Summary
- The “big three” were outliers. One Piece consistently outsold Naruto and Bleach in the 2000s.
- Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen are the latest strong candidates for long-lasting hits in Shonen Jump.
- Shonen Jump is moving towards diversification, focusing on creating many smaller hits rather than replicating long-running success.
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Shonen Jump Before “the Big Three”
- Shonen Jump Peaked Before the Big Three
Sales Suggest Diversification Has Been The Answer
In 2024, major Shonen Jump manga ended. Jujutsu Kaisen and My Hero Academia bid farewell to their fans (at least when it comes to the original stories, there are plenty of spin-offs ongoing). Since Naruto and Bleach ended in the 2010s, fans have been wondering which titles would be the “next big three”.
The “big three” are the three best-selling Shonen Jump series that could become long-lasting hits, which in the 2000s were One Piece, Naruto and Bleach. It’s important to notice, however, that even when Naruto and Bleach were at their peaks, One Piece used to top ranks, selling two times more than the second place (which used to be Naruto, generally).
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The “New” Big Three In The 2010s
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When Naruto and Bleach finished serialization, we saw people pointing to several possible new candidates. My Hero Academia was one of the candidates, but Black Clover, The Promised Neverland and Haikyuu were also strong candidates during the 2010s. In the 2020s, especially after Promised Neverland and Haikyuu ended, Demon Slayer and Jujutsu Kaisen became strong candidates.
Of all those candidates, only Black Clover is still ongoing, but it has moved to Jump Giga. One Piece outlived all possible “next big three” candidates. It’s a bit weird that many titles were presented as part of the “new” big three when the oldest of the “original” big three was not only still in serialization but also topped manga sales almost every year during the 2010s. It was only in 2019 that another series (Demon Slayer) topped at least Oricon’s charts.
But now it’s clear One Piece should end in the next few years. Many people are then wondering: which will be the next big three? Which current SJ titles could last as long as at least Naruto and Bleach, spending around 10 years in serialization?
But that question is based on a wrong impression, because the “big three” from the 2000s were outliers in Shonen Jump history, not the rule (which doesn’t mean the magazine wouldn’t want to try to replicate it). So the question here is: does Shonen Jump actually need another big three? To answer that, we will need to first reflect on a few things.
Shonen Jump Before “the Big Three”
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Before briefly analyzing what Shonen Jump was before the so-called “Big Three Era”, it’s important to note that there was never a “big three” in the way international audiences understand it. While One Piece and Naruto frequently topped the yearly Oricon charts as the top 1 and top 2 manga when it comes to sales numbers (with One Piece usually selling at least twice as much as Naruto), Bleach was not always in third place, and would sometimes sell less than other Jump titles, like Reborn or Blue Exorcist.
If we think of the “Big Three” from the perspective of how long the series ran in the magazine, becoming a pillar of it, then we actually had a Big Four. Gintama, which debuted in 2003, also ran for over 15 years in SJ. In its final arc, it was moved to Jump Giga (in 2018), and ended serialization in 2019, with 77 volumes. Gintama also used to be at least among the top 10 titles in the Oricon charts. But despite being a huge hit, Gintama is usually ignored by international audiences, since its humor relies so much on Japanese references.
This points out that the idea of a “Big Three” is actually a misinterpretation made by international audiences, who would only consider the three long-lasting Jump titles that were able to consistently reach an international public. Also, Hunter x Hunter (1998–) was almost reaching ten years of serialization when it started going on recurring hiatus (the first long hiatus started in 2006). The Prince of Tennis also lasted long, running from 1999 to 2008, finishing with 42 volumes (but not as long as the supposed “big four”).
If we analyze Shonen Jump during what is considered its prime, the 1980s-1990s, we will notice that titles would hardly be serialized for over 6 years. The exceptions are JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (ongoing since 1987, but moved to Ultra Jump in 2004, when 80 volumes had been compiled), Rokudenashi Blues (1988-1997; 42 volumes) and Dragon Ball (1984-1995, 42 volumes), and Captain Tsubasa if we consider the sequels to the first series (that ran from 1981 to 1988). Even Slam Dunk, considered one of the pillars of the magazine in the 1990s, didn’t last for over 6 years, running from 1990 to 1996, with 31 volumes.
