Proper Japanese Title: 週刊少年ジャンプ

Weekly Shonen Jump launched in 1968 (as Shonen Jump, only becoming weekly in 1969), and is arguably the best-known manga magazine in Japan's history due mostly to its peak sales in the 80's and early 90's when it was circulating 6.5 million copies. However, even in its lowest periods such as in current times, it sells around 2 million copies (what it had gotten to by the late 70's), which is quite significant in a time when most manga magazines can't even get 1 million (with the second best-selling manga magazine having half the sales).

Jump Mascot

It was predated by plenty of other already-established shonen manga magazines and from Shueisha itself, it became a replacement for the decade old Shonen Book. However, apart from some time in the early years of the magazine and in the late 90's when Magazine was selling better due to a huge dropoff in Jump's readership (after Dragon Ball and Slam Dunk both ended), Jump has reigned supreme for most of its life. Of the modern big four "Weekly Shonen" magazines (Jump, Magazine, Sunday and Champion), it currently outsells all the others by over twice as much and its serializations are among the best-selling manga of all time.

Though the manga themselves are often highly successful, many series, especially in modern times, get huge boosts in popularity and growth from their frequent anime adaptations with some titles that weren't doing too well in the magazine (like Kuroko no Basuke), becoming one of the best-selling manga of the decade after it got anime promotion. One of the things that makes the magazine so interesting to fans is that for the most part, the series within are ranked by popularity polls each week and placement in the magazine can often directly tie to how well received recent chapters have been.

Obviously there are plenty of exceptions to this rule, especially in a magazine that has run for nearly fifty years, but one of the magazine's key characteristics is its high turnover rate with new series. Generally, a few series are launched in the magazine every few months and have been since its inception, and at the same time, a few old series end.

Format of the Magazine

Though in the first years of the magazine, very few series lasted more than a few issues, indicating they were likely only intended to be short one-off's, as the magazine began to cultivate a number of strong titles in the 70's, the constant cancellation of the old to make way for the new bred a system of high competition for any new series. With every new serial essentially having to prove itself within three or four months as being more popular than a decent chunk of other titles in the magazine, if it failed, it would be cancelled to make way for another new series.

Because of this system, while Shonen Jump has published many of the best-selling manga of all time (including One Piece, Dragon Ball, Kochikame, Naruto and Slam Dunk which are five of the only shonen manga in history to have sales over one hundred million), the vast majority of titles it published don't last more than two or three volumes (and in the case of titles before the 80's, were often never collected by Shueisha).

Hirohiko Araki's First Serial

Since the 80's, virtually every new series is essentially given the same promotion with every title getting collected and most new series getting the cover and lead color page in the magazine for their first chapter. However, even when the magazine can be harsh on a new series, creators of failed series are often given new chances (with many of the major successes of the magazine starting out as failures, such as Hirohiko Araki who debuted with Mashōnen B.T. which was cancelled after ten chapters but only a few years later he returned with JoJo no Kimyō na Bōken which lasted for over five hundred chapters) and even major creators can have their works axed quite quickly if they are not popular (Chagecha being cut after eight chapters despite the author having previously done Bobobōbo Bōbobo which lasted for over three hundred).

As a general rule, the series on the cover is given a color page for the first page of the chapter along with a color spread at the beginning of the magazine while a few other series are given a color cover page each issue (often to promote something, like their newest collection, their surprise popularity, an anniversary or an anime adaptation). However, sometimes the cover is taken by a series that doesn't even get a color page or can even be at the very back of the magazine (though often, the series at the back of the magazine has been an established one, proving that popularity does not always indicate placement). Pyu to Fuku! Jaguar debuted at the back of the magazine in 2000 (getting color pages but not the cover) and proceeded to be one of the only serials to remain in the magazine through the entire decade.

Very rarely, series have been given full-color chapters, generally while at the height of their popularity but even the most popular series generally drop off in popularity partway through their run and by the time they end, they are no longer significantly promoted in the magazine. Final chapters of a series are generally only given a color page if they were quite popular at some point in their run, but one of the rarest honors given to a series is a fully-colored final chapter.

