With a very positive overall reception, I decided to revisit this concept two years later in August of 2018, to celebrate Jump's 50th Anniversary, as well as fill in some notable gaps that the original series had not covered, but I felt really should have. The end result of that was The Ages of Jump Redux, a two-part series that covered an additional 25 different Jump manga, which also included six series that had debuted after My Hero Academia, starting with Black Clover, and since there was one more Age of Man left from Hesiod that I hadn't used I decided to call this current era of Jump that those six manga came from the "Iron Age". While I don't think The Ages of Jump Redux received anywhere near the same reception that the original Ages did, I was pretty pleased with the end result, which now totaled 148 different Jump manga that debuted between 1968 & 2017; for proper context, though, that's just 19.89% of all Jump manga that have existed, as of mid-2023. Since then, a new resource has come about for looking through Jump's entire history, & that is Jajanken: Weekly Shonen Jump Lab, a literal comprehensive database of every single regular issue of Jump that's ever been made, complete with every single serialized manga that's ever appeared in the magazine's history. Then there's also Weekly Shonen Jump Exhibition Volumes 1-3, a trio of large books that were part art book, part mangaka interviews made for Jump's 50th Anniversary in 2018 that go over a great deal of series that Shueisha itself felt were important to the history of the magazine.
Having gone through the trouble of looking over all 744+ series that have been serialized in Jump (so far) for the sake of figuring out the magazine's history of early cancellations, I came across some last little stragglers that I missed out on over the past nine parts of The Ages of Jump. Some were 100+-chapter series that I really should have included, if only because I feel every series that hit triple digits, in general, should be acknowledged & celebrated, while others were certainly shorter but still had something important worth making note of, especially in light of other pieces I've written (or even made a video of) since doing the Redux. However, I only focused on the original four ages this time around, as while it was fun to take a short peek into the Iron Age in 2018, it's still nowhere near close to ending & should be given time to fully define itself.
So, to celebrate Jump's 55th Anniversary, here's the first of two final (for real, this time!) parts of The Ages of Jump, totaling 30 more Jump manga, with this being the first 15. The concert is over but there's always time for an "Encore", so let's look back at Jump's history once again & (for the last time) see "How Far We've Come".
I had mentioned this title by name quickly at the very start of The Ages of Jump, but in retrospect I really should have given this manga its due credit, if only because it's the very first Jump manga ever published, technically. While Chichi no Tamashii also debuted in Jump's very first issue, as well as a pre-serialization Harenchi Gakuen one-shot, the first thing anyone who opens that first issue will see is Kujira Daigo/Daigo the Whale by Sachio Umemoto, which was also the subject of Jump's very first cover. The series told the story of Daigo, a literal giant of a middle school student who is adopted by a politician named Kasuga & taken from his home of Kochi to the bustling city of Tokyo. Daigo quickly befriends his fellow classmates, before they all team up to prevent the Principal & Kasuga from shutting down the middle school that they all go to, as Daigo wants a school for everyone, including the poor. As mentioned, Kujira Daigo & Chichi no Tamashii were the first two serialized manga in Jump history, & while Umemoto's series would only run for 11 chapters, it's kind of fitting that the very same issue that saw Daigo's final chapter get serialized also saw the (serialized) debuts of both Harenchi Gakuen & Otoko Ippiki Gaki Daisho; in essence, Kujira Daigo did exactly what its titular lead aimed to do by establishing a place for everyone. While Shueisha itself would never release the very first Jump manga in a collected format, which actually wasn't too surprising at the time, the now-defunct Wakagi Shobo would release all of Kujira Daigo across two volumes in 1970 under its Comic Mate label. As for Sachio Umemoto, he'd continue to make manga for Jump until 1970, when he left due to his distaste for the magazine's initial exclusivity contracts (though he would return to Jump in 1981 for one more series), making manga for other publishers here & there, with his most iconic being 1970's Apache Baseball Team for Weekly Shonen King, which received a TV anime adaptation in 1971. Sadly, Sachio Umemoto would pass away on September 6, 1993, at age 50, of a cerebral hemorrhage. Today, Kujira Daigo is really more of a footnote in the history of Shonen Jump, but at the same time its story of a giant with a heart of gold teaming with his friends to save a place they loved truly does feel like a perfect encapsulation of the magazine's motto. Even if "Friendship, Effort, Victory" wasn't yet a thing in 1968, Jump's very first manga shows that it was always there from the start.
