Shonen Jump

Weekly Shonen Jump is a weekly magazine. Commonly refered to as "Weekly Jump", it contains many popular manga titles, with a chapter and some color spreads each week. There are many other weekly magazines featuring manga, all published by Shueisha, including Young Jump and Monthly Jump.

The Term Shonen
Shonen is a Japanese word commonly used to refer to teenage and pre-teen boys, which is Shonen Jump's main demographic, although a large minority of readers are actually young girls around the same age.

Manga
Weekly Shonen Jump publishes a chapter of each manga featured each week on Wednesday, about Tuesday in the US. Many of these manga are very popular, and commonly become anime, some even going on to be large, popular anime series, such as One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Toriko, Dragon Ball, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and Rorouni Kenshin. Scanlators usually scan these by about Wednesday in the U.S. Paper quality is not too good in Weekly Shonen Jump, usually being a yellowish color. Often manga are released in tankobon volumes with higher quality printing material.

Featured Covers
Over One Piece's run in Shonen Jump, it has been featured on a number of covers over the years.

Shonen Jump Heroes
Covers that feature One Piece characters with other heroes from the magazine.

Foreign Jump! Adaptations
In 2002, Shueisha announced a partnership with Viz Communications, now VIZ Media, a purveyor of anime and manga in the United States, to distribute a monthly version of Shonen Jump in that country. The Shonen Jump issues, like the Japanese issues, are read from traditional right to left, because if printed the other way, pictures and words would be a mirror image. In it's first issue in January 2003, it sold almost 300,000 copies, making it the top-selling comic book of any kind in the U.S. for that time period. The titles featured in the American version initially included Yu-Gi-Oh!, YuYu Hakusho, One Piece, Naruto, Shaman King, Dragon Ball Z, and Sand Land. In January 2004, Sand Land ended and was replaced with Hikaru no Go in the lineup. Dragon Ball Z, the second part of Dragon Ball, was discontinued in the April 2005 Shonen Jump and the last part of the story was serialized in graphic novel form. Starting in January 2007, Yu-Gi-Oh! GX will appear in the American Shonen Jump. It has also recently been announced that Gintama will also be serialized soon in the January 2007 issue, as was an option during a long questionnaire period about the manga that was presented early in 2006. Shonen Jump also has articles in the beginning and end of the magazine about new anime, manga, and video games. Shonen Jump is written in the traditional Japanese style right to left.

Shonen Jump also runs a line of graphic novels, including those that ran in the American Shonen Jump, but also other titles that ran in the Japanese Shonen Jump but not the American version, like Rurouni Kenshin, Knights of the Zodiac (Saint Seiya), Whistle!, The Prince of Tennis, Dr. Slump, Legendz, Beet the Vandel Buster, Zombie Powder, and Bleach. In addition, Kinnikuman: Nisei (better known as Ultimate Muscle in North America, Northern Europe, Oceania, and some regions), a sequel of the Jump title Kinnikuman, is sold in the graphic novel format as a Shonen Jump Advanced title in North America. Other titles on the Shonen Jump Advanced lineup include I"s, Eyeshield 21, Death Note, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo, Hunter X Hunter, D. Gray-Man, Buso Renkin, and Reborn!. Most of these comics have been run once or twice in the same chapter amounts as the regular comics.

In the magazine's text, the U.S. Shonen Jump uses circumflexes instead of macrons to mark long vowels. The manga in the magazine does not always reflect this (e.g., the preview for Whistle! used macrons). Shonen Jump recently adopted a policy of editing dialog and art of serialized manga to make it more suitable for younger audiences and still appeal to older audiences as well. This policy has still received criticism from old-time readers. Manga translated by Shonen Jump that are not present in the magazine have fewer edits and are released sooner.

Not all of the titles incorporated in the Shonen Jump brand in North America are Weekly Shonen Jump titles. Beet the Vandel Buster, Claymore, and Legendz are published in the sister magazine Monthly Shonen Jump, while Yu-Gi-Oh GX is from the video game magazine V-Jump. Stranger still is Ultimate Muscle, which while a sequel to a 'Weekly Shonen Jump title, is actually published in Weekly Playboy. On the other hand, titles connected to Weekly Shonen Jump started prior to the start of the Shonen Jump line are not included in this packaging.

Shonen Jump is published in Germany as the compilation magazine BANZAI! by Carlsen Verlag. BANZAI! publishes Hikaru no Go, Hakuchi One, Naruto, I"s, Hunter x Hunter, and Shaman King. Several other titles, such as Yu-Gi-Oh!, Halloweens, Dr. Slump, One Piece, Neko Majin, Sand Land, Neko Majin Z, DNA² and an original German manga series called Crewman3 were serialized in BANZAI!. BANZAI! stopped in December 2005 because the license was not renewed by Shueisha. The Swedish Shonen Jump has Yu-Gi-Oh!, Naruto, Shaman King, Rurouni Kenshin. The Norwegian Shonen Jump is being published by Schibsted Forlagene. The first issue appeared in March 2005 with the same series as the Swedish Shonen Jump and it is translated from Swedish. They have had SandLand (finished), Rurouni Kenshin (replaced SandLand), Naruto, Yu-Gi-Oh and Shaman King.