Rather than serializing a huge, long-lasting hit, important authors would create several shorter stories. Mangaka like Masami Kurumada (Saint Seiya), Buronson (Hokuto no Ken), Tetsuo Hara (Hokuto no Ken), Masazaku Katsura (Wing-Man), Akira Toriyama (Dragon Ball), Yoshihiro Togashi (Yu Yu Hakusho) and Tsukasa Hojo (City Hunter) all created more than one hit to the magazine during their careers (Kurumada was for a time one of the biggest names of the magazine, both Ring ni Kakero and Fuuma no Kojiro were considered big hits before he created his most internationally known work, Saint Seiya). If we go back to the 1970s, series would generally be much shorter than 6 years.
What this all shows is that the 2000s were an exception when it comes to how long series last in the magazines. Success had not been measured by serializations that would last over 10 years. Shonen Jump editors in the 1990s were probably not even expecting series that would be so long, much less that more than one series would be able to stay running for over 10 years.
Shonen Jump Peaked Before the Big Three
The “Big Three” actually emerged after what is considered the Golden Age of Shonen Jump. The magazine peaked during the 1980s-1990s, and 1994 was the year when Shonen Jump had the highest circulation of all time: the average circulation of the magazine was calculated at around 6.3 million copies. That’s almost six times higher than the average circulation of the magazine in 2020 (at around 1.6 million), when Demon Slayer was peaking.
I have a very personal take on this. Considering this “outlier” happened right after the magazine started to decline, I believe the editorial team might have pressured authors more than usual to not finish their stories, because Jump was afraid that losing its most famous titles would lead to a greater decline. This is just a hypothesis, though. If that ever happened, I also believe they started realizing that it is hard to get titles to last so long, so they changed strategies.
However, today is harder to know if we can say Jump is still declining because many readers are using online platforms like Shonen Jump+ and Manga Plus. We don’t have accurate information about how many people access these websites and what exactly people are reading. We know some stories are huge hits, but we don’t know what’s the average for a manga.
Sales Suggest Diversification Has Been The Answer
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If we analyze the yearly Oricon charts from 2021, we will see that titles reaching the top 10 seem to be more diverse in themes. Not only that, but, generally speaking, we don’t have a huge difference between first and second places, as used to happen with One Piece and Naruto in the 2000s.
In 2021 and 2022, in which the world was still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic, we had numbers that were bigger than usual, but since 2023 the Oricon charts show numbers more aligned with those we saw during the pre-pandemic. It seems the public is getting more diverse, and we can also check that Shonen Jump has been successful in serializing new titles that are not the typical battle shounen we’ve been seeing for some decades (a good example would be Akane-banashi). Shonen Jump+ also seems like a place for Shueisha to try new things and check what kind of stuff resonates with the “Jump public” (Spy x Family, for example, is also not like a typical Jump series, but has become a hit).
We know that the female public has always been there too, but it seems Shonen Jump is starting to take it more seriously, like Young Jump already did a few years ago. What we can expect from now is not two or three huge hits that everyone reads, but lots of “smaller hits” that many different people are reading.
Oda hasn’t ended One Piece yet, but Masashi Kishimoto and Tite Kubo have not been able to create new hits like Naruto and Bleach after finishing them. Replicating a success that lasts so long is not an easy task, and what I personally think that Shonen Jump is looking for with initiatives like the JUMP Next Generation Battle Manga Award is not authors that can serialize a story for +10 years, but rather authors that can once again create several hits that would last around 4–6 years each. If they could create titles that would hit for over 10 years, that would be a bonus, not the goal. I don’t believe any of the new hits, such as Sakamoto Days, will run for 10 years.
The so-called “big three” were outliers in the magazine’s history, and diversification seems to be more key than long-lasting hits today.
Shonen Jump doesn’t need another big three, it needs diversification and adaptation to an ever-changing manga market, and the SJ we will see in the future is very different from the one we’ve come to know. Which, as already stated, doesn’t mean Shueisha wouldn’t welcome a “new big three” anyway.
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Shonen Jump
Fuente: successacademy.edu.vn
Categorías: Anime