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Without a doubt, the late George Akiyama (1943-2020) was a mangaka of two sides. On the one hand, he was the creator of Haguregumo, which ran from 1973 to 2017 for 112 volumes in Big Comic Original & was known for its mix of lackadaisical & serious storytelling in showing daily life during the end of the Edo period. On the other hand, Akiyama was also someone who loved telling stories that dealt with all manner of controversial, incendiary, & scathing topics, even to the point where one of his works, 1970's Asura, eventually got banned for a time due to Akiyama's unflinching portrayal of cannibalism as the means by which the titular lead had to survive during the Sengoku Era. However, for the purposes of this history, we're going back to one of Akiyama's earliest works, though neither his debut work nor his debut with Shonen Jump. His debut manga, in general, was 1966's Gaikotsu-kun in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine, while his first manga for Jump was the 14-chapter Kurohige Tanteicho in early 1969. The issue after Kurohige Tanteicho ended, Akiyama immediately debuted his next series for Shonen Jump, mid-1969's Delorinman (or Derorinman, if you prefer), which aimed to tackle the idea of what "justice" really is. Delorinman starred Sanshiro, a young man who fails at committing suicide & is left with a horribly scarred face that makes him look like a Hannya, and after all of this now decides to call himself "Delorinman" & act as a godlike hero of justice for his hometown; there were some hints that Sanshiro may have been mentally unstable prior to his suicide attempt. However, because of his disfigured face & shoddy costume (literally just rags & a red fundoshi), the citizens think he's nothing more than somebody to hate & ridicule, the local children play pranks on him constantly, & his own wife & son refuse to believe that he's actually Sanshiro, yet despite it all Delorinman continues to fight for love & justice. Delorinman would run until mid-1970 for 44 chapters, making it the fifth-longest Jump manga from those initial two years, but when came time for the series to be released in tankouban form the last 16 chapters, titled the Kurofune Arc, were never collected; therefore, it was only two volumes. In fact, it wouldn't be until 2017 that the entire series would finally get collected by Fukkan Dotcom, with the main indication being that Akiyama had lost the original manuscript for the longest time. George Akiyama would eventually make eight different manga for Shonen Jump on & off up through 1984, but none of them would ever surpass Delorinman in length.
It also worth noting that Akiyama would do a remake of Delorinman from 1975 to 1976 in Weekly Shonen Magazine, one with a somewhat different tone & plot that ran for three volumes, resulting in later reprints of the original Jump series being titled Gansou/Original Delorinman.
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For a perfect example of just how different times were for manga, look no further than the early Bronze Age of Jump. The fifth serialized manga in Jump history was 1968's Manga Konto #55 by Yuya Enomoto, which was literally a manga adaptation of comedy duo Kenichi Hagimoto & Jirou Sakagami, known collectively as Konto #55 (a.k.a. Conte #55). That would run for 59 chapters, making it the fourth-longest Jump manga from the magazine's earliest days, with Enomoto following it up a week later with 1970's Manga Drifters, which I covered in the original Ages of Jump. However, for an even better & longer running example, let's go over early 1972's Sore Ike Jump de Young Oh! Oh!/Up & at 'Em Jump with Young Oh! Oh! by Nobunao Miya. Much like Manga Konto #55, this series was based around a real-life comedy act, though in this case it was based on Young Oh! Oh!, an hour-long variety show that aired on MBS from 1969 to 1982, with this manga take on the show being serialized during what's seemingly considered Young Oh! Oh!'s heyday. While this concept of featuring a manga based around a real life comedy duo or variety show in the magazine sounded a bit more sound in the 60s, as Jump was still far from having an established "style" by that point, it does come across a little more bizarre come the early 70s, as Jump by that point already had its fair share of recurring series, including comedies like Toilet Hakase, The Gutsy Frog, & even Manga Drifters, the last of which being very much in the same vein as Jump de Young Oh! Oh!. However, that's not to say that the variety show-based manga didn't succeed in any way, as it wound up running for 120 chapters (it looks as though the series was never compiled into book form) before ending in mid-1974, which is nothing to poke fun at. I mean, for context, that makes Sore Ike Jump de Young Oh! Oh! longer than stuff like Harenchi Gakuen, Kouya no Shonen Isamu, & even Death Note, none of which are small name titles for their respective eras! As for Nobunao Miya, he'd continue making manga, including one he made immediately after finishing up Jump de Young Oh! Oh!, though according to his old teacher, Hikaru Yuzuki, Miya died young; no actual date of death has ever been revealed, however.
In both the original Ages of Jump & the Redux I covered just one manga each by Hiroshi Motomiya, namely his debut (& most iconic) work for Jump, 1968's Otoko Ippiki Gaki Daisho, & the only other Jump manga of his that's really known outside of Japan, 1983's Tenchi wo Kurau (by way of the various video game adaptations it received). However, while nothing else Motomiya ever made for Jump even approached the length or success of Gaki Daisho (likely to his own dismay, at least at the time), and his Golden Age run was filled with continually short and/or cancelled manga, his importance to Jump's Bronze Age is undoubtedly worth going over, so we'll be covering three more of his manga in this part, one in each of the next three trios, & up first is mid-1973's Obora Ichidai/A Generation of Big Lies. It starred Tarouji Yamaoka, son of millionaire Saburo Tanba from Okayama; initially, Tarouji took his mother Chiyo's maiden name to separate himself from his father. However, after a deal Saburo makes in an attempt to reform Japan accidentally results in the self-centered Manjiro Shimamura taking control & turning Japan into a dictatorship, Tarouji takes his father's last name & forms an anti-government group, the Obora Alliance, to take down Shimamura, using Saburo's wealth to finance everything. While technically Motomiya's third series for Shonen Jump, as 1972's Musashi was such a failure that it forced Motomiya to return to Gaki Daisho for one last year, Obora Ichidai definitely seems like a direct follow-up to his most successful Jump series in spirit, with Tarouji tackling a similar (semi-nebulous) thing as Mankichi did, only now instead of general societal issues it's a literal corrupt government. In that regard, it's not too surprising that Obora Ichidai would go on to be Hiroshi Motomiya's second-most successful Jump manga, running until mid-1975 for 88 chapters, collected across 11 volumes. For a good indicator as to Motomiya's popularity at the time, 25 of those chapters included color pages (eight of which leading their respective issues), with 13 of them literally happening in a row, specifically Issues 32 to 44 of 1974. This was essentially unheard of at the time, as even Gaki Daisho never went more than two consecutive issues with color pages... but, as we'll see further into this piece, Hiroshi Motomiya was truly a special exception to Jump's rules & was given treatment that almost no other mangaka has since also received.