Full-Color Kochikame

This honor is reserved for the final chapter of some of the magazine's biggest series that helped the magazine rise in popularity, in several cases, their end has led to the magazine having a steep drop off in readership. To date, only five have gotten the honor: Ring ni Kakero (1977- 1981), Dragon Ball (1984-1995), Slam Dunk (1990-1996), Naruto (1999-2014) and Kochikame (1976-2016). Notably, the issue featuring the end of Kochikame was the first time the magazine ever reprinted an issue and rather than coloring the final chapter itself, it included a full-color reprint of the first chapter of the series instead.

Indexing Serializations

For the purposes of indexing, it is important to note that for many highly popular series (particularly from the beginning of the magazine to the early 80's), what were considered chapters then are not necessarily what have been established as chapters now. It is quite common for these older series to bundle multiple chapters together, to edit out chapters or pages or even reorder chapters in a collection (particularly with gag manga where chronology isn't as important).

This is partly due to the fact that at the time, many serializations didn't officially number their chapters so while it is much easier to reference a particular chapter of a long-running modern series, with a series like Kochikame, the title is referenced instead or in the case of other classics like Ring ni Kakero or Cobra, the chapters have not been preserved at all in their original form (for example, the first tankobon of Cobra only listed one chapter over a hundred and fifty pages long but in the magazine, chapters were twenty to thirty pages).

In some cases, however, the author has just chosen to update the work, presumably to make it flow better as a story as opposed to a serialization and in the editing, original chapters can be lost. For this reason, many sites will claim a series has far less chapters than it actually did have. For example, most sources will claim the original Saint Seiya had only 110 chapters, which would have meant it lasted only a little over two years in the actual magazine, but in reality, nearly two years before the series had even ended it was already celebrating 150 chapters (see: #1038).

Other notable series, like Dr. Slump and Kinnikuman have been given fan-made chapter numbers that are accepted by most English-language sources as fact despite not being in any way official, not in publication order or multiple chapters bundled together.

Differences from Other Manga Magazines

Arnold and Taro Yamada

Jump is unique in a number of ways from its primary competitors and contemporaries, with one of the notable aspect of its decades-long run being the covers. Many manga magazines since the 80's and 90's have used photo covers (primarily of gravure idols) to entice a secondary audience to the magazine but Shonen Jump is extremely rare for almost exclusively using illustrated covers (even more specifically, the very rare exceptions have not been idols but people like Ayrton Senna or Arnold Schwarzenegger). Also, despite launching when alternative manga was becoming mainstream, Jump did not have a period of using alternative covers like Magazine and Sunday were doing in the late 60's and early 70's.

Serials run in Weekly Shonen Jump are not strictly bound to any set genre or style parameters (at least historically), though the magazine has a tendency to directly inspire its future creators (many of whom were assistants to Jump mangaka before debuting with their own serials). Perhaps due to its competitive nature in trying to remain popular, many of the pillars of Jump have very similar tropes and themes (generally, with one series becoming popular and later series adopting aspects of it as homage).

The most all-encompassing genres generally published in Jump are sports manga, battle manga and gag manga (though these limits are regularly pushed to include non-traditional sports, new battle systems or more bizarre gags). However, one of the biggest things that makes Jump manga easily identifiable is the self-referential nature of many series. It is generally very common for a series to at some point feature somebody reading or talking about Jump with a number of them going a step further and having it be a plot point in an otherwise serious story (though gag manga are especially prone to referencing Jump and breaking the fourth wall). While for each individual series this is generally a minor detail, for readers of the magazine it is an easter egg which becomes infinitely more obscure when collected, as the reference can be to a decades-old contemporary that never became popular or that readers may not even realize ran in the magazine at the same time.

Cover of WSJ #1135

References range from every serial in an issue featuring a cameo of Kankichi Ryotsu or Luffy's straw hat, to a series directly about making a Jump manga (Bakuman.), mangaka and their editors appearing in the serials themselves (Dr. Mashirito, Shimabu, Hideaki Amachi, Masakazu Katsura), two serials crossing over (Sket Dance × Gintama or Toriko × One Piece or Toilet Hakase × Onna Darake), chapter covers being special tributes to beloved serials that ended in that specific issue (One Piece chapter covers for the final chapters of Naruto, Kochikame, Toriko) to a vast variety of major characters reading the magazine; sometimes in very dramatic ways such as Maeda Taison surviving being stabbed in the gut because he had a recently published issue in his jacket to Jotaro Kujo introducing Star Platinum and the concept of Stands by having it get him the latest Jump while he was stuck in a jail cell.

