ending if he stays dead, I want Orphie to magically come back and make everything okay. This arc made me hate the antagonist and I felt satisfied when Shark got the cuffs on him and arrested that monster. If Tamura figured this out from the start, maybe Dolphin wouldn’t have been in this situation to begin with…but I’m honestly mad about this cancellation now that the circumstance have become clearer of the series around it.
Jujutsu Kaisen is on hiatus and it was sudden, so I would not be shocked if the editors decided that they can run both of i tell c and Nine Dragon’s for an extra month so that the magazine isn’t so empty. As a result of that, that might be why this batch of series is two instead of three like most people thought it would be. I also wouldn’t be shocked if they decided that Kaisen is definitely only going to be gone a month, so they only need to cut two series for now and can cut the other flops when the next batch starts and make that one bigger. Whatever the case, Dolphin SHOULD NOT have been one of the ones that got axed. i tell c and Nine Dragon’s are going to go NOWHERE with this second chance, Dolphin still sold better than either of these two, placed better on the TOC than either one, and I think Tamura is way more trustworthy of pulling out an arc out of nowhere that can stall for a month and still be entertaining, than a case study of a mangaka saying “screw this” and the world’s slowest sports manga. I wouldn’t be shocked if the fact that they picked only maybe even two significantly worse manga than his caused Tamura to give up on WSJ. I genuinely think he could make another amazing success on Jump+ since he won’t have to worry about surveys, he’ll have all the time in the world to develop his loveable cast that he’s good at doing when he has time, and if he underperforms in volume sales, he’ll still have a higher chance of not getting axed. I wish the best of Tamura because I do think he’s a good talent, but he should turn the page of this part of his career and reassess if he wants to continue chasing the WSJ dream or be part of the growing Jump+ empire.


Nothing major really. Just some quick movie tidbits. My Hero Academia: World Heroes’ Mission got a new trailer that you can check out HERE. There’s also a new trailer for the second half of season 5 that you can check out HERE (https://twitter.com/WSJ_manga/status/1406214148267065346). Jujutsu Kaisen 0 got a release date in Japan of Christmas Eve, which is very fitting. You can check out the news HERE.

We eagerly await Akutami-sensei’s return so let’s listen to Jujutsu Kaisen’s second opening! I like the first one more, but this is still a bopper.



Next time, the long awaited batch of new series begins! Till then, remember: support the official release!

Let the hunt begin. It’s time to Make the Jump.


The first thing to examine is this week’s Jump’s Table of Contents. As you know, a table of contents is a list of what to expect inside whatever literature you’re currently reading, and Jump’s no different. It gives us the order of how series appear in that week’s Jump issue, what series received a center color page (or CP for short), among other things. This isn’t an exact representation of a series standing in Shonen Jump, but it can give us a close look at how Shueisha views a series based on patterns and the like. That’s generally why people view the TOC as a ranking of sort.

A series “rank” is just where they appear in the magazine (for example, a series that ranked 4th that week means it’s the fourth series to appear in that week’s Jump, excluding CPs). It’s the closest approximation we can get on a series’ popularity before its first volume is released. While readers in Japan can vote on their top 3 series for a week, ultimately it is up to the editors to decide the order of the TOC (though those viewer votes obviously have a huge factor in the editors’ decision making). New series aren’t “ranked” right away. We don’t know how far back TOC’s are made or how many weeks back they’re meant to reflect a series status, but it is a general rule of thumb that a new series doesn’t start “ranking” until its 8th chapter (or the first chapter where it does not receive a CP if chapter 8 receives one).

Here is the TOC for Issue #30 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 6/27/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

Hooray, I was actually wrong! i tell c IS ending this week. Thank God, letting mediocrity last far longer than it deserves to is one thing, but letting actual garbage like that last would be insulting. Inaoka is definitely capable of better than this and while I’m done with him in WSJ (as in, I don’t care if he comes back ever again. If he comes up with another series in WSJ, obviously I’m going to read it still), I think he could do something cool in Jump+ or one of the other Shueisha magazines. For Nine Dragon’s, it still could end next week I guess, but there’s really no need for it yet now that the lineup is at 20 series (well, Nine Dragon’s needs to go in the sense that it’s terrible and terrible series need to be axed if they don’t sell well or do well in the magazine, but technically they can keep everything at the moment) so I’ll work under the assumption it’s continuing for at least a little bit, which would explain why the series went from blitz pace to only fast pace. I don’t really think it deserved a second chance, but whatever. Elusive Samurai is top 6 as always and getting a color page next week for the release of volume 1. Witch Watch…got better but I wouldn’t feel relief yet. Black Clover and Yozakura aren’t ranking this week, and Magu-chan is a wild card that could possibly place higher than it when it does rank. It could very easily fall back to bottom 5 next week.

High School Family is back in 7th place…if it switched with what’s last place, this would be a perfect TOC honestly. Why does this series mess everything up all the time? This is 100% forced push from the editors. It sells like complete garbage, there is NO presence to this series online or offline, it doesn’t get color pages so it’s clearly not popular in the magazine or worth actually promoting, why do they insist on forcing this clear flop down our throats?

Based on personal tastes, save for last place, this is honestly the perfect bottom 5 for me. All the series I don’t like, sans HSF are there. Getting into that, that’s bad for Candy Flurry…but I want to remain hopeful since I like this series . I don’t think preorders are up yet so I can’t check if it’s doing bad or not, so I’ll let the dream live for now. Plus, I COULD argue that since Nine Dragon’s is the only bottom 3 series still in the lineup, that the bottom ISN’T as impactful for a new series (especially since HSF is near the top and it clearly plays by different rules). As for the others…I think Undead is going to be a shorter series at this point. I don’t care that it was on King’s Brunch (another Japanese variety show, that Undead WAS ALREADY ON PREVIOUSLY, WITH MORE FOCUS, AND DID NOTHING FOR THE SALES) for like 5 seconds because it got seventh place in a bookstore award, it is clearly losing steam and any media attention it gets at this point is because of what it’s associated with rather than because of its own merits. I highly doubt it’s getting cancelled this year, but it’s long-term future is definitely slowly slipping away.

And look at what’s in the bottom 3, hopefully for good but I’m not that naïve. Me and Roboco is coming out in July with another volume and it’s this low the week before release. The anniversary is next week and the color page is bare minimum pushed back a week (I wish it wasn’t happening, but basically anything gets a color page if anything notable is going on for that series these days). I’ve been seeing people say it’s not funny lately in the West and maybe Japan is starting to think that as well. Is it in danger now? Probably not (unless volume 4 also shows no growth as well). Is it’s time as a “featured” series in Jump that gets love over? I think it’s coming ever closer. This TOC shows: the bottom is basically empty now. Nine Dragon’s is the only guaranteed bottom dweller, Candy Flurry could be that now, and then what? Magu-chan is popular in the magazine clearly so probably not that (it’s also getting a Twitter account, merch, and LINE stickers, so it’s probably safe for the time being), Undead’s recovered a bit (not really recovering if you’re constantly bottom 5 instead of 3, but eh) so maybe not that, HSF is annoying and never stays where it should for long, and Ayakashi has gone up and reception has generally been better lately…the opposite for Roboco. It would make sense if Roboco is banished, but I’m not believing it until I see it not get a color page for #32 (since maybe they’re waiting for date anniversary instead of issue anniversary like they did for Magu-chan). If this is the start of the demise of Roboco though, I’ll be glad because not only is my least favorite WSJ series dying, but it also is a sign of a rebound for the magazine if we have to start cutting series that were generally considered “safe”. Jump is at its best when the competition is fierce and every series has to bring their a-game or face the axe, so something that’s been safe for the past year mainly cause there was nothing pressuring it all of a sudden being faced with cancellation unless it improves shows that authors are going to need to actually try again.
   

And now let’s shine some light on the most recent chapter of some series currently featured in Weekly Shonen Jump. These aren’t my top five chapters of a week necessarily, but they are ones that I want to highlight and talk about a little.


This was a terrible ending, for a terrible series. Goodbye, the end. Hope you can find success somewhere else, Inaoka, because I’m not looking forward to anything you do that’s more than four chapters anymore and would much rather you find success somewhere where I’m not forced to read you.

Also, that password puzzle was dumb, but bless the translator for making it work to the best of their ability (if you don’t know what the puzzle actually is: Last chapter, the bomb guy was basically going through the katakana alphabet and they reached the last character, which normally doesn’t start words in katakana. It’s extremely hard to keep the spirit of it while making it understandable for English readers)


I’m still going to be hopeful …it’s not looking good though. Maybe this is a case of Demon Slayer/Jujutsu Kaisen where the main villain is introduced real early to be a hook, and the fact that Tsumugi is a lollipop user is still generally a secret suggests that it isn’t rushing completely to the end…but it’s not looking good. I think what was here is pretty cool and I look forward to actually learning about this villain group, but I don’t know. Also the male MC’s name is Misaki apparently. Okay. I’m going to forget it in 3 chapters again unless he’s actually mentioned more often.  


Maybe if I do this, magic will happen again and this will also end next week
Realistically, this has one, maybe two games left, hopefully it’s one so that these last eight or so chapters (since I’m going to guess the next batch of new series is probably late July-early August) can have a remotely decent final game but considering these two don’t know what the word “pacing” means, probably not. Reading this though made me realize that sometimes it’s hard to see what’s happening in the game (like, I didn’t know if the last pitch was a fastball or not). This is why baseball doesn’t work in Jump.


I think I realized why I’ve been hating this past twenty or so chapters: Deku can’t carry this manga. It’s essentially been just Deku this whole time and he’s always been the weakest part of the main cast,  and the fact he’s been going at this solo (and insisting and insisting and insisting on doing this solo…) just makes it even more apparent how bland and uninteresting Deku is as a main protagonist. So when I saw Bakugo at the end of the chapter, I felt a little hopeful…before remembering next week is a break . I hope this stupid “Deku has to do it alone” thing is over because it’s just not interesting in the slightest.


First off, normally I don’t care about localization of names. I think if you’re translating something into English, the title should be English unless the translation sounds boring or is completely unhelpful (for example, I am fine with Jujutsu Kaisen because the alternative is Magic Sorcery Battle, which is beyond generic and doesn’t actually tell you what Jujutsu Kaisen is about). This one though, is flat out terrible. Red Hood was perfectly fine as the title. It was clear enough that this is a hunting manga. This isn’t a Kimetsu no Yaiba or Shokugeki no Soma where maayyybbee the casual reader wouldn’t get the name; people would understand the series just fine if it was just Red Hood. This was probably done cause of DC and not wanting to get sued (which yeah, DC probably would because they definitely aren’t busy making good comics at the moment), but even still, why not use a synonym for red? That would have been way better. Oh well.