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Outside of Japan, Kimio Yanagisawa is more or less a no name mangaka, but in Japan he's a bit of trailblazer & trendsetter, namely due to his wildly popular 1978 Weekly Shonen Magazine series Tonda Couple, which helped start the romantic comedy boom of the 80s, alongside the likes of Rumiko Takahashi's Urusei Yatsura in Weekly Shonen Sunday. However, prior to that, Yanagisawa had first made a name for himself over at Shonen Jump with his debut serialization, late 1973's Onna Darake/Riddled with Women. The series told the life of the Nozaki Family, specifically that of fifth grader Rokusuke & his five older sisters, Ichiko (who works as an office lady), Niko (a junior college student), Mitsuko (a high schooler), and twins Shitsuko & Itsuko (both in junior high). For the most part Onna Darake was a gag manga focused heavily on sexual comedy, mainly based around how beautiful all of Rokusuke's sisters were (especially Ichiko, Niko, & Mitsuko), though they were also all very capable women when it came to defending themselves, which often resulted in them teasing & bullying their little brother early on; Yanagisawa himself even makes the occasional cameo as Bechi, likely a play on the silent film benshi of old. While their mother had been dead since the start of the manga, eventually Yanagisawa wound up killing off their father, which changed the tone of the manga somewhat to one in which the Nozaki siblings build on their love for each other as a family, especially when Ichiko becomes their sole source of income, & Rokusuke's sisters ease up on their rougher behavior towards him. Even Rokusuke's teacher Mr. Yamaarashi becomes more of a father figure for our lead, as well as possible love interest for Ichiko. In the end, Onna Darake would run for 90 chapters (including the initial two one-shots) & end in late 1975, totaling seven volumes. Allegedly, after that initial tankouban run, Onna Darake would never actually get reprinted or re-released in any way, making it hard to read for the longest time, but in 2022 the entire series got re-released digitally by Smart Gate as part of a giant, 33-volume collection titled Kimio Yanagisawa Complete Works, to celebrate his 50th Anniversary as a mangaka. As of this, Kimio Yanagisawa is currently 74 years old & still making manga, though today it's mainly via his long running salaryman series Mission Section Chief Hitoshi Tadano, which he's been doing since 1998.
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Ever since the original Ages of Jump I've had some people mention a handful of manga that I neglected to include, and while I don't think every single one of them that was mentioned is really worth including, there are a couple that do feel like notable omissions, and here's our first one of those. Born on January 29, 1954, Yukinobu Hoshino would drop out of university in 1975 & move to Tokyo to become a mangaka. After making two one-shots, Hoshino would make his serialized debut in Shonen Jump with early 1976's Blue City. It's a sci-fi story about an underwater city that is constructed to deal with overpopulation, only for it to become the last bastion of humanity after a mysterious & deadly pathogen from space arrives on Earth via meteorites & spreads across the surface, followed by the UN coming up with the "brilliant" plan to literally just nuke the surface with hydrogen bombs to kill off the pathogen, leaving only underwater life (including the 20,000 citizens of Blue City) to survive; also, eventually a man named "Dr. Genocide" starts making trouble, because it's the 70s & subtext is for cowards. While only running for 18 chapters across two volumes, before ending in mid-1976, Blue City is generally looked at as a great success, establishing Yukinobu Hoshino as a name to look out for. He also quickly found a close friendship with Daijiro Morohoshi, who also made his debut with Jump (as covered in The Ages of Jump Redux) at the same time, and when Hoshino took a break from sci-fi with 1983's Yamato no Hi in Young Jump he looked to Morohoshi's work for inspiration, specifically The Dark Myth. Today, Yukinobu Hoshino is a highly regarded & celebrated mangaka known for both his detailed & intricate artwork as well as his excellent storytelling, mostly within "hard sci-fi" but sometimes dealing with ancient history & folklore. While Hoshino is now more known for titles like 2001 Nights, Yamataika (a remake of Yamato no Hi, which originally went unfinished), & his long-running Prof. Munakata Series, it all really started with Blue City, and it's not like Hoshino has forgotten it, either. Blue City would receive two sequels, 1979's Umi no Fang/Fang of the Sea & 1984's Battle Blue, and ever since 2010 all three have been compiled together as Blue City Chronicle.
