
Shonen Jump has started a new campaign for their magazine starting in the July 2007 called "SJ Evolution." According to the latest issue, "SJ Evolution is here, meaning big changes to your favorite manga magazine! In the coming months, SJ will introduce new faces & wave goodbye to familiar ones." Right now this campaign consists of 5 elements, but more could be coming down the line later. The 5 phases are:
- Everything that's going on with Naruto, which we've already discussed a lot. Basically, Shonen Jump is bumping the amount of Naruto chapters per issue & will be jumping to the Shippudden storyline in January.
- The arrival of Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo to the magazine, which we also previously discussed. The July 2007 features the first monthly publication of the manga, which oddly enough starts off at chapter 110. I'm guessing this takes off directly after the one-shot Bo-bobo manga that Viz put out a few years back, which was a combination of volumes 9 & 10 of the Japanese version. The first 8 volumes of the series may never see the light of day in America, it seems.
- The end of Shaman King. Well in the magazine anyway. The August 2007 issue will see the final publication of the Shaman King manga in Shonen Jump magazine, despite the fact the story is nowhere near over. The manga will still continue to be published in the form of graphic novel volumes however, & will be published at a faster rate of every 2 months. This isn't the first time a manga has left Shonen Jump to be completed in the graphic novel format. DragonBall Z did it a few years back as well.
- The conclusion of Yu-Gi-Oh: Millennium World. Yu-Gi-Oh will be the first manga in the American Shonen Jump to reach its natural end in the magazine. Of course it doesn't help that they skipped the Duelist Kingdom & Battle City sagas for graphic novel formats. Although the SJ issue only says "Can you guess which one?" Of course it can only be Yu-Gi-Oh, since with the exception of YuYu Hakusho, no other manga in the magazine is even near its end (with Naruto, One Piece, GX, & Bo^7 still going on in Japan). & YYH still has a bit of a ways to go too.
- Shonen Jump also hinted at another new manga coming to the magazine, which again we've discussed already. I still think there's a good chance that it'll be the Arrancar saga of Bleach, but only time will tell for sure.
Shonen Jump said that a website for SJ Evolution would be available as well. At the time of this writing, the page isn't up yet. But when it does come up, you can find it here:
http://www.shonenjump.com/evolution
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