Making the Jump

After a long long year, we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Will 2020 end on a high note? What’s 2021 looking like? Let’s find out as we talk about #52 of Weekly Shonen Jump while we…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 #52 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 11/29/2020) [NOTE: If there’s two names next to an author avatar, the top italicized name is the one who uses the avatar]

*Will fix these later*

Unranked: Build King, Hunter x Hunter

Next Issue Preview:

I didn’t really make note of the last time it got a color page because I thought it’d just be a one off but it seems like we’re going to get the occasional TPN chapter now for the foreseeable future. I guess the duo would rather just work on what they’re known for and know works then risk destroying their rep on a new series, which I can understand but still, a little disappointing for most people.

As for the actual TOC, nothing really sticks out for the final TOC of 2020. OBO is last like you could have predicted; Seer has sunk completely like most newbies. Will the volume sales save it? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I guess the only actual somewhat notable thing is that Yozakura went back up instead of sinking after a somewhat low placement last week. So that probably shows that these ranks aren’t flukes at this point and it’s going to be consistently high for a while yet.

So, let’s focus on the next issue preview instead. My Hero’s got a secret project announced next week. Hmm the movie was officially announced this week and is coming summer 2021, so that probably isn’t it. The anime was already announced for Spring 2021 so no. They’re really busy so I’m going to rule out a new original OVA for now. We’re still waiting on popularity poll results so it can’t be a new one. I wonder what else there could be? I’d say maybe Horikoshi is doing something for One Piece 1000 but that wouldn’t really be a My Hero project would it? So probably not that. What else is left? A new game series? I think One’s Justice 2 is still doing DLC so I don’t think it’s OJ3, so maybe something in a different genre? I wonder what it could be.

Yozakura is coming back with another color page so soon after the last one! I think that means that it’s part of the frequent color page rotation now which is great because it shows a commitment from Shueisha and I think Yozakura color pages are always amazing. Now cover please! Undead got another one too which isn’t a shock. Let’s see if it explodes in December or not.
 

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 calm before the storm is here. Whether we get a full out training arc or the next one is Operation: Yozakura Front Lines and go straight into the Tanpopo battle, I am excited. This spread has made it clear that this time around the family have a role to play in this fight. The side cast is going to get their shine and it’s going to be great. Plus, it was nice to see the eighth generation of Yozakura heads again and I can see why Ban was a threat back in the day. I think while this could be the last arc or setting up the ending, it’s probably way more likely that this is just the “Mukuro arc” for this series and at that point everything else is going to be open completely.


What a sweet little chapter here. This slice of life supernatural series makes more progress in the romance department in one chapter than most romcoms do in a year. These pillars are also the best sense of chaos a person can ask for. The series resurrected after introducing the third one and giving Napptaku a bigger role. It’s still true to itself as well, which makes it even better. I don’t know if the volume 1 sales saved the series yet, but it’s definitely getting respect now and I’m excited for the future!      


So after that close call from the last arc, I’m reassured that Suzu actually is going to be useful down the line. That’s good because I think her and Matsuri playing off each other in fights should be cool. I’m also glad that we’re just skipping to the Ayakashi accepting her as the new king after Shirogane’s fall. If we had to do what we did here for like the next two months, I would have been pretty bored probably. I’m looking forward to the next major arc now that we got the traditional hungry pervert out of our systems, but that’s probably going to take a bit to get to.  


It’s chapters like these that make me drop manga if I wasn’t trying to read everything in a magazine. Holy god are the jokes in this series awful. They all either drag for far too long or were just stupid to begin with. It’s more just dragging to get to the point: making it to the main continent, just like 90s manga and it sucked when Samurai 8 did it and it sucks now. Already overwhelming people with the master flashbacks. If you’re not going to have the master be in the first chapter, slow down the info about him and the relationship with the MCs. Doing it all at once just makes things dense and a chore to read through. Finally, LOOK AT THAT CLIFFHANGER. IT’S DUMB. I know build battles are the thing for this manga and houses are creatures in this world…but this looks so stupid and not in an endearing way. Toriko wasn’t even this stupid in the beginning. DQ:Dai’s remake anime is just making this even more apparent because it’s a manga from the 80s-90s, the era Build King is calling back to, and it feels so much more modern and lively than this. I sincerely hope this push blows up in Nakano’s face.  


Following a really strong first chapter up with another strong one seems pretty hard these days for whatever reason. We still need to see long term if it keeps it up, but so far, SAKAMOTO DAYS is keeping up with the high bar it set for itself last week. I’m glad to see that this series is going to be absurd as hell with its scenario, that’s definitely going to help it keep feeling fresh. There’s some odd things here, like not sure if Sakamoto would realistically be that skilled and have that much time to retire and have a family if he’s only 27 now…but this is also the same manga that had robbers hold up a bus because they’re mad their favorite manga got cancelled by Shueisha (hmmm, I wonder if he’s trying to tell us something) and the wife being more worried about ice cream melting then being threatened at gunpoint, so I probably shouldn’t be thinking that hard about it.

Overall, this is still a great start for a new series and I’m looking forward to what’s coming. It seems like the violence is getting toned down, and if it, I’m all for it because that was the real thing from the one shot that I was weary of, but I’m also not really into gory stuff in general so I can see why other people view that as a negative. Hope this catches on in Japan!

Sales Numbers:

The final week for November has come and would you look at that, Yozakura made it! If you add up the weekly numbers, it gets you 29k, but there's still 1 day in November unaccounted for and realistically, it can manage at least 60 copies in a day probably, so 30k in a month! That's a great sign for Yozakura as it continues its slow growth. Let's keep this up come January.

Everything else is expected. December here we come!


2021 looking like it’s gonna be another great year so far. Let’s hope it keeps up! Also, be on the lookout for a special edition of Making the Jump. It’ll be a reflection of the magazine’s 2020 so hope you’ll look forward to it when it comes out! Till next time, remember: support the official release!

The new Jump year has begun! Let’s get into it as we…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 #1 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 12/6/2020) [NOTE: If there’s two names next to an author avatar, the top italicized name is the one who uses the avatar]

Color Pages: My Hero Academia (Cover and Lead Color), Undead Unluck (Color), Mission: Yozakura Family (Color)


TOC
DR. STONE
Jujutsu Kaisen
Magu-chan: God of Destruction
Mashle
Black Clover
Me and Roboco
Chainsaw Man
We Never Learn
Ayakashi Triangle
High School Family
Hardboiled Cop and Dolphin
Moriking
AGRAVITY BOYS
Our Blood Oath
Phantom Seer

Next Issue Preview:

A new year, new graphics. What ya think? Wanted to streamline it a bit while still making it somewhat visually appealing. I think at this point we know the English names for the series on the TOC so I decided to just use their logo instead. If a series is in the bottom five, it’ll be a green number unless it’s the last chapter, in which case it’ll be red and have “END” indicated on it somewhere. For the color stuff, it’s still relatively the same. I decided to just use the cover of the magazine instead of a picture of the series. Might as well show you the actual cover, ya know. Enough about that though, let’s look at the actual content of the TOC already.

Magu-chan’s redemption tour continues with a top 3 placement! Completely well deserved and I hope this is a sign that the series is growing in popularity. Volume 2 is next month so not sure if we’re going to see results right away, but I hope this is another Yozakura and this is going to be with us for awhile now. Definitely think of the three November debuts, it deserves this treatment the most. In a similar vein, I think Dolphin is hanging on by a thread. It did well enough to not just be insta-axed it seems, but unlike its compatriots, hasn’t really gotten out from the bottom 5 purgatory. Combine that with no color page in recent memory, the only one with no reprints coming out, doing the “worst” of the three (not like any did well enough to say they were significantly ahead or anything), and probably having the highest expectations out of them (it wasn’t a HUGE hit, but Tamura still did Beelzebub which was a success, as well as Hungry Marie that was a flop but still did better that most new series do these days) and yeah, it definitely isn’t looking bright for Chako and friends. It’s not in immediate danger because AGRAVITY BOYS and Moriking exist, two veterans series are ending by the end of the month, and it’s looking like its curtains for OBO and Seer, but Dolphin is definitely in shaky waters.

Speaking of Seer…yeah, it’s looking realllyyyy dire at this point. Dead last the issue right after its first volume releases and not near anything casuals actually would want to read to garner interest in it. Looks like they just gave up on it. It’s not unheard of, they literally did the same thing with Yozakura before volume 1 and it rose from the ashes (technically it was bottom 3 the issue before volume 1 came out, but same idea), but I’m not going to act like that’s a common occurrence. Plus, Magu-chan is already a low seller they’re investing in a little, I highly doubt they’re going to do a second one. I also say this because Seer is not really doing good enough presale wise to indicate it’s a significant success. It’s around where most average newbies are at this far out so at most I’m expecting Me and Roboco levels, which for a gag series is…sorta acceptable (not really, but Jump can’t be picky right now), but for a one in a hundred battle exorcist series, can’t really imagine that they’re interested in giving that a second chance. Who knows, maybe physical store sales will be significantly higher and it’ll actually do alright, but I’m not going to pretend like it’s in a good spot.
In relation to pretending like it’s in a good spot, I feel like that’s what Jump’s going to do with Me and Roboco. I’m going to list out its rankings since #46 of last year, where it got 10th. I’m looking from that point on because theoretically that’s the last time it got a “bad” rank on the TOC.

So from #46 last year to #1 now they’re: 10 – 6 – Color (week before volume 1 comes out) – 8 – 4* - 4 – 7 – 6.
In comparison, let’s look at Yozakura in the same frame.
Yozakura: 6* - 3* - 5* - 4* - Color – 9 – 6 – Color.

The asterisk is weeks where it ranked above a notable series. My definition for a notable series is one that Jump is clearly invested in that consistently ranks high. So that excludes Undead Unluck (it SHOULD be notable, but they’re so random with its ranking. I can’t really give you a reason why either, but they don’t value it that much on the TOC, so beating it doesn’t mean much in my opinion), Ayakashi Triangle (it clearly gets lower than it should be because ecchi), We Never Learn and Chainsaw Man (they’re both ending, so Jump isn’t really invested at this point), and for this exercise I’ll also exclude Roboco and Yozakura because that’s the point of this comparison.

Roboco has one week where it ranked above a notable series (Mashle) and it was a week where Yozakura wasn’t even ranking because it had a color page. Every other week, the most it could do was beat Undead, Ayakashi, WNL, the series where placements don’t seem to matter for. It’s a series that ranks high because there’s little in the current lineup that actually does well. It doesn’t actually battle with the other notable series.

Here’s Yozakura’s breakdown in comparison: it beats Mashle in 46 (this is off a color page btw, which Yozakura has historically down pretty bad in TOCs after color pages before this stretch), it beats Mashle and Black Clover in 47, it beats Jujutsu Kaisen and Mashle in 48 (the week Roboco got a color page and thus isn’t ranked), it beats Kaisen AGAIN in 49, it has color pages in 50 (Black Clover is on break this issue and Kaisen has a one shot chapter that doesn’t count), and then in #1 of 2021 it has colors again.

So not only does Yozakura have bigger names it’s beaten (Kaisen TWICE in the middle of its anime explosion), it has more variety, consistently beat Mashle (which Roboco only managed ONCE), has more color pages to its name, and gets high spots IN SPITE of higher profile series existing as opposed to Roboco only getting higher than 6 when notable series are all on break or have color pages (#51, the other week it got 4th, was a week where Mashle and Black Clover got color pages, and My Hero was on break).

And to further drive this point home, what if we did include Yozakura and Roboco in this exercise? Yozakura outplaces Roboco 4 times and Roboco is higher only twice. Not to mention, the only issue Roboco got a color page? Yozakura was still higher on the TOC that week (if you included color pages in rankings. Yozakura is 6th that week and Roboco is 8th, and still only places above Mashle for notable series). Sure, Roboco beat this week’s color page, but Yozakura still topped it the other time it did have one so if you include color, the gap widens to 6-3 PLUS now you can include DR. STONE to what Yozakura has outplaced making it even more apparent that Yozakura is actually getting high placements on merit.

So yeah, it LOOKS like Roboco has great rankings and going strictly by the numbers it does. But, if you follow basketball, there’s something called “empty stats”. What that basically means is that a player has an impressive looking box score (something like 20 points and 15 rebounds), but they do jack all to actually help the team win (whether it be they suck horribly at defense, they were more going for their own stats rather than helping the team win and staying in the team’s flow, etc.) and all those stats don’t have much meaning if you look at the context they got them in. That’s basically Roboco’s high rankings. Sure, the placements are high, but what it actually outplaced was meaningless. Everything can beat the series it beats consistently. Compare them to Yozakura, or any of the other notable series and you’ll see that it’s not the same league of quality.

Now why did I do all that anyway? Well, I wanted to prove that TOC wise, it isn’t as safe as most people think it is and combine that with the meh sales and it’s definitely not established yet. Don’t get me wrong, as much as I would like it to be the case, it’s not in danger of getting axed soon. It’s just stuck in this limbo until volume 2 comes out of probably not getting pushed but not being banished to the shadow realm like Dolphin’s probably going to be. If sales don’t grow, and I have a feeling they won’t, it’s probably curtains then. For now though, Roboco is just there.

Man, all that text so far and I haven’t gotten to the actual big news of the week. Chainsaw Man is ending next issue! Maybe the reason why it took so long for me to address it is because I’ve been saying this for weeks and that it was going to come way sooner than people think so I’ve already accepted it’s gone. Or maybe its because it took me like 85 chapters for me to accept it. Whatever the case, yeah, it’s ending. I think there’s an announcement next week too so maybe the anime is finally coming. Also, they didn’t say it, but I imagine We Never Learn is also ending next week because Sensei’s route is supposed to end next week too. It’s a little weird that there doesn’t seem to be a color page for the finale, but maybe Jump thinks it already got one for its ending the chapter multiple routes were revealed and thus feels it doesn’t need another one. Or maybe there’s an epilogue chapter or something. I doubt that though because Tsutsui-sensei already confirmed he finished the name (basically rough draft) of the final chapter last week and they seem to be two weeks ahead (aka, the name would be for next week’s chapter, not a theoretical epilogue for issue #3-4). Whatever the case, rest easy sir! You did great work for the past year for the most part, we can pretend that Rizu’s route didn’t happen this year!

Btw, My Hero’s secret project is an art exhibit. Cool I guess, but not like I’ll ever go there so don’t really care that much.
 
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 chapters like these that make me so happy to read manga. It was a perfect blend of comedy, storytelling, foreshadowing, and fanservice. It’s annoying when people complain “author forgot about this character!” or “author introduced this person for no reason!” because more often than not, they’re wrong. This is evident here when Gondaira-sensei brought back every major named character. He did not forget about them. He did not just randomly throw them into the story originally. It was so obvious that all of them had a bigger role planned for them in the future. Obviously, some of them aren’t in the roles they were intended for originally (Hatoda for example, I think was meant to be Taiyo’s main rival but the reception for him wasn’t great so Gondaira-sensei retooled him for a different purpose in the story. He DID NOT forget about him completely), but they were always going to come back when the series transitioned to a mainly battle manga.

This might seem like ending series vibes, but I don’t think it’s the case at all. First and foremost, Seiji flat out said that coco is NOT the leader and that this actually isn’t the final boss. Whoever the leader is, they’re obviously going to need actual buildup. Not only that, but we still don’t have much info about the structure of Tanpopo. We know what they’re doing and how they do things, but we don’t really know beyond that. For all we know, Tanpopo could have its own Ginyu Force or Warlords or something. Second, we got some stuff about our secondary cast, but still a lot to develop or can show. Ignoring the fact that we have gotten literally nothing new on Hoshifumi yet, we got a lot of potential plot points/characters from this chapter alone.

• Kyoichiro, Seiji, and Rin’s middle school life. All we know is that they were friends and probably troublemakers. A backstory chapter or two, or even arc is bound to happen showing how close they were.

• Something between Sui and Nanao. Like Sui said, he tried killing him and Nanao responded with saying he won’t die that easily. Not to mention, Sui also talks about how his life has no worth and would be happy to help Nanao find the way to cure Hazakura victims. I think it was also important that he specifically showed his symbol and not Oga. I would not be shocked if at some point, Nanao has to fight Sui again.

• Sosuke is bound to get his “I’m cool for Mutsumi’s sake” moment. The one where he actually does something cool without it being immediately reprimanded or redacted for a joke. Would not be shocked if he’s the one that “saves” Ai. Mainly think this because it seems like his partner for this mission looks to be Shion, and after a chapter helping a little boy with his parent issues and subtlety moving for baby Taiyo and being tsun-tsun for him in chapter 60, it’s kind of clear that she has a soft spot for kids at this point. I’m pretty sure that’s going to apply to Ai too, unless she’s one of those “actually 24 year old short people”, but I doubt that.

• Hatoda is probably going to get some kind of reflection from his hospital stay. I think he’ll probably realize he loves Mutsumi for real and not just for a status trophy, or maybe even that he can move on from her completely. Maybe he’ll long term help the Yozakuras track Tanpopo. Plus potentially he could end up doing something with Ayaka.

• The double Yozakura Sominine eye special. Taiyo’s gonna get it at some point and I honestly think it isn’t going to be against coco. If he does, I don’t think it’s going to be a perfected or complete version of it.

Not to mention that even if Tanpopo is gone after this arc, it is REALLY easy to make future antagonists in this series even if the major characters are connected to Tanpopo (and if we’re being real, its only the Yozakuras and Hinagaku that are directly related to them. Sosuke, Ayaka, Hatoda, and Hoshifumi can easily be connected with the next antagonist group instead). Hatoda can become evil again, there’s another secret org, maybe an upcoming spy group in the underworld that’s also evil, there’s so much they can do. Plus we don’t know who killed Kuroyuki (maybe it was Papa Yozakura, maybe not), more government conspiracies. There’s so much more that we can do.
Third. The sales are increasing more and more, it’s still quite ahead of at least 6 series, it does great on the TOC now, it has longevity (in comparison to the rest of the lineup), and it gets color pages. The ONLY reason why it would get cancelled at this point is if we got like 12 Mashle level successes from the get go and…sorry that ain’t happening even if I think next year will be a good year for newbies.

So yeah, I would say this is almost definitely the transition arc from mostly gag/comedy to mostly battle for Yozakura. Not the final arc, but a monumental chapter all the same.  


This is the typical, “if we’re gone, we can at least have a satisfying conclusion” arc that newbies do if they think they’re on the brink of demise. Now, I don’t think this is the last arc at this point, but I would not be shocked if it was going to be originally. This feels relatively self-contained compared to the last arc, with only vague implications to the overall story, if this was resolved quickly they can do a “the story continues” ending easily.

It actually felt real clumsy honestly. The way they get Iori and Riku involved felt forced, Tsumuji doesn’t feel like much more than a plot device, this counselor dude feels out of left field, definitely didn’t seem like the planned next arc. Let’s see how this goes though. Maybe now that we know that its not getting killed right away, it can turn it around on the TOC.


Well, this arc has been giving world building with the Divine Visionaries, and it has been better than the last. I don’t know though, I guess the reasons why I liked the series so much originally are just gone now. It feels like Komoto’s just doing everything to make the series popular instead of great now. It’s just been action action action with one joke thrown in for the longest time now. I really don’t know what it can do at this point to turn things around for me.


I just want to die. And now this series has to fill in volume 4 so it’s possible we’re stuck with this for another EIGHT issues. Wwwwwhhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyyy?!?!?!?!?!?!??!1?!?!?!?!?11



What a statement chapter. We’re seeing hero society crumble before our eyes. I think the end of this arc is fairly soon and if it continues like this, it’s going to be really strong.

Also, we’re ignoring the popularity poll results. There’s a lot wrong with it and I don’t want to talk about it :/


Weekly Shonen Jump isn’t the only publication that Shueisha has under its belt. It publishes a myriad of other magazines and has various online platforms not including Jump where it publishes original manga. This section is meant to be a generally minimal spoilerish look at series from said areas and maybe introduce people to hidden gems.

One of my favorite manga of all time, despite all its flaws, is Katekyo Hitman Reborn. I loved the ice hockey one shot, HOT! and wished that got a full series. Eldive exists. So when Akira Amano revealed she was doing a new manga, I was in even though I don’t really like detective media.

Six chapters, three cases in so far, and I can say this is definitely entertaining. You can definitely tell this is an Akira Amano manga so if you don’t like that, there’s a decent chance you won’t like this one. However, I also think she changes things up enough where she does deserve another chance if you weren’t a fan of her previous works. Ron is a fun partner and I don’t think Ishiki’s stupidity is annoying yet.

These cases are already out there. We’ve already gotten stuff like hand murderers and piggy bank magic tricks here, so these cases are definitely going to get wild. I do wonder though, if there’s ever going to be a really long case. I’m talking like multiple volumes length, and if that did happen, would it feel like its dragging? From previous works, I feel like she never drags things out, if anything she does things too fast so I don’t know if that’s a problem but detective manga are way easier to make drag than a battle or spokon. She’s on point as ever with the art and I would say her “same character” syndrome isn’t as apparent. I think if you never read (specifically read cause the anime looks way different) Reborn, you wouldn’t be able to tell the similarities for some character designs.

Aside from the pacing problem potentially down the line, I would say the biggest problem this series faces is scope. How big are these cases going to end up? We’re already in murder conspiracy cases here. How much can you realistically raise the stakes without making it feel ridiculous in a bad way? Overcome that and I think we got a great series on our hands.

I would have liked this in regular Jump, but Jump+ is cool too. I hope the sales are good, especially after Eldive happened.


December is here now, which means it’s time for Japan to release new volumes for Weekly Shonen Jump series! This time around the manga that were released came out on 12/4 and include: Undead Unluck volume 4, Ayakashi Triangle volume 2, and the debuting volume 1 of Phantom Seer for the current lineup. For recently completely series, Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs final volume (24) and Kimetsu no Yaiba’s final volume (23) are also out today and a compilation of side stories called Kimetsu no Yaiba Gaiden is also releasing alongside these. For Jump+, the hyped-up beast Kaiju No. 8 as well as Ghost Reaper Girl are doing their volume 1 releases this week. Let’s get into it!

Sales Numbers:

Now with a 100 percent more Jujutsu no Yaiba wall. You see, it was Kimetsu no Kaisen wall before because KnY was dominating the charts and then JJK right below it, but now it’s Jujutsu Kaisen on top of the charts dominating with Yaiba below it. Totally different! Being real, Yaiba was just running out of stock and the reprints are being sent out at the end of the week. Everything will be back to “normal” by next week probably.

So we’ve finally made it. The final Kimetsu no Yaiba volume is actually getting released (plus a gaiden volume). Nothing else to really say other than welcome back to Oricon Top 10 for the yearly sales! One new volume and a mountain of backlog sales will do that. The side stories volume almost did 1 mill by itself.

That isn’t the only monster we have though. From the depths of Jump+ stands the next smash hit, Kaiju No. 8! This is...terrifying honestly. That’s better than SpyxFamily (4), CSM (7), Jujutsu Kaisen (5), DR. STONE (6), The Promised Neverland (3), Black Clover (4), and even beat MHA’s debut with 3 less days! There’s potentially a 200k first print and its possible that it actually goes through that! I can say I was here :0 Of course, a really strong start is great, but it needs to keep up this volume’s sales and continue to show this level of sales for volume 2 to truly become the second pillar of Jump+.

Undead didn’t make Oricon this time around, but it grew. It probably didn’t do 28k, but yeah, that’s growth. Cool. As for Ayakashi, that’s lower than volume 1, which isn’t the best…but this is one of those cases where we need to see how it does over the month. Its first volume did chart on Shoseki so I think it’s probably growing, but can’t be too sure. Not like its in danger of getting axed or anything. Yuuna’s down for a final volume and something that did 21k last time, but I think this is just because there’s an OVA bundle version as well. It’d probably be higher than Undead and Ayakashi if that didn’t exist. Farewell Yuragi Inn, see you in the next life.

Speaking of phantoms, Phantom Seer has made a pretty good debut for a “newbie”. That number is better than the previous trio, with two less days to boot. When I said I expected Me and Roboco levels, I meant the equivalent of that in 3 days, which would probably be 4500-5500 copies sold. I didn’t mean literally at its level and selling more than it. It might have turned things around, or maybe they’re expecting more, but considering this got reprints sent directly to stores instead of the usual warehouse variety newbies with stock issues get, I doubt the expectations were actually high originally. Can it grow from this? Hopefully. I actually don’t know if these numbers are good enough to establish it yet. I do think though that this basically put Dolphin on the edge of death now. Unlike Magu-chan or Roboco, it’s not done by a non-established name, it did the worst of the three, it’s not pure gag/comedy like the other two so the expectations should be higher, and it does the worst of the three on the TOC. I do think Seer delayed its demise bare minimum. Will it kill all three of the previous new series…well, I hope it killed two of them, but I don’t think it did yet. Let’s see by the end of the month what it’s doing.  

If you were curious, Kaisen did 1 million this week in series sales. First time ever. This boost is crazy. I think we have our 2nd place in 2021’s Oricon Yearly rankings unless the boost dies like completely by March or something that probably isn’t going to happen does.

Ghost Reaper Girl LOL. The Viz curse is real. Viz seriously picked this over Kaiju No. 8 at first.


DR. STONE and The Promised Neverland season 2 start up really soon…you know, saying that made me realize why there would be a special TPN chapter in this issue and next…anyway, DR. STONE has a new key visual while Neverland has a new PV (...which is region locked and I don't want to link a video that's just getting deleted)! Plus, recently some info for who’s doing the OP and ED came out. The opening for this season of DR. STONE is a song called Rakuen by Fujifabric while the ED is Koe? by Hatena. I don’t know anything about Hatena, but Fujifabric have done some notable songs for anime. I’d say the biggest one is the fifth opening for Boruto. You may have any opinion of the series what you want, but I will say that the fifth OP is the best one by far and a legitimate banger. Give it a listen.



2021 Jump started out with a bang! Let’s see how things turn out as December roars on. Till next time, remember: support the official release!

Before we begin, I’ll just bring it up if you were looking back at old Making the Jumps. If you did, you might have noticed that I deleted every picture from every edition other than the Weekly Shonen Magazine edition. The reason for that is because at the start of the year, people on Twitter were getting DMCA’d by Shueisha for posting basically anything from their IPs, from manga panels, to anime clips, to even fanart. I really really doubt they’d ever find this place, but I didn’t want to risk it (and they possibly COULD have gotten the imgur links for all those images taken down, leaving a lot of broken images), so I removed all of them. However, a few days later, it was confirmed the DMCA takedowns weren’t actually Shueisha, but someone posing as them. Just to be safe though, I’m not going to be using panels or embedding visuals for the anime for a while. Once I’m not busy, I’ll go and fix all the old editions. All that said, enjoy the backlog of Making the Jumps!
----

For the first time in forever, I’ll be dancing through the night because this edition of Making the Jump will be relatively on time! (LOL no)


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 #2 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 12/13/2020) [NOTE: If there’s two names next to an author avatar, the top italicized name is the one who uses the avatar]

Next Issue Preview:

It has come, Chainsaw Man is actually over. What a wild ride that was. I’ll talk more about it later, but it definitely left an impact.

Before we look at placements, I wanted to highlight the one shot next issue specifically because Shiro Usazaki is back! I’m so glad she’s already back and hope she finds success! Support her in any way!

This seems like a pretty average TOC. If someone told me this was the TOC from like 5 issues ago, I don’t think anyone would bat an eye other than Magu-chan being a little high. Black Clover being second is cool though. We’ll see if Seer rises for its decent first volume sales so far. I think Dolphin might sink really soon.

I think there is one notable thing though. AGRAVITY BOYS came out #2 last year. They give series that are established or plan on doing something with a cover or color page for anniversaries. Even Yozakura got a color page for its anniversary this year. I think it not getting a color page this issue for the anniversary was bad, but not that notable. However, Jump usually does “change” when they celebrate an anniversary. Sometimes they do it based on date. Sometimes they do it based on the issue number it debuted on. Sometimes they delay it because they’re doing new series when the anniversary occurs (that happened for CSM’s second anniversary for example). However, this issue was barren in terms of color pages. Next issue is pretty barren (I think the one shot and special Kochikame chapters could wait a week honestly). AGRAVITY still didn’t get one for the anniversary. I think that’s pretty telling. It’s probably getting cut soon. Maybe not now because WNL and CSM are leaving, but after that? Probably will be axed, especially since Magu-chan, Roboco, and now Phantom Seer all do better than it.


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 counterattack is here. The captains have finally arrived in the Spade Kingdom and looks like we’re getting some hard-hitting fights. I hope this is an actual showcase for the captains because we got some time with Jack, Nozel, the Crimson Lions last arc, I want to see the others show off since their last serious fight was when most of them were possessed by elves. Some of them we haven’t even seen in a real fight. Let’s see if this battle can top the elves invasion. So far, seems like it will.



We saw Phantom Seer escape from the jaws of cancellation with those sales, I wonder if OBO can pull out the same next month. I will say though, “this screams final battle after getting told you’re done” so if this ends really soon, I wouldn’t be shocked.



STONE continues its solid run with another fun chapter of science antics. I think it was a nice little breather chapter after the past couple ones were a high stakes intense chase. We’re still quite a ways from the climax of this arc, but it’s been building up to be a big one. Looking forward to it.


LET IT GO! LET IT GO! CAN’T HOLD IT BACK ANYMORE!

Anyway, this route is finally over and verdict is…meh, it’s okay. Almost everything that was supposed to make this route interesting and unique like the student loving teacher taboo or Nariyuki thawing Sensei’s frozen heart was either barely touched on or flat out ignored. The only thing we got that was neat was some of Sensei’s school life and the festival was cool, because Nariyuki is the real #bestgril in the series. I guess it was cool that Sensei was the only one to get a wedding in her route which is like…man, we’re just pandering huh. That whole thing with Sensei’s parents, probably would be cool if you know, that was actually developed. I’m pretty sure this was the only real time it was addressed since Sensei’s arc in the main route, and if memory serves me right they didn’t even actually confront this problem back then, just sidestep around it. It sure is nice about how it seems like Nariyuki isn’t friends with Rizu, Fumino, Uraka, and Senpai anymore in this route. Definitely not stupid how they weren’t invited to the damn wedding or even bother trying to explain their absence. Nope, definitely not dumb at all.

There’s a chapter next week and I’m like 99% sure that it’s the finale. I wonder what on earth it could possibly be about since the route did officially end here. It’s definitely going to be a ride for me. We’ll talk more about the series ending then.

Spoiler:

This chapter honestly feels like a perfect wrap up for the series. The Control Devil is reincarnated and Denji is taking care of her now, Denji finally realized what was wrong with Makima and his relationship, and he’s living his life to the fullest now. I don’t think I really need anything else. This was about as good of an ending that I could want as someone who was out on this series for two thirds of its run.


Turning the Page

I normally do these for either cancelled series or ones that are making their English physical volume debut, but I waited a bit because a) the Golden Future Cup was running and I wanted to talk about that and b) I figured this might be ending soon so I might as well have waited for that. Well, it’s not quite ending, but this is the end of its Weekly Shonen Jump run so I figured now was the perfect time to talk about Chainsaw Man.

No matter what I may say about the quality of the series, I will acknowledge that Chainsaw Man is an extremely important title for English readers. It heralded the great Dark Hero Generation of Jump! So important! On a serious note though, Chainsaw Man was the first new Jump series to debut with the restructure of English Shonen Jump and Mangaplus. You see, back in the day, there was a physical English Shonen Jump. That needed to drive sales obviously, so it picked the most popular series from Japan and translated them in a magazine. Eventually though, SJ transformed into a digital only magazine. It still needed to drive subs though and make a profit, so it again still only did translations for the most popular Jump manga in Japan. Since you had to pay for that, naturally that lead to people doing their own translations and releasing them for free on the internet. Then Viz changed the game forever. At the start of 2019, they announced that their entire magazine would be free to read, they would translate essentially every new series that debuts in Japan’s WSJ, and that they’re going to do close to worldwide simultaneous release of new chapters. Chainsaw Man was the first of these new manga to get this chance. However, they made this announcement on a Friday I think, after the magazine already leaked on the internet. So series were already releasing their chapters, and CSM got one. And it continued for quite a bit. In other words, Chainsaw Man was the last Jump manga to get a significant English fan translation release. It was both the bringer of a new era and the end of an old one. For that, it’ll always be important as the bridge to people accepting the official translation of manga (even if there are still fan translations still).
Right away, Chainsaw Man seemed like a hit in the online community. The West ate it up right away, but as we learn time and time again, that doesn’t mean much if Japan doesn’t like it and for a bit, it seemed like it was kind of average. It was middle of the TOC until the release of volume 1, where it had a strong debut after basically a whole year of flops (before Chainsaw Man, Jujutsu Kaisen was the only new manga that did good). It quickly caught on after that and we were off to the races.

I think of all the manga in Jump I’ve ever read, Chainsaw Man is the one I have the most complex relationship with. Back when it first started, I HATED this manga. It was gory, super super dark, had stupid immature humans, it had basically everything I hated in stories. Not to mention, Jump was still pretty competitive at this point, so I figured only one if any of the series from its batch would be given a second chance if it didn’t have a strong start. Normally I wouldn’t feel that strongly about a series getting a second shot over the other flops, but this was one of those batches where I was cursed to fall in love with a series that was doomed to be short, Hell Warden Higuma. I truly loved that manga, way more than I ever should have, and to see it gone and the one from that batch I hated survive made me mad, because I was also pretty into neO;lation as well. I think overall, for me, CSM was a big victim of unfortunate timing. It came out during a batch I really liked the other series in it, it came out before I hated a decent chunk of Jump’s lineup meaning most of my anger was directed at it, and I was pretty bitter about it growing faster than series I loved (Jujutsu Kaisen at the time, I got into Kimetsu no Yaiba right before the explosion, act-age ;( ) when it didn’t match the quality I felt. In hindsight, a lot of my hate for it probably wasn’t warranted, especially since 2020 taught me what hate truly looked like when it came to Jump manga.

Well, let’s get into it. Chainsaw Man is a thriller. That’s the best way I can describe it because it definitely doesn’t fit into any conventional definition of literature. It broke the mold of Weekly Shonen Jump manga. I’m not saying it’s a seinen disguised as a shonen or any of that other stupid crap, but it definitely did things most WSJ manga would have never attempted. I think it’s a unique manga, both to its benefit and detriment. It is truly one of a kind, but because of that, it ends up doing some things that I would consider make the manga worse just for the sake of doing something new. It definitely improved greatly over the second half of the series, and if you loved these characters, I think the tragic moments hit you really hard. I didn’t though, so that’s why I feel like its just alright.

In a way, Chainsaw Man moving to Jump+ is a perfect place for it. From the very beginning, it was always way bigger online than it is physically. All the fan art, fan animations, interactions it gets on Twitter, online sales data show that it does significantly better on online stores than physical ones. So being on Shueisha’s premiere online platform after already proving to be a success in the biggest manga magazine in the world, it should grow a lot. The three pillars of Kaiju No. 8, Spy x Family, and it should leave Jump+ in a very positive place (I’d dare even say better than WSJ). Chainsaw Man is allowed to be free now and do basically whatever it wants with the story. So, as we look back at the unique experience CSM gave the readers, Fujimoto can turn the page on this chapter and create a new phenomenon with Part 2.


December is here now, which means it’s time for Japan to release new volumes for Weekly Shonen Jump series! This time around the manga that were released came out on 12/4 and include: Undead Unluck volume 4, Ayakashi Triangle volume 2, and the debuting volume 1 of Phantom Seer for the current lineup. For recently completely series, Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs final volume (24) and Kimetsu no Yaiba’s final volume (23) are also out today and a compilation of side stories called Kimetsu no Yaiba Gaiden is also releasing alongside these. For Jump+, the hyped-up beast Kaiju No. 8 as well as Ghost Reaper Girl are doing their volume 1 releases this week.

Let’s get into it!

Key:

Undead’s growing. Neat. Ayakashi might be stunted. Not neat. The landscape is way different from when Robot or Samurai 8 were running (plus, people actually like this series unlike those two), so I don’t think Ayakashi is in any real danger, but not growing is definitely not what you want to see from it.

Yuuna did about as well as I thought (don’t know how well the OVA bundle version did though). Respectable end to the run.

With ten days, Phantom Seer is now the third best debut of a new weekly manga this year for Jump, behind Mashle and Ayakashi Triangle (if you include Burn the Witch, it falls to fourth, but that’s an exception). That’s pretty good and all, but you know, Yozakura did around the same for volume 1 and it didn’t really help TOC placements until volume 3 came out, Undead is still basically a middle rank TOC series that sometimes rises or sinks despite being a success, and Roboco is still a top 5/6 series despite only being slightly better than AGRAVITY BOYS’ first volume. I’m not expecting it to see a huge improvement in the TOC yet, maybe from bottom 3 dweller to bottom 5 dweller that sometimes goes bottom 3 when the TOC goes crazy.

Kaiju no. 8 continues its dominant stretch. It cracked the top 30 AGAIN on Oricon, in a week where the Kimetsu no Yaiba wall resurfaced and the Chainsaw Man backlog got a boost (plus Kaisen still exists even if it was lower this time). Volume 2 has to keep this up obviously, but this is looking like an amazing start for it.

Ghost Girl LOL.


The big news of course, is that Chainsaw Man is FINALLY getting its anime…and it’s done by MAPPA. The crew really trying to take over the world now. I don’t really have any feelings about it. Kaisen’s amazing so far, but I think CSM is going to require a way different skillset.

Jujutsu Kaisen’s anime has taken Japan by storm and let it continue! The artists for the second OP and ED have been revealed as long as the song names. Performing the new opening is who-ya extended. [VIVID VICE] appears to be their first Jump opening, but they did do the opening for Psycho Pass 3. [give it back] by Co shu Nie is the ending that replaces LOST IN PARADISE. Let’s hope it lives up to that song’s popularity! Co shu Nie also worked on Psycho Pass 3, but they’re familiar with Jump: doing The Promised Neverland ending songs. What they’re most well known for though is probably the Tokyo Ghoul:re opening. I love Kaisen’s first OP, so hope these are great follow ups!

Time moves so fast. The first new manga I ever read as it came out was We Never Learn. Next week, we say goodbye to it for the last time. Till next time remember: Support the Official Release!

As long as I believe in that, in every possible future, and every possible version of this series, Making the Jump will continue. Question No. 24: [x] covers #3/4 of WSJ.


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 #3/4 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 12/20/2020) [NOTE: If there’s two names next to an author avatar, the top italicized name is the one who uses the avatar]

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

It has come, We Never Learn has finally concluded. We’ll get more into it later but farewell my old friend. It’s been an amazing four years and I’ll love you forever. Let’s look towards the future though.

The TOC hasn’t been interesting in a while. We have our top 5 (or 6, Mashle’s somewhere in the top 5 usually), Black Clover, Roboco, Yozakura, Undead, Ayakashi, and High School Family as the middle, and then the bottom 5 is usually the same with the bottom 3 in some order. Magu-chan is the only curveball we have gotten, and probably will get for awhile now that Chainsaw Man and We Never Learn are both gone. We desperately need a big batch of new series, and I say this as someone that likes SAKAMOTO DAYS a lot and usually doesn’t want to do giant batches so quickly. I just want my “traditional” romance and sports manga in Jump or something that makes the lineup feel fresh

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.


Dolphin went from the “doing random stuff to figure out if we’re getting axed” arc to the “let’s do an arc that can act as the finale if we are but has earth shattering reveals if it’s not” phase of its life. There’s seven artifacts that are powerful, but since this is Tamura, I wouldn’t be shocked if like five of them were jokes and the one that’s getting focus on this arc is the only one that actually matters (even if this isn’t the last arc). If I had to guess, this probably will be the last arc unless volume 2 does significantly better, which I doubt it will.

Also, I have to say…Tamura does a really bad job with stealthily reusing character designs. The captain is literally just Marie from Hungry Marie. If I looked hard enough at her crew, I could probably find someone similar to them in his previous works. It’s small things like this that add up and make me annoyed while reading the series. I’m not dropping this anytime soon and I definitely don’t hate it like AGRAVITY or Moriking. Let’s see how this goes.    


This feels more and more like a modern day Gintama has more chapters come out, and I mean that in a good way. The cast is expanding and the characters we already have are coming to their own and offer their own charms. I think the series clearly knows what it wants to be at this point. Now the questions if its something that Japan likes, more specifically the people that read and vote in the magazine. Online metrics, I think its there. It clearly looks like a popular series based solely on online platforms like Twitter and YouTube. Let’s see what happens in a few issues.  


So this is interesting. I think OBO might have saved itself from getting cancelled before 20 chapters, but I’ve also seen many a manga that introduced new characters that seem like extend the life of a manga only to get canned within the next two chapters. I’m still completely indifferent to this series and don’t care about what’s happening here. The last thing a series can do to get me invested in it is introduce a “good” exorcist group that is so clearly evil despite being the “justice” of the world. Let’s see what happens next chapter but I highly doubt this turns it around.


