Manga magazines are a fascinating aspect of the manga industry that I think, excluding the particularly popular ones such as Weekly Shonen Jump, are underappreciated in the West. I’ve heard people compare reading a manga magazine to watching a TV channel as you might come for only a few series but you may end up experiencing some that you didn’t know about and may like. While not a perfect analogy, I do understand the basic point it makes and it actually works well for the topic of today’s article as, similarly to how a TV show can occasionally change which channel it’s airing on, manga can also end up being released in a different magazine than it started in. Therefore, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some of the reasons why manga may switch magazines.
The first reason and, seemingly, most common reason for a manga to change magazines is that the magazine it’s running in has been shutdown but the publisher doesn’t want to cancel the series itself. The first time I noticed this was when Monthly Shonen Jump, a sister magazine to Weekly Shonen Jump, was ended and it was announced that Claymore would temporarily run in Weekly Shonen Jump. A few months later, Shueisha released a new monthly shonen magazine, Jump Square, and Claymore was transferred there where it eventually finished its run. Of course, this only happens to the particularly popular series and the other series that run in the defunct magazine are likely to be cancelled instead.
Interestingly, my next example follows the reason that I’ve previously explained but it also feeds a little bit into the next reason so I wanted to take a moment to discuss it in greater detail. A manga series called Dorohedoro began running in a seinen magazine called Monthly Ikki but, after Monthly Ikki was cancelled, Dorohedoro was transferred to a successor magazine called Hibana but this new magazine was cancelled only two years later! Interestingly, Dorohedoro, which I want to remind you is a seinen series, was transferred to Monthly Shonen Sunday where it managed to finally reach its conclusion.
While Dorohedoro switched magazines due to the cancellations of said magazines, it does introduce us to the idea of a manga switching to a magazine with a different demographic. A couple of notable examples include Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure which went from Weekly Shonen Jump to Ultra Jump, which is a seinen magazine, xxxHolic which went from Weekly Young Jump, a seinen magazine, to Bessatsu Shonen Magazine and Saiyuki Gaiden which transferred from Monthly GFantasy, a shonen magazine, to Monthly Comic Zero Sum, a shojo/josei magazine. I haven’t seen any definitive reasons as to why these manga change demographic so if anyone is aware of an example that does explain why they switched, it’d be appreciated.
The final reason that I want to look at has to do with the series Vinland Saga. Initially starting out in Weekly Shonen Magazine, it quickly swapped to Monthly Afternoon, a seinen magazine, within a few months. While seemingly the same as the previous reason, what differs is that we were actually provided a reason this time which had nothing to do with whether the magazine was shonen or seinen but whether it was weekly or monthly. The mangaka, Makoto Yukimura, stated that he was having difficulty with the weekly schedule so he decided to swap to a monthly magazine.
The reasons why manga may switch to different magazines is quite fascinating and I’d love to learn more about the decisions that go into making these changes. Let me know your thoughts on the reasons why some manga switch magazines, if you know any additional reasons, if you’re aware of a mangaka explaining why they changed magazines like in the case of Makoto Yukimura and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk and amazon.com for all of your needs!