Controversies

While Jump has experienced general controversy in its long lifetime like most popular media, it is generally not significant and revolves around questions of content being age-appropriate or influencing kids negatively. There have also been cases of people getting arrested for posting early spoilers of the magazine online. However, in a select few cases, controversy has directly influenced a series and even more rarely, resulted in cancellation regardless of how popular the series is.

Harenchi Gakuen: As one of Jump's very first hits, Harenchi Gakuen was designed to be controversial and used this controversy to help boost public awareness of the magazine. One of the first ecchi manga, it was scandalous for its time but tame by modern standards (and much less explicit in comparison to later Jump serials). As it was a gag manga, the provocative situations were treated very light-heartedly but proved influential to young boys who would emulate the perverted actions of the characters (such as lifting up girl's skirts in schools). The series caused a lot of public outrage in Japan but the magazine notably was proud to publish it and defended the work. Though it did end once in a dramatic fashion, it returned a few months later and was ultimately serialized non-continously for four years.

Shiritsu Kiwamemichi Kōkō: The debut serial of Akira Miyashita (who would go on to be one of the defining creators of Jump's Golden Age). Though the series was popular, backlash came when an offhand claim by a character that he violently conquered several schools displayed five actual school names and information without their permission and all the schools protested this slip-up. The series was quickly cancelled and never properly preserved and collected so that it was never even reprinted for over thirty years (despite the author becoming a huge success just a few years later).

Seikimatsu Leader-den Takeshi!: A popular gag/battle manga that began in 1997, it was very popular for a time but after five years and while in the middle of the battle between the final boss, the author (Shimabakuro) was arrested for paying a sixteen-year-old for sex and the series was abruptly cancelled, the final chapters not collected and the original collections went out of print. A couple years later, the final chapters were published in Super Jump and larger editions of the series were published that collected everything. In 2008, Shimabu was able to return to Shonen Jump with Toriko (which ran for eight years). If he had not been arrested, Toriko likely would have started in 2003 as it's original pilot appeared in Jump in 2002, when Takeshi was heading toward its natural conclusion.

Kuroko no Basuke: While not cancelled, Kuroko no Basuke was the subject of a significant controversy when its anime started and the series became highly popular in the dōjinshi scene (particularly with yaoi dōjinshi) which meant that a mostly female audience had latched on to the male cast of characters and began writing and sharing their own fan works featuring male cast members as a romantic couple. Historically, this had been a large part of Jump's audience since the 1980's with a Captain Tsubasa dōjinshi being reworked to create Zetsuai 1989, one of the most important early yaoi manga. However, various places connected to Kuroko including the author, the station that broadcast the anime and places that sold the dōjinshi and other items related to the series were sent threatening letters containing a suspicious powder or liquid and this led to a ban of any Kuroko material to be sold at various dōjinshi events. The 36-year old suspect was caught and arrested on December 15, 2013. On March 29, 2015 a special dōjinshi event dedicated to Kuroko was held in response to the previous ban. Kuroko never missed an issue during its run and remained popular to the end, even getting the cover the issue before its final chapter in 2014.

Jump Mangaka

No. 9, 1970

In the era when Jump launched, it was actually the fourth major Weekly Shonen (as King existed), and when Champion followed a year later it was part of a large network of five magazines which often fought for dominance and it was never completely definitive which was the most popular of this era. As part of the trend of this era, it was extremely common for mangaka to appear in multiple weekly shonen magazines and several appeared in all five (sometimes simultaneously). As such, Jump's earliest years are filled with creators who came from or are most associated with other weekly shonen magazines but often had a much more minor role in Jump. Below are the most significant examples (including all the creators from the first issue minus the reprinted comic strip and the one complete unknown creator who is not known to have done anything else).