So the stage is set for the next phase of the story. This battle is over, Deku has his next long term goal, and now we’ll have to see how hero society rebounds after the attack by the villains. After everything that happened I have to say…I’m pretty disappointed in what happened in this arc. This might sound odd because spoilers, I said this was the best arc in 2020 Jump, but that was before we got the ending (which is part of 2021 technically). I really hate what Horikoshi is doing with Deku, Shigaraki, and I’m scared about what he’s going to do with Endeavor. The heroes should have lost way more than what they ended up did losing after what the villains did this arc. The future is interesting though. Horikoshi said that we’re closer to the conclusion at Jump Festa, so I’m assuming we’re around halfway there. Let’s see what happens from here on out.


I questioned what the hell could the last chapter be since we wrapped up Sensei’s route last week, and turns out its just an excuse to make doujinshis canon ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Being serious, I get what this ending was trying to do. A theme of the series is that the possibilities of your future are infinite, so showing that all these routes can happen in the girl’s future if they challenge themselves and confront Nariyuki is fitting. However, this still feels like a copout ending despite the fact that the multiple routes ending is in of itself a copout ending (a good idea for one, but still a copout nonetheless). Like, I think its neat that you got to pick which ending was “your canon” one but what this chapter essentially does is reaffirm that your ending is only a choice. You can’t really pretend like your route just happens and that’s how the series ends because of this chapter; in the back of your head there will now be this thing telling you that this only happened in your girl’s head. It’s a view of their possible future, but that’s it, possible. It’s not realized now because of this chapter. It fits thematically and all, but it is a little disappointing, or maybe I feel that way because now I have to accept that Rizu’s route can technically happen now instead of just ignoring its existence forever. I don’t know, I feel like it probably would have been better just to end it with the last route’s ending instead of trying to shoehorn this bonus chapter. I will say though, if this happened in the 2020 magazine year instead of 2021, this would still be a top 3 ending of a Jump series.    


I’ve said previously that romcoms are probably my favorite manga genre. There’s just something about them that always draw me to them. It all started with Nisekoi, but the one that continued the legacy and kept the flame burning until I discovered The Quintessential Quintuplets was Taishi Tsutsui’s We Never Learn.

There were a few factors as to why this series stuck out to me right away. First, it was 2017 and the first of a legendary batch of six debuting manga (something they still haven’t matched to this day). 2017 was the year that I decided that I wanted to get obsessed with Jump and figure out everything about how it works and it was entirely thanks to this batch. Both We Never Learn and DR. STONE got me invested right away that I needed to know if they would last or be axed early, so I started researching about how Jump runs their magazine and discovering things like the TOC and volume sales. Second, Nisekoi had ended recently and there was a giant hole in my heart that I wanted to fill. The artstyle looked really similar to Nisekoi so I thought it was meant to be. Third, Tsutsui-sensei did the Nisekoi spin-off manga and I really enjoyed that, so I figured he could probably do a good original series too and gave it a shot. And that was completely accurate. He did do a good original series and I was hooked from basically day one.

If we look at it surface level, We Never Learn doesn’t reinvent the wheel for romcom harem manga at all. A part of me knows that and I think that’s why I can’t put it on the same level as Nisekoi or Quintessential Quintuplets in my heart despite being a series I adore and looked forward to weekly for 85% of its run. That isn’t a bad thing though. Sometimes a series can be considered genius just by keeping things simple and fun, and I think that’s this series strongest trait. It knows that the simplest thing to make a romcom manga great is having great characters which this manga has in spades. From the second #firstgirl Fumino, to the sporty childhood friend Uraka, and the sassy pixie maid Asumi-senpai, there’s tons of personality and chemistry in the cast.

I think what makes everything work though and connects things is the strength of the male lead character, Nariyuki Yuiga. Like I said, We Never Learn doesn’t reinvent the wheel and Nariyuki is no exception at surface level. He’s the naïve male that doesn’t realize that multiple girls love him somehow, but there’s still a charm to him that other dense male harem leads just don’t have. I think its because despite his initial super serious personality, at the core of it, Nariyuki is just a giant dork. He’s down to match the antics of his supporting cast and realizes that his actions actually do change his relationships with the other girls. He bounces off the others so well and the one relationship that doesn’t really feel natural (Rizu’s), is completely intentional by Tsutsui-sensei and shows Nariyuki’s three-dimensional character.

Another thing this series does amazing is that for a manga in a genre that specializes in it, it really doesn’t ever feel dragged out. The only arc that goes on for more than five continuous chapters are the route ending chapters, which are all only one volume’s worth of chapters. Every arc in this manga takes place over the course of the series and is gradually built on over time. Continuity actually exists in this series and matters.

I can’t put this in my top 3 romcom series of all time. I just can’t after that rough late 2019-2020 spot in the manga (plus the anime’s ending is still god awful). Despite that though, We Never Learn will always have a special place in my heart. It was the series alongside DR. STONE that got me super into Weekly Shonen Jump, it kept me going and acted as the romcom I could fall back to if I hated something or read to make me feel better while waiting for the series that I loved as much as Nisekoi, and it reminded me that following a manga is meant to be fun. So as Tsutsui-sensei turns the page on this chapter in his career, I look forward to seeing what he does next. Just please never do anything similar to Rizu’s route again.

Jump Festa was this past week at the time of writing, so of course a lot of anime info dropped! We got some VA info and the next opening song for Black Clover, some visuals for Jujutsu Kaisen’s second half of the season, My Hero’s launch date for season 5, and so much more!


For some fun, we’re going to have a question every week that revolves around Jump. Be warned though, unlike the rest of Making the Jump, this trivia question can be about any series that ran in Jump! So without further ado –

Hey! We’re back! Sorry about forgetting last issue’s question. Dropped my mind because I had to do this plus the 2020 wrap up at the same time. Anyway let’s get into it.

Q: It looks very likely we’re getting a new batch of series for #7 and 8 at least. If we do get something for #8, that would mean that it debuted the same number as Undead Unluck. What series in Jump at the moment share the same ISSUE NUMBER anniversary (for example, two series debuted in #44 but in different years)?

1000 chapters for One Piece. Wow, that’s amazing. We’re on break (or should be at least, I might be late posting this who knows). Till then, remember: support the official release!

1000 chapters down, many more to go for One Piece and 25 editions of Making the Jump down, many more to go for me! 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 #5/6 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 1/4/2020) [NOTE: If there’s two names next to an author avatar, the top italicized name is the one who uses the avatar]

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

I was going to do a funny gag where I just show you the bottom five of the past 3 TOC and ask you which one was which because I thought nothing interesting was going to happen, but something did happen. AGRAVITY BOYS is actually ending! Already on a roll with my predictions! After CSM and WNL ended, I actually didn’t expect AGRAVITY to take the fall this soon, but here we are.

Aside from that, next issue starts a three issue in a row one shot campaign, aka, an excuse to delay a batch of new series so that we can give Undead and Mashle anniversary covers without messing dates up. I’ve accepted that those two are going to get preferential treatment even if it annoys me that it’s only those two of the newbies, but my favorites aren’t really in danger of getting axed at this point so it’s fine. They’ll get covers eventually too.  

So, to finish this section off, I’ll put the author comments of every mangaka this week since everyone but Nakamura commented about One Piece (he picked to talk about his series ending instead, which I understand. He also did congratulate One Piece on his twitter). Also, Nariyuki is shadowed because We Never Learn ended last issue, so Tsutsui didn’t say anything in this issue.
Click HERE

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’m so glad that my suffering is almost over. Can’t wait for the last chapter to be heartwarming for the first half and then throw it all away for a lame pervert joke to end the series off.


This is an interesting chapter to do at the moment. This is the range for most slowly concluding series to either wrap up or start or their wrap arc and this three chapter story is definitely fitting for a conclusion arc. We finally see Ruru’s mom, Magu-chan does meaningful and actually helpful things for Ruru that deepens their bond, and spending a New Year’s weekend with family seems like as good of any place to end the long arching plot before doing a final arc. However, this is also a good story beat to go through for a long-term series. It opens up more relationships for Magu-chan to explore, gives him a goal to strive for, and was great character development for Ruru, who needed it at this point. Considering there’s a color page next issue, I’m going to guess that this isn’t the end, but if it is, I can’t say it came out of nowhere.    


What a chapter title. Actually, just what a chapter. What seemed like a filler week (that was really adorable) ended up actually being quite important because we were introduced to new villains! They all have colors in their name and there was a rainbow themed group in Tanpopo, so the logical assumption would be that these guys are some of the big guns. Gondaira-sensei has definitely brought back his quirk designs from Poro and I’m here for it. This chapter also did an interesting thing with the Tanpopo in that once again, they’re sort of being humanized. The sick doctor and Ai’s I assume caretaker are playing cards with Momo, they’re having fun, and they’re getting ready for a party despite a really important operation for their side occurring in seventy-two hours. We know that some of these people are quite twisted, but still in a way…this seems like the Yozakura Family if they were flat out evil? I don’t know. I’m really interested in knowing how many of these people make it out of this arc and become allies/supporting characters to the family. This chapter basically showed that they aren’t just evil only. They’re people who just happen to be evil, but still people (despite being experiments and hybrids).    

AGRAVITY BOYS Chapter 50 (END): Defying Gravity

So that happened. It’s not quite the end for the boys yet, they have an epilogue (chapter? Arc?) coming in Jump GIGA but this is it for the WSJ run. It was fine I guess. It wasn’t as awful as the last two weeks, but I still didn’t really like what happened in it. I think I’ll wait till the epilogue concludes before giving my final thoughts on the series as a whole.  


Alright, let me get this out of the way first. This was a really good chapter and what I’m going to say does not change that fact. It was also a required chapter and had to happen eventually. That being said…maaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnn this was a disappointment!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Okay, the 1000 chapter is a huge milestone to cross. I understand you want to hype that up. I’m even fine with advertising that one like a month ahead, you want to get as many readers after all. However, Shueisha hyped this chapter up for almost the ENTIRETY of 2020 and acted like this was a MONUMENTAL MINDBLOWING chapter. Look, I know part of that is my fault for getting sucked into the hype…but the way they advertised this up made it seem like this chapter was going to be way more important than a normal milestone chapter (such as 800,900, etc.) x100. Why are you opening a worldwide popularity poll and putting an ad in the NEW YORK TIMES just for a chapter where Luffy is going to declare he’s going to become King of the Pirates and surpass two Yonko. Yes, that is hype, and actually doing something to Kaido is a BIG DEAL…but it’s not advertising for an entire year and hype THIS specific chapter as something game changing for an entire year.

Again, I want to reiterate, on its own, this was a REALLY GOOD chapter. It’s probably been my favorite since the Reverie (or I guess the intermission of Wano), just…there was already no way that chapter 1000 was going to live up to the hype it was getting, but doing THIS for 1000 did not help in the slightest. This would have been perfectly fine as a 800 or 900 milestone, but 1000? PERSONALLY, I don’t think it lived up to the hype. You think it does? That’s perfectly fine! The amazing thing about One Piece and why it made it to 1000 chapters is because there’s something in it for everyone. No matter how much I complain about One Piece nowadays, I love it from the bottom of my heart and am glad that I read this series.


Rookies are an important part of Jump’s lineup, but their works rarely get translated. If they are, it’s usually because people have expectations from the mangaka, whether it be they won a notable competition or Viz did it for some reason. So while I would like to do a lookout for one shots, it’s not really realistic for me to do it. So instead, I can do analysis on mangaka from oneshots that appear in Jump and Jump GIGA (a seasonal magazine that Jump does for newbie mangaka/people with flops as their first Jump series to do oneshots in preparation for serialization), mangaka that had flops in Jump already that I think have potential, or Jump+ mangaka that I want to see make the jump (heh) to the main magazine. This is meant to be a showcase for the potential future pillars of WSJ.

For our first edition of this, let’s go to the guy that I’ve been hyping up since the start of this year’s GFC. In the most recent issue of Jump GIGA, after disappearing for two years, Masoaki Shindou has finally returned to the manga world with another one shot named Ruri Dragon! Looking at the raws (no translation yet. See what I mean!), it was different from anything he’s done before and in a good way. He tried something unique and it paid off because it was actually adorable. He flexed his drawing ability with those shots of the dragon. He showed that he learned how to make meaningful relationships in a timely manner. Whatever he did during those two years he disappeared definitely helped a lot because he feels like the complete package now. I definitely think he’s going to be an important part of Jump’s future.

What could he make though? Based on his history, it seems like it would be a battle manga probably, but the one one-shot he did that wasn’t a battle manga was his best by far and actually really interesting. I think Ruri Dragon would be cool, but the issue is that Magu-chan is running in the magazine right now and it’s really similar concept wise. Magu-chan might be cancelled by the time he’s ready I guess, but I don’t like speculating replacements for specific series unless its incredibly obvious (We Never Learn was a Nisekoi replacement the minute it was revealed) and I don’t think Magu-chan is successful enough to warrant a “replacement”. Could he do something else we didn’t expect like a sports series? Maybe. I actually think he could do a really good one. He’s got compelling relationship and amazing panel artwork down, and those are the two things you need to know how to do really well for a sports manga. Plus, there’s literally no sports series in Jump right now, so he’d be filling in a specific niche in the magazine that’s needed and would be able to get big if it catches on.

I’m really looking forward to Masaoki Shindou’s debut in Jump now that it looks like he’s ready. He made a one shot that was leagues beyond its competition in GIGA, so let him have his chance now.

Next time, we’ll do a look at for the mangaka of another GIGA one shot that didn’t get a lot of fanfare. I think they could have a bright future in a certain genre though. Find out who then!

For some fun, we’re going to have a question every week that revolves around Jump. Be warned though, unlike the rest of Making the Jump, this trivia question can be about any series that ran in Jump! So without further ado –

Q: With AGRAVITY BOYS ending its miraculous year long run in Jump, let’s ask about the opposite. What is the shortest regular serialization in Jump history? This is not including miniseries such as Burn the Witch (which is going to end up being more than four chapters anyway) or one shots.  

Last Week's Answer:

Next time is the first week of January’s sales and 2021’s first releases for volumes. Let’s see what has changed since last we saw certain series’ volumes. Till then, remember: support the official release!

The dawn of a new batch of series. New Making 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 #7 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 1/17/2020):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue(s) Preview:

Finally, a new batch of series! Oh how I’ve longed for this day (let’s ignore the fact that I actually really like SAKAMOTO Days, which was the previous newest series). To say I’m excited for this group would be an understatement! Each and every one of these offer something that I’m really excited about seeing, but let’s go with the one that I’m least looking forward to first.

The fourth series doesn’t have a finalized translation for the title yet (as in, the name can be two things. It obviously doesn’t have an official English name yet), but we DO know that it’s a sports series. FINALLY. It’s been over six months since Haikyu!! ended and now they’re trying to fill the spot. I’ve been wanting this, so what could make me not as excited? It’s a baseball manga. Full disclosure. I hate baseball. Not in the “I don’t care about the sport and know nothing about it, but if I actually do learn about it, I might like it” way. No, I flat out hate the sport. It’s my least favorite sport of them all. That’s not the main issue though. The actual problem is that Diamond of the Ace in Shonen Magazine and Major 2nd from Sunday are ongoing and pretty popular. Do you want to know the last successful baseball manga from Jump? Rookies, from 1998. It ran for five years and is generally considered the “forgotten success” in all of Jump’s history because it’s the most notable success in their history that never got an anime adaptation. Since then, baseball manga have been cursed in Jump. They all die quick deaths (with the last one being by KAITO and lasting 10 chapters. It ended up working out in the end, Blue Flag was way better and was actually successful on Jump+) and are all terrible. If a baseball manga was to break the cycle, this would be the time…but I don’t see it happening. This is also the only series of the batch by a rookie (even if one of the vets only did a flop in the magazine previously). The competition is STEEP for this series. I’ll still look forward to it though if the characters are good; characters matter the most in sports manga after all!

Ai Terushii is probably the one I find second most intriguing. Inaoka did Invade You back in 2017 and was probably one of the least remarkable new series released since like, 2012. However, he got the honor of doing a digital exclusive mini series for Jump last year and it was actually quite interesting. It had a pretty out there premise and it seems like that’s what he’s going with here because the preview image is of a faceless girl. It’s still a romcom though I’m pretty sure so let’s see if this can fill in We Never Learn’s shoes. I’m cautiously optimistic for this one.

Witch WATCH is something I’m really excited for too. I’ve recently been getting into “magic” series (I mean, I’ve liked Black Clover for a while, but it’s not really a “magic” series so much a series that uses magic, if you get what I mean) after reading Weekly Shonen Magazine’s new series Tricks Dedicated to Witches and LOVE or MAGIC (I’ve also realized I’ve been on a Magazine binge lately. Hmmm, maybe I should do another Magazine Rack sometime soon) so it’s both ironic and exciting seeing Jump get into that. What really got me excited though was who’s doing this series. I don’t think anyone actually knows this, but SKET Dance is one of my favorite manga of all time and its ending is one of my favorite endings I’ve ever read in a manga, plus I’ve always wanted to read Astra - Lost in Space but couldn’t because I thought it was a digital only release in volume form, and its weekly chapters were lost after Viz switched to their current model for Jump. If the characters are even half as good as SKET Dance, I’m going to be extremely happy. In normal circumstances, this would be my most hype but well…

SKET Dance is one of my favorite manga, but it’s not my top. You want to know what is my top? Assassination Classroom by Yusei Matsui. So yeah, the minute I saw Yusei Matsui was coming back, there was nothing that could contain my excitement for it. Something that sticks out to me is that Matsui does research on what’s popular and makes stories that take that and makes them stand out still. Neuro came out during a time where “darker” manga were in with Death Note, D. Grayman, and BLEACH was still picking up. Assassination Classroom came out during a time where kids were feeling down by the Japanese education system and we know how that turned out. So what is he doing now? A historical based series set in feudal Japan. During a time where Kimetsu no Yaiba changed the game and is refreshing the manga reader scene and appeals directly to Japan based on its influences. During a time where the hottest manga outside of Jump is a historical manga based on a popular point in history for Japan (Kingdom). This man is a genius, how does he do this every time? Yeah, it’s pretty obvious that this is the most excited I’ve been for a manga since…DR. STONE? Honestly, this might be the most excited for a Jump manga debuting like ever. The only thing that comes close is Matchmaking of the Amagiri Household from…Magazine…which is also coming out this year and like, that’s still a newbie mangaka making their first series versus the mangaka of my favorite series of all time. Please don’t let me down, Matsui.

Aside from that, Phantom Seer…yeah, I think it just became incredibly expendable. Still stuck in the bottom 3 despite the generally speaking, alright sales. Four new series that all offer something different from what we currently have, unlike Seer being the same genre as second biggest series Jujutsu Kaisen and not being good enough to pick up any of its fans. SAKAMOTO Days and Build King existing. I just don’t see a world where Seer recovers unless volume 2 goes up to Mashle numbers, and I mean CURRENT Mashle numbers, not what it did for volume 1.

I think the good vibes for Magu-chan are coming to an end unfortunately. The color page this issue is actually really low, as in, bottom 5 if color pages count towards TOC placements, low. Not only that, but the sales, spoilers, aren’t looking so hot right now and the story is at a point where it COULD end soon. Plus with this batch of four series eliminating AGRAVITY and Moriking, plus OBO almost definitely dying soon as well, Magu-chan’s real last hope is that Roboco and Seer’s sales stunt harder than its, plus High School Family flopping…which is possible I guess, but that’s still only delaying the inevitable. I’m not saying it’s ending soon, but I would not be shocked if Magu-chan sank back to the bottom sooner rather than later.  

So…I’m going to be honest. I genuinely have no idea how Jump views Undead Unluck anymore. They put it in a newspaper ad in Japan for the new year alongside the five veterans and Mashle that was supposed to be a sign of” going forward for many years to come”, in other words those would be the leaders of Jump for the foreseeable future…yet literally nothing else about how they treat it suggests that they feel that way. It’s always closer to the bottom 5 of TOCs than the top (to the point where I can’t even remember the last time Undead was 5th or higher), it doesn’t get nearly the amount of color pages as Mashle (or even Yozakura lately), and now it’s getting bumped for its anniversary. Technically, this issue is Undead’s anniversary; it started January 19th, 2020. Next issue would be the issue anniversary for it and generally the time Jump celebrates an anniversary. They started a new batch during its anniversary, as well as Mashle’s, instead. However, Mashle is getting color pages next week, so it IS getting something for its anniversary (plus I imagine its getting a cover sometime after this batch that’s for “something else”, but wink-wink it’s actually an anniversary cover that’s just late we just don’t want to say it’s late). Undead’s got nothing though. It’s either delayed to after this batch (which I don’t think is a good sign for a future pillar) or it’s getting a delayed color page, which is even worse than what Yozakura got. At least Yozakura’s color page for the anniversary was on time. It’s getting to the point where I genuinely think they might drop Andy from Mash’s side and just advertise Mashle instead or reconfigure their advertising so that the new group is Mash, Taiyo, Roboco, and a new series lead. I really don’t know how they view Undead at this point.

And finally, Build King is starting its rankings now! Its right in the middle at eighth, which normally is pretty respectable, but I feel like might actually be a bad sign. They went out of their way to advertise it as extremely popular right away; a series that’s actually extremely popular doesn’t end up below Ayakashi Triangle or Yozakura for its first placement. Samurai 8 also started out right in the middle before the obsessive pushing started so it’s not like we’re going to see it fail right away…but this just seems like a disaster waiting to happen at this point. I hope SAKAMOTO Days doesn’t suffer the same fate.

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.


…Man I just do not care what is going on in My Hero anymore. Shigaraki was ruined for me. I do not care about any villain that’s actually in Tartarus. This entire arc was meaningless because the villains lost more than the heroes did in this invasion (seriously, how did THAT happen). Deku is just going to be saved by whatever convenient power he gets from a previous OfA user. I just don’t care anymore. How did things turn so bad in the span of five chapters?


I also cannot bring myself to care any more about this series. It is so uninspired and boring. They spent three chapters rebuilding something that should have happened in one, maybe two. The main characters are so boring and unispiring. This screams Shimabukuro is coasting on his name to get the long run it needs to get to the “interesting” stuff, just like Samurai 8 but worse. At least with Samurai 8, I could tell that even if that’s what he was doing, Kishimoto was determined with that series and he CARED about what he was writing, he just didn’t know how to make the start digestible for people not familiar with him and wasn’t pushed to by his editor to do so. Here, if I told you Shimabukuro was also heavily invested in building and actually got really interested in real estate between the end of Toriko and now, would you believe me? I sure as hell wouldn’t believe that if I didn’t research before he released this one shot back in 2017. I sincerely hope this suffers a quick death, but I know it won’t.  


I have some fears about this series despite loving it so much and it being my favorite new series since Yozakura Family (yes, I like it even more than I did TPGW). I’m worried that Sakamoto not really being a character might get old fast. I worry about how exactly there’s going to be long term storytelling in this story once all the major characters are introduced; it can’t just be gag while assassins pop up to kill Sakamoto. However, a few of my fears have been alleviated here.  The biggest one was that I was really worried that, well characters in general, but especially Shin was just going to be the butt of jokes; he wasn’t going to matter at all and just a tool to make Sakamoto look cool. Here though, we saw that he can take initiative, that he will get his own moments, and that he’s eventually going to get an awesome payoff even if it’s not now. My other worry was that if there were good ideas for action scenes here, that they wouldn’t look good in practice. The roller coaster fight is an awesome idea I’m surprised more manga don’t do and from this chapter, looked amazing and was hype inducing. I’m not worried anymore about action scenes. Even if this stays long term, it might look rough in the beginning but they’re going to be amazing once this series reaches its peak. I really really hope that people like this series in Japan.  


I called it completely. So long, Hasegawa. Hopefully you find success in Jump+ or something. All I know is that I never have to give you a chance again. I haven’t been burned this hard by a manga since TPGW.


The wheels of fate are turning. We’re getting closer to the mystery of how everyone turned to stone initially was pulled off. Solid as always and I’m enjoying things right now, but I’m just waiting for things to turn up a notch, that breaking point.  


New year, same routine. January is here now, which means it’s time for Japan to release new volumes for Weekly Shonen Jump series! This time around the manga that were released on 1/4: My Hero Academia volume 29, Black Clover volume 27, We Never Learn volume 20, Jujutsu Kaisen volume 14, Chainsaw Man volume 10, Mission: Yozakura Family volume 6, Mashle: Magic and Muscles volume 4, and Magu-chan: God of Destruction volume 2. Our Blood Oath also debuts its first volume. AGRAVITY BOYS and Moriking also release their newest volumes, but I didn’t record their sales since they’re over now.

Sales Data:

Key:

FINALLY! IT’S FINALLY HAPPENED! Yozakura Family has finally ranked on Oricon! I’ve been waiting so long for this day and its finally come! There’s a lot of work that needs to be done still (getting a second volume to rank on Oricon for starters since only one newbie has been able to accomplish that since Chainsaw Man), but for the moment, I’m just so happy that this day has finally come.

Speaking of days I’ve been waiting for…Jujutsu Kaisen is here!!! Holy god, it surpassed My Hero Academia’s monthly numbers in a flash. AND THAT’S WITH STOCK ISSUES! Both Shueisha and I were not prepared for this domination. I don’t even want to imagine what the boost is going to be when the anime gets to stuff like Itadori vs Todo.

Chainsaw Man also saw a pretty big boost this volume too. Manga “ending”, anime announcement, and general word of mouth hype doing its magic. I wonder how March is going to go for volume 11.

Just because Kaisen stole the show doesn’t mean My Hero had a down week. This is actually the series best first week ever! Obviously we need to see how the rest of the month goes to paint a clearer picture, but right now, that’s looking really good. Black Clover also improved on its previous volumes first 10 days, but again, we need to see how it goes for the month. We Never Learn doing as good as always.

I’ve been delaying it but aside from Yozakura finally charting and Kaisen’s absolute explosion, there is one other noticeable thing that needs to be addressed. Mashle has made it to We Never Learn’s level finally. I was expecting this last volume, but it made it now. Out of the current lineup, this is the obvious series to watch in terms of potentially exploding. The other new series growth don’t even come close to Mashle’s. Good job by a rookie, but I’ll also say that getting a PV with Tanjiro’s seiyuu voicing it definitely helps push sales.

But with all the good here, there is unfortunately some bad here too. Magu-chan got a lot of promotion compared to other newbies. Really good TOC placements, color pages, vomics. This was all obviously done to improve volume 2 sales and what were the results? 1100 more copies sold with an additional two days. In other words, it didn’t grow. That is absolutely heartbreaking. I don’t think they’re bad enough where it’s now the prime axe candidate or anything, but at best it’s going to have an AGRAVITY BOYS level run (btw, volume 5 of that did slightly worse than Magu-chan) and all the love it’s gotten lately is probably not going to last. Man, that sucks.

Our Blood Oath, more like Our Axed Series, amirite. Obviously, these numbers aren’t anywhere near good enough to save it, but I’ll be honest. I’m actually impressed that it managed to rank. I genuinely expected it to not even chart on Shoseki, let alone sell around 5k copies. So good job OBO, you’re probably the most successful bottom tier flop of 2020. Hope you enjoy the small amount of time you have left in Jump.

Ghost Girl LOL. Oh wait, that’s not this month. Moriking LOL. Couldn’t even chart despite having 7 days. What an embarrassment.  

He was elusive for five years, but he has finally returned! Yusei Matsui’s new series debuts in #8 of Weekly Shonen Jump, being covered in today’s Making the Jump! Let’s get to 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 #8 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 1/24/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue(s) Preview:

Decided to change the color page layout a little bit. Nothing really major, just taking out some of the fluff.

SAKAMOTO Days with a good 6th rank for its first placement! Nice! I hope it can keep up this level and get a color page relatively quick. As we see time and time again, you can sink really quick despite a hot start. Build King is already in the bottom 5. Great job, Nak. Really glad you said it had extreme popularity after two chapters. I really hope it sinks to the bottom 3 where it belongs.

Aside from that…nothing else really to say. Magu-chan is still high for now, but that could change any week now. Phantom Seer is pretty low, so the sales clearly aren’t enough to keep it super safe. I’ve heard that people in JP think the series is carried by its art (which I agree with completely), so it would make sense why the volumes do “decent”, but it would do awful in the magazine survey for example. If that’s the case, then yeah, I would understand why they don’t care to push Seer. If no one actually likes the series, and just the art, is there really any point pretending like its popular? Before you argue Ayakashi falls into this, I would say a) it’s an ecchi series, the art IS the main selling point. Phantom Seer’s still trying to be a good story and action series, it just fails at doing that and b) Ayakashi is actually an interesting story despite the ecchi elements. Also, Ayakashi volume 2 did less than volume 1 so if volume 3 doesn’t show growth, there’s a realistic chance that Ayakashi also starts falling in the TOC.

Our Blood Oath ended this week. What a world. Hopefully High School Family follows suite soon.      

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 series was so uneventful that I didn’t even realize I forgot to read this chapter until I already started typing up my impressions for the other series. I remember when I thought this was going to be an enjoyable short ride at the very least…Oh well, best of luck with your next series Kazu Kakazu. I still think you have a lot of potential.


Shirogane is just a petty fool and I’m here for it. I don’t know when we’re going to enter another arc, but I’m fine with being in hijinks for a little while longer. The supporting cast is being developed right now and we are getting hints at what’s to come for Matsuri and Suzu. The main thing that I’m questioning is…Yabuki is the king of ecchi and yet, he isn’t really doing that this time around despite this being an ecchi. I can respect that he wants to tell a story and I’ll say that this is probably the best thing he’s ever written quality wise…but his selling point at this point is his ecchi. That’s what his fanbase like from him so I’m not surprised that volume 2 sales were lower than volume 1’s. It’s just really weird.      


SAKAMOTO Days is definitely one of the more creative action series out there right now. It’s proven itself that it can do action scenes really well and be creative while doing it. I’ve never seen mind reading be used like that and I hope there’s more uses like that in the future. This started out good in the ToC so hopefully it can keep this up.    



My man Gondaira-sensei really wants to flex his skills with a cover and lead color page, you can just tell Hopefully he’ll get it soon.

The raid has finally begun! This should be the breakthrough arc of the series. The entire family is getting involved in fights now, Tanpopo is being confronted and the rainbow squad are getting to show what they got, everything is coming together. Some questions are going to be answered with this upcoming fight, mainly, just how strong is Futaba exactly? Is she actually stronger than Kyoichiro? Is there something about her that makes her not the number one spy like he’s been assumed to be this entire time? She’s strong, but can she handle top tier characters since in all honestly, she’s only fought fodder so far this series.

Another thing that comes to mind is how are the rest of the allies going to get involved with the story? Last chapter they specifically said they’re at their homes preparing in their own way, so they are going to show up somehow, but how since they weren’t with the Yozakura family. Will they have active roles in fights, or are they going to be doing behind the scenes stuff? What exactly is going to happen next?

I do want to say though. I still don’t believe this is the final arc of the series. Ignoring the fact that there’s been at least 3 different arcs that people called “final arc” and didn’t turn out to be, there is too much there that can be done that Tanpopo don’t HAVE to be the end goal (though we still have no clue about the leader leader). We need to know what’s in the book at Yozakura manor, there’s this whole aunt/uncle of previous generations thing we can do, you can just make up a new upcoming rival group to the Yozakura that are rising in the underworld (explaining why they weren’t heard of till now), international spies, so much that Tanpopo getting raided doesn’t automatically mean this is the end.


Welcome back old friend. How I’ve longed for you to return. You definitely know how to get people talking about your manga right away.

So, first things first, there’s some…let’s call it English translation liberties, here. The biggest things are 1) the “hide-from-the-demon” game thing…yeah, that’s not the original version. They just say hide and seek. It’s not as obvious in other languages. And 2) the panel with the girl dying. That thing they put there, English only. The other languages just say she was killed during a pillage/looting. Look, I realize translating is a really hard job and the guy is more skilled at it then I ever will be, but he literally changed the complete ideas of two MAJOR events in the first chapter with his translation. I’ll be real, my excitement for the series went down a bit when I learned who translated this first chapter. They kind of made Kimetsu’s translation bad and they’re nowhere near as good as Kaisen’s original translator (though I completely understand and agree that the original one should have been replaced). It’s these kinds of changes that give manga a bad image in English circles.

Anyway, rant over, let’s get into the actual first chapter. I thought it was a really good and impactful first chapter. It might have been “fast” and the transition from lighthearted stuff to tragedy might be “jarring”, but that’s the point. This chapter was supposed to illustrate that life can change at the drop of a dime, especially in respect to historical stories. Tokiyuki was just supposed to be a successor to the shogunate, Takauji was just a loyal solider hero. There was peace in Kamakura. Then everything flipped and turned to disaster for Tokiyuki. He says it in the chapter itself. Everything changed in ONLY 24 days.  

I’m not going to pretend like I know this is completely accurate to history or like I know how Japanese people feel about the events this story will probably depict, I do know that based on what I DO know about history, most of it isn’t outlandish aside from the obvious supernatural stuff like Tokiyuki having the ability to “escape death”. A 3-year-old being sent to rule a province IS something that happened back then (and from what I’ve heard, that DID happen in the real-world version of this period). Sacking of villages WERE this brutal back in the day. Murder of children because of their relation to leaders DID occur.

Also, based on both the chapter calling him the person that’s “in the textbooks, but forget about after the test” and my limited research (imagine avoiding history because it would spoil a manga’s ending :/ Is this what Kingdom fans have to deal with?) on him, Tokiyuki, while a real figure in history, seems like the kind of person that Matsui can fill a lot of blanks in with his own ideas. I don’t know if he’s going with a timeskip to him being 10 right away, or the story is going to mainly happen while he’s 8, but there are tons of gaps that can be worked with.

If there’s anything I’m “worried” about its that I’m going to have a hard time tracking names. These are actual people obviously, but as someone that doesn’t know about the events being described here, I can’t rely on that to remember the names...which means these long names are going to be the end of me. I hope Tokiyuki and Takauji are the most complicated it gets, but I doubt it is.

Aside from that, this is Matsui showing off his strengths. He’s pretty funny, amazing art (which is funny because Matsui says he’s not a good artist), really good use of narration to advance the story. I’m definitely looking forward to more and I’m expecting this to catch on right away.  

For some fun, we’re going to have a question every week that revolves around Jump. Be warned though, unlike the rest of Making the Jump, this trivia question can be about any series that ran in Jump! So without further ado –

Q: What was the last romance focused story released? For the purpose of this question, I’ll exclude Mission: Yozakura Family since while that can be argued as a romcom and the premise is that Taiyo marries into a family of spies, romance wasn’t originally the focus.
 

Last Week's Answer:

Next time, we go from lost in the history of Japan to lost because of a lack of face. Let’s see how the second series of this new batch goes. Till then, remember: support the official release!

Another day, another new series debuts in #9 of Weekly Shonen Jump. i see MtJ number 28 is on the table now.


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 #9 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 1/31/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue(s) Preview:

Well, that’s a lot to swallow! I guess we can start with the bad. Magu-chan went from top 5 to bottom 5 in the span of a week. Yeah, that hurts even though I’ve been prepared for this to happen the moment sales didn’t improve This probably means we’re going to see the demise of our favorite God of Destruction (Beerus who?) soon enough. If not, it’s almost definitely the end of the color pages/promotion it received recently. I won’t lie, I’m sad that series I hate are probably going to do better/get treatment they don’t deserve, but I also can’t deny that Magu-chan can’t live if it doesn’t grow in sales, especially since my theory was that the only reason why it rose in the TOC in the first place was to try to get better volume 2 sales.

So let’s talk about the now biggest enigma of the lineup. Where exactly does Phantom Seer stand? If we’re going solely by the TOC placements, it should have been out the door already. A series surviving isn’t just about the TOC though. There are other factors that go into it. The most obvious factor would be sales and demand and well…the way that front is going would give you the exact opposite answer. It’s sold better than most of the newbies did volume 1, and it’s the series that got its second full reprint for volume 1 the fastest since Yozakura (it got it even quicker than Mashle did!). The problem is, wouldn’t that naturally mean that Jump would promote the series so that volume 2 can bare minimum replicate that success? They gave Yozakura 2 color pages after that after all. Well, this is where my theory crafting comes in.

WARNING: Phantom Seer’s standing opinion ahead. Feel free to skip it if you don’t care.

I’ve been thinking that Seer isn’t actually popular, and people just like it for the art. It is POSSIBLE that in the weekly surveys for the magazine, it actually does really bad. So there would be no point in promoting it in the magazine with things like high ToC placements or color pages because the people reading the magazine don’t like it. That’s where the disconnect might be coming from though. If you live in Japan and buy the magazine, you probably will buy the volumes of most of the series in Jump (helps that they’re pretty cheap over there :/). However, manga is much much bigger there. There is a decent chance that people that buy the volumes won’t buy the magazine, hence it doesn’t do well in the magazine. Obviously, that doesn’t mean a whole lot in the grand scheme of things and your priorities determine which factor between volume sales and magazine reception is more important (and yes, both are still important), but that would explain how everything but the magazine points to Seer being decently sized. This comes with a lot of risks though.

The biggest obviously is that the volume buyers might abandon it, especially if people actually do only care about the art. The art can draw you in for one volume sure, but if they don’t like the story, most people probably won’t continue on. There’s always going to be people that drop something just because they lost interest, but Seer’s retaining of readers might be worse than the average volume 1 to 2 shift if a significant amount of people picked it up for the art and didn’t like it at all. Another risk though is that you now have to wonder how you increase manga sales. The people in the magazine don’t care so advertising and promoting it there won’t work. Word of mouth isn’t favorable if people don’t actually like the series; if anything, it’ll convince less people to check it out. It didn’t explode in popularity with volume 1 so bookstores or prominent sites aren’t going to talk about it like they did Kaiju no. 8 for example. How exactly is this supposed to grow significantly?

So, where does that leave it? In my opinion, I think the most likely scenario is that it’s not in immediate danger, but it’s not going to get out of the bottom 3 unless volume 2 shows SIGNIFICANT growth. Just like how Jump can’t have a series that’s positively received in the magazine but sells poorly, they can’t keep a series that sells decent, but does bad in the surveys forever. At some point, they’re going to have to cut bait and let it go if it doesn’t show promise like Yozakura did/does or win an award like Undead did.

SEER STUFF ENDS HERE

Build King…is in last place. We’ll get to SAKAMOTO Days soon, but the fact that this batch are doing so opposite on the TOC so far is both hilarious and depressing since if only one gets to survive, I know for a fact that Nakano is going to fight tooth and nail in every attempt to make it Build King. Quality wise, I can’t say I’m surprised. I’ve longed said that nowadays, world building focused manga won’t last long in Jump while character driven stories will thrive, and this is the most recent example. The only good thing Build King has going for it is the world building (which is still only “good…ish” instead of “great” like Toriko fans insisted it would be when it was revealed). The characters are bad, the humor is terrible, the action is bland as hell, the pacing is all over the place, the art looks too dated to be charming. It absolutely deserves to be bottom of the TOC, I just didn’t think it would actually get there so quickly. Maybe, just maybe, if the sales are only normal bad instead of abysmal bad, it’ll still get a swift axe.  

I think that’s enough about the negatives so let’s look at the good news! Yozakura finished top 5, above Mashle, and is getting another color page so soon! I’m so happy that it’s keeping up this push and I hope that the fact that they’re giving it color pages so frequently (one every 3-5 issues) means they’re open to giving it a cover sometime after this current batch of series ends. This is how you get people to buy into Yozakura, just show that you care about the series, even if it’s not going to be a flagship (and for the love of god, tell your people at Viz to at least PRETEND to care about this series. How is it fair or a good idea that this series digital release was completely ignored while you advertised AGRAVITY BOYS’s AFTER IT WAS ALREADY CANCELLED?!?!?!? Why is THIS the one series that you don’t use the color page for in your tweets of new chapters when it has one?! Why is THIS the one series that you suddenly care about TOC order for when posting author comments when normally you just do cover/lead color page, the color page series, and then TOC order?! Why is THIS the one series that doesn’t get an upload bump despite getting color pages?! It should NOT always be at the bottom of the most recently uploaded chapters every week).

Sorry, I said we’re sticking with good vibes, so let’s move on to probably the biggest thing of note here. SAKAMOTO Days made it to 3rd place this week! Great job! I think this is the first series since Me and Roboco that managed to improve from its initial ranking right away. It obviously needs to keep this up and have good sales, plus a color page or two early on would probably help, but this is looking like a strong start for the series. This makes me really happy since I’ve really enjoyed the manga since chapter 1 and want this to be big.  


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.


