The Current State of Shonen Jump 2020

I can't believe the last time I did one of these videos I mistook a picture of going a guy for akira toriyama especially after the disaster that was that first video but here we go current state of shounen jump 2020 no mistakes at all this time probably if you're a recent follower in my channel and maybe have no idea what a weekly shonen jump is it is a weekly Japanese magazine that publishes the most recent chapters of around 20 different ongoing manga titles each one of which is battling in a war to become the top series of jump and it's kind of brutal the cutthroat son of jump means that any series seen as underperforming teeters on the brink of cancellation while its most popular titles your Naruto's your one pieces of your Dragon Balls go on to be adapted into anime movies and video games even transcending the magazine itself and becoming bona fide world wide phenomena and why I like doing these videos is not only to take a look at the ever-shifting battleground that is jump but to shine a light on the magazine's hidden gems and to try and see which ones could potentially become jumps next earth-shattering title which right now is a really interesting question not only because many of gems major titles are entering the twilight of their runs but also because 2019 is the first time in 12 years that a series outsold one piece [Music] all of which we will get to but first I think it's important we take a moment and honor the fallen so let's talk about the series that did not make it out of 2019 the two most notable casualties in the ward stay on job's pages were Hin Amaro Zumo and shokugeki no souma although casualties is probably overstating things boat series had long lucrative runs spanning hundreds of chapters and have come to what feels like a natural conclusion with honimaru Zumo being the never that popular but quietly adored sumo title that had some of the best goddamn art working jump illustrated with a weight and intensity that made matches of sumo feel like battles of mythical gods well the fanservice heavy shokugeki no souma made the act of cooking feel like a desperate war for survival leveraging the strength of non battle battle manga to fight its way into the sacred ground of jumps most popular titles in 2017 before a gradual loss in popularity preceded its conclusion in December of last year and while it's always sad to see two veteran series come to an end like this both these titles had tremendous runs and their authors can go out with their heads held high which unfortunately is an experience that only precious few have jump have been brutal in their cutting with titles like singing manga Alice and tayo failing to amass any kind of real following running for less than twenty issues before vanishing from jumps pages and a lot of series went this way teenage Renaissance David neo pull Asian hell warden higuma the last say Yuki you cameo let's loose TT Sai Tokyo Shinobu squad and beast children all suffered low sales short runs and cancellation and while the impact of these titles was minimal I have to imagine the work and passionate took to even get them to jumps pages must have been immense which is why I like to honor their authors here and wish them better look in their future creations but I also think the jump needs to be ruthless in its coding and especially now as this is what makes space for the brand titles of the magazine the first of which is mission Oh Sakura family telling the tale of a young lad who after becoming engaged to his childhood sweetheart in order to not be murdered by her psychotic assassin brother must undergo a life of hellish training and espionage in order to integrate into the family spies it's a fun light-hearted title but yo sakura family's biggest problem is that there is just another current title doing the same thing but are you ibly much better in jump plusses spy ex family taking on a very similar idea with a young spy building a pretend family only doing it with superior artwork sharper writing and some really heartfelt moments that made the series one of the breakout titles of last year and unfortunately leaving Yozakura family looking a little uninspired by comparison on the complete opposite end of the spectrum we have me Thomas security Spirit Buster's starring a psychic detective who is terrified of ghosts and this being a comedy manga spirit Buster's is going to live and die by how funny it is and so it's fortunate that spirit Buster's is [ __ ] hilarious not only because its author is a master at establishing scenarios and then wildly subverting them but because he just knows how to draw comedy I mean just look at this drawing if you don't think this is great then this series probably isn't for you but also I don't think we'd be friends it's early days for spirit Buster's yet and while a comedy series is never going to make it to the peak of jump that doesn't mean this title couldn't have a long successful run in the vein of other comedy titles like the disastrous life from sake K jump also has a fresh batch of newer titles that have only started releasing so of which are just a little too early on for me to feel comfortable giving a full opinion on but there are others like zip man centering around a high schooler who finds a technologically advanced suit allowing him to battle villains through the streets of Tokyo in tokusatsu style showed and it's fine it's a very typical shortened story that I fear is going to have trouble standing out among Jim's ranks which is definitely not a problem like gravity boys has a strange series about a group of attractive morons colonizing a new planet after the people of Earth have been wiped out by a nuclear blast and it's a fun idea with some sublime artwork but the issue I have is that it falls somewhere between a genuine sci-fi story and an episodic comedy and I'm just not sure it does either well enough to elevate itself above jumps for their titles but it's still early days and if it can find its voice this could become an interesting oddity for jump the most anticipated new title of the magazine is undoubtedly samurai ace and that's because it's from Masashi Kishimoto the guy responsible for Naruto which is easily one of the most successful and widespread manga of all time but now shifting his focus from ninja to Samurai or more specifically cybernetic space samurai with Kishimoto handling the writing and storyboards with art by Akira Okubo I was really excited to read this one as it's not everyday a legitimate legend of the manga industry starts a new series but unfortunately I've come away with my doubts about the future of samurai ace which is a shame because there is some good stuff here hotcha Mara's relationship with his father is genuinely really touching it Nana she is one of the more interesting side characters of a shounen manga and there's a moment where a Shiba in you dual wield some pistols but the issue is that the series is so dense with lore and world building that the actual characters and story are buried under talk of samurai souls keyholders locker balls the problem being that even when you scrape the dense layer of science fiction aside all you're left with is a very standard feeling traditional shown in battle series in a magazine whose upper echelons are dense with traditional show series and unfortunately I don't seem to be the only one feels that way samurai eights first two volumes sold exceedingly poorly in their