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

[Shinuki no Reborn]

Moderator Notice:

WEEKLY SHONEN JUMP THREAD RULES​

#1. No fights or personal insults.
#2. No bait or troll comments with the intention of being annoying or starting serious heated discussions, if i notice it's a continuous behavior, i will warn the user or delete the comment.
#3. No toxic attitude towards series, no one is obligated to enjoy any series and it's totally fine to criticize what you don't like, just avoid posting gratuitous hateful or toxic comments about X or Y series, if i notice this behavior, comments will be deleted.
#4. Don't bring politics or off-topic stuff to the thread, this is about Weekly Shonen Jump magazine and mangas, so keep any conversation about topics that aren't related about anime & manga outside the thread.
#5. Don't post news about series from other magazine or publishers in the WSJ thread, post in the series own thread, but it's fine if you're mentioning other series or magazine to express a opinion or reflection about Shonen Jump.
#6. Any tweet, specially japanese, about news, update or some interesting thing about the magazine or series has to come with a text of what that tweet means and also be on topic, if not it's going to be either deleted or i will edit the post.
#7. Refrain from self advertising or advertising Youtubers videos in the comments.
#8. Constant fanart posts just for the sake of praising a favorite series is prohibited, this rule doesn't apply for official art by Jump artists posted on social media, they're fine to post.
#9. Don't discuss or hype chapter spoilers before Sunday release, only comment if is related to a series surviving status and do it only inside the spoiler tag.
#10. Regarding rule #9, an exception will be made for when we have new series, in this case, spoilers will be allowed only for the first 3 chapters of a new series for the users who are interested in knowing informations and details about the new series, these spoilers will obviously be kept under tags to protect anyone that doesn't want to be spoiled, so don't worry about it.
~ Shinuki

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

 

[Bulju]

So, what is y'all take on why Alien Headbutt is flopping this hard despite being far from anything actually terrible?

I don't think every flop merits a deep analysis. Maybe it's just because it's terrible?

 

[tirakai]

...following how series are performing in Jump and analysing why one manga worked while others didn't is kind of the whole point of this topic. Just saying 'it's bad because it's bad' and not thinking about it any further isn't a very interesting way to see the magazine.

Jump's ToC is basically a sports league, and analysis and commentary is half the fun of sports.

 

[cameronney618]

I just think it's not good. People can't go on about how "kids don't like wrestling anymore in Japan" even though you have characters like Incineroar popular with japanese kids over the last decade.

Yes, bro. Just use the most popular ip on the planet as reference. His dark/ fire type attributed to most of it's popularity anyway.

He's not even the most popular one in that starter.

 

[Smirky Bell]

So, what is y'all take on why Alien Headbutt is flopping this hard despite being far from anything actually terrible?

I think that is because the manga doesn't represent wrestling in a good way for the japanese. Look, wrestling is a theater with colorful fighters entertaining the audience with acrobatic moves. So, a grayish manga like this could be boring for the public.

Maybe the deathmatch with various wrestlers could have been more interesting in the end lol.

 

[cameronney618]

So, what is y'all take on why Alien Headbutt is flopping this hard despite being far from anything actually terrible?

My personal believe is that the series premise and magazine marketing sold a different kind of series, from the premise texts it gave the impression that would be like a actual deathmatch wrestling series against aliens in a desert island but in the end the series turn out to be mostly just the main character walking in the island and fighting non stop as if is a video game where you go to new location and fight enemies, also the complete lack of other wrestling characters and main girl definitely hurt the series.

-Wrestling is outdated.
-Big Muscular MC's are outdated.
-It's another mindless people fight manga like Sakamoto and Shinobi is.
-The Waifubait and all the more entertaining characters came too late.

The wrestling half of Alien Headbutt is the Jannety. Aliens are the Micheals. And MAD is also getting more and more popular.

 

[Kiaida]

Yes, bro. Just use the most popular ip on the planet as reference. His dark/ fire type attributed to most of it's popularity anyway.

So where's your data proving wrestling is unpopular in Japan? You call everything unpopular. And again, Jump is read mostly by adults.

He's not even the most popular one in that starter.

He is.

 

[cameronney618]

So where's your data proving wrestling is unpopular in Japan? You call everything unpopular. And again, Jump is read mostly by adults.

The internet is free. Look it up.
They've been struggling to fill up their Wrestlemania equivalent mainevent for years now.

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

He is.

Decidueye exist.

 

[Jhonathan]

Has this been posted already?

 

[JBC008]

Is the Lady Justice author working on something new?

 

[Smirky Bell]

Decidueye exist.

Incineroar was in everything, dude. Ash's main partner, Champion's main partner in the anime, the starter chosen to participate in Smash bros

 

[Jhonathan]

Is the Lady Justice author working on something new?

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

Is the Lady Justice author working on something new?

He's the artist of this manga

Shinmai Ossan Boukensha, Saikyou Party ni Shinu Hodo Kitaerarete Muteki ni Naru.

It is common knowledge that it is best to become an adventurer when you are as young as possible, because the magical power that is the basis of an adventurer's strength will hardly grow if you don't train it while you are young. But this man, Rick Gladiator, who became an adventurer when he was...

www.mangaupdates.com

 

[Kiaida]

The internet is free. Look it up.
They've been struggling to fill up their Wrestlemania equivalent mainevent for years now.

