Mag Talk Weekly Shonen Jump (2026) - News and Discussion!

[Shinuki no Reborn]

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~ Shinuki

I hope everyone reads the rules and use it as a guide to behave well in the thread, thanks!

 

[JBC008]

I didn’t call Hertz a mistake. There being only one hit in 2025 was the mistake.

KB was teetering on the edge of cancellation early in the year and when they axed Astro (thank God) instead they tossed KB some color pages, saw it was still struggling and finally put KB out of its misery.

Ahh, I see. I agree, but as much as Someone Hertz was the only hit from last year, we also have to do 2 things to consider. The first is what the lineup was like last year with the series and where were they in their stories, and the second being the new series themselves and ask ourselves critically, “were they any good,” down to the point that they deserve to be in the top ten or 13.

 

[Stivie]

The frustrating thing is that on people's head they have this memory of the manga doing terrible but if you look at the rankings for the last months before the series ended you actually realise it wasn't even ranking bad for most of the time and got many color pages, the manga was in fact having some of the highest placements in a long time but it still simply rushed to end.

Ch94: 10th
Ch95: Color Page
Ch96: 11th
Ch97: 8th
Ch98: Color Page (2nd Anniversary)
Ch99: 11th
Ch100: 9th
Ch101: 12th (Bottom 4)
Ch102: Color Page
Ch103: 10th
Ch104: 12th
Ch105: Color Page
Ch106: 14th (Bottom 3)
Ch107: 15th (Bottom 2)
Ch108: 14th (Bottom 2)
Ch109: 11th
Ch110: 12th (Bottom 5)
Ch111: 14th (Bottom 3)
Ch112: 14th (Bottom 4)
Ch113: 12th
Ch114: 6th
Ch115: Color Page (Final Chapter)

I so wish Phantom Seer or Ichinose Family had the same luck as Kill Blue, and had lasted 2 years.
Seriously, and then I'm the annoying one who complains about the comedies in Jump, but you complaining about the ending of Kill Blue is okay.
Kill Blue has an anime, so be satisfied with that. If it was canceled, Fujimaki is also to blame, after all, the manga had mediocre sales.

 

[Kiaida]

Manga don't exist in a vacuum, lol. There's a reason to why no magazine or previous Jump editor cancelled series with their first anime in production: It's stupid. If NO ONE does that besides Saito, the guy who is failing at every possible metric, it's obviously a bad move.

Magazines need anime more than ever: manga sales are going to keep dropping, but anime is still thriving and is where the real money and attention is. TOCs and Shoseki rankings are absolutely irrelevant in comparison to an anime, they're only important in the sense that you can compare what is doing well between the series running in the magazine, but the moment a manga is getting an anime, it will always be considered a hit to Shonen Jump and is a better commercial move to at least support it until its release instead of betting on 10k seller Kiyoshi or 3k seller Otr because they "grew from 10k to 10.2k" or had okay useless Mangaplus views.

"It was dropping in sales". Irrelevant, it sold more than these series and had an anime in production. The idea that Saito did the right thing by hurting a multimedia IP only makes sense if you think he's a revolutionary thinker that thinks a few thousand copies on Shoseki matter more than business deals and how to properly deal with IPs in the modern industry.

 

[Bulju]

no magazine or previous Jump editor cancelled series with their first anime in production: It's stupid.

I'm From Japan exists, you know.

Magazines need anime more than ever: manga sales are going to keep dropping, but anime is still thriving and is where the real money is.

Most of that money goes to the production company. Obviously the original series getting a boost would be nice, but for a rapidly declining series like Kill Blue it was probably much safer to rake in the licensing fees and call it a day.

TOCs and Shoseki rankings are absolutely irrelevant in comparison to an anime, they're only important in the sense that you can compare what is doing well between the series running in the magazine, but the second a manga is getting an anime, it will always be considered a hit to Shonen Jump and is a better commercial move to at least support it until its release instead of betting on 10k seller Kiyoshi or 3k seller Otr.

This has been discussed to death at this point. It has never and will never be the case with Shonen Jump. If a series falls in the rankings, falls in sales and has no cushions left it will get cancelled. Period. Thinking that Jump should pause the publication of new series just to save one ailing series is a frankly insane line of thinking.

"It was dropping in sales". Irrelevant, it sold more than these series and had an anime in production.