Of all these highly notable mangaka to appear in Jump's early era (which had little indication of what the magazine became), the first and primary creator to generally stick with Jump and help define the magazine was Hiroshi Motomiya who debuted in No. 4, 1968 and debuted his first Jump serial (Otoko Ippiki Gaki-Daishō) in No. 11 of the same year. The series proved to be such a massive hit, that Motomiya was actually forced to extend it beyond his intended ending (a fact which resulted in the final arcs of the series not being reprinted in later editions). Editorial changed the ending of the series into a promise of its return and even gave it more attention on the covers of the magazine while his second series, Musashi, was still ongoing. Musashi was ultimately ended within a few months and Otoko returned again until it was finally allowed to end in 1973.

Mankichi Togawa

While this tactic is highly questionable, the series did influence and inspire many young mangaka who would come to work for Jump and Motomiya was ultimately able to serialize many other shorter works in the magazine's history (appearing in over 630 of the magazine's first 950 issues) and only left in 1987 to focus on seinen manga (but keeping his association with Shueisha where he has become one of the publisher's most published authors by a significant margin). While he did use his success at Jump to appear in many other magazines through the 70's and 80's (including the other major weekly shonen magazines), unlike the authors listed above, he did not leave Jump during this time and remained a fixture of the magazine.

It is the protagonist of Otoko (Mankichi Togawa) that represents the first true major Jump hero and it is the creators inspired by it and who worked as assistants for Motomiya that became the first generation of true Jump creators, kicking off the modern Jump lineage. It is in this period that Jump began to fully define itself in the 70's and that it created the system of talent for which it is generally known for, with the majority of its creators after this being rookies who made their debut with Jump and often people who worked as assistants on Jump manga before debuting with their own.

Several of Jump's biggest creators were originally assistants for other major creators before them and even creators who were never assistants have talked about how they were inspired or influenced by their predecessors and contemporaries in Jump (example: Masashi Kishimoto being influenced by Ninku but not working as a Jump assistant). Or on the other end of the spectrum, some mangaka who were not assistants have had their assistants attempt Jump serials, and there are many examples of short serials in Jump's history by creators who were Jump assistants (example: Osamu Akimoto was not an assistant of a Jump author but his assistant Hiroshi Aro had a Jump serial). Of mangaka who appeared in over three hundred issues of the magazine with their own work, these are the ones who were assistants for previous Jump authors:

By being so interested in debuting rookies rather than established creators, Jump has also been the place many creators debuted who are not generally remembered as part of Jump's history but later became much more better known in other magazines or with other publishers.

In the past, the authors of Jump would annually appear together in a group shot on the cover of the magazine (often dressed in themed costume) but as mangaka became more private about their personal appearance this trend totally stopped with many successful mangaka in later Jump history being virtual unknowns as individuals (with fans even left speculating whether the authors are male or female or even if they are actually secretively other published mangaka using a new pen-name).

One-Shots and Pilot Chapters

Apart from its earliest days before it had a proper stable of ongoing titles, Shonen Jump usually publishes less one-shots than many other magazines and in many cases (either at the time or retroactively), these one-shots are done by creators who also worked on serials in the magazine. Often one-shots are either used to fill in an unexpected absence of a serial (in which case the one-shot tends to be by an unknown creator) or more often, the magazine features a series of one-shots (usually five, or even ten in earlier decades) as part of some event.

In earlier years, these events (like Aidoku Shashō) often featured creators who were already popular doing one-shots (all while still producing their main serial) but since 2004, the one-shots are usually part of the Gold Future Cup, an event wherein the winner can theoretically create a serial based off their one-shot (though there's really no set protocol to this, see that page for more details).

Pilot Chapter of Video Girl

With the majority of Jump serials having started as a one-shot that was reworked for the serial, most creators start off doing one-shots; though the majority of these are not published in the main Shonen Jump magazine but in its various spin-offs over the years. Weekly Shonen Jump has had many spin-offs over the years (with most of the "Jump" magazines being descended from it in some way or another), but its most direct spin-off has gone under many different incarnations.

