Forum - View topicAnswerman - Why Did Shonen Jump Succeed In America?
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Engineering Nerd
 Posts: 904 Location: Southern California |
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Can I say the Yu-Gi-Oh promo cards actually push the sales of Shonen Jump (both print and digital) a lot? I mean...that's the main sales point of the annual subscription: ultra rare cards that actually can improve competitive play.
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WashuTakahashi
 Posts: 415 Location: Chicago, IL |
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I think I have nearly 5 years worth of Shonen Jump magazines sitting at home. I personally loved it since it was a cheap way to consume a lot of manga quickly. But towards the tail end of it they started jumping over story arcs, making it impossible to follow. Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece all jumped forward dozens of chapters to try and catch up with the Japanese, but that left readers like myself who only read those manga in Shonen Jump completely lost. It'd get to the point where I would have 3-4 months of magazines stacked up, ready to read, and would have to force myself to power through them. Finally let my subscription die out and heard about the new online version maybe two or so years later. Never bothered with that.
I think Shonen Jump would have done a lot better if they didn't try to catch up with chapter skips, but the magazine was pretty much destined to fail soon anyways as print became less popular.
I do remember ending up with a bunch of Yu-Gi-Oh cards, which I later gave to a friend who owns a card shop. I'm guessing they probably sold for at least 50 altogether, since there were 3 Egyptian god cards. I also have a bunch of Naruto cards (I don't think that game ever took off...), and a few random Inuyasha, Bleach, and FullMetal Alchemist cards that came from the magazine. Not sure how popular any of those were though. [Do not double-post. Use the Edit button instead ~Zalis] |
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pluvia33
 Posts: 196 Location: Dayton, OH, USA |
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I've never been a huge shounen fan, but I loved and subscribed to Shojo Beat and Yen Plus while they were done physically. I eventually fell behind in reading both of them, but I have the entire print runs on my shelf, waiting to be read some day....
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Brand
 Posts: 1029 |
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Justin, are you sure this is correct?
I'm pretty sure I was still paying for a subscription even after it became Tokyopop. I remember being super pissed about all the changes because I was paying solely for Sailor Moon. |
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bj_waters
 Posts: 234 |
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I know I'm probably in a vast minority here, but I would still totally subscribe to physical English manga print magazines. I could easily see myself dropping upwards of $60-70 a year for such a thing. (Of course, it would kind of depend on what series they ran, but they'd have to be pretty bad/offensive for me not to be interested!)
I actually went out of my way to buy back issues of Shonen Jump and Yen Plus, and I finally have all the issues (except SJ #0, but I don't think I'm missing much without that one). I keep thinking I should dig up all the old Raijin Comics magazines as well (I've got about 20 at the moment), simply because they ran series you just can't find anymore. (First President of Japan, Baki the Grappler, Revenge of the Mouflon!) |
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WashuTakahashi
Posts: 415 Location: Chicago, IL |
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You're definitely not alone. I'm more picky with my manga then I was back in the Shonen Jump days, but I'd happily subscribe to a manga magazine that has titles I'm interested in. I don't have nearly enough time to just sit down and READ anymore, and a subscription would force me to spend more time doing that. (Which is a good thing!) |
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Revolutionary
 Posts: 607 Location: New England |
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Huh? I actually wish they'd stop sending me those. I have no use for them. |
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Gasero
 Posts: 939 Location: USA |
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I'm just glad that Shonen jump didn't spend too much time resisting the modern market distribution method of going digital. I know that not everyone enjoys digital content, but it was obvious that a lot of consumers were more interested in digital scans than manga that were delayed compared to the Japanese release.
I'm hoping to see many more years of success now that there is a good amount of competition in the digital manga market. |
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EricJ2
 Posts: 4016 |
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Also, since Viz and Tokyopop's manga could get into mainstream retail outlets, and analysts didn't know what yardstick to use to measure the new anime fandom, anime's "new popularity in the US" was measured by how many Americanized manga titles were selling at Barnes & Noble and MediaPlay. Not the VHS sales, not the cable ratings, just the manga.
And because manga fandom was still a core niche at the time, newbie mainstream anime fans were similarly hypnotized by the analyst headlines into thinking that being an anime fan meant buying manga titles at US stores...And, like Justin says, went out to buy titles they mostly knew from US TV, like Sailor Moon, One Piece, Naruto and Cardcaptor Sakura. Basically a closed self-fulfilling prophecy, with each group feeding the fandom fantasy of the other, because neither one really knew any better. Last edited by EricJ2 on Mon Jan 04, 2016 5:23 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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levonr
 Posts: 820 |
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I wish Five Star Stories and Area 88 would get a proper release in America.
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BodaciousSpacePirate
 Subscriber Posts: 3019 |
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The first ten volumes of Five Star Stories actually received an English-language release around 1999-ish. I have the first 18 "volumes" (they broke up each of the original volumes into 2-3 parts) sitting on my shelf right now. I'd love to get the six I'm missing, but they run about 50 bucks a volume at this point. 
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Mr.Shonen
Posts: 269 Location: Brooklyn, NY |
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I remember picking up my first American SJ from an Orlando airport coming back home from vacation. There's something oddly nice about reading through one of them. I started to get them when I would go buy manga from Barns and Noble.
After a while I gave up but looking back I wish Viz did this differently. One issue was that amount of series/chapters each volume had. I think it was 7 series with 1-2 chapters. It would of been nice if they bumped up the numbers. Now while this would of jumped the price up I think it would of been better for the fan who didn't have the money to drop on a couple volumes of a SJ title. Maybe a $10 volume of monthly SJ with 10-12 titles that had 3-4 chapters. Also, didn't Shonen Sunday's parent company have a stake in Viz too at the time? Why didn't they try to get in on this? |
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bj_waters
Posts: 234 |
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Yeah, it's easy to see why physical manga magazines disappeared. I was sad when I got my last Shonen Jump, but I understood why that was. Especially now that they're able to beat the scanlators by having it out the same day as Japan.
I don't think Shonen Sunday didn't have anywhere near as much presence as Shonen Jump. SS just had InuYasha at the time, whereas SJ had quite a few series that were already popular as anime in America (DBZ, Yu-Gi-Oh!, YuYu Hakusho, Rurouni Kenshin, etc.) |
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Rika Hue
 Posts: 147 |
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My friend, those can sell for a pretty penny on a site like troll&toad. Even if you don't get a lot per card, hey that's better than it just lying around somewhere at home, right? |
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bj_waters
Posts: 234 |
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I just used them as bookmarks. 
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