How is it irrelevant? Ichinose sold more than half of the magazine when it was cancelled, and no one will ever question that decision because sales and public reception were dropping like a rock. In fact, most of the reaction to it getting cancelled at the time was along the lines of "thank god this finally kicked the bucket". I feel like an old disgruntled employee pointing at a big sign on the wall at this point. Absolute sale numbers WILL NEVER be more relevant than the direction sales are trending in.

 

[Aqyurs]

I'm From Japan exists, you know.

I'm From Japan didn't end until after the anime ended (the manga ended April 2020 and the anime ended March 2020) and didn't get banished to Saikyo Jump until the anime already started airing (it was transferred May 2019 and the anime started airing April 2019). If anything, I'm From Japan is the series that proves that previous leaders didn't cancel series that had anime in production (even if they clearly deserved it).

 

[Kiaida]

I'm From Japan exists, you know.

That was green lighted with an anime and was more of a temporary tourism ad series.

Most of that money goes to the production company. Obviously the original series getting a boost would be nice, but for a rapidly declining series like Kill Blue it was probably much safer to rake in the licensing fees and call it a day.

Shueisha is part of the commitee for most of their series. This whole thing about anime existing to boost manga sales is an outdated concept that should already be ignored, it's not the case anymore. IP is the money maker and basically only anime series get to have access to that (besides the occasional anomaly like Kagurabachi). Shueisha's last financial report even said they need to invest more in license and merch to fully explore their franchises.

Even in cases where they don't get that much money from the adaptation, anime is way more mainstream in Japan now than manga. Ideally you want series that more people can at least somewhat recognize.

This has been discussed to death at this point. It has never and will never be the case with Shonen Jump. If a series falls in the rankings, falls in sales and has no cushions left it will get cancelled. Period. Thinking that Jump should pause the publication of new series just to save one ailing series is a frankly insane line of thinking.

No one said that, the argument is that he had other worse performing series, with no anime coming out soon, like Kiyoshi and Otr and picked Kill Blue to end.

And Jump will change, they're not some kind of special business that can ignore the changing industry. Magazines keep losing sales and relevance, to the younger generations they're almost an outdated concept, so focusign on survey votes is also not as relevant as it was in the 90s when Jump was selling 6M copies every week and 8 in 10 kids in Japan were reading it. Nowadays only 1 in 10 kids read this magazine, they have to adapt.

And if anything, like I said, cancelling a manga with an anime coming out soon is a bigger break of expectatations and tradition. Jump historically considers all manga with anime their hits.

How is it irrelevant? Ichinose sold more than half of the magazine when it was cancelled, and no one will ever question that decision because sales and public reception were dropping like a rock. In fact, most of the reaction to it getting cancelled at the time was along the lines of "thank god this finally kicked the bucket". I feel like an old disgruntled employee pointing at a big sign on the wall at this point. Absolute sale numbers WILL NEVER be more relevant than the direction sales are trending in.

Ichinose didn't have an anime already in deep production. And even then, this "trend in sales" argument ignores how Kiyoshi itself proved it's wrong. It stopped growing below Kill Blue, Astro and likely, with digital, Chojo. Making business choices based on a few hundred units isn't really a good move. If it was growing from 10K sales to 20K or something, there could be an argument, but axing an anime series over these numbers is something else.

 

[Stivie]

Manga don't exist in a vacuum, lol. There's a reason to why no magazine or previous Jump editor cancelled series with their first anime in production: It's stupid. If NO ONE does that besides Saito, the guy who is failing at every possible metric, it's obviously a bad move.

Magazines need anime more than ever: manga sales are going to keep dropping, but anime is still thriving and is where the real money and attention is. TOCs and Shoseki rankings are absolutely irrelevant in comparison to an anime, they're only important in the sense that you can compare what is doing well between the series running in the magazine, but the moment a manga is getting an anime, it will always be considered a hit to Shonen Jump and is a better commercial move to at least support it until its release instead of betting on 10k seller Kiyoshi or 3k seller Otr because they "grew from 10k to 10.2k" or had okay useless Mangaplus views.

"It was dropping in sales". Irrelevant, it sold more than these series and had an anime in production. The idea that Saito did the right thing by hurting a multimedia IP only makes sense if you think he's a revolutionary thinker that thinks a few thousand copies on Shoseki matter more than business deals and how to properly deal with IPs in the modern industry.

Honestly, what happened with Kill Blue could very well happen with Kiyoshi, Himaten, and Shinobigoto. After all, none of these manga managed to increase their volume sales, even with good positions in the TOC.
Shinobigoto has been in first place several times and currently receives many color pages, but none of them attract new readers, and if they end up falling to the bottom and stay there for too long, they will be canceled, regardless of whether there is an anime in production.

 

[WyldViolet]

I'm From Japan didn't end until after the anime ended (the manga ended April 2020 and the anime ended March 2020) and didn't get banished to Saikyo Jump until the anime already started airing (it was transferred May 2019 and the anime started airing April 2019). If anything, I'm From Japan is the series that proves that previous leaders didn't cancel series that had anime in production (even if they clearly deserved it).

Plus, it was proposed by the Japanese government was it not? Pretty sure the anime was planned from the getgo.
Edit: Kiada got to it before me.

 

[tirakai]

I'm still not certain Kill Blue did get cancelled. Chojo clearly was, and the anime is just a bizarre choice from an studio that even Jump seems to have been surprised at (even if you assume it was greenlit in the first 15 chapters i.e. the only point it was doing well, surely you'd shelf it at some point past ch 20 when the series was clearly dead and not recovering).

Kill Blue on the other hand was still getting colour pages near the end and even finished on one with the announcement. The Student Council stuff was clearly rushed and cut short, but that's not the first time the series decided to skip a bunch of planned arcs. I've always felt it's possible Fujimaki got too mentally exhausted by the weak reception and constantly having to rework his plans and decided to end it early himself or something along those lines. You don't cancel something with a colour page in its final issue.

I'm definitely interested in what the anime's going to do, since it's just 1 cour I assume it'll be a normal adaptation maybe up to the Beach arc, but if it returns for a 2nd cour you could probably rework the rest of the arcs in such a way that makes it feel like a full, complete story. Like most of the Mitsuoka Challenge and all of the Student Council content could be cut entirely and it'd be a better paced story as a result.

 

[Lord Anubis]

Not sure if the news is WSJ but well...

That guy:

--- Double Post Merged, Apr 19, 2026, Original Post Date: Apr 19, 2026 ---

Also, I think a group cover collab with Mario would be pretty fun actually, where it's like the Legends Z-A cover where all the Jump protags are with different Mario characters drawn in their own style, some examples I have in mind based on the current roster of Jump:
- One Piece: Mario (both are the faces of their respective IPs)
- Me & Roboco: Waluigi (mad leg game & are generally silly)
- Sakamoto Days: Bullet Bill (guns are heavily featured throughout the series)
- Witch Watch: Kamek (a silly looking creature for the sillier witch manga)
- Blue Box: Daisy (Chinatsu & Daisy are both sporty girls)
- Akane-banashi: Lakitu (his Japanese name is "Jugemu" after the infamous Rakugo story)
- Nue's Exorcist: Toad
- Kagurabachi: Cheep-Cheep (feesh)
- Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi: King Boo or Dry Bowser (thought it would be cool to see like with Kiyoshi & Mega Gengar)
- Hima-ten: Peach (it's about a boy who works for a metaphorical princess, which features a literal princess)
- Ichi the Witch: Rosalina
- Shinobi Undercover: Ninji (it's about ninja)
- Someone Hertz: Talking Flower
- Under Doctor: the Viruses from Dr. Mario (main enemies of the game alongside a combat medic)
- Kinato: Mallow (both are healers that gradually become more offense based)
- Alien Headbutt: DK (both are himbos)
- Roku's House of Oddities: Luigi (both are timid males who deal with cursed spirits in their houses)
(Note: I'm trying to go for with what's most thematic for those series)

 

[WyldViolet]

That guy:

--- Double Post Merged, Apr 19, 2026, Original Post Date: Apr 19, 2026 ---

Also, I think a group cover collab with Mario would be pretty fun actually, where it's like the Legends Z-A cover where all the Jump protags are with different Mario characters drawn in their own style, some examples I have in mind based on the current roster of Jump:
- One Piece: Mario (both are the faces of their respective IPs)
- Me & Roboco: Waluigi (mad leg game & are generally silly)
- Sakamoto Days: Bullet Bill (guns are heavily featured throughout the series)
- Witch Watch: Kamek (a silly looking creature for the sillier witch manga)
- Blue Box: Daisy (Chinatsu & Daisy are both sporty girls)
- Akane-banashi: Lakitu (his Japanese name is "Jugemu" after the infamous Rakugo story)
- Nue's Exorcist: Toad
- Kagurabachi: Cheep-Cheep (feesh)
- Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi: King Boo or Dry Bowser (thought it would be cool to see like with Kiyoshi & Mega Gengar)
- Hima-ten: Peach (it's about a boy who works for a metaphorical princess, which features a literal princess)
- Ichi the Witch: Rosalina
- Shinobi Undercover: Ninji (it's about ninja)
- Someone Hertz: Talking Flower
- Under Doctor: the Viruses from Dr. Mario (main enemies of the game alongside a combat medic)
- Kinato: Mallow (both are healers that gradually become more offense based)
- Alien Headbutt: DK (both are himbos)
- Roku's House of Oddities: Luigi (both are timid males who deal with cursed spirits in their houses)
(Note: I'm trying to go for with what's most thematic for those series)