Beginning in 1969 as extra issues of the magazine, where creators like Akira Toriyama, Tsukasa Hojo, Hirohiko Araki or Tetsuo Hara would publish their earliest one-shots, in 1985 it became an official seasonal spin-off (see here), which would continue to publish one-shots by creators that would later make it big. It went through numerous name changes in later years including Akamaru Jump, Jump Next!, Jump Giga and Jump ×. The longest-running independent magazine that came out of Weekly Shonen was its monthly counterpart, originally known as Bessatsu Shonen Jump, it then lasted for decades as Monthly Shonen Jump and is now known as Jump SQ.

Sequels and Spin-Offs

All these spin-off magazines are often separated from Weekly Shonen Jump by one major factor; while WSJ rarely runs sequel series, even to its most successful franchises, many of these other magazines' longest-running series are sequels (often sequels to series from WSJ). Though in this magazine some series have ties to each other such as shared characters (like Hareluya and BØY) or universe (like Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball), the only major sequels in the magazine's history were primarily renamed serials that never really ended, with one flowing right into the next (though there were a few exceptions).

The only sequels to run in WSJ are:

On the other hand, many Shueisha manga magazines (and even some magazines from other publishers) are in part, held up, by sequels or spin-offs from this magazine. Examples include:

International Popularity

Formosa Youth Translating Dragon Ball Super from V Jump

As part of being the most popular manga magazine in Japan, Weekly Shonen Jump (and specifically its most popular series) are very popular around the world. Though internationally Jump is most popular in Europe and East Asia, it also has a growing market in the United States (possibly slowed down in the 00's by frequent censorship of highly popular series). The most popular Jump serials will often be published in a number of languages (generally while they are still ongoing in Japan) and several regions even publish their own equivalent to Weekly Shonen Jump such as Comic Champ (Korean) and Formosa Youth (Chinese) and the digital only Weekly Shonen Jump (English).

It is worth noting that none of these magazines translate the entirety of Jump and when using Shonen Jump covers that show the mascot character of every series in the magazine, the international editions will edit out the series' that they don't translate. In the case of Comic Champ, original Korean material is heavily featured and in the case of all three magazines, while Weekly Shonen Jump is the most popular source drawn from, material from other Jump magazines like Jump SQ and V Jump is also included. The magazines are used to translate particularly popular material (such as One Piece) while it's still new in Japan but other series that aren't translated in magazine form are still translated and published in collected form.

Collected Serials

Generally, collections of manga from this magazine (as well as a few of its more direct spin-off magazines) are published under the Jump Comics banner though in the earliest years of the magazine, Jump Comics was reserved for popular ongoing series while Jump Super Comics was usually used to collect short miniseries that had already ended and in some cases, Jump Comics Deluxe was also used. Eventually, even short series that had ended were published under Jump Comics and these latter two banners were shifted over with the launch of Super Jump in the 80's (the only seinen magazine to directly spin out of Shonen Jump, even taking over some of its serials like Cobra).

Below is listed all serials from the magazine's history that have been collected. Despite the fact that the majority of one-shots have been collected, these are not listed (with many Jump one-shots being bundled into collections of Jump serials). Series that have never been collected (and thus do not have their own page) are not listed but all material exclusive to the magazine is listed within individual issue pages. Note that links are always to the first printed collection of the series, which in the case of very early serials, can often be decades after the fact or was not by Shueisha. It is also worth noting that collected versions of series include extra material that was never published in the magazine, particularly in relation to series that ended abruptly in the magazine but were given a more complete epilogue in their respective collections.

1968-1975

No. 53, 1972

This was the era of Jump where the most material was uncollected and a fair amount of what was collected was not done by Shueisha. While not the longest-running series, the stand-out successes of this era were Otoko Ippiki Gaki-Daishō and Harenchi Gakuen (both ended because the author wanted them to and not because the publisher did). The most common theme for a successful new series was baseball with several of the longest-running titles from this era featuring the sport, there was always multiple baseball manga running simultaneously including Chichi no Tamashii, Samurai Giants, Astro Kyūdan, Play Ball and Honō no Kyojin. The two series from these formative years that released the most volumes were gag manga (Dokonjō Gaeru and Toilet Hakase). There were also major series in a number of genres or styles not normally associated with Jump like cooking (Hōchōnin Ajihei), circuit racing (Circuit no Ōkami), the autobiography of a Hiroshima survivor (Hadashi no Gen) and a western (Kōya no Shōnen Isamu).