first week with volume one selling 12,000 copies and volume two and three dropping to just eleven thousand copies and to give some context to that volume one of dr. stone sold triple that in its first week and without the massive marketing push that samurai eight received and while it's not impossible for series in samurai its position to turn it around it's just very unlikely and I have to say I'm a little heartbroken for a kishimoto but then again this is a guy with absolutely nothing left to prove and so that's it for shounen jump snoo titles meaning it's now time to take our first steps into the hallowed halls of shone and jumps biggest series but first a little note on how do we define big in previous videos this is something I've done through the table of content averages and in hindsight there are way more reliable metrics I could have been using and I was a stubborn Tomas for it sticking with them as long as I did so I wanted to apologize for the misinformation spread both in these videos and in the original fall of Bleach video I will do my best to do better so forget TOC rankings a fall coma from now on we're going to be using the total yearly sales estimates as tallied by Oricon com and so with that in mind let's count down jumps 10 biggest series number two will shock you we begin with a series whose success and jump is still a little baffling to me in act age and it jumps number 10 most popular title and trailing only slightly behind we never learn a harem series very high school tutor tasked with raising the grades of a variety of charming young ladies and romantic mischief ensues it's a sweet series with some of the most endearing artwork and jump selling 1.2 million copies and landing it a jumps number 9 spot and honestly I'd have thought it would have rose a little higher considering the 2019 anime but maybe it's lack of punching sports or lasers means it's never going to break jumps class unlike jiu-jitsu Kyson a series of a group of high-school students battling the occult with some solid artwork and great action jiu-jitsu Kyson has steadily been building in popularity since it began and now closing in on 100 chapter and with an anime do it this year 2020 could well be the year that we see this series explode but as of 2019 it sold 1.5 million volumes placing it at number eight and within striking distance of veteran series black clover black clover is a traditional ass battle manga that leans heavily into trope and convention and while it's going to divide people whether that's a good or a bad thing it hasn't stopped this series doing extremely well selling 1.7 million units in 2019 and while that is a drop from 2018 that's likely due to the late 2017 anime bringing in an influx of new fans buying back issues inflating its sales for that year and if we look at the series volume sales we can see that it's still selling as much as it ever has and just to note you might notice a little drop-off in sales figures as the year goes on but that's actually pretty normal by virtue that older tanka bonds are at longer and therefore have more time in which they can sell and so it only really means something if you see a continuous drop over multiple years or in the rare case that volumes sales actually start increasing as the year goes on which would represents an extreme explosion in popularity but I mean that could never happen right it's not like we could see a series that popular in this video next up is a little bit of a heart breaker for me in dr. stone the story of all of humanity being frozen in stone before two teenagers awaken 3,700 years later who must restart the planet by choosing who to bring back and who to leave frozen before starting a war with what is basically Hitler as a beautiful cave and what I love about the series is not just the gorgeous artwork of fun characters but how it took the engine of shown in a bottle and power escalation and replaced it with a war driven by scientific advancements the reason I use the word heartbreaking is that I really thought 2019 was going to be the year of dr. stone and at the heart of that was its anime adaptation but unfortunately well the anime wasn't terrible it also wasn't really anything else being a very basic adaptation using known of the strengths of animation to elevate its source material meaning the potential of dr. stone never reached that wider audience that I'd really think it could have with the series selling a commendable 1.8 million copies taking it to the threshold of jumps top 5 but not crossing it at number 6 the reason I make a big deal about this is that once you enter the Sacred Realm of jokes top 5 series there's an ocean of difference between these titles and everything that came before them while there's less than a hundred thousand sales betweens positions 7 & 6 there's a difference of 2.7 million sales between positions 6 & 5 meaning that we are now entering the territory of jumps monster series that define the magazine the first of which is high Q at 4.5 million sales the beautiful boys doing things well volleyball Edition manga has enjoyed near-constant success coming up on its fortieth volume high Q now being the third oldest title in the magazine second if you don't care hunter hunter but let me dream a consistently high quality story dynamic artwork and a great forces in anime has kept this series strong for eight years and while the Sun may be setting on the flightless crows with high Q entering its final arc its had a spectacular run and its author Haru G for a day can end the series proud at number four is my hero academia and while this series has never been my personal favorite title and jump it doesn't change the fact that it's still a sales juggernaut with a massive influx of sales in 2018 likely due to the release of its feature film but still consistently selling over 5 million volumes year-on-year but what's kind of shocking and speaks to the insane strength of jumps and lineup is that even with those monstrous numbers hero academia was not able to break into jumps top three due in part to the monumental and surprising success of promise Netherland since I started doing these videos I've been talking about the potential a promise Neverland as something new and different for jump but even I had no idea that the series was going to hit this hard or wise this far backed by an absolutely stellar anime adaptation and some frankly batshit insane developments in the manga promised Neverland exploded last year with volume sales even surpassing my hero academia with its total yearly sales climbing to 7.4 million and to put in perspective how insane a number that is that's more than Naruto's sales at their absolute peak cementing promise Neverland as part of Jim's new big 3 losing it only to the two most popular titles of the magazine which brings us to the king of Shonen the immortal the unkillable the 20-year behemoth it's one piece if I was to try and explain one piece success in a single sentence it would be that what started off as an excellent story about a single character has over two decades evolved into an excellent story about an entire world one that scope has transcended what people even thought was possible with Shonen manga the story continuing to evolve in the most recent one ou are even introducing what could be one pieces endgame villain as well as offering a tantalizing glimpse as to what Goldie Roger's treasure might be this ser big one piece is there's only 15 million