Mag Talk Weekly Shonen Jump [2020] - Discussion and ToC Talk

[Shinuki no Reborn]

MANGAHELPERS "TOC" POLL ISSUE #51 - VOTING!​

The poll for issue #51 is now open, vote for your favorite chapters of the week clicking HERE!

Alongside the release of Sakamoto Days, the extra series this week are:

-Dragon Ball Super 66
-Boruto: Naruto Next Generations 52
-Ghost Reaper Girl 10

Good Votes!

 

[Halloween]

Moderator Notice:
Henceforth, I will be deleting posts that complain about Weekly Shonen Jump having too many/not enough gag/battle/exorcism/sports/etc series.

These posts are not insightful, and do not meaningfully contribute to this thread. Also, this decision is not up for discussion, so posts discussing this decision will also be deleted.~ Halloween

 

[Ryuusei]

Spoiler: 52 TOC & 01 Preview

呪 僕 O マ ブ S C D 破 C B 夜 C 僕 あ 灼 ぼ チ 高 ア 森 A 仄 ぼ 次号カラー ヒロアカ アンデラ 夜桜 約ネバ 道産子 GIGA 岸本先生が描くコラボポスター 爆豪クリアファイル

Spoiler: Issue #52 ToC & Preview

Jujutsu Kaisen (Cover & LCP)
My Hero Academia
One Piece
Mashle
Black Clover
Sakamoto Days (CP)
Dr. Stone
Magu-chan: God of Destruction (CP)
Build King
Mission: Yozakura Family
Me & Roboco
Ayakashi Triangle (CP)
Shakunetsu no Niraikanai
We Never Learn
Chainsaw Man
Koukousei Kazoku
Undead Unluck
Moriking
Agravity Boys
Honomieru Shounen
Bokura no Ketsumei

Issue #1
Cover & LCP: My Hero Academia
CP: Undead Unluck, Mission: Yozakura Family, The Promised Neverland, Dosanko Gyaru wa Namaramenkoi

GIGA Preview
Collab poster by Kishimoto
Bakugou clear file

 

[Shinuki no Reborn]

Volume 6 was released in October and volume 9 only sold 150k while it was on the charts. It matches.

Oh yeah, i looked at Amazon date and saw 11 instead 10 lol, but so, 2 volumes that for sure crossed over 200k + 1 that crossed 150k= 550k. The problem is that is hard to believe that the rest of volume 6 sales + the other 5 volumes only sold 50k at most during the entire year. So going back to the question, the numbers for the other series are official by Oricon or counted by someone?

 

[SharkBait]

However, the problem is that due to our cultural environment there are still too many men who feel discomfort (or even repulsion) at the idea of gay male romance. Japan isn't better in that aspect.

very dishertening to hear.

Will continue to fervently pray that things and media change. Having characters that are relatable to me would be fantastic and propel jump to new heights.

 

[pamuchi]

So this new Jump app lets you read the magazine with friends...?

瞬刊少年ジャンプ｜集まって、跳んで、ジャンプを読む。

仲間を集めれば集めるほど、たくさんの作品を読める。マンガの新しい楽しみかた、瞬刊少年ジャンプ！！[18歳以下対象]

www.shonenjump.com

Did I just read that there's a restriction for people over 18 years old? Lel.

 

[perroloco]

... Guys Jump is a magazine aimed at kids/boys, and I don't wanna sound prudish or anything but Jump doesn't even have that many main characters interested in their opposite sex (Most Jump protagonists are 'asexual' if you will, think Goku, Luffy, Gon) so they won't have a gay MC, at least I wouldn't bet on it any time soon.

And btw this is not because of Jump being homophobic or whatever, but simply because Jump rarely has MC who like someone, sure you have your Narutos or Sakuragis (Main Characters that had a crush on the female lead) or even pervert main characters like the dude from City Hunter every now and then, but Jump's manga rarely delve into romance (Of course unless it's a Romance manga like To Love Ru), that's why the motto of the magazine is "Friendship-Effort-Victory", those are the core values of Jump manga, not romance, and especially not romance between gay couples.

