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Weekly Shonen Jump Issue #49 (2026) 00. Ichi the Witch (Cover & Lead Color Pages)
01. Sakamoto Days
02. One Piece 00. Roku's House of Oddities (Color Page)
03. Akane-banashi
04. Someone Hertz
05. Shinobi Undercover 00. Superpower Battle Fantasy Club (One Shot by Tatara Kyo, Color Page, Golden Future Cup #6)
06. Me & Roboco 00. Under Doctor (Color Page)
07. Graykeith: Translator Daemonica
08. Witch Watch
09. The Ura Files
10. Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi
11. Animal Signal
12. Nue's Exorcist
13. Hal Formula
14. Cannon Master
15. Class 2B Hero Destroyerz
16. Kagurabachi
Weekly Shonen Jump Issue #50 (2026) - Information!
Akane-banashi (Cover & Lead Color Pages)
Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi (Color Page)
Me & Roboco (Color Page)
Shishikabane (One Shot by Maki Gyujirou, Color Page, Golden Future Cup #7)
Instead of just calling manga we don't like AI-slop because we can't find a reason it actually deserves to be axed, why don't we actually look at numbers and see what Hima-ten! has done to justify not being axed.
I was originally going to post this for Hima-ten!'s first anniversary...then I didn't for some reason, I don't remember why. So, the half of year since isn't accounted for, but if we're being real, it doesn't really change much. Also, my school's Microsoft Office finally locked me out despite being years since I graduated, so I'd have to remake these charts from scratch on Google Sheets and I don't really want to do that
===
First, every series TOC placements in their first year, side by side, according to Jajanken:
Next, the individual line graphs of their year 1s:
Color Key - Orange: Lead Color Page but no cover | Blue: Color Page | Purple: Cover but not the Lead Color page
Average: 11.54
The week it got the cover (chapter 8), it didn't have a color page to go with it. The week it celebrated the anniversary - ch. 51, it didn't get the cover (it was One Piece that week).
Average: 9.56
the week it got the cover (chapter 29), it got a regular color page to go with it (Kuroko no Basket got the lead color page).
Average: 7.60
Jump during this time was running 16 series instead of 20+, and there was one lead color page and usually one, sometimes two, regular color page per issue (and it immediately followed the lead color page). So it was more mid tier than upper echelon.
Average: 9.0
Average: 10.04
Average: 10.10
...what the hell was I"s made of?! That first year is NUTS. Most decade long pillars don't get starts that good! I knew it was extremely popular and the author is extremely popular but sheesh. If I had to hazard a guess, I"s started during the final months of "the Dark Age", so right before One Piece (and Seikimatsu Leader Dan Takeshi) and the swarm of 1998 and 99 series that would define the magazine for years to come. Maybe the editors decided to push any series that started strong super hard, and I"s was the main benefactor?
Average: 5.3
I didn't include Blue Box because we already know how it compares to Hima-ten!, we look at it every week. No point in doing it when we know Blue Box is way ahead, but Blue Box is way ahead of a lot of these so that's not saying much. I didn't do Video Girl Ai...because I didn't do Video Girl Ai. I don't really have a reason besides I wanted to do one work per author, but it probably should be here too. I didn't do To Love Ru because the peak was Darkness, which is Jump SQ, so it would be leaving out a significant piece of the puzzle just using the WSJ numbers. Any other successful romance I probably just forgot about.
Basically, the main thing separating Hima-ten! from the rest of the Jump romance series was one "special promotion" thing before the anniversary. Consecutive color pages, cover, lead color page, something like that. It got one 1st place in its first year, which some of these series never managed to do in general, let alone year 1, but that's not really "special promotion". That's just regular promotion. Even Yuuna, the lone series to not get a lead color page year 1, managed to get something and it's possible it didn't get a cover only because its ecchi instead of popularity reasons. Okay, technically there was that special campaign with Hima-ten!, Shinobi Undercover, and Kiyoshi they did where if you did a quiz you could enter a lottery for merch, which is similar in vein to things like the Jump Power Generation or Jump Awakening...but eh. Not sure if that really counts right now (if they start giving color pages calling them that and making it a real thing, it probably does).
Aside from that, Hima-ten's stacks up with the rest of these romance series. 8 color pages before the anniversary is about where a successful romcom should be. Romances usually have an ebb and flow period where the rankings are all over the place (Hima-ten!'s is admittedly lower lows), so its not that strange for Hima-ten! to be jumping in the rankings. It gets color pages at a good enough rate, one every four or five chapters. Ichigo 100% is an exception because Jump was just not giving color pages in general outside the lead color page according to Jajanken. It was just lead color page, maybe one other series getting regular color pages, a lot of times. I don't know if that's accurate or we just don't have those issues preserved somewhere to verify the color pages for that period, I'd love to learn about a possible reason for a color shortage in 2002-03 if that's the case. Kimagure Orange Road makes sense because there straight up wasn't that many color pages back then - it did get a decent amount for its time. Hima-ten!'s TOC averages for the first year is right there with the rest, only 1-2 placements off average wise (11.54 vs 10 or 9). That seems big, but I'll explain how that isn't nearly as wide a gap as it sounds.
Its TOC average got tanked by "bottom 5 because there was no other series to put there". Basically, the only time Hima-ten! is ever in the bottom 5 for longer than two weeks is because a big new series batch happens, cleans out the bottom dwellers, and Hima-ten! hovers there until the new series fills those spots in and Hima-ten! shoots up again.
For example, look at its average at the time of the anniversary cover. If you exclude those 4 placements as an anomaly (because they are, that was the first time Hima-ten! was in the bottom 5 for longer than two weeks), the average becomes 11.20. If you include the chapter after the anniversary cover (but not the cover), Hima-ten! shoots up to 10.82. Include the cover and it's 10.6! Right in line with the others, albeit still the lowest one. So let this be a reminder; bad rankings add up quickly. I'm not going to exclude them though, so 11.54 is the number we're using.
All things considered...Hima-ten's closest comparison is probably Ichigo 100%. There's no lead color pages or singular cover for Hima-ten! before the anniversary, but they both started out strong out the gate, went down for a bit to highlight some other new series once it was established, harem dynamics were similar, they were late to celebrate their first anniversaries, they both got the "ecchi" label but neither are crazy ecchi (Ichigo 100% is definitely ecchi, but it's not To Love Ru or Yuuna), similar TOC average after year 1, the hair colors match...and even then Hima-ten managed to get the cover when Ichigo 100% didn't so it's in a pretty good spot. Maybe Yuuna is also applicable...but again, no cover NOR a lead color page for Yuuna when Hima-ten! got it so it looks good for Hima-ten.
In general, I think Hima-ten!'s on the right track. It's on the lower half of it, but it's generally following the same path as other successful Jump romances. I do think it's worth pointing out that Hima-ten! isn't the primary romance series in the lineup; Blue Box is. So the one that's going to get pushed primarily is Blue Box. And having multiple romances does impact the TOC averages since we can see Yuuna and We Never Learn are the only other double digit averages, and they're the only other ones that ran primarily with another successful romance series - each other (yes, there's some instances like Nisekoi running for like six months with Yuuna, but the former was already ranking badly so Yuuna probably had no effect on it). This happened in Yuuna's year two, but I do want to point out that WNL did affect Yuuna as the later's average dropped to 13.98 while WNL was going through its first year (WNL's year 2 was 9.2 while Yuuna was going through year 3 which was still way lower despite the anime airing this year).
Usually the main romance series destroys the competition (Nisekoi vs Kagami, Pajama mo Kanojo, and Koisome Momiji was 7.60 vs 11.9, 13.65, and 14.39 respectively. We Never Learn and Yuuna faced off with Cross Account and its abysmal 16.75. Yuuna dealt with Love Rush's 14.38, etc.). Blue Box destroys Hima-ten! as its the primary romance (Blue Box is at 5.83 lifetime). Even Hima-ten! has a noticeable victory - Syd Craft's final average was 13.79 (Hima-ten!'s average at the time is the aforementioned 11.20 because if you remember correctly, that bottom five stint started the issue after Syd Craft ends).
Other failed "romance" averages include: Anedoki - 14, Hatsukoi Limited - 13.53 (the debate over whether it was an intended short series or not can be another day), magico - 14.28 lifetime and 13.08 after year 1, Hime-dol - 15.25. Basically, 13 or higher in year 1 is the point of no hope. 11 or 12 is where the question marks start popping up. Double Arts was 10.82, and its one of if not the most contested axe of a "flop" in the past 25 years. Lilim Kiss finished at 11.42, but had a color page five chapters before the axe and was ranking fine until the last five chapters, so it probably shouldn't have been axed when it was. But both of those also reached an 11 average by chapter 20. At that point, Hima-ten! was at 8.7 if you include the first seven chapters, 9.3 if you don't. So it was far ahead of the "11 border" at the same part of its life. Still though, 11-12 is where you can find the romance series you can debate if they should have been axed or not.