The original Ages of Jump saw me cover 1972's Team Astro by Shiro Tozaki & Norihiro Nakajima, an outrageous baseball series that quickly turned into absurd, superpowered feats of insanity, so much so that Tozaki himself eventually left the series, resulting in editor Hiroki Goto (later Jump's 4th Editor-in-Chief, 1986 to 1993) needing to step in & help out, relying on reader surveys to help guide the plot towards what readers wanted to see happen; Shigeo Nishimura (Jump's 3rd EiC, from 1978 to 1986) would later call this the origin of "Making Manga for Weekly Jump". So, after Team Astro eventually got to be too much for everyone (creators, editors, AND readers!) & came to an end in 1976, where did Norihiro Nakajima go from there? That brings us to his next (solo) series, early 1977's Asataro-den/The Tale of Asataro, which told the story of Asataro Tandora, a junior high student who has a penchant for getting into fights. Worried about the kind of boy he's becoming, Asataro's father Denzo (an ex-yakuza) hires Kansuke Shinshoin, a young man who just finished time in prison, to be Asataro's tutor, and Kansuke's chivalrous spirit & outlook on life inspires Asataro to do the same, becoming someone who only fights when it's just. Deemed a "banchomono" by Nakajima himself, who also considered it his life work, Asataro-den seemingly filled in the gap left by Otoko Ippiki Gaki Daisho's finale four years prior (or Obora Ichidai's two years prior), as it seemingly portrayed Asataro as someone to look up to in how he learned to live his life, while the delinquent he still was allowed for fights to happen regularly enough; not a surprise, considering that Nakajima idolized Hiroshi Motomiya, even calling him "Onii-chan/Big Brother". Over time, Asataro-den managed to run for 108 chapters before ending in early 1979 after 11 volumes, though at least there are no indications that Nakajima pushed himself to the point of various health issues this time around, like what happened with Team Astro; he also once literally "stopped the presses" with Team Astro, but promised to never do that again. Norihiro Nakajima would continue making manga for Jump until mid-1982, while also making manga elsewhere, until he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage on August 2, 1985, which effectively ended his career. Nakajima would later make three more short manga in 1988, 1989, & 1998 before eventually resigning to a simple life of watching TV & reading newspapers (according to his son, a monk who's also an award-winning essayist), before passing away of colon cancer on August 28, 2014 at the age of 64.
Without a doubt, Norihiro Nakajima is probably one of the most unsung mangaka in Jump's history, as the sheer insanity & superpowered feats he drew in Team Astro would go on to highly influence shonen action as we know it today (& he certainly pushed himself beyond his limits, just like a shonen manga lead would), though we can also see that there was more to him than just that, via Asataro-den.
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The second Hiroshi Motomiya manga slots in right here, and while it may sound rather unassuming by its title, it does have a rather unique concept behind it... and is, by far, the showpiece for how Jump treated Motomiya as someone special during this time. Debuting in early 1978, Sawayaka Mantaro/Mantaro the Invigorating stars Mantaro Hanami, a second-year student at Private Ban Academy who has a deep respect for Miyamoto Musashi & is a rare male offspring of the Hanami lineage, which is primarily female. With the encouragement & cheering of Satsuki Matsudaira, the first female offspring of her family's lineage in 230 years (& Mantaro's finaceé by way of arranged marriage), Mantaro finds himself engaging in all manner of sports-based competition to help out the various clubs in his school, including ice hockey, soccer, boxing, kendo, and baseball (his all-time favorite). We've all heard of sports manga, but the direction Motomiya went with Sawayaka Mantaro definitely sounds like a truly unique one, allowing for a multitude of different sports to be featured & showcasing the value of a jack-of-all-trades, instead of the usual type of sports series lead. This manga also marked the start of Motomiya's professional partnership with Jun Morita, a female mangaka who debuted around the same time as Motomiya, with the two eventually getting married & having some children; Morita would do the initial rough sketches for Motomiya's female characters. Sawayaka Mantaro would go on to be Motomiya's third-longest series for Jump, running for 84 chapters (including the original one-shot) before ending in mid-1979 after 10 volumes. By this point, Shigeo Nishimura was now EiC at Shonen Jump, and he felt that Jump owed its very existence to Hiroshi Motomiya (& Gaki Daisho) so much that he gave Motomiya carte blanche to do whatever manga he wanted in Shonen Jump during his tenure... and maybe even give his manga special treatment.
I say this because Sawayaka Mantaro was absolutely inundated with color pages for its chapters, so much so that I think the other mangaka might have possibly claimed preferential treatment. The first five chapters of the serialized run were all given "lead color", so they all had full color opening pages (at the very least) & led their respective issues; there have been a couple of series since that also pulled something like this off, but those were all limited/short-run series. After that, though, the next nine chapters all had color pages of some sort, resulting in 14 straight weeks of Sawayaka Mantaro being given special treatment from the beginning. Even after that, the series wouldn't go for more than a single issue without color pages until after Chapter 32, and no more than two straight issues until after Chapter 42; in other words, by the halfway point of this series (& almost an entire year in), close to 3/4 of the chapters had color pages, to some extent! Even though the second half only had nine chapters with color pages, hence why I think the other mangaka might have spoken up, that still meant that 41 out of 84 chapters (including the one-shot) had color pages of some sort, or 48.8%. The only manga to surpass that (in terms of percentage) would be Level E in the mid-90s with 56.25% of the chapters having color pages, & Otoko no Joken in 1969 with 63.16%, but those were only 16 & 19 chapters long, respectively; Sawayaka Mantaro was four or fives times longer than either of those! This wouldn't quite be the end of Hiroshi Motomiya being given special treatment, but it was certainly the last time anything by him was given something this absurdly indulgent.
