It’s been a while since we’ve run news on this site, but we figured that the occasion of SHONEN JUMP’s 100 issue necessitated discussion. We received word from Viz that this issue’s quite the anniversary bash, featuring familiar favorites from DRAGONBALL, BLEACH, YU-GI-OH! and NARUTO all together for some special mayhem. There’s even a crossover between DRAGONBALL and ONE PIECE in the issue that I’m pretty sure will just be swelling with “preposterone” and over 9,000 flying fists.
Seeing this makes me think of what I heard and observed at last year’s Anime Expo - - a lingering question about the health of the anime/manga biz today. Reaching any kind of publishing milestone would at least seem to speak to healthy performance, but I suppose the release of this volume is sadly timely and coincidental to the distressing counterpoint of the shake-ups at Tokyopop.
I suppose I’m more curious to see how relevant an anthology magazines is to the Anime Vice community. How many of you are keeping up with SHONEN JUMP? Is it merely an entry level sampler that points you to specific, individual series that you’ll focus your attention on? Or is it still the lynch pin of your habit?
Tom Pinchuk’s the writer of HYBRID BASTARDS! & UNIMAGINABLE . Order them on Amazon here & here . Follow him on Twitter: @tompinchuk
To celebrate Shounen Jump they're publishing Cross Epoch that was released in 2006 in Japan and adds nothing to either story. How about to celebrate VIZ swears they will stop censoring manga. Now THAT is something I'd be greatly interested in. The online audience doesn't want VIZs censored versions of stories. They want the real story. So far, scanlations are the only ones providing that.
The Shounen Jump magazine isn't even worth it in the U.S. It's pretty much superfluous. Why would I want to buy a loose magazine then buy the collected volume version. It's just buying the same thing twice.
I don't really care for manga so Shonen Jump has very little value to me, but I can see why someone who regularly collects shonen manga would want to purchase it. Honestly I'd rather wait until a volume is collected and just buy individual series that I like (if I did collect manga).
@FoxxFireArt said:
Doesn't the Japanese Shounen Jump have different styles of publications... not just a mainstream one, like the Akamaru Jump and such? (I learned all this in Bakuman)
@lurkero said:
lol!
Shounen Jump in Japan has several different magazines. This is closer to an imitation of the weekly series that has One Piece, Naruto, BLEACH, and others. It's how readers in Japan keep up with the very latest in the story. A few months later those chapters are separated into a volume format and sold in Japan. It's published very week throughout the year with a break around national holidays. With fifty-two weeks in a year. They reach 100 issues very two years or so.
That's why I call the the VIZ version an overpriced imitation. It doesn't keep you up to date on the story. it's censored, and a waste of paper.
PRAISE WHITE JESUS AND GEORGE BUSH!
They're the publisher of the uncensored Tenjho Tenge, so they're at least making progress.
As for JUMP, I bought into it early on when I was still on the outside of the Manga scene, but by the point that I was buying all the corresponding manga that came in the magazine (not to mention cancellations, and then putting Bleach IN, which slowed release to a snails crawl) I found it repetitive and superfluous.
Just because VIZ doesn't censor everything they publish is no excuse for censoring anything. In the books they censor they are only producing an inferior product and not the real story.
It's not as if they have just stopped censorship. It was only a few months ago they painted out the cigarette from Shikamaru's mouth in Naruto. So, the bloody violent murder of Asuma was fine, but Shikamaru taking one puff of a cigarette was too controversial for VIZ. They're still doing it and they aren't stopping.
I said they were making PROGRESS, not that they're GOD.
Well, they might be, but that wasn't what I was saying...
(praise Victorious Imaculate Zenu!)
You do know that everybody in the United States isn't all Christian :(
The fact they are still censoring and have made no statement that they aren't going to censor anymore isn't progress. They go out of their way to avoid letting people know about the real stories. They want to pretend their version of these series is the real one and it's not. Progress would be to stop altering series they have been censoring. Not that they aren't altering series they weren't changing to begin with.
They can't say they don't want people to use scanlations when scanlations are the only source for the real stories in English. Other publishers are making progress. Del Rey and Yen Press. I don't know of any real censorship they do to manga stories.
I've never asked them to be God. I've only wanted them to be a high quality manga publisher. What they claim to be. What they put out is more often inferior to what the fans translate, and they don't even seem the least bit ashamed of that.
You can say that for Video Games, TV, Cartoons, and Music
What make anime so different?
This is why I don't go to church, they trying to control everything by saying it is evil
Another example of progress: censoring Bleach in Shonen Jump (a decision I fully support), but leaving it uncensored in the manga version (One I also support)
Do I wish Sanji still smoked, and Greed was still hung on a cross-shaped slab. or that Hiruma said "FUCKING KILL THEM"? Absolutely. But if Viz keeps the "swastika" when the latest chapters of Bleach make it here (in three years...) then that will have qualified as huge progress.
Take is a list that I pulled from the blessed site Conservapedia on the liberal values video games are teaching our youth: