Currently Running Manga Discussion

[Spark Of Spirit]

Japanese Top 30 selling manga series of the first half of 2016:

1. One Piece by Eiichiro Oda (6,470,105)
2. Assassination Classroom by Yusei Matsui (4,391,966)
3. Attack on Titan by Hajime Isayama (4,370,941)
4. Haikyu!! by Haruichi Furudate (4,016,578)
5. Kingdom by Yasuhisa Hara (3,561,489)
6. The Seven Deadly Sins by Nakaba Suzuki (2,712,499)
7. One-Punch Man by Story: One / Art: Yuusuke Murata (2,553,331)
8. ERASED by Kei Sanbe (2,332,110)
9. Tokyo Ghoul:re by Sui Ishida (2,179,345)
10. My Hero Academia by Kohei Horikoshi (2,135,591)
11. Terra Formars by Story: Yu Sasuga / Art: Kenichi Tachibana (1,906,964)
12. Chihayafuru by Yuki Suetsugu (1,885,180)
13. Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma by Story: Yuto Tsukuda / Art: Shun Saeki / Cooperation: Yuki Morisaki (1,756,603)
14. Detective Conan by Gosho Aoyama (1,612,080)
15. Orange by Ichigo Takano (1,604,284)
16. Fairy Tail by Hiro Mashima (1,534,636)
17. Gintama by Hideaki Sorachi (1,468,890)
18. Prison School by Akira Hiramoto (1,414,896)
19. Magi by Shinobu Ohtaka (1,340,330)
20. World Trigger by Daisuke Ashihara (1,254,621)
21. Seraph of the End: Vampire Reign by Storyboard: Daisuke Furuya / Story: Takaya Kagami / Art: Yamato Yamamoto (1,193,851)
22. Bleach by Tite Kubo (1,129,676)
23. Ajin by Gamon Sakurai (1,110,691)
24. Golden Kamuy by Satoru Noda (1,110,116)
25. Dagashi Kashi by Kotoyama (1,098,890)
26. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure by Hirohiko Araki (1,047,950)
27. I am a Hero by Kengo Hanazawa (982,923)
28. Major 2nd by Takuya Mitsuda (938,777)
29. Konodori by Yu Suzunoki (934,730)
30. Yotsuba&! by Kiyohiko Azuma (920,185)

My Hero Academia is starting its climb. Hopefully the anime will help it a good deal.

[gunswordfist]

Damn, Jojo cracked 1 million and My Hero Academia, Erased and One Punch Man cracked too? Me likey.

[VLordGTZ]

I'm happy to see that Assassination Classroom sold very well in its final stretch. 

MHA will most likely rank even higher by the end of the year thanks to the boost from the anime.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Rumiko Takahashi has a one shot coming out next week.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Weekly Shonen Jump Issue #26 (June 6th, 2016):

Hinomaru Zumou (Cover, Lead CP)
1) My Hero Academia
2) One Piece
Boruto (CP)
3) The Disaster of Psi Kusuo Saiki
Kimetsu no Yaiba: Blade of Demon Destruction (CP)
4) Black Clover
5) Food Wars! Shokugeki no Souma
6) Samon the Summoner
7) Straighten Up! Welcome to Shika High's Competitive Dance Club
8) Haikyuu!!
Takuan and Batsu's Daily Demon Diary (Not Ranked)
Hunter x Hunter (Not Ranked)
9) Yuna of Yuragi Manor
10) Mononofu
11) Kochikame
12) World Trigger
13) Gintama
14) Bleach
15) Toriko
16) Nisekoi
Chronicle of Isobe -Life is Hard-

Issue 28 Preview:

Cover, Lead CP: Haikyuu!!
CP: Black Clover, Straighten Up! Welcome to Shika High's Competitive Dance Club, Yuna of Yuragi Manor

Straighten Up finally breaks out of the bottom. Mononofu still needs to push harder.

Also, seeing World Trigger's recent sales as Jump's sixth best selling series and its random rankings in this list each week has put me at ease with it. It'll be around for a while. Random dip for Haikyuu, though. It is almost never out of the top 4.

[LumRanmaYasha]

Nice to see SU! start to rebound. Hopefully Mononofu climbs back up the ranks soon too. At least it's not in danger in the immediate future, since Toriko and Nisekoi are guaranteed to end before there becomes a need for something to be cancelled.