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In the original Ages of Jump I included both Doberman Cop & Black Angels, easily the two most iconic Jump manga to come from Shinji Hiramatsu, who got his start in manga as an assistant to Norihiro Nakajima during Team Astro. However, in between those two series, Hiramatsu had another series that probably should also be acknowledged, despite it running shorter than either of them. That being said, though, it also was more than five times longer than anything else he did for Shonen Jump, so let's go over early 1980's Ricky Typhoon. The series Hiramatsu did in between Doberman Cop & Black Angels, it followed the life of Ricky Yamato, a wrestler trained by the legendary Lou Thesz himself, who returns to Japan with the American wrestling troupe he was working with to be a part of the event commemorating the 16th Anniversary of the death of Rikiougan (a fictional Rikidozan), who secretly was Ricky's father. During the event, Ricky winds up fighting another wrestler who harasses Kyoko Shima, a local flower girl, & as a way to stay in Japan to be with her asks Giant Baba if he could join All Japan Pro Wrestling. Meanwhile, Karl Gotch (Japan's "God of Wrestling) asks Antonio Inoki if his latest student, Narcis Strauss, can join New Japan Pro Wrestling, becoming a rival of sorts for Ricky. As you can see, Ricky Typhoon took a page from Tiger Mask by being very strongly linked to real life pro wrestling, right down to using actual pro wrestlers & promotions, with the manga even going as far as eventually having Ricky compete for both the AWA & NWA Junior titles (neither of which actually existed, at least in the way they're thought of here), while Ricky voiced interested in even going for the WWWF Title (even though the promotion had already changed its name to the WWF in 1979, a little before the manga debuted). Inspired by his memories of watching matches involving the likes of Rikidozan & The Destroyer, and apparently even doing some actual training in the ring to get it right, Hiramatsu would serialize Ricky Typhoon until mid-1981, when it ended after 79 chapters across nine volumes, showing a different side of the man who'd become best known for his darker & grittier stories. Hiramatsu wouldn't forget his wrestling manga, though, as he would make titles that take place in the same world as Ricky Typhoon. 1979's Mr. Lady technically predates it, with one of the characters seen in Ricky Typhoon (Mr. Gal) being the titular lead's sister. Meanwhile, 1997's Dosukoi Gigolo sees Ricky himself cameo as a wrestling trainer, & 2008's Ricky the Lady was a short-lived sequel about MMA starring a woman who claimed to be Ricky's daughter.
Today, Shinji Hiramatsu is still making manga, and even made an autobiographical series, 2016's I Become a Gedoh-man, in which he goes over his time as an assistant to Norihiro Nakajima & his experience making Doberman Cop.
Up next is the last Hiroshi Motomiya manga we'll ever cover here in The Ages of Jump, and in one regard it's quite possibly the most important one that Motomiya ever did, at least in terms of how Jump would go on to treat certain finales of some of its series. In 1974, Motomiya did a one-shot for Monthly Shonen Jump titled Kouha Yamazaki Ginjiro/Ginjiro Yamazaki, The Tough Guy, and it had enough interest that Motomiya was able to turn it into a proper series, now simply titled Kouha Ginjiro/Tough Guy Ginjiro, that ran in Monthly Jump from 1975 to 1978 for nine volumes, though there was also a short-lived "Part 2" made in 1979 that never got a collected release; it'd even receive a three-episode OVA adaptation by Bandai Visual's C-Moon label in 1991. This series told the story of Ginjiro Yamazaki, a student at Tencha Middle School who lives alone, works part-time as a paperboy, & gladly beats up anyone who messes with his classmates, only for things to start changing when he meets Takako Ozawa, a new transfer student that he falls for; "Part 1" ended with Ginjiro leaving a letter for Takako. For whatever reason, after the short-lived Part 2 run, it was decided that Ginjiro's story would return in Weekly Jump, resulting in mid-1980's Yamazaki Ginjiro, which detailed our titular character's high school life at Seishin Academy, one after he & Takako seemingly had a falling out. As was still (relatively) usual for Motomiya at the time, Yamazaki Ginjiro maintained "high" placement in Jump's Table of Contents throughout its entire run, only going below the top five for its last eight chapters, before ending in mid-1981 after 44 chapters across five volumes; even today, this manga is the third-highest ranked series (on average) in Jump history, behind only One Piece & Kouya no Shonen Isamu. However, Yamazaki Ginjiro's importance in Jump history is specifically about how it came to an end, at least in regards to real life, not the in-universe story. Aside from seeing Ginjiro & Takako reconcile & finally kiss, before getting married, Yamazaki Ginjiro would be the first manga in Jump to ever get the cover all to itself for its final chapter, something that (so far) has only been replicated twice in the 42 years since, namely with Slam Dunk in 1996 & Kochikame in 2016; however, Yamazaki Ginjiro's final chapter received no color pages whatsoever & didn't start its issue. The entire Kouha Yamazaki Ginjiro series has also managed to stand the test of time by way of being the literal namesake of some stuff, too, with Globeat Japan's ramen noodle shop chain Buta Soba Ginjiro (& Frito-Lays' 2006 snack named after the shop) being named after the character, & with the official blessing of Motomiya himself (that's neat!), while catcher Ginjiro Sumitani of the NPB's Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles has admitted that he's named after the manga, despite the differing kanji for "Ginjiro".