As for the chapter itself…I think inconsistent is how I would describe it? I think in general it was good, but there was a bunch of things that made me go “Wait.” The fact that in the first pages of the chapter, Grimm has three different hair colors should tip off that fact. I read the oneshot for this and I thought it was enjoyable, and this was mainly that…but with some odd differences. The main one I’m thinking about is they didn’t bother explaining how Grimm goes from kid form to adult form in this chapter. It probably has something to do with her being part werewolf or something since this chapter hammered in the fact that they can transform, but that feels like an odd choice to push to the future. I also thought it was really strange that the mayor’s death got off-screened in this version, when him dying in the oneshot was the entire emotional core of the story and is the reason why you care about Velou (that’s a bad name btw, I guarantee I will forget it by the time chapter 2 comes out) fighting for his life against the werewolf. I also felt the art was technically impressive, but not really impactful(?). To be fair, he is a former assistant of Horikoshi, and I feel the same way about My Hero a lot, but it just feels like something is missing when I’m looking at the panels. For example, the part where the Mayor is saying he’ll protect everyone as long as he lives, I feel like the way he’s drawn is meant to make this feel epic and heroic, but it just feels dirty and like he didn’t finish drawing it. That “cool guys don’t look at explosions” spread looks more awkward than cool. I don’t know how hot takey this is, but I feel like if this wasn’t Horikoshi’s former assistant, people would be way more harsh on the art.

When people say “this series has a lot of potential!” I generally think that means one of two things. The first one is they think the series itself has a lot of potential based on the confirmed information and presentation. An example of this would be Mission: Yozakura Family, for me. I said it had a lot of potential after chapter 1 because the characters themselves seemed cool and lovable, the mystery of the incident that happened to Mutsumi that kicks off the series is eyecatching, and the growing of Taiyo and Mutsumi’s relationship. This is all stuff we are confirmed to see more of and are necessary for the series to move along. The second kind of potential is the hypotheticals the premises can introduce. An example of this one would be Build King. The potential isn’t so much in the characters or the story, but possibilities that the world can introduce. In other words, its potential relies on things being introduced/developed that we are not promised. In Build King, the potential came in the WORLD or relying on more interesting house creatures, which are things that don’t necessary HAVE to be developed and ultimately weren’t.

That’s the kind of potential I see when people say this about Red Hood. All the potential here is that the myths and fairy tales they bring out as enemies could be interesting, or about the cool gadgets they can use. None of it is about the actual premise or the characters, and that’s generally a bad sign for me when it comes to a Jump series because what Kawaguchi sees as interesting probably won’t align with you and there’s no guarantee he’s going to expand beyond werewolves. If that happens, does this series have anything else that will keep people reading? Based on what I’ve read of others reactions…probably not? Even based on the PV linked…it doesn’t really do anything to sell you on the series itself with parts of the actual manga. I’m assuming the Japanese text is making it out to an epic adventure with myths to defeat or something, but that’s exactly what I mean. Nothing about the actual plot or characters are interesting. It’s the possibility of cool creatures from fairy tales that may or may not actually happen that’s meant to sell you. If that’s what you want, that’s good, different opinions and all. I just believe that isn’t enough for a series to survive long term in WSJ.  

First impression is that this will probably make it to 30 chapters, survive an axe round or two, but never live up to people’s expectations. I HOPE this isn’t another Phantom Seer where it does decent, but it’s not really growing or resonating with the magazine, so it gets axed (and people complain to the moon about it), but I saw the hype for this before the chapter even came out and I saw Grimm’s adult design and realize that hope is futile. Underwhelming, but makes sense, this is a series with Taguchi as the editor, happens all the time with his series.


Hey, what do you know, a one shot from Jump GIGA Spring 2021 actually caught my attention enough to want to talk about it. I wasn’t expecting that but here we are. I also wasn’t expecting it to be another exorcist one shot of all things that got me to care, but I liked it quite a bit. The concept for this one is one I’m not that familiar with, but it might just be me, but it actually felt kind of fresh for an exorcist story. The idea here is that everyone has a “shadow” inside them that represents their inner negativity and it can eventually overtake you and make you evil. This phenomenon occurs because of two twins stumbling upon a certain lake and one of them dying or something like that. It’s an exorcist series, and it has most of the cliches like “male MC saves female MC, ends with her being partners with male MC” and “male MC is OP exorcist”, but I think they felt refreshing here for some reason. The art was pretty good here and I actually did like the characters, however basic they are. This isn’t revolutionary or anything, but it’s competent and enjoyable, so I wouldn’t mind if this became a full series. I definitely would like to see Kenji Amamiya in the main magazine by the end of next year though.

We eagerly await Akutami-sensei’s return so let’s listen to Jujutsu Kaisen’s second ending! This makes me sad every time.



Next time, Jump becomes a better place with a new series I’m actually looking forward to. Till then, remember: support the official release!

The long road begins. It is both hard and tortuous based on what we can see this week. It’s time to Make the Jump.


The first thing to examine is this week’s Jump’s Table of Contents. As you know, a table of contents is a list of what to expect inside whatever literature you’re currently reading, and Jump’s no different. It gives us the order of how series appear in that week’s Jump issue, what series received a center color page (or CP for short), among other things. This isn’t an exact representation of a series standing in Shonen Jump, but it can give us a close look at how Shueisha views a series based on patterns and the like. That’s generally why people view the TOC as a ranking of sort.

A series “rank” is just where they appear in the magazine (for example, a series that ranked 4th that week means it’s the fourth series to appear in that week’s Jump, excluding CPs). It’s the closest approximation we can get on a series’ popularity before its first volume is released. While readers in Japan can vote on their top 3 series for a week, ultimately it is up to the editors to decide the order of the TOC (though those viewer votes obviously have a huge factor in the editors’ decision making). New series aren’t “ranked” right away. We don’t know how far back TOC’s are made or how many weeks back they’re meant to reflect a series status, but it is a general rule of thumb that a new series doesn’t start “ranking” until its 8th chapter (or the first chapter where it does not receive a CP if chapter 8 receives one).

Here is the TOC for Issue #31 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 7/4/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

It’s time for the seasonal TOC that makes me mad! This is exactly why I don’t celebrate when Roboco gets a bad ranking in one TOC; it always rebounds and gets a super high one it doesn’t deserve immediately after! I assume they’re doing the “put series that are releasing volumes together” thing again because Roboco is right after Black Clover and then they did Yozakura, put Elusive Samurai’s color page way lower than a popular series would go normally for a color page, then Undead, in the bottom 5 area. I honestly don’t know if this strategy actually works (I would guess no since High School Family always gets ignored by manga buyers when they do this and I highly doubt Kaisen beating One Piece in sales last month was because they were next to each other on the TOC right before they released…), but I hope once Roboco doesn’t show any growth, AGAIN, they just give up once and for all and banish it to the bottom until it gets cancelled like where it belongs. This “buy the volume of all these series” theory is also the only reason why I think Yozakura is bottom 5 this week. If you count the actual numbers, it’s 10, which is only 1 lower than its usual 9, and that one is Witch Watch which they placed high this week I guess as a sign that they are not abandoning it (plus, with Yozakura being more lovey slice of life romcomy lately, maybe they decided they could put Witch Watch higher up and still keep the “variety” they strive for when making TOCs).  

…Bottom 3 is better than last place I guess, but not really. I hope Candy Flurry keeps going up instead of just staying in that zone . Why can’t this be HSF T_T. That’s clearly not popular, is not successful, and is just dragging now.

So, I’ll be honest, Nine Dragon’s ended, but by the time that news came out, I already finished the TOC graphic and uploaded it to imgur. I didn’t feel like redoing it for a series I could care less about and we all knew was dead anyway, so I’m just leaving the graphic like that. It did end though.

From anniversary spread, popularity poll, official Twitter account (the @ is magmenuek_info btw. Account has 3.8k followers which is about what I expected after a week), and merch, to last place. Yeah, I can’t lie, sort of expected that for Magu-chan. While I would love this to be a sign that it’s the new “end of magazine gag manga” (mainly because it’s the only mostly gag manga that’s actually good), I doubt it. This is probably just them saying, “Yeah, we gave the fans everything they wanted from Magu-chan. We’re done pushing it now. We’ll let the volume sales be whatever with or without push until we decide to cancel it if the merch sales suck.” Which I’m fine with. The series has a popularity poll ongoing, so we know it’s not getting cancelled out of nowhere or anything. Low rankings honestly probably don’t matter in the short term for it. I think the merch doing really well (and I have no idea if it is selling well or not) decides if Magu-chan can continue to reign.

So…My Hero is on break this week. #32 is the issue anniversary for it…and it’s not getting the cover. The issue after is #33-34, which is either the One Piece anniversary cover or a group cover. With that double issue, that means there’s a break after it. Maybe they’re waiting for the movie? Which in that case, I think it would work for #35 since that’s August and the movie is August I think…but that’s weird that they pushed the anniversary celebration back a month, sort of. It getting three consecutive color pages is something worthy of the anniversary, I don’t know though. Just weird how Horikoshi is seemingly allergic to covers or something (also, I would still bet that #35 is a cover too).

Which leads us to the big moment…top 3 this week for Blue Box…and the cover and lead color pages next week! Absolutely well-deserved for the best performing newbie in terms of TOC rankings since…Promised Neverland? It’s been a minute, but Blue Box one hundred percent deserves this push. A part of me is a little cynical in thinking that maybe they want to push their Jump Mangaka School thing’s second year since recruitment is ongoing, and Miura is a graduate of the first class of it so giving her the cover might be a way of saying “Hey, you too can be successful enough to be on the cover of Weekly Shonen Jump so early if you enroll today!”, but I do think this is mostly because of her own merit and the series being genuinely popular. The expectations for this volume 1 must be pretty big though. If it lives up to them though…we might have our first or second (depending on Elusive Samurai’s performance) mega hit from the start in a while rather than just a success that grows into a mega hit (CSM, Kaisen, Kimetsu, etc.). I am so happy for this. This is the successor to Nisekoi I’ve been waiting years for, and now it might be the successor to it in terms of sales and become the next titan of Jump romcoms (sorry, We Never Learn. I really like you, but you are pretty insignificant in the grand scheme of things). A part of me wonders if Kodansha is kicking themselves for letting Miura go since Magazine was literally the perfect place for her, but then I remember they have Couple of Cuckoos becoming a big name, Girlfriend, Girlfriend is airing now as an anime, Rent-a-Girlfriend is doing really well, and then they have Amagami plus My Charms Are Wasted on Kuroiwa Medaka looking like they’re also going to be bare minimum respectable romcoms (plus if all else falls apart, they have Negi-sensei who can probably make another amazing romcom and be a gigantic hit if they’re completely desperate. Ranger Reject is doing good, but it’s not something irreplaceable or anything), so they probably aren’t sweating it too much.