1976-1980

No. 8, 1979

This was the era when many of the creators who defined Jump during its Golden Age in the 80's got their start in the magazine such as Akira Toriyama (Dr. Slump), Yudetamago (Kinnikuman), Masami Kurumada (Ring ni Kakero), Osamu Akimoto (Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Kōen-mae Hashutsujo), Akira Miyashita (Shiritsu Kiwamemichi Kōkō) and series like Kinnikuman and Ring ni Kakero continued laying the foundation for much of the battle manga genre that would define later eras of Jump. Baseball continued to be a common theme with new long-running series like Akutare Kyojin and Susume!! Pirates but new sports began to be emerge like golf (Hole in One) and tennis (Tennis Boy). Though it was not the first or only Shonen Jump series to get this later reevaluation, Cobra was a hit from this period that is now generally considered a seinen manga. It was also an early example of a manga in the magazine that was able to take hiatuses throughout its run and not get cancelled.

1981-1985

No. 4, 1984

It was in 1983, with Hokuto no Ken's debut that what is generally known as Jump's Golden Age began but in fact some of the series that really defined the 80's debuted before Hokuto no Ken such as Captain Tsubasa (one of the most popular sports manga of all time and one of the first to really bring a female audience to Jump). While the era is often remembered for the battle manga like Dragon Ball, Sakigake!! Otokojuku, Hokuto no Ken, it had some of Jump's first hits in other genres like romantic comedy (Kimagure Orange Road and Stop!! Hibari-kun). Protagonists ranged from stoic killers who were judge, jury and executioner (Black Angels and Hokuto no Ken) to goofy and naive idiots (Kinnikuman and Dragon Ball) or perverts (Shape Up Ran and City Hunter). Nageroboshi Gin was a popular series told from the point of view of wild animals, rather than humanoid protagonists.

1986-1990

No. 5, 1987

By this point Jump's circulation was increasing by the millions and issues became longer, allowing for a few more series to run at once. Though some of the major hits of the 80's ended (like Captain Tsubasa, Kinnikuman and Hokuto no Ken), new ones came just as quickly to take their place with Slam Dunk doing for basketball what Tsubasa did for football, it also became one of the best-selling manga of all time. Saint Seiya continued the trend of manga that appealed a lot to both male and female audiences.

Though this era introduced series like Bastard!! which continued blurring the line between shonen and seinen, it was also the era when some of Jump's most adult-oriented creators were sent to other magazines like Super Jump (such as Hiroshi Motomiya and Shinji Hiramatsu). Video games also became a part of the manga culture and Jump capitalized on this through the Dragon Quest spin-off Dai no Daibōken which became a huge success in the 90's (the characters of Dragon Quest were designed by Toriyama who was then-serializing Dragon Ball, Jump's biggest seller).

Den'ei Shōjo was a popular serious romance that involved science fiction elements and explicit conversations and implications of sex through a teenage protagonist. Yota (the protagonist) was often struggling with his urges that were normally considered comedic in series like Tar-chan (a gag depiction of Tarzan who would regularly play with his testicles and get erections throughout the series to punctuate a joke). This era also was the beginning of JoJo no Kimyo no Bōken which at its end nearly two decades later was Jump's second-longest series, it was one of the first series in Jump's history to completely change its protagonist and separated itself into parts to mostly change things up with a new time period and mostly new cast of characters every few years.

No. 5, 1990

Rokudenashi Blues became part of the rise of delinquent manga in the late 80's and early 90's and one of the best-sellers of the genre. It also remains one of the best-selling Jump series of all time despite never getting an anime series (something that is virtually unheard of for any Jump manga after Dr. Slump). Yamashita Tarō-kun and the author's follow-up, Pennant Race, were two of Jump's last long-running series to focus on baseball with the attempts at sports manga beginning to use even more non-traditional Jump sports like ice hockey (Metal Finish), rugby (No Side), kickboxing (Kickboxer Mamoru) and judo (Hikaru! Chachacha!!).

