Shonen Jump
Shonen Jump, often abbreviated as SJ, was a monthly manga anthology magazine published in North America by VIZ Media. It is the English counterpart of Shueisha's popular Japanese magazine, Weekly Shonen Jump, revised and reformatted for American audiences.
The magazine serialized and previewed chapters from popular shonen series, such as One Piece, Naruto, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Bleach. It also contained news on anime and manga, as well as featuring various articles on Japanese video games and media. The first issue was released in November 2002 with a January 2003 cover date.
History
In June 2002, it was announced by Shueisha that an English version of their popular Japanese manga magazine, Weekly Shonen Jump, would be published oversees by VIZ Media. Though the magazine would be based on Weekly Shonen Jump, Renee Solberg—the marketing manager for VIZ Media—noted that it wouldn't be a carbon copy of the original magazine. Rather, they would be "selecting the material most appropriate for the American market." Though this mostly consisted of series that had an already-existing popularity in the west, like Dragon Ball Z and Yu-Gi-Oh.[1]
The biggest change from its Japanese counterpart would be the switch from publishing weekly to just once a month. According to Seiji Horibuchi, the CEO and co-founder of VIZ Media, this was done to better fit the American comic distribution system.[2] Despite this, Shonen Jump would keep the right-to-left reading style seen in Japanese manga in juxtaposition to standard American comics.
Shonen Jump ran for over 9 years with a total of 110 issues; with the first issue being released on November 2002, and the final issue being released on March 2012 after VIZ decided to focus on switching to releasing manga digitally.[3]
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure
The third part of the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure series, later titled "Stardust Crusaders", was first previewed in English in the August 2005 issue of Shonen Jump magazine.[4][5] Besides the different use of title fonts, the biggest difference about this release was the inclusion of English sound effects.[6] While this was a very common practice among VIZ's English releases, even including their release of Baoh the Visitor, this was something they omitted in future releases.
Magazines
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Shonen Jump, No. 0
Shonen Jump, No. 2
Shonen Jump, No. 32
Shonen Jump, No. 41
Weekly Shonen Jump, No. 33
Gallery
Shonen Jump Logo
Weekly Shonen Jump Logo
Shonen Jump Advanced Spring Summer 2005