Now all I ask for is that Blue Box isn’t one of those series that have great color pages but terrible covers, please!
   

And now let’s shine some light on the most recent chapter of some series currently featured in Weekly Shonen Jump. These aren’t my top five chapters of a week necessarily, but they are ones that I want to highlight and talk about a little.


I wonder if in the raws, it literally was just SKET DANCE or if the parody was still a parody. Fun reference aside…I don’t know, this just doesn’t seem like a Shinohara series. I’m just not feeling anything deeper than “Niko’s cute!” for these characters at this point, when I did with the SKET-dan crew. This doesn’t even have the amount of over hammy drama that I heard Astra Lost in Space does. I just went “oh” when the warlocks were introduced, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to have that tepid a reaction to them. To be fair, SKET DANCE turned around when the student council was revealed, so maybe there’s still time to turn Witch Watch around too, but most of my excitement for the series is gone at this point. I don’t think the series is bad or anything, but it just doesn’t tickle my bones the same way as it did in the beginning.  


I wonder if STONE is starting to lose steam with magazine readers. It doesn’t show in the TOC, but I’ve noticed that lately, things that would take several chapters are concluding in one now. Like this chapter, the dam that’s blocking the Suez Canal, if this was about 100 chapters ago, it probably would have taken four chapters for it to be destroyed with this one ending with the declaration that the crew are making a missile (Tsukasa’s totally going to like that one btw) and then spending the next two making it. I guess that makes sense, even after 200 chapters of reading the same things it can get old eventually. Plus, realistically…what else can they do that can beat out a rocket? Not much. So yeah, I think this chapter is just another sign that STONE might be ending sooner than people realize (plus, Inagaki did say in an interview a long time ago that the series was planned to be five years, and this is year four).


If the subway system was anything like this, I’d visit New York more often . I think this arc is wrapping up soon and I’m fine with that. It’s been enjoyable, but I do feel like it’s dragging a little at this point. I miss the day to day life of the Sakamoto Convenience Store. I think the future is bright for serious arcs in this series, but I just want some breathers now for a bit. That being said, this series is definitely the most creative when it comes to using the environment in fights, so if this gets an anime, I can see this becoming absolutely massive.  


Yeah, this is definitely one of those series that people like because of what “it can be” instead of what “it will be” or “what it is”. To be fair to them, Red Hood itself, is presenting itself as way more than it is truthfully. It’s trying to be this epic tale that is super deep and grey in morality, when that just doesn’t match up with the lore of the world. All that stuff about other creatures like vampires, dragons, and the like? Doesn’t matter because Grimm is making Velou a part of the Werewolf hunters of Red Hood. The premise of the story is making werewolves extinct. Velou’s connection with the conflict of the world is with werewolves. That line about other mythological creatures being around was meant to make the world seem bigger than it will end up being, but all it does is leave empty promises for readers and making the world more complicated than it needs to be. I know the end of last chapter says “part 1”, but a) This is Jump. That means whatever the author wants it to (i.e., i tell c used “part” as a substitute for “reboot because people hate this”) and b) that still doesn’t guarantee the other creatures people were hyping up. Part 2 can easily be “werewolf extinction” or “werewolf conservation” or anything else. Even if they were going to eventually tackle vampires and the like, my question would be why would you want that? Velou has no connection to anything else. Grimm has no connection to anything else. The scope of the series doesn’t go that far and making it go there seems more of an attempt to make a manga that doesn’t have that much depth seem to have more when it really doesn’t (it’s similar to how black Clover took this long to do an arc about another Kingdom and when it finally did it, it combined the other three right away into one arc). I think the artwork is also trying to be more than it really is. There are now several instances where Kawaguchi tried to make something “look cool” and it just comes across as awkward or flat out a mess. The werewolves themselves are all over the place: one chapter it takes going instead one’s stomach and blowing it up to beat them, the next one loses by getting whacked by a bell. It’s already inconsistent on how powerful they actually are (and none of these have been hyped up as a super werewolf or anything). This just screams, “manga people tell themselves they love, but don’t deep down.” I’m not saying this is even bad, but I just don’t see how this is manga has super amazing potential to be amazing. At most I can see it being a good manga that lasts nearly a year but never reaches a higher gear.  

I swear the only reason people are hyping this up still is because of the My Hero connections Kawaguchi has. I guess it pays to know the right people.


I liked this quite a bit. Despite what I come across as, I actually do like manga that are able to pull off a “retro throwback” and I think Neru is a good throwback to 80s/early 90s manga while modernizing that artstyle to still be appealing. The premise is pretty simple with a minimal long term hook (the grandpa is missing, they’re probably going to look for him eventually), but the story of the chapter I felt was good enough for me to not dread reading more. The action really stuck out and looked alive and fluid. I don’t think any character is offensively bad or boring yet. Akebi leaves a strong first impression and almost definitely won’t be a useless damsel in distress.
Overall, I think this is fun. The main problem I can see though is that readers won’t look past that and see the lack of depth as a reason to ignore it. It’s basically the opposite of how I feel about Red Hood. Red Hood I think is going to get a lot of attention, but that much attention is going to make people see how there really isn’t much to the series and eventually turn on it, whereas I think Neru is going to get little to no attention, and because of that people aren’t really going to pay attention to what the series DOES have/do well or to the fact that Neru isn’t TRYING to be more than what it is right now, unlike Red Hood.

I would prefer if this survived, would not be shocked if it did, would not be surprised if it dies and I’d be a little sad but not outraged. I’m ready for more skills.


Shueisha hopes to get lucky in the seventh month of the year in July, as this month they are releasing: Black Clover volume 29, Mission: Yozakura Family volume 9, Undead Unluck volume 7, and Me and Roboco volume 4 for currently ongoing series.  In addition, The Elusive Samurai makes its debut with the first of two consecutive months of volume releases. Also, the final volumes of Phantom Seer (4), AGRAVITY BOYS (6 and 7), the fourth volume of Hardboiled Cop and Dolphin, and the second volume of i tell c are releasing, but we’re only tracking Phantom Seer since that one will probably be significant enough to track.

Sales Data for June 28th-July 4th:

NOTE: Logically, if (when) Elusive Samurai ranks on Oricon, its volume sales will also be its series sales since the only volume out would be volume 1.

NOTE 2: There were distribution issues for Shueisha volumes over the weekend so things will look weird this week. It’ll probably be back to normal for most series by the end of week 3 (if they aren’t, at that point, it’s a series problem, not a distribution one)

My man did it, 3 different decades, 3 different hits. The Elusive Samurai is here.  The first new Jump series to debut in the top 5 of Shoseki since…maybe Robot x Laserbeam? I don’t know, it’s been years. I expected this, but to see my GOAT pull off the impossible is amazing . Will it keep this up next month? Who knows, but for now, I’ll enjoy the ride. The fact it almost beat Black Clover day 1 and was really close to beating it on the weekly charts, I don’t know if that says more about Samurai or Black Clover, but it definitely means something.

“This Roboco > Phantom Seer game Nakano is playing is incredibly annoying, but whatever. He’ll probably change his mind come April 30th when Phantom Seer does significantly better than Roboco again.”

Phantom Seer is a dead manga. To be fair, a more popular than the average dead manga, but a dead manga nonetheless. It got absolutely no promotion and still managed 250,000 copies in circulation. It still sold more than the golden child, Me and Roboco, which STILL gets color pages, good TOC placements, Miyazaki for whatever reason was the judge for a Jump Treasure Award a month or two ago, and moved to shamelessly riding the coattails of actually popular series to get attention once they realized no one cared about the regular parodies (how coincidental that the cover is a copy of probably the most popular cover of Jujutsu Kaisen and they did an entire chapter based around the hottest new manga in Jump, Blue Box, ). I don’t care about battle vs gag manga being like comparing apples to oranges; a dead manga SHOULD NOT be selling way more than a manga that got PUSHED TO THE MOON, in its first week. I want to reiterate: I don’t really like Phantom Seer and think in a vacuum its axe was justified. Jump did this all the time in the past with promising series (for their time. Double Arts was doing 40k in two weeks back in 08 and got canned in three volumes. Most flops nowadays don’t even make it to 40k EVER. I mean, I’m glad that flopped because the mangaka was Naoshi Komi and he ended up making Nisekoi…but still, axing a 40k seller would be absolute stupidity nowadays yet most people agree Double Arts was pretty justifiably axed), the only reason people care now is because they can actually express their opinion on a wider platform. That being said, it is absolutely beyond incompetence that Phantom Seer got axed over Roboco. One showed potential of growth and was beloved. The other showed only two people in the world care about it (and one of those people is Nakano) and NEVER grows. It’s not a Yozakura where the growth is slow but noticeable (and also on the back of no promotion), an overpushed but still solid seller like Hinomaru Zumo was, or even a late bloomer like a Kuroko no Basket. Roboco’s sales are flat out AWFUL for how much promotion and special treatment it gets.

And all that was BEFORE the actual weekly Shoseki estimates came out. The numbers are lower than usual, but if they are legit, then Roboco managed 7.3k…being outsold by a dead manga is one thing. NOT EVEN REACHING 10k WHILE STILL BEING OUTSOLD BY A DEAD MANGA IS ABSOLUTELY PATHETIC. Who cares if it “grew”? It didn’t grow to an acceptable level (at this point in its life, any successful WSJ manga should be able to manage at least 10k no matter how many days week 1 is) and IT STILL GOT OUTSOLD BY A DEAD MANGA DESPITE ALL THE PROMOTION IT GOT AND WILL STILL GET BECAUSE THE EIC IS A HACK.

Please, just cancel this series.

Which brings us to this faceoff.

“I think my boldest prediction was that by the end of the year, Mission: Yozakura Family was going to surpass Undead Unluck in newest volume release. We have ten days’ worth of data for this, and we can see…Yozakura is right there.”

Yozakura is RIGHT THERE. Day 1, they are essentially next to each other. Day 2, they both drop the same amount (and if the Tokyo Revengers wall didn’t exist, Yozakura would STILL be right next to Undead). Day 3, LITERALLY ONE SPOT BEHIND IT. I’m going to be real, these two are releasing their next volume October 4th. I actually think Yozakura has a good chance of surpassing it (especially if an anime gets announced for the anniversary/anything super hype happens for it). That’s a Monday, so both are definitely making it to Oricon, which makes this comparison even more interesting potentially (plus I think the Tokyo Revengers anime is over by then, so the wall could potentially be not as formidable by then). I don’t know what happened with sales this week, but these two are way closer than ever (and I don’t buy ONE day of not being next to each other made a 5k gap when the last time they came out together, the Shoseki rankings were more distant and it was still closer. Something is up with Shoseki this week or something).