There actually is one unsuccessful romance series I feel I need to go more in depth for: Pretty Face. It ran from #24 in 2002 to #28 in 2003. Similar TOC average (11.54 vs 11.6), was the secondary romance series to the main success at the time (Ichigo 100%), got an early sign of high popularity (Hima-ten! got a 1st place in the TOC while Pretty Face got a cover at chapter 18 with no lead color page). I'd also say this supports the previous idea that having multiple successful romance series does affect the less popular one since Pretty Face was constantly below Ichigo 100%.
So is it possible Hima-ten ends up like Pretty Face? Technically, but I don't think it's likely.
Hima-ten! got the lead color page AND cover for its anniversary while Pretty Face didn't. I made a post about it before, but basically any series that gets both get at least one more year before getting axed (it was like 5 series that got axed before the second anniversary since 2000 despite getting the cover for the first anniversary).
Hima-ten! was getting color pages in general. Remember how I mentioned 2002-03 had this period where nothing was getting color pages basically besides the issue's lead color pages according to Jajaken? That's Pretty Face's entire run. It got a color page at chapter 9, and then it didn't get any kind of color again until chapter 49, the first anniversary lead color page but no cover. Even when it got the cover, it didn't get a color page of any kind. Ichigo 100% didn't have much more (1 color page, 1 cover with no color page, and 1 lead color pages which was the anniversary one), but it still got something during that year. So they basically gave up on promoting Pretty Face once volume 1 came out, while they still promote Hima-ten! (even if I would like them to promote it as much as they do Shinobi and Kiyoshi).
Yasuhiro Kano is an enigma of a mangaka. Pretty Face's situation is like, a 1/1000000 chance of happening in Jump. Even the other comparable case (P2) was a clear case of giving it a pity cover before axing it because it was doing horrible in the magazine. Pretty Face wasn't doing bad enough to get a lead color page and then axed three chapters later; performance wise it should have gone at least another batch or two. Mx0 was meant to end early but got extended due to popularity, only for it to end the chapter before the second anniversary because it tanked in popularity (the most standard of Kano's series, but I think it's notable that it was another series that implied Kano ran out of ideas and they wanted out). Kagami no Kuni no Harisugawa also wasn't doing bad enough to immediately get axed (it sold about 45k week 1, 59k total before leaving Oricon), especially when its batchmate ST&RS existed, but it was axed immediately basically because the premise was too limiting and Kano didn't know what to do, so they called it quits.
Kano was a different headcase that needs caveats if you want to use their series for data points, in my opinion. Still though, according to data, these series are comparable so you can't write it off as impossible.
...Hima-ten! still did better than Pretty Face considering Hima-ten! lasted more than 3 chapters past its anniversary so I'm willing to take my chances that Hima-ten! isn't another Pretty Face.
===
Let's do the sales now. This one will be quicker because...well, half of these don't have individual volume sales numbers. I'll just give circulation numbers I found for them of the entire series. They're big enough where you can assume even year 1 was really good sales wise.
Ichigo 100% - 8 million* (Couldn't find a source confirming it. The one source I did find has a citation, but it's a dead link so can't confirm. I found a second claim 7.5 million, but there was no source and I'm pretty sure it was a site anyone can post on so I don't think that one is reliable either)
Kimagure Orange Road - 20 million, vol 1-18
I"s - 15 million, vol 1-10
For the modern ones, I'll give what their volume released before the anniversary sold since we can actually check that.
*- Hima-ten!'s week 1's Oricon sales + shoseki's week 2 and 3 estimates. I wouldn't actually recommend adding two different sources numbers to get a combined total, but Hima-ten only had one week on Oricon so nothing else to do. It doesn't really help that much anyway. also ignore the error with Hima-ten's! second bar. It should be a week 2 and a week 3, I just forgot to fix it
Hima-ten! lags far behind here. I know, physical market was way stronger back then, digital sales are higher than back then so maybe it's closer than it appears, the global economy is worse today than back then, Japan's declining birth rate means there's less younger people for shonen romances to appeal to, and you know, you're probably right. I personally believe Hima-ten! does at least decent digitally based on how other romcoms from Shonen Magazine or Sunday do really good digitally, so logically Jump's romcoms should too. Plus if you check things like Amazon and the Billboard ranking posted recently, there are signs that point to it being a decent (if nothing else) seller digitally. We don't have much proof of that being the case or digital being the reason for decline though. We have to work with what we have here; it's already hard enough comparing series that do have volume sales with ones that are too old for them.
I'll also keep this brief since they're other magazines (and this is already a mammoth of a post), but just a quick comparison for other "big" romance series to come out in the past 2 years (this one is first three weeks charted since they're all basically one week Oricon, the rest Shoseki so its the same data pool. Only one of them made it to 4 weeks and it was already ahead, so I didn't feel like finding the calculations for the estimate of week 4). Also, these numbers are based on the series' most recent volume as of JULY 2025, so I'm pretty sure at this point some of them have pulled more ahead, but it's not worlds apart last I checked.
I don't really know why, but Magazine Pocket categorizes Orion's Board as romance, so I'll include it. Ogami Tsumiki isn't really a romance - it's more friendship building that can end up a romance if the author wants, but I put it here anyway just in case and it's still pretty romcom coded even if it technically isn't one.
The slightly older ones like Kanan-sama, Yowayowa Sensei, Mikadone Sanshima wa Angai Choroi, ones that are getting anime soon or have it now, are also in this 10-20k range (well Kanan-sama and Yowayowa actually sell less than 10k, but their peaks pre anime were in the 10k range). So sales wise, Hima-ten! is among the top of the next gen of "romance" and romance adjacent series, above average at worst. Now, whether this says more about the genre in general I'll let you decide, but numbers wise, Hima-ten! is doing comparable if not better than romance series that have gotten an anime announced and are considered important to their respective magazines' futures.
I'll also say that the mobile apps are where you're going to find the "big" shonen romances right now. Magazine Pocket has The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity and the Alya Sometimes Speaks in Russian's manga adaptation (and had works like Nagatoro and Shikimori in the recent past), Jump+ had You and I Are Polar Opposites, works that clear the 20k ceiling comfortably. It's not as dire as sports, but shonen romance is also getting blown out kinda badly in physical shonen magazines now that the old titans like Komi and Takagi-san ended and works like Rent A Girlfriend and Goddess Cafe Terrace are far past their peaks (Blue Box is still doing good). please save the genre Someone Hertz
Maybe these trends suggest that traditional romance needs twists nowadays? Blue Box is a sports hybrid, Yaernacht of the Dark Moon from Magazine looks promising and is a battle harem like Nue's Exorcist, the reason why I was confused about Orion's Board earlier was because its far more shogi than romance but its performing as good as Tune In To the Midnight Heart, we've seen series like Undead Unuck and Yozakura where the series isn't "romance" but the series revolves around a romantic couple and their relationship, do good. Maybe it's not good enough to just be a "romantic comedy" now. I don't know. Maybe Someone Hertz will give us a clearer answer.
Also most of these do well digitally so that could contribute to the relative same area of physical sales all these series are in while better separating them in terms of popularity. We don't know them though, so can't analyze them.
The main thing Hima-ten's lagging behind in are sales, but eh, that's fine. Everything is lagging hard sales wise because the physical manga market is in decline. Plus, romcoms are more high floor-low ceiling sales wise. The strat for romcoms these days is clearly faster adaptations for quick bucks. Hima-ten! does enough to get attention from smaller studios. Will it ever reach these other series heights? I won't say never, maybe Ufotable and MAPPA combine in two years and create the ultimate sakuga fest with Hima-ten! that solves world hunger or something. Realistically, no it won't. That's fine though. It doesn't need to reach those heights.
===
Did Hima-ten! get the benefit of being the only real romcom in the lineup? Yes and no. It still had to beat out Syd Craft - which it did. It's not a complete overlap, but Blue Box is also potentially siphoning a lot of potential votes too (assuming romance lovers don't just vote for both of them, idk if they do, we can't get that kind of data just looking at the TOC). Not to mention it has to compete with Nue's Exorcist romcom harem plot points, Shinobi Undercover's developing romance between Yodaka and Aoi, even Witch Watch is romcom coded despite not being a romcom per say. So you can say it got a little leeway for the sake of lineup diversity, but you also can't deny that it did do enough on its own to justify surviving when it was challenged by another romcom and managed to find an audience despite a more popular series with the same theme running alongside it.
