Mag Talk Weekly Shonen Jump [2021] - Discussion and ToC Talk

[101nemesis]

The theory was based on the fact that an old series (don't remember which one) got 1st in the surveys for a certain chapter also placed 1st on the ToC 8 weeks later. This is where both the 8 week theory and the theory that ToC is a 1:1 comparison of surveys came from, at least what we believed was the case years ago.
But there have been instances after that that have gone against this.

Main example, I can think of from the top of my head is World Trigger.
World Trigger being popular early on and even ranking 1st apparently multiple times (based on what the editor himself said) but you wouldn't be able to say that looking at it's placements in the ToC for like 2 years of its run.
Almost always lower half of the ToC (a few times in the bottom 5) only occasionally rising for CPs. And there have been zero instances during then where WT hit the top of the ToC, IIRC.

The only indication that World Trigger was popular or WSJ cared about it was that it did get CPs relatively often.

8 week rule is fun and all but it's not set in stone and never was.
Like even if a 8 week rule existed, for all we know, they said "fuck you" to those who figured it out and moved it to something else.

 

[savethecat]

I get that the editors choose the order of series
no one is saying it's 1:1 poll results

but their placements is indicative of the reception
good reception = magazine beginning
bad reception = magazine end

that's also confirmed and not a theory

I'm talking about the 8 weeks theory
where was it debunked?

”debunked” wasn’t exactly the best word to used. More so that it was never proven or disproven to be a thing, and that from what we know about the ToC and placements already it doesn’t seem very likely that the results are very reflective the Magazine 8 week prior.

for exp. a lot of the color pages being given for reasons such as promoting new volumes, new anime seasons, new story arcs, ending arcs, announcing character popularity poles, etc.
things like “build king is getting extra pages due to extreme popularity” even though it’s only been 2 or 3 chapters.

we can only speculate, but it seems like the TOC is very calculated and preplanned based on multiple aspects, rather than one single reader poll. if I had to guess the first placement of a series isn’t official until chapter 8 because they’re viewing theyre based the popularity on how consistent it’s reader votes are in the first 7 weeks.

and tbh, even though we’ve accepted that the 8th Chapter is the first placement, we don’t really have a confirmation of that other than a Bakuman chapter from over a decade ago. for all we know that could have been just a general round off, or their way of deciding placements could constantly update over time

 

[Mammo]

there are still instances where a new manga takes a nosedive starting from ch8 Ziga, Tanaka Seji, Invade You, Ne0, Higuma, Poro, U19 comes to mind

 

[tirakai]

Sales aren't the only thing that matters in WSJ, they also clearly value the poll highly, and to an extent variety as well.

If Phantom stays at the bottom while Magu-chan stays up high, Phantom Seer will be gone first even if it sells more. It'd hardly be the first time a series outlasts higher sellers due to good ToC positions (especially when it's a gag manga) and that's part of what makes Jump Jump, the focus on consistent week to week popularity, on people buying the magazine every week to read their favourites.

 

[Stivie]

Sales aren't the only thing that matters in WSJ, they also clearly value the poll highly, and to an extent variety as well.

If Phantom stays at the bottom while Magu-chan stays up high, Phantom Seer will be gone first even if it sells more. It'd hardly be the first time a series outlasts higher sellers due to good ToC positions (especially when it's a gag manga) and that's part of what makes Jump Jump, the focus on consistent week to week popularity, on people buying the magazine every week to read their favourites.

For the magazine that sells best in Japan, the sales of its series are much more important than its position in Toc. If it was the way you say it, it was for yozakura to have been canceled instead of mitama.

 

[tirakai]

Mitama didn't perform significantly better than Yozakura in the ToC, maybe a bit better overall but they both mostly hung around the bottom half with some drops to the very bottom and occasional jumps high. It's a pretty different situation to one series being at the top half every issue while another is always bottom 2.

Similarly Mitama also sold like 4k or less per volume, the difference between 4k and 14k is a much bigger deal than the difference between 12k and 20k.

 

[savethecat]

there are still instances where a new manga takes a nosedive starting from ch8 Ziga, Tanaka Seji, Invade You, Ne0, Higuma, Poro, U19 comes to mind

A while ago there was a controversy with The Video Game Awards, because they revealed that the decision for winners are decided from a mix of viewer votes and judge votes. And Viewer votes account for 10% of the decision, and Judge votes account for 90% of the decision.

My guess is that Jump follows a similar method. The reader surveys play somewhat of an influence on the ToC, but overall editorial’s decision on placements overrule the reader surveys.

I obviously don’t know the ins and outs, but I would imagine the whole “First OFFICIAL placement is around chapter 8” thing is true. But it’s more so influenced from a combination of multiple reader surveys, rather than a single week’s placement. Considering that readers can only vote for 3 series, a single week’s results isn’t a good reflection of a series’ popularity. But looking at the results of about 4 or 5 weeks gives you a good idea over whether or not readers like the series. So around chapter 5 or 6 or when they’re making a the ToC for whatever issue chapter 8 appears in, they finally have a good idea on the overall reception of a series is.