We eagerly await Jujutsu Kaisen’s return, but I ran out of songs I like from it…so let’s go with something new now. It’s similar in spirit (ha) to Kaisen, and also one of my favorite series of all time. This week…it’s technically a Kodansha series now, but it’ll always be a WSJ one in my heart. For this special occasion, let’s go with an official AMV for the first opening of…Shaman King (2021)!


Next time, a good series gets a cover so hopefully we’ll get a good TOC! Till then, remember: support the official release!

A great cover for a great Making the Jump, let's get into it!


The first thing to examine is this week’s Jump’s Table of Contents. As you know, a table of contents is a list of what to expect inside whatever literature you’re currently reading, and Jump’s no different. It gives us the order of how series appear in that week’s Jump issue, what series received a center color page (or CP for short), among other things. This isn’t an exact representation of a series standing in Shonen Jump, but it can give us a close look at how Shueisha views a series based on patterns and the like. That’s generally why people view the TOC as a ranking of sort.

A series “rank” is just where they appear in the magazine (for example, a series that ranked 4th that week means it’s the fourth series to appear in that week’s Jump, excluding CPs). It’s the closest approximation we can get on a series’ popularity before its first volume is released. While readers in Japan can vote on their top 3 series for a week, ultimately it is up to the editors to decide the order of the TOC (though those viewer votes obviously have a huge factor in the editors’ decision making). New series aren’t “ranked” right away. We don’t know how far back TOC’s are made or how many weeks back they’re meant to reflect a series status, but it is a general rule of thumb that a new series doesn’t start “ranking” until its 8th chapter (or the first chapter where it does not receive a CP if chapter 8 receives one).

Here is the TOC for Issue #32 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 7/11/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

Wow…that’s a pretty empty TOC all things considered. Only 12 series ranked (which will be the opposite next week when only 3 series are going to not be), but there’s some interesting stuff we can extract from it…and some things that make me sad .
Yeah, I’ve given up hope on Candy Flurry making it at this point. One last place early on isn’t the end, one last place and one bottom 3 is hard but doable, two last places and a bottom 3 is pretty insurmountable. On top of that, looking at presale data on Amazon and Rakuten…not looking good either. That combined with the quickened pace…yeah, it’s probably axed at this point. Sucks, but I think it’s for the best that Jump is at a point again where cuts are actually painful because I like the series rather than painful because they took 3-4 months to get rid of terrible series (now if only we could get rid of HSF which performs just as bad as these flops…). And hey, if it somehow surprises me and pulls through, I’d be stoked!

With all that said…I think Candy Flurry is the only series ACTUALLY in immediate danger at the moment. I’ve said what I said about Undead enough (and no, I don’t think ONE top 5 appearance changes things drastically, or else Soul Catcher(S) probably would still be running in WSJ to this day; do it consistently before you can even get me to consider changing my mind), I think Magu-chan’s popularity poll results come out in December or something far out and I don’t really see the need to cancel it before those come out (though it could be considering the shift from last chapter), I pray ever waking hour of every painful day that HSF and Roboco get banished to the shadow realm and never return but it never happens so I’m not holding out hope for that one until they are literally the only choices to be cut, Ayakashi seemed to stabilize a bit so I don’t know if I’d go as far as to say it’s in danger yet, and we’ll cross the Red Hood/Neru bridge when we get there in a couple months (very very very early data for Neru though…not looking hot). On top of all this, there’s already an empty spot in the magazine as there’s only 19 currently running series (including Jujutsu Kaisen) at the moment, so if they only do two new series (which they’ve been doing a lot lately) next batch, only one thing has to go and that is almost definitely Candy Flurry.  

As for everything else, I would say Witch Watch being bottom 2 would be pretty concerning, but again, they already have so much space that save a scenario where they’re doing a batch of like 4 new series, Burn the Witch, AND Hunter x Hunter return, being bottom 3 one week isn’t that bad. It only becomes bad if this becomes a habit, though with Witch Watch, I could see this becoming a habit. They are in the “push Blue Box to the MOOONNNN” phase of its life right now, and that affects Witch Watch the most. Plus, Phantom Seer shows that sales aren’t everything, so if it’s not getting votes in the survey, it very easily could end up being in danger, but that’s not for at least another 4 months (this scenario also doesn’t factor in the fact that Red Hood or Neru could end up doing worse by the time they start ranking). So right now, it’s probably a sign of caution, but not concern yet.

Also, it’s been a month since Jujutsu Kaisen went on hiatus. Technically, it can come back any day now, but they are obviously going to announce when it does come back, so be on the lookout for that I guess. This is in no way rushing Akutami-sensei back, he deserves as much rest as he wants. Just saying that technically, it can come back any day now.  
   

And now let’s shine some light on the most recent chapter of some series currently featured in Weekly Shonen Jump. These aren’t my top five chapters of a week necessarily, but they are ones that I want to highlight and talk about a little.


The PV has less than 10k views after a week, which I’m pretty sure is the worst performance of one since every new series has gotten one…so that’s not a good sign. When I search JP Twitter, I don’t see people putting it on their top 3 of the week, so also not a good sign. What I said last week seems to be coming to fruition…

As for the chapter itself, I liked it. There were some weird consistency issues (I’m not really getting why they use steel weapons if you aren’t trying to kill people? I know they said this was to stimulate real battles, but like, you aren’t killing other students so you have to fight in a way that doesn’t majorly injure people…which makes it not close to real combat), but I still think it’s enjoyable. The main complaint I’ve seen is exactly what I thought people would say though: there’s no plot or “hook”. Ignoring the fact that the action IS the hook (which may or may not be enough for you, but there IS one), I figured this was going to happen since Western WSJ fans don’t know what they want. They want series that don’t start slowly but when they get it, they complain that there’s nothing to keep you reading and then wonder why the series dies quickly. That being said, Japan doesn’t seem to care about the series all that much right now so I’m not expecting a long run.


When people say, “x series is pulling a Reborn!”, they generally mean that the series is going to shift from mainly a gag series to a more action-comedy, mainly action one and become more popular. Most recently, that occurred with Mission: Yozakura Family. Around the first anniversary, it shifted from doing mostly comedic slice-of-life chapters to more long form action ones and rose in, sales (managing to rank on Oricon for the first time ever with the volume that marked this shift), TOC placements (including more color pages), and even outside promotion (btw, there’s a video on Jump’s channel of them making a cookie version of the color page for chapter 14 and it looks so good!). I hate this phrase so much because 9/10 times, it does not apply when a series decides to do something different from the norm, it’s just people trying to ignore the fact that the series might be getting cancelled.

The name of last chapter was Fate vs Destruction, aka the same scheme whenever Muscar does battle with another one of the pillars. We’ve already gotten two chapters like this that were serious (well, as serious as a Naputaaku chapter can be anyway) before going back to the status quo of the series. The reason why this one is going on longer and is more actiony than previously is because a) Magu-chan is the main character, so of course he gets more of a focus against Muscar b) Magu-chan is the last pillar standing. If he loses, Muscar wins and everything is over. It needs to be more epic and climatic than normal as a result c) Magu-chan is the god of DESTRUCTION. He naturally is more flashy and fight oriented than the god of madness or providence and d) If this is not the end, where else are we going to get an arc that justifies fights to this level? The Ruru’s mom plotline is essentially finished, Muscar is the only major antagonist in the story, they introduced another pillar just for this arc that’s going to be befriended by the end of this fight, befriending Muscar for real drives home the point that Magu-chan really can befriend anyone, so where else are we going to get action scenes like this for a long period of time? We aren’t.

So yeah, please stop insisting that Magu-chan is changing into a more action series now because of this chapter. It’s way likelier that this is just the final arc and Kei Kamiki wanted the final arc to feel more like a Jump final arc, and even more likely that this is just a change of pace and we’re getting Magu-chan and Ruru slice of life goofiness in three chapters for the foreseeable future again.

As for the chapter itself, that’s my Mad God! Let’s go, Naputaaku!  


This was a game changer chapter. It introduces the idea of divinity actually being real in this world as well as possible hints to stuff, like where Tokiyuki’s elusiveness may come from. Shizuku can see divine beasts so maybe her dad isn’t a fraud. The entire world has opened up, which is really impressive considering this is a historical manga that’s following history very closely I’m pretty sure, so the scale should be relatively small scale compared to other series and not that open to interpretation without the premise falling part, but he found a way to make it work. That’s why Matsui-sensei’s the GOAT.

I wonder if we’re going into another arc right away or taking a breather for a bit. I’d like some time to get better acquainted with our new retainers, but I trust Matsui to do something great either way.

So begins this maybe mini episode maybe full out arc of Yozakura. They introduced an annoying reporter called Usa; I see what they did there (they’re based on a rabbit with the ear things of their hat and Usa is short for Usagi obviously). I wonder if this exam arc is going to be better received than the ones the new Jump series try as a last ditch effort to get attention and if this is one of those exam arcs that are meant to introduce a bunch of new important characters (aka, the Naruto/Black Clover version) or one’s that’s supposed to show how strong the main cast is/has become (aka, the HunterxHunter/Jujutsu Kaisen version).
Whatever the purpose is, I trust in Gondaira-sensei. With how many chapters left till the end of August, how long Yozakura arcs tend to last, and the setup for this exam, perhaps the second anniversary is going to be lined up with Taiyo vs Kyoichiro. It’s possible we get Kyoichiro’s full power/Blooming for chapter 100…man, imagine how hype that would be!

In addition to the cover and lead color page, Blue Box got a Twitter account! The @ is aonohako_pr and it already has almost 20k followers after only a week (and this is before volume 1 is released btw).

Pfft, Blue Box took 13 chapters to get to the first date, Nisekoi took 3, which one is the true filler romance!

All joking aside, this is probably the first major step in the relationship for both people since Chinatsu gave Taiki the wish ribbon back in chapter 2. I’m fine being patient, but apparently readers aren’t because AGAIN people are complaining about the POSSIBLITY of this becoming a love triangle before Hina even says what she’s actually feeling. It could be jealousy that Chinatsu and Taiki are getting closer with the aquarium date, it could be envy that Koi knows things about the relationship she doesn’t despite also being a close friend of Taiki, it could be she’s mad at herself because she doesn’t want Taiki and Chinatsu to get closer since she doesn’t actually trust Chinatsu, it could literally be anything. Just let Miura-sensei write the damn story before jumping to conclusions christ.

Aside from that annoyance, this chapter was as great as always and is everything I like about Blue Box. From small details that hint to things like Chinatsu banging her wall while looking for clothes to wear to the date and Taiki hearing it, to just stupid jokes that get a laugh out of me like Hina calling Taiki Secki, to how great the sports shots look (I hope we get Chinatsu activities soon. I want to see Miura-sensei do some basketball shots so badly.) I’d say overall a good first lead color page and cover since the first chapter.