And, with that, we've seen the end of Hiroshi Motomiya here on The Ages of Jump. Following Yamazaki Ginjiro, Motomiya would make another four manga for Jump, ending with 1986's Sekiryu-Oh, which he'd finish up in Super Jump; Shigeo Nishimura's tenure as EiC ended during Sekiryu-Oh's run, & with it Motomiya's carte blanche stipulation. Of those, the only one worth truly mentioning would be 1983's Tenchi wo Kurau, which I already covered in The Ages of Jump Redux, but Hiroshi Motomiya still reigns supreme to this day with the record for most individual series in Weekly Shonen Jump history, at 11 different manga. As of this piece, Hiroshi Motomiya continues to make manga, 55 years after his debut in Jump, and while he may no longer be a direct influence of most new mangaka today, his importance in inspiring & even teaching other legendary mangaka is undeniable. I mean, his list of former assistants includes the likes of Buronson, Tetsuya Saruwatari, Tatsuya Egawa, & (allegedly) Masami Kurumada, so Motomiya's influence on modern manga is unquestionable.
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And, coincidentally enough, up next is a manga by one of those very people that Hiroshi Motomiya helped inspire & (indirectly) taught! Akira Miyashita got his start in manga as an assistant to Yoshihiro Takahashi, of Akutare Giants & Ginga -Nagareboshi Gin- fame, during the monthly serialization of Takahashi's original dog-based manga, 1976's Shiroi Senshi Yamato. However, Takahashi himself was a former assistant of Motomiya's, so when Miyashita made his own serialized debut with 1979's Shiritsu Kiwamemichi Koukou/Private Extreme Path High School, it actually came with an introduction written by Motomiya himself, who personally had called the editor & recommended that it be included in Jump ASAP after reading the manuscript. Unfortunately, one of Miyashita's assistants from Shiga Prefecture wound up using the names & symbols of actual schools, & even students, from that region without permission, resulting in understandable controversy that wound up in the cancellation of that series after 42 chapters. However, Miyashita was given a second chance, which he took with mid-1980's Geki! Gokutora Ikka/The Fierce Gokutora Family!, which acts as a sequel to Kiwamemechi, of sorts. It stars Tora, a young countryboy of a teenager whose power is only matched by his stomach. During a school trip he encounters Masa Gakubo, the main character of Kiwamemechi who has since established his own "Gokumasa Family", and loses to him in a fight, which in turn makes Tora want to follow Masa & the Gokumasa Family by attending Abashiri Gokuto Juvi, sneaking his way in by taking another person's place. After finishing his time there Tora establishes the "Gokutora Family" (with Masa joining him), which unites to tackle anything in their way, even if it takes them all the way to the halls of the Diet itself. Miyashita would serialize Geki! Gokutora Ikka until late 1982 after 111 chapters, across 12 volumes, making it his second-longest manga for Jump, behind only Sakigake!! Otoko Juku; nothing else Miyashita would make for Shonen Jump would even surpass Kiwamemichi's length. Akira Miyashita would stick with the magazine all the way until early 1995, or close to 16 years, before moving on to making seinen manga, primarily focused on the Otoko Juku series, though he'd eventually unite it with Kiwamemichi (&, in turn, Gokutora Ikka), revealing them as all taking place in the same universe.
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Today, the idea of Shonen Jump having more than one manga based around the same sport sounds ridiculous, but this was much more common back in the day. The 70s, for example, saw Jump have as many as three or four baseball manga running simultaneously, and the same was true slightly for the 80s as well, as while Captain Tsubasa was the undisputed kind of soccer manga for Jump during that decade, it wasn't the only one to make a name for itself. Cue early 1982's Kick Off by Taku Chiba (real name Yoshikazu Itakura), which looks to be their first serialized manga & tells the tale of Taiyo Nagai, a former track & field star in middle school who's now starting high school. After seeing the beautiful Yumi Kawamura, who's the manager of the soccer team, Taiyo breaks his promise to join his brother on the baseball team & instead joins his buddy Ichiro Maeda for the soccer team, mainly so that he can get Yumi's attention; so now that's three Jump sports manga I know of that use the "lead only joins the team because of a girl" concept. However, while Captain Tsubasa was more or a less a "pure" soccer manga, Kick Off was only half that (at best), as it was also a romantic comedy, specifically one that parodied the genre that was still surging in popularity. Taiyo & Yumi would constantly refer to each other with the "-chan" suffix in their minds, and a recurring gag saw Chiba spend an entire page just having the two of them stare at each other while hearts fly around them; one fan even counted how often this happened, with the total being 186, or an average of almost twice/chapter. Shigeo Nishimura would call Kick Off a "thorough mocking of romantic comedies" & considered it a spiritual successor to 1977's Susume!! Pirates by Hisashi Eguchi, which was also a parodic sports manga, while manga critic Tsuyoshi Ito would later say that reading Kick Off would give him a strange, intoxicating sense, similar to when he listened to trance or techno music. However, the series was successful enough for its time, running until the end of 1983 for 97 chapters (including the original one-shot), across 12 volumes, and it'd easily be Taku Chiba's most iconic work in his career. The debut issue of Fresh Jump in 1982 even saw Chiba make a one-shot sequel titled Sono go no Kick Off/Kick Off, Afterwards that showed what Taiyo & Yumi were doing during college (again, this was while the main series was still running), while in December of 1999 Chiba made another sequel one-shot titled Kick Off 2 that appeared in a mook published by World Photo Press titled Comic Figure King. Unfortunately, Taku Chiba would pass away on February 27, 2016 of renal pelvic cancer at the age of 56.