Ooh really like this idea.
Hell, a Smash Bros collab could be rad too.
Luffy-Mario
Chihiro- Marth
Himari- Samus
Ichi- Pit
Gakuro- Link
Akane- Bayonetta
Sakamoto- Simon Belmont
Kiyoshi- Roy
Mimei & Kurage- Ice Climbers

 

[Subarashiii]

I honestly don't see how KB could've been stretched any further than it already had been tbh story wise anyways. Minus maybe just not quickly ended the arc again but that's its own separate issue. I don't think there was anywhere near enough content to make it to April of this year tbh. Not to mention the boost it's getting seems pretty marginal so far I don't really think it would have changed much in the long term. I think 2025 only had 1 series I wanted to make it out but didn't and that's Kaedegami, but readers clearly weren't on board but that's how it goes.

 

[FantasticFootno]

I honestly don't see how KB could've been stretched any further than it already had been tbh story wise anyways. Minus maybe just not quickly ended the arc again but that's its own separate issue. I don't think there was anywhere near enough content to make it to April of this year tbh. Not to mention the boost it's getting seems pretty marginal so far I don't really think it would have changed much in the long term. I think 2025 only had 1 series I wanted to make it out but didn't and that's Kaedegami, but readers clearly weren't on board but that's how it goes.

Really? Of all series, kill blue is one where you can see the author quickly pivot lol. The unicorn plotline was wrapped up after like a single fight, that was clearly cut short, as we had characters teased who ended up doing nothing. This then led into a new direction of the series. This one was even more glaringly cut short, literally like 16 of final 25 chapters sets up that the Mc has to become the student council president. He was going to have to prove himself to each member in a different trial (because the entire series clearly wanted to have trials against different opponents, but would flop on the first or second one and have to pivot to a new opponent group lol). But we had a pre-trial with the air soft fight, which led into absolutely nothing, because it was somehow final arc time, and the student council stuff didn’t matter anymore.

All this to say, if he hadn’t pivoted from the school principal plot stuff I think it could still be running today (ignoring reception of the arcs). But like, if it hadn’t pivoted from the student council stuff, there were 4 different members, that’s like 3-4 arcs, of which the prelim arc was like 16 chapters. It would easily have lasted past the anime airing, lol.

 

[icrawfish]

Here is a big thing I think contributes well to the ongoing Kill Blue discussion now that we can look back on the magazine leading up to the anime:

What would’ve had to have been axed in place of Kill Blue to ensure its survival until the anime release?

This goes one of two extremes, with perhaps some in-between possibilities: either axe at least one thing that was running when Kill Blue got axed, or debut one less series in every single new batch between then and now. Given the 2-batch rule, the most you can delay axing one that’s still currently running is by axing Otr alongside nice prison, and with that you move forward to when Otr was axed, where you either need to kill one among Kiyoshi/Himaten/Shinobi (all of which were performing better than Kill Blue, or at least had less of a downward sales trend), or serialize one less series in 2025. I don’t see Jump having a strong incentive to hold back on new serializations when they’re still in a state of hunting for things to fill the holes that were left by JJK/MHA and will be left by SakaDays/Blue Box (yes, we can look back at 2025 and see how many axed series that could’ve been rejected to save space, but Jump doesn’t know these will all fail going into serialization). Thus, it becomes hard to keep Kill Blue alive when its survival most likely means the death of something that has its own promising future ahead of itself.

I agree that axing something when the anime is still on the way is bizarre and questionable, but I can’t say with absolute confidence that I would’ve made a decision that would please Jump fans much more if I were in that position, at least not without slowing on accepting new publications, which goes against the aggressive nature of Jump. This all isn’t even getting into the case of Chojo as well, with it’s longer axe-to-anime timespan to account for.