We’re moving on to the next arc. Honestly, the writer is different, but if you told me the guy that wrote Tokyo Shinobi Squad was doing this series, I would believe you. They really are structured the almost exact same. There’s literally no down time, we’re moving right away to the next arc. He just introduces allies to the main duo as they come along, doesn’t really slow down or give them a focus in the chapter. I still don’t know if it’s safe or not yet based on this pacing despite the fact that the introduction of a villain group should make me think it’s safe.

Yeah, I’m not really feeling the direction this is going. I wanted raccoon girl to be some kind of ally after all that and after they specifically said she still had some phantom left in her. The fact that she isn’t kind of makes this last arc seem kind of pointless. The villain is dead, erased from memories so he never existed, the heroes don’t really know the villains killed the doctor so whelp, and they just moved on. I think this will probably be better if it makes it to chapter 40 or 50.  



Well, the exam is kind of unique at least. I’m worried though that this is just going to be more of the bland battle manga stuff that Mashle has become lately, and Mash oneshotting the things that people were saying can’t lose to magic definitely isn’t making me feel better. I really really want to like Mashle more than I do, but everything I loved about the series is basically gone. If it sells it sells, but man I’m so disappointed in what this series became.      


A new arc begins, finally! I hope that Akutami figured out that you can give chapters in the same arc different names. I don’t want to imagine a world where a final arc has like part 87 in the title. I also don’t want to see this the title for the next 40 chapters :/

Annnyywaayy, this feels like this took a 180 don’t it? So, I’m a little confused. This is a bit of spoilers, but I’ve read Jujutsu Kaisen 0, the prequel for the series, and it ended with Okkotsu’s curse Rika being purified and moving on. I don’t believe she was exorcised, but I’m almost completely sure that she lost her powers when Okkotsu took her curse energy to fight Geto and almost killed himself. So, while it’s really cool that Okkotsu is here and about to take an active role in the main series now, I don’t understand how Rika is still here and so powerful. I also don’t really get why the Jujutsu sorcerer organization still don’t like Okkotsu or still consider him a special grade sorcerer since he doesn’t have the thing that made him so dangerous anymore? I’m sure some of these things will be answered, but I don’t know.

For Okkotsu himself…this is really weird. Again, I read the prequel series where he’s the main character. He did care about his friends a lot and would put himself in danger to protect them, so I understand why he hates Itadori for hurting Inumaki…but I feel like this is too sharp a contrast between him and the prequel version. I don’t think the prequel Okkotsu would hate Itadori so much that he would be his personal executioner. I get that he didn’t have the chance to know him like his classmates did, and to him he’s just Sukina’s vessel that hurt his friend, but I also think Okkotsu would be the kind of person that wanted to learn more about this situation. He strikes me as the kind of guy that would trust in someone if his friends believed in them, and his friends do trust Itadori. Maybe that’s where this is going, but right now, he just seems off to what was established previously. I wonder how things are going to go from here.
It’s weird with the prequel. It went from you probably should read Jujutsu Kaisen volume 0 to better understand some things about the Tokyo second years, Geto, and his crew, to now it was an active mistake to do so.

Also, to show just how long the Shibuya Incident was to me, I completely forgot that Inumaki lost his arm at some point LOL.


I’m still here for the series. Still looks as great as ever, still got laughs out of me, and the history that matters is given in a digestible format still. That being said, unlike the first chapter, I think there were some actual small problems here. So, last chapter we got two female warriors that are going to aid Tokiyuki and his escape. We didn’t get their names then, but I thought that was fine because they were in one panel and assumed they were going to be introduced later. They were in this chapter too and actually got a bit of focus, and Matsui gave names to characters for less last chapter. They still didn’t get a name card or an explanation to who they were though. That’s kind of weird and sort of makes me worried that Tokiyuki is going to be the only real important protagonist. I don’t know if they die or not in the real life version of this story (I don’t even know if they’re real), but the fact that so far, things have been angled so that Tokiyuki is the one that matters the most, I could see that being an issue down the line.

My other problem in this week’s chapter is that I don’t know how we’re going to get real fights from the series but it seems like it’s going to try being an action series. It SHOULD be easy to do battles in a samurai historical piece, but the main character’s gimmick is that he can ESCAPE from anything. He’s going to be doing a lot of running. Not sure how that’s really going to work, especially if his allies aren’t important enough to get focus, but I trust Matsui. If anyone can figure out how to make this work, it’s him.  


Well, that was definitely an…interesting way to kick off a series. The main female protagonist gets an uncontrollable crush on criminals and breaks laws to prove they’re guilty. I think it’s interesting, but I don’t like how much disbelief I’m supposed to suspend for this to work. I know the Japanese law system is kind of a joke (that’s why Ace Attorney is the way it is), but there is no way that anything that Aioi did to capture the culprit would hold up in a legal court. It would ALL be thrown out as evidence that couldn’t be used because it wasn’t obtained legally.

Another thing I wasn’t big on was that for being the “main characters”, the twin brother detectives really didn’t do…like anything for this case. Not only that, but the story is about two “crazy” detectives…which means that the rational twin brother is probably dead because that’s how any detective series goes (see Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright and Fey, Mia). The characters the story is going to focus on I don’t think can “carry” a serious story like this is trying to be. They need the serious/not crazy person to play off of to make this work.

I also don’t really like how this doesn’t really go with the basic idea of mystery stories. The underlying principle every mystery story follows is that the reader should be able to solve the mystery before the characters do if they want to. I’ll be frank, the only reason why you would be able to figure out who the culprit was before they say it is because 9/10 times in mystery stories, the “defendant” person of the first case is usually the culprit. If that wasn’t a rule, there’s no way the evidence would lineup in a way that said that the perpetrator was the one that did it.

Now, all that said…normally I would probably still be pretty high on it. The art looks much improved from Invade You or even his last series in digital Jump. It’s different from the rest of the regular Jump lineup. I didn’t flat out hate it like I did half of the newbies from last year. The reason why I’m being so hard on it is because of Ron Kamanohashi from Jump+. You know how Spy x Family happened in 2019 and then six months later Yozakura came out in regular Jump and people said it was a ripoff even though they would have been planned at the same time months before the release and thus there was no way one would know about the other? That’s sort of how I feel like here. These two were pitched independently of one another and are now going to be compared to each now until one dies. Unlike SxF and Yozakura though, these two share more than a surface level similarity. They both are about a crazy detective that are doing things that would ruin a normal detective (Ron tries to get culprits to kill themselves, Aioi falls in love with them), they have a go doer partner that isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, these cases are insane right from the start. However, there’s some key differences.

1) Ron’s cases still feel solvable. They’re complicated, yeah, and I’m never going to try solving them before the story does, but the pieces are there for the reader to figure it out early. i tell c doesn’t do that.

2) Ron is still a fun character 95% of the time. He’s eccentric and a loose cannon, but his personality doesn’t really seem detrimental to solving cases most of the time. With Aioi, it feels like falling for criminals would be counterproductive and is a disaster waiting to happen (what happens when a criminal is okay with her obsessive love and uses it to their advantage?)

3) Ron is a “failed” detective. He’s talented, but the agency actually do acknowledge that he’s too out there to be considered a “good” detective. He goes too far and would never be able to actually convict someone with his actions, which is why he partnered up with Toto so that he can actually get work done. Aioi is somehow a secret weapon/ace detective.

I’m not quite at axebait territory yet, and I do like the story, but I definitely think that this was meant to be the “throwaway” series of the batch. They probably have higher expectations for the other three (well, Matsui’s series and the baseball one maybe). I wouldn’t be shocked if this got less than 19 chapters.
 
For some fun, we’re going to have a question every week that revolves around Jump. Be warned though, unlike the rest of Making the Jump, this trivia question can be about any series that ran in Jump! So without further ado –

Q: This is a simple one. What’s the most recent series in Jump to make it to 20 volumes, as of March 2021?

Last Week's Answer:

Next time, we explore the magical world of high school. Aw to stay away from that hell once more. Till then, remember: support the official release!

Lost in space, lost in the blissful memories of high school, and now lost in magic. Kenta Shinohara returns in #10 of Weekly Shonen Jump and I return with the 29th edition of Making 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 #10 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 2/7/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

Next Issue Preview:

Well well well, some interesting things of note here. Dolphin’s at the bottom despite the new volume of it coming out the Friday before this issue is released. Can’t say Jump is really showing any signs of faith in it. I don’t think it’d be outrageous for me to say that this is probably the final arc for the series. In a similar vein, I would not be shocked if Magu-chan starts prepping for its own finale.

Oh Build King, how you have fallen greatly already. While we need to wait till volume sales probably, which we won’t have till April, it’s not looking good at all for not Toriko. It might even be over already depending on why this initial reception is so not good because as much as I want to just say “it’s horrible, the end”, that doesn’t really mean much since terrible series get good reception sometimes (just look at what got a color page last issue). If it’s because the artstyle seems outdated to readers, then yeah, it’s over. This is literally Shimabukuro’s style and there’s no fixing that. If it’s because the characters suck, then this exam arc is make it or break it for the series and so far…it’s definitely a break. It collapsed at the worst possible time too. The last thing a new series that’s struggling wants is for there to be a new batch going on because readers can feel free to drop it and just read the new series that week if they want something different from their usual series instead. So when there’s 4 new series and all four of them have a realistic chance of garnering attention for one reason or another, yeah, Build King better hope the sales are amazing off the bat or else it’s gone (I wonder what the wraparound for the first volume is going to be now )

On the opposite side of the spectrum, SAKAMOTO Days not only collected another top 5 placement, but it’s getting a second color page so soon as well! Like Build King, we have to see how the volume does in April, but there’s actually a decent amount of evidence to suggest that it’ll do pretty good. What a great showing so far. In slightly worse news, Phantom Seer is showing signs of life! It got bottom 3 again, but they’re giving the series extra pages next chapter. Not sure the reason, but hey, it’s something. This is do or die time for it, better make the most of it.

This is also sort of off topic, but it didn’t really fit anywhere else. Saikyo Jump is a bimonthly magazine by Shueisha that’s generally aimed at younger kids. For the March edition, there’s another campaign for newer series in the main Jump lineup called Jump New Heroes (well, it’s not really “new” since they used it for a stage on Jump Festa back in December, but it’s the first time since they’ve done something with it) where you can play games to get goodies from the series. The series featured this time were Mashle, Mission: Yozakura Family, and Me and Roboco. So, a few things I want to say.

First, Saikyo Jump came out I believe the same day as the February releases for Jump. We obviously need to see the long run, but so far, Me and Roboco doesn’t look like it grew; it might have regressed if anything. It being part of this promotion was probably decided before volume 2 came out in an effort to get bigger sales. Compare that to Mashle and Yozakura, where I think they did have the recent volume’s results and made the decision to include them anyway. It was obvious that Mashle would be here, it’s the biggest new series since Chainsaw Man and is as close to a mainstay as you can get without being considered one. Yozakura being here after they know how well it did, to me, points that they’re satisfied with the results and are now willing to actively push it. It’s not going to get Mashle levels of promotion, but I do think we’re at the point where things like covers, more frequent color pages, and actually be included in images with Jump’s established lineup aren’t out of the question.

Second, Undead Unluck and Ayakashi Triangle were also part of the “New Heroes Stage” at Jump Festa, but not part of this. That seems really weird, especially since if you’ve been keeping track, they both have been stuck in the lower middle area of the TOC and neither have gotten a color page since #1 of WSJ, and neither have gotten anything on the levels of Mashle promotion lately. On top of that, Undead didn’t really grow a lot last volume and Ayakashi declined. This makes it seem like they’re backing down on them being really important. However, I think there’s one simple answer for why they’re missing here. Saikyo Jump is targeted at a younger audience. []Undead[/i] and Ayakashi are a lot of things, child appropriate is NOT one of them. They probably didn’t include them because their reading demographic skews higher, there’d be no point really. So while I think it’s still possible that they are backing away from Ayakashi and Undead being part of a promotion group, this particular omission probably doesn’t mean much.

Finally, I think this doesn’t speak well for the other new series, save SAKAMOTO Days. Magu-chan is perfect for Saikyo Jump and wasn’t included in this promotion (another reason why I think they did consider January’s sales when they included Yozakura). Dolphin, I think would be more adult oriented but it needs as much as it can get so it not being included is telling. High School Family, despite the name, is definitely aimed at little kids (with maybe 50 year olds that miss their youth probably being the other big demographic he’s aiming for) and it being missing does not bode well. They’re still scared to promote Seer so I get why that’s missing. Build King is another series where it’s clear they’re going for younger readers and also a series they pretended was bigger than it was at first, so it not being included right away is a bad sign. I think SAKAMOTO Days was too new for this (and also goes for an older demo I’d argue) to be really considered, so I’d say it’s more of a nothing for than a bad sign.


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.


There’s basically everything put in place for a final arc now. Umi’s set up to do something, the old characters are all involved in the plot now. It seems like we’re going to receive a resolution for the diving instructor person’s turn to the dark side. Shark’s got a stipulation of “one shot left of your ultimate move”. With the sales not looking good and the TOC rankings plummeting, it’s not looking good for good ole Shark. I will give it some credit though. This has definitely been the best arc of the series so far, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to really matter.


Yeah…I’ll be upfront. I forgot to finish this spotlight with the others and I forget what happens this chapter. I think it’s the one where people are invading the Clover Kingdom and Asta pops back up with his demon powers. Black Clover is Black Clover. If you liked it already, you’ll like this one, if not, not changing your mind here.


Man, Gondaira-sensei is really fiending for a cover at this point, please give it to him already, Jump .

I normally hate doing this in other series, but powerscaling in Yozakura is actually an interesting pastime because there’s no actual rules you have to go by, so there’s no annoying character or feat that makes your theories flat out impossible like in so many other shonen. The only “power systems” we’ve gotten so far is the spy license (which doesn’t actually say anything because there’s no way that Taiyo and Sosuke are equal for example) and now how compatible a person is with Hazakura (which, obviously won’t apply to everyone). So while the series introduced Kyoichiro as the greatest spy in the world at the moment (it might actually only be Japan, but I’ll just assume it’s the world until we get a big international spy arc), there’s a realistic chance that he actually ISN’T the strongest character in the series…well, never was because I think it was clear that Papa Yozakura was the strongest character in the series upon his introduction but…my point was that Futuba might actually be stronger than Kyoichiro and there’s nothing really saying that can’t be the case.

The main reason why I brought this up is because this chapter definitely showed that it’s plausible for her to be the strongest Yozakura. She’s fighting the general with the highest Hazakura compatibility and is only struggling slightly. She isn’t really being bothered by fire, which I feel should be a fist fighter’s biggest weakness in a fight since you know, it’ll burn your fist if you touch it. The biggest reveal though of course, is that Futuba can use Blooming and it’s manifested in both her eyes. I wonder what her ability could be since making her body harder would be the natural thing for a martial artist, but that’s Taiyo’s.

Also, coco…my guy is a PSYCHOPATH. Akai’s backstory is depressing (something tells me they all will be), but this man is an actual monster. Akai got revenge against her family’s murderer and she was CRYING because she knew it didn’t actually solve anything, and his first thought was having barbeque after seeing the guy burn to death. Not to mention, when he first arrives to the scene of Akai’s burning house, his first thought was that he was a horrible person. AS IF HE WAS NORMAL AND GOOD! He came because he wanted to inject Hazakura into a 17-year-old girl and make her an experiment, and then grafted the remaining parts of her family’s corpses onto her body, as if that was a noble task! HE’S ACTUALLY A MONSTER! But at the same time…he saved Akai. He saved all of Nijibana presumably. They all genuinely believe that he did a good thing for them and is a good person. This is so interesting because this is essentially a more twisted Yozakura Family.

This arc is so amazing and might solidify Yozakura in my top 10 manga of all time list. Wow I hope this will get animated someday (and also an English physical release of the manga, I WANT TO OWN THIS SERIES ON MY SHELF, VIZ!!).  


Alright, two chapters in…and I’m already annoyed. The yandere detective is going to get really old, really fast. The male duo detectives are just a step behind her and not really bothering doing anything to push forward with solving the case. All they’re doing is summing up what Aioi already did so that the reader can know what’s going on, basically meaning the reader has no chance to actually solve the mystery. These cases are just bad. Most of this wouldn’t really be sticking out usually, but this series came out the same time as Ron Kamanohashi that does the same concept way better. This series is still an interesting premise, but that’s like all it has going for it, and at some point if it can’t deliver on the premise, it’s just going to fall apart. I don’t hate the series by any means, but I just can’t see how this lasts long term.


Well, I was kinda right. There was a romcom in the batch, it just wasn’t the one that I expected! This is an interesting turn for Shinohara, considering SKET Dance is kinda infamous for uh…let’s just say not doing this, and I don’t know about Astra Lost in Space, but it strikes me as a series without romantic elements as well. So far, I think he’s done a good job with it. Chemistry is really important for a romcom and so far I think the main duo have a lot of it, and it’s Shinohara’s main strength as a writer so I think things will be fine on that front.

I thought this chapter was really fun overall, probably my favorite from this batch, mainly because I’m a romcom guy at heart. When I first saw the title, I didn’t really think about the name much, expecting time to be a plot element. I thought it was a pleasant surprise to see “watch” in this situation was “watch” as in protect, in fact, you could say Morihito is…a guardian of the witch! I apologize. Anyway, the fact that dear ole Moi and Niko are childhood friends actually adds an interesting wrinkle to their relationship of witch and familiar and I’m curious how the romance develops here. I think Niko and Moi are fine enough for a first chapter, but I’m expecting their layers to be peeled over time.

I really liked the chapter, but I do wonder if this chapter was impactful enough for readers. I have my issues with i tell c but it definitely leaves an impression on you after reading it, as does Elusive Samurai. This on the other hand, is a slow burner, as most romcoms are. I’m not going to be too panicked about TOC placements at the start (other than maybe the first one), successful romcoms in WSJ tend to get a good first rank and then hover around the middle/bottom before the big push (We Never Learn, Nisekoi, even Yozakura was like that) and on top of that SKET Dance was a bottom dweller at first too, but I do hope that this gets the chance it needs.    
 

Do you feel the love, cause I sure don’t! February is here, which means new volume releases. Coming out this time are One Piece volume 98, Me and Roboco, Phantom Seer, Hardboiled Cop and Dolphin volume 2, and High School Family making its debut! In addition, Jump+ is providing Ron Kamanohashi: Deranged Detective volume 1 this time around. Let’s get into it!

Key:

Okay, so actually, something unexpected for once. Usually, Oricon Top 50 is the only thing that gets leaked. They technically do 100, but they stopped making that public a while ago. For some reason, this week’s numbers got leaked so…yeah. Seer’s actual number is 13,858, Ron’s actual number is 13,753 and Roboco’s is 10,804. Dolphin and HSF still didn’t make Oricon.

Alright, technically One Piece had 5 days of Shoseki instead of 4 like everyone else, and it got 1st that day. I just didn’t feel like counting it was fair so we’re starting with its official release. Yep, just about what I expected.

Phantom Seer I’m sort of wrong. I mean yeah it doubled in sales (well, actually slightly less than that since Oricon numbers for it are out there) and I was wrong in the sense that it was able to find an audience that don’t read the magazine, but I think most of what I’ve been saying applies still. It’s not popular in the magazine probably and still seems to be carried by its art, which will grow old eventually. It doubled which is good (no it didn’t, but it practically is double) and if this was like two months ago that probably would have been enough, but now we’re heading into a lineup with Matsui and Shinohara back and looking good quality wise, SAKAMOTO DAYS looking like a hit, i tell c potentially also going for outside the magazine readers and being more unique, and a baseball manga with the lowest of bars it needs to clear to become a mainstay, plus maybe Build King will sell well. I think Seer guaranteed an anniversary, but that’s about it.

Me and Roboco got so much promotion. More vomics than the other new series, including being the one that started this whole initiative. It was part of “New Jump Heroes” alongside the four series that would be considered the biggest successes since CSM despite not being anywhere close to their sales (five now). They did some kind of promotion where you could read the entire first volume for free online on Zebrack. It’s one of the few series that got its circulation numbers revealed (it was for memes, but they still revealed them). It’s been attached to the top 5-7 of the TOC for basically it’s entire run (with one random week at 9th in an issue where were most of the bottom dwellers had color pages) and got color pages to promote both its volumes (more than Dolphin, HSF, or Seer can say). The second volume cover is a parody/homage to One Piece volume 61 (the first volume post timeskip and I think most sold volume in Japan) and released the same day as the new One Piece volume. They got the writer for The Promised Neverland to give his recommendation for the wraparound around the volume, the first time a new series got one since like…act-age back in 2018 (Matsui recommended it). Got a Japanese e-sports commentator to talk over the first chapter of the series for a video. They made a freaking parody video of Jujutsu Kaisen’s first ED because the series made a joke about it! And for what? Sales that look like the AGRAVITY BOYS growth curve, aka little if not none at all? Congrats Nakano, your lust for a gag hit was for naught. I may hate gag manga generally (Saiki Kusuo is still top tier tho), but even people that like gag realize that forcing a gag manga in basically every batch of new series for two years straight was not going to get you the result you wanted. All things considered, they probably should have just kept Mitama since it did good in the magazine and not bother with the rest. It sold not good at all, but none of the gag manga have sold passable numbers for a long-term gag series in Jump. At least Mitama was popular online and for its own merits, even if I personally didn’t like said merit.  

Kind of figured this would be the case, but Dolphin is doing worse than volume 1. That’s probably worse than stagnation like Magu-chan faced, so I would say this is probably the series in danger of being axed the most now. Kind of a shame because Tamura finally did something interesting, but it’s a case of too little too late. Oh well. Maybe he can try on Jump+ and find his next hit there. I know Beelzebub was for the most part a success, but I feel like Tamura’s time has passed for Jump, even if he probably does have as many chances as he wants since he has Beelzebub under his belt.

High School Family is a flop. I imagine that the series on the hot seat are Dolphin, it, and Magu-chan, with maybe Build King there as well if things get extremely bad for it. I think this is about what it deserves since it genuinely is awful and there’s no redeemable quality to it in my opinion. At least I don’t have to deal with the doubt the series brought me about whether it was actually popular or not. I wasn’t around in 2013 when Isobee was released, but something tells me that it didn’t do this bad on Shoseki for its debut.

And finally we have Ron Kamanohashi with a pretty respectable debut. I don’t know if that’s considered “big” for Jump+, but it seems to be doing as well as if not better than ‘Tis Time For Torture, Princess at the very least. It’s also on the level of 2.5D Seduction which is another one of Jump+’s bigger titles at the moment, so I think it’s going to be a bigger deal and around long term for now. Good job Amano, you recovered from the elDive disaster.

For some fun, we’re going to have a question every week that revolves around Jump. Be warned though, unlike the rest of Making the Jump, this trivia question can be about any series that ran in Jump! So without further ado –

Q: What was the fastest a series got a second color page last year?

Last Week's Answer:

This new batch of series concludes with what may be the ace of the group. Till then, remember: support the official release!

Bottom of the new batch, bases are loaded with the three previous newbies. Up to bat is the final new series, a baseball manga appearing for the first time in #11 of Weekly Shonen Jump in the 30th edition of Making 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 #11 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 2/14/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

I can only hope this is the start of the Me and Roboco demotion before the eventual cancellation, but something tells me that this is only for one week and a coincidence. Still though, one spot above bottom 5, lowest it’s been I think ever. Then again, Dolphin is also almost out of the bottom 5 and we all know that it’s going to be the next axe at this point. This probably means nothing.

Yeah, I still don’t know if they view Undead as a big part of the future of Jump or if it’s just benefitting from being associated with Mashle. It got the anniversary cover…but like a month late. It had a big jump from volume 2 to 3 in terms of sales, but that’s really the only one that did that. Everything else was on the same curve as volume 1 to 2, and that’s after tons of promotion. I guess the one thing that does sort of show they have faith in it is that for this year’s magazine spines, they’re putting a member of the current lineup on it saying something like “you can read this in x” with x being a different language every issue (the “you can read this” part is also in whatever language x is). Before, I didn’t think it was notable, but then this week’s spine had Zoro on it after last week’s had Mash on it. In other words, they did One Piece, My Hero, Black Clover, DR. STONE, Jujutsu Kaisen, Mission: Yozakura Family, Undead Unluck, Mashle, before going back to One Piece. They ignored Magu-chan, Dolphin, Phantom Seer, High School Family, Build King, and SAKAMOTO DAYS (this isn’t shocking, they don’t value those series that much or they’re too new), but they also ignored Ayakashi and Roboco, which I think IS notable. So, this shows two things: 1) They think Yozakura is important enough to include in this. They easily could have skipped Taiyo and just go straight to Andy, but they included him anyway so clearly they’re happy with how Yozakura is doing nowadays and willing to include it in promotions. 2) They know Undead is important even if for some reason magazine surveys don’t reflect it. If they truly didn’t think it mattered, they would have just skipped to Mash, do Matsuri after him, and then go back to One Piece, or something.

Phantom Seer is still bottom 3 despite being one of the best newbie series in terms of sales from 2020. We’ll see if it rises over time, but if it’s not popular in the magazine, I expect it to continue being in that bottom 3/5 limbo but may get extra stuff like color or extra pages once in a while like Yozakura did before the first anniversary (also, I think they would pick Yozakura for an anniversary cover over Seer since they have the same issue anniversary).  

Don’t tease me with Magu-chan like this . My heart can’t take this heartbreak that I know will happen if I believe. I mean technically the situation I laid out for its survival is happening (Roboco didn’t “stunt”, but it had to underperform massively given everything it’s gotten for advertisement), but then they did this batch of four series that all seem like they have a chance of being hits and I’d rather they push those four until at least they prove not popular.

*TOC TALK ENDS HERE, FEEL FREE TO SKIP TO SPOTLIGHT IF YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT COVER TALK*

This is the stretch of the year where the cover lineup is pretty predictable, so I’ll just lay out what I think we’re getting before I do my crazy theory crafting.
#12 – Undead Unluck – confirmed; first anniversary
#13 – Mashle – may as well be confirmed; “first anniversary” (it got a color page the issue of its anniversary, but realistically this is the anniversary celebration)
#14 – Jujutsu Kaisen – the issue anniversary; in the past it got pushed for DR. STONE but this is the way bigger series now so the only reason I can imagine this gets bumped, would be if they do STONE first because it’s older
#15 – DR. STONE – close to the anniversary, they generally celebrate this close to its actual anniversary
#16 – My Hero Academia – it’s been awhile plus the anime is coming back around then; it always gets the cover for the anime starting so I would say this is basically confirmed
#17 – Black Clover – It’s anniversary is also in February, but as you can see, it very easily can get bumped (like last year). I can see it being first though because this would be the closest issue to March 30th, the day the last episode of the anime will air. I can see them doing that as a final thank you before Black Clover drifts to irrelevancy; One Piece may also get a cover around this time too since the last time it got one was #5/6, so it’s possible Black Clover is #18.
#18 – One Piece – It’s been a long time since a cover and it’s still the biggest series in the magazine, so it will get a cover eventually; could also be #17 since Black Clover isn’t as important nowadays to prioritize a cover over One Piece.

Alright, so let’s get to the fun part. Last year, #10 was Guardian of the Witch, the last of that batch of 3. The next new series started at #20, Moriking. 2018, Ziga was #16 and then the next new series wasn’t until #24 (with one double issue in between). 2017, Robot x Laserbeam was #16, we didn’t see another new series until #28. So that means, it is highly likely we won’t get a new series until at least #20, even more likely not until at least #24, leaving #19, #20, #21, #22, and #23 (keep in mind we have one double issue around this period, so it’s only 4 free issues, not 5). The next anniversary after we finish Black Clover’s isn’t until #28 with Ayakashi. At least one of these covers will be a group one since it’s a double issue, which leaves us with 3 unknowns.

After everything with including Taiyo in the spines of the issues, the good amount of color pages since 2021 started in the magazine, the good rankings, the increase in sales, and the emptiness of the lineup: I think Yozakura is getting one the issue before the group cover. It deserves one at this point, Gondaira clearly wants one, this is a period where everything’s already got one recently or aren’t popular enough so we need “filler” (and I don’t think SAKAMOTO is going to be big enough for one, Roboco flopped, and I think they’d just wait for Ayakashi’s anniversary to give it one), by the time we get to #20, it’s already May or late April, Yozakura volume 8 is probably May so it would be great advertisement, I think it’d be a good preview for the second anniversary cover or an anime announcement cover, the current events is a climatic and important arc for the series, everything is here for the cover. I’ll say it’s #20, and that the double issue is #21/22.

In a similar vein, #19 is before the May releases, so I can see them giving Jujutsu Kaisen that one because it’s the second biggest series in the lineup at the moment and doesn’t really need a reason for a cover.

Which leaves us with #23…history says that a new batch starts around or after the double issue, so I think that’s when we get them. Nothing else is that pressing that it needs the cover, if you do 3 or 4, that gets us to #28 relatively clean so Ayakashi can get the cover with no problems. And then you can do another new batch at #30 like they’ve recently been doing so they aren’t forced to give Magu-chan (if it lasts that long) or Roboco (if it lasts that long as well) a cover they don’t necessarily deserve.

So to recap, this is what I think we’re getting #19-30:

#19 – Jujutsu Kaisen
#20 – Mission: Yozakura Family
#21/22 – Group cover (One Piece lead color page)
#23 – new series
#24 – new series
#25- new series
#26 – One Piece
#27 – something random like DR. STONE or maybe Mashle
#28 – Ayakashi
#29 – new series
#30 – new series
*COVER TALK ENDS HERE*

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.


So absorption it is. Futuba shot up my characters ranking so much after these last three chapters and Yozakura is shooting up my favorite manga list quickly too. I really like how Futuba is trying to relate to Akai and show her there’s more ways to cope than just anger. I also am really digging how she’s not saying Akai is wrong per say, but that there are other ways to handle loss.    

I also really like Futaba’s relationship with Taiyo. In the beginning, she kind of saw Taiyo as an idiot that loves too much, but over time she grew to respect him more and appreciated how he was willing to rise up from the bottom despite being dealt a crappy hand in life.

This arc has just been so amazing. I really hope that the growth continues and Yozakura gets more recognition. Gondaira might possibly be the most improved mangaka in Jump I’ve ever followed. I have no clue how he went from Poro to one of my favorite Jump manga at the moment.


I’m really just a softie at heart. This was another really good chapter, quintessential Shinohara. This felt right out of SKET Dance. I really like these two dorks, but I can understand why people wouldn’t be as high on them. I think they were hinting at it this chapter, but I think it would be for the best if we moved on to the school part of the story so we can get more characters in here. Shinohara has great casts in general so him getting to show that off sooner rather than later would be great for the series. I can imagine this sneaking by at first before eventually becoming a hit down the line.  


This name is not clean to pronounce, would have flowed better if they kept it Kowloons’ (by the way, it was confirmed as Kowloon a while ago, I just forgot to change it in the past issue previews). I’m assuming they went with this name because Nine Dragon’s Ball Parade and they’re trying to get some fans not in the know. Stupid reason I know, but Viz are stupid, it’s definitely something they would come up with and think it’s a good idea.

As for the chapter itself…it was okay. It’s been a while since I was completely indifferent to a first chapter of a series, which I don’t know is a good sign or not. It does literally nothing new for the sports genre, but everything in sports has been done…okay, everything good has been done in sports already. There are still original ideas but they’d all most likely be terrible if actually done. Jump seems to have something for these unlikely duo sports stories though.

This chapter basically showcases everything I hate about baseball though; it literally is the one sport where being smart doesn’t give you any kind of edge. If this was any other sport, Azu would have made the team easily because high sports IQ and his dedication to studying other talents are the signs of a generational talent. You don’t need that in baseball though. All you have to do is either be fast or strong and let other people think for you. He showed great leadership skills and proved to be a pretty good playmaker/strategist. You’re at the mercy of your pitcher though so you making correct calls or knowing what the right play is means nothing if your pitcher is an idiot.        
Characters are the most important thing in a sports series and the two we got here were fine. Nothing really amazing so far, but none of them are offensively bad yet.
If I were to rank the new series, I’d probably say: Witch Watch, Elusive Samurai, Nine Dragons’ Ball Parade, i tell c. All four of them are easily better than every 2020 new series except for SAKAMOTO DAYS though, and honestly I’d probably take these four over any new 2019 series other than Yozakura and CSM (bias for Higuma aside).
 

The big news of course, Kimetsu no Yaiba got a season 2 announced! Kimetsu no Yaiba: Red Light District Arc makes it sound like a) it’s one cour since they’re doing one arc from what it appears, and b) they aren’t recapping Infinity Train here. It looks like you do have to watch the movie to get that arc, and that is a canon and important arc so you can’t skip it. Kinda sucks, but hey, Demon Slayer is the biggest series in Japan right now. Whatever they do will make money.

Aside from that, Black Clover is finally ending at episode 170, scheduled for March 30th. Black Clover didn’t really get a boost from the anime (a long term one anyway, it did see a little boost before going back down) and it’s the most recent Jump series to get a long running anime. Every new series that’s gotten one since has been seasonal and we’ve seen them get way more of a boost. Even My Hero which is essentially yearly, got a bigger boost out of the anime than BC did, even if the boost itself was atypical (generally, the “anime boost” happens for season 1 of the anime and then slowly goes down. My Hero’s boost came from season 2 and 3 and it hasn’t reached the “goes down” part yet, even if the growth isn’t as noticeable as say JJK). They had a lot of hope that Black Clover would take off tremendously (they even called it the next Naruto! I’m pretty sure that also happened when Boruto’s manga was revealed to be a thing too!) and it never did. The anime, production wise, is a huge mess and probably did more harm than good at this point. It’s not bad by any means, but it’s the posterboy of why long running anime is slowly dying. I wonder if that’s it for Jump giving long runners to new series in general. Old stuff they remake, I think would still not be seasonal, but the sales of their new manga have all gone up a lot whenever they got a seasonal anime (except for We Never Learn, but that was never really meant to be a giant franchise anyway).


For some fun, we’re going to have a question every week that revolves around Jump. Be warned though, unlike the rest of Making the Jump, this trivia question can be about any series that ran in Jump! So without further ado –

Q: What was the last sport’s manga before Nine Dragon’s Ball Parade?

Last Week's Answer:

 

We’re heading towards anniversary time! Till next time, remember: support the official release!

We are now in the anniversary zone of WSJ, with a bunch of series celebrating another year of serialization! #12 is Undead Unluck’s, so let’s…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 #12 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 2/21/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

Why did I have to be right Me and Roboco bounced back to top 3 and color page. Now, I doubt it’s dying soon, but I do want to point out Mitama did basically the same thing before absolutely plummeting in the TOC. So it’s possible that this was just planned before the stagnation was shown but…man I don’t even think Phantom Seer was being mistreated before this and I think this is bull. That series showed growth. Is it good growth/is it worth keeping around? I don’t know, but objectively it showed more than Roboco ever has and yet gets this treatment. The same thing happened with Yozakura. It showed the decent sales and the reprints for volume 1 and 2, yet Mitama is the one that got the preferential treatment. Nakano needs to stop this gag agenda already.

Speaking of undeserved gag agenda, I don’t know if it’s because they thought it wouldn’t outright bomb or if they’re getting the push out of the way so it can die a quiet death, but High School Family getting extra pages doesn’t really rub me the right way. Dolphin has been getting nothing but crap for months despite being from a more successful vet, doing twice as well as HSF, and doing about the same on the TOC. Why is HSF, which has even LESS fanfare getting this special treatment? This gag agenda really needs to stop.

Aside from that…the only notable thing is SAKAMOTO is at 7 this week. I wouldn’t say awful sign yet…but once more the color page curse hits. I hope this is as low as it gets though. Things aren’t really going to happen in the TOC until the new series starts ranking at least so this section might be bare for a while.

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.


Sorry, still don’t care about the series. They’ve done a terrible job with making me like the characters so them being brought down and the hope spot with Kenma does nothing for me. I still know nothing about this group of villains so while being threatening is good, them destroying our heroes isn’t really doing anything for me. If the series didn’t look so good, I sincerely doubt anyone would care about anything happening right now and probably think its ending since the side characters are finally getting shine.


I think I’m in the minority, but I actually don’t really like how “Pokémon” this series has gotten lately. What I mean is that lately, it feels like the focus has been adding “god of destruction” like entities to the cast and getting them all. I much preferred the previous dynamic of the series when we just had 3 god of destructions and they play off each other and their chaos. Now it feels like they just want to have fun with the new minion of the week and the focus is just being funny instead of thinking about WHY the joke was funny. The reason why I love Magu-chan more than most of the recent gag series is because there was more to the joke or gag than just because it was random. Each joke/gag had a purpose and there was a reason why it was funny that it happened/targeted that character. Now…its just telling jokes. It just feels lame lately. I assume Kamiki doesn’t want to commit until he knows for sure he’s gone or not, but this just feels like lame filler…in a slice-of-life manga…that is based around filler…why did this have to outright flop instead of Me and Roboco


Matsui-sensei, you are far too powerful for your own good. I never would have guessed Kojiro was actually a boy if he didn’t say this chapter. I also wouldn’t have figured out that Ayako is actually a giant compared to the other eight-year-olds, but looking back, yeah she actually was noticeably taller than Kojiro and Tokiyuki. Aside from that, I’m glad we’re finally getting some focus on the supporting cast now. I always really liked the secondary cast of Matsui’s series so this should be more of the same. These two plus Shizuku should be fun characters for Tokiyuki to play off of, and this chapter shows that they already do have some good chemistry. I wonder if we’re going to get more important retainers down the line though. Creepy priest guy said he needed to rebuild his ranks with loyal and capable retainers to stand up to Takuji, but I wonder if that’s just going to be a background kind of thing or if arcs are going to be built around that idea. I’m still really enjoying the series and still think it’s going to popoff probably, just…eh, I’ll get into it in a later edition of Making the Jump. It doesn’t have to do with Elusive Samurai in particular, just Jump in general.  


Okay, I really need to talk about this. I mentioned in the past that Ron Kamanohashi and this are similar…but this is getting ridiculous. You want to know the setting for the second case in Ron? A hot spring. You know what’s the setting for this, the third case in the series? A hot spring. You want to know what the third case for Ron was? A mystery about a guy that kills victims and chops off their right hand. You know what the third case for this series is? A mystery about a guy that kills victims and chops off their right hand. They’re the same thing at this point except Ron has way better characters and uses the main characters way better. It’s gotten to the point where if i tell c doesn’t do something original, I will actually be annoyed that if it survives long term because it’s literally just doing what a better series is doing but gets away with it because “cute yandere girl” is the main character.

I really have nothing else to say. It still has all the problems of the series; Ukon is worthless despite being a main character, the mysteries are straight up impossible to solve before the characters do, I still don’t see how they solve it in the first place. It’s sad how Nine Dragon’s did a better job of “solving” a mystery and did a better job of foreshadowing than the mystery manga where its specifically supposed to do that.


This series is competent, but unfortunately for me, competent isn’t enough to get me on a baseball series’ side. It’s going the Eyeshield 21 route, which fine, I really love that manga and am happy that more manga are trying to follow in its footsteps now that Kuroko and Haikyu!! basically overshadow the “partner” style sports series at this point. That being said, it’s still following in the footsteps of something. The overanalyzing “perverted” manager has been done before, though I will give her props for the Solid Snake tribute. The “elite school didn’t pick me so I’m going to this lesser one that lets me play to my abilities” trope is done to death. There’s nothing new here, which is fine if you like baseball. I don’t though, I hate it so much. I’m not going to say this series is bad yet, like I would say i tell c is at the moment, but I definitely wouldn’t be sad if this flopped right away too.

It’s been awhile since I did the first edition of this, but well, a new batch of series came out so I wanted to focus on that. Full disclosure, one of my profiles was going to be Kazusa Inaoka, and he’s back, so…I should probably hurry on and do more of these before the people I want to talk about end up in Jump LUL.

So last we checked in, Masaoki Shindou came out with Ruri Dragon and I really enjoyed it, but there was one one-shot from that GIGA issue that stood out from the rest even more. Ruri Dragon was above the rest as well, but this one, this was actually unfair to the other mangaka. It also had no color page or real promotion, but it absolutely stole the show.

Nakamura Hinata is a name I never heard of being releasing Wilted Flower back in December. I think they might be a vet in the sense that they have written something before this, but I don’t think they’re particularly well known yet or someone from a different company. That doesn’t mean a thing though. This mangaka knows how to write a compelling story.

If you don’t know, Wilted Flower is about this college student who decided to make his senior thesis about a never dying flower. The reason for this is because his mother died of illness during his childhood and seeing the flowers from her funeral depressed him because it reminded him of her death. One time, he goes to a floral shop and meets a girl named Hanamori where they get closer over time. Once the boy gets real close, Hanamori basically disappears for a while. She stops visiting him, she ended up quitting her job, and he never saw her around. He eventually finds out that she was dying from a disease the entire time (I assume cancer), and that she’s in the hospital. The reason why she avoided him was for a similar reason to him; she didn’t want to get too close to anyone and make them sad if she died. Of course, spending time with him naturally led to feelings of love blossoming and deciding that they would be okay because its better to have these feelings out there and spend as much time together as possible over chasing something that even if achievable, didn’t lead to happiness.

The reason why I think this stood out far more than almost every other one shot in that Giga one shot is because it expresses its themes the best out of any of them. It felt so much more polished with its storytelling, with a clear storyline, development curve, and ample amounts of showing off characters. It felt like it knew what it wanted to accomplish and did it seamlessly. It didn’t try to do something for the sake of being cool; everything served a specific purpose for narrative. The only thing I really thought showed “weakness” was the ending, and I only really think that because it’s a oneshot. I think if it was an actual series, the ending would be way different.

That being said, I don’t think this would work as a long series. I would really like Nakamura to be the guy that made a mega hit romcom on Jump+, because this seems like something that wouldn’t get the chance in regular Jump. He does drama really well, he has cute character designs, but I wouldn’t really say this was “funny”. It’s not supposed to be, but I just don’t think Jump would run a romance drama. They barely do romcoms, I don’t think they believe a serious romance story would appeal to younger audiences.    


We move on to Magic Saitama’s first anniversary. Till then, remember: support the official release!

Today we see how the power of cream puffs can get you one year of manga serialization, as Mashle’s anniversary is covered in this…Making 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 #13 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 2/21/2021):

Color Pages:

Next Issue Preview:

This break for Black Clover wasn’t planned. Hope everything is fine with Tabata! They put in a oneshot named DELETE to replace it. DELETE is done by the mangaka of Double Taisei. This week, they’re also starting a new one-shot campaign called Jump Frontier. I think the idea here is to include shorter one-shots that can be developed into full series if they prove to be popular. We’ll see how it goes.

*MAGU-CHAN RAMBLING PLZ FORGIVE ME*
So let me keep it hundred with you. I love Magu-chan, I really do. Admittedly, I haven’t liked the newer chapters as much as older ones (basically anything after Ruru’s mom’s visit ended), but I still think the series is really good and it should be doing better than it does. However, I call out Me and Roboco and its COMPLETELY UNDESERVED mega push every time I bring the series up so it’s only fair that I call out this crap too. As is mentioned in the opening of this section every week, the final say in the order of the TOC goes to the editors. They have access to data we don’t, including magazine survey results, but I’m sorry, we still DO have data on series performances and all of it points to Magu-chan not being popular at all, let alone “very popular”. The obvious one is volume sales and if we look at Shoseki estimates (since Magu-chan hasn’t made Top 50 yet and Top 100 didn’t start leaking until after it fell off the charts completely), volume 1 to volume 2, is a decline. Volume 1 charted for the month of November. It wasn’t particularly great (13k for an entire month is like…slightly better than AGRAVITY BOYS), but it still did. Volume 2 did not chart for January at all, and the cutoff for the month was 13k. So that means two things: 1) November was a weaker month since the cutoff was lower and 2) Magu-chan AT BEST stunted in growth, declined more likely. Not only that, but volume 1 has failed to chart since volume 2 has been released. EVERY OTHER successful series, even Me and Roboco, had a previous volume charting when the new one comes out at least once. Phantom Seer’s was charting from volume 2’s release to like the 22nd of February, even if it was as low as the 400s. The backlog simply does not exist for Magu-chan. New people aren’t jumping onto the train.

I believe it’s the only remotely successful series in the current lineup that has NO Twitter presence (other than SAKAMOTO DAYS which can change easily come April when it probably does better than Magu-chan). Yozakura, Mashle, Undead all have official accounts. Seer, Ayakashi (I think), even i tell c’s authors have Twitter accounts promoting the series. Roboco has this entire parody chain with “characters from the series” having accounts on irl Twitter too. They promote all these series (except Seer) on Jump channels like Youtube and Twitter accounts. Magu-chan gets none of this. They ignore it like the rest of the flops and don’t ever do lotteries for merch or include it in promotions.

I don’t think it’s EVER been nominated for anything. Even Yozakura has gotten nominated for fan awards. People just don’t care about this series at all outside the magazine. And no, Me and Roboco giving it a shoutout in a chapter does not count as outside the magazine.  

It DOES NOT deserve the placements or color pages it’s been getting unless its survey results are literally showing that its more popular than One Piece, and we all know that is straight up impossible. This is just Nakano’s bias for gag manga going on. Phantom Seer deserves this far more than it, and I don’t even like Seer all that much or think its promotion is bad in a vacuum (it’s not popular in the magazine, so what’s the point of promoting it in the magazine. Twitter and Youtube on the other hand…). It’s when you compare it to Magu-chan and ESPECIALLY Me and Roboco where I think this is just stupid. Not only that, but at this point, they better be waiting for the anniversaries to end to give it a cover, otherwise Yozakura getting snubbed of a color page before the volume releases for MAGU-CHAN, is straight up bullcrap. You can call me a biased Yozakura fanboy or whatever; I am, but even objectively you can’t justify this as anything but bias from Nakano. Yozakura has been doing better sales wise than Magu-chan since the start, it’s STILL growing unlike Magu-chan, it has been doing better on the TOC for MONTHS, and it’s part of an ongoing campaign: Jump New Heroes. It SHOULD be getting just as obnoxiously pushed as Roboco (well, it wouldn’t be obnoxious because Yozakura does at least double Roboco, but you get what I mean), yet it never is.  
 
*RAMBLING ENDS HERE SORRY*

Aside from that…let’s see…I always get sad seeing Undead Unluck get anything, but whatever, I’m not going to sit here and say it doesn’t deserve it after seeing Magu-chan getting this much love. I made peace with Seer needing to do amazing volume 3 as well to even get a chance. Dolphin is actually decent now, so I’m glad that it’s not being left in the bottom 3 ditch every week like I thought would happen at least. Uh…other positives…they at least gave up on Build Kind for now. Though that’s probably turning around if it ends up doing more than even Moriking knowing how Nakano gives all his biases the world.

Alright, I guess this week is meant to be make-me-mad week because on top of series I don’t like/think don’t deserve pushes getting color pages, they pull this crap: One Piece cover and lead color pages for #14. Again, I love One Piece. It’s the flagship, they have to give it some love, but…JUJUTSU KAISEN IS LITERALLY YOUR HOTEST SERIES AND IS ON TRACK TO BE #1 ON ORICON FOR 2021! WHY ARE YOU NOT DOING THE ANNIVERSARY COVER FOR ITS ACTUAL ANIVERSARY?!?!??! If Akutami is feeling burnout…WHY ARE YOU NOT DOING DR.STONE THEN?! BOICHI IS A MACHINE AND CAN DO COLOR PAGES OF HIGH QUALITY AT THE FASTEST RATE OF ANYONE IN JUMP RIGHT NOW?! ON TOP OF THAT, THERE’S AN ANIME AIRING RIGHT NOW! IT’S OKAY TO SHOW IT SOME FAVORTISM DURING THE ANIME AIRING! Just, god, they can’t admit that other series are more important than One Piece at the moment. It’s going to get worse because I guarantee that it’s still going to get #17 or #18 like I predicted originally.  

Next week’s TOC better blow my mind in a good way because WOW THIS ONE SUCKS. The only good thing about it was Yozakura top 5. Keep this cover campaign going.

Okay, so I’ll be upfront. I’m like eight weeks behind on Making the Jumps and have not written a Spotlight for like six of them. I also can’t go back and reread chapters that far back because Mangaplus only goes up to 3 weeks for series not licensed by VIZ That being said, I remember the general plots of these chapters so I think I can do a basic opinion thing on them. This is only meant for times when I can’t write Spotlights, so for the next while, I’m gonna do an arrow for five series and say how I feel they’re trending in terms of quality. There’s no middle, only up or down.

















I have to put the Trivia corner on break again for a bit as I play catch up, so I'll just leave you with a random Jump OP or ED that I really like. This week: Black Clover OP 12:


I’ll probably be less annoyed next issue, hopefully! Till then, remember: support the official release!

I got nothing, so let’s…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 #14 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 3/7/2021):

Color Page:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

Well…it’s better than last weeks at least. 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. I look forward to the day that we graduate from High School Family. It has long overstayed its welcome and it does nothing to justify its existence at this point.

Yeah, I don’t really have anything to say about this week’s TOC so let’s go to next week instead. DR. STONE got its anniversary cover before Kaisen…again. I get it though; STONE is like the secondary posterboy of the magazine at this point so I expect it to get things sooner than it should. Kaisen will get another cover soon enough. They’re also doing a popularity poll for the series, can’t wait for Senku to crush everyone again!

The series getting color pages I have no real complaints about. SAKAMOTO DAYS seems incredibly likely to be their biggest hit since Mashle, and it has a volume coming up in April. Makes sense to get another color page. Also shows that the rankings aren’t the worst thing in the world despite barely being above bottom 5.
Yozakura is continuing the redemption tour with another color page. Excluding lead color pages, it now has jump ahead to most color pages out of any series this year with its fourth. Getting ever closer to that eventual cover. And man, look at that! Consecutive color pages for two issues! That is actually a big deal because the most recent series to do that were Undead Unluck (for winning the Tsugi Manga award, aka for being a future pillar of Jump), Black Clover (long established series), Chainsaw Man (3 consecutive ones, and it was in the middle of its absolute peak and becoming a rising star), and Act-age (for becoming a miracle series that became really popular…it still hurts T_T). On top of that, you finally gave the series a PV for the volume release...sorta. The actual video is a music video for the manga with an original song about the series! They’re finally giving Yozakura the push it deserves.  

Which leads us to the moment we’ve been waiting for…our new batch of series is going to start ranking now. Elusive Samurai is first up with next week’s issue. I’ve been thinking about how this is gonna go and so far, I think what’s going to happen is Elusive Samurai is going to start high, and then fall off a bit (unless they’re pushing it) and then shoots up if the volume sales are amazing (which I think it will be). I think Witch Watch is gonna be mid until the volumes come out, and then probably will rise to Yozakura territory if it succeeds. I think i tell c and Nine Dragon’s are both just going to flop. I don’t think Nine Dragon’s is going to do enough to stand out, and i tell c is too much of a mess for me to say that Japanese readers think its compelling enough to vote for it in surveys.

Things should be getting interesting soon.  

Okay, so I’ll be upfront. I’m like eight weeks behind on Making the Jumps and have not written a Spotlight for like six of them. I also can’t go back and reread chapters that far back because Mangaplus only goes up to 3 weeks for series not licensed by VIZ That being said, I remember the general plots of these chapters so I think I can do a basic opinion thing on them. This is only meant for times when I can’t write Spotlights, so for the next while, I’m gonna do an arrow for five series and say how I feel they’re trending in terms of quality. There’s no middle, only up or down.
Scale: Green – Way up | Yellow – Up | Orange – down | Red – way down

Hardboiled Cop and Dolphin Depths 33: Sunken Ruins, Part 10




Nine Dragon’s Ball Parade Chapter 4: Yoshikata Tsurugi




SAKAMOTO DAYS Days 14: Stealth Mission




The Elusive Samurai Chapter 7: Archery 1333




One Piece Chapter 1006: The Honorable Hyogoro the Flower




I’m feeling lucky this month, and I’m sure Jump does too because new volumes have been released as of March 4th! This month, we have Jujutsu Kaisen volume 15, Mission: Yozakura Family volume 7, Undead Unluck volume 5, Mashle volume 5, Ayakashi Triangle volume 3 and Magu-chan: God of Destruction volume 3 of the current lineup releasing. The final volumes of We Never Learn (21), and Chainsawman (11) Part I are also here. In addition, Kaiju No. 8 gets to prove if volume 1 was a fluke or not with volume 2 releasing the same day, and we’re going to track sales for a series that I haven’t talked about yet, but really enjoy from Jump+, Deadpool: Samurai volume 1! Our Blood Oath volume 2 is also this month, but we all know how that’s going to end so I’m not recording the sales data for it.

Sales Data:

Key:

One quick note, recently Oricon top 100 has been leaking instead of just top 50, so even if the numbers seem lower than previous months, they are more accurate.

Let’s get the negatives out of the way first, Magu-chan completely stunted if not declined. Heartbreaking, but I think its time to let it move on to greener pastures. I can’t justify keeping it in the magazine at this point, no matter how much I like it. Ayakashi and Undead sort of stunted. This basically matches volume 2’s estimates from Shoseki with one more day and I think Undead barely improved, which is pretty bad for a series that got as much promotion as it did compared to say, Yozakura. I don’t think they’re declining yet, but kind of a bad sign that they aren’t making as big of jumps as other series we’ll get to. We Never Learn did about the same as always. Ending on a positive note.  

Okay, let’s get to the good stuff now. Yozakura has shown signs of growth again! It didn’t rank as high this time (being 66 I think), it did still get on Oricon so great job there. The big thing though, is that it almost matched volume 6’s first week sales, with three less days! That’s a sizeable increase and I hope one it can build on. The reception for the series has gotten significantly better from its humble beginnings and Jump has shown signs for caring about it now, so I think a big leap can occur soon!

Deadpool from Jump+ had a solid first showing too. I’m interested to see if they’re good enough to make Shueisha consider extending the series longer than intended. I think its deserved too, definitely enjoyable.

And then we have four monsters. Let’s get the notable one out of the way first. Kaisen is absolutely killing it. On the pace its going, it will definitely make it to #1 on Oricon for 2021. Chainsaw Man is getting really big without an anime, I wonder what it can do once it gets it or if Part II can keep up the momentum.

And then we have Mashle. That boy grew like hell. It not only blasted past We Never Learn, but its now standing heads and shoulders above its fellow newbie peers. The sky is the limit it seems and I definitely think this is Jump’s next pillar. It doesn’t even compare to the other monster we have though…

Kaiju No. 8 has entered the scene. It’s not a fluke. This is the next big manga after Spy x Family took the world by storm two years ago. It has numbers most Jump series WISH they could get, and its doing it in the online platform. The series being a real hit has boosted Jump+ so much now. It is a legitimate alternative platform for Jump and shows the possibilities of going outside the box for traditional shonen manga can accomplish.

We go back to more anniversaries with DR. STONE (wow, I became obsessed with Jump four years ago…that’s crazy). Till then, remember: support the official release!

Four years ago, humanity was blessed…with a curse that turned everyone to stone and forced civilization to start over. Huh, maybe they weren’t blessed. I’ll bless you though, with this week’s Making 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 #15 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 3/14/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

Eh, I got nothing really beyond Elusive Samurai being 6th. Respectable first ranking, and I think it only gets better so I’m expecting it to hover or increase from here. Uh…yeah, let’s see how the other newbies do.

Okay, so I’ll be upfront. I’m like eight weeks behind on Making the Jumps and have not written a Spotlight for like six of them. I also can’t go back and reread chapters that far back because Mangaplus only goes up to 3 weeks for series not licensed by VIZ That being said, I remember the general plots of these chapters so I think I can do a basic opinion thing on them. This is only meant for times when I can’t write Spotlights, so for the next while, I’m gonna do an arrow for five series and say how I feel they’re trending in terms of quality. There’s no middle, only up or down.
Scale: Green – Way up | Yellow – Up | Orange – down | Red – way down

Ayakashi Triangle Chapter 36: The Mysterious Snow Maiden




Magu-chan: God of Destruction Chapter 35:




One Piece Chapter 1007: Mr. Raccoon Dog




Witch Watch 6: Fresh Spring Transparent Fashions




DR STONE Z=189: Our Dr.STONE



Okay, so here’s what I’m going to do. Instead of doing four weeks of March sales data and wasting my time because March is already over, I’m going to wait for Shoseki to do monthly estimates and we’ll talk about how each series did in March overall. I’ll be back to normal for April and April2 (since the May releases are on April 30th this year because of Golden Week I think).

This edition's Jump OP/ED is a classic, Nisekoi's first opening. Real boppin' song!



Conclusion
I’m almost caught up!! Till then, remember: support the official release!

It’s been a long time, but my final act hasn’t started yet, 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 #16 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 3/21/2021):

Next Issue Preview:

You know, when I said I was expecting Elusive Samurai to rise quickly, I wasn’t expecting it to go from 6th to second. I’m pretty sure SAKAMOTO Days did the same thing and then fell to near bottom 5 soon after so I’m not going to say I’m right yet, but this is definitely a good sign. Plus, it’s already getting a color page, which normally I don’t take to mean much, but uh…Build King has not gotten anything yet and I would argue that Toriko was around as big as Assassination Classroom, so it could have gotten the early color page for push treatment but did not. All around, good vibes for my boy Matsui!

What isn’t good vibes is…High School Family getting fifth. That series is beyond dead, literally no one cares about it at all, and it bombed horribly back in February. There is no actual reason for this. I’m not going to fake outrage about Phantom Seer being screwed or anything, but that does not mean I’m okay with series that don’t deserve the push getting it. This is stupid.

i tell c starts at nine which is uh…fine? I don’t know. I think this is a Time Paradox Ghostwriter waiting to happen. I don’t think it’s going to just completely collapse like it, but i tell c definitely peaked and is going to get old really fast. I can’t see it doing good, like at all and it’s on the verge of doing something completely stupid plot wise. Let’s see how this goes.

Ayakashi sure has been hanging around the bottom for awhile, eh? I said a while ago (or maybe it was two posts ago, I don’t know, this massive Making the Jump dump is making things blend together) that I wouldn’t be shocked if Ayakashi started sinking because sales have stagnated and, yep, looks like it has. Not in any real danger of being canceled or anything, but I would not be shocked if they do the bare minimum in terms of promotion for a bit. I still expect an anniversary cover, but I also would not be shocked if all it got was a color page too. I think the volumes are getting into the “arcs” territory of the series, so I’m interested to see if people prefer arcs or the one off stories.

Okay, so I’ll be upfront. I’m like eight weeks behind on Making the Jumps and have not written a Spotlight for like six of them. I also can’t go back and reread chapters that far back because Mangaplus only goes up to 3 weeks for series not licensed by VIZ That being said, I remember the general plots of these chapters so I think I can do a basic opinion thing on them. This is only meant for times when I can’t write Spotlights, so for the next while, I’m gonna do an arrow for five series and say how I feel they’re trending in terms of quality. There’s no middle, only up or down.
Scale: Green – Way up | Yellow – Up | Orange – down | Red – way down

Black Clover Page 286: A Night With no Morning




Phantom Seer Chapter 28: Fuuka Yukizuki




Mission: Yozakura Family Mission 75: Shion and Kengo vs Cha-Cha and Aonuma




i tell c chapter 8: grasp




My Hero Academia No. 366: The Final Act Begins




The Jukebox
This edition, let's look at a simpler time. A time when cheesy anime OP's were all the rage. Let's go all the way back to the early 90s with...Yuyu Hakusho!


Like the next series to celebrate an anniversary, not giving up is my magic! Till then, remember: support the official release!

I did it, I'm all caught up on Making 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 #17 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 3/28/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

Witch Watch is at a pretty good 6th place for its first placement. I’m fine with that! I was pretty into the first chapter, but I also don’t think it’s definitely wowing people either. It’s a Shinohara chapter through and through. I still think it’s going to start off good, end up mid for a while, and then get a proper push for volume 1 if it does well.  That is the cycle of the successful Jump romcom after all.

Phantom Seer is entering its Final Climax huh…that’s definitely a choice. It’s pretty weird timing because they literally announced I think the previous chapter that there’s 100k copies in circulation which is alright, especially since Roboco was at 20k at essentially the same point and they promoted it instead of cancelling it…but eh. I’ll get more into it when the series does end I guess, but my tl;dr is: I’m not saying this is wrong on its own, but this is wrong in the sense that other series should have died way before this one. I’m not going to blame those series though. Ultimately what killed Phantom Seer, was Phantom Seer. It’s not Magu-chan’s or Roboco’s fault that Seer didn’t live up to editors hopes.

Fine picks for color pages again (Kaisen’s on break, so I won’t harp on them picking One Piece for the cover over it…AGAIN, this time) even if it’s a little weird that they literally did the same exact lineup like two issues ago. Yozakura has what I think are the best color pages in the magazine and SAKAMOTO can be pretty good (plus 3 color pages before volume 1 release is usually a good sign). Let’s see how Nine Dragon’s does.
 
Okay, so I’ll be upfront. I’m like eight weeks behind on Making the Jumps and have not written a Spotlight for like six of them. I also can’t go back and reread chapters that far back because Mangaplus only goes up to 3 weeks for series not licensed by VIZ That being said, I remember the general plots of these chapters so I think I can do a basic opinion thing on them. This is only meant for times when I can’t write Spotlights, so for the next while, I’m gonna do an arrow for five series and say how I feel they’re trending in terms of quality. There’s no middle, only up or down.
Scale: Green – Way up | Yellow – Up | Orange – down | Red – way down

Hardboiled Cop and Dolphin Depth 36: Partner




Jujutsu Kaisen Chapter 144: That Place




My Hero Academia No. 367: Been a While!!




Nine Dragons’ Ball Parade Chapter 7: A New Step




Black Clover Page 287: Day of Atonement




And for our last session for now, we of course have to listen to the biggest boppin' song in all of anime. Naruto Shippuden OP 16! (Also, I probably should have given spoiler warnings at this point...oh well.)



Next time, we continue to wonder when Jump will realize that Kaisen released in March, not May or June! Till then, remember: support the official release!

We’re back on track with the 37th edition of Making 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 #18 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 4/4/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Absent – My Hero Academia, Jujutsu Kaisen

Next Issue(s) Preview:

Hey, the new batch of series is early this time! There goes my predictions…I also guess that May/June is the new March cause Kaisen ain’t getting its anniversary cover till after Golden Week and the double issue it seems. Anyway, let’s get into it! In the now extremely outdated 2021 predictions Making the Jump I made that I won’t put up, basically I said 2021 would be the year of romcoms and that Blue Box would be the forefront of it. I had high expectations and I think now is literally the perfect time for it to come. There’s only one traditional romcom (Witch Watch), and two stories that could delve into romance (Yozakura and Undead). Other than that, there’s Ayakashi which also isn’t going for the same audience. And then if you compare the one shot of Blue Box to Witch Watch, they aren’t even the same time of romance. I hope that this blows up. I want to live in a world where this and Amagiri from Magazine lead a new era of romance.

The second new series is called Ame no Furu, which I think can be translated as something like it’s raining here or something (it’s something about rain). Other than it being drawn by Santa, we don’t know anything about it. I looked at the artists previous works though and I think they look good, so I’m intrigued. I’ll probably talk about it more next Making the Jump.

Man, looks like they’re going all in on Elusive Samurai it seems. First place after only 11 chapters? The last time a new series got first this quickly might have been Jujutsu Kaisen (interesting how Assassination Classroom got first at chapter 11 too). I think it deserves it, but just interesting that it looks like they’re expecting this one to be a big hit. Wouldn’t be shocked if there’s a big first print in July for volume 1 (we’ll get to the schedule later). I know that this week is weird cause My Hero went on break suddenly, and Kaisen is on break this week too, but I think it says something when they already put this at one while Mashle STILL hasn’t gotten first and it’s the breakout series they’ve wanted for so long.

ES isn’t the only series from its batch on the rise. Witch Watch has gone up to top five this week which is nice! Plus, it’s getting a color page next issue too. Not sure if this will hold, but right now, I’m happy about how things are going for it since I think it’s my second favorite series in Jump right now (first being I’ll give you one guess).

Alright, let’s get into i tell c because I think its at a crossroads now. Bottom 5 this week and it completely nosedived in terms of quality and direction. I really don’t think it’s going to recover and I think there’s a couple of concerning things in terms of preliminary sales data. First off, instead of May, Shueisha is releasing Jump volumes for that month on April 30th this time (I assume because the first week of May is Golden Week entirely, unlike most years). However, they’re releasing it with these series: Mashle, Undead Unluck, Yozakura Family, Phantom Seer. We’ll get to PS later, but you can take this lineup one of two ways: 1) They have incredible confidence in Mashle, Yozakura, and Undead to carry a month’s sales, and hoping that new blood will check out i tell c along with them. 2) They’re throwing May away and letting i tell c die because they have no faith already. The second thing is, you guessed it, Amazon preorders (and Rakuten rankings)! They’re bad. Like, words apart from the big three (and I guess Phantom Seer, haven’t checked that for reasons I’ll get to I promise!) Undead Unluck’s first volume was released early because of “fan demand” (according to their Twitter at least. If fan demand could actually get early releases, I feel like we’d have a Jujutsu Kaisen volume every two weeks!), but something tells me that they don’t have the same faith in i tell c despite putting it out before the rest of its batch.

Finally, we get to Nine Dragons’ Ball Parade. Nineth place…not sure if that’s good or not. Normally, that’s respectable, but there’s some issues in this case. First, this series is slow as hell. It took them I think five chapters before they did a second baseball activity. They’re going the “we need nine platers for a game” route it seems, so it is entirely possible we won’t see an actual game until chapter 25 or something like that. As we established time and time again, you need to be interesting beyond belief to survive a slow start in Jump and uh…a baseball manga that follows all the sports cliches is the furthest thing from interesting. I don’t see how it can shoot up the rankings, but I can see how it can sink real quickly. Second, it’s the only sports series in the magazine and its already barely above bottom 5. Unlike most new series, it has a niche and SHOULD be able to stick out, yet it doesn’t. Of all the new series to get vomics since they started doing them, this series is BY far the worst performing Jump one. Its PV trailer for chapter 1 is the WORST performing PV since they started doing them consistently. They BARELY got above 10k views after I think two months. This batch of new series got commercials advertising them, Nine Dragons’ was the worst performing one at 24k views (Witch Watch has over 140k, but to be fair, it could have been because it featured SKET Dance in it). Literally no one talks about it online in both the West and Japan. It’s the first sports series since Haikyu!! ended and the ONLY one (before Blue Box which the one shot was half sports so still, the only full one) in the lineup, yet it can’t produce any buzz. No one cares about this series.

So should we get into this now? Yeah, you’re not seeing things, Phantom Seer is ending this week. It’s the traditional Jump special, “Final Phase” but in reality, that means final chapter. This ending is gonna be rushed as hell, but at least I won’t have to hear the people who cry every time a battle manga is low on the TOC while a gag is anywhere above last place now complain about Phantom Seer’s “bad” treatment. Remember my point about the April 30th lineup? This is another reason for my two stances on it. They have three established series (but no headliners at the moment), one new series, and a now cancelled series. My thinking when I first saw the schedule for April 30th was that they’re finally acknowledging the next gen of Jump (since all the big hitters are ending by like, 2023 at this rate) and seeing if they can carry a month, but now…not sure.

Before we end this, let’s do some brainstorming about what else is leaving us for the great beyond. Two new series are on the way, so naturally we need two series to end. Phantom Seer is one, which leaves us with another one. If we look at it, there are three series awaiting oblivion.

1) Hardboiled Cop and Dolphin
2) High School Family
3) Build King

Dolphin is pretty obvious, this screams final arc, sales declining, and not good performances in the magazine. However, this issue announced the previous volumes are getting reprinted. Phantom Seer proves that doesn’t make a series safe, but it probably points to it not getting cancelled next issue. High School Family absolutely bombed, NO ONE cares about it, they take forever to release volumes (volume 2 isn’t until JUNE), and we have a million gags, it’s easily replaceable. Build King has finished outside of bottom 3 maybe once after its initial ranking and they are clearly rushing towards an end. The main thing that’s helping it is that it seems too new still, because there’s at least 3 bigger failures WITH sales data they can cut first, and its by a veteran. However, I think there’s a few things we can look at to get a better clue.

1) The content of the series itself – High School Family just introduced a guy trying to get the dad back to the workforce. The chapter ended with him swearing he’ll bring him back no matter, so bare minimum, there’s going to be at least two chapters featuring that guy. It’s a gag manga, so obviously it can end whenever, but I think a plot point like that implies at least a few more chapters, and the second series that has to end basically has to end next week. Dolphin is clearly in a final arc, but it also feels like it could go on for another 10 chapters still. It’s not quite at the ending yet. Build King introduced a power up that was not once hinted at for Tonkaichi, things that can be final bosses for a series, and is rushing through everything. This thing can easily end in two chapters.

2) T-shirt campaign – For issues #18-20, they are doing a campaign for almost every series in the magazine where you can win a T-shirt. Dolphin is in issue 19’s, High School Family is in this one’s. Build King is not present in any of them. And before you write it off as too new (SAKAMOTO isn’t in either after all), they included Elusive Samurai. So no, they’re capable of adding newer series if they cared enough. Anyone with a brain knows SAKAMOTO isn’t being cancelled yet, so Build King is the only notable omission, not counting Phantom Seer, which we already know is cancelled. (for reference, these are the lineups: #18: One Piece, DR. STONE, Undead Unluck, Magu-chan, High School Family, Elusive Samurai | #19: My Hero Academia, Black Clover, Mashle, Hardboiled Cop and Dolphin | #20: Jujutsu Kaisen, Mission: Yozakura Family, Ayakashi Triangle, Me and Roboco).

3) Poster placement – In a recent ad page in Jump, there was a line up with all the protagonists of the lineup in a group setting. They were all way in the back, but there’s a few notable things. Dolphin got two characters (Shark and Chako), the only other series to get two were Yozakura, Undead, and Nine Dragons’. High School Family is in the back, but the guy looks bigger than some of the newer series. Build King is all the way in the back corner, behind the new series which are traditionally put in the way back unless they’re extremely big right away (see Elusive Samurai), and I think you can even argue behind the text. So basically in the most obscure spot on the entire page.

4) Chronological order – Traditionally, in Jump, save for notable series conclusions, they end series in order of release (oldest to newest). 2020 for example: Samurai 8 ended before Zipman!! It went Mitama, Bone Collection, TPGW. AGRAVITY ended before Moriking, which ended before Our Blood Oath. Phantom Seer is the first death. Dolphin came out before PS, so it would be safe under this rule. HSF is barely not safe, coming out a week after PS. Build King is also after PS.

In conclusion, Dolphin is the least likely, High School Family COULD be it but not likely cause circumstances, and Build King is sweating bullets right now. It’s almost definitely Phantom Seer and Build King ending for Blue Box and Ame no Furu.


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 think ES is still on a big roll. The introduction of another retainer might raise eyebrows for some, considering the three we have right now still haven’t gotten a real moment yet, but personally I’m fine with it right now. Tokiyuki, sorry, Chojumaru, is going against an army to take back his land, he’s going to need as many people as he can get. Plus, this thief Kazama seems like an interesting fellow. His backstory reminds me of The Reaper of Death from Assassination Classroom and his relationship with his master. I won’t spoil the specifics cause that twist because its really cool, but I really like that dynamic here too. The series is also still really funny. That rich boy joke with Tokiyuki got a good laugh out of me.


I was hoping that the exams would be something refreshing and get Mashle back on track for me, but I think I just need to accept that it’s not for me anymore. This chapter was cool because for once we got someone that could match up with Mash and his OP nature, and I thought the game they played was pretty unique. Plus, Mash actually lost (miss me with that draw crap. He definitely lost)! I just know that this isn’t going to last though. I already know that Mash is going to get “beat up” for one or two chapters, get up, and beat the music mage. All the “interesting” matchups are gone at this point. I don’t think Finn is getting anything else this arc, and everyone else has been ignored so doubt they’ll get much. I hope I’m wrong, but doubt it.


I enjoyed this introduction arc for the new assassin and feel like this is how most series should handle incorporating new characters. It was a fun battle and had a decent plot towards it. I like SAKAMOTO quite a bit still, but this chapter also highlighted my biggest worry of the series now that we established that characters aside from Sakamoto are going to look cool. This was a great self-contained mini arc, but I still am not sure about a long-term arc yet. This is nothing new for stories I like, Yozakura faced this same problem before the Kuroyuki arc, but I do wonder if SAKAMOTO is going to start slipping in the rankings because of it. Phantom Seer is gone now and BK/Dolphin/HSF are going to join it next week, so presumably the bottom 3 is open again (aside from maybe Ayakashi being there permanently, but doubt that). This series is just so fun.  


For a cancelled series, this ending was fine, I guess. It’s about as unremarkable as the rest of the series, but it wasn’t as awful as most battle manga have been with finales (see Build King next week). I think if they knew they were getting the axe, they probably could have done a better job wrapping things up, but I think this does basically everything it needed to. I had fun reading this, but I’m not going to be terribly sad its gone now.


I’ve been enjoying Dolphin lately, shame Tamura took until the point of no return to get here. Like, I still think if Dolphin blows up in popularity, Tamura can find a way to continue the series, but I don’t think its doing that. The sales are declining and the magazine is slowly filling up with successful series so the “slowly build while other series flounder worse than it” strategy isn’t going to really work at this point. I feel like the series is at its best when it isn’t focusing on Shark, which uh…to be fair even the greatest of series can face that issue *cough*OnePiece*cough*, but I don’t think it’s generally a good idea to make the main character the least interesting part of your series. That being said, I’m interested to see where this backstory leads. I want to know how a cop became a dolphin.


It’s time to get into this. Phantom Seer has concluded in this issue of Weekly Shonen Jump. Based on the 2018 Golden Future Cup winning one shot, Hono Mieru Shonen, the series of duo Togo Goto and Kento Matsuura debuted in #39 of Weekly Shonen Jump in 2020. An exorcist series that debuted during the Kimetsu no Yaiba explosion and the start of the rise of Jujutsu Kaisen, Phantom Seer is the story of a boy named Iori and his classmate Riku. Riku is a “beckoning hand”, someone that attracts the attention of phantoms and is constantly being targeted by them. Iori is an exorcist with the ability to control shadows and summon other spirits with the power of his keys…or something like that.

See, right away, one of the biggest issues with Phantom Seer is that everything feels underdeveloped. Exorcist series are done to absolute death at this point, I get that. I also have said that almost every cancel bait exorcist series make the same mistake of focusing on being “unique” instead of “good” or “solid” and that I think exorcist series need to focus on building a solid foundation before building on the unique aspect of the series. Phantom Seer is a step towards that, but not a fully realized one. There’s an attempt to set up this world, but the issue here is that Goto did not include anything that could be developed or made interesting later on. The phantoms are basic, the powers are basic, it took them around twenty chapters to introduce a major antagonist, the exorcist group is just a basic organization, nothing about it stands out. I’d also argue what was here wasn’t even good. All of the arcs felt so small scale and inconsequential in terms of what are the effects to the world, that they might as well not have happened.

Talking about the story in general, unimpressive is probably how I would describe it. None of the characters are really good, the eventual villain group didn’t have anything interesting to them, and of the I believe three arcs there were, the only one that had any kind of structure or good ideas was the one dealing with the raccoon girl. Iori didn’t really show signs of development I felt until the end, being one of those newer MCs that rely on snark for personality instead of giving them an actual one. Riku had potential early on, but she sort of just became a plot device by the end, just having a hax power that solved the problem every time so she didn’t really live up to it. The side characters were introduced with no transition or ease into them and disappeared as quickly as they entered. It felt like a series that only cared about looking cool without ever actually doing anything while doing it. That sort of worked in the early 2000s (Bleach, Fairy Tail, and others were big, but it still were mainly the good stories that stood out in the manga world), but that definitely isn’t enough in 2021. A series needs SOMETHING else to really get attention. Mashle is “funny” (I stopped really laughing, but most people still think its funny), Yozakura has great characters and mystery, Undead has an incredibly unique power system (I would argue its too complicated, but whatever).

How did we get to this point though? In Jump, it can be argued that quality doesn’t matter. If people like it, then it will last. Well…there’s really no evidence to suggest people actually liked it. From the start, Phantom Seer was basically a bottom 3 dweller on the TOC. It had one color page before the release of volume 1, but aside from that, there was really nothing to suggest pre volume 1 that people were rocking with it. Then it actually came out and…it did good…ish. It was one of the higher first volume performances in recent memory for Jump, and it received immediate reprints. Surely that would mean that people like it right? Welll, not exactly. The main thing I heard after the volume came out was people like the art, in fact, that’s generally the only compliment I’ve heard about the series. It has nice art, but it didn’t do anything else good. And that’s sort of reflected in the fact that it never rose in the TOC despite the decent sales. Volume 2 also came out, and it was looking alright. It made top 100 of Oricon first week! Except it seemed like it stunted in growth. After one month, Volume 1 sold 22k according to Shoseki. Volume 2 sold 21k in a month. Volume 2 got 13k according to Oricon in week one. Volume 1 was 14k according to Shoseki estimates. It had 100k in circulation, but the estimated sales add up to 43k. So, around half of its known stock was not sold. For all intents and purposes, it seems like it was not a series with major potential. And yet…

One of the most annoying things about the manga community is when they complain a Jump series was “unfairly” axed. More often than not, its because they don’t actually understand how the system works and are just mad a series they like was cancelled. I get it, I hate seeing series I love cancelled too, but I’m not going to say it didn’t deserve it or that Japan’s tastes are garbage (especially since the average fan in the West will call any battle manga the next big thing and automatically call a new gag series trash). Phantom Seer though, was taken to a whole other level. There were SO MANY conspiracy theories about how the editor in chief personally hated the series and that’s why its gone, or that his love for gag is going to kill Jump since he’s letting less successful series survive, or that they’re stupid for just relying on surveys, and so much anger over a series that you’d think they were cancelling One Piece or something. Would I have cancelled Phantom Seer NOW? No, probably not. Would I have cancelled Me and Roboco or High School Family over it? Yeah. Is it Me and Roboco’s or HSF’s fault that Phantom Seer is axed? Absolutely not. Those series are not doing good either, but they have nothing to do with PS not meeting whatever expectations the editors had for it. Phantom Seer is why Phantom Seer got cancelled (also maybe there were some issues with the artist and writer, who knows?).

Tokyo Shinobi Squad is the previous series that Matsuura has worked on in Jump, alongside writer Tanaka Yuki, and I don’t know exactly how much Matsuura influences the writing of his series, but if you told me that Togo Goto was just a pen name for Tanaka, I honestly would believe you. Before you say anything, I want to clarify, that I DO like Tokyo Shinobi Squad. In that batch of four, it probably was my favorite series (over Samurai 8), and if I were to rank all the series that debuted in 2019, TSS probably would have been fourth maybe third behind Yozakura, Higuma, and CSM (though, I think that says more about 2019’s quality then it does about how good I think TSS is). That being said, almost every issue I’ve said about PS, was in TSS. Jin was “my nakama are my power” the character instead of snarky, but that’s about the only real difference structure wise. It is actually astonishing how they are basically the same series, except one was cyberpunk and the other was an exorcist series, and just how different the reception for PS was. Maybe if people were this vocal about TSS, it would have survived because 2019 is different compared to 2021 and there was time for lower rung series to develop a fanbase if they showed the slightest potential (that’s how we got Yozakura after all).

I’m sure this isn’t how Matsuura and Goto wanted this to end. Matsuura is an insanely talented artist…but dear god he needs a talented writer. I hope he has a success someday, but for now, it’s time he turns the page on this chapter of his career and work on his next work and hopefully makes it big. I don’t want to give up on Goto yet, because he has shown flashes of greatness, but I also don’t know if he will ever become consistent. I’m interested in his next work and if he’s still with Matsuura. For now though, he can turn the page on this part of life and look at what comes next.


Back like we never left! April has arrived meaning more Jump series releasing! This month, we have My Hero Academia (30), Black Clover (28), DR. STONE (20), Me and Roboco (3), Hardboiled Cop and Dolphin (3), and the debuting Build King and SAKAMOTO DAYS! In addition, the recently concluded AGRAVITY BOYS (5) and final volume of Moriking are here.

Sales Data for March 29-April 4:

I’m going to preface this by saying, I’ve SEEN people claim that they saw on social media that retailers had problems getting in Jump manga, so it MAY cause lower than expected sales for everything (except Moriking. That could be the only manga in all of Japan and still be sad LUL), but I’m not going to take what essentially amounts to “I heard from a friend who heard from a friend” into account yet. I’m treating these numbers as if it was a normal week (unless My Hero has like, 3k sales or something ridiculous, but doubt that’s going to happen).  

Hey, look at that new layout! I should have made the chart go up to four weeks, but eh, who am I kidding, I’m going to forget to do sales by week 3 anyway, so what’s the harm in only going up to it?

So for My Hero, Black Clover, and DR. STONE, I think it could be argued the distribution problem did happen. These numbers are noticeably lower than normal, but it could also just be because this is a 3 day first week this time, and the last few times we’ve seen them, they came out on 6 or 7 first day weeks. We’ll need week two numbers to see for sure.

SAKAMOTO Days is the most recent series from a newbie to get a release and I think its in an interesting spot right now, based on week one alone at least. If you look at it at face value, it basically matched Undead’s first volume (7.5k vs 7.6k) in the same amount of days, but there is reason to assume that they don’t actually capture how popular they are (SAKAMOTO has the distribution issues, and Undead released during the month where lockdowns started in Japan and I still think that had an effect on sales because everything that released that month last year recovered from those lows…is April a cursed month for manga releases?). However, I think you could argue that SAKAMOTO had more promotion than Undead did (3 color pages compared to 1 for Undead, higher TOC placements including a top 3 once, vomics because Undead was before their time, and by the time they came, Undead was already too big for one to work realistically) so the fact that it only managed this much despite possible distribution issues, I think it can be seen as a letdown. That being said…this is way better than some of these failures we’ll get to later, so I’d still say it’s a success. I don’t think this is going to get Phantom Seer’d or anything. Just hope that this is because of a lower first print and not a ceiling for its sales.