And with that we say "Farewell" to not just the Bronze Age for the last time, but also the 80s in general! Yeah, I actually managed to cover all of the notable stuff from the Golden Age of Jump's first half in the prior two Ages of Jump runs, so we're going to skip right ahead to the early 90s to finish this first "Encore" off.
Amusing that I covered a soccer manga not done by Yoichi Takahashi in the prior entry, because up next we have a manga done by Takahashi himself that ISN'T Captain Tsubasa... in fact, it's not even a soccer manga! Now, to be fair, Takahashi has made numerous manga about other sports, like tennis (Sho no Densetsu), ski jumping (100m Jumper), basketball (Basuke), & boxing (Chibi), but beyond his iconic soccer series only one of them seemed to catch on in its own right, though still nowhere near the legendary status that Tsubasa has. That would be early 1990's Ace!, a baseball manga about Kazuya Aiba, a new transfer student at Wakamiya Elementary who has been given special pitching training by his father, which in turn helps his school's team (the Wakamiya Fighters) manage to survive being disbanded by not just helping recruit enough members to properly play but also aim to win the regional tournament, which the Fighters lost the previous year. Takahashi himself used to play for his local nankyu baseball team, so this was a series that came from an earnest love & respect for the sport, but in true Yoichi Takahashi fashion this didn't aim for 100% realism. Just as in Captain Tsubasa, Ace! took inspiration from the likes of Team Astro & Ring ni Kakero, with various players having their own "special moves" that despite being real pitches (forkball, knuckleball, crossfire) were portrayed in fantastical ways, while the players themselves performed seemingly superhuman feats unthinkable for elementary school students. Not just that, but Takahashi also implemented some heavy, non-sports, drama into the plot, like the death of Kazuya's father & even his little brother being kidnapped! While Ace! seemed to do consistently well in Jump for its first year or so, eventually it slowly lost readers' interest before ending in mid-1991 after 73 chapters, right in the middle of the semifinals of the regional tournament, though Takahashi was allowed to properly finish the story via three of Jump's Seasonal Specials, from the (mid) 1991 Summer Special to the (early) 1992 Winter Special; the series, as a whole, would total nine volumes. Still, Ace! would go on to be Takahashi's longest non-Tsubasa manga in Jump, and it would become inspirational in its own right, even reaching as far as the MLB in North America, technically! In particular, now-retired pitcher Hideki Okajima (who started with the Yomiuri Giants & eventually would play for both the Boston Red Sox & Oakland A's) admitted that his unique pitching form came from him wanting to replicate the way Kazuya Aiba pitched in Ace!, a manga he loved reading as a teenager, which often resulted in Kazuya's cap flying off from the force; Okajima believed imitating the manga made him throw harder. Considering that Okajima would wind up being the first Japanese-born pitcher to ever play in the World Series in 2007, I think that more than gives Ace! a legacy worth acknowledging & celebrating.
Also, once again, it's proof that over-the-top sports manga/anime can be just as influential in the real world as more realistic fare has been.
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Serendipity can be a funny thing, because what we wind up having here is a Yoichi Takahashi manga that isn't about soccer being sandwiched between two soccer manga! With Kick Off acting as one (sweet tasting) piece of bread, the other (spicier) piece winds up being the series that Makoto Niwano made after finishing up The Momotaroh back in late 1989. Yeah, it might sound a bit weird for a mangaka known in Jump mainly for his wrestling & jiujitsu series to tackle "The World's Game", but that's exactly what he did with early 1991's Cho Kidou Bohatsu Soccer Yarou: Libero no Takeda/Super Mobile Spontaneous Soccer Guy: Takeda the Libero. The series starred Tama Takeda, a teenager with an absolute love of soccer & a startlingly fast dash, but due to various circumstances has never actually gotten the chance to play a game, & after transferring between schools 13 times finally sticks with Akebono High School's soccer team, finding himself in the position of libero/sweeper, a more free-form type of defensive center-back. With a (more than likely purposefully done) lengthy title like that & a main character whose name is the literal kanji for "bullet", I think it's easy to take a guess that Libero no Takeda went with a more exaggerated take on soccer, with characters having their own specialty moves, most notably Tama's Bazooka Channel. From what I can tell by looking it up, it literally changes the alpha waves of the brain of the person who uses it into "harahorohire waves" (i.e. a trance-like state), which in turn allows the person to kick with the force of a bazooka due to the high tension they put their body through, and if the person didn't have stable brain waves prior to using the Bazooka Channel then they risk coming out of the move in an infantile state. Not just that, but eventually Tama manages to get a powerful muay thai fighter to join the team by beating him in an MMA match, and the final match of the entire manga sees Tama & his team take on a literal J-League team managed by Tama's father, who eventually winds up taking on his son in a 1-on-1 battle to end it all; this entire manga sounds so utterly insane that I honestly kind of love it. Anyway, Libero no Takeda would wind up running for 84 chapters before ending at the end of 1992, totaling nine volumes. Makoto Niwano would follow up Libero no Takeda with (the now infamous) Bomber Girl in early 1994 before finding his biggest success with the original Majima-kun manga, and then would eventually leave Shonen Jump after 1998. Niwano has since shown no hesitation in reviving his old catalog in various ways, and the same is true with his soccer manga, as in 2002 he made a sequel, subtitled 2002-nen Sekai Hishou-hen/2002 World Flight Chapter, which ran for four chapters in Shueisha's Manga Allman (which literally stopped getting published mere issues after this ended; I swear Niwano is cursed!) & sees Tama (who had since been spending his time in the African jungle, because why not?) being asked to act as the trump card for the Japan national team in the Grand Cup tournament.
