Mag Talk Weekly Shonen Jump [2019] - Discussion and TOC Talk

[supercow297]

The reason why the latter half of 2018 was so forgettable was because Nakano was, at the time, trying to see if they could get a new gag manga off the ground which could compete with YouTube for younger audiences. It, uh, didn't work, to be blunt.

What does YouTube have to do with anything?

 

[tirakai]

Speaking of gag manga, is this the longest WSJ has ever went without one? Granted WNL is gag manga half the time but it's a romcom which isn't quite the same.

 

[OtterBrigade]

What does YouTube have to do with anything?

because despite gag series starting and finding success in other magazines (including Magazine and Sunday) they're dead set on this idea kids just watch Youtube for comedy now and won't pay for gag stuff

 

[LuckyJim]

Speaking of gag manga, is this the longest WSJ has ever went without one? Granted WNL is gag manga half the time but it's a romcom which isn't quite the same.

Do you mean without a gag manga at all, or without a solid established gag manga?

 

[Rain Spectre]

because despite gag series starting and finding success in other magazines (including Magazine and Sunday) they're dead set on this idea kids just watch Youtube for comedy now and won't pay for gag stuff

Yeaaaah...the thing is that those series still have sales figures well below Jump's standards.

It's important to note as well that I'm referring to traditional gag manga in the vein of Kochikame and Dr Slump. A series with comedy like Gintama is still very much valid.

 

[tirakai]

Without any gag manga in general. There was always Kochikame around to bridge any potential gaps between major other gag manga but now it's gone, Gintama's gone, and there's no back of the magazine or normally ranked gag manga either. WNL is the closest we've got.

Which brings me to another point, I feel like WSJ needs to try more gag manga about girls. Even in the very gag-centric David the girls were mainly there as a romance prospect.

Sunday's got stuff like Komi and Maou-jou and Magazine has SYD and Senryuu Shoujo where the main focus is on the girls. WSJ on the other hand doesn't really try cute gag manga. Things are getting better for female leads though with Neverland and Act-age doing well though and Tomatoypoo maybe would've kept going for a good bit if the artist could've handled the schedule. I feel like a cute gag manga is maybe what they need right now.

 

[Rain Spectre]

Without any gag manga in general. There was always Kochikame around to bridge any potential gaps between major other gag manga but now it's gone, Gintama's gone, and there's no back of the magazine or normally ranked gag manga either. WNL is the closest we've got.

Which brings me to another point, I feel like WSJ needs to try more gag manga about girls. Even in the very gag-centric David the girls were mainly there as a romance prospect.

Sunday's got stuff like Komi and Maou-jou and Magazine has SYD and Senryuu Shoujo where the main focus is on the girls. WSJ on the other hand doesn't really try cute gag manga. Things are getting better for female leads though with Neverland and Act-age doing well though and Tomatoypoo maybe would've kept going for a good bit if the artist could've handled the schedule. I feel like a cute gag manga is maybe what they need right now.

I don't think Komi-san qualifies as a "traditional" gag manga in the slightest. Even so, the bigger issue is that they're trying to use gag manga right now to get in kids, and it's simply not working.

 

[OtterBrigade]

Yeaaaah...the thing is that those series still have sales figures well below Jump's standards.

It's important to note as well that I'm referring to traditional gag manga in the vein of Kochikame and Dr Slump. A series with comedy like Gintama is still very much valid.

Aho Girl sold well enough to get an anime, Pop Team Epic was pretty big last year, Crunchyroll gets like 3 or 4 gag series a season but most come from 4koma. Gag seems to be thriving there (since not much else works in that format). Sure they aren't selling Jump numbers but clearly people are still reading or their anime would stop being made and the magazines would stop running them.

 

[Nemesis]

i think Jump should try a manga in 4-koma format. I don't think they ever done that and in Magazine there was series like Aho Girl, Tsurezure Children and others, for ex. This could be an experiment to try a new comedy of some type.

 

[tirakai]

WSJ's modern gag manga sell well below jump's usual standards too, let's be honest. They sell less than successful gag manga elsewhere even, I think Maou-jou sells more than Isobee did and it's from Sunday, the magazine that's gradually dying. And it's not even one of the biggest gag manga.

 

[Rain Spectre]

Aho Girl sold well enough to get an anime, Pop Team Epic was pretty big last year, Crunchyroll gets like 3 or 4 gag series a season but most come from 4koma. Gag seems to be thriving there (since not much else works in that format). Sure they aren't selling Jump numbers but clearly people are still reading or their anime would stop being made and the magazines would stop running them.

That's the thing though, Aho Girl pretty clearly has some level of Otaku appeal, and Pop Team Epic is basically meme culture personified. "Classic" gag seems rapidly unable to work unless it has some way of tying back to internet culture.

I will say though, I think a modern comedy could really work if it ditched its roots and embraced the new era. Can you imagine a Jump manga with the sheer chaotic energy of something like Nukitashi for example?

 

[Maxy Barnard]

There seems to be a lot of confusion as to what a gag manga is sometimes, as WNL and Gintama come up occasionally, and they’re more plot-focused things.

Gag manga is what it says on the tin, a manga driven by gags instead of plot. So Kochikame, Dr Slump, Gag Manga Biyori? Gag-driven, gag manga. Gintama, Sket Dance, We Never Learn? Plot driven, so not gag manga.

