The Rise and Fall of Weekly Shonen Jump: A Look at the Circulation of Weekly Jump

According to that shounen magazines circulation graph, weekly shounen champion lost all its readers between the years 2001-2003 O.o

The circulation graph for the magazines is one decimal place too far to the right. The total population of Japan is only 128 million.

Wait, strike that question. I just got confused by the graph. ^o^;

maybe the readers are not very interesed od what a the moment Shonen Jump offers. I guess the magazine will need to make a market investigation of the why, maybe their money is limited and dont think shonen jump as a priority, maybe the attention has gone to other styles of shonen, anything could be.

It's the internet people!!! Believe me, the reason why the magazine sales are drop is becuse of the internet that exists in our time!! Though there are hit mangas such as One Piece, Naruto, Fairy Tail etc... the sales drop because of the internet.

Ever sice technology has become better and better, we used the internet to find and get stuff for free. This is exactly what happens to the magazines at the moment. People have been buying the magazines, scan them and distribute it throughout the internet for no cost at all. So even though we have hit series like One Piece or whatever, it won't matter aor change a thing. People are just going to get scans off the internet for free anwyay rather than buying the magazines itself. Because of this sales have been dropped because more people read the scans for free. This is exactly what is happening to manga readers throughout the world, people get the scans off for free rather than buying the mangas/magazines itself.

You might be asking, then how come from 1987 - 1994 the sales of shonene jump magazine is up. Well duh the internet and technology weren't that devloped back then, people buys them to read mangas, that's how the slaes are up. And not to mention that during those times there are hit series like dragon ball and yu yu hakusho, well of course the sales were good. Even if dragon ball and yu yu hakusho was in the times where internet and scanners exist, same thing is going to happen anyway. People are just going to find the scans off he internet for free.

So it's not the series itself that made the sales drop, it's the technology for beig so hi-tech that people use it to find a way to get it for free.

I second Pat. The thing is, if they released Jump at the same time/speed in america, it would be worth it to get it. I'd rather read manga on paper than computer anyway, and I could get all the other series in it. The only people who actually get jump now are kids who don't realize the series is further along than they realize.

Hey, where's Death Note? I'm sure that it's sold more than 10 mil. It should definitely be on that list.

in the first chart it says that its the LATEST first edition volume sales but katekyo hitman reborn has the sales of volume 2 instead of the sales of volume 14 and on a side note is circulation the amount of money made or the amount of copies sold

what is the newest item in the newest shonen jump magazine?

Houshin Engi has 23 volumes not 15

YOU KNOW, I SINCERELY BELIEVE THAT NARUTO WILL MAKE A GREATEST LEGEND AND INCREASE THE POPULARITY OF SHOINEN JUMP TO AN UNBELIEVABLE EXTENT. NOTHING TO WORRY 'BOUT HA HA
NARUTO IS FAR BETTER THAN DRAGON BALL, IN MY OPINION.

Its clear and obvious that Shonen Jump severe decline was right after dragon ball ended in 1995 and they never came back to those golden days even tho they have one piece,naruto,bleach,eyesheild,death note,dgray man and prince of tennis.

It simply means dragon ball is better than all of them combined, even tho its only 42 volume, dragon ball blow the competition out of the water even if they has more volumes which is AMAZING.

heya all just browsing n came across this site.am a huge fan of the manga and anime of all stuff thats in the books.i watch them all (YUGIOH N GX NARUTO BLEACH DRAGONBALLZ D GRAYMAN )anyway i dont have a clue where i can get my hands on the v-jumps or weekly shonen jumps.ive looked high n low for them on the web.does anyone know or if anyone wanna help me out id be very greatful

My take is that Dragon Ball is the greatest anime/manga ever. But others will disagree. Case in point of how great is: Bleach, One Piece, and Naruto are all series where the creators have had some influence from Dragon Ball. In the Japanese One Piece, Luffy is voiced by the woman that did Krillin in Dragon Ball. The minor character on One Piece, Dr. Kurai (something like that), was voiced by Masako Nozawa (born Oct. 31, 1936), the woman who would go to voice Dragon Ball's star, Goku (and his sons).

well on accordance to what someone said, if it werents 4 scanlations many ppl wouldnt even know about manga, and sometimes ppl prefer the scans over the official releases in whatever their native language is cus the companies that licence the manga do such a craptastic job in translating/editing them. On the other hand, some ppl can read japanese, so i'd be pontless 4 them to buy the magazines, and thats also when scanlations come it. I think that if the licencing companies would release the manga faster and take into consideration that fans want it as authentic as possible, there might be even mo sales and scanlations might decrease.

