i don't think it's a hard and fast requirement, but the magazine isn't going to let anything in that they think won't be appealing to their target demographic of young boys. i wouldn't be surprised if it was self selecting to an extent. i read bakuman, a series by the team behind death note about 2 high schoolers who want to be serialized in shonen jump. though i'm sure it's not wholly accurate, all the manga they submit have protagonists who are teenagers at the oldest, and they talk about how they'll probably be more likely to get accepted that way
for a real world example, right now shonen jump is running sakamoto days, but i think that's the only thing in the physical magazine with an adult protagonist. i mean, i guess luffy is 19, but i don't think that really counts. 20 was the age of majority in japan until this year
Yeah. There are other magazines that aim their comics at different demographics and along genre- women, adults and so on, but Weekly Shonen Jump is the one that consistently sells well because it has the longest history and biggest market with the broadest appeal (girls will buy it for, say a sports story like Haikyuu!! with a lot of hot teenage anime guys in it) so it attracts the best authors which reinforces it's market dominance etc.
Capitalism breeds innovation. :deeper-sadness:
The reason we're getting more high quality stories like Demon Slayer, Jujetsu Kaisen, Spy x Family and CSM now is because of 2 things: 1) WSJ expanded into web publishing and the online format has given authors more freedom than maybe some of the more stricter print only stuff allows for- I know SpyxFamily and CSM were beneficiaries of this new format and 2) Editorial has had a change in direction and they aren't trying to chase another Big 3 endless ongoing story like One Piece or Naruto anymore- they're not afraid to just end a series even if it's doing record numbers, for example Demon Slayer ended a while back, which has done wonders for the storytelling.
yeah, i mean on some level you're not going to always have adults as heroes in childrens media. but it definitely has shifted a lot over time. in the 80s, though i'm sure there were plenty of wsj manga about high schoolers and younger, the big ones that i can remember were all about adults.
i mean, jojo's bizarre adventure starts out with jonathan and joseph, who are both 20 iirc before moving to high school protaganists with jotaro before moving back to adult protagonists with part 6 (after which he moved to a seinen magazine). dragon ball started with goku as a child, but he's 25 at the start of z, so the majority of the manga's run is about him as an adult. fist of the north star's kenshiro is like 30. so this used to be more common
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i don't think it's a hard and fast requirement, but the magazine isn't going to let anything in that they think won't be appealing to their target demographic of young boys. i wouldn't be surprised if it was self selecting to an extent. i read bakuman, a series by the team behind death note about 2 high schoolers who want to be serialized in shonen jump. though i'm sure it's not wholly accurate, all the manga they submit have protagonists who are teenagers at the oldest, and they talk about how they'll probably be more likely to get accepted that way
for a real world example, right now shonen jump is running sakamoto days, but i think that's the only thing in the physical magazine with an adult protagonist. i mean, i guess luffy is 19, but i don't think that really counts. 20 was the age of majority in japan until this year
Maybe the real villain is us for reading comics aimed at teens! :stuff:
Yeah. There are other magazines that aim their comics at different demographics and along genre- women, adults and so on, but Weekly Shonen Jump is the one that consistently sells well because it has the longest history and biggest market with the broadest appeal (girls will buy it for, say a sports story like Haikyuu!! with a lot of hot teenage anime guys in it) so it attracts the best authors which reinforces it's market dominance etc.
Capitalism breeds innovation. :deeper-sadness:
The reason we're getting more high quality stories like Demon Slayer, Jujetsu Kaisen, Spy x Family and CSM now is because of 2 things: 1) WSJ expanded into web publishing and the online format has given authors more freedom than maybe some of the more stricter print only stuff allows for- I know SpyxFamily and CSM were beneficiaries of this new format and 2) Editorial has had a change in direction and they aren't trying to chase another Big 3 endless ongoing story like One Piece or Naruto anymore- they're not afraid to just end a series even if it's doing record numbers, for example Demon Slayer ended a while back, which has done wonders for the storytelling.
yeah, i mean on some level you're not going to always have adults as heroes in childrens media. but it definitely has shifted a lot over time. in the 80s, though i'm sure there were plenty of wsj manga about high schoolers and younger, the big ones that i can remember were all about adults.
i mean, jojo's bizarre adventure starts out with jonathan and joseph, who are both 20 iirc before moving to high school protaganists with jotaro before moving back to adult protagonists with part 6 (after which he moved to a seinen magazine). dragon ball started with goku as a child, but he's 25 at the start of z, so the majority of the manga's run is about him as an adult. fist of the north star's kenshiro is like 30. so this used to be more common