units separating one pieces a lifetime global sales and that apartment meaning in as little as two years one piece could potentially become the second most popular comic book of all time second only to Superman and with ten million units sold this year one piece lands firmly as jumps numbered to spot [Music] oh [ __ ] I forgot we were that's rice for the first time in over a decade one piece has been outsold by another series in author Koya hara gota gay and her debut ongoing series commit suno yabba demon slayer it's hard to argue the demon slayer is doing anything that new or original and Shonen but it's equally hard to argue that there are any ongoing series right now doing traditional Shonen better than demon slayer polishing the conventions of the genre down to a glistening gleam and using it to tell a story of familial love that is both intimate and brutal and as a results it's hard not to be pulled into tonzura story not to feel his pain as he struggles to protect his only remaining family not to root for him as he masters new abilities in the face of increasingly hopeless battles or be touched by the sombre sense of empathy he shows his demonic enemies in their final moments demon slayer is grace but the catalyst for its success came in the form of one of the most stunning TV adaptations ever studio affordable giving life to tonsure a story he elevating it beyond even the manga resulting in such an explosion of popularity that its sales actually increased a volume to volume driving demon slayer to 12 million units sold surpassing even one piece and so there you have it we have a new king of Shonen one piece is dead all hail demon slayer only not quite while demon slayer did technically outsell one piece the volume sales tell a different story with one piece selling double demon slayers numbers each and every volume what's happening here is that the bulk of demon slayer sales are coming from the influx of new fans brought in by the anime who by buying back issues are inflating demon slayers numbers past what they would normally be and so while it is technically true that demon slayer outsold one piece it's not really true to say that it's more popular as less people are actually reading it and none of that is to disparage demon slayers achievements honestly I think it's so awesome that a series was able to rise up and scratch the face of God like this but for now one piece is still the undisputed king of Shonen but you also have to wonder for how much longer one piece can't go on forever and when it does end what will that mean for jump and its dominance of the manga industry and that's a question that starts to carry more ways when you consider that out of Shonna jumps top five titles three out of the five are entering their final arcs those being hiked you promised never land and even demon slayer with hero academia originally envisioned to end at volume 30 which would be around the beginning of next year although those plans seem to have changed according to a 2018 interview but still it's not hard to imagine that in the next two to three years jump could be losing the vast majority of its most popular titles and while it does still have its sleeping giant in my beloved hunter hunter after more than a year of hiatus who knows what the future of that title even is what all this means is that if jump wants to maintain its place within the industry now is the time it needs to be fostering new titles that will take off at the place of the old to take chances on series that are new and different ones that could shock current readers and potentially draw in new audiences series that one day could become the lifeblood of the magazine man too bad I can't think of any series like that chainsaw man began life in late 20:18 telling the story of den G who after fusing with his demonic chainsaw a dog obtains the power of chainsaws and is taken in by a secret devil hunting organization and tasked with hunting and killing the gun devil a being responsible for a cataclysmic worldwide massacre that lasted only a few minutes but killed millions of people initially the idea for chainsaw man doesn't seem that original it's devil man with chainsaws and what's more unlike nearly every other series in jump the artwork has this unfinished jagged feel but the more I read chainsaw man the more I started to feel like I was experiencing something really special there's both the cynicism and intimacy to the series that is not apparent at first glance while the artwork is rough it's also oddly beautiful in its way not only because author Tatsuki Fujimoto has a talent and depicting disturbing images of horror but also because he's adept at conveying emotion through his comics not afraid to use an entire double page spread to establish a mood and tone which helps give a sincere level of emotion to these characters and that really matters with this series because even more importance than it's gruesome chaotic battles is the lives of the people who fight them each character in their own way a beautifully flawed human trainwreck take 10 G for example he begins a story with nothing no home no friends and owing his organs to the Yakuza but after becoming a devil hunter he slowly starts to piece together how to be a person at first just happy to have a bed to sleep in but then coming to the revelation that he needs a purpose in life and that it's now his goal to touch a boob and yes that's pretty dumb but then when he actually does he's struck by a sense of emptiness his life losing all meaning before he enters a mere existential crisis before coming to the Epiphany that sexual contact doesn't mean a whole law without emotional intimacy behind us and that's a piece of his character that continues to develop over the course of the story as he learns to appreciate ours and even forms relationships with people their devil hunters all of whom have these beautifully poignant moments that make them feel human and alive and well the series is also hilarious somehow teetering between a disturbing work of horror and a balls-to-the-wall action manga it's ultimately the stories of these very broken characters trying to find their way and it's the chaos that keeps me thinking about chainsaw man long after the chapters intended I do worry chainsaw man might just be too weird to be accepted by jumps larger audience but surprisingly it has actually done pretty well in the first year selling around 400,000 copies and what I'd say is if you take anything from this video please please give chainsaw man a shot out of everything we've talked about this is the series that has me the most excited for what a new era of jump could be friends that's gonna do it I want to give a shadow to Rukia for once again helping me with the research on this video I'm gonna link his manga blog in the description and you should really check it out he's a good guy and incredibly knowledgeable if you enjoyed this video and would like to help me make more like it you can do so over on patreon.com forward slash super eyepatch world where for only a single dollar you can support this channel and pay for the electricity and food I need to make videos this video I'd particularly like to thank Jim cheery a pathetic gentleman son of an ki Baron Blackthorne contra points Robin Keshe B and catgirl miles you can also find me hosting the let's fight a boss video game podcast or on Twitter at my patch old friends take care of yourselves and I'll see you next

