Manga Xanadu

A few things I want to get off my chest first. Viz– Afros are for frogs and fists get their strength from the North Star and not nose hair. Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo must Gogogo-go Go-gogo! Bleach may make your whites look good as new, but it’s not going to do the same for Shonen Jump. Recycling is for cans, bottles and newspapers, not manga! I don’t know why, but these changes to Shonen Jump have really been bugging me. Why add these two titles? Why now? Bleach has been doing just fine on its own. It’s been making the USA Today Top 150. The only real logical reason to move it is to try to build Shonen Jump sales, if they are in fact slumping. (We don’t know SJ sales figures). And Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, I really can’t believe they had a huge amount of requests to add this to the magazine. Viz only put out one volume in 2005 (which you can’t even find on their website), and they’ve started it’s serialization at chapter 110? That doesn’t sound like a serious commitment to me. It really made me think. What was so special about these two titles? Then, it hit me….

I‘m back and mostly recovered from SDCC. I was there for three days, Fri, Sat, and Sun, with my family, so I wasn’t able to hit all the panels, but I did get to go to a couple of manga related. We got to the convention center and through registration just in time for me to go to the Shonen Jump Panel, one I was looking forward to go to. Now, I’ve talked about my feelings on the changes for Shonen Jump so far here. For over a month now, Viz has been hyping the new title to be joining Shonen Jump, with Shaman King leaving, Naruto winding down to normal, and another title ending naturally. Anyone reading the magazine knew what the ending title was, Yu Gi Oh!. That was no big surprise. And Marc Weidenbaum, editor-in-chief of the magazine didn’t leave us in suspense about what the new title was going to be. As everyone has heard by now, it’s Bleach. I was ambivalent about this announcement at first. I like Bleach. I think it’s a really fun title, and would be a good fit with the magazine. But the more I thought about it, the less of…

Now, I really don’t mind the recent changes that were announced in the recent issue of Shonen Jump. This certainly isn’t the first time that a series has been taken out of the magazine to continue in graphic novels. Dragonball Z left after just over a year, and Yu-Gi-Oh! took out the “Duelist” arc to continue with the shorter “Millenium World” arc. I really didn’t mind these changes, since the series’ brought in only improved the magazine. I wasn’t sure if I was going to like Hikaru no Go when it was first announced, but it turned out to be an excellent series. Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo is not. I’m sorry, I didn’t like this series from the preview chapter they ran a year or so ago, and after reading the latest chapter, I still don’t like it. I really enjoyed Shonen Jump magazine because it would have entertaining, quality series, and of late, the only squabble I had was that there were so many running that I was only getting one chapter a month instead of my usual 2-3. Lately, it’s been Naruto, One Piece, Shaman King, Hikaru no Go, Yu Yu Hakusho, Yu-Gi-Oh! Millenium World, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, and Gintama (another…