Keeping a series alive amidst crunchy performance circumstances is not something that can be easily done without potential ramifications, and in a game of hedging bets, Saito chose to gamble on the promise of the new thing rather than the middling established thing. It’s a gamble I suspect a lot would take, but Saito got an unfortunate roll with all of the stuff following these controversial axes being not as successful with the exception of Someone Hertz (separate questioning can be made about how he chose to axe some of those vs. others at certain times, but changing any of that would not have saved Kill Blue or Chojo in this immediate example).

The anime has been nice so far. As something of a jazz guy myself I approve of the soundtrack.

--- Double Post Merged, Apr 19, 2026, Original Post Date: Apr 19, 2026 ---

oh, almost forgot:

Issue 20 Votes

1. Sakamoto Days
2. Nue’s Exorcist
3. Someone Hertz
4. Drawn to the Fire
5. Akane-banashi

6. Hima-Ten!
7. Me & Roboco
8. Shinobi Undercover
9. Witch Watch
10. Under Doctor

 

[nemu asahi]

Maybe you're all looking for a logic where there is none....

Erratic decisionnal pattern might be an appropriate diagnostic?

(don't look for me, I'm already outside)

 

[Lord Anubis]

Ooh really like this idea.
Hell, a Smash Bros collab could be rad too.
Luffy-Mario
Chihiro- Marth
Himari- Samus
Ichi- Pit
Gakuro- Link
Akane- Bayonetta
Sakamoto- Simon Belmont
Kiyoshi- Roy
Mimei & Kurage- Ice Climbers

I came up with something similar myself, I also tried to stick strictly to Nintendo characters & a one per franchise rule as best as I could:
One Piece: Donkey Kong (Both Luffy & DK are monkeys and tend to fight with their fists)
Me & Roboco: Captain Falcon (LEG)
Sakamoto Days: Inkling (Inklings tend to use a lot of improvised weaponry, like Sakamoto. Plus there was a paintball tournament arc in Sakamoto)
Witch Watch: Kirby (Seemed like a cute, silly guy that could hang out with Nico)
Blue Box: Wii Fit Trainer (Both Chinatsu & WFT are very sporty girls)
Akane-banashi: Isabelle
Nue's Exorcist: Palutena (Gakuro & Nue have a similar dynamic to Pit & Palutena)
Kagurabachi: Link (Both Chihiro & Link are famous swordfighters)
Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi: Lucas (Both Kiyoshi & Lucas are timid, yet strong. Could see Kiyoshi being like a "big brother" to Lucas)
Hima-ten: Rosalina (Similar reason to Peach in the Mario one)
Ichi the Witch: Robin (They could be either gender, with the male variant being another man that can use magic & the female variant be another Witch, but uses times instead of Majiks)
Shinobi Undercover: Falco (Both Yodaka & Falco are very swift fighters, plus Falco is a bird, while all the Shinobi's codenames are birds)
Someone Hertz: Jigglypuff (Both Kurage & Jigglypuff have talents that are related to radio broadcasts, with the former submitting jokes to be read aloud, while the latter sings soothing songs that tend to put people to sleep)
Under Doctor: Dr. Mario (Both Haiji & Mario are doctors, plus you gotta have Mario in a Nintendo collab)
Kinato: Shulk (JRPG-esque world with Shulk kinda resembling Kinato in a way)
Alien Headbutt: Incineroar (Both Shirokiba & Incineroar are pro wrestler themed)

 

[Hawke]

 

[Broseph]

And Jump will change, they're not some kind of special business that can ignore the changing industry. Magazines keep losing sales and relevance, to the younger generations they're almost an outdated concept, so focusign on survey votes is also not as relevant as it was in the 90s when Jump was selling 6M copies every week and 8 in 10 kids in Japan were reading it. Nowadays only 1 in 10 kids read this magazine, they have to adapt.

This has been big discourse in Japanese social media recently. Most younger kids don’t read magazines anymore and the ones who do read manga digitally read manga that have current popular anime.

Anecdotally it’s pretty clear that Jump doesn’t have the same cultural relevance it used to. The last generation with Haikyuu, My Hero Academia, Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen is almost looking like a swan song for the magazine in terms of it being singularly dominant in the industry. When One Piece ends in 7-8 years, it’ll truly be the end of that era. It’s not really Jump’s fault though since as you mention, the industry itself is changing and Jump is caught up in that. There will still be exceptions like Kagurabachi but those seem to be rarer as time goes on as compared to old years where they would produce a mega hit every year

 

[Aqyurs]

What would’ve had to have been axed in place of Kill Blue to ensure its survival until the anime release?