The real way it got lucky was because of the lineup it debuted in all being on the verge of ending. My Hero and Kaisen ending the same year it debuted, Yozakura and Undead ending shortly after. Sakamoto, Elusive Samurai, Blue Box all being on the verge of ending, with Witch Watch probably being not that far off, Kill Blue, Astro Royale, and Chojo all ending. All of the DoA new series that debuted since Hima-ten! But you know what? That's the same for basically every other success too.
We Never Learn debuted in a six batch series, so 6 series minimum had to end to make room for it. Add Gintama, Saiki K., Isobee, and Samon-kun (and I guess Spring Weapon No. 1 but that never should have survived in the first place) ending or leaving the magazine within a year (plus World Trigger disappearing for a year before transferring to Jump SQ) and there's obviously room for We Never Learn.
Nisekoi started in 2011, right before the end of: Nura, Bakuman, Reborn and magico (a one year old series) in 2012 (plus the aforementioned Kagami no Kuni which ended earlier than it should have based on its performance). Sket Dance, Medaka Box and Kurogane (a one year series) in 2013. You can also include Naruto, Beelzebub, and Kuroko no Basket ending in 2014 but the series was already more than safe at that point. The magazine's audience needed to find new series to read and Nisekoi was one of them.
Yuuna in 2016? Bleach, Toriko, Nisekoi, Kochikame, Assassination Classroom. All the series ending during We Never Learn's time also apply for Yuuna. There was an opening and Yuuna found a way through the cracks.
Ichigo 100%? 2002 saw the end of Rising Impact and Whistle!, plus Takeshi would leave the magazine at this time. 2003 saw the end of Rookies and Hikaru no Go. 2004 the end of Yu-gi-oh!, Shaman King and Black Cat (plus Jojo's would leave the magazine at this point).
I"s was during the "Dark Ages", so that should explain it all.
It's just the cycle of life that a bunch of staple Jump series end around the same time and series that probably aren't as popular or successful as them replace the concluded series, in hopes of growing to be as big as them someday. Sometimes they do; sometimes they don't and you look stupid for keeping Spring Weapon No. 1 for over a year (this applies to not romance series too btw).
===
tl;dr: Hima-ten!'s on the lower average of successful romances in Jump history, but it does enough to still be considered part of this group. This "AI-slop" clearly found a big enough audience that likes it. Also, this was written in the context of the first anniversary (so July/August 2025), so if some of the info or framing feels off, it's because this was written months ago and I did my best to update it, but might have missed some things.
Instead of just calling manga we don't like AI-slop because we can't find a reason it actually deserves to be axed, why don't we actually look at numbers and see what Hima-ten! has done to justify not being axed.
I was originally going to post this for Hima-ten!'s first anniversary...then I didn't for some reason, I don't remember why. So, the half of year since isn't accounted for, but if we're being real, it doesn't really change much. Also, my school's Microsoft Office finally locked me out despite being years since I graduated, so I'd have to remake these charts from scratch on Google Sheets and I don't really want to do that
===
First, every series TOC placements in their first year, side by side, according to Jajanken:
Next, the individual line graphs of their year 1s:
Color Key - Orange: Lead Color Page but no cover | Blue: Color Page | Purple: Cover but not the Lead Color page
Average: 11.54
The week it got the cover (chapter 8), it didn't have a color page to go with it. The week it celebrated the anniversary - ch. 51, it didn't get the cover (it was One Piece that week).
Average: 9.56
the week it got the cover (chapter 29), it got a regular color page to go with it (Kuroko no Basket got the lead color page).
Average: 7.60
Jump during this time was running 16 series instead of 20+, and there was one lead color page and usually one, sometimes two, regular color page per issue (and it immediately followed the lead color page). So it was more mid tier than upper echelon.
Average: 9.0
Average: 10.04
Average: 10.10
...what the hell was I"s made of?! That first year is NUTS. Most decade long pillars don't get starts that good! I knew it was extremely popular and the author is extremely popular but sheesh. If I had to hazard a guess, I"s started during the final months of "the Dark Age", so right before One Piece (and Seikimatsu Leader Dan Takeshi) and the swarm of 1998 and 99 series that would define the magazine for years to come. Maybe the editors decided to push any series that started strong super hard, and I"s was the main benefactor?
Average: 5.3
I didn't include Blue Box because we already know how it compares to Hima-ten!, we look at it every week. No point in doing it when we know Blue Box is way ahead, but Blue Box is way ahead of a lot of these so that's not saying much. I didn't do Video Girl Ai...because I didn't do Video Girl Ai. I don't really have a reason besides I wanted to do one work per author, but it probably should be here too. I didn't do To Love Ru because the peak was Darkness, which is Jump SQ, so it would be leaving out a significant piece of the puzzle just using the WSJ numbers. Any other successful romance I probably just forgot about.
Basically, the main thing separating Hima-ten! from the rest of the Jump romance series was one "special promotion" thing before the anniversary. Consecutive color pages, cover, lead color page, something like that. It got one 1st place in its first year, which some of these series never managed to do in general, let alone year 1, but that's not really "special promotion". That's just regular promotion. Even Yuuna, the lone series to not get a lead color page year 1, managed to get something and it's possible it didn't get a cover only because its ecchi instead of popularity reasons. Okay, technically there was that special campaign with Hima-ten!, Shinobi Undercover, and Kiyoshi they did where if you did a quiz you could enter a lottery for merch, which is similar in vein to things like the Jump Power Generation or Jump Awakening...but eh. Not sure if that really counts right now (if they start giving color pages calling them that and making it a real thing, it probably does).
Aside from that, Hima-ten's stacks up with the rest of these romance series. 8 color pages before the anniversary is about where a successful romcom should be. Romances usually have an ebb and flow period where the rankings are all over the place (Hima-ten!'s is admittedly lower lows), so its not that strange for Hima-ten! to be jumping in the rankings. It gets color pages at a good enough rate, one every four or five chapters. Ichigo 100% is an exception because Jump was just not giving color pages in general outside the lead color page according to Jajanken. It was just lead color page, maybe one other series getting regular color pages, a lot of times. I don't know if that's accurate or we just don't have those issues preserved somewhere to verify the color pages for that period, I'd love to learn about a possible reason for a color shortage in 2002-03 if that's the case. Kimagure Orange Road makes sense because there straight up wasn't that many color pages back then - it did get a decent amount for its time. Hima-ten!'s TOC averages for the first year is right there with the rest, only 1-2 placements off average wise (11.54 vs 10 or 9). That seems big, but I'll explain how that isn't nearly as wide a gap as it sounds.
Its TOC average got tanked by "bottom 5 because there was no other series to put there". Basically, the only time Hima-ten! is ever in the bottom 5 for longer than two weeks is because a big new series batch happens, cleans out the bottom dwellers, and Hima-ten! hovers there until the new series fills those spots in and Hima-ten! shoots up again.
For example, look at its average at the time of the anniversary cover. If you exclude those 4 placements as an anomaly (because they are, that was the first time Hima-ten! was in the bottom 5 for longer than two weeks), the average becomes 11.20. If you include the chapter after the anniversary cover (but not the cover), Hima-ten! shoots up to 10.82. Include the cover and it's 10.6! Right in line with the others, albeit still the lowest one. So let this be a reminder; bad rankings add up quickly. I'm not going to exclude them though, so 11.54 is the number we're using.
All things considered...Hima-ten's closest comparison is probably Ichigo 100%. There's no lead color pages or singular cover for Hima-ten! before the anniversary, but they both started out strong out the gate, went down for a bit to highlight some other new series once it was established, harem dynamics were similar, they were late to celebrate their first anniversaries, they both got the "ecchi" label but neither are crazy ecchi (Ichigo 100% is definitely ecchi, but it's not To Love Ru or Yuuna), similar TOC average after year 1, the hair colors match...and even then Hima-ten managed to get the cover when Ichigo 100% didn't so it's in a pretty good spot. Maybe Yuuna is also applicable...but again, no cover NOR a lead color page for Yuuna when Hima-ten! got it so it looks good for Hima-ten.
In general, I think Hima-ten!'s on the right track. It's on the lower half of it, but it's generally following the same path as other successful Jump romances. I do think it's worth pointing out that Hima-ten! isn't the primary romance series in the lineup; Blue Box is. So the one that's going to get pushed primarily is Blue Box. And having multiple romances does impact the TOC averages since we can see Yuuna and We Never Learn are the only other double digit averages, and they're the only other ones that ran primarily with another successful romance series - each other (yes, there's some instances like Nisekoi running for like six months with Yuuna, but the former was already ranking badly so Yuuna probably had no effect on it). This happened in Yuuna's year two, but I do want to point out that WNL did affect Yuuna as the later's average dropped to 13.98 while WNL was going through its first year (WNL's year 2 was 9.2 while Yuuna was going through year 3 which was still way lower despite the anime airing this year).