And while Jump was basically the definition of mainstream, it wasn't afraid to publish the total bizarre alongside its certified hits with a gag manga like Chinyūki entirely abandoning its initial plot of re-telling Journey to the West to spend several weeks in a row featuring a random angry old lady brutally beating several pedestrians on the street in absurd detail.

1991-1995

No. 3-4, 1992

Though this was actually Jump's most successful period with manga like Dragon Ball and Slam Dunk dominating the magazine and sales continuing to rise (until they ultimately peaked in 1995 with over 6.5 million copies sold), it was also the era when many of the most consistent Jump authors of the 80's ultimately left the magazine to pursue seinen manga (including Tsukasa Hojo, Akira Miyashita and Tetsuo Hara).

It was also the first time an author who hadn't been able to have a major hit since their debut came back with a sequel to their best-known series (Captain Tsubasa) and while new long-running series began (Jigoku Sensei Nūbē, BØY), this period was mostly dominated by serials that began years earlier and had already built up their fanbases. One of the biggest series to debut just before Jump's sales drop-off began was Rurouni Kenshin which became one of the pillars of Jump after all its predecessors left.

1996-2000

No. 6, 1998

With Dragon Ball's end in 1995 losing the magazine about half a million readers and Slam Dunk's end in 1996 losing nearly two million more, Shonen Jump took a massive hit in its popularity (allowing Shonen Magazine to become the best-selling manga magazine) and its new line-up mostly reflected that. While it was selling relatively well (in comparison to the 70's), it was a now a magazine losing its audience rather than gaining a new one and most of the defining creators of the era had not been in the magazine before the 90's, with only a few from the late 80's.

Several of the major new series were by authors who already had a major series in the past like Masanori Morita (Rookies), Masakazu Katsura (I"s) and Yoshigiro Togashi (Hunter × Hunter) but it was specifically in this era (when the magazine fell off after the end of classics like Dragon Ball) that rookie mangaka inspired by Dragon Ball began to work for Jump, and though they weren't hits right away, the only two manga able to properly compete with Dragon Ball's level of success (One Piece and Naruto) started in this era. Towards the end of the century, Jump also returned to introducing some of the best-selling sports manga that could interest a female audience like Prince of Tennis while also having some major success outside of physical sports with best-selling series about go (Hikaru no Go) and a fictional card game (Yu-Gi-Oh!).

2001-2005

No. 22-23, 2004

With the new millennium, any remaining series and creators from Jump's Golden Age were mostly already gone and the new hits from the late 90's began to really take off. Magazine's circulation began dropping off rapidly and Jump's dropping had slowed to a much more reasonable amount so that it once again became the top-selling manga magazine. While it never properly grew in circulation again, it was able to retain the same readership for consecutive years or only dip slightly and series like One Piece and Naruto were able to become the best-selling manga of their time.

Along with other hits from the late 90's like Shaman King, Prince of Tennis and Hikaru no Go; they were joined by new hits like Bleach, Eyeshield 21 and Gintama. Though it had serialized female mangaka in the past like Yuko Asami (Wild Half), Jump had a number of more successful and longer-running female authors like Katsura Hoshino (D.Gray-man), Akira Amano (Hitman Reborn!) and Mizuki Kawashita (Ichigo 100%).

This era was also the one that was dominated by series that would go on to shatter previous notions about what a long-running Jump manga was (with six series from this era matching or far exceeding a classic like Dragon Ball in total number of volumes). Despite this new trend of making manga much more drawn out, one of the most successful series which had a huge international appeal was Death Note. Death Note was a story with a very specific end goal that it mostly rushed towards and despite the popularity, it was ended after only two years when the story completed itself.

In this era of many new faces, two of Jump's last remaining icons of the Golden Age both started a final Jump series only for it to struggle within Jump's audience for its first months and ultimately be moved to a seinen manga magazine where they were able to continue their careers (with Masanori Morita's Beshari Gurashi moving to Weekly Young Jump and Hirohiko Araki's Steel Ball Run moving to Ultra Jump).