SAKAMOTO isn’t the only debuting series we got to discuss though, even though I wish it was. Build King clocks in at just under 3.2k so yep, it outright bombed. In the gone too soon predictions Making the Jump I will never post now, I said that they aren’t cancelling Build King unless it’s a massive bomb and well, it flopped hard and its 99% cancelled. I think this series was garbage and the worst non gag manga in the magazine, so I’m not going to cry over it, but still kind of shocked that they actually didn’t drag this out. Maybe Nakano is learning! *looks at Phantom Seer’s cancellation and Roboco volume 3’s sales* oh…maybe not.

So, let’s recap all the promotion and push Roboco has gotten since volume 1 did…average.

• More vomics than the other new series, including being the one that started this whole initiative.
• It was part of “New Jump Heroes” alongside the four series that would be considered the biggest successes since CSM despite not being anywhere close to their sales
• It’s been attached to the top 5-7 of the TOC for basically it’s entire run and hasn’t even flirted with the bottom 5 yet
• got color pages to promote both its volumes AND is getting one for volume 3
• The second volume cover is a parody/homage to One Piece volume 61 (the first volume post timeskip and I think most sold volume in Japan, since beaten by a Demon Slayer volume I believe) and released the same day as the new One Piece volume. Volume 3 is a parody of a famous Promised Neverland color page/image and they still use the TPN chibi spinoff to promote this series instead of the other way around
• Revealed circulation numbers for the series
• Got a Twitter account not only way sooner than other series did (Mashle, Yozakura), but it got one in general (Magu-chan, Dolphin, SAKAMOTO, Elusive Samurai don’t have one). It’s also an entire extended universe, with multiple “characters” from the series having accounts
• They got the writer for The Promised Neverland to give his recommendation for the wraparound around the second volume, the first time a new series got one since like…act-age back in 2018 (Matsui recommended it). (Okay, I was slightly off about this one. Tokyo Shinobi Squad got one from the guy that wrote the manga that TSS was basically ripping off. I completely forgot that happened, but I think my point still stands because that one felt more out of obligation because Tanaka basically bled out his heart about how much he loved that guy and his series)
• Got a Japanese e-sports commentator to talk over the first chapter of the series for a video.
• They made a parody video of Jujutsu Kaisen’s first ED because the series made a joke about it
• It got a campaign in a Saikyo Jump magazine promoting it alongside Yozakura and Mashle before it could even prove it was a growing success (it essentially stagnated in February for the record)
• They release it during “lighter” months where its arguably the third or fourth biggest series releasing to make it look bigger than it is (by the way, guess what’s probably releasing in July where the only major series probably there are MHA, Black Clover, and a debuting Elusive Samurai?)
• Roboco got a stand display in stores for volume 2, I don’t think even Mashle got that yet (and I think the only time Undead got that was when it won the Tsugi Manga award)

So basically, save for giving it a cover (which, knowing this hack of an EiC, I wouldn’t be shocked if it did get one for its anniversary despite not deserving one at all since apparently now we can have series celebrate anniversaries with only a color page), they gave it everything and it didn’t grow a noticeable amount at all. Okay, maybe February was a fluke. I mean, there was only one month in like the past 5 years that I’ve studied that I would even consider the possibility of being an abnormal month (it sure is weird seeing Hungry Marie be considered axebait after ranking like 83 in Shoseki weekly rankings and managing 15k first week, or seeing Samon-kun be considered a failure for only making it to 30k, perspectives are funny), but who knows, Nakano treats Roboco like its God’s gift to the world so surely it can’t be a flop right? It’s the kids that are wrong!

It sold 5,565 copies in three days. Volume 2 got 10,804 in four and made Oricon (Top 100, but still) … Look. I realize my hate for this series is probably annoying to read, which is why I’ve tried avoiding talking about it whenever I didn’t need to and only make “subtle” jabs at it, but its crap like this that makes me hate the series more than I should. I hate High School Family as well, but it’s the worst selling series in the magazine (since Build King is gone in a week), they don’t ever treat it as more important than it is, and it’s by a veteran with a success so I can understand why it has a longer leash than the average new series. THIS THOUGH? HOW IS ANY OF THIS FAIR TO THE OTHER NEW SERIES?! I literally just argued that Phantom Seer is the reason why Phantom Seer got cancelled, and I’ll still stand by that, but maybe it would have done better if it got just one iota of the promotion that Roboco has gotten. Maybe Magu-chan wouldn’t have declined if they gave it the Roboco push. I don’t know, and I think its pointless to argue that they would. What I do know is that Roboco never DESERVED any of this promotion and these sales prove that. I will almost never argue a series should get more promotion than it gets (Yozakura is the only one right now because as we’ve seen, it’s actually really hard for a new series to grow nowadays, so the fact that its been doing it for now seven volumes straight has to prove it has potential. And even then, other than a cover, I’m fine with what Yozakura has gotten since 2021 started), but I WILL yell when a series gets overpromoted or promotion it doesn’t deserve.

Like, come on, Roboco’s sales HALVED between volumes 2 and 3, and no, I don’t care if there’s a distribution problem that’s affecting it. Roboco isn’t big enough where that should have a major impact on its sales. At worst, I think it lost maybe 3k sales because of it if it actually did happen (a whole Build King to be fair), My Hero, DR. STONE, Black Clover, and maybe SAKAMOTO and Dolphin are the only series I will believe would be majorly affected by this (and even then, I’d need to see how volume 2 of SAKAMOTO does before I consider that this distribution issue effected it). So even if you DID add those 3k sales, it’d be at 8.5k, and at that point you could probably argue that the lower sales are just because of less days…but that’s also bad because that means it’s NOT growing. If we were going from 7 to 3, like Yozakura did in March (it was 7 to 4, but close enough), then yes, it would be growth, but we’re going from 4 to 3 here. So, we’re left with the most overpromoted series in the past 10 years (yes, more than Black Clover. At least you can say that Black Clover was a success in the end, even if it didn’t get close to the expectations they set for it), failing at a rapid pace, and it’s still going to still be here for another six months at least…I don’t argue editor bias for most series, but legitimately, Roboco feels like Nakano loves the series personally so it gets to stick around.
 
Whatever, I’m done being mad. I hope Roboco gets AGRAVITY’d since there’s no chance in hell it gets axed before the anniversary at this point, there’s way too many worse performing series that need to go before we get to Roboco unfortunately. Let’s move on to one of those series, which is sad because it’s actually gotten good now: Dolphin. Those sales…make me believe that a distribution problem might have happened, and unlike Roboco, I could buy it affecting Dolphin. As we can obviously see, Dolphin is a dead series walking. That would lead to the natural assumption that they printed less copies to begin with. So, with less copies going out, a distribution error would also have a bigger impact on it because let’s say they lost 3k copies (I don’t think its that big, but let’s just assume). If they only sent out 7k copies to sale, and they now only have 4k available, then that makes it harder to actually sell the volume because they obviously don’t want to run out completely before a reprint comes. Plus, with the reprinting of the previous two volumes, I would not be shocked if Shueisha is trying a “its so popular you can’t find it anywhere” strategy with Dolphin, I’ve seen dumber plans work.

AGRAVITY is doing around the same as the bottom tier of Jump, despite being cancelled for months now. Not sure if that says more about how loyal the fans are, or how bad the fodder of Jump is at the moment. Whatever, maybe someday I’ll talk about the series as a whole.

LOL Moriking. What an embarrassment.

Let's go with another newer series this week. In honor of romance returning to the magazine, let's go with the most recent successful romcom: We Never Learn OP 2!



Next time, my most highly anticipated one shot/author in recent Jump history gets his shot. Hopefully he lives up to my excitement! Till then, remember: support the official release!

The smell of love and new manga season is in the air. In this 38th meeting, we shall…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 #19 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 4/18/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue(s) Preview:

And that’s another loss for the Build Kind. Sure is a shame that extreme popularity leads to barely making it to 20 chapters, amirite?

Elusive Samurai at 3rd this week after a first place, not bad, not bad. I heard recently that the reception is actually that it’s an average manga, but people are liking it because of Matsui, which I think you can take multiple ways. One, that means this series is probably going to do well at first because Assassination Classroom sold like crazy and old fans still like Matsui (unlike Kishimoto or Shimabukuro), but could possibly lose steam if it doesn’t keep things up. Two, expect a fat push campaign featuring your boy Tokiyuki sooner rather than later.

As for its fellow batch mates…Nine Dragons’ sort of hanging in there. It didn’t drop basically since One Piece and Kaisen are back now, but it also didn’t really make up ground either. Plus, I think chapter 3 is the point that I realized that this wasn’t going to really work. Will Japan see it that way? No clue, but I’m not expecting much here. But just like always, there’s another series that sticks out more than Nine Dragons’. Would you look at that, i tell c is already last place. There was this little theory that the shift in the story was just meant as a “prologue”, ala DR. STONE, and always meant to go like this. Yeah uh…I think this placement puts that theory to bed. This was definitely done because the author panicked and changed everything up in a desperate attempt to save the manga. Will it work? Looking at presales data, lack of promotion, and the fact that the author hasn’t done a series that’s been over 17 chapters yet to suggest he can pivot series successfully after bad initial reception, no probably not. Did I see this coming from a mile away? Yep. Oh well, at least it’s no longer just a Ron Kamanohashi clone now.

Aside from that…not much else to say about this week’s TOC. High School Family is at 8 this week, but like, there’s no way it’s going to explode enough to be here long term, plus the only real oddity here is Mashle. Everything else, HSF has ranked above a decent amount so it’s not strange. I don’t care that much.

So let’s talk about next week’s issue instead. Color page rotations been kind of boring lately. This is the second time they’ve repeated the same lineup of color pages minus the cover and lead color page recently (Yozakura and SAKAMOTO were the color pages last issue, and the color pages I believe two issues before that), so I’m wondering if they just don’t have that many people that can do them fast enough. Gondaira is a machine, but I do find it weird that his most recent one was literally just coloring in the first page of the chapter, makes me wonder if he got called up last minute. It’s also strange seeing STONE get a regular color page this issue, especially since it’s probably going to get a cover relatively soon. Kaisen’s been on break a decent amount recently too, so maybe they just don’t have time which leads to this situation? I don’t know. I’m also not questioning the fact that Mashle and Samurai got these, they both clearly deserve them (unlike a certain other series that got one this issue). Just find it weird that this happened again with a different pair of series.

And now we get to the big news. We have info on the second new series, Amenofuru! Gotta say, when I saw the little preview image in the corner of last issue’s preview…a battle manga that involves sweets, surprisingly, wasn’t at the top of my list of what it could be about. I’m excited though! I think the last series where it was clear it was going to be a battle manga from the start was Zipman!! all the way back in December of 2019 (remember when we had hope in the world still? Me neither). Zipman!! wasn’t the best, but I enjoyed it still. I’m also not expecting something like Toriko but with candy instead of meat or something like that (ironic that this is announced the week Build King was cancelled now that I think about it), but if it’s something like Food Wars (;( ) where the battles are like bakeoffs or taste offs, I think I’d be cool with it too. 2021’s batch of new series has been really good so far (knock on wood). I may not like all of the series, but the only one that I was completely out on from the start so far is Nine Dragons’. I got Matsui back, I got Blue Box serialized, now give me my surfing manga.  

Also, awhile ago I mentioned the spine of issues having characters on them. I think last I updated, Zoro was on #11 (the one with Nine Dragons’ first chapter). Since then, we got Bakugo (My Hero), Yuno (Black Clover), Ryusei (DR. STONE), Megumi (Kaisen), Mutsumi (Yozakura), Lance (Mashle)…and then Magu-chan and Ruri last issue….and THEN they did Fuuko (Undead)…like, I actually have no idea how they view Undead at this point. Middle lower TOC placements, they skipped over UNDEAD at first (I thought for sure if they were going to skip one, it’d be Yozakura), the sales aren’t growing fast enough to justify pushing it as a future pillar…like, what do they view Undead as? Also, I think this is acknowledgment that Magu-chan is at least popular in the magazine, because the sales definitely don’t show that. I wonder if they’re going to skip Roboco after seeing that it’s flopping now. Wait, the EiC is still Nakano? Oh, nevermind then.  
 
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 still like Witch Watch a great deal, but Blue Box definitely made my excitement for it go down a decent bit. I like that parallel between them as children not wanting friends and now Moi and Kan willing to work with each other and blooming into a good friendship eventually. I also like that for Niko’s sake, they’re willing to put their issues aside to help her. However, I feel like…it just sort of lost some wind because of Blue Box’s existence. I honestly don’t know how to put it. I don’t think this was worse than previous chapters, but it just didn’t do it for me this week…I don’t really get it either. Hope it’s not a trend.


MY HEART! MY HEART IS BROKEN T_T AI DESERVES THE WORLD!

A lot of people have been saying that the format has been repetitive for a bit and that this is boring…but they’re completely missing the point of these fights. Aside from the fact that all these Tanpopo people are NOT redeemable (no, just because Mizuki wanted to protect Ai does not make him a good person), it was meant to show how demented the doctor is as a person. He is pure evil and deserves some kind of retaliation for the humanity that he robbed from all these people. Are all the Nijigana generals good people? Naw, but they’re all victims and the interesting thing is seeing how they all reacted to their trauma. Akai was angry at the world and needed someone to accept her anger. Fujisawa was a remorseless killer and needed someone to put him down. Aonuma was empty and was looking for some way to express the gratitude he lost. Cha-cha was arrogant despite his illness and needed humbling. Mizuki lost his humanity, but found someone to care for, realized he was scum and chose death to “fix” his mistakes. Ai was completely destroyed mentally. Its chapters like these that convince me that people that don’t like Yozakura don’t actually read the chapter. Actually pay attention to what they say and what happens and you’d see that there’s more to this than similar structures to fight.  


The dojinshis write themselves at this point. Suzu is going to die of thirst if Matsuri isn’t turned back by chapter 100 at this rate. Aside from that, it was a nice slice of life chapter and helped incorporate Rochka and Ungai into the cast in a natural way. I enjoy these kinds of chapters more than the arcs, but I also realize that the actual story has a lot going for it and it shouldn’t be gone for that long.


This is 100% getting cancelled. You cannot convince me that any of this was planned from the start. It’s doing the TPGW thing of timeskipping to the next point of the story instead of going there naturally. No successful story goes “prologue over, two chapters later, we start the first chapter of this story”. That’s the sign of trying to retcon the crap that didn’t work and make people forget, and failing at it. They completely went against the point of Aiai’s love for crimes (it was originally a thing to show she’s unhinged and will do whatever to find her kidnapper, the one criminal she MIGHT have actually loved and…man, I don’t want to get into that. Now it’s meant to be sympathetic for the criminals and show that she actually has a heart), they’re just throwing nonsense now with her being able to teleport or change costumes quickly (and she’s actually doing it as we see this chapter) and not bothering to explain how she’s doing it. It lost the little focus it had completely. This is done.  


Taiki’s not the only one in love. I absolutely ADORED this first chapter. This was the romance story I’ve been waiting years for. This is the series that I’ve been seeking since The Quintessential Quintuplets ended, and if it keeps up this quality, it might be the series that finally fills the void in my heart that’s been there for five years since Nisekoi ended (it’s been five years since Nisekoi ended?! I’m going to be six feet under at this rate…). It just does sooooo much right as well as appeal to me directly. From the obvious thing of having one of the main characters be a basketball player, to having her be a hoodie kind of girl, to even small things like the name tags for characters (especially the detail of their sport being the thing that makes the line separating grade and name). I think this was the third best first chapter I’ve ever read from a Jump manga since I’ve been following series as they come out (behind Yozakura and DR. STONE). The feeling that this was going to be an absolutely amazing series from the start was here, and something I only felt three times previously: DR. STONE, Act-age, and Yozakura.

I don’t want to spoil it, but next issue we’re talking about the Blue Box oneshot and how it differs from the series, so specifics are going to wait till then, but some of the other things I loved about this first chapter was that it felt so un-Jump like. There was comedy here, but it felt like it was more focused on telling a story and establishing characters, and they’re all enjoyable! The art was great, but distinct from the rest of the lineup. I appreciate the Wayne Gretzkey quote in a sports manga. Makes me think the author pays attention to a lot of small details to make his story better. Even the ending doesn’t come off as out of nowhere. There were a lot of context clues to hint to you that it was going to happen after the bombshell drops. It did a better job of making a solvable mystery than i tell c did (no, I won’t let this go). I love this to death. Please let this live.



Also known as the eulogy to Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro’s career.

Build King debuted in issue #50 of Weekly Shonen Jump for 2020, three years removed from the one shot that started this whole series. Once regarded as one of the two future pillars of Jump alongside Eichiro Oda, Shimabukuro followed up a pretty success gag manga series with Toriko years later. It was meant to be the third pillar of Jump for years to come alongside One Piece and Naruto…except it never lived up to the hype. It sold I believe a peak of 400k for a volume, but it eventually lost all momentum and ended without much buzz in 2016, a couple weeks after Bleach and Nisekoi. Two years later, he released the Build King one shot as a celebration for Jump’s 50th anniversary and it came with what would turn out to be the most puzzling promise that I think doomed the series from the start: if the one shot was popular enough, it would be eventually serialized as a full series. We see that happen a lot in Jump. Blue Box, the series that is replacing Build King this issue, debuted as a one-shot last year and was met with universal praise and was really popular for a one shot. That is where the issue lies though. Build King came out in April of 2018. The actual series came out in December of 2020, and almost released in 2021. That is an almost three-year gap. If it took that long to get the series serialized, AND it made drastic changes (we’ll get there), something tells me that one shot wasn’t actually popular at all. So why would it get serialized? Well, one, it feels like Jump is struggling to get interesting series these days so maybe that’s it. Two, the editor for Toriko was one Hiroyuki Nakano. Guess who’s the editor in chief of the magazine now? I hate this hack of an editor so much.

Well, it eventually got the call and made it into Jump, and they were definitely doing everything they could to set it up for promotion if it showed the slightest hint of popularity. It was in a batch of two, with the second series being a relatively unknown mangaka’s first series (you know, maybe I’m jinxing Blue Box and should stop now…), they basically lied right away and said it had extreme popularity from the start, gave it extra pages several times. Wouldn’t be shocked if they had color pages and covers planned for later in the year if it survived too. Anyway, the series trucked along and was almost completely different from the one shot.

I never read the one shot, I hate Toriko and never had an interest in Shimabukuro, but I’ve seen pages from it and I can tell you, the series was such a step down from the original concept. The one-shot MC was kinda ugly, but he at least looked unique and stood out. Both MCs for the series look generic and are still ugly. I actually think Tonkaichi’s design of being a small child but still a muscle freak looks kind of gross. The one shot was an actual unique build battle series, the series was just a boring battle manga that did a terrible job of incorporating building into it. It feels like Shimabukuro didn’t actually care about making his series compelling to read at the start, and sort of just assumed he would get the time to develop a world slowly. I actually think this whole experience was a sign that times are changing.

Back in 2008, Toriko exploded onto the scene. In 2021, Build King tripped and died like a fish on land, and it was for the same reason. In 2021, you can’t have weak characters and rely on your world to carry you far enough where you can eventually maybe develop the characters. Readers nowadays care far more about the character than the world. If the people inhabiting the world aren’t interesting, no one is going to care about it. Look at every single major hit in the past five years since Toriko ended. Kimetsu no Yaiba, Jujutsu Kaisen, Spy x Family, Kaiju No.8, My Hero Academia (it was 2014, but I would say it exploded in 2016 after the anime started), The Quintessential Quintuplets, Kaguya-sama Love is War, Tokyo Revengers. The Promised Neverland is the one major hit in this timeframe where I would argue that the world WAS better than the characters and was big right away (and even then, I would say that what got the series popular were the mind games, not the world). Even potential future hits like Mashle, A Couple Cuckoos, Undead Unluck, Mission: Yozakura Family, Sousen: Beyond the Journey’s End, Blue Lock, ALL of them put far more focus on the characters than the world. That’s just how it is now. “Unique world and great world building” is NOT enough of a selling point for a manga anymore.

I think Shimabukuro just doesn’t work in a modern manga magazine anymore. I think he’d fit in one of those nostalgia based ones that are specifically aimed at older shonen fans, but he just doesn’t appeal to a newer manga fan. His artstyle looks dated, his brand of humor is out of style, his storytelling is far too slow for a new reader of Jump, he doesn’t seem to get what works today. This might have been disappointing for him, but I hope that Shimabukuro can turn the page on Build King and make a better series next time. Just don’t be in Jump please so I can ignore it.  


Back like we never left! April has arrived meaning more Jump series releasing! This month, we have My Hero Academia (30), Black Clover (28), DR. STONE (20), Me and Roboco (3), Hardboiled Cop and Dolphin (3), and the debuting Build King and SAKAMOTO DAYS! In addition, the recently concluded AGRAVITY BOYS (5) and final volume of Moriking are here.

Sales Data for April 5th-11th:

SAKAMOTO Days - I think there’s something here. After 10 days, it’s at 15k. I think that makes it the third best selling new series from 2020 now (excluding Burn the Witch). Phantom Seer proves that these sales don’t guarantee safety, but I think we can deduct that SAKAMOTO is also popular in the magazine as well, so I would say that if it keeps this up, SAKAMOTO is going to get some promotion as well. I also heard that it’s sold out in a lot of places, so that could be affecting it too, but we’ll see how volume 2 goes. June is going to be a livelier month than April, let’s see if it can stand out from the pack then.

Build King - In 10 days, did 7k…which is not good, but still better than most flops…but it’s also by Toriko’s mangaka so there was no way these sales would be considered satisfactory. I know I basically yelled at this series the entire time because the only reason why it got anything was because of Toriko…but that does also work both ways. Everything it got was because the author did a mega hit before, but that also means it has to live up to expectations that previous series creates, even if it shouldn’t necessarily be as high. No wonder it got cut instead of Dolphin.

Phantom Seer died for this. Magu-chan is going to die for this. Dolphin is going to die for this. i tell c is probably going to die for this. This series makes me a hateful being. So, after two weeks, Roboco is declining. Roboco was at 14k after two weeks for volume 2 (WITH Oricon week 1 numbers), and week 2 here is at 12k (and probably less because Shoseki usually overestimates, rather than under). The sales are getting WORSE, and yet this is still going to live for no reason.
   
Dolphin - Yeah, this is about what I expected. Beating AGRAVITY by week 2, but not really growing. I think this is about what we expected. Salvation is not coming for it. Shame but oh well. I think Tamura could do something cool on Jump+ and he’d probably have the leeway to accomplish that.

LOL Moriking. What a sad embarrassment.


It’s been like, three months since we last talked about anime and sooooo much was announced/happened. There is one big thing I want to talk about though so let’s shoot through the rest first.

My Hero Academia season 5 started! The first cour is a divisive arc, but the second one should be really good, one of the most highly liked arcs in the entire series. We’ll see how it goes. You can check out the OP here and the ED here. I feel like these are middle of the road for the series. Can’t really fault them, KANA-BOOM did the last opening and they’re probably my favorite band at the moment (rest in peace, BACK-ON. It’s been like 3 years and I’m still sad over it ;( ) and Polaris was the best opening since ODD FUTURE. I’ve never really cared about the EDs either.

DR. STONE season 2 came and went. It adapted my favorite arc and while I’m behind at the moment, from what I’ve seen, they adapted it loyally so no complaints there. They announced season 3 (because they would obviously do one) and that’s when my favorite character gets shine so I’ll look forward to it.

Jujutsu Kaisen ended its first season and it definitely left its mark on the world. All around amazing anime and look forward to season 2 when that gets announced. What we did get though, was an announcement for Volume 0, aka the prequel. Great move because unlike Demon Slayer’s movie, this is canon but also something that isn’t necessary, so you aren’t punished if you skip out on it. It also can serve as an amazing introduction to the series itself without making a newcomer feel lost, but also not feel like they’re missing out if they don’t want to watch the anime. Good stuff all around. You can check out the teaser trailer here.

The Promised Neverland season 2 ended up being anime original content…skipping Goldy Pond as a result. You know, I already said that this series was the biggest disappointment for me last year and that it was garbage by the end, but at least it had Goldy Pond which was a really good arc and probably could have salvaged the anime. I could pretend that’s where the series ended and see the one amazing arc in animated glory…and then they skip it and went an even worse route. I’m sure when the manga ended, most people were thinking that Shirai was just burned out and could probably write something fine later on. Apparently, he helped write this anime original second season and from what I’ve heard…I actively never want to see him in Jump again. It is so clear that Goldy Pond was a “fluke” (and to be fair, it was basically a generic battle arc, so it isn’t that hard) and that the only reason why the escape was so “amazing” (I think it’s good, but it’s not the best first arc in manga history) was because he had a year to plan it before serializing it. Literally everything he’s done after Goldy Pond was complete garbage (and no, that unrelated one shot he did after the series ended wasn’t good either).

…Oops, that wasn’t even the big thing I wanted to talk about. TPN just makes me mad. The actual biggest series of focus I want to talk about is, you guessed it, Black Clover. It got a movie! It is so ironic, I think Black Clover was the first “big” Jump series I was around for to read the manga, see the anime get announced, and see the anime adaptation as it was happening, and I think the general consensus was that a movie wasn’t ever going to happen because its not as successful and that the work place was chaos, so to see it actually get one, it’s kind of cathartic. Every good thing comes at a price though, and this one was…the anime is now over after four years of continuous episodes.

It feels like the end of an era honestly. Back in the day, weekly series was the bread and butter of Jump. It felt like every series that got an anime was weekly. And then, at some point, anime fans realized that weekly anime kind of suck. And more big series started going the seasonal route. Black Clover feels like it’s the last relic of that era. I know there’s still weekly anime coming out now, and more will come after Black Clover, but it feels like Black Clover is the last big Jump series that’s going to get a weekly anime for a very long time, if not ever. It also feels like the last “traditional” successful battle manga out there. Every other battle manga feels like there’s some kind of gimmick or focuses on something aside from the battle that makes it cool or unique. Black Clover feels like the last series where the draw is fights between hot blooded characters.

So, in a way, it feels like my “childhood” is ending. Not in that Black Clover is my childhood and it’s gone now, I was already an adult by the time it started airing. The type of battle series Black Clover is though, I actually think it’s going to be the last of its kind (not counting ongoing stuff like One Piece). I also have a soft spot for the anime even if it’s not something I ended up watching all the way through since I read the manga, mainly because the season it aired was the first one that I started watching anime seasonally. Is it weird to be nostalgic for a series that isn’t really your childhood? I don’t know, but I’ll miss the anime because it also means the manga’s end is sooner than we may think. I hope that movie shines like a diamond though.

Annddd we’re back! Apologies for that. Let’s just jump straight into it this week.

Q: How many series debuted last year? For this we’re counting #1-52 of Jump’s 2020, so series that came out in 2019 but were released in issue #1 or #2 count.

Previous Answer:

Next we meet, the resurrection of battle shonen commences, hopefully! Till then, remember: support the official release!

My blood is boiling because of this hot-blooded battle action…or is it because the sweets are killing me? Let’s find out in this edition of Making 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 #20 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 4/18/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue(s) Preview:

Yeah, I guess that’s it for i tell c. There’s too many better performing series for it to just stick around the bottom forever and hope it gets a fanbase. There’s no reason for them to do that either. Also, it might be because Google Translate sucks, but the author recently tweeted work for the two volumes of the book is almost done…which kinda implies that it’s going to be two volumes only. To fill that volume, it would need to end at some point between #25 and #27…which as we’ll see is very possible. In addition, it’s getting extra pages, and honestly at this point I take that as a bad sign because the only series that repeatedly get those are ones that are about to end (see TPGW, Phantom Seer, Guardian of the Witch, etc.).

It’s also not looking good at all for Nine Dragons’. They can wait for the sales for this one since i tell c is worse off and they have Dolphin and HSF (I don’t care about the high rankings. They are not keeping a 3k seller long term if they cancelled Mitama) to cancel to make room (and if they want to do four new series next batch, they can axe Magu-chan or *gasp* Roboco first), but I definitely would not bet on it performing well. Meanwhile, Witch Watch is still holding pat (though I wonder if that will last by the time Blue Box is ranking) and with a color page for Elusive Samurai this issue, the vets from the last batch are prevailing so far.

I think this is the lowest Roboco has ever gotten, and it’s interesting how all four of those series from that batch are at the bottom and right next to each other (and that the only successful one is the one in the bottom 3…). It was just over a year ago where this batch seemed so promising and possible that two or three hits would come out of it…and now there’s only one that could be considered a success and even that one is declining. Anyway, I HOPE this is them going back on the Roboco push at least a little. I won’t lie and I’ll say I wish it was second to last place (because actual last could mean it’s the “end of magazine gag” and it definitely doesn’t deserve that), but I also realize that there’s at least 5 other series that should go before it, so I understand that it’s not going to bottom out right away. This SHOULD be the end of its constant top 5 push though because it’s just clear that isn’t the actual state of the series. WILL it though? Considering Nakano is still EiC…no, probably not.

To add to my confusion, Undead decided to shoot up to top 5 this week…yeah, I don’t know at this point. I think the mid-tier of the TOC at the moment is Undead, Yozakura, Mashle, SAKAMOTO, and Witch Watch. Any one of these could be top 5 in a given week, but the lowest they’re going to get is probably 9th or 10th. I’m not worried about Yozakura yet because it’s essentially in the same spot as always, it’s just there’s more series ranking because we have a full lineup at the moment and that makes it look worse than reality. I also think SAKAMOTO is going to be around here for a bit, probably shooting up if volume 2 does better in June.

Looking at this TOC, honestly…excluding Candy Flurry (formerly Ame no Furu) which I can’t say anything about yet since the series is only one chapter and it wasn’t based on a one shot I love like Blue Box, this might be my favorite line up in years. In terms of what I like, I think it actually matches up to 2013-14 Jump, which had everything I loved, even if I wasn’t reading them back in 2013-14 (if you look at this random TOC from 2013, the only series there that’s over 20 chapters that I don’t really like is Toriko, and I’ve never read Kochikame or Soul Catcher(S) so no opinion on them). Out of the entire lineup, the only series I don’t like at all are Undead, HSF, i tell c, and Roboco, and two of them are going to be gone by the end of summer and Roboco is probably gone by the end of 2021. I don’t care about Nine Dragon’s but aside from that, I either really like or want to really like everything in the lineup (I’m still holding on to hope that Mashle wins me back!). I know a lot of people say that Jump isn’t what it used to be and that the lineup is really weak now, and sales wise, that might be true, but I just don’t agree quality wise. I think the lineup is as good as any other generation, if not better. There’s ton of varieties, we have good ole battle action, romcoms are back on the menu, and even if I don’t care about the main one they brought back sports to Jump. I may complain a lot about placements and sales, but that’s just my opinion of Jump under a business-like analysis. If I were just talking as a fan, I actually really like where the lineup is now.

One last thing, Jump is doing another one shot promotion, this time marketing it as a one-shot in five consecutive issues for spring. Not many people I’m excited about, but there are some notable names here. In #23, Nakama Tadaichi is doing a one shot. If you don’t know who that is, he did a, if I recall correctly, pretty well received one shot back in 2019 called Tokyo Grind Horror Channel. He also competed in the 2017 GFC, so now he’s the second participant from that competition that made it back to the main magazine before the winner Masaoki Shindo (he HAS to be coming at some point, right?). In #25, Yu Odoriba is doing a one shot. He did MY LITTLE MARS last year and it was pretty well received online, but I wasn’t really feeling that one, so I hope this one is better. Other than that, we’ll see how it goes with these people. Since they’re doing this, I’m assuming we aren’t getting a new series until at least #27 (if you’re keeping track, Ayakashi started in #28 last year. If they want to do an anniversary cover for it, they probably wouldn’t start a new batch until at least #30, unless they really don’t care about being on time anymore).

T-shirt tangent:

 
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 can’t lie, I’ve already given up on this series. I’ll still read it because I read everything in Jump and I would say this is the first chapter I would actively say was bad, but I already do not care about this series at all. It was always going to be an uphill battle for a baseball manga, but I just don’t have it in me to get invested. I think all the characters are either dull, or annoying. They finally got to a game! I don’t like that they went with more explaining the strategy over showing the action approach for it. This really just does nothing for me and am hoping that it’s gone sooner rather than later. That being said, I don’t think there’s anything inherently bad about the series (other than the rival with the swirly glasses. The swirly glasses troupe is one of my least favorite in all of anime/manga and almost every single character that wears those, I end up hating a lot.), it’s just not for me because it’s baseball. If it was any other sport, I’d probably still be open to it being here long term.


Kazama is a fun character and I’m glad that he’s getting some time to shine right now. I dig the relationship he has with Tokiyuki and how Tokiyuki has already taken quite the liking to him. This relationship reminds me of Itona and Class 3E from Assassination Classroom, but not as extreme or stretched out. I can’t wait to see how these two are able to escape from the villains with the order. Also really glad that characters aside from Tokiyuki were on a color page ^_^


I figured this was as good as time as any to revisit what I said in the past about the arc. All they’re really doing this chapter is explaining how the culling game works and that’s fine, but it was just text dumps for most of it, and like, that’s fine I guess. Hiatus x Hiatus does that all the time and people love that, but I would have appreciated a little more. I did like that Hakari is also finally going to enter the plot. He was hyped up with Okkatsu, but unlike the later, we don’t have any prequel series or anything to have a basis for Hakari other than that he’s probably the strongest student at Tokyo’s Jujutsu High. Can’t wait to see what he can do.

I’m fine with Okkatsu now. I was right to say that he would actually like Itadori. Him doing that was just an act and that IS something I could buy Okkatsu from volume 0 doing. I also like that him and Maki are still keeping up the friendship they developed before Okkatsu left. I also like that he’s being active in trying to save Gojo because that’s still something he would do. However…not really sure where the copycat aspect of his powers really come from still. In volume 0, Okkatsu was just a powerful dude with a giant curse (that he exorcised, still not sure why Rika is here…) and can use a sword. I don’t really get where the copycat aspect of it comes from, and I thought that would have been more Hakari since we know nothing about him yet and he could surpass Gojo someday based on Gojo’s own opinion…that’s just weird.

I’m looking forward to the culling game starting eventually, but I’m worried that’s going to take like another twenty chapters. Then again, if everything goes right, Jujutsu Kaisen is supposed to end in 2023 according to Akutami-sensei, so I don’t think he’s going to waste that much more time.


I am absolutely in love with Blue Box. That color page was absolutely gorgeous. Taiki and Chinatsu just have so much natural chemistry already that I find it really enjoyable. Sure there’s some clichés here and there (what a shock, both Taiki and Chinatsu like Jump in a sports series!), but none of them detract from my enjoyment of the series and I want to see how they develop. I like that Taiki already established a goal to strive for and that him blindly saying stuff does have consequences, even if he had good intentions in mind with his words. I also like that we’re sort of emphasizing the rom part of romcom for once. The last series that did that was…Cross Account? And that wasn’t good. I’m really excited to see where Blue Box goes from here and it already seems like it’s developing a fanbase.

Plus that Takagi-san reference at the end! (let’s pretend that doing x because you were embarrassed isn’t a common occurrence)


That lead color page looks just like Zipman!!’s except its candy instead of powersuits. They know how to get my attention at least.

So, I said this last edition of Making the Jump:

“I’m also not expecting something like Toriko but with candy instead of meat or something like that”

…I was wrong LUL. This actually looks like Toriko but with candy instead. They even have a guy that has a fork for a weapon and it looks like it’s going to be pretty brutal, and honestly? I’m here for it. The main reason why I hated Build King was that Shimabukuro wasn’t even trying to make it stand on its own; he was just relying on people sticking by it because he did Toriko. If this has the fights of Toriko but with better characters that aren’t sacrificed for the sake of #worldbuilding, then that sounds good to me. Plus, this art so far looks way better than anything Shimabukuro did.

The first chapter was good I’d say. It didn’t absolutely blow me away, but I can see the potential here. I mainly think that nothing about this was bad, but nothing about it stuck out either really, and that’s generally not the best start for a Jump manga. The main concept of the 100 candies that can be used as weapons needs to be fleshed out, and I’m not a fan of just saying Tokyo was destroyed and that it affected things, but not actually show how that affected things. I’ve long said you don’t need #WORLDBUILDING and focusing exclusively on that is bad for a Jump manga, but I still think you need enough to set up a hook for the premise. That being said, I do want to see more of this and would not mind if it survived. Is it axebait? Naw. Do I think it’s going to be the next big thing? Right now, no. I still would put this over most of 2020’s new series so 2021 is 4/6.


Man, I’ve just been doing this a lot huh? Well, there’s just so many things I want to preview/give tribute to. This is the last one for awhile though (unless a new batch starts literally after Golden Week). For this one, let’s talk about the mega acclaimed one shot from last year, Blue Box by Kouji Miura!


So, for once, I’m actually doing this comparison AFTER the full series debuted in Jump so I’m going to take a different approach. This time let’s look at the differences between each version and see how much Miura improved it.

• Taiki and Chinatsu were aged down
The biggest change between the one shot and the series was that Chinatsu is now a first year in high school and Taiki is a third year in junior high. I can think of a few reasons for why they did this, the most prevalent being that this artificially increases the length of the story. If they kept it at Chinatsu as a third year and Taiki as a second year, then that basically means we only have one year of focusing on them and it almost definitely ends once they get together. By making them younger though, we’ll have a lot more time to develop the relationship, maybe actually see them as a couple, conflicts that could arise (assuming this doesn’t flop and get cancelled within 20 chapters anyway). Plus, making them younger does help with making Chinatsu and Taiki’s relationship feel more approachable. I don’t know about you, but for me, I would be intimidated to talk to and try to befriend a third year (or senior in high school). I feel like they would look down on me and even if it did happen, I’d be wasting their time because they only have one year left anyway and it’s highly unlikely I’d still be their friend after they graduate. It’s still basically the same relationship here, but there’s just something inherently more approachable about a first year in high school, or maybe that’s just me.

• The boy is on the badminton team instead of volleyball
This is probably the second biggest difference between the one shot and the series. I personally would have preferred if they kept the girl on the basketball team and the boy in the volleyball club, but maybe they felt it was a little on the nose (basketball and volleyball being their two most recent major successes with sports) and wanted to differentiate the series from Kuroko and Haikyu!!, and girls’ basketball is far more unique than another boy playing volleyball. I think the change is fine still since I doubt the sports are the main focus of the series, but I don’t really like badminton as a sport so eh. I do like the possible imagery that could be at play here though. The boy is seeking the girl, and badminton is usually a singles sport while volleyball is always a team one. Perhaps this shift is meant to better showcase the boy’s drive to improve to impress the girl since in volleyball, it’s way easier to get ignored despite making improvements? I can tell you from personal experience in tennis (which is close to badminton), on a bad team like I assume this one is, you don’t really practice doubles. You play doubles, but that’s just so everyone gets a chance to be on the court. The coach is actually just evaluating you on a singles basis and if you stand out, you’re a singles player. So in other words, the change might have been done to better highlight the boy MC’s skills (or lack of them) since if you’re bad, it’s clear in doubles where as in singles, you might just be playing someone too good. Probably looking too much into this though. It could just be because the author’s favorite sport is badminton based on their previous avatar.

• The character Hina Chono
Hina wasn’t in the one shot (or if she was, it was one of the background characters seen at the very end. Not important is my point). I think her presence could mean one of two things. Either we have a love triangle right away (which I’m pretty sure people wouldn’t like at first), or they wanted someone that could stir the pot and cause misunderstandings to happen so we can get conflict in these chapters. Whatever it was, I think she’s a good addition to the cast and helps balance things out because Taiki and Chinatsu are more quiet natured.
 
• The conflict of the chapter
In the one shot, Chinatsu’s main struggle was trying to decide between romance and focusing on basketball. This time around, it seems to be between deciding to move with her family overseas or to stay in Japan. The conflict is resolved in a similar way, with Taiki saying something to Chinatsu that encourages her and leads to the ending (in the one shot, Taiki confesses, and they become a couple, in the series he says aim for nationals and it’s him saying that gets Chinatsu to decide to stay in Japan). This isn’t a huge difference, but it does beg the question if this is going to be a series where they draw out the relationship, or if we get a confession fairly soon and we get more of a relationship-based story instead of a story focused on seeing them try to get together.  