Shueisha hopes to get lucky in the seventh month of the year in July, as this month they are releasing: Black Clover volume 29, Mission: Yozakura Family volume 9, Undead Unluck volume 7, and Me and Roboco volume 4 for currently ongoing series.  In addition, The Elusive Samurai makes its debut with the first of two consecutive months of volume releases. Also, the final volumes of Phantom Seer (4), AGRAVITY BOYS (6 and 7), the fourth volume of Hardboiled Cop and Dolphin, and the second volume of i tell c are releasing, but we’re only tracking Phantom Seer since that one will probably be significant enough to track.

Sales Data for July 5th-11th:

NOTE: Logically, if (when) Elusive Samurai ranks on Oricon, its volume sales will also be its series sales since the only volume out would be volume 1.

You can view this as the “real” test for series since week 1 had distribution issues. Week 1 doesn’t mean much for anything other than Roboco.

…What I said last week still applies for Phantom Seer vs Roboco. A dead manga that got cancelled MONTHS ago should not STILL be beating a manga as pushed and promoted as Roboco, gag manga or not. It’s even worse because I also think a “successful” series should be able to hit 20k sales in 2 weeks (or 10 days) and Roboco STILL can’t do that. Just…why are Shueisha pretending that this is a hit. Everything about this series reeks of desperation (nothing says, “We think a series is successful” like plastering the phrase “TV Anime…hope we get one someday!” prominently on its anniversary color spread)

…BOY THAT YOZAKURA AND UNDEAD RACE IS GETTING INTERESTING AIN’T IT. A 6k difference after week 2, and their week 2 sales according to estimates are literally less than a thousand apart. The difference is that for Yozakura, that’s still growth from previous volumes (volume 7 had 28k after 11 days and volume 8 29k after 10 days) while Undead is still stagnating/declining (volume 6 had 38k at 10 days as well, volume 5 was 44k after 11 days). I’m telling you, Yozakura is on the verge of catching up to Undead.

Well, Elusive Samurai already surpassed Ayakashi Triangle after two weeks, and that’s with probable stock issues for week 1. I just hope the sales aren’t already at the peak (and I’m pretty confident they aren’t, since the series gets better overtime as opposed to Ayakashi where if you didn’t like volume 1, you probably still won’t like volume 4).



Viz does a licensing event on Twitter every once in a while (maybe they’ll go back to con announcements soon) to announce their lineup for upcoming seasons. So, I’ll cover all the Jump stuff that got announced. Also, I’m doing manga only, they sometimes do other stuff like anime releases or stuff like coloring books, but I don’t think those matter as much.

Before that though, let’s do some unrelated stuff.

Another licensor, Seven Seas Entertainment, did their own Twitter event to announce some stuff recently and they actually did get a couple of Shueisha stuff. Coming February of 2022 are 100 Girlfriends Who Really Really Really Love You and 2.5D Seduction. I don’t like 100 Kanojo and don’t think it deserves the license before its contemporaries, but whatever. Seven Seas is also known for doing ecchi series, which 100 Kanojo really isn’t, but I still think it was smart of them to use their mature imprint for it because there’s no way I would ever let a child read anything that has to do with Hahari (or even Hakari honestly). At least I don’t have to worry about this getting licensed by Viz over a Weekly Young Jump series I actually like (we’ll get to that though…). The other series was 2.5D Seduction which I’m actually really happy about because I unironically love that series. I honestly thought there was no shot of this ever getting picked up since Viz doesn’t do ecchi like this and it seemed too niche for Seven Seas (even if they themselves are a niche), but it is and I’ll probably buy the volumes! This is one of the rare ecchi series where I think the ecchi is the weakest part of the series. I’m much more invested in the actual plot (LUL) and the characters; they’re just so relatable and fun!

The other thing is a Viz thing, but they didn’t announce it during this event, so it’s kind of odd. Ayakashi Triangle digital volumes got found on Comixology recently and it’s slated for the end of July…but Viz hasn’t announced it yet. I have a thought about this that we’ll get to later (spoiler warning: I’m mad about this thought), but this does kind of show that they’re willing to at least do ecchi digitally now. Will it be uncensored, who knows? But at least it exists right?...haha…

Anyway, let’s get to the event’s reveals. I’ll divide by Digital Only and Print and give some basic thoughts.


Bone Collection – Uh…why? I mean, you did the entire series weekly already, so I guess you can make a quick few bucks just compiling that into volumes, but actually why? Not only was this not popular in the slightest, but it was actively bad and made fun of constantly. I don’t see this doing remotely well. It’s even funnier because they skipped Time Paradox Ghostwriter (and also Phantom Seer) which might actually do pretty good for a cancelled manga, so it’s like they intentionally picked manga that wouldn’t cause outrage (…we’ll get there). (UPDATE: They didn’t announce TPGW because apparently it’s coming out at the same time as Ayakashi digitally…man, Viz really are good with announcing stuff outside their events, aren’t they?)

Mitama Security: Spirit Busters – This one was way overdue and I honestly don’t get why they waited on this. I’m pretty sure even the West liked this more than Moriking or AGRAVITY and unlike a certain other series we’ll get to later, should have been digital only from the start.

Hardboiled Cop and Dolphin – This was nice. I expected it since it seemed popular online and it still is a quality series that Viz always liked. It’s funny though, I’m pretty sure this is the first Tamura series they’ve ever officially released volumes for. They never did Beelzebub (I guess because Baby Beel’s beelzebub is always out?) and Hungry Marie came before they did every series in Jump completely, so they only ever did 3 chapters for it.

Me and Roboco – Thank God this didn’t get a physical version. I’m already mad and if this got something it didn’t deserve on top of that, I might actually have busted some blood vessels. I’ll explain later, but I think this does basically kill any chance of physical for it. The casual Western audience also hates this manga, so I doubt it’ll actually do all that well, so maybe Viz will get the memo and stop pushing it every week if it flops.

Magu-chan: God of Destruction – I’m actually really glad that this at least got a digital release. This sold horribly in Japan so I was worried that Viz thought it wouldn’t be viable enough to sell at all. Like Roboco, I think this basically has no chance of a physical, but the fact it even got this is lucky enough.


Kimetsu no Yaiba – Stories of Water and Flame – I’m happy with this, not happy that this probably isn’t in the box set that they’re releasing for the series in August once the main manga is complete. I think these are fun side stories and it has the Bozebeat guy behind it, who I actually like, so I’m glad to support something he made even if it’s only successful because it’s attached to a mega anime franchise.

Deadpool Samurai – Marvel promised a way to read this in English when it was first revealed, and they delivered. I enjoyed it, probably not enough to get the volumes, but this is nice.

Dragon Quest Dai – I think these are based on the recent re-edition that just finished coming out in Japan. I’m whatever on the series itself (the anime is enjoyable, but I’m way behind on it and probably won’t catch up till a rainy day or something), but I think is potentially exciting for what it might hint at. They brought back Jojo, are releasing Fist of the North Star, and now this. They might be starting a “classic hits” kind of line now, so maybe they’ll do the Slam Dunk rereleases from back in 2018 that never made it to the West or finish Reborn! (this one is me just being a dreamer).

Which brings us to the last release…

SAKAMOTO DAYS – Before I become negative, I’ll start out by saying I REALLY like the series. It’s probably top 5 in current Jump right now for me and maybe top 10 weekly manga overall. I also think it did deserve a physical release DOWN THE LINE. I’m still probably going to buy the physicals when it starts coming out in Spring of 2022…but I’m sick and tired of this bullcrap.

Mission: Yozakura Family is on the verge of two years of serialization. That’s something like, maybe 15% series out of 1000s can brag about in Jump. In Japan, it sells more than EVERY OTHER manga I’ve listed besides the Dai re-editions (which it does about the same as) and the Kimetsu no Yaiba spinoff (which does better than like, 80% of all manga), INCLUDING SAKAMOTO DAYS. It already has a French release, I think a Thai release, and it either has or the release in Italian is coming out this year. People LIKE THIS SERIES in the West. WHY DOES THIS STILL NOT HAVE A PHYSICAL ENGLISH RELEASE?! IT CAUGHT UP TO UNDEAD UNLUCK (A SERIES YOU ALREADY RELEASE BY THE WAY) FOR GOD’S SAKE! If you needed any other proof that Viz does not like this series, it’s right here. I’ve officially given up hope of the physical ever happening from Viz. If it happens, it probably only comes out if an anime is announced, but since they clearly don’t care about this series at all, it probably only happens if it becomes the next Kimetsu no Yaiba, and I love this series to death, but LUL AT THAT EVER HAPPENING.

And it isn’t just Yozakura either. Ayakashi is the second best newbie (maybe third depending on how Elusive Samurai continues) since Chainsaw Man. It ALSO deserves a physical release but Viz basically just said never by making it digital only. Since they have the digital volumes, that probably means Seven Seas isn’t going to bother since why only get the physical rights to distribute a manga and Viz doesn’t physically release stuff that has nipples anymore (I don’t even know if their digital version will be uncensored). My only “theory” (plea) that these two even have hope for physical still is the fact that they DIDN’T announce either. When Viz announces something got licensed, I take that as them saying “THIS is it. This is how we’re distributing them.” That’s why I think Roboco and Magu-chan are done (besides both being gag manga that don’t sell good); if they had any thought about eventually releasing them physically, they would have just silently put them on their schedule and let things go. They specifically hyped them up to get people to buy them though. They never did that for Yozakura and they haven’t done that for Ayakashi (and also apparently TPGW, which actually makes sense because despite being a failure, it made A LOT of noise in the West, way more than anything since Chainsaw Man, so maybe they COULD release that physically and it not do awful. I think Phantom Seer could as well, which is suspicious since that’s the only recent Jump series that matters that’s unaccounted for at this point). So MAYBE, they’re just waiting for the “right time” to release them, but this is actual horsecrap.

Also disappointing is the lack of Oshi no Ko or Kubo-san from Weekly Young Jump. Kubo-san is kind of niche and I don’t know how well Takagi-san actually does in the West (must be at least well enough since Kodansha thought it was worth releasing Shogi-senpai physically here and they are pretty conservative when it comes to physical releases [see Tokyo Revengers -_-]), but Kubo-san does better than Undead Unluck in Japan and has less volumes so it’s still kind of dumb, but I guess I can understand not betting on it yet. Oshi no Ko though, I legit have no idea why they’re sitting on this one. Oshi no Ko does REALLY well and is REALLY popular in Japan, is written by the Kaguya mangaka which the West LOVES, and also doesn’t have that many volumes yet so you can catch up pretty quickly. Is the idol stuff really that much of a turnoff for Western audiences? I don’t think it would be, especially with the kind of story Oshi no Ko actually is (and again, it’s written by Kaguya’s mangaka. That alone will give the series a ton of goodwill, arguably way more than it deserves, justlikeKaguyaoops!).