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

Decidueye exist.

Kids aren't filling up rakugo presentations as well and Akane Banashi is one of the longest running series in the magazine. Doubt this matters for a manga that only leans on wrestling to give a powerset to a battle manga's MC.

And Rowlett is popular, Decidueye isn't, it was losing to Incineroar in polls like the Nintendo Dream one when the game released. And now we had a whole decade where Incineroar was everywhere.

Has this been posted already?

Creative freedom is good. So it would be better if he got to drawn the manga he wanted, but current Jump is more restricted in other ways, there's a reason even Shinohara complained about it.

 

[Jhonathan]

Jump is already cracking down on Ecchi, if this gets big we won't see boobs in this magazine anymore, we still see pretty and cute boys though.

Actually kinda of funny that no one ever said anything about Jump selling Witch Watch as a reverse harem full of hot guys. There was a Shota being lusted in an ad and everyone was okay with it

 

[Smirky Bell]

Jump seems to have a history with restraining the author.

Kubo in Kluboutside talked about a case like this:

Q113.
Will you ever publish a continuation of your one-shot stories like Rune Master Urara.

A113.
Urara had a story prepared for the purpose of serialization but it didn't get past the serialization meeting because it had a female protagonist in a battle setting and the story was hellishly dark. I'm not interested in drawing dark stories right now, but I might do it if I get a lot of free time

Different eras, different "rules", but always restraining

 

[Newkerzy]

Has this been posted already?

People really need to read Rule #6 in this thread….

 

[JBC008]

He's the artist of this manga

Shinmai Ossan Boukensha, Saikyou Party ni Shinu Hodo Kitaerarete Muteki ni Naru.

It is common knowledge that it is best to become an adventurer when you are as young as possible, because the magical power that is the basis of an adventurer's strength will hardly grow if you don't train it while you are young. But this man, Rick Gladiator, who became an adventurer when he was...

www.mangaupdates.com

They created Ossan Newbie Adventure? I had no idea.

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

Correction, they are working on the manga adaptation of Ossan Newbie Adventure.

 

[Lord Anubis]

Is the Lady Justice author working on something new?

No, looks like it's a behind the scenes look at Ogino's production on Lady Justice

 

[TheRealTravisty]

People really need to read Rule #6 in this thread….

Indeed.
For those who don’t use Twitter like me, here’s an article.

Former Weekly Shonen Jump manga artist says editors insisted on erotic content as a precondition to publishing superhero series with a female protagonist - AUTOMATON WEST

Ken Ogino, author of the cancelled Shonen Jump title Lady Justice, recently talked about the manga's behind-the-scenes.

automaton-media.com

 

[nkempi]

I just think it's not good. People can't go on about how "kids don't like wrestling anymore in Japan" even though you have characters like Incineroar popular with japanese kids over the last decade. Most Jump readers are in their 20s/30s anyway, so even if that was true it wouldn't explain it flopping.

The story is flat thin and for 10 chapters it was just a guy running around punching monsters. The art also isn't really that good, alien designs may be decent and he can make twitter bait spread pages, but he's inconsistent, action doesn't flow that well and generally isn't interesting. If you can't remember a specific move or action scene, you aren't doing your job with wrestling.

All the key moments in Kinnikuman are memorable because of its flashy techniques and over the top imagery, there's nothing here even remotely as fun as the Kinniku Buster, Kinniku Drive or the Muscle Spark, and this is just mentioning Suguru's techniques, all the enemies have their own iconic signature moves, while Alien Headbutt monsters barely interact in interesting ways with the MC, it forgets how much wrestling leans on BOTH fighters doing theatrics. The wrestling stuff feels more like window dressing than properly integrated to the story anyway.

I think this is well put. I agree it’s not really about the subject matter being unpopular, it’s just not very good. Your points about the wrestling are spot on. The MC really needed some kind of memorable signature move other than just punching and yelling go to hell. And the aliens really needed to do more than just punch him back. It was established that the aliens were already observing earth culture, they could have said something like they learned to fight from watching pro wrestling and then turn every fight into a proper wrestling match. Wrestling really did not factor into the series much at all, only nominally. You could change MCs entire backstory and it wouldn’t change anything. And yeah I agree about the art, it’s not that great, but it’s different and grittier than most of the stuff in Jump so I think people just interpret that as being good. A lot of the proportions were really weird.

On the plot, agreed it’s very thin, and it also tried to dangle the aliens being some big mystery which I don’t think worked. It was very deliberately not explained where the aliens came from and what they want. Even now it’s still not fully fleshed out, but what we’ve gotten is that they are using humans as batteries in order to take the earth for themselves. Which is basically the plot of The Matrix…I just don’t think it really worked. There needed to be some more stakes to explain why the MC needs to fight the aliens. Even now at the end, it makes no sense he agreed to be sent off to fight some final battle when his whole family is still apparently being held in captivity.

 

[Newkerzy]

Indeed.
For those who don’t use Twitter like me, here’s an article.

Former Weekly Shonen Jump manga artist says editors insisted on erotic content as a precondition to publishing superhero series with a female protagonist - AUTOMATON WEST

Ken Ogino, author of the cancelled Shonen Jump title Lady Justice, recently talked about the manga's behind-the-scenes.

automaton-media.com

Thank you.