Shonen Jump ToC Rankings

Issue 32:

Takamagahara (Cover, Lead Colour, New Series)
1. Toriko
2. One Piece
Assassination Classroom (Center Colour, Extra Pages)
3. Nisekoi
4. Naruto
5. Kuroko's Basketball
6. PSI Kusuo Saiki
Haikyuu!! (Center Colour, Extra Pages)
7. Koisome Momiji
8. Barrage (First Ranking)
9. Sket Dance
10. Beelzebub
11. Gintama
Medaka Box (Center Colour)
12. Bleach
13. Kochikame
14. Reborn!
15. Pajama na Kanojo
16. Kurogane

Issue 33:

Cover, Lead Colour: Sket Dance (5th Anniversary)
Center Colour: Takamagahara, Reborn!
Extra Pages: Assassination Classroom

Sub-par first showing for Barrage, it seems.

edited 4th Jul '12 3:40:25 AM by burnpsy

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Assassination Classroom is by the same guy who wrote Neuro, right? The art is really similar.

It is indeed.

Wow.. I am surprised and pleased that Naruto isn't #1, sometimes not even top 3. And am rather shocked to see Toriko at the very top. I guess I only ever read the first couple chapters so I can't judge it...

Thanks for sharing this, it's really interesting to look at. Scary to see how much some manga jump around.. the life of an author must be stressful.

It's just Shounen Jump. It's known for being particularly cut-throat. They'll let low-ranking series survive if they have good volume sales though.

I don't particularly like their system, personally. It means that things either get killed before their time or drag on for years longer than they should.

It does seem to have problems with people voting for their old favorites. People forgiving a weak chapter because they liked the 400 that came before it skews the rankings wildly.

I don't really care about people forgiving a weak chapter; having awful things happen in order to set up an emotional pay-off for later is fair play, and sometimes you just need to get a pile of exposition out of the way. Or maybe the mangaka just had a rough week. What I don't like is how much emphasis is put on the rankings.

Popularity isn't a great way of deciding whether or not something should continue. It has to play a role to some extent, because they have to make money somehow, but well- I feel that the ending is always the most important part of a work. And this system means that because something is popular, it is forced to continue past the point where it should have ended.

So what we end up getting is a bunch of mediocre series that could've been decent but were killed prematurely, and a bunch of decent series that could've been great if they'd been killed at the right time.

edited 4th Jul '12 8:36:59 PM by Gilphon

Not that the bias helps Bleach, Kochikame, or Hunter X Hunter. That said, Kochikame and Hunter X Hunter are contractually immune to cancellation (and Naruto and One Piece are the two top sellers period, so they wouldn't cut those to save their bottom line).

I think it's better than other magazines that ignore the polls but have, like, 25+ series running and rotating weeks off to keep things somewhat fresh with a smaller amount of new blood.

One Piece won't end for another 10 years at least and it's such a money maker.

What's the story behind Hunter x Hunter?

Hunter X Hunter is consistently one of the best-selling series whenever it releases a new volume, however it's been on hiatus for so many years now that most of its fans don't even read Jump anymore. So it performs poorly in the polls since the target audience has no idea what's going on (and no motivation to catch up) but sells so well that Jump doesn't care.

Incidentally, this is also why they recently rebooted the anime. They want to get the younger generation caught up so maybe they'll read it too.

edited 4th Jul '12 8:45:05 PM by Clarste

Issue 33:

Sket Dance (Cover, Lead Colour)
1. Naruto
2. One Piece
3. PSI Kusuo Saiki
4. Toriko
Takamagahara (Center Colour)
5. Kuroko's Basketball
6. Nisekoi
7. Haikyuu!!
Assassination Classroom
8. Koisome Momiji
9. Gintama
10. Beelzebub
11. Barrage
Reborn! (Center Colour)
12. Kochikame
13. Bleach
14. Pajama na Kanojo
15. Medaka Box
16. Kurogane

Issue 34:
Cover/Lead Colour: Naruto (Movie Special Chapter, 33 pages)
Center Colour: Koisome Momiji, Barrage, Beelzebub
Absent: One Piece

Naruto will also have a normal 17-page chapter.