The only positive I took away from this announcement aside from SAKAMOTO itself getting printed is that we’re probably done with waiting two years for a popular series in Japan to get licensed. If it got Western hype early on and does well in Japan, it’s probably getting announced for English physical releases before the third volumes comes out now. I’m like, 99% sure that Blue Box is getting announced in October or whenever Viz does their Summer 2022 announcements (I hope so at least. I’m going to be so god damn pissed if the one manga I would really LOVE to be fast tracked here had to wait so long anyway). Elusive Samurai is 50-50 because it is hyped up in Japan, but the West didn’t like it originally (well, they did, I more mean it wasn’t massive at first), but it’s also by Matsui who did Assassination Classroom which had to well enough for Viz since they made a box set for it after it completed (which they normally don’t do unless the manga did really good for them or is REALLY HYPED UP like Kimetsu no Yaiba) so maybe they trust that his fans will deliver, I don’t know.

One of my favorite series right now got the cover this week, so let me share the OP for one of my favorite series of all time this week: the first opening of The Disastrous Life of Saiki K.!


Next time, the anniversary for the most legendary manga of all time! Till then, remember: support the official release!

As we Make the Jump, let’s celebrate the most legendary manga of all time!


The first thing to examine is this week’s Jump’s Table of Contents. As you know, a table of contents is a list of what to expect inside whatever literature you’re currently reading, and Jump’s no different. It gives us the order of how series appear in that week’s Jump issue, what series received a center color page (or CP for short), among other things. This isn’t an exact representation of a series standing in Shonen Jump, but it can give us a close look at how Shueisha views a series based on patterns and the like. That’s generally why people view the TOC as a ranking of sort.

A series “rank” is just where they appear in the magazine (for example, a series that ranked 4th that week means it’s the fourth series to appear in that week’s Jump, excluding CPs). It’s the closest approximation we can get on a series’ popularity before its first volume is released. While readers in Japan can vote on their top 3 series for a week, ultimately it is up to the editors to decide the order of the TOC (though those viewer votes obviously have a huge factor in the editors’ decision making). New series aren’t “ranked” right away. We don’t know how far back TOC’s are made or how many weeks back they’re meant to reflect a series status, but it is a general rule of thumb that a new series doesn’t start “ranking” until its 8th chapter (or the first chapter where it does not receive a CP if chapter 8 receives one).

Here is the TOC for Issue #33/34 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 7/18/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

It’s great news that Jujutsu Kaisen is returning next issue because boy does everything else about next issue bore/annoy me! The TPN duo are doing another one shot and I will continue to boycott anything Shirai writes that isn’t a series in WSJ because I think he is completely terrible now, Undead is getting a color page and I find all of the ones for the series boring so essentially a waste of one in my opinion. And High School Family…I decided to wait till the color pages of next issues are revealed before writing these and it’s exactly because of crap like this. HSF was bottom 3 this week, where it belongs, and I was going to be like “Man, other than Undead being second, this is a TOC I can get behind at least, even if Ayakashi is lower than I would have liked”, but then this crap happens. I swear with Roboco and HSF there’s no actual repercussions for being flops. They do terribly sales wise for what they are given promotion wise and they get rewarded for their desperation (HSF got a color page because they’re begging for a live action adaptation? Not even an anime, a live action?! Come on already). I know the editors like to exaggerate in these previews, but now they’re just flat out lying because on no planet is High School Family a “hot topic” in any location of the world (unless me constantly saying it should be cancelled counts as making it a hot topic). At least I can have peace knowing that HSF isn’t going to get the cover for its anniversary (I wish it was cancelled before the anniversary because it clearly deserves to be, but I’ve given up on that front).

Ayakashi in last…I realize the TOC is volatile at the moment and half the lineup could end up being bottom 5 any given week (which is why SAKAMOTO’s placement means nothing right now) and that Candy Flurry is the only one in immediate danger of the axe, but I can’t say any series that gets put last is safe, unless it’s the end of magazine gag manga which Ayakashi clearly is not. Ayakashi isn’t getting cancelled before 2022 with all the crap that needs to go before it (Candy Flurry, Roboco, HSF, Magu-chan probably, most likely at least one of Red Hood and Neru), but much like Undead, the long term future of it isn’t looking that great right now.

Aside from that, for the first time ever, Blue Box and Witch Watch are next to each other! I wonder with the more “serious” nature of the later possibly appearing now with the warlock introduction if they think the two series are different enough now where it doesn’t matter if they’re close to each other.

   

And now let’s shine some light on the most recent chapter of some series currently featured in Weekly Shonen Jump. These aren’t my top five chapters of a week necessarily, but they are ones that I want to highlight and talk about a little.


It’s been four chapters and they are STILL in the damn hamlet (and spoilers, we’re going to be there after next chapter too). Red Hood reminds me a lot of The Last Saiyuki right now…except I can’t even see the promise in Red Hood. The Last Saiyuki was hyped in the west as a big series, people swore all we needed was patience to see it be amazing, and all the potential interesting allusions to Journey to the West were there…and the pacing was a complete unbearable slog. It took them NINE chapters to leave the house and that effectively killed the series. Right now, Red Hood: is hyped as the next big thing for reasons, all we “have to do” is wait for the other myths to appear (and to be fair, they actually did appear I think)…and the pacing right now is a complete unbearable slog. It’s even worse though because with TLS, I at least see WHY he took so long to do anything (he was trying to build the relationship between the MC and his new younger sister so that the journey would be more emotional) where as…what is the actual point of taking so long with leaving the hamlet in Red Hood? They aren’t building the relationship between Velou and Grimm, they still are both boring/annoying and don’t particularly play off each other well. Apparently it’s not to ensure the hamlet is safe because we were just told that everything is destroyed by the end of this encounter so Velou’s entire reluctance to leave is now pointless. It’s not to get way more cool action moments because the action has been a mess and lame. It’s not to expand on the world because the introduction of other myths (like witches) came without any buildup (which is doubly worse because we’re in Part I: Werewolf Hunting right now and we haven’t even started hunting werewolves yet…). Just, what the hell is the good point of this manga that makes people think there’s something here? Grimm is thicc? Is that really it? I already know this is definitely going to be the next Phantom Seer if this doesn’t do well in Japan (and honestly, I feel like it won’t because I’ve heard JP ask similar questions of how is this going to last long with what it’s doing right now, so they also don’t see anything special here it seems).

I legitimately want to know how Taguchi is so bad at making a series beginning digestible/not feel like padding because this is now at least the third series he’s the editor of that feels like it drags (I would argue fourth because he’s My Hero’s editor right now, and this “Deku is the new pillar” arc also dragged like hell) because this should be at least an average series based on the one shot, but a lot of the big issues with the full series are editor things.


These past two chapters pissed me off so much not just because I thought they were bad for the series’ future, but because I know people are going to eat this up and say it’s good or hype, which is going to make the series go even more downhill. If you thought there was any chance of Mash EVER not being OP or the strongest in the verse, they’re gone now. That wouldn’t be a problem, Saitama is the same way in OPM, but the issue is that this is no longer a mostly gag manga that occasionally does battle parodies, it’s a mostly played straight battle manga that has badly time jokes now…which is bad because now the in ability to create tension in serious moments IS a problem when before, it could have been written off for laughs (it’s also why I dropped One Punch Man. It also became a serious manga with the occasional joke in the middle of fights). Since Mash is OP and is never going to lose, I don’t care about the state of the world because I know he’s going to solve every problem now…which again wouldn’t be a problem if this was still a gag manga parodying battle manga, but now it’s a serious battle manga with no stakes. The principal is probably dying to this golem thing? Who cares, Mash is going to beat it anyway, have an emotional moment with the principal dying in his arms and then do a badly timed joke, and then everything else is going to stay the same because Mash isn’t required to change. I really really really really want to still like Mashle, but I just can’t.


That was a nice breather chapter after the seriousness of last arc. It was an interesting bathhouse chapter since there wasn’t much fanservice in it, but I think that’s SAKAMOTO DAYS as a whole, it takes stuff we think is common or cliché and does it in a new and unique way. I didn’t care about the new character they introduced, and don’t know how important he will be, but Sakamoto, Shin, and Lu are always fun so I don’t mind that. I wonder though if now that SAKAMOTO is essentially safe, if they are going to slow things down now or continue with the fast action pace.  


The cancellation march continues . Though I don’t really get the point of wasting a chapter on Misaki and then letting Tsumugi beat the guy anyway. Misaki was clearly the worst part of the series and honestly what probably killed it since while Tsumugi is good, she needs a strong character to bounce off of…which is not Misaki. This was a fine chapter otherwise and this might end up being the big climatic arc since Tsumugi and Irie are going to end up teaming up here.


Real quick, the Food Wars guys did a Shokugeki no Sanji chapter for the anniversary, and it was also good! Anything with Vivi is good. Check it out too.

This was a fine chapter. It was basically all fighting and not much actually happens until the end with Yamato’s DF reveal. Not much to really say other than it was cool to see Franky actually do things and Luffy is probably coming back soon.


Shueisha hopes to get lucky in the seventh month of the year in July, as this month they are releasing: Black Clover volume 29, Mission: Yozakura Family volume 9, Undead Unluck volume 7, and Me and Roboco volume 4 for currently ongoing series.  In addition, The Elusive Samurai makes its debut with the first of two consecutive months of volume releases. Also, the final volumes of Phantom Seer (4), AGRAVITY BOYS (6 and 7), the fourth volume of Hardboiled Cop and Dolphin, and the second volume of i tell c are releasing, but we’re only tracking Phantom Seer since that one will probably be significant enough to track.

Sales Data for July 12th-18th:

The last week of sales before August and yeah, basically nothing new. Elusive Samurai is out of Oricon now, but it still did pretty good (might make it to 100k before volume 2 comes out in August at this rate). Roboco yet again fails to make it to 20k on the charts (because there’s no way it’s going to make it to a fourth week). It’s almost 10k less than a manga that got cancelled almost four months ago, not to mention, more recent hits such as SAKAMOTO DAYS and Witch Watch were able to chart for essentially the entire month while Roboco is almost assuredly not going to get a fourth week and is off the daily charts. This is so stupid.

Once again, Undead sold less than 1k more than Yozakura for the week, the difference is that this is by far Yozakura’s best first 17 days (38k, previous best was last volume’s 33k), while Undead is STILL stagnating. These two are at the same level now. Now treat them like they are (as in, they’re both part of the next gen of WSJ).  


How else can you celebrate an anniversary than with the opening to a legendary series. The first opening for One Piece!