I am 100% certain most rational minded people can read a story with a gay lead and find it entertaining and enjoyable. Gay/Ace/Pan/Etc people read stories with Straight leads all the time and don't go "ew the lead is het? are you kidding me, get this unreadable het garbage away from me!" I am infinitely sure are gays in this very thread that read shonen jump mangas.

To answer directly to your statement, because it seems, it was you SharkBait and no one else, that for some reason started talking about Jump publishing shonen manga with BL elements in them (lol)...

Why? Seriously, why? Why would Jump do that? lol
I mean, Jump has 50+ years in the game, they have an established model of doing manga which clearly has worked for them, and I don't know about you but I really don't read any Jump manga expecting new romantic developments between my favorite characters (Sure, there are shippers out there, but most shippers are deluding themselves thinking their ship will eventually be real, and more specifically whoever ships 2 straight characters is just being plain dilusional lol)

I know Jump authors tend to tease these kind of 'relationships', it's very prominent in sports manga, but there' a huge gap between teasing something and it actually happening.

That being said, I think maybe a side character would be an interesting idea for an author to explore, but again, highly unlikely and even if the author wanted to (Which I doubt any author would dare/want to do that) their editor will likely prevent the idea from happening.

 

[Vizard]

Kamio Yui wa Kami wo Yui #3

act-age #9

Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san #19

Dragon Ball Super #11

Abyss Rage #5

Vigilante - My Hero Academia: Illegals #8

 

[Blue Rock]

Why? Seriously, why? Why would Jump do that?

Ok, not going to post about it anymore after this, but I should say this at least.

Because the world has changed in the last 50 years. Because there are homosexual boys who read magazines like Jump and it wouldn't hurt to have some characters they could relate. Because having gay characters shouldn't be a taboo in this day and age.

But sadly it is, so I agree we wouldn't see something like this anytime soon. But I strongly disagree that it is ok.

Also like there are a lot of series with straight character that doesn't include any romance. We could have gay characters without having BL elements

 

[SharkBait]

Why? Seriously, why? Why would Jump do that? lol
I mean, Jump has 50+ years in the game, they have an established model of doing manga which clearly has worked for them, and I don't know about you but I really don't read any Jump manga expecting new romantic developments between my favorite characters (Sure, there are shippers out there, but most shippers are deluding themselves thinking their ship will eventually be real, and more specifically whoever ships 2 straight characters is just being plain dilusional lol)

Why not do it? It would finally let them connect with a significant portion of readers in a more direct and meaningful way. There are sites all over the net that keep track of the sexual diversity of lead characters in media and most people do want there to be more, so it seems reasonable to want a cherished and beloved manga magazine to do likewise.

The magazines for the content exist argument ignores the fact that rarely are they actually action first series or series with prominent action elements, and also those magazines are often published like once every two months or worst quarterly, meanwhile jump is every week. Stories are richer more expansive and more abundant.

That being said, I think maybe a side character would be an interesting idea for an author to explore, but again, highly unlikely and even if the author wanted to (Which I doubt any author would dare/want to do that) their editor will likely prevent the idea from happening.

I'd prefer a main character it would be more meaningful, the majority of the heroaca fanbase have wide spanding theories that Bakugo Katsuko is gay afterall.

 

[savethecat]

Eeeh. I would say the reason most Shonen MCs don’t have crushes in Jump is because the creators either don’t consider it relevant, or they just have no clue how to write romance.

iirc I believe I read an Akira Toriyama interview where he straight up said that he made Vegeta and Bulma, and Krillen and 18 become couples off screen because he’s not good at writing romance, or something along the lines of that.

And I’m a little more blurry on this, so don’t take this as 100% legit, but I feel like I’ve seen an Oda interview where he said he doesn’t include any kind of Romance within the Straw Crew simply because he just doesn’t believe it’s relevant to the story.

I don’t know why anyone is entertaining Sharkbait’s persistence on having a Yaoi series to begin with.
But think Jump wouldn’t touch any LGBQT series simply because I can’t see them being comfortable with the topic. I don’t think it has anything to do with “it’s a kids magazine”.