[Spark Of Spirit]

All Might! If there's a single character I would like to see more of the past of in My Hero Academia, it is All Might. There's no question in my mind that this is the best series Jump has run in a long time. It just keeps getting better. Also good to see the other heroes show up to help. It was interesting to see what exactly motivated Endeavor to do what he did with Todoroki.

So Tamakoma-2 is up to rank 4 in the Rank Wars after their crushing victory. I do wonder if this is hinting at the Rank Wars finally nearing the end. There are only three teams above them as before, only this time they have a winning strategy that only needs more polish. Of course, if Chika used the cannon instead of the lead bullet at the end, she would have defeated Teruya and would not have been defeated. She still has to get past that. On the whole, though, I'm excited to see what this means for the team.

I like the contrast in Food Wars between the beginning of the series and now. It is the first time Erina has had Soma's cooking since the series started, and a good chance to show how far they've both come since then. I'm really eager to see where the next chapter takes it.

Black Clover has gotten a lot better with character development over the last few arcs since the invasion. By making it natural with the story and world-building, it comes across far more genuine and less forced. The Black Bulls are just fun to be around.

As for Seraph, well, Yu is still a dimwit.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I do think that Black Clover may want to change things up a bit in the next arc. Every arc so far, without fail, has followed the same formula of Aster's friends being in trouble and him coming in to bail them out at the last second. Even if he's not the strongest person there, they've made it that any team battles can't be won unless his anti-magic is involved, and while that's OK for major battles since he's the main character, I feel like it robs the supporting characters of their dignity when he has to step in on their behalf in a set-up like this. I kind of wish that they had been allowed to carry out their original fights first before the big bad of this arc showed up, just to at least show the worth of the other Black Bull characters who haven't gotten as many chances to fight. It can get a bit too predictable when it always comes down to Aster saving his friends from an overpowered villain in the nick of time. And yes, I like how he's not always the one to defeat said villain, but still, I feel as though he's kind of being treated as a bit too overpowered for his own good given how little experience he still has at this point.

And I'm not suggesting something like Naruto or Bleach where the main character gets completely lost in the mix in favor of showing every battle for every supporting character. By all means, I like it when the main character is actually treated like the main character of the story. I'm only saying that it'd be great if the main character can also rely on his friends a bit more than it being the other way around.

This is also a problem that I had with Food Wars until the last few arcs in which the supporting cast was given a lot more to do other than lose to Soma or fill in time between Soma's matches. Thankfully it improved itself once Soma lost to Hayama in the AE Finals. Hopefully something similar happens in Black Clover.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I found this old quote about North American Jump:

Weekly Shonen Jump has traditionally been a superior incubator for new manga properties. What are some of the hot properties that Weekly Shonen Jump has developed recently that Americans may not be familiar with?

Many series have become popular from 2011 to 2012. There's Kuroko's Basketball, High Kyuu!!, The Disaster Of Psi Kusuo Saiki and Assassination Classroom. These series will not yet be distributed simultaneously for various reasons such as censorship and translation difficulty (for example, translating a gag manga without having anything being lost in the translation is extremely difficult). Also, for Shonen Jump in Japan, there are anywhere from ten to fifteen new series that start every year. As you say, this is both what is unique about Shonen Jump as well as its mission. For the simultaneous releases of Shonen Jump in English, we are thinking that we actively want to release new series from chapter one.

Viz has licensed three of these four series in the years since.

EDIT: Here's a list of some of the highest circulated manga out there. Though it is missing some, like Flame of Recca, it is pretty comprehensive.

[Spark Of Spirit]

This week's ranking:

Haikyuu!! (Cover, Lead CP)
1. My Hero Academia
2. Gintama
Straighten Up! Welcome to Shika High's Competitive Dance Club (CP)
3. Kimetsu no Yaiba: Blade of Demon Destruction
4. Samon the Summoner
Black Clover (CP)
5. Food Wars! Shokugeki no Souma
6. Hunter x Hunter
Yuna of Yuragi Manor (CP)
7. Hinomaru Zumou
Fuzoroi no Bunshin-tachi (One Shot)
Takuan and Batsu's Daily Demon Diary (Not Ranked)
8. Mononofu
9. The Disaster of PSI Kusuo Saiki
10. Nisekoi
11. Kochikame
12. Toriko
13. Bleach
Isobe Isobee Monogatari

Yep, both World Trigger and One Piece were off this week. I hope Ashihara is okay, though I'm guessing it would have been ranked where the one shot was placed. On the other hand, it looks like the recent batch of new series were a success. Only Takuan and Batsu is an unknown, but the others all seem to have found a niche.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Spoiler

So how long until having to constantly use up nen on rubber limbs takes its toll on Hisoka?