…Oh what the hell, I’ll throw in the One Piece Rap too since it’s also so legendary.


Next time, another anniversary! Till then, remember: support the official release!

I can’t front, there’s an anniversary this issue, but this is a pretty disappointing week. Let’s just Make the Jump.


The first thing to examine is this week’s Jump’s Table of Contents. As you know, a table of contents is a list of what to expect inside whatever literature you’re currently reading, and Jump’s no different. It gives us the order of how series appear in that week’s Jump issue, what series received a center color page (or CP for short), among other things. This isn’t an exact representation of a series standing in Shonen Jump, but it can give us a close look at how Shueisha views a series based on patterns and the like. That’s generally why people view the TOC as a ranking of sort.

A series “rank” is just where they appear in the magazine (for example, a series that ranked 4th that week means it’s the fourth series to appear in that week’s Jump, excluding CPs). It’s the closest approximation we can get on a series’ popularity before its first volume is released. While readers in Japan can vote on their top 3 series for a week, ultimately it is up to the editors to decide the order of the TOC (though those viewer votes obviously have a huge factor in the editors’ decision making). New series aren’t “ranked” right away. We don’t know how far back TOC’s are made or how many weeks back they’re meant to reflect a series status, but it is a general rule of thumb that a new series doesn’t start “ranking” until its 8th chapter (or the first chapter where it does not receive a CP if chapter 8 receives one).

Here is the TOC for Issue #35 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 8/1/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

I knew this week’s TOC was gonna suck the minute I saw Undead and HSF got a color page last week. Instead of being negative for multiple paragraphs, I’m just going to continue saying that the TOC is volatile, otherwise I’d go insane thinking that whoever made this thought it was a wonderful idea to put Elusive Samurai bottom 5, Witch Watch bottom 4, Yozakura bottom 2, and Me and Roboco fifth and above Black Clover and Mashle

Bleach is also doing something next issue for the 20th anniversary apparently. It’s a special chapter and 73 pages so I’m assuming Kubo worked on this for a while…so maybe Burn the Witch is still a ways off from season 2. Or maybe Kubo is a bad man and did a 73-page one shot and four 30+ page chapters all at once and he’s coming back next month. Who knows with him at this point.
   

And now let’s shine some light on the most recent chapter of some series currently featured in Weekly Shonen Jump. These aren’t my top five chapters of a week necessarily, but they are ones that I want to highlight and talk about a little.


Finally! I didn’t want Akutami-sensei to rush his return, but I can’t lie and say I didn’t miss Jujutsu Kaisen when I clearly did.

So uh…can they actually just rip off Fight Club like that? It was almost literally beat for beat it I’m pretty sure.

Besides that, this was a good return chapter for Kaisen. Hakari finally being introduced is hype and I cannot wait to see how he fights. I found it interesting that he’s a fight organizer and that he’s essentially gone down the wrong road of life and want to know if he was always like this, or if the jujutsu life got to him. It was nice seeing Panda again too!


SHE SAID IT! SHE FINALLY SAID IT! THE TSUN ALWAYS SAYS IT IN THE END!
*cough* Cool chapter overall. I wasn’t as annoyed when Asta jumped in last chapter and “saved the day”, but it was still nice to see that he’s letting Noelle handle this anyway. One of the biggest issues with Black Clover is that Asta basically solves everything, so seeing Magna and now Noelle get their moments to shine is really great to see, but it also gets me thinking.

I always thought the moment Noelle finally admitted to herself that Asta is the one she loves, that it would essentially be moving on to the final arc since I never saw Black Clover of all series being the “teasing will she confess or not” shonen battle series. I always figured it was going to be she realizes it herself and then confesses to Asta after she does something really cool. I don’t know if that part is still happening, but this revelation is starting to make me think that this is the final arc and I think there’s quite a few story reasons pointing to it (I’m going to ignore things like TOC placements or sales because realistically, there’s too many worse performing series where that won’t matter for BC for at least another 3 years if Tabata still wants to go that long):

- I have no actual idea where you go from here in terms of villains. We did zombies, we’ve done elves which essentially acted as the “Edo Tensei”/dead people war arc, and now we’ve done devils (who are the strongest things in the verse) …what else can you do that won’t feel lame in comparison? I guess you could do Diamond Kingdom and finish the change that Asta and Mars promised would happen all the way back in the Witch’s Forest, but will that feel as climatic as beating devils and Asta befriending his demon?

- After all this, Julius has to acknowledge one of Asta or Yuno as the next Wizard King, right? They both saved the Clover Kingdom twice, are going to free the Spade Kingdom, and led the rescue (probably) the monarch of the Heart Kingdom. If that isn’t enough to put you next in line for the Wizard King, I honestly have no clue what else Asta or Yuno could do. If one of them was going to become a Captain, they easily could have done that way earlier, but Vengeance became the Golden Dawn’s leader again, so it’s clear that we’re never going to say Asta/Yuno be an actual Captain before the end of series flash forward that’s bound to happen. I think it’s clear at this point that one of them is just shooting straight up to the top.

- It’s great that everyone is getting the spotlight in this arc…but that’s usually a sign that a long running series is ending if that isn’t a common thing in the series (which it isn’t in Black Clover). I never thought the Elf arc was the finale arc, and if you look back, the only real spotlights shined on characters aside from Asta were Yami, Julius (before he died), and I guess Fuegoleon and Nozelle kinda? Last arc, everyone ended getting saved by Asta or Yuno, but they’re getting a chance to shine, as if it’s a final hurrah.

- The powerscale of the series is just done. If there’s anything more, then it’s legitimately going to be ridiculous. We have characters standing up to Satan and other Satans. You can’t descale from there and make it not feel lame. Asta is going to be busting planets at this rate if it continues to the seven hundreds. In a related sense, this has to be Asta’s peak power wise. I legit cannot think of any other way to give him powerups or new powers without it literally just being “you are now Satan, enjoy” and if we’re getting to the point where Asta has to become God to get stronger, you probably should just stop.

- After this, can the kingdoms really have conflict with each other? The Heart Kingdom is going to be allies with the Clover Kingdom forever, the Spade Kingdom is getting wiped, and the Diamond Kingdom is probably going to change before the Clover Kingdom is at conflict. If all four of them are not fighting…is there really a point in going on? There’s no more natural conflict in the series if they aren’t; anything else would just be a cheap out of nowhere “Kaguya” if you catch my drift.

Is this the end? I don’t know. Are there signs that point to it being the end? Yeah. Is this a satisfying end if it is the end of Black Clover? I’d say so. Let’s see where this goes.


Yeah, this just isn’t doing it for me. I think this is all competent and objectively not bad, but I’m just not caring about any of this really. I don’t think the cast this time around is set up for serious scenarios/arcs, and it just comes off as forced instead of adding something to the series. I missed when this was a fluffy romcom about Niko and Moi’s relationship, not just school hijinks with no sense of romance here . At least the NEET guy is cool.


And we’re back to our slice of life shenanigans, just as I predicted. I don’t really like haunted/spoopy stuff, so this chapter didn’t do much for me, but I think it was nice that Mu looks to be a reoccurring character as well (remember when introducing fifty characters was bad writing? Oh, that only applies to Yozakura Family? Okay). How long will this go? Who knows honestly. It can probably end whenever, but there’s at least four series that need to end before it plus others I would prefer ending first, so that whenever might not be till 2022 at this rate.



There was also a quick one shot setting up the movie coming out this week. It was fine, nothing really special. It didn’t make me want to watch the movie any more than I did previously, but it also didn’t annoy me like most movie tie-ins do so it’s fine.

This chapter was also just fine, which is a step up from two months ago. I’m just so over this Deku arc right now and I desperately want something new to happen. This chapter probably would have meant more to me if I liked Iida, but I don’t, so oh well. I don’t think it’s bad or anything, I just didn’t care.


The movie for My Hero Academia is coming out August 6th! Also, here’s the PV for Jujutsu Kaisen 0.



Let’s celebrate My Hero’s anniversary with a different OP since I think I already used Odd Future.


Next time, a group cover before another break! Hopefully I’m not as apathetic for that issue as I am for this one. Till then, remember: support the official release!

I don’t care. Let’s just Make the Jump.


The first thing to examine is this week’s Jump’s Table of Contents. As you know, a table of contents is a list of what to expect inside whatever literature you’re currently reading, and Jump’s no different. It gives us the order of how series appear in that week’s Jump issue, what series received a center color page (or CP for short), among other things. This isn’t an exact representation of a series standing in Shonen Jump, but it can give us a close look at how Shueisha views a series based on patterns and the like. That’s generally why people view the TOC as a ranking of sort.

A series “rank” is just where they appear in the magazine (for example, a series that ranked 4th that week means it’s the fourth series to appear in that week’s Jump, excluding CPs). It’s the closest approximation we can get on a series’ popularity before its first volume is released. While readers in Japan can vote on their top 3 series for a week, ultimately it is up to the editors to decide the order of the TOC (though those viewer votes obviously have a huge factor in the editors’ decision making). New series aren’t “ranked” right away. We don’t know how far back TOC’s are made or how many weeks back they’re meant to reflect a series status, but it is a general rule of thumb that a new series doesn’t start “ranking” until its 8th chapter (or the first chapter where it does not receive a CP if chapter 8 receives one).

Here is the TOC for Issue #36/37 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 8/9/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

Remember when I said the TOC was extremely useful and is actually competitive again a month ago? Yeah, throw that out the window, it’s completely useless. I don’t even get why either, there is a clear bottom tier of series (Candy Flurry, Magu-chan, HSF, Roboco) so the TOC shouldn’t be this unstable, yet for whatever reason, the idiot who puts it together just puts it in a random order. Yes, I understand the TOC is not a ranking, but I also don’t see how THIS order is the most enjoyable for a reader of this issue. The worst part is, of all the series to just put in the way bottom, Yozakura is like the WORST choice of them all to do this to.