Channel: Super Eyepatch Wolf

Views: 1,034,923

Keywords: Shonen Jump, One Piece, Kimitsu no Yaiba, My Hero Acadamia, Demon Slayer, Promised Neverland, Anime, Manga

Id: 4arTCRhueAY

Length: 24min 59sec (1499 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 22 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/dolsson14]

I knew Demon Slayer did very well but I was shocked to see the promised neverland do so well in sales.

[u/Rushbomb]

Glad to see Eyepatch Wolf be mindful of the criticisms he received for the metrics he used for his previous videos, and adjust accordingly. There's just something about the way he presents his passions that make it so interesting to watch whatever he puts out.

[u/CentipedeSlayer101]

This is probably the biggest channel to shout out Chainsaw man so thats great.

[u/RafaelBoxerGuy]

that guy upload video once per month, but always worth my time.

[u/Koro_Sniper]

Act Age sounds interesting. Might have to give it a read.

[u/Genus-God]

I suspect that he didn't read SNS, since there was nothing graceful about that ending. Ok, it didn't get AXED, but it definitely had the switch for its life support switched off

[u/ruminaui]

Good for Demon Slayer burst of popularity. Also I guess that for Samurai 8, because Kishimoto at the end of Naruto was used to lore building he forgot that is something you only do when the series is already going for quite some time. Sure lore can be at the beginning but it can never be your foundation, and it should be keep at minimum when a series start, because you know no manga has succeeded because of its lore

[u/RedRumMaker]

Although i don't watch this channel, I love the segment he gave for chainsawman. Hope it breaks through saleswise and gains more popularity.

[u/Karma110]

I heard people say TPN dropped in quality or something like that. I don't read it That's just what I heard.

Jujutsu Kaisen and Act-Age are the best right now even tho I think Jujutsu is doing better in sales but not by a lot I don't think.