[close]

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, I honestly can't think of too many times in the series where characters complained of "running low" on Nen. I tend to equate it more to something like Stands from JoJo's as opposed to Chakra from Naruto, in that conceptually it's treated more as an ability than as a quantifiable source of energy.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Man, MHA is too good. That glare Stain gave All For One was too good. Now it looks like both All Might and All For One are tapped out of their quirks. Whatever happens next looks like it'll rely on Midoriya stopping Shigaraki.

Food Wars showed once more a good contrast between Erina and Soma. I particularly like that he chose a dish where the more expensive ingredients would be a step down. When it comes to food, the options are almost limitless as to what you can make. That's part of what makes this series fun to read. You get to see all kinds of crazy recipes and ingredients that are seemingly impossible, but actually exist. It was also good to see the two of them finally bury the hatchet. Great chapter.

One Punch Man was the best chapter in a while. There was quite a bit of good comedy, action, and character development here. That said, I do wish it came out more often.

Lastly, Black Clover was pretty good. It was nice to finally see an opponent Asta couldn't easily beat on his own. If the Eye of the Midnight Sun are going to be legitimate threats, he can't be beating them all so easily. On the other hand, I'm not seeing any way to beat this guy unless everybody works together to stop him. Should be fun to see how this ends.

Also, in HxH, did Hisoka just kill two members of the Spiders? Man, he's deadlier to them than Kurapika was. I guess this is a way of getting both them and Hisoka into the next arc since they were not in the Chimera Ant arc at all until near the end.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I have to say, even though it came out of nowhere (which seems to have become part of Togashi's sporadic writing process ever since the Chimera Ant arc started over a decade ago), I'm liking this Hisoka Vs. The Spiders sub-arc much more than the mostly mundane and boring set-up that we got for the Dark Continent arc before this. It's interesting since they are all major villains of the series, yet none of them are protagonists, so you really can't tell what the outcome will be since both Hisoka and Chrollo seem far too important to be killed off by one another, yet in a battle between them, somebody has to come out the victor unless other parties interfere in the conflict (which is probably what will most likely happen). I have no idea where Togashi is going with this plot, nor how it will tie in to the Dark Continent arc (if Togashi even decides to tie them together, that is), but that's honestly what makes it interesting to me. It takes characters that I'm invested in and who we haven't seen in a while, and puts them in an interesting situation. That, to me, is when a series like HXH really shines.

Food Wars has been having some of its best material in a while for the past several weeks or so. I'm liking Erina's character development, though I'm not particularly fond of how learning of Soma's parentage seems to be what let her take him more seriously and give his cooking more of a chance. I would have preferred if he earned that completely by himself, and his parentage was revealed after the fact, but even so it's a really minor gripe. I really just like character redemption arcs, and right now Erina is going from being a spoiled and uptight elitist to being a more genuinely thoughtful and reasonable person. I'm assuming that she will end up joining the battle against Central in the next arc.

Black Clover was entertaining and I'm happy to see that Aster is in fact getting his ass handed to him really hard for once. And it makes sense given the much higher level of his opponent. I'm not really a fan of the one-dimensional villains who just throw insults to everyone else like they are some divine, elite beings. It's way too overplayed in this genre and just not really fun or interesting to see. It's a really cheap way to get people to root for the heroes to eventually overcome them and kick their ass, but when it becomes overdone you tend to see it as lazy character writing, like I do. That said, it looks like the rest of this fight will go down with Aster working with a team of other Magic Knights, so it could be a really cool battle if they implement interesting strategies into it like they did with the last major team battle in the series.

And finally we have the best currently running Weekly Shonen Jump manga (IMO). My Hero Academia continues to impress me with its nuanced characters and really ballsy plot turns. I love that this victory cost All Might his powers for good, and now even if he is there to give Midoriya advice, he can no longer physically protect and train him. I also love how the stage has been set-up for Shigaraki and Midoriya to be the new future heads of the villains and heroes in this series, respectively. They are each carrying on the wills of their predecessors, but have also lost a lot of the guidance that their mentors could previously provide for them, and now have to lead their own paths toward achieving what they want.

Overall, this was a great week for WSJ manga, or at least for the series that I follow.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Kochikame is getting a new anime series!