As a guy that started to watch manga in the 90s, I can tell you that slam dunk was the most popular manga in Japan during that time. If you calculate the circulation per volume, Slam duck beat both Dragon Ball and One Piece.

You should note that most popular shonen manga are either about fighting or sport. So the shonen magazine need both type of series to stay alive. For the current running series, both One piece and Naruto may be able to replace Dragon ball on the fighting genre, but Prince of Tennis and Eyeshield popularity are not even close to slam dunk. So I suggest Shonen Jump to focus on finding a good sport series. Although I don't think they can find another slam dunk, if the new one can come close to Captain Tsubasa in terms of popularity, Shonen Jump may be able to rise again.

The figures in this article don't make any sense to me. They have Bastard!! listed as the 19th most popular of all time, yet it doesn't even appear under the currently serialized titles when it (supposedly) ranks higher than Gintama... Bastard!! isn't even Shounen anyway so it shouldn't be there. O.o

Well, we really do need a manga like DBZ. Well first of all those are only the sales for Japan. If you count worldwide DBZ exceeds like almost 300 million. And people are still buying those volumes. So far I have not seen any manga with such powerful influence. Naruto doesn't have that caliber. Possibly no action/fighting manga is catching up to DBZ because all those manga were somehow influenced by DBZ. We need to have a manga with an innovative idea. Plus we also need a powerful sports manga similar to Captain Tsubasa and Slam Dunk. Thats my 2 cents.

Thanks for the article

Bleach, One Piece, and Naruto are all series where the creators have had some influence from Dragon Ball

Well, we really do need a manga like DBZ. Well first of all those are only the sales for Japan. If you count worldwide DBZ exceeds like almost 300 million. And people are still buying those volumes. So far I have not seen any manga with such powerful influence. Naruto doesn't have that caliber. Possibly no action/fighting

hi,one piece is the most popular manga in japan,and it is the one who keep the sales of weekly shonen jump high,i love this manga.

All-Time Best Selling Jump Series???????????

I supose that now One Piece should have much more sales, here says Vol.45 ongoing While it has already reached Vol 53.

Hope I find something to be nearer Vol 53, Vol 50 or something.........

The big rise and spike happened in the mid / late 80's and 90's because the supporting cast of manga in the magainze was so good. A lot of the "second tier" manga back in the 80's / 90's is better than a lot of the 1st tier manga out right now. That and so many quality manga just happened to be out at the time / in succession back then.

(going off memory from reading them, so orders might be a bit mixed)

It started in the 80's with stuff like:
Dr Slump
Cats Eye
Fist of the North Star
Kinnikuman
City Hunter
Seint Seiya
Jo Jo
Captain Tsubasa (the original one, not the subsequent ones)

And kept going with hits like:
Dragonball (when it was actually still interesting)
Dragon Quest
Rokudenashi Blues

When those were still going / slowly petering out, stuff like:
Slam Dunk (huge in Japan both to male and female, it almost single-handedly made basketball big in Japan)
Yu Yu Hakusho
Came out and carried the torch...

Followed by stuff like:
Rurouni Kenshin
Houshin Engi
Yuugioh
And when they were out and were going full swing and / or ending, there were still successors:
One Piece
Hunter x Hunter
Naruto
Bleach
Tenipuri

Now all throughout this, the supporting manga that came along with the "hits", say Moeru Oniisan in the 80's or stuff like BOY, Denei Shoujoin, Jigoku Sensei Nuube in the 90's were very good and helped flesh out the magazine and they all had a good following.