• The ending
The one shot ends with the two becoming a couple and hinting at other couples being born in that gymnasium (hence why it’s Blue Box). We didn’t…quite get there in the series after one chapter. The ending wasn’t something even alluded to in the one shot, but makes sense to happen since its going past chapter 1: Chinatsu moves in with Taiki’s family. I think this is important for two reasons. 1) This opens up the possibility that the relationship could start quickly. They’re always going to be together at this rate and they’ll know each other very well by the time Taiki gets to high school 2) I think this confirms that the serialization version is going to be focused on Taiki and Chinatsu. In his first author comments, Kouji Miura said he would be happy if we thought we’d like to be with Taiki and Chinatsu every week, which implies they’re the main characters. That’s normally a no duh thing…but the one shot actually hints that there could be a shift between different couples, that’s why it was called Blue Box. Now though, they’re focusing on Taiki and Chinatsu. I honestly prefer this. I always thought the “shifting focus to different couples” idea was kind of dumb. For the longest time, detractors of romance hated that most popular romance manga depict how they get together, but stop “before they actually get to the romance” …so, my question is how would shifting the POV couple mitigate that? Wouldn’t that make it worse if anything? They’d be stopping multiple couples’ stories before the “romance happens” to go to a new one. I honestly feel like they just want to complain to complain at this point.

• Chinatsu doesn’t have the ponytail anymore
Chinatsu wore her hair in a ponytail during basketball activities in the one shot. So far, it seems like she just keeps her hair down all the time in the series. I prefer girls letting their hairs down over ponytails, so 100/10 manga now.

So overall, I think the changes (and there actually are a decent amount) make the series not only more fleshed out enough to be a series, but more enjoyable. I think the one shot is still really good as a standalone story, but I vastly prefer the series version. Let’s just hope the series is successful enough where I can compare the anime’s first episode to chapter 1

Back like we never left! April has arrived meaning more Jump series releasing! This month, we have My Hero Academia (30), Black Clover (28), DR. STONE (20), Me and Roboco (3), Hardboiled Cop and Dolphin (3), and the debuting Build King and SAKAMOTO DAYS! In addition, the recently concluded AGRAVITY BOYS (5) and final volume of Moriking are here.

Sales Data for April 12th-18th:

Basically everything fell off, which was to be expected based on this month’s trends and the fact that Magazine and Sunday were releasing manga this week, with almost all of Magazine’s heavy hitters showing up to play plus some promising new series. So yeah, not shocking. I’ll talk about SAKAMOTO DAYS in more detail, but for everything else under it, I’d say bad sign. None of them appeared to have grown at all. They declined if anything.  

SAKAMOTO DAYS didn’t chart this week, so until we get April estimates that’ll probably bump it up a bit, SAKAMOTO did 15k for its first month. I would say that’s pretty decent for SAKAMOTO since it’s a really similar series to Yozakura in the early going, and that did 14k first month. The main difference between the two is that Shueisha learned that they probably should push these 14/15k sellers so that they don’t grow at a snail’s pace, so SAKAMOTO is going to get more love, which is fine. The important thing now is to not Phantom Seer or Roboco itself and show any signs of growth.

LOL Moriking. Mitama died for this.

For some fun, we’re going to have a question every week that revolves around Jump. Be warned though, unlike the rest of Making the Jump, this trivia question can be about any series that ran in Jump! So without further ado –

Q: When was the last time there was a group cover? I’m looking for issue number here, NOT the date.

Last Week's Answer:

I haven’t done an ending for a series yet, so let’s rectify that! This week’s tune is none other than DR. STONE’s second ending, one of my favorite EDs in recent memory.



Man, I’m finally all caught up now and after next week we’re already facing a break Oh well, till then remember: support the official release!

Come aboard, and bring along, all your hopes and dreams! Let’s find what we’re looking for in this edition of Making 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 #21-22 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 4/25/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

(that’s a typo, it should be 21-22)

Next Issue Preview:

Well well well. 15 chapters later, and The Elusive Samurai is already getting a second cover. The push is real! While I am sure the series is really popular already, I’m also aware enough to realize this is more likely because Matsui-sensei’s got clout after doing Assassination Classroom (and also because Jump can’t seem to remember Jujutsu Kaisen came out March 5th, 2018. To be fair, I can’t either! This entire time I thought the anniversary was in February…), so they can trust the cover to him this quickly since the last time a new series got their second cover before volume 1 came out was…like Assassination Classroom back in 2012 and that issue came out the week volume 1 came out while Elusive Samurai volume 1 isn’t until July bare minimum (it’s 99% July, but you never know…). Now, will this backfire? I gave Shimabukuro and Build King so much crap because it didn’t live up to expectations, but Elusive Samurai is in a similar boat, I just think Matsui-sensei can do it. But if Elusive Samurai underperforms after the amazing TOC placements, all the color pages, and now the second cover before series like Ayakashi, SAKAMOTO, and Yozakura got theirs, yeah, it’s going to be terrible. I trust Jump learned after Samurai 8 blew up in their faces, but it’s always good to be cautious.

Speaking of pushes, Mashle in first! The TOC isn’t one for one reception for series, but I can see how chapters from this arc would be the most popular in the magazine, even if I personally don’t really care about most of them. Mashle definitely isn’t undeserving of this first, but I do find it interesting that they did this right after I commented on the fact that Samurai got first before it

I feel like, I’m just bullying these two series at this point, but like, there’s really nothing else to comment on :/ Witch Watch is doing fine at 7th still, but the other two batchmates, boy are they struggling. I feel confident completely writing off i tell c at this point. If the placements haven’t recovered by this point, then I’m pretty sure nothing is saving the series barring miraculous sales for the volume that are not coming. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong, but I’ve seen so many series try what i tell c did and not bounce back. As for Nine Dragon’s, I guess bottom 3 is better than literal last? I think everything I said still applies. If it couldn’t stand out despite fulfilling an obvious niche that people wanted in the magazine, I can’t see how it’s going to bounce back now that there’s another series that also fulfills that niche and is getting way more attention. I wouldn’t be shocked if many of the people that support it only did because it was the only sports series in Jump and now they don’t even care because Blue Box is way better and engaging. Oh well, this is why we should stick to good sports like basketball or soccer (I’ll also accept surfing ).

For the other new series, I honestly think they have high expectations for Candy Flurry now that I think about it.

• They put it with a romcom in the same batch, which while it was an extremely hyped up romcom and probably will also be really successful (…I hope), romcoms still tend to be on the lower scale in terms of success for Jump (for example, Nisekoi which is the longest romcom in Jump history at 25 volumes, still only has 12 million copies in print as of 2018 which is still less than 500k copies per volume). I imagine the thought process for batches is that they either want one series that hard carries the batch and stands out among the rest (Samurai 8, The Promised Neverland, Burn the Witch, Ayakashi; they also thought Build King was that but it ended up being the opposite) or they want a batch where every series is viewed as “equally good” and could ALL be part of Jump’s future (the legendary six batch, Zipman!! and AGRAVITY, Kimetsu and Yuuna, Yozakura and Mitama). I think the Blue Box and Candy Flurry batch is the latter because Blue Box got SO much hype online before the serialization and they made a big deal about the one shot (it was the first one shot that got a vomic since they started the YouTube push, they already rereleased the one shot vomic as one video, and they even did a vomic for another one of his one shots) that I can’t imagine they thought it was a throwaway, plus it was the first series of the batch. I feel like the first series of the batch is always the one they THINK is the best one (Elusive Samurai, Build King, Burn the Witch, Ayakashi, Moriking, Undead were all the most recent first series of a new batch and I think they ALL had the highest expectations of their batches if you compare the pedigree of the other series in them) too, and Blue Box was first, so they clearly think it’s important. But I also don’t think they’re throwing away Candy Flurry either though.

• The main character of the manga is female, which is already an oddity in Jump, but this is a BATTLE manga with a female MC and it doesn’t appear to be ecchi either. The last one of those was like…Jojo’s Part 6 maybe? And that’s still a sequel to a popular series so like, it’s basically unheard of in Jump for a new battle manga to do this. If we include non-battle manga in Jump, then we get Act-age and Promised Neverland…which both were hits (I don’t count Yui Kamio really. Yui SHOULD have been the MC and she was the face of the series, but the boy was the actual MC and that’s part of why it sucked). They don’t do this often so that must mean either a) they have literally nothing else ready to serialize or b) they think it has a lot of potential despite going against their usual trends.

• They gave it an official Twitter before chapter 1 even came out, which the last time they did that was Undead Unluck I’m pretty sure (and they gave AGRAVITY BOYS a really early one when it seemed like it was going to be big too). They also aren’t giving just anything a Twitter too since Magu-chan is still crying, Dolphin has nothing, and I don’t think SAKAMOTO has anything yet either.

• As far as I know, the writer has not done anything at all. No previous series, no published one shot, no recorded entry into a competition that may not necessarily publish winners, there’s literally nothing to reference for them. They don’t do that in Jump. The last series to have a writer that literally has no previous experience was Ziga…and even then there’s a heavily supported theory that he was actually YOKO, that did Dance Club and Shudan! previously (a theory I absolutely refuse to accept because there is no possible way that a talented writer like him made Ziga which was one of the poorest written series I’ve ever seen in Jump), so yeah, they don’t let total newbies do a series for their first work in Jump. It’s highly likely that this is a vet who’s using a pen name, and generally vets have higher expectations than first series newbies.

So yeah, I think Candy Flurry and Blue Box both have high expectations and it’d be cool if an entire batch succeeded. The last time that happened was 2016 with Yuuna and Kimetsu no Yaiba so we’re overdue for a two series batch working out. I don’t think Candy Flurry had a strong enough chapter 1 to say it’s looking good, but I think it could possibly pick up in reception after chapter 2 and 3 if they’re good.


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 think this was a neat ole role reversal and allusion to the start of the manga. Suika is cute incarnate so seeing her cry made me sad as well. My feelings that the ending are coming sooner rather than later were not weakened here, but rather reinforced. You don’t normally do the “callback to the first arc of the series” arc until you basically wrap everything up (like how the “revisit all the areas in a game” part isn’t until the last part of games usually) since doing it before then isn’t as meaningful without the characters essentially completely their character arcs. Here, I would say basically everyone except Suika has a completed character arc (that had one to begin with anyway). She constantly feels like she’s a hinderance to everyone else and now it’s her chance to prove she’s useful. I’m looking forward to these new developments.

My Hero has the same problem One Piece does now: I literally do not care at all about what the main characters are doing at this point. This AfO vs OfA thing I stopped caring about so long ago. I do not care about Deku at all anymore because he’s now completely against what made his character so cool in the beginning. All Might is not interesting at all. They took away all the cool cast members in Class 1A. Nothing actually happened in this chapter aside from Deku moving. I HOPE at some point something cool like Stain showing up again (I think he got broken out too, or could have been written to be included in that prison break at least), Shinsho actually being allowed to be a hero now, literally anything that makes this more than just the Deku show.


I have quite a bit to say about this chapter and the implications, but let’s get this out of the way first: yes, the interaction between Matsuri and his mom was extremely weird. Yabuki is making those dojinshi artists work with all the material he is giving them. That’s it.

So, there was actually quite a bit of foreshadowing in this chapter. First, Suzu is trying to get her own costume now! I’m actually glad about this because it shows that Suzu is not content just being a damsel in distress and wants to do her own thing to help ayakashis. I also thought it was interesting that Matsuri’s mom actually showed up. Seeing that Matsuri isn’t just a “grandparents” kid now, makes me curious about the rest of his family. Are they all also exorcists? Is it just the mom? What exactly does the mom do? So many questions about them.

However, the main thing about the mom that I want to talk about is what this implies about the future of the series. First off, in the author comment for this week, Yabuki says he’s working on a lot of stuff and brought up that the anniversary is coming up. I’m going to take that as confirmation that Ayakashi is going to get a magazine cover at some point for the anniversary, so no, despite what I’m about to say, I don’t think it’s gloom and doom for the series yet.

That being said, I actually do think Ayakashi is struggling in terms of popularity. It’s an ecchi series, so I’m not shocked about the lower rankings…somewhat. I don’t think it’s good when any series, aside from the end of magazine gag manga, is constantly in the bottom 3. To me, that implies that these series are in fact struggling in the magazine surveys or are struggling in terms of volume sales, thus they don’t feel a need to promote them in the magazine. Also, while ecchi series tend to do not as well placement wise…they still do get a decent amount of color pages if they’re successful. Ayakashi has gotten five in its first year…but other than chapter 14 to chapter 18, they’re spread out. And since 2021, it’s been near the bottom when it doesn’t have color pages, plus it doesn’t randomly shoot up like Yuuna and I assume To Love Ru did during their runs. It’s actually just been going down so I don’t think you can actually say that it’s popular despite the rankings. Plus, the sales of each volume have been DECLINING, not growing. We’ll see if that continues in June, but right now you can’t say it’s doing amazing sales wise, even if the numbers themselves are better than most of the magazine. Plus, looking at the actual cover of this issue, not the Viz version (Viz messing something up, WHAT A SHOCK1!), Matsuri is one of the smaller characters on it and not in the front. Taiyo, Andy and Fuuko, and Mash moved up and got bigger, so clearly, they were updating some things there. The fact they didn’t move Matsuri up shows that they view those three as more important.

Now what does this all mean for the series itself? Well, if it’s struggling, then that means the editor is telling Yabuki to do stuff that would appeal to more readers. You know what appeals to more readers in an ecchi series? Going more hardcore with the situations, aka, doing things like having a whale of a time two chapters ago, or having the belly button escapade last chapter, or introducing “Mommy” characters like Matsuri’s mom now. Yabuki’s going for those people. In other words, we’re getting a whole lot less “wholesome” fanservice and way more “fanservice” fanservice if you catch my drift. Will it work? I don’t know. Personally, I like this series way more than Yuuna and To Love Ru, since it’s ecchi but there’s still an interesting plot going on, but for some reason ecchi snobs (imagine being a snob for ecchi of all things) hate this series because it shows some dignity still and think it doesn’t go far enough or the plot isn’t interesting enough to justify this lack of ecchi (because To Love Ru was "masterfully written"). I’m not really the main target audience though so my opinion matters less I guess, so yeah, if we’re entering “wish-fulfillment” stages of fanservice now, I’m going to like the series a lot less.    


I think people are being way too harsh on this series. It’s not the most amazing thing ever, but people are acting like this is an abysmal series that is a disgrace to Jump and it just isn’t that. It’s perfectly fine, and I agree perfectly fine isn’t good enough for Jump probably (see Nine Dragon’s), but this series gets way more hate that makes me scratch my head. I know I made the case that there’s more expectations for this series than the average newbie, but like, christ, them not meeting them yet doesn’t mean it’s bad (and don’t worry, we’ll get to not meeting expectations!).

There was even a decent amount of good in this chapter. We got a better look at Tsumugi’s character, and she’s actually fairly refreshing from a recent Jump battle manga protagonist. Most of them, are either selfless or the lack of personality is their personality, but Tsumugi actually realizes she’s cute and wants to use it to her advantage, and she still has a heart of gold on top of it. I like that her reason for wanting people to like sweets is actually fairly selfish (it’s not because it’s the right thing to do, it’s because she loves lollipops and doesn’t want her favorite sweet to be ridiculed). I like that she acknowledges that she isn’t doing the “smart” thing saving people while trying to escape from officials. I dig that she’s more of a “power” fighter with a giant lollipop instead of being more “speedy” which I feel like doesn’t get as much attention in most battle series.

This isn’t Bone Collection (which was legitimately awful but people praised for some ungodly reason) or Demon’s Plan, this is perfectly fine like Zipman!! was. It just wasn’t nearly as good as what it seemed like it should be based on initial hype (people were waiting YEARS for Yusaku Shibata to come back and I already mentioned how Jump has been hyping up Candy Flurry so far). I don’t think this is axebait at all, but I do think it’s going to be an uphill battle from this point on.


Speaking of not meeting expectations, this chapter is like, the epitome of everything wrong with One Piece nowadays. Wano was hyped up for YEARS as something that would make Marineford “look cute”. Everything post time skip was essentially building up to Wano. All these cool characters were showing up to Wano like CP-0, Marco, the Big Mom Pirates. The Supernovas were gathering on Wano. It was supposed to be an epic arc! And yet…it has underdelivered on almost EVERYTHING since the damn arc started, which is pretty impressive that I still feel this way because Whole Cake Island was depressing. Don’t get me wrong, I think Wano is still technically “good” and is miles ahead of Whole Cake Island…but this has to be the most disappointing arc in the entire series.

Big Mom…christ what did Oda do with Big Mom?! I guarantee you that no other Yonko would be shown anywhere near this incompetent and awfully written if they were put in the same scenarios. No, this payoff for the WORST PLOTLINE IN THE SERIES was not worth the amnesia chapters. He completely ruined Big Mom and I will never take her seriously now, no matter how many times she knocks down clear joke characters like Page One or Ulti next time we see this scene. This does not make Big Mom feel more “complex”, it just makes her feel like a complete joke.

So after ALL THAT HYPING UP the Supernovas and about how the next generation of pirates are ready to take over…the only Supernova that’s about to take anything is Luffy, and maybe Kid if he ever actually finds Big Mom. After hyping up this Supernova vs Yonko showdown…we get the standard Luffy vs final boss fight. Like…this is trash. Luffy at the start of the arc, was barely first commander level. Now he’s suddenly strong enough to beat (cause there’s a 99% chance he wins here, and a 1% chance he loses here but beats Kaido in the next act) the strongest character in the series?! I get One Piece isn’t a “power scaling” series and that Oda will write Luffy to win any battle if he thinks Luffy needs to win it, but this is just crap. All this does is make me not care about fights anymore because now I’ll know it doesn’t matter if x can blow up galaxies or something, if he’s not coming back than Luffy’s going to win and pull something out that is total bs to justify it.

That’s part of my biggest issue with One Piece now. Everything outside of the current focus of the arc is more interesting because I DON’T know what will happen. I already know that Luffy’s beating Kaido here. The Strawhats are beating the Flying Six here. Big Mom’s a joke so I don’t care if Kid eventually kills her. I already know how Wano’s going to end, but Oda is going to drag it for another 50 chapters. What’s going to happen with the Revolutionaries? Are the Warlords done? Will the Marines splinter even more? What’s S.W.O.R.D.S role in the story? What’s Vegapunk up to? All these things are elements I would actually get excited about because they aren’t obvious and there’s so much more potential to expand than just “oh, I guess Luffy actually WILL win now”.

I’ll always love One Piece from the bottom of my heart, but anyone that still says it’s the best weekly manga in the world or the best shonen currently going, I’m sorry but that just isn’t true. Oda is not immune to criticism. He CAN make mistakes.  


I’ll be real. Jump GIGA is coming soon (if it’s not already out. The release date is April 30th I think), but I genuinely don’t care about any of the one shots based on preview images. The only ones that I even bothered keeping note of is Gen Osuka since he did Golem Hearts and I always try to keep tabs on people that have done something in Jump, as well as this one shot named DDDDODGE because it’s soccer I think. There might be other good ones, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there and I’m going to ignore them for now. So instead, I’m gonna be looking at past mangaka who flopped for their first series who I think have potential. Unless we get a lot of news on current series, I’ll probably do two or three of these consecutively for now.  


When we have to use a screenshot of a screenshot of his avatar because Viz didn’t bother saving their author comments from issues before the shift to free online Jump…

2018 was a pretty dark year for Jump. They found Jujustu Kaisen that year and Promised Neverland plus Kimetsu no Yaiba had their anime announced, but they didn’t have much else going for them. Gintama and The Disastrous Life of Saiki K. ended and created a comedy void (which you can argue they still haven’t filled…), this was the year that Soma completely cratered and fell off a cliff both quality wise and sales wise, their big new anime of the year were Hinomaru Zumo (a 30k seller) and Yuuna and the Haunted Hot Springs (a series that continued to decline even after the anime), Black Clover proved once and for all it couldn’t live up to their expectations as the “next Naruto”, and they cut RobotxLaserbeam despite doing alright sales wise and much better than flops. I also think this might be my least favorite year in terms of new Jump series…ever. Throughout the entire year there were only four series debuting that made me feel like there was something other than trash there: Jujutsu Kaisen and Act-age which I was behind both right away (and I even had faith in Act-age from the start. I still miss my girl, Yonagi T_T), Bozebeats which had a really good start but fell apart basically right after that (the mangaka got a pretty good gig though. He draws the Kimetsu no Yaiba Gaidens now, I think a successful Fate manga, and probably made more money than he ever would making an original series in Jump), and Alice to Taiyo.

Alice to Taiyo was a music manga by Takahide Totsuno and I found it really interesting. Recently, we’ve been getting “un-Jump-like” series in the main magazine. Blue Box feels like a Magazine series, SAKAMOTO DAYS felt really dark and rough which wouldn’t really have flied in 2010 or something, Magu-chan is a slice of life manga we never would have gotten during the Big 3 Era, and of course Act-age (T_T). That started in 2018 I would argue, and Alice to Taiyo was cut right from that vein, feeling like a Sunday manga. However, it was kind of before its time and ended up flopping.

The reason I said this was because 2018 was sort of the last year where it felt like Jump was trying to force itself to get hits that fit the “Jump mold” instead of just getting interesting stories that have the spirt of Jump, but don’t look it, if that makes sense. If we look since Jujutsu Kaisen, which while really good, is still basically just a battle manga that looks really cool, I’d say other than Mashle and now SAKAMOTO DAYS, all of the successes since haven’t been the same. They’ve been character driven stories with the plot being more based around personal development instead of action stories driven by the goal or journey of the characters. Chainsaw Man is the struggle of a boy who never had anything trying to find his worth in life, Yozakura is the story of a boy who lost his family regaining the light in his life again thanks to his new one, Undead is the story of a guy that wants to die learning about the good in life thanks to a girl that tried ending it all, Ayakashi is the story of an exorcist trying to revert back to his original state while discovering himself. None of them are about the desire to be the best in something, or save the world from something, the stories are personal. They aren’t really traditional Jump stories. Alice to Taiyo is in a similar vein to these stories. From what I’ve seen, his other one shots are like that.

Takahide Totsuno has this warmth to their stories despite their darkish premises. In Alice to Taiyo, the story was about Taiyo being antisocial and wanting to break out of his shell but couldn’t, so Alice helped him (you know…saying this outloud, this makes me think this is where my love for Yozakura comes from since Taiyo was like this with Mutsumi too…). The series had really good chemistry between the two MCs, but the plot wasn’t really “there”, which wasn’t a successful series back in 2018. Nowadays, plot driven stories aren’t the be all end all, but that basically sentenced Alice to Taiyo to death right away back then. I just really like the way Takahide does relationships between characters. That’s my favorite aspect of stories, and I think they did them really well by making them feel realistic while still being part of a manga.

I’ve been keeping my eye on Takahide Totsuno, seeing what they’ve been up to since I think now they would work really well in Jump. They did a one shot in the 2020 Summer edition of Jump GIGA that looked nice and apparently they did a one shot in Weekly Young Jump back in February of 2021, so they’re still doing work. I’m expecting them to get a series somewhere soon. I definitely think they have a hit series within them. Not sure if it’ll actually ever materialize, but I think it’s possible.

Next time, I finally get to talk about one of my beloved lost loves.


We did three weeks of April sales, and since realistically two or three series are going to actually have numbers in week 4, I figured that now was the best time to cover March monthly sales like I promised I would…well, part of it. I’ll be real with you. I waited as long as I could to release this edition of Making the Jump because I was waiting for the March Shoseki monthly estimates to come out, and normally it takes at most a month for them to be done. It’s May now when I’m writing this and…they still aren’t out. What I’m going to do instead then is leave what I don’t have blank unless it’s obvious that things are massively different (aka, it’s obvious Mashle did significantly better this month than previous ones) and go back and update this once March’s estimates are out. I’ll also bring it up when I do update this.

Sales Data for March:

Jujutsu Kaisen. 1.6 million…Jesus Christ. The wave is here and I’m riding it.

Chainsaw Man. Almost 500k in a month and no anime yet. Part 2 might actually be one of the biggest manga in history if it keeps up at this rate.

Mashle is on another level now. Including the upcoming volume 6, the series has 1.4 million copies in circulation. That plus monthly totals like these clearly show that the cream puff connoisseur is a hit in the making.
Yozakura.

Undead.

Ayakashi.

Kaiju No. 8 is the next confirmed mega series. It outdid CHAINSAW MAN ON THE RISE at 2 volumes. The sky is the limit at this point. It might be a million seller by the time an anime happens (cause it’s definitely happening now).

For some fun, we’re going to have a question every week that revolves around Jump. Be warned though, unlike the rest of Making the Jump, this trivia question can be about any series that ran in Jump! So without further ado –

Q: Simple one that I can’t possibly mess up. What’s the next series celebrating it’s anniversary, assuming it doesn’t get cancelled before then?  

Last Week's Answer:

So since I’ll have no other reason to ever talk about it again…I’m just going to link the PV for Yozakura volume 7 with the custom song.


Jump’s on break May 2nd. Lucky for me, I had some stuff on the back burner that I can probably finish on time. So next time, we’ll either do a recap of 2021 so far (since this is basically the half way point) or another edition of Magazine Rack! Till then remember: support the official release!

Lately, I’ve been getting really into Weekly Shonen Magazine’s lineup. I dare say I’m liking it more than Jump’s lineup (even though the lineup is slowly filling up with series that interest me). This week we aren’t Making the Jump…this week we’re grabbing something new from The Magazine Rack.  

This isn’t going to be the traditional TOC analysis I do. Instead, here, I’m going to list the roster and give my opinions on them. It’ll be a quick couple of sentences, since there’s some series I want to focus on for The Spotlight and I’ll also briefly give my opinion on their standing in the lineup. There’s also no particular order for the series on the list, other than the frequently/currently on hiatus series being the bottom. I also excluded the three or four newest series from here because simply they’re too new to make any kind of prediction or guess to how they’re perceived.

Couple of Cuckoos - The fastest rising star in the magazine at the moment, Couple of Cuckoos has lived up to the potential it had sales wise. The series is still quite good, but it’s nothing special. However, it keeps growing a lot and is fast tracked to carry Magazine soon.

 Eden’s Zero - It saddens me that this is the only Hiro Mashima series that didn’t get way more popular than it should have, because it’s been consistently good. This is by far Mashima’s best written manga and hasn’t fallen apart yet. However, this just feels like a case of obligation because Mashima made Fairy Tail, because nothing else about its performance really suggests its actually popular. The anime probably will do nothing for it, it gets promotion that most series don’t (like actually getting a cover. A lot of new series don’t even get that in Magazine), Orient got moved out of the magazine and Eden’s Zero does slightly better (and it’s not like Magi was a nothing series. That used to be top 10 on Oricon yearly sales too, and you could argue it ending killed Sunday), most of this just feels like because Fairy Tail, instead of because Eden’s Zero. It deserves better, but oh well.  

Tokyo Revengers - For the longest time, I wasn’t a believer, but after seeing it consistently do really good on Oricon in terms of backlog, new volume releases, pretty good social media presence, a live action film that’s actually picking up buzz in Japan and seeing how amazing the anime is…I finally believe. I think Tokyo Revengers is a future pillar. I’ll even take it further, I think if lasts long enough (because I’ve never read the manga but have heard that the series is ending supposedly), it could actually be Magazine’s flagship. It has EVERYTHING, from unique concept, to fulfilling a niche that nothing in the market’s really got covered (delinquent series were big in the 80s and this manga sort of brought them back), to amazing characters, to actually being good. Everything about it screams like it can become the most important title in Magazine’s lineup. The ONLY thing going against it is…it could be ending soon. To be fair, this isn’t really new for Magazine (Quints was a pillar for Magazine alongside Seven Deadly Sins during the end of its run, while being under the radar for most of it), but they really need a series that will go for a long time that can do 300k sales consistently. It sucks that it took this long for Revengers to take off to this level (while still having another gear), but they can milk this while they can.

Smile at the Runway - I’ve been wanting to check out the anime for Smile at the Runway but haven’t gotten around to it. Its anime is done now, and it’s still around Eden’s Zero in terms of sales, and not backed by Hiro Mashima sooo, I think it’s safe, but probably won’t get promotion unless there’s literally nothing else that issue. I also saw a recent author comment where they said the most recent chapter (at the time), reeks of cancelation but it’s not the last chapter, sooooo, it might not also be safe/might also be concluding soon if they have to give that warning. (apparently it is ending soon!)

I Don’t Know if it’s LOVE or MAGIC - The series is just fun. Nothing complex, but sometimes you just like reading “trash” (and we’ll get to the concept of “trash” soon). This probably won’t be super long, but that’s fine. It’s slightly above the average axebait series.

Shangri-La Frontier ~Kusoge Hunter, Kamige ni Idolman to su~ - I think Shangri probably has the potential to become really big someday; it’s got all the traits for a popular series after all. Web novel adaptation (I think the WN is also popular), “trash” isekai/game world genre, OP MC straight out of a LN. It’s got it all really to take off While most of that was an exaggeration, can’t say I really like the series. It’s one of the few Magazine series that actually has a weekly simulpub (on Crunchyroll), and yet I still don’t read it because I think this is boring, which is really weird because it’s basically an SAO rip off and you’d think I’d be all over that. There’s just something about the charm not being there like in SAO. I think it’s the characters maybe, because I love SAO’s cast, while I could not care less about Shangri’s characters so far. It just feels like action action action action, which…I guess is cool for a bit, but it gets boring real fast unless the characters are endearing (see Mission: Yozakura Family or SAKAMOTO DAYS). That being said, I can totally see this becoming the flagship of Magazine someday, but I can’t put a series that doesn’t do 100k in sales for its newest volume as a future pillar yet. That doesn’t seem right.  

Girlfriend, Girlfriend - I feel like I’m in the minority for Girlfriend, Girlfriend, and even then I’m not convinced of my own stance. I don’t really have anything other than a feeling, but I feel like Girlfriend, Girlfriend is going to be way shorter than people realize. This concept is refreshing and funny, but it’s also something I can’t see going on for really long unless they add more characters to the situation, and Naoya has made it clear over and over and over (to an annoying degree at this point, personally) that he’s “only” keeping it to two-timing. Adding more girls to the relationship would go against the series, but it’s going to be get old eventually if they only keep it at two, which is why I think it might end next year (around 100 chapters) and I also feel like that’s sort of reflected in the sales so far. It started out higher than what people probably assumed it would, and it’s gotten pretty far for what it is…but it also feels like there isn’t much more growth here since the sales have already reached the stagnating phase. I enjoy the series every week, but it’s also not something I absolutely need in my life. I also don’t think the anime is going to do much considering it’s going to be bad probably…but all star casts can save “bad” anime (see, The Quintessential Quintuplets season 1) and this cast is definitely all star (aside from Nagisa), so who knows. I really don’t see this making it past 100k sales per volume though.

To Your Eternity - I actually don’t know why this series isn’t more popular than it is. I’ve only watched one episode of the anime, and it was fine, but even I find it weird that it’s been stuck at 20k seller for so long, which is why I said that it’s just there instead of an anime mainstay or series with promise. It’s by a person that did a critically acclaimed work (A Silent Voice), the premise feels like something people would eat up (the boy journeying through the world trying to find Paradise feels like it would be popular right away), it puts way more focus on being a psychological study on someone than about being a weekly series (aka it’s #deep), it has good art from what I’ve seen of the manga. I actually don’t know why it does so mediocre, but the fact that it’s like a perfect storm of everything that people should like, but apparently they don’t, makes me think that there isn’t going to be much of an anime boost here. Who knows, maybe I’m wrong, but it just feels like a series that’s never going to get remotely big no matter how hard they try.

Fire Force - I think Fire Force is the “flagship” of Magazine right now if there has to be one. It’s probably the most recognizable series in the magazine and it’s barely below if not surpassed Diamond of the Ace Act II in sales at this point. The anime is pretty popular, and it’s a good ole fashioned battle series so the casuals will like it more. It’s ending sometime this year probably, but for now it’s the face of Magazine. I still think it’s fine and creative…but remember how I warned that it can get as weird as Soul Eater with its fanservice? Yeah…it got as weird as Soul Eater with its…everything. I’ll probably just wait for the series to end before picking it back up at this point, unless something insanely cool happens that gets my attention.

Blue Lock - I think Blue Lock is the secret weapon of Magazine. It’s already made it to 100k pre anime now, the quality is among the highest in shonen manga right now, and unlike most of the other big names currently, the end is not quite in sight so they can capitalize on this long term potentially. It’s a soccer manga, so it has global appeal. It’s been nominated for a lot of awards and fan polls, so definitely has critical acclaim. If they play this right, Blue Lock is their next big thing.

Tesla Note - I originally thought this was just a regular axe bait series and it would be gone within 20 chapters. Then they announced an anime and a Final Climax for the manga that makes me think it was always meant to be short and a multimedia project. I don’t know, I didn’t care enough to read it and the anime looks trash so not watching it, so I have no opinion on of it’s good or not.

Danshi Koukousei wo Yashinaitai Onee-san no Hanashi. – Yeah, I have no idea about this series at all. I legit had no idea this even existed until I started doing research for this. It’s one of their bottom sellers and always at the bottom of Magazine’s TOC (even if that doesn’t matter nearly as much), but it also has like 8 volumes so it must be at least somewhat popular, otherwise they would have axed it by now. No clue.

Ranger Reject - This series shows that Negi is actually a really good mangaka. Completely different from his previous series, but still really good. It still has his charm from Quints, and I think it’s cool on its own. Seems like it’ll probably do well. That being said, romcom/harem fans can be “kinda “crazy…so initial reviews from volume readers might be all over the place once fans of Quints realize this isn’t a harem manga…(ignoring the fact that Negi warned people it wouldn’t be.)

Seven Deadly Sins: Four Knights of Apocalypse - I never liked Seven Deadly Sins so I was never going to read this anyway. However, after how awful I heard the last arc got, I DEFINITELY would not be confident in a sequel/spinoff written by the same guy being any good. However, name recognition sells, and I’m pretty sure SDS was still the biggest manga in the magazine by the end (I think it was a 400k seller, Quints was a 350k seller and ended first, everything else was over 150k behind). I wouldn’t be surprised if it sells a lot. Wouldn’t be shocked if this is another Eden’s Zero.

Rent-a-Girlfriend - I reigned back in my opinion of Rent-a-Girlfriend a bit. The anime definitely did good and boosted the manga…but Tokyo Revengers already passed it again and it did that before the first episode aired, and the gap the anime boost for Tokyo Revengers is going to cause might be too far for Rent-a-Girlfriend to overcome by season 2. I still really enjoy the series and think it’s worth checking out, plus I think 200k is possible when season 2 happens (assuming it still grows), but I just don’t think it’s going to become a pillar like Quints ended up doing…partly because Cuckoos is on that path and has way more time to get there while this has maybe a year left, and also just because other series are growing faster.

When Will Ayumu Make His Move? - Ayumu I would say of all the manga with an upcoming adaptation, is the hardest one to predict. It does a solid 60-70k for new volumes, but you feel like it can reach a second gear because we’ve literally seen Yamamoto do this before with Takagi-san (though I think Takagi-san was still bigger pre anime). However, I don’t think his ninja girl series is anywhere close to his other ones in terms of success (definitely is in terms of quality), so who knows if it will explode even more. All I know is that this is a really comfy series and I’m glad it’s lasted this long.

Goddess Café Terrace - The impossible has happened; I like a Seo Kouji manga It’s just so refreshing to read something from him that’s simple and fun, and I know that’s not going to last Anyway, Seo Kouji is one of Magazine’s guys, so this bare minimum is not getting axed even if it flops. That being said, I think this has way more potential than Hitman ever did for the simple fact that it’s a harem series and so far isn’t a complete mess. However, Eden’s Zero (poor EZ ), shows that previous rep for a mangaka might cap a series potential (hell, Hitman itself shows that. He pissed off a lot of people with Fuuka and a lot of them never came back).

Hajime no Ippo – the grandpa of this lineup, and also the only series here with no digital release. It’s over 1200 chapters and about boxing, so this is a no from me (plus I heard it gets bad after 1000 chapters and no way am I wasting my time there if that’s true!). Obviously making it this long shows it at some point, was a major seller, but it’s no longer that. It does 50-60k first week nowadays and finishes around 75k before leaving Oricon, so nothing to sneeze at, but it’s so old at this point that there’s probably no increasing the sales. It’s never getting axed, but it’ll also never really get super promoted (doesn’t help that the mangaka has for a very long time, been against digital manga and does not include his series in the digital version of the magazine).

Diamond of the Ace Part II – It’s baseball and probably over 300 chapters at this point so I will never read it. No clue if it’s good or not because no one really talks about it other than being the most popular baseball manga at the moment (which is true I think, sales wise at least). For most of the post SDS and Quints’ era, Diamond of the Ace Act II was the bestselling series in the lineup and it might still be. However, the most recent volume of Fire Force beat it week 1, and it was under 10k difference for weeks 2 and 3. I wouldn’t be shocked if Fire Force passed it soon or if this starts declining. I’m also expecting at least one of Blue Lock, Cuckoos, and Revengers to pass it at some point during their anime boost (if Blue Lock ever gets one T_T ), if not at least two.

Bakemonogatari – I’ll be real. The only thing I actually know about this series is that it’s drawn by Oh!Great and I wish it wasn’t so I could read a new original series by him instead (I still miss Air Gear). It’s either a manga adaptation of an anime or a light novel (I’m pretty sure it has both, but I don’t know what the source material is. I just know it wasn’t a manga first because it was a big deal that this manga was even happening when it was first revealed). It started out really hot, being a top 3 seller in Magazine I think, but it’s kinda petered out to be more even with the rest of the lineup minus Fire Force and Diamond of the Ace II.

Ahiru no Sora -I wonder if I’ll ever live to see this series come back. It’s been on hiatus for like 2 years at this point (is this what HxH fans feel like?) and it doesn’t feel like it’s coming back anytime soon. It’s been so long that I genuinely don’t even know if it’s still a big seller. Wikipedia says it has 24 million copies in circulation with 50 volumes, which I think means it has an average of 480,000 copies/volume, but I’m not sure if later volumes declined by a lot. I really enjoyed the anime, buuutttt the mangaka apparently didn’t so that probably means no season 2 and the series will be dormant another five years.

So here’s how I view the lineup in general:


Just There – They’re not really “safe”, but I think if they need to axe series, they aren’t going to go straight for these whether because of decent sales or an anime airing. That being said, if they’re lacking in flops, these are expendable and probably would go before cancelling a major series in the lineup. They also probably won’t get as much advertising like color pages as other series.

Safe – Whether it be because of legacy or because they did see growth, just not huge ones from their anime, these series probably won’t ever get axed. They’ll go as long as they want, but they’ll just be chilling and get the occasional color page or be allowed to go hiatus as long as they want if they need it.

Promising Series – They have potential to get really big. These are generally newer series that don’t look like cancel bait, and whether it be because of quality or veterans being the one behind it, they’re going to get a decent amount of promotion. They can get really big if they get an anime or if their anime is a success.

Anime Mainstays – All these series got an anime or have an ongoing one. They aren’t ever going to get cut to make room and they’ll get promotion, but they also probably have reached their cap or don’t have as high of a ceiling. They probably won’t reach insane heights but do well all the same.

Future Pillars – They have the potential to become really popular and sell really well. They also have a lot of potential growth in addition to what they’ve already done and get tons of promotions outside of color pages such as collabs, outside advertisements, or being nominated for/winning awards.

“Pillars” – The most successful series in the lineup. They’re “pillars” instead of pillars because while they sell the most, they aren’t really doing impressive numbers. A real pillar should probably be doing bare minimum 300k per volume but WSM doesn’t have that at the moment. These are “mainstream” series in that a casual manga/anime fan probably have heard of these series. They have the best potential of getting a cover for the magazine and are recognized as the faces of the magazine. The top pillar is the “flagship” but there is no clear series that can be considered one.

There’s an eensy teensy problem about Weekly Shonen Magazine that makes this kind of hard: there’s no official English simulpub for almost any of these series. That basically means there’s no point in making The Spotlight be about a series chapter that week since there’s a chance that translations might not be caught up completely. I’m just going to say google is your friend, and good luck if you want to check these out. I’m going to try my best at the very least to pick series that have an anime coming out/are almost guaranteed to be getting one that you CAN check out on services like Crunchyroll or Hidive or series that DO have an official volume release.

These are going to be more spoilerly than normal and more of a look at the series than specific chapters. Without further ado though, let’s shine that light on six WSM series.


Here are some of the things I said the last time we did this exercise:

“Blue Lock legitimately has everything it needs to become a legendary sports manga by the time it ends. All it needs at this point is some official way to support it outside Japan.”

“Most of the not major characters feel like the fodderest of fodder, like they would feel just as important if they didn’t have a name and never interacted with the main plot. You can tell basically right away who’s going to matter down the line and who’s just there to make the actually relevant characters look amazing.”

“It shows the ugly and hard parts of playing a sports seriously, from constant failure, to humiliation, to how the grind damages you badly.”

…Oh boy, what a difference a few months make. First things first, it did get an official English release! Digital volumes are available. They aren’t the simulpub or physical release I would have preferred…but it’s a start. Hopefully they do well enough to get Kodansha to try physical releases.

Blue Lock went from my favorite manga in Magazine…to my favorite currently updating manga in general. I’m not kidding. I already gave it the highest of praise and it somehow exceeded that and rose to an even higher plane of existence. I think the last time we talked about the series it was at the tail end of the second selection. Isagi just lost to Rin’s team and cleared the selection, and we were shifting to Reo and Kunigami vs Ryusei and Igaguri. That match made me say the line about fodder because at the time I thought it was obvious Kunigami and Reo were not going to get eliminated yet and Igaguri is legitimately the worst player to ever grace Blue Lock. It seemed obvious that he was going home and the next arc would be developing Kunigami and seeing how he makes it to the third phase, since I would say Kunigami is the most “protagonist” like member of the original Team Z after Isagi, so following him for a bit made sense to me. Plus, the devil and hero thing they had with Ryusei and Kunigami would have been interesting to see. We sort of got an antagonistic relationship between Isagi and Barou, but Kunigami and Ryusei are complete opposites that hated each other, so seeing how they worked together would have been neat…and then Kunigami lost and was sent packing. Granted, they introduced a Wild Card selection (that they still haven’t done anything with yet) just for Kunigami to stay in Blue Lock, but that was actually a shock to see one of the important characters to get eliminated! He’s the only character that’s been on a volume cover so far that didn’t make it to the match vs the U20! (not counting Ego, since he obviously isn’t a player, but he is the coach for the Blue Lock 11).

And then we make it to the third selection where we are introduced to the Blue Lock 6, the six best players in the system that the team assembled to beat the Japan U20 team would be built around: Rin (the obvious best player in Blue Lock up to this point), Ryusei (an important character that we already know is hot stuff since he eliminated Kunigami), three characters we weren’t introduced to prior to seeing the 35 players that made it this far, and then Nagi (who we keep seeing is the fastest growing player in all of Blue Lock and is positioned to be Isagi’s other rival/partner). With that group, plus with the set up that Ego says you could potentially replace a member of the Blue Lock 6 in addition to being a starter, that would naturally lead you to believe that the three new characters were fodder meant for Isagi and other important characters to surpass. But no! Karasu, Otoya, and Yukimiya all are actually legitimate players and portrayed as clearly above everyone outside the Top 6. We got some unsung heroes rising to join important characters like Isagi, Chigiri and Bachira as starters (Gagamaru, Niko, and Aryu), and then we saw people like Barou and even Reo (who was the secondary focus character for the third selection matches!) who only ended up on the bench and there’s a real possibility that they don’t get subbed in for this game.

Blue Lock completely destroyed the one weakness I felt the series had. Now you have no idea what character is going to matter in the end; everyone has an equal chance of being the star of the match and being the hero. You can’t underestimate anyone anymore (except Igaguri). They were able to actually make everyone left feel like a threat. And that doesn’t even include the U20 team either! I didn’t consider this a weakness, but the other thing really “missing” from Blue Lock previously was that there wasn’t really this “team” to anchor Blue Lock and push their development. Most sports series have that one team that drives the main team to improve constantly: Slam Dunk – Ryonan, Kuroko – Too (and Seirin acted as this for Kaijo), Haikyu!! – Aoba Johsai and Nekoma, Eyeshield – Ojo. Blue Lock didn’t really have that rival team…and then they introduced the U20 team. The combination of Sae and Aiku alone makes for an interesting foil for Blue Lock and the relationship between the two squads is definitely something I look forward to seeing develop after this match. They threw Ryusei on top of this though and now there’s so many cool themes in this rivalry such as how Blue Lock has been proven right because the only reason U20 has a chance now is because of the striker they poached from Blue Lock.

Speaking of Sae, boy does he reinforce that idea of sports being rough on you. Not only with how his relationship with Rin completely died because of soccer, but just looking at his own personal journey to where he is now shows that even if you’re good, sports can be unforgiving. Not just him, but even Kunigami and Reo display this theme in their developments. Kunigami realizes after defeat that he can’t be the hero he always wanted to be and was heartbroken, but that Wild Card gave him either a new sense of hope or the realization that he can be something aside from a hero. Reo realizes that he can’t ever stand in front of Nagi again, because Nagi is the far superior player and only getting better. So he realizes he needs to change as well and his way of doing so is really cool.

I legitimately have nothing negative to say about Blue Lock now. It was so high before, but it has reached the pinnacle and I do consider it a legendary sports manga now, and the sales boost reflects it. It and Cuckoos have the potential to be the three pillars of the Magazine alongside Tokyo Revengers if the anime does enough for it. They just need to nail this one.
 

Last we talked, I was mentioning how Cuckoos (then called Cuckoo’s Fiancé) had potential and was a promising title that could blow up if they did things right and well…it became the breakout new hit of 2020 in general (unless you count Kaiju No.8’s dominance of December as enough to make it the breakout hit of 2020) and might be a pillar for Magazine by 2022. It’s incredible how far this series has come in only one year…which just goes to show that people don’t mind tired tropes as long as they’re used well.

A Couple Cuckoos is a Nisekoi clone, not just in the sense that it’s a “harem that has an obvious winner after one chapter and spends its time pretending it doesn’t”, but quite literally it feels like Nisekoi. The main characters parents are connected to each other, arrange a marriage for them that they don’t necessarily want, the other harem members are almost definitely connected to a childhood mystery, it definitely feels like the natural progression for a Nisekoi fan to clench on to alongside We Never Learn. This is still the “basic” harem romcom that uses a mystery hook, so if you want something new, it’s not going to be found here. However, if you want something fun, I think this will suffice.


Honestly, this series is nowhere near the quality of the other five series in this spotlight, and there’s a decent chance that this is gone by the time I do another Magazine Rack. The main reason I wanted to discuss this is just because it’s so fun. There is absolutely nothing original in this series. It’s literally just a light novel in manga form…but I’m light novel trash so that’s fine with me. I don’t think this series is amazing or anything, but it’s got fun characters, fun hijinks, and I think the atmosphere is just enjoyable if you go into this not expecting a masterpiece or anything. I don’t expect this to last super long (it did 10k in I think 5 days, which is alright for a first volume, but not amazing), but it’ll be an enjoyable ride. I wish all series destined for a short run were as fun as this. It’s also series like this that make me hate Jump’s 2018-20 run of failures. This series is probably not going to last more than 30 chapters, but I still find it an enjoyable series with some good to it. I probably won’t ever reread it once it ends, but I can’t say it wasted my time. Most of the cancelled crap in Jump was garbage and probably shouldn’t have been published in the first place (I can only say I liked…two of the series that got axed “quickly” within that time period from Jump). This is nothing special, I just think this is how a “cancelbait” series should be.


Remember a long time ago when I said Kubo-san would be the closest I would ever get to talking about Takagi-san in this? Yeah, I lied. This series is literally Takagi-san if it was weekly, which makes sense because it is by Yamamoto Soichiro. I love this series to death, even if I won’t ever call it by either its English or Japanese name. It’ll always be Shogi Senpai to me! There really isn’t much to say though. It’s just a teasing match between a boy and girl, except this time the boy is the one in control of the situation most chapters. I think the entire cast is wonderful. Never overstays its welcome. Every chapter feels fresh, which should actually be impossible because this guy does at least two other series and supervises a fourth one, and NONE of them feel like they’re copying from the other, other than (Moto) Takagi-san, but that’s also the point and even then, it feels like unique twists to the original. It’s just a nice fluffy series that you can read if you need a bring me up. Also Rin is a good character, fight me.  


I was always going to be excited for Negi Haruba’s next series after he did what is currently my second favorite romance manga of all time (fingers crossed for Blue Box!) and my manga of the year for 2019. So I was definitely invested when he revealed he was doing a Super Sentai manga since he could easily play to his strengths with mystery while also trying out action for the first time. Leave it to Negi though to find a way to find a unique twist for a genre that’s probably built around clichés and common tropes (unique to me at least. There’s probably a Kamen Rider or Super Sentai show with the same premise). It still has the Negi charm that Quints did (my man really likes series that revolves around a group of five people that look identical…), but it also shows how he isn’t just a one trick pony. There is basically no romance here, yet he is able to make such compelling characters and relationships within the first 10 chapters. The conflict between D and the Dragon Rangers is engaging and there’s so much potential here with the vice subordinates and the other lower rung people. This probably won’t touch Quints success or popularity, but this definitely is not in the shadow of Negi’s previous series. I’ll admit I checked it out because of his name, but even if I didn’t know about Quints, I would say this is a really good series so far. Negi is talented in drawing action. He’s amazing at writing characters. The one thing he hasn’t proven he can do yet is something I hope he won’t have to for a long while: can he end series in a good way? I think the literal ending of Quints, as in, the last page, was really great, but the road to get there? Ehhhh, he lost focus, but I’m willing to say that was because he wanted to spend some time with his newborn kid, so he rushed things. Let’s see how this goes.
     
Goddess Café Terrace
Most Recent Chapter: 11


I didn’t think it was actually possible. In fact, I still don’t, so I should savor this feeling while I still can before the pendulum inevitably swings the other way, but for now…I actually like a Seo Kouji manga. I actually REALLY enjoy a manga by the guy who has made at least 2 trainwrecks of manga and made me question the whole veteran loyalty thing Magazine has going on.

So far, Goddess Café Terrace works…because it’s basically everything a Seo Kouji manga is not usually. It’s simple, has likeable characters, and is lighthearted. There’s no melodrama yet, or any attempt to be this psychological dissection or deconstruction. It’s just simple, harem fun. I think the girls are fun, and the boy is not insufferable, even if he can be a little crude. I’m sure at some point its going to become traditional harem romcom, but honestly, I would prefer that over the crazy crap Seo Kouji normally does with his manga. I really really hope this doesn’t sour on me by the next time I do one of these.  


Eden’s Zero is on Netflix, so that already crippled its worldwide appeal since we aren’t watching it weekly now. Looking at early results, doesn’t seem like the anime is giving the manga a boost either…so probably this will do nothing for the series. Shame because the anime isn’t bad or anything, just seems like it reached its peak.

The Quintessential Quintuplets season 3 was announced! Season 2 came and went (well, not really since it got delayed twice before airing) and they announced season 3 after the last episode. They definitely increased the pace for season 2 (I think almost everything they cut was fine. There’s one Miku scene that would have been nice, but it doesn’t matter a whole lot in the grand scheme of things). I assume they did that so they could finish everything in season 3, and considering they did Scrambled Eggs in two episodes, The Last Exam in one, and Sisters’ War in two, they can probably fit everything else in 13 episodes now. Season 2 looks so much nicer than season 1 and I actually like the design changes since they’re closer to the manga now, so I hope season 3 keeps it up…but it looks like it could also be a movie possibly! I hate this trend of making canon material a movie now, but the movie should be really good at least, and if it isn’t, then I can at least pretend the anime didn’t end as bad as the manga now

When Will Ayumu Make His Move? This is both surprising and expected at the same time. The series definitely sells enough for one and its mangaka is definitely popular enough where fans of his other works will check it out, but at the same time it felt like it was never actually going to get one. I don’t know. I’m sure it’ll be just as good as Takagi-san’s. It’d be funny if they got Kaji Yuki and Rie Takahashi to do the main characters here too (I’d want a deeper voice for Ayumu tho).  

Tokyo Revengers. Holy god was this good! I know a series is good when I’m so conflicted about being anime only for a series or reading all 200+ chapters in a week because I HAVE to know what happens next. Plus, it seems to be doing its job. The entire backlog is doing numbers, with everything being in the top 300 of Shoseki since the first episode aired. I think this is going to do its job, alongside the live action film if it ever actually manages to air, and we’ll see a major boost for the series, and I’d be happy for the series. It definitely deserves it.

Kanojo mo Kanojo, sorry, Girlfriend, Girlfriend (probably should have done Girlfriend and Girlfriend or Girlfriend’s Girlfriend, or something like that instead), had an anime announced! It’s airing Summer 2021 and I don’t think they’ve shown a single frame of animation, but it has an all star cast (basically all the usual suspects you would expect from a CGDCT cast, #TeamRieTakahashi, #TeamAyaneSakura) so whether it’ll be good or not is 50-50. Considering the only reason I can think of that Quints got a giant anime boost was because of the cast getting people in, I could possibly see Girlfriend, Girlfriend blowing up too, but Quints also had an amazing story that would keep people reading after checking the show out because of the seiyuu. I don’t think the entire cast being single digit IQ idiots is going to keep the casual buying every volume. Who knows though!

Rent-a-Girlfriend was also confirmed to be getting a second season. Makes sense as I would say at the moment, it’s Magazine’s hottest veteran (Cuckoos might be there by the time of the second anniversary.) and I think it did really well on the international market. I wonder if there’s a second wind to this anime boost or if this is the peak. Generally, anime don’t get a bigger boost after season 1, but who knows? We live in wild times now for manga.

Tesla Note got an anime revealed in a kind of weird moment…and whoa boy it was something. That trailer…I’m someone that actually doesn’t mind 3D/CG anime anymore. Bandori is one of my favorite anime series of all time, along with D4DJ and I think Love Live CG has gotten really good as of now…but christ. This trailer looked SO bad that I wouldn’t be shocked if it set back people’s opinion on cg anime another ten years. That plus the series itself not being good from what I heard…recipe for disaster right here. Definitely a skip from me.


I think the original one shot is my favorite one shot I’ve ever read. The minute I read it, I knew that I would love it and beg for it to become a fulltime series. Sure enough, it got announced really quickly. I’ve seen my fair share of one shot to full time series become god awful after the transition (I don’t know what the hell happened to Our Blood Oath still), so there was a sense of caution there, but I was always willing to get burned because it was scratching the Quint itch I had since season 2 was delayed. And now we’re finally at the release of the full series. First impressions…I can already see Amagami vs Blue Box debates happening once the anime for both start. 2021 has been good for new series I’ve checked out so far (we don’t talk about Dandadan).

So, the major differences from the one shot I can think of with this first chapter is Uyruu’s look being different now, which is a good thing. In the one shot, he was literally just the main character from Temple…which you know, now that I think about it, I have no idea how they got away with the one shot since the premises for the two series are INCREDIBLY similar…anyway, he looks different now and they aged him down to be Yuna’s age instead of between Yuna and Yae’s. The initial meeting between Uyruu and the sisters was a little different, but still captured the same general feel. At the start of the series, there was a flashback for Uyruu we didn’t see in the one shot that will definitely be important later on. The “miracle” that occurs right before Yuna’s ribbon is found was also explained instead of just being left out for the one shot. Nothing too major, but more just added details. I enjoyed all of these additions, captured everything I liked about the one shot and made me excited for the next chapters.

So for the series itself, what was it about? It’s a harem romcom about a boy named Uyruu that is aiming for Kyoto University’s Medical branch. For context, that is one of the most difficult programs to get into in all of Japan, so he is absolutely aiming for the sky. He ends up moving to a shrine because he wants a place to study at without interruptions, where he walks in to three shrine maidens changing (cause of course you have to have a super fanservice scene in the first chapter of a romcom). This sets up the dynamics between Uyruu and each Amagami: Yae is the traditional airheaded Onee-san that’s actually incredibly immature, Asahi is the traditional youngest sister teasing troublemaker, and Yuna is the traditional middle sibling serious worker that’s going to end up in the same class as Uyruu. After a tumultuous first night, Uyruu overwatches the girls performing shrine duties, and Yuna struggling when she’s faced with a foreign visitor. This distraction ends with Yuna somehow losing her ribbon and seeing just how different our girls are to him, they believe in the gods looking over people while Uyruu doesn’t, causing an argument with Yuna. After they both looked for the ribbon at night, the Starfall of Wishes occurs, a miracle alluded to during an earlier conversation, and the ribbon also pops up. Later that night, now back at the shrine, Gramps comes home and tells us the secret everyone already knew was going to happen: Uyruu can stay at the shrine as long as he marries one of the Amagamis!
So yeah, plotwise, it’s a very basic harem manga that doesn’t do anything different in the genre. I would say there’s some twists, like the “punching the guy I like” trope being slightly different here with Yuna and her salt throwing, but nothing major as of yet. And that’s okay! I actually think that could potentially be good for a Magazine romcom. Magazine is basically known as the romance magazine right now, but if you look at it, there’s so much variety in the romance series. We have the personal relationship and focusing on two people kind with Rent-a-Girlfriend, we have the teasing relationship with not much progress and just meant to be fluff kind with When Will Ayumu Make his Move?, we have the mystery harem with Couple of Cuckoos, we have the stupid hijinks harem romcom with Girlfriend, Girlfriend, we have Goddess Café Terrace which is probably going to end up being a drama focused harem considering the author and the premise, and then even if it’s not long, we have the ecchi harem with I Don’t Know if it’s LOVE or MAGIC in the lineup. Amagami fits the mold of both the “traditional harem” and “shrine/temple/hot spring/male MC moves into this place” inspired romcom, so even in the magazine of love, it can stand out.

I really like the characters so far, even if most of them are “basic”. Yuna is my favorite at the moment, but I think all of them are lovely so far.

I think there’s a lot going for Amagami to have a very long run (well, long for romcom standards. I don’t think it’s ever going to get to 400 chapters or something crazy like that). It is a romcom who’s oneshot and actual series was recommended by Negi Haruba, who Amagami’s mangaka used to be an assistant for. That Quints connection, plus I think disappointed fans that wanted him to do another harem instead of Ranger Reject, might flock to this series since it’s the closest one to it in the magazine. Even if not, having the stamp of approval not once but twice by the guy that did the most popular harem manga since Nisekoi and maybe romance in general since it too (I think you can debate if Kaguya passed it at this point or not), definitely will help it (like how We Never Learn got the seal of approval from Komi-sensei and that helped get Nisekoi fans in right away). Kodansha is bragging about how this was the fastest one shot to full series serialization in Magazine history and that it was done so because it was so popular, so they clearly believe in this series (they even declared this the winner of the one shot competition it was part of before all three entrants were released, and decided it would be a series right away). There was an official Twitter for this series that was public MONTHS before the full series came out. Not only that, but that account actually managed almost 7.5k followers, which for an account that only had a one shot and storyboards to post about for nearly four months, is pretty impressive and shows that there might already be a fanbase. At the time of this writing, it has almost 8.5k followers.

I think the most important thing to consider though, is the rest of the lineup. It’s obviously going to get an audience in Magazine just on the basis that the readers like romance, so they’ll check out most romance stories, but there’s something else. There’s a lot of pretty successful series in the lineup, but nothing far ahead enough to say it won’t ever be surpassed for the next ten years. What I mean is, basically, they have a lot of series that are big enough where they’ll get eyes on the magazine and probably get people to check out other series, but nothing big enough where Magazine will feel the need to milk the hell out of like they did Quints and SDS. Fire Force IS going to end this year, probably. Rent-a-Girlfriend IS going to end within the next two years. Tokyo Revengers might not be here next year despite being primed to be the new flagship of Magazine. Stuff WILL end soon, but not soon enough where there’s room for all these new series to last for months if they flop. They need to keep the ball rolling to find stuff with potential. However, if they DO find some unpolished gems, then they basically have to keep them because it’s possible the 10k seller is going to get replaced by something that doesn’t even make it to Shoseki’s ranked weekly charts. That’s basically why I Don’t Know if it’s LOVE or MAGIC is here instead of Tricks Dedicated to Witches or Beast No. 6 or what’s keeping Smile at the Runway going despite the anime boost not existing anymore and it stagnating in sales. If Amagami is battling it out with all these new series, it basically has to survive ONE round and it’ll guarantee itself at least 30, probably 50 chapters because they can’t risk tossing promising things in case they lose like four major series at once (see, Jump in 2019).

Also, I legitimately can’t remember the last romance manga in Magazine that didn’t make it AT LEAST to chapter 30. Like, I actually don’t know, and I know basically every series from 2018 on and most of the flops have been like, edgy crap or underdeveloped action series.

Overall, I’m really excited for Amagami and romance manga in general. I’m so happy that both this and Blue Box lived up to my expectations their one-shots set for me. They both easily already made me feel the same way I did reading Nisekoi and The Quintessential Quintuplets weekly (or watching the anime weekly since I got on board for both during the penultimate arcs), something most romance manga don’t do anymore. I want both to succeed so much that I think I might actually import both of their volumes from Japan to directly support them. I absolutely recommend Amagami and think it has massive potential to be a success.

Oh, and A Saint Joined My Party! sucks. I checked it out because the mangaka did Tejina-senpai which I liked the anime of, but this series is just irritating. Amagami might make it since I see no path for Saint surviving.
 

Let’s not leave Magazine out of the fun! In honor of Tokyo Revengers blowing my mind, I want to share the OP of the season for Spring 2021.



Glad that I got to do another one of these! Magazine is probably my second favorite shonen magazine at the moment (Jump is making quite the comeback after a pretty meh most of 2020). I’d love to do this for another magazine…but the only other magazines where I have any kind of understanding for are Weekly Young Jump (and I’ve already talked about every series I read from it aside from REAL. Also it’s a seinen magazine, not shonen) and Sunday…and I don’t follow any of their series weekly (I want to do Frienen: Beyond the Journey’s End by English volume release. I plan to be anime only for Fly Me to the Moon, but it could be ending soonish so I’d just do the English volume release too. Switch I would follow weekly, but I don’t think there’s a consistent release and it’s over by the time I post this. The only other Sunday series I would check out is Call of the Night…which I also probably would follow by volume release). Plus who knows what the magazine is doing. We’ll be back later this week with your regularly scheduled Jump. Till then, remember: support the official release!

His elusiveness has led to a return to the spotlight. In our 41st edition, it’s time for… Making 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 #23 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 5/9/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

…It’s that magical time of year where the TOC is made specifically to annoy me! I’ll start with the least annoying thing. DR. STONE is getting its fourth cover of the year. My endless jokes about Jump forgetting when Jujutsu Kaisen’s anniversary actually is aside, this does peeve me a little. It’s not the worst thing, of the “Big 5” series in the lineup at the moment, DR. STONE has ALWAYS been the one that gets the second most covers and I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to do things like this for STONE. My issue is more, there’s a BUNCH of series at this point that ALSO deserve a turn but haven’t gotten one yet. Yozakura obviously, ESPECIALLY once we get to the sales portion of this Making the Jump, deserves one now more than ever. Ayakashi I think warrants one, but that’s not a huge deal since I still think there’s going to be an anniversary cover for it. At this point, I think Mashle is worthy of just getting random covers. It’s clearly a hit at this point, it’s fine to give it extra love. 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. They have six hits, one or two series that can explode with an anime, and who knows with Ayakashi. They HAVE to be aggressive about making hits at this point. It worked for Mashle, and it…helped? Undead. SAKAMOTO did pretty good for its first volume, they should be trying to capitalize on it. Give it at least one cover page before the anniversary and show that it’s worth investing in the series. Part of what sank Phantom Seer is that magazine readers saw no reason to invest in it. It was at the bottom week after week with no color page in sight; it looked like Jump just gave up on it. Why would you check out something if the magazine itself just gave up on it?

Magu-chan…is getting another color page. So, I’m of two sides with this. On the one hand, I think they realized that they messed up with AGRAVITY BOYS and should capitalize on a small but dedicated fanbase as much as they can. It’s never going to be a massive hit but throw a bone for the loyal readers so that they’ll check out the magazine still after the series is gone. On the other hand…I’m pretty sure this confirms Magu-chan is going down the AGRAVITY route too. This color page is for #24. Magu-chan’s anniversary is on #29. AGRAVITY BOYS got a color page in #46 of 2020. The anniversary was #2 of 2021 and it didn’t get any for that. If they were going to acknowledge the anniversary, surely they would have just waited till then right? Realistically, it’s only one more month than doing it now would be. If they’re getting the important series cover out of the way now (If they remember Kaisen had an anniversary: that, a One Piece cover, and then one random series gets them to #28, which is Ayakashi if it gets an anniversary cover), they might be prepping for a new batch of series at #29. The only time in recent memory I can remember a series getting their anniversary recognized during a new batch of series was Yozakura, which was higher up the totem pole than Magu-chan is. So if that happens…yeah, I don’t think it’s looking good for Magu-chan. That would also include Dolphin, but we already know that’s deader than dead.

Which gets us to this thing that genuinely makes me mad…High School Family is getting a color page. While I do believe in promotion, I also believe in hopeless cases. High School Family, is a hopeless case. It sold 3.5k copies for volume 1, IN A MONTH. It was bottom 3 constantly before i tell c and Nine Dragons came about, so the only real reason for its improvement in the TOC was because worse series appeared, which again, would be fine to give a series a second chance…if its sales WEREN’T 3.5K IN A MONTH. To justify it, it would need to like, quadruple in sales JUST TO SAY IT SHOULD NOT BE AXED IMMEDIATELY. Considering the only things that do that these days are series with anime, that’s not happening. So this is effectively a waste of a color page and another series that could use the promotion (like Wind Watch or even something new like Blue Box). Can’t wait for this series to sell like 4k in June.

As for our weekly look at this batch, Wind Watch top 5 again and still looking strong, Nine Dragon’s and i tell c not. i tell c bombed massively and is a dead series walking. Nine Dragon’s probably is going to follow suite. I’m just saying, much like i tell c, I have not seen Nine Dragon’s volume 1 once on Rakuten before 500 for Jump manga, and I’ve seen literally every other June release at least once. Not to mention, it’s releasing the same day as Jump+’s baseball manga…which is an actual success…like, did they not think this through? If someone wants a baseball manga, they’re just going to pick up Oblivion Battery. This was so poorly thought out…


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 hope this becomes a love triangle just so spoiled western fans can cry for months on end.

Aside from that, looking at the actual contents of the chapter, quite a bit happened here. First off, time skip! We’re officially in high school now for our formerly middle school trio of friends. I was wondering when that was going to happen because I don’t know realistically how long the series could have stayed at spring break before feeling old, so it’s good to see that taken care of right away. That’s the nice thing about Blue Box so far: it takes care of things quickly. Like last week, there was a misunderstanding about Hina and Taiki’s relationship and they solved that within the chapter. It’s like, we should see how things go before prematurely dreading the worst! There’s a juicy cliffhanger here, and I’m confident that things are going to be either settled or established next chapter.

I’m really loving Blue Box right now. I enjoy the nerds that are Taiki and Chinatsu, as well as teasing friend Hina, and the vibes the series have right now are just great. I hope this keeps things up and since Me and Roboco is already parodying it, I’m going to take that as a sign of popularity (still hated that chapter of Roboco tho). I just wish I could actually talk about the series with people, but naw, most discourse with English communities so far is just dreading what COULD happen instead of talking about what IS happening that is really good right now.  


Boy, do I love my hypocrites.

The good doctor is a great villain. I think he makes for a great reflection point for the parallels between Tanpopo and the Yozakuras. I’m also really intrigued about the historical references in the series. From what I can pinpoint, I think I can make a guesstimate of what happened to the good doctor and the first Yozakura head, and I’m actually really liking how Yozakura is integrating real world history into it. I think that helps it stand out, not just in the rest of the lineup since Elusive Samurai and Undead (kind of) are the only other series with real world events being canon to it, but it helps distinguish itself from Spy x Family since that’s a fictional world (not that these series are similar really. People think they are though, so any major difference helps).

Aside from that, I’m really looking forward to what comes next. Is Taiyo going to get a new Blooming out of this? Is the ring going to do something else? Maybe we’ll see what Kyoichiro is up to next chapter and we’ll get a Momo sighting then cause he’s been absent mainly. Perhaps Sosuke actually shows up and continues being my guy, cause if you didn’t notice, he’s the only person from Operation: Front Lines who hasn’t shown up yet (Sui and Oga are with Nanao, Rin and Hoshifumi are helping Futaba, I think the cop is where Shinzo was clearing up leftovers), unless I missed him. So maybe he repays Taiyo’s kindness by saving him when he’s in a real pinch? I don’t know, that’s probably just wishful thinking but I’d like it!


This is making me think that Magu-chan’s end is drawing closer and closer. I’ve enjoyed the ride, but I’ve also accepted that at this point, it’s not going to last. I think the direction this is gonna go is Muscar fighting everyone to stall for time so that Ruru and Magu-chan can figure out how to befriend him for real. I think that can carry them for around 5-10 more chapters. They might get a little more time now since we have bigger flops in the lineup again, but I do think the groundwork for the final arc is being laid down even if this necessarily isn’t it yet. As for the chapter itself, I think it was a good serious chapter. I’ll be real and say I haven’t liked anything as much as Ruru’s mom coming to visit, but I do think this was well done. I like Uneras wanting to protect Ruru and Magu-chan and being serious while having her goofy nature still there.


I’m glad that Magna is getting this chance to show off. He got a moment sort of back in the Elves’ Invasion arc (I’m pretty sure he was just getting murdered by Luck’s elf counterpart, he looked cool while doing that tho), but he was always being outshined by Luck or Noelle or someone else whenever he got his moment, but this time this is solely him (and sort of Zora since he helped…but eh). I think Black Clover is really good at making side characters look cool even if they may not necessarily have the best useful conversion rate. I do wonder if Magna is going to actually take this guy down though. This seems like it’s going to in the Clover Kingdom’s favor right now and if I remember right, this was the guy that took down Yami. It can’t be this easy.


That was a weird chapter for me, especially since THIS was the one they picked to give lead color for. Seemed kind of weird to already have a chapter not focusing on the main character this early, but Matsui-sensei’s a genius, I trust he knows what he’s doing. That being said, I did like the dynamic between Tokiyuki and Takauji this chapter showed, with one being charismatic by being cold and powerful while the other is charismatic because he’s warm and welcoming. We haven’t really gotten a lot of Takauji since he betrayed the Hojos, and I assume that’s because we’re spoiling history by doing so, so any little insight we get of him is nice. Aside from that, I wonder where we go from here. I don’t know about Japan, but in the West at least, it seems like people are buying into the series now, so I wonder if it’s going to keep up this momentum.


I’ll be real. Jump GIGA is coming soon (if it’s not already out. The release date is April 30th I think), but I genuinely don’t care about any of the one-shots. There might be good ones, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there and I’m going to ignore them for now. So instead, I’m gonna be looking at past mangaka who flopped for their first series who I think have potential. Unless we get a lot of news on current series, I’ll probably do two or three of these consecutively for now.  


This is where I stake my nonexistent reputation on one person I’ve never ever met and never seen any of his other works to back up my opinion…but oh well! Natsuki Hokami is a relatively new name to Jump (because I don’t even know how old the guy is or if he’s done anything outside of Jump or Jump GIGA.) and I think he has my attention more than your average “first series is a flop” kind of guy because his first series was the first new series to debut during the Mangaplus era, which gives it a little more attachment to me since it was the first series I could follow start to finish legally or without having to hope someone would translate it. As far as I know, his first work was a one shot, that eventually became a mini series on Jump GIGA named Higuma no Te. Higuma no Te, as you can probably guess, was essentially what would eventually become Hell Warden Higuma, but if it was four chapters instead of an entire series. The only major difference was that Higuma was younger in that.

About a year later (I think, it might have come out in 2016), during December, a new batch of series would be announced. Dubbed as the “Dark Hero Generation”, Chainsawman, ne0;lation, and Hell Warden Higuma would enter the long history of Weekly Shonen Jump. I loved Higuma to death. To this day, I think it deserved a longer chance (especially since they probably picked between it and The Last Saiyuki, and that one was a complete waste of time that didn’t deserve the benefit of the doubt), and genuinely believe it would still be here right now if they gave it that chance, but that’s in the past. Those 19 chapters, plus epilogue from Jump+ released months later, showed me that Hokami has a lot of potential. He was able to make an actually compelling backstory for Higuma, one that got me to emphasize with him. Not only that, but when he actually gets to write a battle that matters, I feel the emotional weight and tension the characters are emitting. I also think that he can still make enjoyable scenarios as well. The epilogue was a summer festival, but he made it stand out by incorporating the “escaped demons” thing very well with the plot of the special chapter. He’s also pretty creative when it comes to powers, I think. I really like that he can use the limbs of demons he sent back to Hell as his power and thought that would have been very fun to see, plus it was cool seeing him bring back demons he just defeated into his arsenal. The actual fights themselves were enjoyable too and his style stuck out to me. I think the covers for Higuma looked good, but they didn’t have “impact”.  

Hokami is obviously not one without weaknesses, and they are big enough where I think if he can’t overcome them, he might be in trouble. The biggest one for me is that he struggles with introductions. The first three chapters felt like they dragged, it took forever for things to actually kick into gear and he had a problem of making things that should take one chapter, take two or three. I also think he fell into the rookie trap of making only the main character cool. I love Higuma and thought he was a cool character, but he’s the only one on the hero side that stood out. Part of that is because this series got cut short before he got a chance to develop his allies, but I also think he didn’t do a good job of making the sidekick feel like anything but a background character (to the point I don’t even know his name). Ayaha could have been cool, but it took till either the second to last chapter or the epilogue before she actually did anything beyond be useless or a hinderance to Higuma. I dug their relationship, but she really wasn’t actually doing anything for most of the series. This goes back to not knowing how to introduce things though. I don’t think a third reoccurring character even showed up until chapter 10 (after the point where it was probably too late), the main villain entered the plot way sooner than he should have (I’d argue even if it was already axed at that point, it was too soon), he was interesting though and I think would have made a good main antagonist if the series wasn’t axed.

I would say that Hokami also didn’t do a great job of making a series that stands out. He actually followed my golden rule for exorcist series, which is have a cool concept that you can expand on if your series takes off (the prison terms thing and Higuma’s power), but focus on being a “good” exorcist series instead of just a “unique” one, and I think a lot of that genericness stood out because it was in the same batch as Chainsawman…which is a very unique demon manga. Hokami’s problem was that he didn’t quite make it to “good” series. I would say the first ten chapters of Higuma were just average. They were just "Higuma fights demons". They weren’t really done in service of anything. Taking Jujutsu Kaisen for example, the first ten chapters I think introduced the concept of Sukina, Jujutsu High, introduced Nobara, showed how brutal the exorcist life is, and set up the hook for Sukina and Itadori’s relationship. Higuma, didn’t really set up anything after chapter 1 other than maybe Enma isn’t as cool as he seems to be at first. It didn’t set up the world all that well, and you still need to do that a little, even if you can’t do way too much (Build King) or else you risk boring readers.

These are things you learn to improve over a career though. He can iron out these issues and come up with something really good and I’m actually excited to see what else he can come up with. Basically everything he’s ever released was related to Higuma in some way, but now he has to try something completely new. He clearly can come up with fresh ideas and unlike most failed battle mangaka, I actually think Hokami showed that he has talent, he just needs to learn how to apply it (and hopefully not end up with a terrible editor like he did last time). I definitely think he can be the next Tabata/Gondaira (person who had a flop for their first manga but developed a mini dedicated fanbase, and is able to get to a mid-tier level success their second go around). I hope he hasn’t given up on manga yet because he definitely has shown more promise than some of these other failed mangakas that came back with a second attempt that was just as bad if not worse than the first ones.


Since Jump was on break last week, we didn’t get to see how week 1 for the April 30th/May releases did. Good thing with this format that it’s easy to see both last week and this one’s! Anyway, Golden Week has come and gone, so let’s look at some numbers! This time we have Mission: Yozakura Family volume 8, Mashle and Undead Unluck volume 6, the recently concluded Phantom Seer’s volume 3, and the debut of i tell c!

Sales Data for April 26th-May 9th:

Where do we start? Hmm, I guess we can talk about the newest Jump series to make it to volume and bookshelves around Japan, only to be abandoned because no one bought it. I know Amazon and Rakuten rankings aren’t the most reliable thing, or even that indictive of success, but I do think they’re good enough to predict if something is going to be a major bomb or a major hit right away. For months, i tell c was doing terribly on both (I never saw it in the Top 500 for JUMP manga on Rakuten daily rankings. Considering I’ve seen random things like the Saiki K. backlog pop up in the 400s at least once during my time checking these, the fact the i tell c volume couldn’t make it that far ONCE is a beyond terrible sign) and it shows here. Just looking at numbers, it isn’t QUITE the biggest recent flop in history, Zipman!! debuted at 268 back in April of 2020, but if you consider what was out in April of 2020 vs what was releasing April 30th and what was recent…you can make a case that i tell c bombed even harder because there was basically no real competition (there were 3 important Jump manga here and the oldest one was from 2019, the not Jump Shueisha manga were Jigoraku and Boruto, and the hot backlog series right now is Tokyo Revengers…which is a series I love but like, if you can’t even make a dent in a Magazine series backlog wall at least for day 1, you’re probably screwed). 2,650 copies sold week one, and then only up 5k after 10 days…on the bright side that’s more than Invade You! at least…  

Speaking of being screwed, Phantom Seer did about as well as previous volumes. I know a lot of people cried about this cancellation being unfair, but like, it’s an exorcist series that did below average for Jump action manga standards, didn’t grow and apparently didn’t resonate with the magazine readers. I really don’t think you can say this cancellation was unjustified. Should other things been cancelled before it? Yeah, sometimes life isn’t fair though because we lost this series but two of the series that should be gone are getting color pages next week. In a vacuum though, Phantom Seer was not doing well enough to justify a series not popular in the magazine. 11k in 3 days against 13k in four. Like, that’s growth, but that’s less than Yozakura growth and Yozakura is unique as a series so you can justify slow growth where as another exorcist series…naw, can’t really.

Mashle just knows how to keep the ball rolling huh. Debuted as #1 on Shoseki and made it top 10 for the first time ever on a week where it only had 3 days. Granted, it was in a week with nothing really poppin’ coming out (I think the biggest thing this week was Toliet Bound Hanako-kun, which is like a 150k seller), but to see that is always good. I think this should confirm Mashle as the next Jump thing and get it some more cred in the magazine now. So, good for it, justified the push it got at the end of it.

…Which leads us to the big thing. In my predictions for 2021 that are gone but never forgotten [by me], 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. With Shoseki estimates, there’s ONLY a 9k difference between them. The last time Undead had a 3 day week was volume 3, it managed 17k and to rank on Oricon Top 50. This time? After over six months difference and various promotions? 19k in three days (and that’s Shoseki estimates. It’s possible it’s actually less). The last time Yozakura had a 3 day first week was volume 2, where it managed 6.6k back in April of 2020. Now it’s at 15-16k in the same time frame. One is showing signs of clear growth and one is either declining quickly or April is absolutely cursed for manga sales…guess which one Shueisha decided to push and which one was ignored for over a year and still hasn’t gotten a second cover yet

Undead is NOT in a good situation if this is an actual number and not just some weird lockdown thing or distribution issue. Back in March, it had 34k in 4 days. It managed slightly over half that with one less day and fell short of what volume 5 did in 11 days by about 6.5k. We’re not quite at “decline” stage yet, but it definitely feels like it has stagnated, and for a series they pushed as “the next big thing in Jump” alongside Mashle, that’s just embarrassing. It still is in no danger of being axed, but I’m starting to see that the TOC might not just be a fluke. I realize Japan’s “state of emergency” might have something to do with it, but everything else seemed to recover from that slumping first week, plus this almost stagnating state has been building up for awhile so I don’t know if I can just write it off.

As for Yozakura, this should show once and for all, IT’S NOT IN THE SAME BOAT AS THE SMALLER SERIES! Its second week alone outsold Roboco, Magu-chan, High School Family, Dolphin’s entire first months and SAKAMOTO’s MONTHLY total (by adding up its weekly estimates) barely beat Yozakura’s second week. It’s basically at 30k in 2 weeks, and most likely will make it to 40k by the end of May. It’s not Mashle levels, and it’s not up to Undead quite yet (looks like it can get there by the end of the year if things keep up tho), but it is ACTUALLY growing and it is doing FINE. Not great. Not bad. Fine. Mashle and Undead were at this level when they got their second covers. It deserves it now. And stop comparing Yozakura to the others. It definitely belongs in the Mashle, Undead, Ayakashi tier, even if it’s the lowest of the four (and who knows for how much longer).      


For some fun, we’re going to have a question every week that revolves around Jump. Be warned though, unlike the rest of Making the Jump, this trivia question can be about any series that ran in Jump! So without further ado –

Q: What’s the next series to make it to volume 10?

Last Week's Answer:

I’ve been in the modern era, so let’s set it back a bit. To a simpler time, when I just liked anything. In fact, let’s go back to when English dubs were great. Let’s give a listen to…Bobobo-Bobobobo’s first opening!


Next time…I don’t know, there’s more Jump stuff. I got nothing to preview this time. Till then remember: support the official release!

Can it be next week yet? No? I guess it’s time for… Making the Jump then!