Issue 35:
Lead Colour: Naruto

Naruto is getting two lead colours in a row to celebrate the movie.

edited 10th Jul '12 4:21:53 AM by burnpsy

Wow, Medaka Box got 2nd to last. There goes its semi-comfortable "at least its not in the bottom 5" position.

Assassination Classroom is cool so I'm glad to see it's getting some of the love it deserves.

This week's rankings pretty much confirm that Barrage was dead on arrival.

I imagine the next round of cuts will be decided between it, Kurogane and Pajama unless something ends naturally.

The problem is, who should decide which shows are mediocre and which are great? It's a matter of objectivity vs. subjectivity. Even if you would personally be in charge of cancelling all mediocre series and extending great ones, there would still be mediocre series in Jump, according to everybody else.

There is nothing wrong with elitism, and the idea that as long as they make money, the vox populi's Lowest Common Denominator should be overruled by the few who know what they are talking about, but in that sense, Jump is already pretty elitist. Compared to other serialized mediums that are relying on the total audience size to measure popularity, like TV ratings, where something gets continued by the virtue of making John Q. Public sit on his ass for an hour, Jump is already following a ridiculously small sample of devoted fans, the kind of people who are so involved with manga publishing that they keep sending in these polls every week. They are also the kind of people who would take a show's potential into consideration. You simply can't get much closer to elitism than that. Even if you would narrow down the decision to a committee of a hadful of connoisseurs, it would almost be the same order of magnitude of people.

As long as Finnagle, Murphy, and Sturgeon are working, no publishing system can perfectly weed out bad series and reward everything good (especially while we can't agree on which are these), but this is a relatively good one, at least compared to the others that directly reward mainstream-pandering.

We might as well say, that Jump's is the worst form of rankings, except all those other forms that have been tried.

edited 10th Jul '12 5:36:42 AM by Ever9

Issue 34:

ROAD TO NARUTO THE MOVIE (Cover, Lead Colour)
1. Toriko
2. Kuroko's Basketball
3. Nisekoi
Beelzebub (Center Colour)
4. Naruto
5. Haikyuu!!
Koisome Momiji (Center Colour)
Assassination Classroom
6. Sket Dance
Takama-ga-hara
7. PSI Kusuo Saiki
8. Bleach
9. Reborn!
Barrage (Center Colour)
10. Gintama
11. Kochikame
12. Medaka Box
13. Kurogane
14. Pajama na Kanojo
One Piece (Absent)

Issue 35:
Cover, Lead Colour: Naruto
Center Colour: PSI Kusuo Saiki, Kochikame, Goblin Night (Golden Future Cup Entry #1)
A special Yu Gi Oh card will be bundled with this issue.

Double Issue 36/37:
Center Colour: Cupid of Love Yakeno Harachiri (Golden Future Cup Entry #2)

Issue 38:
Center Colour: After-School☆Idol (Golden Future Cup Entry #3)

Issue 39:
Center Colour: INPWEAR CODE (Golden Future Cup Entry #4)

edited 18th Jul '12 7:46:42 AM by burnpsy

Issue 35:

Naruto (Cover, Lead Colour)
1. One Piece
Assassination Classroom
PSI Kusuo Saiki (Center Colour)
2. Kuroko's Basketball
3. Nisekoi
4. Toriko
5. Haikyuu!!
Goblin Night (Center Colour, Golden Future Cup Entry #1)
6. Reborn!
Takama-ga-hara
7. Gintama
8. Sket Dance
Kochikame (Center Colour)
9. Pajama na Kanojo
10. Beelzebub
11. Medaka Box
12. Koisome Momiji
13. Bleach
14. Kurogane
15. Barrage

Double Issue 36/37:
Cover, Lead Colour: One Piece
Center Colour: Nisekoi, Haikyuu!, Cupid of Love Yakeno Harachiri (Golden Future Cup Entry #2)

Issue 38:
Center Colour: After-School☆Idol (Golden Future Cup Entry #3)