Usually the main romance series destroys the competition (Nisekoi vs Kagami, Pajama mo Kanojo, and Koisome Momiji was 7.60 vs 11.9, 13.65, and 14.39 respectively. We Never Learn and Yuuna faced off with Cross Account and its abysmal 16.75. Yuuna dealt with Love Rush's 14.38, etc.). Blue Box destroys Hima-ten! as its the primary romance (Blue Box is at 5.83 lifetime). Even Hima-ten! has a noticeable victory - Syd Craft's final average was 13.79 (Hima-ten!'s average at the time is the aforementioned 11.20 because if you remember correctly, that bottom five stint started the issue after Syd Craft ends).
Other failed "romance" averages include: Anedoki - 14, Hatsukoi Limited - 13.53 (the debate over whether it was an intended short series or not can be another day), magico - 14.28 lifetime and 13.08 after year 1, Hime-dol - 15.25. Basically, 13 or higher in year 1 is the point of no hope. 11 or 12 is where the question marks start popping up. Double Arts was 10.82, and its one of if not the most contested axe of a "flop" in the past 25 years. Lilim Kiss finished at 11.42, but had a color page five chapters before the axe and was ranking fine until the last five chapters, so it probably shouldn't have been axed when it was. But both of those also reached an 11 average by chapter 20. At that point, Hima-ten! was at 8.7 if you include the first seven chapters, 9.3 if you don't. So it was far ahead of the "11 border" at the same part of its life. Still though, 11-12 is where you can find the romance series you can debate if they should have been axed or not.
There actually is one unsuccessful romance series I feel I need to go more in depth for: Pretty Face. It ran from #24 in 2002 to #28 in 2003. Similar TOC average (11.54 vs 11.6), was the secondary romance series to the main success at the time (Ichigo 100%), got an early sign of high popularity (Hima-ten! got a 1st place in the TOC while Pretty Face got a cover at chapter 18 with no lead color page). I'd also say this supports the previous idea that having multiple successful romance series does affect the less popular one since Pretty Face was constantly below Ichigo 100%.
So is it possible Hima-ten ends up like Pretty Face? Technically, but I don't think it's likely.
Hima-ten! got the lead color page AND cover for its anniversary while Pretty Face didn't. I made a post about it before, but basically any series that gets both get at least one more year before getting axed (it was like 5 series that got axed before the second anniversary since 2000 despite getting the cover for the first anniversary).
Hima-ten! was getting color pages in general. Remember how I mentioned 2002-03 had this period where nothing was getting color pages basically besides the issue's lead color pages according to Jajaken? That's Pretty Face's entire run. It got a color page at chapter 9, and then it didn't get any kind of color again until chapter 49, the first anniversary lead color page but no cover. Even when it got the cover, it didn't get a color page of any kind. Ichigo 100% didn't have much more (1 color page, 1 cover with no color page, and 1 lead color pages which was the anniversary one), but it still got something during that year. So they basically gave up on promoting Pretty Face once volume 1 came out, while they still promote Hima-ten! (even if I would like them to promote it as much as they do Shinobi and Kiyoshi).
Yasuhiro Kano is an enigma of a mangaka. Pretty Face's situation is like, a 1/1000000 chance of happening in Jump. Even the other comparable case (P2) was a clear case of giving it a pity cover before axing it because it was doing horrible in the magazine. Pretty Face wasn't doing bad enough to get a lead color page and then axed three chapters later; performance wise it should have gone at least another batch or two. Mx0 was meant to end early but got extended due to popularity, only for it to end the chapter before the second anniversary because it tanked in popularity (the most standard of Kano's series, but I think it's notable that it was another series that implied Kano ran out of ideas and they wanted out). Kagami no Kuni no Harisugawa also wasn't doing bad enough to immediately get axed (it sold about 45k week 1, 59k total before leaving Oricon), especially when its batchmate ST&RS existed, but it was axed immediately basically because the premise was too limiting and Kano didn't know what to do, so they called it quits.
Kano was a different headcase that needs caveats if you want to use their series for data points, in my opinion. Still though, according to data, these series are comparable so you can't write it off as impossible.
...Hima-ten! still did better than Pretty Face considering Hima-ten! lasted more than 3 chapters past its anniversary so I'm willing to take my chances that Hima-ten! isn't another Pretty Face.
===
Let's do the sales now. This one will be quicker because...well, half of these don't have individual volume sales numbers. I'll just give circulation numbers I found for them of the entire series. They're big enough where you can assume even year 1 was really good sales wise.
Ichigo 100% - 8 million* (Couldn't find a source confirming it. The one source I did find has a citation, but it's a dead link so can't confirm. I found a second claim 7.5 million, but there was no source and I'm pretty sure it was a site anyone can post on so I don't think that one is reliable either)
Kimagure Orange Road - 20 million, vol 1-18
I"s - 15 million, vol 1-10
For the modern ones, I'll give what their volume released before the anniversary sold since we can actually check that.
*- Hima-ten!'s week 1's Oricon sales + shoseki's week 2 and 3 estimates. I wouldn't actually recommend adding two different sources numbers to get a combined total, but Hima-ten only had one week on Oricon so nothing else to do. It doesn't really help that much anyway. also ignore the error with Hima-ten's! second bar. It should be a week 2 and a week 3, I just forgot to fix it
Hima-ten! lags far behind here. I know, physical market was way stronger back then, digital sales are higher than back then so maybe it's closer than it appears, the global economy is worse today than back then, Japan's declining birth rate means there's less younger people for shonen romances to appeal to, and you know, you're probably right. I personally believe Hima-ten! does at least decent digitally based on how other romcoms from Shonen Magazine or Sunday do really good digitally, so logically Jump's romcoms should too. Plus if you check things like Amazon and the Billboard ranking posted recently, there are signs that point to it being a decent (if nothing else) seller digitally. We don't have much proof of that being the case or digital being the reason for decline though. We have to work with what we have here; it's already hard enough comparing series that do have volume sales with ones that are too old for them.
I'll also keep this brief since they're other magazines (and this is already a mammoth of a post), but just a quick comparison for other "big" romance series to come out in the past 2 years (this one is first three weeks charted since they're all basically one week Oricon, the rest Shoseki so its the same data pool. Only one of them made it to 4 weeks and it was already ahead, so I didn't feel like finding the calculations for the estimate of week 4). Also, these numbers are based on the series' most recent volume as of JULY 2025, so I'm pretty sure at this point some of them have pulled more ahead, but it's not worlds apart last I checked.
I don't really know why, but Magazine Pocket categorizes Orion's Board as romance, so I'll include it. Ogami Tsumiki isn't really a romance - it's more friendship building that can end up a romance if the author wants, but I put it here anyway just in case and it's still pretty romcom coded even if it technically isn't one.
The slightly older ones like Kanan-sama, Yowayowa Sensei, Mikadone Sanshima wa Angai Choroi, ones that are getting anime soon or have it now, are also in this 10-20k range (well Kanan-sama and Yowayowa actually sell less than 10k, but their peaks pre anime were in the 10k range). So sales wise, Hima-ten! is among the top of the next gen of "romance" and romance adjacent series, above average at worst. Now, whether this says more about the genre in general I'll let you decide, but numbers wise, Hima-ten! is doing comparable if not better than romance series that have gotten an anime announced and are considered important to their respective magazines' futures.
I'll also say that the mobile apps are where you're going to find the "big" shonen romances right now. Magazine Pocket has The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity and the Alya Sometimes Speaks in Russian's manga adaptation (and had works like Nagatoro and Shikimori in the recent past), Jump+ had You and I Are Polar Opposites, works that clear the 20k ceiling comfortably. It's not as dire as sports, but shonen romance is also getting blown out kinda badly in physical shonen magazines now that the old titans like Komi and Takagi-san ended and works like Rent A Girlfriend and Goddess Cafe Terrace are far past their peaks (Blue Box is still doing good). please save the genre Someone Hertz
Maybe these trends suggest that traditional romance needs twists nowadays? Blue Box is a sports hybrid, Yaernacht of the Dark Moon from Magazine looks promising and is a battle harem like Nue's Exorcist, the reason why I was confused about Orion's Board earlier was because its far more shogi than romance but its performing as good as Tune In To the Midnight Heart, we've seen series like Undead Unuck and Yozakura where the series isn't "romance" but the series revolves around a romantic couple and their relationship, do good. Maybe it's not good enough to just be a "romantic comedy" now. I don't know. Maybe Someone Hertz will give us a clearer answer.