Plenty of modern cartoons and comics for kids have gay characters in them nowadays(Arthur, Steven Universe, OK KO, etc.)
I’m sure there are some examples in the manga/anime industry for Shone/Shojo if you looked hard enough. iirc Sailor Moon has a lesbian couple in the main cast.

Spoiler

One Piece even kind of subtly introduced a trans character that’s not treated as a joke, which I guess sorta contradicts “Jump isn’t comfortable with LGBQT. But idk, can’t see them ever going so far as to put in the main cast

 

[El Jacco]

My only problem on the topic is that most of the time, authors treat the gay characters as a joke instead of you know, a character.
I would prefer to have non gay characters than a series treating him/her in an obvious offensive and ridiculous way.

This is off topic but there is a series airing right now called Hoshiai no Sora or Stars Align which has an LGBT+ character and pretty much treats him as another part of the story of the series, he is not the focus at all but it still shows exactly how you should treat a character that belongs in this group, just as another character to the story.

 

[Nemesis]

Look, I don't think we'll see any gay characters on WSJ be it male or female. Jump+ having Blue Flag with lesbian and gay characters shows that it can be on there, just not on WSJ. What I'm seeing is that many series that wouldn't be on there, are serialized on Jump+, which Kanata no Astra probably wasn't the only case where it happened. Which is fine by me as many of those probably wouldn't survive on WSJ but can exist on the digital platform and later on the volumes.

But, this thinking that manga don't have gay characters be it male or female isn't true. There's tons of them be it romance focused like yuri and BL or not (including entire magazines like Comic Yuri Hime). Without even counting biographical manga about LGBT. I know because Yuri romance is one of my favorite things out there, Blue Flag is one of my favorite manga and I like stories about crossdressers (which aren't LGBT in many times, but sometimes are), gays, lesbians, trans and so on be it fictional or biographical.

 

[Tamil]

Jigokuraku #8

 

[shoyoboyo]

One Piece even kind of subtly introduced a trans character that’s not treated as a joke, which I guess sorta contradicts “Jump isn’t comfortable with LGBQT. But idk, can’t see them ever going so far as to put in the main cast

I was actually surprised to see Oda move on past the "transwomen are all just bearded ugly dudes in dresses and bad makeup" shtick. Usually in shonen manga these kinds of characters are played as jokes or their only defining trait is "look at me I'm a guy in girls clothes haha" so it's nice to see some change in that status quo.

I really hope to see other series handle these types of characters in a similar way. I think the next step would be having a trans character in the main cast, but that might be too soon for that. Maybe it's something we will see in one of this year's serializations.

Edit: whoops double post

 

[Tamil]

We've seen gay characters before...Shinobu Sensui is gay and seen as one of the better villains in shonen battle manga

 

[Newkerzy]

This is actually a really cool perspective and the colouring is great. The more I see of Zipman, the more I want to read it.

And it screams MHA influences all over that page too.

 

[Chuck_Atlas]

I also remember that in MHA one of the members of the pussycats is a transgender and Magne as well was a non operative transgender, so Jump ain’t shying away from LGBT characters or issues

 

[Halloween]

Toriko was blatantly homoerotic at points as well.

 

[Belkac3m]

We've seen gay characters before...Shinobu Sensui is gay and seen as one of the better villains in shonen battle manga

Apparently, Itsuki (He is also gay) is Togashi's favorite character from yu yu hakhsho.

 

[Datu Mike]

Ah. Hadn't been keeping up with the anime, so I wasn't sure. That's very unfortunate. They're going to overrun the manga's pacing and start pumping out filler for weeks at a time at that rate. Yikes.

2 years of filler, Naruto route yikes!

 

[Rain Spectre]

So, this is a question I've had on my mind for a while, do you think Jump is too ridgid in terms of launching new series? They seem determined to launch 11 series a year, and that's lead to both failing series like the Taibei Squad being stretched out, and promising ones like Double Arts getting the axe.

It's a question which has been hanging in the back of my mind, anyway.

 

[Caiops]

Would be cool to see a gay mc in Jump.

I still think the best way to work the character being gay or not is how Yoko Taro wrote Emil in the original Nier.