Issue 39:
Center Colour: INPWEAR CODE (Golden Future Cup Entry #4)

edited 1st Aug '12 11:05:18 AM by burnpsy

Double Issue 36/37:

One Piece (Lead Colour, 15th Anniversary)
1. Naruto
Assassination Classroom
Haikyuu!! (Center Colour)
2. Sket Dance
3. Toriko
Cupid of Love Yakeno Harajin (Center Color, Golden Future Cup Entry #2)
4. PSI Kusuo Saiki
Nisekoi (Center Colour)
Takama-ga-hara
5. Kuroko's Basketball
My Mom is a Spy (One-shot)
6. Gintama
7. Beelzebub
8. Kochikame
9. Reborn!
10. Medaka Box
11. Kurogane
12. Koisome Momiji
13. Pajama na Kanojo
14. Barrage
Bleach (Absent)

The cover has all of the current protagonists on it, wearing straw hats to celebrate the 15th anniversary of One Piece.

Kubo has a "sudden illness".

As is standard with double-issues, there will be no Jump next week.

Issue 38:
Lead Colour: Naruto
Center Colour: PSI Kusuo Saiki, Rurouni Kenshin (One-shot), After-School☆Idol (Golden Future Cup Entry #3)

Issue 39:
Center Colour: INPWEAR CODE (Golden Future Cup Entry #4)

edited 1st Aug '12 11:05:08 AM by burnpsy

Cr@p. This week's was released early and thus I didn't notice.

Issue 38:

Naruto (Cover, Lead Colour)
1. One Piece
Assassination Classroom
2. Nisekoi
3. Reborn!
PSI Kusuo Saiki (Center Colour)
4. Haikyuu!!
5. Toriko
6. Kuroko's Basketball
7. Sket Dance
Rurouni Kenshin (One-shot, Center Colour)
8. Kochikame
Takama-ga-hara
9. Kurogane
10. Koisome Momiji
11. Beelzebub
12. Gintama
13. Bleach
14. Medaka Box
15. Barrage
16. Pajama na Kanojo

Kurogane's author has been asking for new assistants. He wouldn't do that if he was getting cancelled, so he's safe for at least the next round.

The 3rd Golden Future Cup entry was pushed to next week for some reason.

Issue 39:
Lead Colour: Kuroko's Basketball
Center Colour: Toriko, After School☆Idol (Golden Future Cup Entry #3)

Issue 40:
Center Colour: INPWEAR CODE (Golden Future Cup Entry #4)

edited 14th Aug '12 2:16:27 AM by burnpsy

Hot damn Nisekoi is at number 2 (well, 3, really, since there are two series at top 1). That's magic right there.

Hurrah for Assassination Classroom and Haikyuu being popular~

Assassination Classroom isn't ranked yet. It's too new.

It's unusual for the editors to place an unranked series that close to the front so consistently, though.

edited 14th Aug '12 5:49:06 AM by burnpsy

Issue 39:

Kuroko's Basketball (Cover, Lead Colour)
1. One Piece
2. Assassination Classroom (First Ranking)
3. Nisekoi
4. Naruto
Toriko (Center Colour)
5. PSI Kusuo Saiki
6. Sket Dance
7. Bleach
8. Haikyuu!!
After School☆Idol (Center Colour, Golden Future Cup Entry #3)
9. Beelzebub
10. Kurogane
11. Gintama
12. Reborn!
13. Medaka Box
Takama-ga-hara
14. Kochikame
15. Koisome Momiji
16. Pajama na Kanojo
17. Barrage

Issue 40:
Cover, Lead Colour: Bleach (11th Anniversary)
Center Colour: PSI Kusuo Saiki, Medaka Box, INPWEAR CODE (Golden Future Cup Entry #4)
Final Chapter: Pajama na Kanojo

Next week's episode of Sakiyomi Jump Bang! will feature PSI Kusuo Saiki.

edited 26th Aug '12 9:16:40 PM by burnpsy

"Anticipation is what determines manga popularity!"◊

Oh, and you all need to catch this anime, if you didn't already!

Wow, Bleach has jumped a lot since the last one.

Go One Piece.