Also most of these do well digitally so that could contribute to the relative same area of physical sales all these series are in while better separating them in terms of popularity. We don't know them though, so can't analyze them.
The main thing Hima-ten's lagging behind in are sales, but eh, that's fine. Everything is lagging hard sales wise because the physical manga market is in decline. Plus, romcoms are more high floor-low ceiling sales wise. The strat for romcoms these days is clearly faster adaptations for quick bucks. Hima-ten! does enough to get attention from smaller studios. Will it ever reach these other series heights? I won't say never, maybe Ufotable and MAPPA combine in two years and create the ultimate sakuga fest with Hima-ten! that solves world hunger or something. Realistically, no it won't. That's fine though. It doesn't need to reach those heights.
===
Did Hima-ten! get the benefit of being the only real romcom in the lineup? Yes and no. It still had to beat out Syd Craft - which it did. It's not a complete overlap, but Blue Box is also potentially siphoning a lot of potential votes too (assuming romance lovers don't just vote for both of them, idk if they do, we can't get that kind of data just looking at the TOC). Not to mention it has to compete with Nue's Exorcist romcom harem plot points, Shinobi Undercover's developing romance between Yodaka and Aoi, even Witch Watch is romcom coded despite not being a romcom per say. So you can say it got a little leeway for the sake of lineup diversity, but you also can't deny that it did do enough on its own to justify surviving when it was challenged by another romcom and managed to find an audience despite a more popular series with the same theme running alongside it.
The real way it got lucky was because of the lineup it debuted in all being on the verge of ending. My Hero and Kaisen ending the same year it debuted, Yozakura and Undead ending shortly after. Sakamoto, Elusive Samurai, Blue Box all being on the verge of ending, with Witch Watch probably being not that far off, Kill Blue, Astro Royale, and Chojo all ending. All of the DoA new series that debuted since Hima-ten! But you know what? That's the same for basically every other success too.
We Never Learn debuted in a six batch series, so 6 series minimum had to end to make room for it. Add Gintama, Saiki K., Isobee, and Samon-kun (and I guess Spring Weapon No. 1 but that never should have survived in the first place) ending or leaving the magazine within a year (plus World Trigger disappearing for a year before transferring to Jump SQ) and there's obviously room for We Never Learn.
Nisekoi started in 2011, right before the end of: Nura, Bakuman, Reborn and magico (a one year old series) in 2012 (plus the aforementioned Kagami no Kuni which ended earlier than it should have based on its performance). Sket Dance, Medaka Box and Kurogane (a one year series) in 2013. You can also include Naruto, Beelzebub, and Kuroko no Basket ending in 2014 but the series was already more than safe at that point. The magazine's audience needed to find new series to read and Nisekoi was one of them.
Yuuna in 2016? Bleach, Toriko, Nisekoi, Kochikame, Assassination Classroom. All the series ending during We Never Learn's time also apply for Yuuna. There was an opening and Yuuna found a way through the cracks.
Ichigo 100%? 2002 saw the end of Rising Impact and Whistle!, plus Takeshi would leave the magazine at this time. 2003 saw the end of Rookies and Hikaru no Go. 2004 the end of Yu-gi-oh!, Shaman King and Black Cat (plus Jojo's would leave the magazine at this point).
I"s was during the "Dark Ages", so that should explain it all.
It's just the cycle of life that a bunch of staple Jump series end around the same time and series that probably aren't as popular or successful as them replace the concluded series, in hopes of growing to be as big as them someday. Sometimes they do; sometimes they don't and you look stupid for keeping Spring Weapon No. 1 for over a year (this applies to not romance series too btw).
===
tl;dr: Hima-ten!'s on the lower average of successful romances in Jump history, but it does enough to still be considered part of this group. This "AI-slop" clearly found a big enough audience that likes it. Also, this was written in the context of the first anniversary (so July/August 2025), so if some of the info or framing feels off, it's because this was written months ago and I did my best to update it, but might have missed some things.
Since we are beginning the year of 2026, is there any newcomer that has launched a one shot in 2025(So no Yuu Odoraiba unfortunaly) that you wish to make an official debut in the magazine proper?
For me, am going for the likes of newcomer Shinosuke Toujo, who i feel very strongly that this is one author that is likely to debut sometime during the year mostly because of how consistent he was for two years straight by making three one shots(One being his official debut and it launched in weekly shonen jump in 2024 while the other two launched in Jump Giga winter 2025 and Autumn 2025 respectively). It's won't surprised me honestly.
I want to add Hatekayama Kinya with a full series based on doll shows one shot he made, but working a bit better at building the characters instead of using them as instruments for the flow of the story. If that is done right then we could see a great series.
Instead of just calling manga we don't like AI-slop because we can't find a reason it actually deserves to be axed, why don't we actually look at numbers and see what Hima-ten! has done to justify not being axed.
I was originally going to post this for Hima-ten!'s first anniversary...then I didn't for some reason, I don't remember why. So, the half of year since isn't accounted for, but if we're being real, it doesn't really change much. Also, my school's Microsoft Office finally locked me out despite being years since I graduated, so I'd have to remake these charts from scratch on Google Sheets and I don't really want to do that
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First, every series TOC placements in their first year, side by side, according to Jajanken:
Next, the individual line graphs of their year 1s:
Color Key - Orange: Lead Color Page but no cover | Blue: Color Page | Purple: Cover but not the Lead Color page
Average: 11.54
The week it got the cover (chapter 8), it didn't have a color page to go with it. The week it celebrated the anniversary - ch. 51, it didn't get the cover (it was One Piece that week).
Average: 9.56
the week it got the cover (chapter 29), it got a regular color page to go with it (Kuroko no Basket got the lead color page).
Average: 7.60
Jump during this time was running 16 series instead of 20+, and there was one lead color page and usually one, sometimes two, regular color page per issue (and it immediately followed the lead color page). So it was more mid tier than upper echelon.
Average: 9.0
Average: 10.04
Average: 10.10
...what the hell was I"s made of?! That first year is NUTS. Most decade long pillars don't get starts that good! I knew it was extremely popular and the author is extremely popular but sheesh. If I had to hazard a guess, I"s started during the final months of "the Dark Age", so right before One Piece (and Seikimatsu Leader Dan Takeshi) and the swarm of 1998 and 99 series that would define the magazine for years to come. Maybe the editors decided to push any series that started strong super hard, and I"s was the main benefactor?
Average: 5.3
I didn't include Blue Box because we already know how it compares to Hima-ten!, we look at it every week. No point in doing it when we know Blue Box is way ahead, but Blue Box is way ahead of a lot of these so that's not saying much. I didn't do Video Girl Ai...because I didn't do Video Girl Ai. I don't really have a reason besides I wanted to do one work per author, but it probably should be here too. I didn't do To Love Ru because the peak was Darkness, which is Jump SQ, so it would be leaving out a significant piece of the puzzle just using the WSJ numbers. Any other successful romance I probably just forgot about.
Basically, the main thing separating Hima-ten! from the rest of the Jump romance series was one "special promotion" thing before the anniversary. Consecutive color pages, cover, lead color page, something like that. It got one 1st place in its first year, which some of these series never managed to do in general, let alone year 1, but that's not really "special promotion". That's just regular promotion. Even Yuuna, the lone series to not get a lead color page year 1, managed to get something and it's possible it didn't get a cover only because its ecchi instead of popularity reasons. Okay, technically there was that special campaign with Hima-ten!, Shinobi Undercover, and Kiyoshi they did where if you did a quiz you could enter a lottery for merch, which is similar in vein to things like the Jump Power Generation or Jump Awakening...but eh. Not sure if that really counts right now (if they start giving color pages calling them that and making it a real thing, it probably does).
Aside from that, Hima-ten's stacks up with the rest of these romance series. 8 color pages before the anniversary is about where a successful romcom should be. Romances usually have an ebb and flow period where the rankings are all over the place (Hima-ten!'s is admittedly lower lows), so its not that strange for Hima-ten! to be jumping in the rankings. It gets color pages at a good enough rate, one every four or five chapters. Ichigo 100% is an exception because Jump was just not giving color pages in general outside the lead color page according to Jajanken. It was just lead color page, maybe one other series getting regular color pages, a lot of times. I don't know if that's accurate or we just don't have those issues preserved somewhere to verify the color pages for that period, I'd love to learn about a possible reason for a color shortage in 2002-03 if that's the case. Kimagure Orange Road makes sense because there straight up wasn't that many color pages back then - it did get a decent amount for its time. Hima-ten!'s TOC averages for the first year is right there with the rest, only 1-2 placements off average wise (11.54 vs 10 or 9). That seems big, but I'll explain how that isn't nearly as wide a gap as it sounds.