Gag seems to thrive everywhere but Shonen Jump (for real no amount of talk about meme culture or youtube stops that being true, I don’t think that argument has a leg to stand on), and it’s hard to say why. It’s taken singular talents like Kyosuke Usuta and Ryo Nakama to make gag manga work in 21st century Jump, and the rare 33% hit rate of Kōji Ōishi, scraping in with Inumaru Dashi (tellingly, the second Lycopene moved out of Jump it started doing better).

There’s just something about Shonen Jump’s audience nowadays. Miserable lot, I guess.

 

[Mankichi Togawa]

All this gag manga talk and nobody has mentioned the true best-seller gag manga of Jump aka Sexy Commando. It had 8 volumes, but each volume sold +1 million copies.

I'm pretty confident the second place of gag manga which sold more copies per volume is for Highschool Kimengumi.

 

[Maxy Barnard]

All this gag manga talk and nobody has mentioned the true best-seller gag manga of Jump aka Sexy Commando. It had 8 volumes, but each volume sold +1 million copies.

I'm pretty confident the second place of gag manga which sold more copies per volume is for Highschool Kimengumi.

I wonder. Do we have sales figures for Stop!! Hibari-kun? I feel like that has to have moved numbers back in the day

 

[Rain Spectre]

There seems to be a lot of confusion as to what a gag manga is sometimes, as WNL and Gintama come up occasionally, and they’re more plot-focused things.

Gag manga is what it says on the tin, a manga driven by gags instead of plot. So Kochikame, Dr Slump, Gag Manga Biyori? Gag-driven, gag manga. Gintama, Sket Dance, We Never Learn? Plot driven, so not gag manga.

Gag seems to thrive everywhere but Shonen Jump (for real no amount of talk about meme culture or youtube stops that being true, I don’t think that argument has a leg to stand on), and it’s hard to say why. It’s taken singular talents like Kyosuke Usuta and Ryo Nakama to make gag manga work in 21st century Jump, and the rare 33% hit rate of Kōji Ōishi, scraping in with Inumaru Dashi (tellingly, the second Lycopene moved out of Jump it started doing better).

There’s just something about Shonen Jump’s audience nowadays. Miserable lot, I guess.

I mean...the internet thing was from Nakano's own mouth. So who am I to disagree?

I think one point of consideration we can maybe make is the matter of inspiration. All artists are inspired by things, and we're at a point where the Big 3 and the things that ran alongside them is considered the main source of inspiration for creators. That's well after the old heyday of gag series, and gag isn't exactly a type of manga which sticks in memories after its over. I mean, how much discussion does Dr Slump garner which isn't just "That manga Toriyama did before Dragon Ball"?

 

[Maxy Barnard]

I mean...the internet thing was from Nakano's own mouth. So who am I to disagree?

I think one point of consideration we can maybe make is the matter of inspiration. All artists are inspired by things, and we're at a point where the Big 3 and the things that ran alongside them is considered the main source of inspiration for creators. That's well after the old heyday of gag series, and gag isn't exactly a type of manga which sticks in memories after its over. I mean, how much discussion does Dr Slump garner which isn't just "That manga Toriyama did before Dragon Ball"?

In the west? Dr Slump doesn’t get much traction, no. In Japan? Are you kidding? It was HUGE, and through its spin-offs and legacy has more than stuck in the public consciousness.

And I see no harm in disagreeing with Nakano, if he said that, as gag seems to be doing just fine elsewhere.

That and the matter of inspiration... most artists now would have come up during the one-two punch of Sexy Commando Gaiden and Pyuu to Fuku Jaguar, right? An iconic creator’s very popular works, the latter of which had a small pile of multimedia adaptations? I’d find it hard for Jump artists not to be a little inspired by that sort of success and impact. But maybe the larger impact of all the action titles of the 00s overtook it

 

[El Jacco]

A second Season of Muhyo & Roji confirmed.

 

[Maxy Barnard]

A second Season of Muhyo & Roji confirmed.

Best news of the year, anime-wise

 

[Scruffy8642]

That was unexpected, but I will gladly watch it. First season ends just as it's getting interesting, and Deen did a decent job with it.

 

[Rain Spectre]

In the west? Dr Slump doesn’t get much traction, no. In Japan? Are you kidding? It was HUGE, and through its spin-offs and legacy has more than stuck in the public consciousness.

And I see no harm in disagreeing with Nakano, if he said that, as gag seems to be doing just fine elsewhere.

That and the matter of inspiration... most artists now would have come up during the one-two punch of Sexy Commando Gaiden and Pyuu to Fuku Jaguar, right? An iconic creator’s very popular works, the latter of which had a small pile of multimedia adaptations? I’d find it hard for Jump artists not to be a little inspired by that sort of success and impact. But maybe the larger impact of all the action titles of the 00s overtook it

I mean, as I said, gags don't exactly stick in the mind long-term. It's not implausible that, since Jaguar was stuck in the back of Jump more often than not, many of the readers who went on to join the industry just kinda forgot about it beyond the fact that it exists.

Best news of the year, anime-wise

Have I mentioned that the artist of that series now does shota porn.