Let's just assume they picked to axe Otr instead of Kill Blue to make room for Modulo and Someone Hertz (like they should have done). From there the choices to make room for 2 of Gonron/Mage Next Door/Hero Girl (if we're going with the idea that they would start one less new series to accommodate for Kill Blue still running in this scenario) would be:

• Harukaze Mound (in this world, they don't have to pretend like it had a chance because Kill Blue still exists as a hit to pad the color page numbers. They can cut Harukaze around chapter 20 like the rest of its batch)
• Kaedegami
• Ekiden Bros (I've made clear in the past I would have sacrificed this existing to give Chojo an extended run, but that choice isn't applicable in this scenario)
• Ping Pong Peril

Honestly you can still cut all three of the actual series that got axed at this time and keep Harukaze an extra round, and it'd still lineup fine for the next batch even if you kept all three series coming in. And to go on to the question of if you would rather Kill Blue continue or one of Gonron/Mage Next Door/Hero Girl exist? I mean hindsight bias sure, but I think most people would easily accept one of those 3 series never getting serialized (hell, I'd be fine if Gonron and Mage Next Door both got erased. And I felt that way since at least chapter 2 for both of them, so it's not me saying this because I saw their entire runs and they sucked. If you showed me only the chapters the authors finished for pitching the series, I still think neither of them would be missed).

To continue on, let's say two of Under Doctor/Kinato/Alien Headbutt were launching instead of all 3, like the scenario you stated. The choices would be:

• Harukaze Mound (if it didn't get axed the previous round)
• Whichever one of Kaedegami/Ekiden Bros/Ping Pong that survived because only two series needed to be cut to make room for two of Gonron/Mage/Hero Girl (it'd be two of these series if Harukaze was axed the previous round instead)
• Series #1 out of Gonron/Mage/Hero Girl
• Series #2 out of Gonron/Mage/Hero Girl
• Elusive Samurai still probably ends around this time naturally

Even if you think they can't cut Gonron/Mage/Hero Girl because they're too new for this batch, you have three choices for all 3 series (and we're going with the assumption they'd only launch 2 of the three so there's even more room for Kill Blue).

And then if you want to continue this to the current batch:

• Modulo (natural end)
• Series #2 out of Gonron/Mage/Hero Girl
• One of Harukaze and Kaedegami/Ekiden/Ping Pong
• One of Kinato's Magic/Alien Headbutt (likely Headbutt since Kinato at least had a few good ranks before dropping)

===

Assuming of course every other series performs the same with the existence of Kill Blue in the lineup still, they had plenty of other series they could have axed with no future instead of Kill Blue.

I hate Kill Blue and I'm not going to cry over the fact I can't read it weekly anymore, but looking at it objectively, it's pretty clear that they made the wrong choice ending it before the anime aired. The only scenario that Kill Blue's survival makes things somewhat dicey is if for whatever reason they picked something besides Otr to get axed in the first round of cuts...we'd basically be in the same scenario as the Kill Blue one except instead of complaining about a series getting axed while it has an anime in production, it'd be cutting off a series that got their anniversary covers within the previous 5-10 issues (Shinobi's was literally the cover the issue Kill Blue ended in) which is almost as stupid.

 

[Shinuki no Reborn]

Always the same thing:

-"it did rank in the bottom for most time after the first year" So did Nue too lol
-"Sales decline" So is 95% of the magazine too, also Kill Blue finished its run selling 15k in the month, which is just 1k behind Hima and 3k/4k behind the almighty new flagship Shinobi Undercover, so the sales argument is just "eh" in the end of the day, it was still doing far better than anything that started after besides SH, and when you put the fact there was a anime in production, it just makes the argument worthless
-"Gaslighting" gaslighting is Saito forcing us to believe Shinobi Undercover is the next big thing

All the fans wanted was just for the series to keep going (as it should) alongside the anime running and probably finish like Mashle did at the end of broadcast

"It was dropping in sales". Irrelevant, it sold more than these series and had an anime in production. The idea that Saito did the right thing by hurting a multimedia IP only makes sense if you think he's a revolutionary thinker that thinks a few thousand copies on Shoseki matter more than business deals and how to properly deal with IPs in the modern industry.

It also makes sense when the ones always arguing are known to have always disliked the series