Its TOC average got tanked by "bottom 5 because there was no other series to put there". Basically, the only time Hima-ten! is ever in the bottom 5 for longer than two weeks is because a big new series batch happens, cleans out the bottom dwellers, and Hima-ten! hovers there until the new series fills those spots in and Hima-ten! shoots up again.
For example, look at its average at the time of the anniversary cover. If you exclude those 4 placements as an anomaly (because they are, that was the first time Hima-ten! was in the bottom 5 for longer than two weeks), the average becomes 11.20. If you include the chapter after the anniversary cover (but not the cover), Hima-ten! shoots up to 10.82. Include the cover and it's 10.6! Right in line with the others, albeit still the lowest one. So let this be a reminder; bad rankings add up quickly. I'm not going to exclude them though, so 11.54 is the number we're using.
All things considered...Hima-ten's closest comparison is probably Ichigo 100%. There's no lead color pages or singular cover for Hima-ten! before the anniversary, but they both started out strong out the gate, went down for a bit to highlight some other new series once it was established, harem dynamics were similar, they were late to celebrate their first anniversaries, they both got the "ecchi" label but neither are crazy ecchi (Ichigo 100% is definitely ecchi, but it's not To Love Ru or Yuuna), similar TOC average after year 1, the hair colors match...and even then Hima-ten managed to get the cover when Ichigo 100% didn't so it's in a pretty good spot. Maybe Yuuna is also applicable...but again, no cover NOR a lead color page for Yuuna when Hima-ten! got it so it looks good for Hima-ten.
In general, I think Hima-ten!'s on the right track. It's on the lower half of it, but it's generally following the same path as other successful Jump romances. I do think it's worth pointing out that Hima-ten! isn't the primary romance series in the lineup; Blue Box is. So the one that's going to get pushed primarily is Blue Box. And having multiple romances does impact the TOC averages since we can see Yuuna and We Never Learn are the only other double digit averages, and they're the only other ones that ran primarily with another successful romance series - each other (yes, there's some instances like Nisekoi running for like six months with Yuuna, but the former was already ranking badly so Yuuna probably had no effect on it). This happened in Yuuna's year two, but I do want to point out that WNL did affect Yuuna as the later's average dropped to 13.98 while WNL was going through its first year (WNL's year 2 was 9.2 while Yuuna was going through year 3 which was still way lower despite the anime airing this year).
Usually the main romance series destroys the competition (Nisekoi vs Kagami, Pajama mo Kanojo, and Koisome Momiji was 7.60 vs 11.9, 13.65, and 14.39 respectively. We Never Learn and Yuuna faced off with Cross Account and its abysmal 16.75. Yuuna dealt with Love Rush's 14.38, etc.). Blue Box destroys Hima-ten! as its the primary romance (Blue Box is at 5.83 lifetime). Even Hima-ten! has a noticeable victory - Syd Craft's final average was 13.79 (Hima-ten!'s average at the time is the aforementioned 11.20 because if you remember correctly, that bottom five stint started the issue after Syd Craft ends).
Other failed "romance" averages include: Anedoki - 14, Hatsukoi Limited - 13.53 (the debate over whether it was an intended short series or not can be another day), magico - 14.28 lifetime and 13.08 after year 1, Hime-dol - 15.25. Basically, 13 or higher in year 1 is the point of no hope. 11 or 12 is where the question marks start popping up. Double Arts was 10.82, and its one of if not the most contested axe of a "flop" in the past 25 years. Lilim Kiss finished at 11.42, but had a color page five chapters before the axe and was ranking fine until the last five chapters, so it probably shouldn't have been axed when it was. But both of those also reached an 11 average by chapter 20. At that point, Hima-ten! was at 8.7 if you include the first seven chapters, 9.3 if you don't. So it was far ahead of the "11 border" at the same part of its life. Still though, 11-12 is where you can find the romance series you can debate if they should have been axed or not.
There actually is one unsuccessful romance series I feel I need to go more in depth for: Pretty Face. It ran from #24 in 2002 to #28 in 2003. Similar TOC average (11.54 vs 11.6), was the secondary romance series to the main success at the time (Ichigo 100%), got an early sign of high popularity (Hima-ten! got a 1st place in the TOC while Pretty Face got a cover at chapter 18 with no lead color page). I'd also say this supports the previous idea that having multiple successful romance series does affect the less popular one since Pretty Face was constantly below Ichigo 100%.
So is it possible Hima-ten ends up like Pretty Face? Technically, but I don't think it's likely.
Hima-ten! got the lead color page AND cover for its anniversary while Pretty Face didn't. I made a post about it before, but basically any series that gets both get at least one more year before getting axed (it was like 5 series that got axed before the second anniversary since 2000 despite getting the cover for the first anniversary).
Hima-ten! was getting color pages in general. Remember how I mentioned 2002-03 had this period where nothing was getting color pages basically besides the issue's lead color pages according to Jajaken? That's Pretty Face's entire run. It got a color page at chapter 9, and then it didn't get any kind of color again until chapter 49, the first anniversary lead color page but no cover. Even when it got the cover, it didn't get a color page of any kind. Ichigo 100% didn't have much more (1 color page, 1 cover with no color page, and 1 lead color pages which was the anniversary one), but it still got something during that year. So they basically gave up on promoting Pretty Face once volume 1 came out, while they still promote Hima-ten! (even if I would like them to promote it as much as they do Shinobi and Kiyoshi).
Yasuhiro Kano is an enigma of a mangaka. Pretty Face's situation is like, a 1/1000000 chance of happening in Jump. Even the other comparable case (P2) was a clear case of giving it a pity cover before axing it because it was doing horrible in the magazine. Pretty Face wasn't doing bad enough to get a lead color page and then axed three chapters later; performance wise it should have gone at least another batch or two. Mx0 was meant to end early but got extended due to popularity, only for it to end the chapter before the second anniversary because it tanked in popularity (the most standard of Kano's series, but I think it's notable that it was another series that implied Kano ran out of ideas and they wanted out). Kagami no Kuni no Harisugawa also wasn't doing bad enough to immediately get axed (it sold about 45k week 1, 59k total before leaving Oricon), especially when its batchmate ST&RS existed, but it was axed immediately basically because the premise was too limiting and Kano didn't know what to do, so they called it quits.
Kano was a different headcase that needs caveats if you want to use their series for data points, in my opinion. Still though, according to data, these series are comparable so you can't write it off as impossible.
...Hima-ten! still did better than Pretty Face considering Hima-ten! lasted more than 3 chapters past its anniversary so I'm willing to take my chances that Hima-ten! isn't another Pretty Face.
===
Let's do the sales now. This one will be quicker because...well, half of these don't have individual volume sales numbers. I'll just give circulation numbers I found for them of the entire series. They're big enough where you can assume even year 1 was really good sales wise.
Ichigo 100% - 8 million* (Couldn't find a source confirming it. The one source I did find has a citation, but it's a dead link so can't confirm. I found a second claim 7.5 million, but there was no source and I'm pretty sure it was a site anyone can post on so I don't think that one is reliable either)
Kimagure Orange Road - 20 million, vol 1-18
I"s - 15 million, vol 1-10
For the modern ones, I'll give what their volume released before the anniversary sold since we can actually check that.
*- Hima-ten!'s week 1's Oricon sales + shoseki's week 2 and 3 estimates. I wouldn't actually recommend adding two different sources numbers to get a combined total, but Hima-ten only had one week on Oricon so nothing else to do. It doesn't really help that much anyway. also ignore the error with Hima-ten's! second bar. It should be a week 2 and a week 3, I just forgot to fix it
Hima-ten! lags far behind here. I know, physical market was way stronger back then, digital sales are higher than back then so maybe it's closer than it appears, the global economy is worse today than back then, Japan's declining birth rate means there's less younger people for shonen romances to appeal to, and you know, you're probably right. I personally believe Hima-ten! does at least decent digitally based on how other romcoms from Shonen Magazine or Sunday do really good digitally, so logically Jump's romcoms should too. Plus if you check things like Amazon and the Billboard ranking posted recently, there are signs that point to it being a decent (if nothing else) seller digitally. We don't have much proof of that being the case or digital being the reason for decline though. We have to work with what we have here; it's already hard enough comparing series that do have volume sales with ones that are too old for them.
