Summary

• Shonen Jump is moving away from its policy of canceling new series quickly, allowing them more time to develop and potentially end on satisfying notes.
• The magazine heavily relies on a small collective of successful series to drive sales, but since these series are close to their end, Shonen Jump is frantically green-lighting and canceling new manga in hopes of finding the next big hit.
• While frustrating cancelations still occur, recent manga cancelations in Shonen Jump have ended on more satisfying notes than in the past, implying that the magazine is becoming more considerate to its canceled series.

In recent years, the fan term the "Under 19 Club", which refers to series canceled after 19 chapters or fewer – prevented fans from actually getting invested in the magazine's newest series. While the future of the magazine's newest manga may be brighter than it has been in the past, there are still dark clouds on the horizon.

Shonen Jump has largely relied on having a small collective of incredibly successful series to stimulate sales. The most iconic example of this are the legendary "Big Three" series: Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach, but even outside these three titans, the magazine has used manga like Dragon Ball and Chainsaw Man to do this as well.

Currently, the three series Shonen Jump is using to fill this role are One Piece, Jujutsu Kaisen, and My Hero Academia, which are all close to their end, meaning Shonen Jump must find something new and iconic fast. This leads the magazine to frantically green-light and then cancel new manga, hoping that one of these new series will gain enough popularity to keep the company afloat.

Shonen Jump Stories Have Adapted To a Shorter Length

Chapters need to be snappier and overload readers with lore to survive

While being understandable from a corporate level, 19 chapters are way too little time to actually do anything meaningful. For example, by One Piece's 20th chapter, the series hadn't even introduced Sanji – a central character in the cast. Given the slow pace at the manga's start, it's doubtful that One Piece would have survived long enough to become an iconic series in Shonen Jump's current landscape. This has incentivized creators to front load information and action in their series, even if it doesn't always fit, which then hampers these series further. If a series does survive this initial stretch, it may have done it at the cost of mes its pacing for the rest of the series and thus prematurely having to end anyway.

However, this front-loading, while potentially deleterious for a series' chance at continued publication, does make many of the series Shonen Jump cancels end on more satisfying notes than some of their past canceled manga. For instance, the most recently canceled series in the magazine, Tenmaku Cinema, almost perfectly wrapped up its story in its 20th chapter. There were still some unresolved plot threads, of course, but the main story and character arcs all wrapped up very nicely. There are many reasons why this could be the case. The series could have been designed like that from the start or Shonen Jump could have potentially given the creators a warning that it was going to get canceled well in advance.

Shonen Jump Has Become More Considerate To Its Canceled Manga

This latter option definitely seems to be the case for another series facing imminent cancelation, Do Retry. The series follows a young boy named Aozora who wants to become a boxer in postwar Japan. It's clear that the author wanted to make this into a formulaic battle manga, with Aozora facing new opponents every arc as he slowly grows strong enough to face his dad. However, after Aozora defeated his last opponent, the manga's pace accelerated, with Aozora quickly finding his father and confronting him in a climactic fight. The series ended in the following chapter, but still tried its best to wrap up many plot threads, implying that the author received an early warning at least.

The manga canceled right before Tenmaku Cinema, Fabricant 100, ended with 36 chapters. This length of time is much more than the standard 19 or less that other series would receive, which implies that Shonen Jump has potentially become more willing to let its manga have more time to develop. This philosophy paid dividends for Fabricant 100, which was allowed to craft an emotionally resonant ending that worked in no small part due to the extra time fans got to spend with the characters.

Frustrating Shonen Jump Cancelations Have Become Less Common

The magazine could slowly be changing for the better

However, despite these relatively positive endings, Shonen Jump's tendency to cancel series after less than a year has squandered the potential of a lot of notable manga. Ayashimon, a newer series by the creator of Hell's Paradise that followed a supernatural gang war was unexpectedly canceled with an extremely open ending. Of course, this may not have been all Shonen Jump's fault, as it was rumored that the series' focus on gangs came too close to glorifying the Yakuza for some Japanese fans' comfort.

More recently, however, the promising Ginka & Glüna was canceled before it really had a chance to develop its world and characters. This is a real shame, given the series had the potential to build into a One Piece style story of exploration and found family. It still ended on a decent note, but given how much more it could have become if Shonen Jump gave it a chance, it is probably one of the most frustrating cancelations of this year.

The fact that those unsatisfactory cancelations are becoming the exception and not the rule is an incredibly encouraging sign. Shonen Jump has introduced a fair number of new titles recently, but of course there is no guarantee that they won't also the Under 19 Club like so many manga that preceded them. However, if recent cancelations are anything to go by, even if these Shonen Jump manga are cut short, they likely won't be as disappointing as the magazines' earlier axings.