It is interesting that all Makoto Niwano has ever received for official English release are Bomber Girl & his manga adaptation of Deltora Quest, and fan translations aren't really any better, because it's undeniable that his real forté has always been in sports series, whether it's wrestling, soccer, or (essentially) MMA, and it's a shame that I don't think we'll ever get the chance to see what he truly excels at.
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We end this first half of The Ages of Jump Encore with another debut serialization from someone I previously covered in the original Ages of Jump back in 2016, Tsunomaru. The pen name for Chiba's Masaaki Tsuno, Tsunomaru first made his mark in 1990 when his one-shot Saru Taishi/Ambassador Monkey won the "Semi-King" award (i.e second place) as part of Shueisha's now-defunct Gag King award for gag manga. This then got him the chance to publish another one-shot in Jump's 1991 Spring Special, alongside getting Saru Taishi published, before eventually making his serialized debut with early 1992's MonMonMon. This gag manga starred Monmon, a monkey who finds himself thrown into (literal) Monkey Prison for stealing beans, and when prison warden Goto tries crushing Monmon's generally cheery demeanor by having the rest of the monkey prisoners beat the crap out of him, they instead all befriend Monmon (& later his little brother Monchak, who also gets thrown into the prison) & eventually revolt against Goto, turning Monkey Prison into a safe haven for monkeys. However, just as what Tsunomaru did with his later (& more iconic) Midori no Makibao, MonMonMon wasn't just about the dirty humor & slapstick, as it also told a dramatic overall story filled with various arcs. This included having to deal with a food shortage at the prison, Monmon & Monchak going out to look for their parents, & even seeing Monmon go on a journey to prove that the Earth is round, as his family & classmates all think its flat; some have interpreted Monmon as being Tsunomaru's self-insert character, which Tsunomaru hasn't really rebuked. What's all the more impressive is that Tsunomaru managed to tell all of these stories in just shy of two whole years, as the series would end in late 1993 after 85 chapters (including the original one-shot), totaling eight volumes... however, that isn't quite the full truth. In reality, MonMonMon got cancelled after Issue #50 of 1993, despite future chapters apparently being promoted in that same issue; there's been no word on what exactly happened. Regardless, Tsunomaru was able to include the unpublished chapters in Volume 8, including the ending... which sees Monmon drown while protecting Monchak. This was Tsunomaru's way of paying homage to Ashita no Joe, which also saw a beloved character die in Volume 8, and he'd do it again in Volume 8 of Midori no Makibao. However, this wouldn't be the last we'd see of Monmon, as in early 2016 (the Year of the Monkey), Tsunomaru would make the two-part Kaetekitta MonMonMon/The Return of MonMonMon, which appeared in both Weekly Playboy magazine (Chapter 1) & the digital-only Weekly PlayNews (Chapter 2). Despite his art style that results in characters looking very primate-like & his penchant for dirty humor, Tsunomaru has shown that he can also tell highly dramatic stories between all the jokes, and it's a shame that he's never been given the chance officially in English.
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This brings an end to the first half of The Ages of Jump Encore, and I must admit that I was just a tad too hasty to say that it was truly "finished" with the 2018 Redux. As we can see already from this first half, there were still 100+ chapter series to acknowledge, titles that ran just shy of triple digits but still made their mark, and even some shorter works that acted as early introductions to future legends. However, I should point out that the reason to return to The Ages of Jump one last time was primarily due to the Bronze Age works that made up the majority of this first half. When I did both of the original Ages of Jump sets in 2016 & 2018, I made a distinct focus to keep things as balanced as possible, resulting in the original run each having roughly the same amount of titles covered for each Age, minus the Dark/Heroic Age due to its short length, and the Redux was similarly focused on divvying up titles equally (minus the Dark/Heroic Age, once again). However, the same couldn't exactly be said for this final run, as while the Bronze, Golden, & Silver Ages were again focused on being as equal as possible, the Bronze Age wound up having just that bit more to cover, for completeness's sake, hence why it takes up almost the entirety of this first half.
At least this time, I truly feel that we've mined out Jump's pre-Golden Age as much as realistically possible, so that's nice.
Next Time on The Ages of Jump: The Golden & Silver Ages both have just a little bit more history to go over, though admittedly it's mostly in regard to their creators, their infamy, or their attempts to stave off cancellation (some more successfully than others). Also, the Dark/Heroic Age even manages to sneak in one last time.
It's the final curtain call!
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