I'll also keep this brief since they're other magazines (and this is already a mammoth of a post), but just a quick comparison for other "big" romance series to come out in the past 2 years (this one is first three weeks charted since they're all basically one week Oricon, the rest Shoseki so its the same data pool. Only one of them made it to 4 weeks and it was already ahead, so I didn't feel like finding the calculations for the estimate of week 4). Also, these numbers are based on the series' most recent volume as of JULY 2025, so I'm pretty sure at this point some of them have pulled more ahead, but it's not worlds apart last I checked.
I don't really know why, but Magazine Pocket categorizes Orion's Board as romance, so I'll include it. Ogami Tsumiki isn't really a romance - it's more friendship building that can end up a romance if the author wants, but I put it here anyway just in case and it's still pretty romcom coded even if it technically isn't one.
The slightly older ones like Kanan-sama, Yowayowa Sensei, Mikadone Sanshima wa Angai Choroi, ones that are getting anime soon or have it now, are also in this 10-20k range (well Kanan-sama and Yowayowa actually sell less than 10k, but their peaks pre anime were in the 10k range). So sales wise, Hima-ten! is among the top of the next gen of "romance" and romance adjacent series, above average at worst. Now, whether this says more about the genre in general I'll let you decide, but numbers wise, Hima-ten! is doing comparable if not better than romance series that have gotten an anime announced and are considered important to their respective magazines' futures.
I'll also say that the mobile apps are where you're going to find the "big" shonen romances right now. Magazine Pocket has The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity and the Alya Sometimes Speaks in Russian's manga adaptation (and had works like Nagatoro and Shikimori in the recent past), Jump+ had You and I Are Polar Opposites, works that clear the 20k ceiling comfortably. It's not as dire as sports, but shonen romance is also getting blown out kinda badly in physical shonen magazines now that the old titans like Komi and Takagi-san ended and works like Rent A Girlfriend and Goddess Cafe Terrace are far past their peaks (Blue Box is still doing good). please save the genre Someone Hertz
Maybe these trends suggest that traditional romance needs twists nowadays? Blue Box is a sports hybrid, Yaernacht of the Dark Moon from Magazine looks promising and is a battle harem like Nue's Exorcist, the reason why I was confused about Orion's Board earlier was because its far more shogi than romance but its performing as good as Tune In To the Midnight Heart, we've seen series like Undead Unuck and Yozakura where the series isn't "romance" but the series revolves around a romantic couple and their relationship, do good. Maybe it's not good enough to just be a "romantic comedy" now. I don't know. Maybe Someone Hertz will give us a clearer answer.
Also most of these do well digitally so that could contribute to the relative same area of physical sales all these series are in while better separating them in terms of popularity. We don't know them though, so can't analyze them.
The main thing Hima-ten's lagging behind in are sales, but eh, that's fine. Everything is lagging hard sales wise because the physical manga market is in decline. Plus, romcoms are more high floor-low ceiling sales wise. The strat for romcoms these days is clearly faster adaptations for quick bucks. Hima-ten! does enough to get attention from smaller studios. Will it ever reach these other series heights? I won't say never, maybe Ufotable and MAPPA combine in two years and create the ultimate sakuga fest with Hima-ten! that solves world hunger or something. Realistically, no it won't. That's fine though. It doesn't need to reach those heights.
===
Did Hima-ten! get the benefit of being the only real romcom in the lineup? Yes and no. It still had to beat out Syd Craft - which it did. It's not a complete overlap, but Blue Box is also potentially siphoning a lot of potential votes too (assuming romance lovers don't just vote for both of them, idk if they do, we can't get that kind of data just looking at the TOC). Not to mention it has to compete with Nue's Exorcist romcom harem plot points, Shinobi Undercover's developing romance between Yodaka and Aoi, even Witch Watch is romcom coded despite not being a romcom per say. So you can say it got a little leeway for the sake of lineup diversity, but you also can't deny that it did do enough on its own to justify surviving when it was challenged by another romcom and managed to find an audience despite a more popular series with the same theme running alongside it.
The real way it got lucky was because of the lineup it debuted in all being on the verge of ending. My Hero and Kaisen ending the same year it debuted, Yozakura and Undead ending shortly after. Sakamoto, Elusive Samurai, Blue Box all being on the verge of ending, with Witch Watch probably being not that far off, Kill Blue, Astro Royale, and Chojo all ending. All of the DoA new series that debuted since Hima-ten! But you know what? That's the same for basically every other success too.
We Never Learn debuted in a six batch series, so 6 series minimum had to end to make room for it. Add Gintama, Saiki K., Isobee, and Samon-kun (and I guess Spring Weapon No. 1 but that never should have survived in the first place) ending or leaving the magazine within a year (plus World Trigger disappearing for a year before transferring to Jump SQ) and there's obviously room for We Never Learn.
Nisekoi started in 2011, right before the end of: Nura, Bakuman, Reborn and magico (a one year old series) in 2012 (plus the aforementioned Kagami no Kuni which ended earlier than it should have based on its performance). Sket Dance, Medaka Box and Kurogane (a one year series) in 2013. You can also include Naruto, Beelzebub, and Kuroko no Basket ending in 2014 but the series was already more than safe at that point. The magazine's audience needed to find new series to read and Nisekoi was one of them.
Yuuna in 2016? Bleach, Toriko, Nisekoi, Kochikame, Assassination Classroom. All the series ending during We Never Learn's time also apply for Yuuna. There was an opening and Yuuna found a way through the cracks.
Ichigo 100%? 2002 saw the end of Rising Impact and Whistle!, plus Takeshi would leave the magazine at this time. 2003 saw the end of Rookies and Hikaru no Go. 2004 the end of Yu-gi-oh!, Shaman King and Black Cat (plus Jojo's would leave the magazine at this point).
I"s was during the "Dark Ages", so that should explain it all.
It's just the cycle of life that a bunch of staple Jump series end around the same time and series that probably aren't as popular or successful as them replace the concluded series, in hopes of growing to be as big as them someday. Sometimes they do; sometimes they don't and you look stupid for keeping Spring Weapon No. 1 for over a year (this applies to not romance series too btw).
===
tl;dr: Hima-ten!'s on the lower average of successful romances in Jump history, but it does enough to still be considered part of this group. This "AI-slop" clearly found a big enough audience that likes it. Also, this was written in the context of the first anniversary (so July/August 2025), so if some of the info or framing feels off, it's because this was written months ago and I did my best to update it, but might have missed some things.
If I had to guess the AI slop allegations were probably just an amplification of how people felt the artstyle at the start was really generic (which, it is, but Ono’s improved with having some fun silly faces at least), and since AI is the new hot-button thing, calling something you dislike with a somewhat generic artstyle “AI” is an easy way to try and undercut it.
Only thing I can comment on is you saying Tsumiki Ogami isn’t really a romcom, which, while that was definitely true at the start, I think you’d be hard-pressed to say it’s not a romcom/romance now, especially with a secondary relationship being teased on top of the main duo; just took a while for that to become clear.
Hima’s performance was definitely uncertain at the start, but at this point I’m of the mind that at least Kiyoshi would have to get axed before Hima would, so I’m not really worried too much about it.
For me personally, I’m not really worried about Kiyoshi and Hima at all. I was impressed with how they both started and think are decent series to keep. I enjoy both as they have both amazing characters and good art.
Now that whole AI-Slop thing definitely is a trigger word and an insult to the artists. But if I’m going to say anything, we have now transitioned into the age of digital art, which is much cleaner and precise than hunching over a table but at the same time you can still see some shaky lines when you see them go practical. But the concern with digital and AI is going to collide at some point if people are not able to distinguish and fat check what was made by a human on the computer and if the AI draws something.
Just a bit of a heads up, i plan to post the one shots from Jump Giga summer 2024 issue sometime tommorow, so for those interested to not worry at all. After that there will be jump giga autumn 2024 and then its pretty much over and done with.
Since we are beginning the year of 2026, is there any newcomer that has launched a one shot in 2025(So no Yuu Odoraiba unfortunaly) that you wish to make an official debut in the magazine proper?
For me, am going for the likes of newcomer Shinosuke Toujo, who i feel very strongly that this is one author that is likely to debut sometime during the year mostly because of how consistent he was for two years straight by making three one shots(One being his official debut and it launched in weekly shonen jump in 2024 while the other two launched in Jump Giga winter 2025 and Autumn 2025 respectively). It's won't surprised me honestly.
I want to add Hatekayama Kinya with a full series based on doll shows one shot he made, but working a bit better at building the characters instead of using them as instruments for the flow of the story. If that is done right then we could see a great series.
Tarō Kaneko
Their artwork is cool and distinct, their action flows pretty well and I think that they'll make a cool original series with the one-shots serving as a basis like what Hokazono did with Kagurabachi. I'm also hoping that it'll blow up in the same way as Kagurabachi and become a great success for the magazine, but I know that looks pretty unlikely for it too happen again...