In Mashle’s most recent volume, Komoto revealed that the series is halfway done (which makes sense considering where we are right now plot wise), so while I don’t think there’s only 6 or 7 volumes left, that basically means Mashle is on a timer now like Chainsaw Man was. I think Undead is going to be a shorter series as we all know at this point, Ayakashi could be a shorter series based on how it’s already stagnated and fan interest just doesn’t seem to be there, Roboco, Magu-chan and HSF ALL do terribly and should be shorter series (and even if they aren’t, they can’t help keep WSJ up when everything big ends), Blue Box is almost definitely going to be a shorter series based on how Miura-sensei is basically doing everything to not drag it out that she can, Elusive Samurai has a in story two year time limit based on actual history (and in story, Tokiyuki is supposed to fight when he’s 10) and Matsui-sensei’s not going to let success change the course so this is also probably going to be on the shorter side, barring some miracle Candy Flurry is a goner by the end of September, and we can’t say anything about Red Hood or Neru yet. On top of this, Black Clover is probably ending no later than the next arc (if there is one) at this rate, Jujutsu Kaisen was supposed to end 2023 but this hiatus might have delayed that (or it also could have convinced Akutami-sensei to speed things up so that he can finish the series satisfyingly in case he gets worse health wise), STONE is approaching a final arc, and My Hero has probably one big arc left (plus One Piece, if the editors and Oda aren’t liars, SHOULD be on track to end 2025, but I’ll believe it when I see it). So if you weren’t paying attention, these are the series that I didn’t mention yet:

Mission: Yozakura Family
SAKAMOTO DAYS
Witch Watch

And if I’m being honest, I don’t think Witch Watch being long term is a sure thing either. It sold well, but I see a lot of people think that the start was the best part, so it can easily be another Ayakashi and stagnate, and it’s not doing too hot on the TOC color pages aside (which we know matters cause Phantom Seer). So, of the current lineup, we only have 2-5 (depending on how Neru and Red Hood do) series that could potentially be here in the long future for Jump. So basically, unless they are EXTREMELY confident in their 2022 lineup, their only choices for a series in Jump that can last 5+ years and be a stable pillar are Yozakura and SAKAMOTO. Which is why it’s stupid that they put Yozakura so low these past two issues. On top of this, YOZAKURA’S ANNIVERSARY IS AT THE END OF THE MONTH! WHY IS NOW THE TIME YOU DECIDE TO PUSH IT DOWN THIS LOW?! I’m still 90% that it’s going to get the cover for it (especially since Kaisen looks like it isn’t going to get one for a while still), but it’s stuff like this that makes people think that you don’t care about the series. ESPECIALLY WHEN THE SERIES IS STILL GROWING SALES WISE (TO THE POINT WHERE IT CAUGHT UP TO UNDEAD), HAS GOTTEN WAY BETTER RECEPTION WISE, AND IS THE FIRST NEW SERIES SINCE CHAINSAW MAN THAT MADE IT TO VOLUME 10.

I swear to God if Yozakura loses out on a cover because of new series AGAIN…
   

And now let’s shine some light on the most recent chapter of some series currently featured in Weekly Shonen Jump. These aren’t my top five chapters of a week necessarily, but they are ones that I want to highlight and talk about a little.


Huh, who knew that Bleach could still be good? Real talk, this probably still completely jumped the shark in terms of actual writing and powerscaling, but the series has been done for over 5 years and at this point I just care about being entertained, and that’s what Kubo did here. I find it interesting how each of the “Big Three” are dealing with their “next generation” focusing on the kids of the MCs in a different way (Oda basically said there won’t be a next generation for One Piece, Boruto is completely about the next generation and is [badly] trying to be its own thing, and Bleach looks like it’s going to be a fanservice galore and mainly about old characters), and if this is going to be a group of one shots (and it probably will be since the JP version calls this the start of a new arc which Viz omitted probably because they have no clue when it’s coming back), I’m fine with it coming back for a month and then Kubo going back to Burn the Witch. This one shot was fun and captures everything Kubo does well and made me realize I think he’s best in short spurts so that his weaknesses don’t take root. All in all, I really liked the one shot.

Definitely didn’t miss the toxic “Big Three” haters tho . Wish they moved on with their lives in the past five years, but I guess that’s why they’re toxic.  


Well this is a serious turn of events while still being fanservicey. I think this was probably the most likely outcome for the previous Ayakashi Medium’s role in the story, but we actually made it. I don’t know if this is the start of an arc or just a two chapter thing, but the seeds are being planted for Suzu having to pick between humanity and Ayakashi. I think we all know she’s picking both, but hey, we got to start the arc out somehow. This should be interesting to see how it ranks since I think at this point, we can conclude that the readers like the not serious parts more than the plot advancing ones.


This is 100% Last Saiyuki syndrome for me. It took far too long for the MCs to leave home, which causes me to stop caring at some point and the outside world isn’t interesting enough to bring me back. It also did the opposite of what I wanted out of the Hunter’s Guild. I was hoping this was a chance for a lot of new and interesting characters to be introduced that can make up for Grimm’s blandness and Verou’s…badness, but the fact that it’s basically an exclusive club that is almost impossible to actually get into means that the hero’s cast is either going to be small, or Kawaguchi yet again is doing stuff that’s just bad writing. Either result is something I wouldn’t like, but it’s not like new characters are actually helping me get invested. The two new ones here are fine, but again, the action is hard to follow and messy so their “awesome” moment falls completely flat on its face for me. I already know that this series is going to be annoying as hell if it doesn’t start out good on the TOC or sells badly.


Neru is starting to find itself and doing a good job of being what it aims to be. This is a unique take on the exam arc and I still find reading the fighting that goes on here. It’s such a contrast with Red Hood where its attempt at feeling grander than it is falls flat on its face while Neru’s slow attempt at expanding the world feels fine. There’s still no “main plot” and that might hurt its performance in the polls to the point where it dies, but while it lasts, I think Neru can be a good series.


So, real talk, Ryusei is my favorite character in the series, I think his brother’s a fine character; I don’t think they needed to be brothers. It genuinely feels like this relationship exists just so Sai can artificially gain more popularity since people love Ryusei. I guess I can get why they did it (most of the recent new character allies introduced haven’t exactly been winners…), but I don’t really feel much about Sai other than “he’s fine”.

Beyond that, I thought this was a good chapter. We’re reaching the endgame for stuff they can “realistically” build in the Stone Age, so I wonder just how much more they can escalate things. That’s another reason why I feel like the series is ending sooner than people realize; a big sell of STONE is Senku being things to get them out of this new situation, once that’s gone what do they do? That’s still a ways off though, so I’ll enjoy the ride for now.


Another month, another batch of releases. As summer ends, Jump brings out heavy hitters such as My Hero Academia (31), DR. STONE (22), Mashle: Magic and Muscles (7), Ayakashi Triangle (5), Magu-chan: God of Destruction (5), and The Elusive Samurai (2) release new volumes and we see the debut of Blue Box and Candy Flurry! In addition, let’s look at Dadandan’s debut as well since it looks like it might be the next Jump+ hit.

Sales Data for August 2nd-8th:

NOTE 1: According to the Blue Box Twitter account, the first volume had an initial print of 70,000 and the reprint scheduled for August 26th is 100k, making the circulation number at that point 170k. For a volume 1, that is really good.

NOTE 2: When Blue Box and if Candy Flurry make it on Oricon, then logically their sales numbers will also be the series number since they only have one volume

So let’s start out with the biggest surprise…Candy Flurry didn’t completely bomb. It’s honestly a miracle, but it actually started out at a decent spot all things considered. I was honestly expecting something terrible like Guardian of the Witch level, but it’s actually way closer to Dolphin…which means it already does better than HSF even though it’s been basically dead for months…Shueisha I swear. Anyway, normally, this probably wouldn’t be enough to save a manga, but with only nineteen series running at the moment and no one signs of a new batch of series yet…honestly? That might be enough to give Candy Flurry a second chance. It’s still a major uphill battle, but I don’t think it’s completely hopeless now. I also saw people not be able to find it in stores in Japan, so this could actually be the result of Shueisha underestimating demand rather than it just falling off completely. Hopefully if this actually does have decent sales, that Shueisha learned from Phantom Seer.

Magu-chan…well that’s probably a better day one at least. Damn, even after everything they did for it, it’s STILL not enough to give it a major boost sales-wise. This is just heartbreaking at this point. They clearly like the series, so I don’t think it’s getting cut yet still, but man this just sucks. Maybe they can move it to Saikyo Jump like they did I’m From Japan (I doubt it since Japan only did that because they weren’t going to outright cancel a manga with an “ongoing” anime, but you never know). That’s a similar way I feel about Ayakashi, minus the moving to Saikyo Jump part (I’m pretty sure moms would boycott Shueisha if they put Ayakashi in a young children’s magazine). It probably is going to do marginally better, but not noticeable enough.

It looks like Elusive Samurai isn’t just a fluke. It’s not as good as the top 5 last month, but considering there’s more competition this time, it’s just as impressive. It’s not the same as Assassination Classroom back in the day, but this is also shaping up to be a pretty good hit with volume 1 reaching 100k probably by next week at the latest. I assume volume 3 comes out November, and that will should be relatively weak for WSJ, so we’ll see if it can carry a month for the magazine volume releases.

It’s not as runaway hit as its predecessors, but Dadandan continues the streak of hyped-up Jump+ titles doing pretty good for a debut. I haven’t really talked about the series before, mainly because I dropped it after 10 chapters and think it’s pretty bad, but good for Jump+. It’s got yet another solid series to add to the lineup. According to its editor, it has 200k copies in circulation and 12k in digital copies (so it sold 12k digitally), which isn’t quite Kaiju No. 8, but I do believe that puts it ahead of Spy x Family’s debut.  

Here we are, what I have been waiting a year for. The first volume release of the romance story I’ve been anticipating the second most since Quints ended (first being Matchmaking of the Amagami Household, which by the way did about 30k its first month. Great numbers for Magazine ) and…it knocked it out of the park. First thing, I want to make something clear since I saw this misconception on Twitter. 70k in circulation is amazing for a new series first volume, and it needing a reprint still is fantastic, especially when said reprint is 100k. That DOES NOT mean it sold 70k in a week (I wish it did though…). 70k in circulation means that initially, Shueisha printed 70k physical copies and sent them to stores. Getting a reprint of 100k means that 70k was too low to satisfy demand and that by the time the reprints makes it to stores, bookstores anticipate most of that initial 70k will be gone. You order a reprint if you THINK you’re going to POSSIBLY run out of product, not when you’re right about to.

That being said, WOW WHAT A GREAT DEBUT FOR BLUE BOX. It surpassed We Never Learn’s (probably around 20k, it didn’t rank on Oricon for volume 1) and Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs’ (I think 16 or 17k) debuts. If I remember right, Nisekoi was 45k in 5 days, so Blue Box BARELY lost to the longest running romcom in WSJ history…yeah, I think this is the next WSJ hit. Excluding Burn the Witch, this was the best week 1 by a new Jump series since…RobotxLaserbeam in 2017? And the last time a non-returning author did this good first week was like…maybe The Promised Neverland (which was only 24k I think)? I am extremely happy that it was a hit right away. I’m ready for the mega push since it’s clear at this point Yozakura is never getting any non-obligatory love. Give me the English physical, Viz.  

Let’s celebrate Blue Box’s success with an OP from my favorite romcom of all time, Nisekoi!

(Yes, I’m reusing this. I was going to use Step, but I couldn’t find a not nightcore version of the opening)

I don’t know. I’m just annoyed at this point. Support the official release.