How do you like your Shounen Jump heroine?
Do you love her dressed in a pristine school uniform, where her smiling face (and possibly panties or if your lucky, cleavage) grace every panel? Do you like her making bentou for the hero, sharing laughs right before he enters the greatest of his greatest battles? Or do you love her strong, the type who would smack the hero when he is wrong and is generally unforgiving to anyone who insults her short skirt but is soft to the hero who basically ignores her D-size bra? If she has one.
For years, legions of Jump readers, particularly women from the Western frame of thought1, would write a post or two complaining why women in a particular Shounen Jump manga is often misrepresented. An interesting rant came by my timeline today, a disheartened Katekyo Hitman Reborn! fan who cannot forgive Akira Amano for making cooks out her heroines. In her blog, she pines about why the female characters in Reborn have been ill-presented, nothing but dolls whose only purpose in the story was to make the boys look better.
Yeah. Right.
Popularity: 16% [?]
- Oh yes! Orientalism plays a key part here! [↩]
1990 to 1994 can be considered by many as one of the strongest periods of Jump. The title that carried this period was an epic intergalactic superhuman masterpiece named Dragon Ball Z. It was so popular that no one in this world could not have encountered this anime. However, despite its popularity, the fujoshis focused their attention towards the other titles that were also great but somehow fell under the cloud of Dragon Ball Z.
For the Fujoshi, Goku and his dragon balls did not spark a fire to their fragile fangirl hearts. Instead, they looked at the bishounens from other Jump titles. The era of androgynous men have come to an end. In this era, it was all about the handsome boys of Jump.
Popularity: 50% [?]
One Piece by Oda Eiichiro
Published by Shueisha
Serialized in Shounen Jump
Translated by Viz
When friends ask me about a shounen story I'd recommend, the first title that comes to mind is One Piece. After hearing the title, most of them groan saying "it's too long" or "there's no bishounen in there" or "the art is butt ugly." Although I'd honestly like to immediately contest and defend this rag tag crew to them, I always just throw at them the line "For your nakama ((Comrade)), just give it a shot." Happily so, after I lend them 20 volumes to read, they'd come back screaming "Nakama!!" with great gusto!
One Piece is more than just a shounen story with a pirate touch. Oda Eiichiro has turned Luffy's quest for One Piece into your adventure as well. This is the reason why it has lasted a decade with fans and why it'll be probably go on for a couple more years. This is a manga where the characters become your nakama.
Last week’s highlight for me, other than receiving some great mangas from a friend (and my Touch OST! ;w;) is looking at the line up of Jump Square. To be honest, as much as I owe a lot of my fandom to Shounen Jump, recently, the titles in the magazine has gone quite stale. Maybe I just grew up. Young Jump is fine, but can be a little brutal on my end. Could Jump Square be just the right amount of adventure, humor, and maturity that I’m looking for?
The manga has quite a lot of things to look forward to. First would be 3nen Zgumi Ginpachi-sensei! After giving my heart and spleen to Gintama (and I think half my brain), this crazy spinoff of the series is definitely something to look forward to! 3nen Zgumi Ginpachi-sensei takes the characters of Gintama and puts them in a classroom setting. Gintoki is now Ginpachi-sensei and he usually leads the class in insane homeroom activities. It has been published as a novel, but I’m not so sure if this means that the novel will extend into a manga series now in jump square or it probably means that it will have some stories written like short novelettes for the series. I’m betting on the latter one since Sorachi is a lazy monkey. XDD So yeah, this is one reason to read Jump Square.
Next would be Gag Manga Biyori. Another genius of a manga short is making a comeback. The humor and crazy puns in this series is gold. Again, it’s old man’s humor and may involve some cultural studies, but its a great way in looking to what a gag manga is like in Japan. <3
The other mangas are still rather questionable as I really haven’t read them before (but they do look nice). Nobuhiro Watsuki will have his story, Another Tale of Frankenstein, continued here. I wonder if it will rise to Rurouni Kenshin. Takeshi Obata will be drawing again, but this time with Masanori Morita. I don’t know if this will be good or what but if a mangaka works with another mangaka (and without corporate intervention!) maybe… just maybe… Obata will definitely bring to life his New Hope award from the Tezukas. A new popular anime, Claymore, will also be in this magazine and might be the magazine’s carrying story. Yoko Kamio of Hana Yori Dango fame will be writing for the magazine as well. There is a ‘Tales of’ story released in the magazine too… so… it could be fun. Could be.
In short, Jump Square is trying to show that Shueisha’s line of shounen mangas is more than just Shounen Jump. The inclusion of Yoko Kamio might be there to even appeal to some mature female readers out there, perhaps in the same way that Yoshinaga Fumi writes for Morning. Could this be Shueisha’s answer to the popular Morning or Afternoon? Well, we’ll see on November 2 if they match up.
Popularity: 5% [?]

Oh dear. Just when everyone of my friends is home from Japan, they show something quite important like this. -_-;; I have to thank Comipress for this. Apparently, 