This next things is more of just my crackpot theory; I have no real evidence to support this. But my theory as to why we’ve been suddenly seeing a lot of series that place well on chapter 8, but then plummet to something lower on chapter 9 is because I think chapter 8 isn’t always necessarily the “1st official ranking”.
Maybe for certain series voting is inconsistent for a particular series, so they need another week or 2 before they can give a confident “first rank”

 

[DreamcastDazia]

about PS
from what I've seen, the general consensus in both jp and the west is the series is being carried by the art
if it get axed but Kento Matsuura comesback quickly, would that be such a bad thing?

Personally thought the art and story sucked which is why I dropped it. Mainly the art though. Mostly the art. I don't like kento's style at all...

 

[ItsSamu]

there are still instances where a new manga takes a nosedive starting from ch8 Ziga, Tanaka Seji, Invade You, Ne0, Higuma, Poro, U19 comes to mind

That definitely happens but I think that comes down to the delay in mangaka receiving the initial response from the first couple chapters and adjusting to negative feedback by throwing everything they can in an attempt to gain popularity, which makes for that chaotic rushed vibe. I don't know how strict the schedule across the board is for every mangaka but for the most part they're several weeks ahead in terms of production, so they might only be doing the storyboarding for chapter 8 by the time the surveys for the issue their first chapter was in actually reaches them.

For the magazine that sells best in Japan, the sales of its series are much more important than its position in Toc. If it was the way you say it, it was for yozakura to have been canceled instead of mitama.

They've also got to be concerned about the sales of the magazine itself, not just the volumes. If there's a series that surveys very well they might be inclined to keep it around. That being said for a series to properly succeed and last long it has to find a balance between being popular within the magazine and both with its own volumes.

 

[Stivie]

Mitama didn't perform significantly better than Yozakura in the ToC, maybe a bit better overall but they both mostly hung around the bottom half with some drops to the very bottom and occasional jumps high. It's a pretty different situation to one series being at the top half every issue while another is always bottom 2.

Similarly Mitama also sold like 4k or less per volume, the difference between 4k and 14k is a much bigger deal than the difference between 12k and 20k.

It wasn't that different. Mitama sold poorly but was better positioned than YozKura who sold well, and still sells well. It is not so different from magu chan and phantom seer. even though magu chan sells well, phantom seer sells better.

--- Double Post Merged, Jan 20, 2021, Original Post Date: Jan 20, 2021 ---

They've also got to be concerned about the sales of the magazine itself, not just the volumes. If there's a series that surveys very well they might be inclined to keep it around. That being said for a series to properly succeed and last long it has to find a balance between being popular within the magazine and both with its own volumes.

The profit from the sales of the volumes also goes to the jump, it would be a waste to cancel a series that sells more than 20K without seeing the sales of the second volume.

 

[TheEnhancedExe]

For the magazine that sells best in Japan, the sales of its series are much more important than its position in Toc. If it was the way you say it, it was for yozakura to have been canceled instead of mitama.

The poll ties in to magazine sales though. The people that buy the volumes might not necessarily read that same manga on a weekly basis. On the other hand, there is an audience that doesn't buy the volumes but still reads the magazine every single week. On one hand, they obviously want to get higher volume sales for their series. But sometimes they keep lower selling series run for longer because the series has a readership that buys the magazine every single week.

This applies especially to gag manga, which is why you'll see them run longer despite the lower sales. Because people who don't usually follow the magazine every single week, can pick up an issue and laugh at the jokes of gag manga without necessarily getting the whole context. So by having some of these manga around for a bit longer, their magazine sales are benefitting. That's probably the main reason Mitama was even running for as long as it did.

Phantom Seer on the other hand might have a higher influx of people who only read the volumes. Since it shares similarities with KnY, JJK and Chainsaw Man, fans of these series that only buy manga volumes and don't read the magazine might be inclined to pick up Phantom Seer. And as we all know due to the huge backlogs, especially KnY and JJK have a ton of readers that only bought the volumes after their respective anime started airing. It's certainly not unlikely for these people to try out a new manga of the same genre.

This in return would explain the low ToC rankings and also doesn't necessarily mean that volume 2 will sell better. Assuming that my assumption is correct, this depends entirely on the enjoyment of the readers that only bought the volume and don't read the manga weekly. If the sales rise, the manga will survive. If they stagnate or even fall, then probably not.

Volume 1 sales by themselves are rarely indicative imo. I mean just take a look at Ayakashi Triangle which sold like 78k for volume 1 and now sold less than 70k for volume 2. The first volume only sold so much because the mangaka was well known. But then it lost a chunk of those readers, didn't gain enough new ones and now it suddenly looks like the next Robot x Laserbeam.

 

[Mammo]

they do care about the magazine variety

remember the Nak interview from a while back
he said something about Chainsawman not doing well in surveys but they keep it around because it attract people that normally don't read Jump

 

[Halloween]

they do care about the magazine variety

remember the Nak interview from a while back
he said something about Chainsawman not doing well in surveys but they keep it around because it attract people that normally don't read Jump

I don’t remember that at all.

Got a source?

 

[Ike79]

there are still instances where a new manga takes a nosedive starting from ch8 Ziga, Tanaka Seji, Invade You, Ne0, Higuma, Poro, U19 comes to mind

The are two statements one can make here:

1. The first 7 ranking of a manga don't reflect its popularity.
2. The ranking of the 8th chapter reflects the popularity of the first.

(1) is true, or at least is supported by the data. The series you mention are examples of this: statistically significant trends do not show up until the 8th ranking.

(2) might be true or false, we don't really know. It's not a logical conclusion of (1), just a possible interpretation. I'm personally inclined to disregard it, because it's a really strict rule and we know that the ToC is flexible.

It'd hardly be the first time a series outlasts higher sellers due to good ToC positions (especially when it's a gag manga)

When was the last time this happened?

 

[tirakai]

I don't think Ayakashi Triangle will be the next RxL, since Yabuki seems to already have a strong consistent fanbase built up through multiple series (while RxL was probably more like people buying the hot new thing then realising they just like Kuroko, not the author). I think sales will probably flatten out with that consistent long-term fanbase rather than keep dropping like RxL did.

When was the last time this happened?

Ghost Writer sold better than Moriking, probably double over all (still only around 5-6k of course, but a jump up nonetheless). Though I suppose it was already mid-cancellation by the time volumes came out. Spring Weapon by the same mangaka outlasted a whole bunch of higher sellers I think throughout 2017 and early 2018.

Also in 2020, Samurai 8 was still outselling every newer series by a good bit when it ended. Sure it had majorly underperformed, but it did appear to be stabilising and I feel like any other magazine probably would've kept it going (since below expectations for Naruto's creator still meant good sales compared to other new series).

 

[Ike79]

Ghost Writer sold better than Moriking, probably double over all (still only around 5-6k of course, but a jump up nonetheless). Though I suppose it was already mid-cancellation by the time volumes came out.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the decision on Ghostwriter was made before they had first volume results. Same with OBO if it does end this issue (and probably a lot of other U19s).

Samurai 8 was decreasing in sales, on top of its initial sales being way below expectations. I don't think it's comparable to a potential Phantom Seer vs Magu-chan. (unless PS vol2 sells less, of course)

 

[Mammo]

I don’t remember that at all.

Got a source?

it's a quote from his interview with Champion eic, he said both Chainsaw man and Jimoto ga Japan don't do well in surveys but continue to be serialized because they attract different demographic

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「少年に読ませたい」という思いが作り手にあれば、それは少年マンガ

natalie.mu

 

[Ravellino]

I don't think Ayakashi Triangle will be the next RxL, since Yabuki seems to already have a strong consistent fanbase built up through multiple series (while RxL was probably more like people buying the hot new thing then realising they just like Kuroko, not the author). I think sales will probably flatten out with that consistent long-term fanbase rather than keep dropping like RxL did.

I find it hard to be sure of that, yes the fanbase is usually faithful but also the author is not doing much to please fans of to love ru

 

[AbrahamOmosun]

it's a quote from his interview with Champion eic, he said both Chainsaw man and Jimoto ga Japan don't do well in surveys but continue to be serialized because they attract different demographic

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「少年に読ませたい」という思いが作り手にあれば、それは少年マンガ

natalie.mu

I saw this somewhere else and the translation says volume sales for Chainsaw man

David and Goliath: Hiroyuki Nakano and Takekawa Shingo in New Interview – OTAQUEST

Hiroyuki Nakano and Takekawa Shingo sitting down for an interview may have resembled David and Goliath, but it did offer some valuable insights.

www.otaquest.com

[Looking only to the surveys can, in many cases, confuse fans as to the current state of Weekly Shonen Jump. Seeing such series as Chainsaw Man and Jimoto ga Japan so low in the rankings but continue to be serialized can be perplexing, but can be explained when other factors, such as the younger demographic for Jimoto and volume sales for Chainsaw, are considered./QUOTE]

 

[TyVip]

^ https://www.otaquest.com/david-and-goliath-hiroyuki-nakano-takekawa-shingo-interview/ looks like a translation of that interview

Quote from it
"
This isn’t the case in reality, however. Nakano described the surveys during the interview as more of a “tool” for gathering “differing opinions” from those of the editorial team, which then inform the decisions they make about a series. Other factors, such as the target demographic and collected volume sales, also enter into the picture.

Looking only to the surveys can, in many cases, confuse fans as to the current state of Weekly Shonen Jump. Seeing such series as Chainsaw Man and Jimoto ga Japan so low in the rankings but continue to be serialized can be perplexing, but can be explained when other factors, such as the younger demographic for Jimoto and volume sales for Chainsaw, are considered.
"