All 3 of them have been translated onto MangaDex with Warped Fairy Tale being my absolute favorite among them, due to its interesting premise and fun world.
Here's the link to all 3 one-shots:
A lot of folks want Taro Kaneko to debut, he has been around awhile now, so its normal for many to want to see him make an official debut.
Anyhow, been finally playing Dave the Diver on my xbox and it got me thinking: Outside Ryūhei Tamura's Hard-Boiled Cop and Dolphin, would't it be interesting to witness an underwater battle series of some kind, were the protagonist is a scuba diver of some kind? I feel like jump would be that crazy to give it a shot.
That kinda reminds me of an idea I have for an exorcism style series where all of the evil monsters/spirits are all sea monsters like Krakens & Sea Serpents and all the exorcists that battle them are like badass magical fishermen.
A lot of folks want Taro Kaneko to debut, he has been around awhile now, so its normal for many to want to see him make an official debut.
Anyhow, been finally playing Dave the Diver on my xbox and it got me thinking: Outside Ryūhei Tamura's Hard-Boiled Cop and Dolphin, would't it be interesting to witness an underwater battle series of some kind, were the protagonist is a scuba diver of some kind? I feel like jump would be that crazy to give it a shot.
I think after watching this series they have tried in the past like crisis diver. We also had One Piece with its Fishman Island arc. But an underwater battle series wouldn’t be as bad as well as a space adventure series. But back to the former, I know who could do it now that they have the clout and their fandom page has written that they used to study Oceanography for a series like that.
I'll also say that the mobile apps are where you're going to find the "big" shonen romances right now. Magazine Pocket has The Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity and the Alya Sometimes Speaks in Russian's manga adaptation (and had works like Nagatoro and Shikimori in the recent past), Jump+ had You and I Are Polar Opposites, works that clear the 20k ceiling comfortably. It's not as dire as sports, but shonen romance is also getting blown out kinda badly in physical shonen magazines now that the old titans like Komi and Takagi-san ended and works like Rent A Girlfriend and Goddess Cafe Terrace are far past their peaks (Blue Box is still doing good). please save the genre Someone Hertz
Maybe these trends suggest that traditional romance needs twists nowadays? Blue Box is a sports hybrid, Yaernacht of the Dark Moon from Magazine looks promising and is a battle harem like Nue's Exorcist, the reason why I was confused about Orion's Board earlier was because its far more shogi than romance but its performing as good as Tune In To the Midnight Heart, we've seen series like Undead Unuck and Yozakura where the series isn't "romance" but the series revolves around a romantic couple and their relationship, do good. Maybe it's not good enough to just be a "romantic comedy" now. I don't know. Maybe Someone Hertz will give us a clearer answer.
Also most of these do well digitally so that could contribute to the relative same area of physical sales all these series are in while better separating them in terms of popularity. We don't know them though, so can't analyze them.
Goost post, but just to add some points, romcom aren't at any risk in these magazines because they also do better than other genres proportionally digital wise. Maybe Hima, not as much, but Kanan, Yowayowa Sensei, etc all lean digital or are strong performers in online platforms.
And another strong factor is that any romcom will have a ton of merch, any anime stores in Japan will be easier to find merch for not yet animated series like the two I mentioned more than something like Kaijin Fugeki or even battle manga from Jump such as Kiyoshi and Shinobi Undercover.
There are also Ogami Tsumiki and Momose Akira doing well at Sunday with huge anime boom potential, besides how even SeitoAna at Magazine has a heroine race aspect to it and it's a big hit.
If is the case i really advise for the members to not do it, don't keep engaging and getting comments and comments going in circles about the same thing just to get more pages, this isn't what i want for the thread since it's just yapping at walls, nothing constructive, since the user in question isn't necessarily attacking the author or series itself, just ignore it, it's the best thing to do, and if the member keeps insisting too much, we will look at what we can do.
Bit late, since i usually avoid coming to these threads until i finish reading everything (which i procrastinate a lot with lmao) but happy new thread to everyone! My first one lol.
I'll put my predictions in spoiler tag so as to not disrupt too much (there's not that many anyway, I tend to not really do predictions because i suck at them, but i still want to participate in some way anyways):
One Piece:
- Will end Elbaf this year and the new arc will start at the end of the year
- New movie announced
- Loki joins the SHs
- New trailer for the remake (PLEASE) and announcing it'll come out in 2027
HxH:
- Comes back for 10 chapters in Jan/Feb
- We're still on the boat! (Ok, this one is easy but shh)
Sakamoto Days:
- Will end near the end of the year
Witch Watch:
- Will still be here for the year
- Part 3 in general will be shorter than Part 1 and 2 though
The Elusive Samurai:
- Ends in the next batch
Blue Box:
- Will not end in 2026
- Will fall to less than 100k per volume sales
Akane-Banashi:
- Won't end in 2026
- The anime will unfortunately be a middling success because it's a niche thing, but the actual quality of the anime will be great
Nue's Exorcist:
- Will hopefully be axed Won't end in 2026
- Anime announced around 2026 summer
Kagurabachi:
- Anime announced near the end of 2026
Kiyoshi:
- Survives the whole year
Ichi the Witch:
- Will eventually cross 100k per volume in 2026
Shinobi Undercover:
- Survives and gets many colour pages
- Grows to a 25k~ seller
Someone Hertz:
- Will survive
- Becomes THE romance series that people associate WSJ with instead of Hima-Ten or Blue Box
JJK Modulo:
- Goes for a bit longer than it was originally intended to go
Axes:
- Gonron Egg
- Harukaze Mound
- Otr of the Flame
Bonus Bleach/Kubo stuff:
- Bleach gets either a new remake or a new anime based off a novel, just some kind of continuation or new project after TYBW Cour 4
- Kubo finally gives us news on Burn the Witch Season 2
- The Hell Arc gets no updates
Anything else i didn't mention, i don't really care enough about to make predictions for lol.
The most tweeted Shonen Jump series in 2025 according to the @shima_manga account:
1. One Piece (44.604)
2. Kagurabachi (38.402)
3. Nue's Exocist (27.234)
4. Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo (14.991)
5. Ichi the Witch (10.999)
6. Super Psychic Policeman Chojo (8.765)
7. Undead Unluck (7.692)
8. Shinobi Undercover (6.175)
9. Sakamoto Days (6.169)
10. Blue Box (6.142)
11. The Elusive Samurai (5.912)
12. Kill Blue (3.920)
13. Hima-Ten! (3.741)
14. Witch Watch (3.662)
15. Ruri Dragon (3.187)
16. Ping Pong Peril (3.091)
17. Akane-banashi (2.965)
18. Someone Hertz (2.748)
19. Otr of the Flame (2.638)
20. Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi (2.633)
Note: Important to notice the account only counts tweets in the first 24 hours of release, not a whole week or something so the number of mentions is the total of mentions in this 24 hours timespan each week during the year.
Oh, i forgot to do my rankings for the previous Issue 52! My last rankings of the year, but first on the new year thread, funny.
Tier 1 (Great):
1 - One Piece
2 - Akane-Banashi
3 - Shinobi Undercover
4 - Ichi the Witch
5 - JJK Modulo
Tier 2 (Good):
- Kagurabachi
- Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi
- The Elusive Samurai
- Witch Watch
- Otr of the Flame (I know people like clowing on this series but i quite liked that Otr's "big backstory" wasn't anything like him being a destined child or whatever, he just had a normal but harsh childhood and a normal non special family)
- Someone Hertz
Tier 3 (Ok):
- Blue Box
- Sakamoto Days
- Me and Roboco
- The Mage Next Door
- The Hero and Demon Lord Call It Quits
- Gonron Egg
- Harukaze Mound
- Hima-Ten
Kinda meh week yet again for me tbh, 2 in a row...i'm watching you WSJ....
Since we are beginning the year of 2026, is there any newcomer that has launched a one shot in 2025(So no Yuu Odoraiba unfortunaly) that you wish to make an official debut in the magazine proper?
Yuki Toba. I really liked Sensei Fukoku and think they can do a really good romance story with a different couple dynamic, but I also think if they get a series this year, it's probably in Jump+ since WSJ has a ton of possible romance series that are higher priority to publish (if Shirokuma does Sezaki-san, it's basically a Witch Watch styled romcom, Signal All Red is obviously a romcom, I think if Naoshi Komi comes back he'd do something romance adjacent). Definitely think if Yuki Toba isn't doing something in Jump+ by then though, they're going to be serializing a WSJ series in 2027.
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