Now, you've still got hits like:
One Piece
Hunter x Hunter
Naruto
Bleach
But the supporting cast of manga is very weak. Bobobobo? Black Cat? ToLoveRu? Neuro?

And the sucessors that should be carrying on the torch are nowhere near as good as some of the older series.
Eyeshield 21? Doesn't compare to Slam Dunk (even though Eyeshield is still a good series).
Gintama?
Hitman Reborn?

So essentially Weekly Jump right now is running on hit old series that are still going (One Piece, Bleach, Naruto), and the "next generation" is no where to be found because the "new gen" seem to be rehashing all the old stereo-types in the manga without refining them, which is what the magazine was always about. And because the old series are getting old without anything new to attract them, the readership is dropping.

(BTW, there is no such thing as "DBZ" manga, there was, and always will be only "DB" (Dragon Ball). The Z was added in for the anime only.)

Hello....

First of all I would like to tell that MrBounce opinion is very nice and clear and i mostly agree with him and that's only because I don't know all the manga's for they are not available in my country.....

What I wanted to say is that after 95 there is a huge drop on the sales of manga series, that is also because of the computers and the games that started to have a full bloom at the time..... If someone wants to read manga now he can in less than a day later have his favorite manga on his computer, even tough manga on paper is totally different, we can't consider that fact on the drop of the sales.......

Sorry for my poor English.

Interesting stats. I had no idea Dr. Slump had been more popular than Saint Seiya, wow.

If u think about it naruto became popular through the nice transition from japan to north america same with DB/DBZ thats y DB/DBZ was such a juggernaut of anime/manga influence of today while compared to OP who did not make a very good transition aka the dark ages... 4kids. Well to put my point of view in if OP would have had a proper transition i could only guess that OP would do numbers on the sales world wide like DB/DBZ's 300 mil volume sales.

P.S. I do believe there is a more varied selection of manga today compared to back then when there were only a hand full so i also guessed that if the people are only given the hand full that is shown in shounen jump today, the numbers naruto and OP, could score manga sales that could bring DB down. Also people back then in north America were not given a lot of anime/manga also so there selection was more limited then japs so that could have led to the spike for DB/DBZ sales.

As a final note with our current population today which is a lot more then 1995 and considering all these other factors OP and naruto would have the potential to topple DB/DBZ.

I'm not gonna lie. Once you think about it naruto is kind of childish? I mean think about it. A ninja wearing orange? Come on. And they always talk about friendship in naruto and all that stuff. Anyone who knows japanese history can tell you ninja's used to be farmers. And Most ninja's could care less about friendship. My point is that Naruto is a childish cartoon that makes no sense and also they don't stick to the story line. They have tons and tons of episodes that are boring and are about nothing. They prolong the series by talking about stupid stuff. In my opinion Naruto is one of the worst anime in history.

Despite the popularity of the Slam Dunk comics, Dragonball far supercedes it with its anime adaptations to a much broader audience.

In the early 2000's, Dragon Ball / Z was the largest cartoon creation around in the United States, ranking #4, at best, on all cable television programs, with little over million viewers less than the World Wrestling programs, and Sports telecasts, with a 2.7 million household rating.

In this day and age, the only cartoon on basic cable that attracts that many viewers is SpongeBob Squareparents, which is of a lower demographic than Dragonball Z.

Being a foreign creation, and after heavy editing, the series still became a cultural phenom in the United States. The editing was done uniquely, unlike 4Kids attempts at marketting One Piece, and Viz's, with Naruto.

Even now, reruns of Dragonball ("Kai") are ranking up there with new episodes of One Piece in Japan. Notably, the "reruns" deputed above One Piece and all other animated programs aside Shin-chan.

Dragonball is practically a God among Action Cartoons. The series is still a #1 anime/action cartoon seller in all countries, even now. If you deduct X-Men's popularity via the live films, Dragonball would be a culturally superior hit than it, and all other series/franchises in that genre.

Have you seen anime sales in the U.S. recently? Dragon Ball Z is still the #1 anime property in the U.S., far and above all other anime properties, including Pokemon: http://anime.suite101.com/article.cfm/anime_dvd_sales_down_20_in_2007