YMMV / Shonen Jump

• Archive Panic:
  • The Magazine has Over 2000 Issues and Over 700 series.
    • Not to mention if you're going to read Long-Runners like Kochikame, Dragon Ball, One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, and Gintama.
• Estrogen Brigade:
  • While the magazine is primarily aimed at 12-18-year-old boys, many of their manga series are known for having rather large female fanbases, to the point where one reader poll found that female readership was around 52%. So well known, in fact, that it was the fandom terminology used for homoerotic doujins about their properties (Captain Tsubasa, Slam Dunk, and Saint Seiya) that led to the term Yaoi being used as fanspeak.
  • Part of the reason Bishōnen Jump Syndrome is attributed to (and named after) them is because of recruiting artists that seemingly tweak their characters' body types to match female standards of male beauty (skinnier physique, thin lips, chiseled face, luscious hair, etc) in order to capture more female readers.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • Inevitable, really, but surprisingly less common than you might think. Back in the old days, it was Dragon Ball vs Sailor Moon, Fullmetal Alchemist vs Inuyasha, and Dragon Ball vs Saint Seiya.
  • Within the Jump fandom itself, the main focus was on the Big Three (most popular shonen series over the past decade) in the early 2000s - One Piece vs Naruto vs Bleach, with Shonen Magazine's Fairy Tail and Toriko entering the fray in the early 2010s. Late 2010s rivalries had One Piece vs My Hero Academia and Black Clover.
  • Fans of Jump tend to go head-to-head with fans of rival books Shonen Sunday and Shonen Magazine.
• The Firefly Effect: A lot of people in the western audience refuse to read anything in Jump until it is a confirmed hit in Japan. Though a bit unfair to new series, many have been disappointed before by investing themselves in Cut Short manga without any ways to show their support which traditionally are "voting in the readers' survey" and "buying the physical release". Both are reserved to the Japanese market before the rest of the world could have a say on the matter which can make early western fans feel helpless and stressed.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The old English slogan wasn't kidding when they called it "The World's Most Popular Manga". When you see any young western fans talking about a series they grew up with, you can bet it would have come from Jump.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • While the Japanese fandom doesn't have a "Big Three" concept like the Western fandom, Jump contributor Go Nagai did mention in an interview for the magazine that it was good to have around three or so series as tentpoles for any magazine.
  • Jump's resounding popularity in the U.S. arguably was predicted in the 70s — Speed Racer, one of the quintessential anime of the boomer generation, was adapted from the pages of its predecessor Shonen Book.
  • The derisive "Shoujo Jump" nickname ended up becoming prophetic when classic Shoujo romance Boys over Flowers got its sequel published in ''Shonen Jump+" with little to no change in content.
• Memetic Loser: The manga U19 (short for "Under 19"), published to Weekly Shonen Jump in 2017, became quite infamous to the western audience for its Ironic Death (being Cut Short by the magazine in only 18 weeks/17 chapters, in other words "Under 19"). Since then, the 19th chapter of new series is considered a very iconic milestone by the fans. Series failing to reach it become part of the dreaded "U19 Club", named after the in-series movement of the same name, which happens fairly often due to Jump's ruthless editorial department.^note Between 2017 and 2021, no less than 15 series have been "U19ed", and that's not counting the handful of series that died in 19/20 chapters and technically don't count nor the hundreds of manga that suffered this fate the prior decades before the meme.
• Misblamed: Late 2010s and early 20s saw Jump in the west get a reputation for cutting short promising new series before they really get a chance to get a footing or a fanbase, like Phantom Seer and The Hunters Guild: Red Hood. Truth is, this has more to do with the west finally being able to keep up with the Japanese releases through the app and site for the magazine being available internationally. Shounen Jump has always been a bit ruthless with cutting short series that fail to meet expectations, and has in fact been cancelling less in recent years.
• More Popular Spin-Off: Few people know that Monthly Shonen Jump was the magazine's original incarnation. The weekly version proved so popular, the monthly one was revived to have a bit of extra content; sadly, it was not long before it was cancelled and replaced with its successor Jump SQ.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: A hallmark of the magazine, in any Jump series you will find plenty of gore and sex despite the Shōnen audience, and many of their series were on [adult swim] or other adult-oriented networks and timeslots.
  • Jump SQ is a strange case, since it's classified as both a shonen and a seinen magazine. Their age demographic is a lot higher than Weekly Shounen Jump, as they aim more towards high schoolers and young adults rather than late elementary to middle schoolers. And it shows, as they are allowed to get away with more sexual content than your average WSJ series.
  • Zig-zagged with Shonen Jump+. It has way looser restrictions since it is a web publication. However, it aimed at a more general audience than its print counterpart, with some of the manga are clearly not aimed at teen boys.

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