Shonen Jump (magazine) - Reception

Reception

Shonen Jump is considered the "most successful and widely read" manga anthology in North America. In addition to the unparalleled circulation numbers, the "Shonen Jump" manga imprint has had consistently high sales, with many of its titles being top sellers. Naruto has been the line's top seller, accounting for nearly 10% of all manga sales in North America in 2006. In December 2002, the magazine received the ICv2 Award for "Comic Product of the Year" due to its unprecedented sales numbers and its successfully connecting comics to both the television medium and the Yu-Gi-Oh! collectible card game – one of the top CCG games of the year. In the Society for the Promotion of Japanese Animation Awards from 2009, Shonen Jump was the winner in the category "Best Publication".

Reviewers of the magazine applauded the selection of series and the various articles included in each issue. In his coverage of the magazine's debut issue, John Jakala of Anime News Network, compared it to the debut issue of competing work Raijin Comics and was surprised to find himself preferring Shonen Jump, despite it being targeted for a younger age group than Raijin Comics. Calling it an "impressive debut issue", Jakala predicted that its high quality content and high value for the price would result in the anthology becoming a successful anthology in North America. In succeeding reviews, Jakala stated that Shonen Jump put "American comics to shame", particularly in terms of the size of the magazine for the price versus the normal size of a similarly priced issue of a regular comic book. He did, however, note that the episodic nature of some of the series included had started to become repetitive after three issues, and that while the articles might appeal to many readers, he himself skipped over them. In addition to praising the value for the dollar, Comic Book Bin's Leroy Douresseaux felt that each of the chapters included were "a self-sustaining and satisfying tale with a beginning, middle, and end" that, coupled with the character and story summaries included for each series, made it easy for readers to keep up with a series even if they missed an issue.

Color me surprised. Largely as a show of support for the anthology format, I signed up for subscriptions for both RAIJIN COMICS and SHONEN JUMP, but I was sure that I would enjoy the former much more than the latter since RC was promoted as being targeted for an older audience, and since SJ featured series that I associated with young children's cartoons. Instead, having read both first issues, I find that (so far) I much prefer SHONEN JUMP, both in terms of actual story content as well as in terms of the magazine's production values. —John Jakala, Anime News Network