Mr. Prince wrote:
While it's consensus that said Golden Age reached its heyday in the mid 90's with its big three (Dragon Ball, Slam Dunk, YuYu Hakusho), when the mag had a circulation of more than 6.5 million copies a week, it's arguably when this trend started: Quite a number of people name 1977 as the starting point, the time when Ring ni Kakero started.
Being quite the Hokuto fanboy I remember watching a long HnK documentary where they said Hokuto no Ken was the beginning of it all, fending off the so called "Love Comedy Boom", during which Sunday gained more and more ground under the reign of Adachi Mitsuru and Takahashi Rumiko. But of course, this documentary was clearly biased in its whole representation towards HnK. So, it should be taken with a bucket of salt.
This. I loooove Kurumada style, there is something in his mangas that just makes me smile everything I read one. Basically, if you have read a single volume.. Heck, even a single chapter of one of its works you have read everything he has done, he is an author that just makes battle after battle, the plot is there, just not too much LOL.. Basically the Kubo Tite of its time. But he created his own trademarks like the "Kurumada-Fall" the "Kurumada Launch" the classic "Rescue arcs"..
And as a side note is the only author I have seen use its WSJ cover for a "villian", Shaka NOT accompanied by other characters (If I am wrong please tell me).. An equivalent would be Kubo doing a cover with just Ulquiorra or Byakuya back when they were villians.
But I am a Masamist (Kurumada fanboy) so I didn´t want to say "Ring Ni Kakero" started Jump Golden Age, and IMO that would be a big stretch, though I can say I have heard countless times that it did start the Shonen JUMP clichés.. Heck, even Street Fighter naming of the main characters is inspired of Ring Ni Kakero´s Takane
Ryuji and
Kenzaki Jun
But yeah, I could totally see why WSJ would increment is sales in 1977 Ringkake is very good, some mangakas even mention how it had to do with them like Oh! Great (Tenjo Tenge) and IIRC Yu yu Hakusho´s editor favorite manga was Ringkake too.
Also.. Just as a request for you Mr. Prince, how would you write "Jump Golden Age" in japanese?? (In hiragana or kanji or whatever you write it on please, I want to do some searching LOL)
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