2006-2010

No. 37-38, 2009

By this point Jump's circulation was very steady with some occassional small increases and most of series from a few years to a decade earlier continued to dominate the magazine. While new hits were able to emerge like To-Love Ru, Bakuman., Kuroko no Basuke and Toriko, the success of Naruto and One Piece shaped the magazine and a number of the longest-running new series from this period spent a large portion of their run in relative unpopularity compared to the older classics that were still ongoing.

2011-2015

No. 4-5, 2014

Before Naruto ended in 2014, it and One Piece continued their dominance of Jump and the manga industry as a whole. Like Death Note years earlier, Ansatsu Kyōshitsu appeared with a very intentional ending in mind from the start of its run and it managed to be one of the biggest break-out hits for its entire four year run, ending at the peak of its popularity (a rarity for Jump).

While Kuroko managed to become a huge hit after its anime premiered, continuing Jump's legacy of attracting a female fanbase through sports manga, Haikyū!! was also able to become a hit, ending up as Jump's second-best selling series after Naruto and Ansatsu ended (with One Piece selling so far ahead of any other contemporary competition).

Modern mainstays to emerge included Boku no Hero Academia, Shokugeki no Soma, Saiki Kusuo no Psi-nan and Black Clover. Despite both Oda (One Piece) and Kishimoto (Naruto) hitting it huge with their very first series, almost all the long-running series from this era were by authors who had a failed Jump series just shortly before.

2016-2020

No. 2-3, 2018

In 2016, Jump became drastically younger with Kochikame ending on its fortieth anniversarry, after never missing a single issue during its run. Other long-running series like Bleach and Toriko ended, leaving the magazine mostly dominated by new series again, though for perhaps the first time in the magazine's history, the longest-running series became the best-selling with One Piece celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2017 (and the magazine celebrating its 50th in 2018).

Notably Uncollected

In Jump's long history, there have been a number of relatively short series that were never collected but almost all of them were published before 1980, in an era when it was common for the biggest creators in the industry to produce work that wouldn't be reprinted in any form for decades (if ever). However, due to the fact that some of these works are by authors who have had some success, there's always potential for them to be collected in the future in oversized or completionist collections (as a few already have been).

Authors from Jump's early years who simultaneously had some of the most important Jump works of the era that were collected and some that have never been collected include Norihiro Nakajima, Yasumi Yoshizawa, Satoshi Ikezawa, George Akiyama and Sachio Umemoto. However, because the 70's Jump didn't give the cover to every new series, many of the uncollected works never even appeared on Jump's cover and are more easily forgotten.

"Lost" Serials

One of the extremely rare examples of an uncollected serial that ran after Jump's Golden Age began in 1983, is Mr. Whitey (1984) which is even more notable for having been drawn by Tetsuya Saruwatari who already had his first Jump series collected and would go on to have over 180 new tankobons worth of material published by Shueisha. An example of a series that got the cover of a historically important issue of Jump despite never being collected was Peranmē Holmes (1976) which was Yasumi Yoshizawa's follow-up series to the Jump-defining gag manga Dokonjō Gaeru. It shared its debut issue (where it got the cover) with the original one-shot of Kochikame, which became the longest-running series in Jump history.

The longest running series to never be collected was Manga Drifters (1970-1975), which was the follow up to Manga Konto 55-go, the chapters were only a few pages an issue but unlike the numerous other examples of this in Jump's history, the material was never collected.

Digital Edition

Weekly Shonen Jump also has its own application, Jump+, for digitally distributing original series (that are often announced, advertised or even receive special chapters in the physical magazine). It launched in September 2014 and on its first day, already began twenty-five serials, reaching one hundred series in two and a half years, they are usually collected in physical volumes under the Jump Comics+ banner.

Jump Comics+

Jump+ was preceded by other attempts at digital distribution of original manga such as Jump Live but + has been the most successful by a significant margin. While it is a place for new authors to make their debut, it's also frequently used by creators who previously had serializations in the actual Shonen Jump magazine (including Akira Amano, Kenta Shinohara, Kyosuke Usuta, Man☆Gatarō, Retsu and Yasuhiro Kano).

Below is a list of all original + series that have been collected in physical volumes, ordered by the first day they appeared on the Jump+ platform (the list does not include series that also were originally serialized in physical magazines and received special digital chapters, or that came from other digital platforms, or short works that were bundled into collections with other material):