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 #24 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 5/9/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

Where do we start? I guess we can just get the weekly look at the last batch out of the way. Nothing’s changed really. Elusive Samurai is fifth this week, which is low for the series, but that’s still ridiculously good for a new series and is coming off a cover page so nothing to worry about. They’re also doing consecutive volume releases for it, volume 1 is July and volume 2 is August, so we’ll see if this pays off. Witch Watch is continuing its high placement momentum and gets another color page. We’ll see what happens once Blue Box starts ranking, since I think that’s also going to have a strong start, but for now, Witch Watch is doing good. As for the other two…at least Nine Dragon’s isn’t dead last? I don’t know. I’ve seen Twitter polls where Nine Dragon’s ranked first or top 3 and while it’s obviously not actually that popular, and the sample size was 200 people so we can’t pull “a lot” out of those results, that does suggest that the series is more popular than the TOC would suggest (also shows why this thing isn’t a one to one ranking). Again, I’ve been checking presale data and the series is doing abysmally, just as bad as i tell c, and being popular online is decent and all…but if that doesn’t result in physical results as in sales or magazine votes, does it really matter? I’m just going to assume i tell c is ending after this case is solved in two or three chapters and we have another member of the U19 club. Whatever.

…That’s interesting timing for Undead to just sink and end up in the bottom 3. I wanted to compare it to other series that got a cover, and then “plummeted” so I went with three recent ones. There’s been 9 issues since that Undead anniversary cover, so I’ll do the next nine placements following them (there’s actually been 10. I think I still got a general picture laid out here though):

NOTE: The source I’m using doesn’t say if a series had a color page or not for issues before 2017, so tack off 1-3 spots for Samon/Dance Club if you want to exclude them from placements.

Comparison of Rankings:

I don’t know if Samon-kun or Straighten Up! got a color page in that stretch (I recall Samon-kun getting at least one, but I won’t say for sure since I’m doing it off memory), but Robot did not get one. I also do want to point out, Undead and Dance Club’s cover and rankings are based on chapters in the 40s and the fifties, while the others are based on chapters in the 20s when they would be pushed. My reason for this…it’s the only timeframe that applied because Samon and Robot never got an anniversary cover. It’s sort of comparable to Robot in that, the collapse basically came out of nowhere, but I don’t think the situation really applies because Robot did this twenty chapters sooner which is a lifetime in Jump. I think Samon-kun was more a victim of unfortunate timing than outright bombing because of the “legendary six batch”. There was a great fall eventually, but I think it was doing well enough if that batch was only 3 or 4 series instead of 6, it might have still survived (assuming the batch wasn't still DR. STONE, We Never Learn, and Robot), after that who knows (I personally believe in that scenario, it would have beat out Spring Weapon No. 1 since they were both gags and it’s clear that was what kept SW1 alive). However, I don’t think there’s going to be another six series batch coming, and there’s enough worse ranking and selling series that need to go before Undead would get axed to make room for new series (by the time Undead would actually be in “danger” of dying to make room, it would have probably ended naturally months before anyway). So that leaves us with Straighten Up! and…I think that’s actually a pretty fit comparison.

They’re both “unique” takes on a common genre (I don’t think Undead is actually unique, but people swear it’s a unique battle manga so whatever), both started out alright for the standards of their times in terms of sales, both debuted right before a major cleaning out of major Jump series occurred, and right before major hits started pouring down from above. Now granted, Undead is more theoretical at the moment since Mashle is the only “confirmed” hit right now. However, if you look at both, you see that Straighten Up! and Undead won the Tsugi Manga award, get a boost from it, then stagnate in sales pretty soon after. I would say, if this continues, Undead might end naturally at like chapter 100 (slightly more than Straighten Up! since the competition isn’t quite as fierce that it needs to go as quickly), and Tozuka comes back with a new series way sooner than the average returning vet (Yoko ended his series in February of 2017 and then came back with Shudan! in June of 2017 for reference.) as a sign of acknowledgement for his success despite not “reaching” expectations.  

So let’s talk about next issue. Roboco is also getting a color page 5 issues before the anniversary. I think what I said about Magu-chan last week sort of applies here too, but it’s not as clear. This will be Roboco’s fourth color page of the year, and it does get them at a somewhat consistent basis, so it getting one now isn’t that weird based on its previous performance. I would probably make the same argument of “why do a color page now, when you can do a color page then and not be that off (plus the next volume is July, so you can double it as promotion)”, but I would take this as a sign that it’s probably getting only a color page for the anniversary and that there’s almost definitely going to be a new batch at that point.

Who cares about that though? The actual news is what we see above it in the preview. Your eyes aren’t fooling you. They aren’t fooling me. This is indeed reality. After two long years, Mission: Yozakura Family is getting the cover for Weekly Shonen Jump. Not only that, but the series is getting 34 PAGES. Gondaira-sensei might actually be a machine. I’m not though. I have emotions and this brings me nothing but joy. After enduring Shueisha overlooking it for far too long, people constantly making up excuses to say that it’s going to get axed, downplaying its success, saying it doesn’t deserve the bare minimum just cause of standards and expectations that only exist in their head, to seeing other series get more love, to haters saying after every.damn.arc. that it's going to be the last one (spoilers, this one also probably isn't the final arc, sorry!), to enduring the slow growth…Yozakura, we here! After being told this would never happen, it has. This is just the start though. Let’s work on that anniversary cover and anime announcement cover (if this isn’t it).


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.


Last week’s chapter had a Yozakura reference and I will not be told different.

It’s really a shame that a) Dolphin finally became a good manga and b) it sold worse than Roboco and Magu-chan and had worse TOC placements than High School Family so its demise couldn’t be delayed by things doing worse than it. I think Dolphin, when it’s all said and done, will be a satisfying “short” series, probably better than what would have happened if it was never in danger of getting axed, but you never know. Tamura has snapped when it comes to art and I’m actually liking the backstory going on right now. It helps make Orphy’s sacrifice in the present feel more impactful. I’m just worried that the ending is getting even more rushed because I would bet a new batch is starting in a month or two, and it STILL feels like Dolphin needs at least another 10 chapters to get everything done in a decently paced manner.  


I see we’ve entered the “final arc since we’re almost definitely getting axed, but not final enough where we can do something else just in case the sales save us” phase of new Jump manga. I never really liked this manga (I didn’t think it was bad though), but the past few chapters everything fell apart pretty quickly. We got two people to join the team at once and the quality of them, gotta say, don’t match the first baseman, or have the character of the shortstop (I’d say quality, but I hate the shortstop so not really). The previous person also got extremely rushed to join the team, but the idea of him I think was still at least pretty well thought and made sense. The outfield and second baseman though? That was just lazy and just saying they’re basically opposites of our two established recruits was a clear sign of “we don’t have enough time to make them real characters, so here’s the outline for them”. A villain was introduced and gotta say, I thought Azami from Food Wars would never be surpassed for “Most Extra Villain in a Regular Series” but this principal guy was absolutely comical. This man hung up newspaper headlines of all the times his school lost and legitimately says if you lose in baseball, you might as well slit your throat, and then immediately punches a glass pane the moment he says someone picked a different school over his. Like…bro, it’s just hilarious how desperate this series got. This absolutely is getting killed mercilessly once a new batch starts.


You know, when I first saw previews for Mashle, my train of thought was “Harry Potter x One Punch Man”, but when I said that I meant in terms of design and theming. I didn’t mean literally Harry Potter with Saitama as the MC instead. I’m not a stickler for “it’s unoriginal, so it’s bad automatically”, but I do think if another series did this exact twist and was about to do this exact fight between teacher and main villain, a lot more people would be calling this trash and bland, but it’s okay because Mashle is different than all those other copycats for…reasons. Whatever. Hopefully some god forsaken world building happens here because the series needs (well, it doesn’t actually need it since sales and reception are really good right now) literally ANYTHING ELSE aside from “Mash gets beat up for two chapters. Shrugs it off. “Hilarious” one liner or action. One punch” to not feel completely shallow.


Candy Flurry is awkward right now, I would say. I’m not going to say amateurish yet, since nothing is laughably bad, but you can clearly tell this is the writer’s first series ever, or at least their first attempt at writing a battle manga ever. The “…or not” gag is fine in theory, but instead of giving character to Irie, it sort of just ruins the flow of the scene and disrupts the pace. I also don’t get why they aren’t really trying to reinforce the names of characters that are presumably major like the boy. The world building also…doesn’t really make sense? Tokyo was destroyed by lollipops and is supposedly completely destroyed now. That’s fine, and Irie’s flashbacks about how she loved Tokyo and she’s sad that it’s gone now is good character building. The issue is…they really haven’t given a reason as to why Tokyo can’t just be reconstructed? The city doesn’t even look all that bad honestly. It looks easily fixable. The person that destroyed it is a lollipop user. So fine, Tsumugi would be a fine suspect for it. However, there’s an issue of Irie is a “vanilla” ice cream user. That implies that there can be multiple ice cream users despite the organization ruling that possibility out (and that being a correct one because we know Tsumugi in fact, did not destroy Tokyo). So like, is everyone in the organization stupid or something? Why don’t they believe that there could possibly be a second lollipop user? Did they never consider every candy has different variations? It might be possible since so far the two we know of are pretty stupid, but if that’s the case…that’s just stupid. That’s not a funny trait for them, it’s just annoying.  

I still think the series is “fine”. Nothing amazing, but not something terrible. I wouldn’t be surprised if this gets axed quickly. Wouldn’t be shocked if it lasts long enough to get good.


The mad lads did it, they actually did a time skip. They also actually aged up Suika. I wasn’t expecting that and I would say this leads more credence to this being the final arc. Generally, the multi-year time skip doesn’t happen unless a major MAJOR shift is occurring (i.e. Naruto to Shippuden or One Piece’s) or the series is ending, and I feel like STONE already pulled off the former with the “Prologue” thing they did at the start of the manga. This is probably going to lead to the final arc, who knows how long that will be though. I did enjoy this little escapade of Suika trying to revive Senku though. It gave her some spotlight and she tackled her insecurity a little here. I wouldn’t mind if she became the new “partner” for Senku for this arc like how it was originally Taiju, and then Kohaku, and then Chrome, followed by Gen, replaced by Ryusei, to get to Tsukasa, to Xeno.


I’ll be real. Jump GIGA is coming soon (if it’s not already out. The release date is April 30th I think), but I genuinely don’t care about any of the one-shots. There might be good ones, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there and I’m going to ignore them for now. So instead, I’m gonna be looking at past mangaka who flopped for their first series who I think have potential. Unless we get a lot of news on current series, I’ll probably do two or three of these consecutively for now.  


Also known as the case of “please give artists better writers, Shueisha” and the half of Time Paradox Ghostwriter that I want to see back.

According to his Mangaupdates page, Date’s first work was the series Tokyo Wonder Boys in 2014, but I believe he was still the artist for the one-shot version of that series which came out before then (I think 2012), but TWB was his first series, and he worked alongside Kento Shimoyama…who is apparently also an anime and Toku screenwriter. Anyway, that series lasted ten chapters and was just a bad soccer rip-off of Haikyu!! that bombed massively. It looked amazing though and Date put himself on the map with his good artwork. He then did a few one shots, notably Gachipin, Haruyo, Koi!, and Gesu no Ongaeshi. All three of them are romcom stories, and all three of them had the idea of “unobtainable girl” and “boy that strives to get the girl” so he clearly has a theme here, and it shows. He eventually got a series in 2017 called Cross Account, which is the similar idea of “boring boy who comes alive on social media” falls in love with “model girl that is above his social class irl, but befriends her on social media”. Again, looked great…not really well written. The characters were all irritating from basically chapter 2 onwards and the plot actually made little sense, but it lasted almost 30 chapters at least and actually sold…not terrible(?) with 10k sales and I think even made it on Oricon weekly charts at least once. Cross Account wasn’t the best, but it showed Date can definitely draw, just for the love of god give him someone that can have decent ideas for a decent manga…and then Time Paradox Ghostwriter happened.

For the first six chapters, I thought Date finally found his hit. That manga was GORGEOUS and I found it really interesting. They finally found him the writer that would give him something amazing to work with…and then the reception for the series was negative and the writer just failed Date. Like, I don’t know how much influence Date has in the writing for series where he’s just the artist, but there’s no way he is that bad and he never just gave up like Ichima did there in his previous series.

Why exactly did I have belief in this guy anyway? Well, his art is just too good for him to give up on manga. I genuinely think he’s one of the best artists Jump has seen in the 2010s and he should not be rotting away in one of the more obscure manga magazines in Japan. Second, he’s a romance guy. Like, I don’t say this to be demeaning; romcom is my favorite manga genre, my favorite new Jump series is a romance, my favorite new manga this year is a romcom, but if your art is good, it really isn’t that hard to have at least a modest success if you do a romance. Cross Account was a modest success and that was a garbage series. All you need are cute girls/boys and some kind of hook and you’re probably getting at least 10k sales.
 
Which leads me to talking about a one shot he did between Cross Account and TPGW: Gal Kazoku. This one was about a gyaru and her new step sibling possibly forming a relationship and having to deal with the awkwardness once they find out their parents are marrying each other (or something like that. It's been awhile and I couldn't find a translated version online). It wasn’t an amazing story, but it was fine, which is an improvement for Date and showed that he is learning how to make appealing characters. The one shot mainly showed his strengths though: mainly his art. That one shot is ecchi, and it looked like something an ecchi snob would enjoy. In an ecchi setting, character strength isn’t as necessary. Like, it would help, Yuuna was good because of the characters, not the ecchi after all, but as long as the fanservice gets the imagination running or the readers talking, it’s probably fine. I still think Date needs a writer because he sucks at plots, and Jump’s recent ecchi hits also still had interesting plots (could argue the interesting plot is the only thing that’s keeping Ayakashi afloat at this point), but if he did an ecchi romcom, I honestly think he could do a good and successful one. And this has proven to work for failed mangaka. Haruto Ikezawa is believed to be the mangaka Yuu Hashimoto, and Ikezawa failed in Jump THREE times. He went to Jump+ and made 2.5D Seduction, which is a successful series that does pretty well for itself and it’s an ecchi romcom, and I would say it’s probably in my top 3 of Jump+ manga (if only translations came out later ;( Mangaplus plz save us). Character designs is clearly Date’s strength so he should play up to it, and he doesn’t need anything complicated for a story if he goes ecchi. I just don’t want him to give up because he definitely is talented.


Golden Week has come and gone, so let’s look at some numbers! This time we have Mission: Yozakura Family volume 8, Mashle and Undead Unluck volume 6, the recently concluded Phantom Seer’s volume 3, and the debut of i tell c! Let’s see the week 3 numbers.

Sales Data for May 10th-16th:

Quick note, SAKAMOTO DAYS has also been ranking lately, around the 400s in the weekly charts, so its total now is around 20k. It’s looking like it’s slowly gaining momentum. Volume 2 should be interesting to observe in June.

That was kind of a weird week 3 in general. Wonder if Japan’s lockdown is slowly taking affect on manga sales. Who knows? That being said, Mashle, Yozakura, and Phantom Seer are still on track or improving in sales. Undead…not so much. It’s stagnating in sales I’m pretty sure.


For some fun, we’re going to have a question every week that revolves around Jump. Be warned though, unlike the rest of Making the Jump, this trivia question can be about any series that ran in Jump! So without further ado –

Q: So, counting Yozakura as having a cover now with next issue, how many series in the lineup have not gotten a cover for 2021 yet? We’re counting Jump’s 2021, so issues released in December of 2020 but fall under 2021 for the magazine count as 2021.

Last Week's Answer:

This week, let’s go back to the times where Jump was simpler. An all time classic series, and an all timer classic opening: the first Slam Dunk opening! Oh yeah, NBA playoffs too. Totally meant to make this topically relevant (go Knicks!)



Next time, the happiest day of my life occurs. Till then, remember: support the official release!

I have waited two years for this moment (well, I guess more like almost a year since I wasn’t doing this in 2019), but it has finally come. Family gather, because today we…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 #25 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 5/23/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue Preview:

The TOC this week isn’t really all that remarkable honestly. Usual suspects are the top 5, the mid-tier is what you expect since Witch Watch, Roboco, and Yozakura have color pages this week, and the bottom two are totally getting cancelled (to the point where if they’re only doing two new series next batch, I legitimately feel like Dolphin got saved. I don’t think it’s only two new series whenever they show up, but that’s how little faith I have in Nine Dragon’s at this point. It even has the extra pages of death it seems like). The only notable thing is that Undead got bottom 3 again. Still could be a fluke but could also be a sign that people aren’t digging it or Jump isn’t satisfied with how Undead is doing. I can get the later, all that pushing and a manga they gave one sixteenth of the attention to got within striking distance of passing over Undead in sales, and Mashle is almost double Undead’s sales at this point so can’t really say they’re equals now. Bottom 3 is a bit harsh for a demotion, but it’s not like Undead is suddenly in super danger. It’s also getting a color page…for results of a popularity poll that I didn’t even know it had for the first anniversary. I mean I don’t really pay attention to series news so I guess I’m not that shocked I missed it, but eh. I feel like popularity poll color pages actually aren’t as good honestly, Spring Weapon No. 1 managed to get one, so they can’t be that sacred.

As for next week, we go back to March because Jujustu Kaisen is finally three years old! Being real, it’s nice that we are finally getting the anniversary cover for the series and that Akutami-sensei is up to it now. There’s also going to be another popularity poll, and I’m curious how many more votes it’s going to get this time. Since that’s out of the way now, I feel like the only mandatory thing we need before we get the next batch of new series is a One Piece cover. Counting next week, it’d have been seven issues since the last One Piece cover so it’s about time for one. I think an Ayakashi cover is likely, but it’s not guaranteed, 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).

We do have one surprise though…Blue Box is getting its second color page! It’s been a long time since a series managed to get a color page before its “ranking” started. The previous instances of it were also veteran author’s series (Samurai 8 and Hungry Marie). It’s been a minute since a series by a newbie got it this early, so I think that could be a great sign for Blue Box…or it could be a sign that they’re struggling to find people that can do color pages without burning out, but I’m generally a positive thinker (I’d like to believe I am at least), so I’m going to believe in the first option. Also, the week Amagami gets its second color page in Magazine, Blue Box gets its second color page in Jump? Coincidence, I think so!
   

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 was going to talk about the chapter last week…and then it was a poop joke chapter and I said screw that. I’m not talking about no poop joke.

It was only a matter of time before the rival witch appeared in the series, and here she is. First impressions…she’s fine. So far, it’s the typical “afraid of people, except for ONE exception” character, and I don’t think she’s offensive yet or anything. I really don’t know what happened though, because I’m no longer nearly as excited about Witch Watch as what I used to be. It’s not even like Mashle where I could pinpoint exactly when and how it happened, I just lost the spark I had for it. Maybe it was when Kan was introduced because it went from focused on Niko and Moi and their relationship to mainly just a comedy hijinks montage. The “rom” part of romcom sort of just became a background element and I guess I just don’t find the other characters appealing enough to overlook that? I still think the series is good, but as we’ll get to soon, other series are passing it by in my rankings.


I’m just really enjoying the ride at this point. I really like Taiki proving that he’s not the stereotypical romcom MC here, being capable of reflection and realizing when he looks stupid for doing something. I like that he’s establishing that Chinatsu isn’t his entire life; he wants to make it to nationals because it’s something he should want to do as a badminton player, and I respect that as a former high school athlete placed in a situation where something like state/country nationals wasn’t even a pipe dream. I’m also liking how he doesn’t hate Haryu and see him as just an obstacle to Chinatsu, but someone he has to overcome to become a better badminton player. This has done wonders for Taiki’s character, much like how two chapters ago did wonders for Hina’s character. I’m really looking forward to future characters getting the same treatment, hopefully for a long time (and it will be, if the upcoming color page is any indication).


SAKAMOTO is a really fun series. I’m really liking the action scenes and it finds way to be funny/amusing every week with its characters. However, the plot, doesn’t really make me feel invested with the series. I enjoy seeing the characters do stuff, but I don’t really care about the why they do stuff. It’s really weird. I’m noticing that I have series I’m completely invested and love more than anything I’ve ever read (Yozakura, Blue Box, Elusive Samurai), and series where I like, but I’m not clicking with completely to the point where I’m thinking about what’s going to happen next chapter during the week. SAKAMOTO is that for me. I still really like the series, but it’s just sort of there at the moment. We’ll see how it goes over time. Volume 2 sales should reveal if it can reach another gear or if it has to start wrapping things up.


In Matsui we trust. He has rewarded my trust in him with another fire series. I’ve absolutely been invested in the series ever since I want to say chapter 9. Basically, ever since volume 2 in terms of content started. It’s captured the feeling early Assassination Classroom gave me while reading though it and everything has started to click with me. The characters are starting to finally form their identities, we moved past the “Tokiyuki is the only useful character” phase of the story, and the conflict between Hojo and Akauji is starting to flesh itself out. Plus there’s a guy with two swords, that automatically makes someone a good character, right? Being real, I think this new guy, if he actually joins the crew, is a cool addition. The main thing I’m worried about is that he dies here to show that this conflict is serious business. Let’s see how this goes.


Compare the cover with the first one the series ever got, and you can see the evolution in Gondaira-sensei’s art. It’s insane how much and quickly he’s improved.
This is the embodiment of everything I love about the series: great banter between the family, clear demonstration of their bonds, amazing artwork, cool attacks and combinations, things making sense if YOU PAY ATTENTION while reading the chapters, this was one hundred percent worthy of being the cover and lead color page for this issue.

And something this chapter does is…reinforce the idea that this isn’t the final arc. I genuinely believe at this point that if you think this is the final arc, you just WANT it to be the final arc because there’s still too much stuff that needs to be addressed. This includes:

• Momo Yozakura who has been MIA for like 15 chapters now (I think he was there while the Doctor and the generals were waiting for the Yozakura to invade)
• The book of the recorded history of the Yozakuras (which will now no doubt tie in with Tsubomi Yozakura)
• Tsubomi Yozakura herself (the Doctor basically admitted that she’s the leader of Tanpopo by saying they created it in chapter 81. So, she’s still alive)
• The reaction the other family members have to Taiyo and Kyoichiro’s secret mission and if anything comes out it (because this is shonen. I know they’re going to end up secretly knowing about it all along or felt like that was the case, except maybe Mutsumi)
• What happens to the Nijibana after being “freed” from Tanpopo
• Kyoichiro having a serious fight. They teased it when he and Taiyo split up, and then he specifically says “don’t use your Blooming” in this chapter. They know that’s what readers want to see, so his Blooming obviously has some kind of important role to play in future events (whether it be his death, or a fight against Momo, who knows)
• Taiyo confronting the true nature of the Yozakuras

And that’s just the MANDATORY stuff. I didn’t even get into possible future arcs and plot points like the idea of “if being a Yozakura is a cursed existence” or “branch family” or “the feeling of unable to protect family” or anything involving the Hinagaku, or something happening to the plan that causes Ban to fight, or another organization popping up for the next arc. There’s just so much that HAS to be addressed and a lot that CAN happen that just saying that this arc is it feels short sighted/ “wishful” thinking.


I have nothing better to talk about, so figured, might as well. In Jump GIGA, the special epilogue chapter for AGRAVITY BOYS was released, and Viz, being the highly competent and genius translators that they are, released their version of it almost a month late…it’s a good thing I didn’t really care that much about this series when it was running to get that angry about it. Anyway, the chapter was definitely an epilogue. It was nice to see everyone get resolutions in their character arcs and to see that things are thriving. I was confused about the time travel and returning back to Earth part for Saga…but I chalk that one up to time travel almost never working in fiction than an AGRAVITY specific problem. Fans will like the epilogue, but it’s not going to suddenly change your opinion of the series or anything.

Speaking of that, what is my opinion of the series? Well, if my indifference to the delay of the translation for the epilogue didn’t clue you in, then I’ll spell it out: meh. Which considering the way the premise of the series was phrased…it was honestly impressive that it made it all the way up to “meh” for me. I thought I was going to really hate it, and there were some parts I did genuinely hate a lot (the Grimslow stuff at the end was dumb. DUMB), but there were some chapters where I thought it was genuinely funny and at some points I thought it was trying to be more than it ended up being, actual ambition that a lot of other flops don’t seem to have these days. If we don’t count Magu-chan as gag (I consider it more slice-of-life that’s occasionally funny), I’d say AGRAVITY BOYS was the last gag manga Jump has done that I actually found remotely funny and not entirely cringe.

For me, the strongest point of the series was the AGRAVITY BOYS, specifically Saga and Chris. Those two were enjoyable whenever they were on page and being the serious one/the one that no sells the craziness made them annoying to me. Geralt’s gimmick was lame and I got annoyed of Baba after like 3 chapters. When the chapter was focused on Chris though, man was it good…usually. It’s really strange how Nakamura made two really good characters…and then literally every other member of the cast was nothing to actively horrible. The brand of humor the series went for is the “throw literally anything at the wall” variety, which I honestly don’t like all that much anymore, but it hit for people that do so that’s fine. I thought this was going to be offensive, but honestly? After the first chapter, I don’t remember anything being actually tasteless. A lot of jokes missed for me, and by chapter 30 when it was clear this wasn’t going to last long term, I felt it just dragged on and on, but I could understand the appeal here, unlike the later gag manga we got that rhyme with Be and U-R-Loco.

I’d say that Atsushi Nakamura should hang out on Jump+ though. The original one shot of AGRAVITY was released there, and it must have been well received there if it got a series on the regular WSJ eventually. The sales didn’t reflect it really, but AGRAVITY itself was really popular online, to the point that it got SIXTH place in the 2020 Tsugi Manga Awards. That was higher than Yozakura, Mitama, MASHLE, and popular series in other magazines like Call of the Night, Couple Cuckoos, or Kubo-san. He clearly has an online cult following at the very least and Jump+ seems like the place to be if you want an online hit. Spy x Family, Kaiju No. 8, Chainsaw Man is moving there, Dandadan might be following suite as the next online hit to transfer it into success in sales, feels like Nakamura would be right at home here. Plus, I think he’s built a loyal fanbase from being in Jump to get him a boost in a Jump+ series and get others to jump on the bandwagon. We’ll see what he’s got eventually, probably, but till then, Nakamura can turn the page on this chapter of his career and see that he defied the odds like defying gravity.


For some fun, we’re going to have a question every week that revolves around Jump. Be warned though, unlike the rest of Making the Jump, this trivia question can be about any series that ran in Jump! So without further ado –

Q: Elusive Samurai is going big with volume 1 coming out July and volume 2 coming out in August. What was the last series to do two volume releases two months in a row? Not two volumes out the same day, Month x had a volume, and then Month y had a second new volume. HINT: The series isn’t currently running and this is generally a sign of the series being cancelled.

Last Week's Answer:

I like the late 90s, early 2000s era of Jump, so let’s stick there a little longer. This week, let’s go with a series that also produced boppin’ tracks: Bleach!



Next time, we go back in time to celebrate something that we thought was long lost. Okay, not that dramatic, but Jujustu Kaisen FINALLY gets its anniversary cover. Till then, remember: support the official release!

I waited two years for last week, but Shueisha waited months for this week, It has finally arrived though. Family gather, because today we…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 #26 of Weekly Shonen Jump (released 5/30/2021):

Color Pages:

Table of Contents:

Next Issue(s) Preview:

Seems like an average TOC for the most part. DR. STONE is sixth this week, but something has to be out of that top 6.

Looking at our favorite four batch series, Elusive Samurai still keeping up the momentum. This dance of last and second to last between i tell c and Nine Dragon’s continues. Only one to two more months of this before we can move on with our lives. There actually is something interesting about this batch’s placements this week though. Wind Witch is in the bottom five this week. There’s a decent amount of possibilities for this.

1) It’s in the Undead spot since it has a color page this week, and Witch Watch is going to shoot back up next issue once Undead is back ranking.

2) They’re doing that “hey, here’s everything that’s coming out next month” thing again where they put everything that’s releasing a volume in June together so people can see if they want the volume from any one of those series (for reference, you have Kaisen and One Piece together, SAKAMOTO, STONE, and High School Family forming a line, and then the cluster of Ayakashi, Magu-chan, Witch Watch, and one series that people probably skip anyway separating Nine Dragon’s [which would also suggest they just gave up on that series since it’s the only June release with NO partner next to it]). Now why is Witch Watch with the floundering series despite showing signs of life on presale data and on the TOC before this? I don’t know, but it seems like tradition that debuting manga end up in the bottom right before volume 1 releases, so they’re consistent with that at least.

3) Blue Box is eating Witch Watch’s audience. I’m no donkey, but I’m going to just take a guess that Blue Box is really popular in the magazine at the moment. I really liked Witch Watch at first because it was a romcom, but Blue Box showed up and has overshadowed it basically every week. People might just be voting for the romance they like better instead.

4) Witch Watch is losing steam. I think Witch Watch is sort of doing what most new series go through after getting its first color page: coasting because it sort of just assumes it’s safe now that it got a color page. Granted, most coasting series don’t end up with two color pages before the first volume releases without having SOME popularity, but Witch Watch sort of did a Yozakura where the “romance” part of the story sort of just disappears so it can be a pure gag manga instead. They remind you that it exists, but they don’t actually try elaborating or doing anything with it. I think Yozakura still did a better job of incorporating romance too. I like the series because of the romcom elements of them, but they haven’t been here lately, and I doubt I’m the only person who feels like this. This would also help support possibility 3 since Blue Box is giving me what I wanted out of Witch Watch.

5) This is a fluke. Pretty simple, no need to elaborate.

So, let’s talk about the future, a thing I hate in the real world but my favorite thing in the Jump world. That Black Clover cover, huh. I have to say, that threw a wretch on quite a bit of my predictions for the summer. First things first, I would guess the cover is probably either for movie news or just cause. I don’t think there’s anything special happening like “we’re in the final arc now guys!” or “new anime seasons despite the movie coming out bros!” and I don’t think they’d just randomly announce a popularity poll for Black Clover of all series (plus, I think they literally just did one). If you recall what I said months ago about the lead up to #28, I DID say that I’m expecting Kaisen, One Piece, and something random, and a Black Clover cover IS definitely something random…but it’s also an extra random because the Yozakura cover I predicted came out later that I thought it would and essentially became the “random” cover I predicted for #25-#27. So where does that leave us now?

First, I do still think a One Piece cover is happening before a new batch of series. It always occurs around this time every year and it’s been a minute since the series got a cover. Second…I actually think this lowers Ayakashi’s chances at an anniversary cover considerably. We know Jump isn’t exactly consistent when it comes to anniversaries (just look at what has the cover for this week’s issue), but they have two, maybe three other anniversaries to think about (and I DON’T think Magu-chan or Roboco are getting covers) that come right after Ayakashi, not to mention One Piece and My Hero have anniversaries in July, and there’s no way they’re bumping those two anniversaries back for Ayakashi unless Horikoshi literally loses a hand and cannot draw anymore. And then there’s the possibility of a SECOND new batch in the summer to push back Ayakashi’s anniversary cover into late August…which is Yozakura’s anniversary and I think they aren’t snubbing it two years in a row. That’s not even mentioning if they have other things they want to promote like Kaisen’s movie or anime announcements for our trio of New Heroes, I also think there’s a double issue in the middle of all this too so there’s another group cover, and like, they aren’t going to go through this many hoops for an ecchi series that’s declining in sales every volume and has bad TOC placements. If they’re giving it the cover, they’re doing it either on time (so #28), or right before the anniversary so that everything after it isn’t disturbed (which we now know isn’t happening). Ayakashi isn’t Mashle or Undead that get special treatment despite being newbies; it’s not a clear hit (well, neither was Undead, but it got lucky Mashle was basically). Is it possible we don’t get new series for a while? Sure, but the last time we didn’t get a new batch of series at SOME point in the mid-20s to #30 issues was 2016, and that’s if you don’t count one new series as a “batch” since Takuan to Batsu no Nichijou Enma-chou debuted in #24, but it was the only new series (wonder what that fella is up to btw). So, at that point, they’re picking between giving the lesser successes a smaller anniversary celebration (aka, only a color page and maybe some kind of campaign, like Yozakura got) or not acknowledging them at all (like AGRAVITY BOYS got and what Dolphin is probably getting unless it ends in the next two issues).

So, if I had to bet…right now I would say…Ayakashi is probably getting just a color page for the anniversary, but it’s going to get a nice campaign to make up for it. I don’t know what kind of fan contest Yabuki can do for it, but he’s been in the business for twenty years at this point, he can probably figure something out. Maybe it’ll get an actual Twitter instead of just leeching off Yabuki (turns out, I was wrong! Yabuki didn’t even have a Twitter until literally a few days before I wrote this, but hey he has a Twitter now! I’d give you the @ but that definitely ain’t SFW LUL). Who knows! I feel extremely confident in One Piece cover for #28 though, and I’ll give a Charles Barkley guarantee that a new batch is starting at some point in June. I also don’t think Magu-chan and Dolphin are getting color pages for the anniversary, and that Roboco will probably get just a color page (no campaign or anything), and it may or may not be on time because color pages are way easier to plan for than cover and lead color pages. I may be wrong, but I doubt it.

*sigh* So, if you couldn’t tell, I write these TOC thoughts at different points throughout the week. Most of it comes from when the TOC first shows up, but what I’m about to say comes days later. I guess I was right, Ayakashi didn’t get the cover for the anniversary…but it got something extra in that it has two color pages coming up. That, plus Yabuki opening a Twitter account, and work for volume 4 is what I assume kept Yabuki busy when he said weeks ago that he had a lot of stuff coming up for the anniversary. Man, all that speculation for naught because we would have got the answer if I was just a bit more patient. Whatever, my point was still right and I’m 100% confident Magu-chan and Roboco aren’t getting covers now either (and if Roboco somehow gets one but Ayakashi doesn’t, this EiC needs to go).  

Also, one last thing. Just a quick comparison between my predictions and reality:

Prediction:
#19 – Jujutsu Kaisen
#20 – Mission: Yozakura Family
#21/22 – Group cover (One Piece lead color page)
#23 – new series
#24 – new series
#25- new series
#26 – One Piece
#27 – something random like DR. STONE or maybe Mashle
#28 – Ayakashi
#29 – new series
#30 – new series

Reality:
#19 - Blue Box (new series)
#20 - Candy Flurry (new series)
#21/22 – Group Cover
#23 – Elusive Samurai
#24 – DR. STONE
#25 – Mission: Yozakura Family
#26 – Jujutsu Kaisen
#27 – Black Clover
#28 – Unknown
#29 – Unknown
#30 - Unknown

I mean…I did get most of these series right even if the order was wrong And I did call something out of left field getting a cover in this stretch…it was just Elusive Samurai instead of Mashle. And I did say that Yozakura and Kaisen would get their covers next to each other, they were just in reverse order. We can say I was close right No? Okay…;(

If I were to update my predictions, I’d probably say #28 is One Piece, #29 is idk, maybe another Elusive Samurai cover for promotion for volume 1, and #30 is a new batch of series. There’s another batch of one shots happening in #27-29, and generally they don’t put advertised one shot campaigns against new series because they use the surveys to see if the one shots have potential as series. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a batch in #29 still, but I’m not expecting it.
   

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 chapters like these that make it hard for me to care about fights in the series. I think it’s cool that Chopper is getting a serious fight for once…but he’s facing the second commander of one of the Yonko! He should be getting one shot, Monster Point or not. The fact that he can stand up to Queen so far just shows that Oda doesn’t care about powerscaling and will write it so that characters will win if the plot demands it, which I guess is fine, but the problem is that’s literally not how he did this before Whole Cake Island and now every fight is like this, which really makes it hard to care since if the Straw Hats lose that means it probably isn’t actually all that important, and if they win, it doesn’t feel satisfying because Oda willed it instead of feeling genuinely earned.

Also, I’ve seen a lot of DUMB fan theories about how Luffy saves himself from this. If Luffy somehow turns the water into rubber…I don’t know, I’ll stop reading One Piece comments? I’m not dropping the series at this point, but BOY would I hate if that’s what happens.


I’m not going to say why, but don’t be surprised if our dear friend Shark is gone in three chapters. If he truly is gone in three chapters…I genuinely don’t know how this is going to end in a satisfying manner, unless the series gets like, bonus chapters in a future Jump GIGA which I don’t think it will (would be funny though since that would be the second time Tamura got pushed there to finish his series). The scale of the events that were introduced in this chapter…it feels like it STILL needs ten chapters to finish everything off without feeling incredibly rushed (which I’ve been saying for like, the past four months). Was that Yae at the end of the chapter? Can she just appear on the island? What’s going to happen with Poseidon’s right arm? Is Orphy gone gone? Is there going to be any kind of epilogue moments? There’s too much here to finish in three chapters.


I missed these kinds of chapters . It was just a goofy chapter of the characters being goobers and the joke was in the scenario itself, rather than the characters telling jokes to be funny. I still feel like there are too many characters at this point, but the three rascals making their secret base was an entertaining read. This is more notable because it just makes me sad thinking about the series. I would love if things kept like this, but I also know it won’t because while it may have been spared from the next axe session, it still has to wrap up before the year ends unless every other new series from this point on are complete disasters (and even then, I don’t think it’s safe necessarily). Which means, there’s going to be more of these “pseudo-serious” chapters featuring Muscar probably and those are just bummers for me. They just don’t feel like the rest of the series and that’s because they aren’t; they exist because the series has to wrap up with some kind of arc at this point. I’ll enjoy this moment while it lasts, but I know that it’s just a moment.


I could just put a long bbzzzttt sound here and I think it would capture my feelings of My Hero now perfectly. I just do not care at all about what’s happening, and it’s taking way longer than it needs to for things to get resolved. Horikoshi had a chance to shake things up massively and reignite the series, but he went the safe route and it didn’t help make the series any more interesting at all.


Happy three year anniversary, finally! I’ll be real, I actually don’t like most Kaisen covers honestly. I thought maybe it was a one time thing with the last one, but seeing this one, I realized…I really only like two of them. It’s really strange because after Yozakura, I think Kaisen has easily the best volume covers in Jump at the moment, but the magazine ones just don’t click. Oh well. Also, people say that this is the modern day Hunter x Hunter and while I don’t really agree, it definitely looks like Akutami took inspiration from Togashi this week with the “rough sketches” outline the chapter has at points. That, plus the lead color page not really being recognizable from the series and being mostly greyscale (it took three days for me to realize that it was supposed to be Maki and Mai…and Maki was the one I figured out who it was first) makes me think Akutami needs an actual hiatus to recharge a little. He definitely wasn’t ready for the media tour he got when the series blew up (which makes Gotouge more impressive with Kimetsu’s explosion). It’d suck to not have the series for another month, but the mangaka comes first.

As for the chapter itself, it’s really amazing! I thought it was cool to see more of the hierarchy of the Zen’in Clan and more Maki in action. I hope she beats the crap out of this guy.



I’m doing something a bit different for this Beyond the Jump. It’s been a while after all! This series is from Tonari no Young Jump, which I think is essentially Young Jump’s version of Jump+, if I’m correct in my understanding of it. I THINK One Punch Man is also from here, but the main reason why I’m talking about this series is because the mangaka is Sui Ishida, the creator of globally popular series Tokyo Ghoul. I haven’t seen the entire series or any of re: so I can’t say a definitive opinion on TG, but my tl;dr is I think the concept of the series is phenomenal, the execution…I heard he suffered burnout during the run and you can clearly tell he did if that’s true. That’s why I’m glad that this series is in this format: the schedule is whenever he feels like releasing something and it’s online so he doesn’t have the grueling grind of being in a weekly magazine to deal with.

Now, what’s the series about? …To be honest, I don’t know. This first chapter was like 70 pages and it didn’t really establish a “plot” for the series. It introduced the concept of the world with “choujins” (which, to be honest, I’m still not quite clear on what they are yet, but that’s fine since that will be elaborated on later), gave us some characters, and a hook to read more. To be fair, that hook worked because I’m interested in learning more about the series and look forward to reading more about that plane crash that started the chapter. It’s just…I don’t know, weird? I don’t even really know who’s meant to be the main character out of the two they introduce.
Beyond that…I think this series hits. The powers are interesting, I think the plague mask transformation thing looked really cool and was an awesome way to end the chapter and was quintessential Sui-sensei. The art looks really great composition wise (though I’d say the paneling could be confusing at times…but that’s also vintage Sui so I don’t think that one is getting fixed anytime soon). The theming of the series so far, being a hero, I found intriguing and wonder what Sui’s twist is going to be. If Sui continues to be passionate for this, I think this can be just as good as Tokyo Ghoul at its best.

For some fun, we’re going to have a question every week that revolves around Jump. Be warned though, unlike the rest of Making the Jump, this trivia question can be about any series that ran in Jump! So without further ado –

I’m going to take a little break from trivia. Sorry, but I’m running real low on questions! I’ll be back with this by the end of summer, probably.

Last Week's Answer:

I want to continue this NBA playoffs theme we’ve been doing (ignore the fact that last week was Bleach ). This time, we got the first opening to Kuroko no Basket! We can do it indeed, but apparently not the Knicks ;(




Next time, the waiting room for new series begins. Also, June sales! Maybe. I don’t know, I’m bad at math. Till then, remember: support the official release!