I (jokingly) call these the Acknowledged, But Unloved. Of course, like last time, let's just start with the most obvious one of them all...
In the annals of Shonen Jump history, there have only been four manga that have received the holy grail of veneration: The Full-Color Final Chapter. Many manga that are seen as successes will receive the first few pages in full-color, i.e. like it was a Western comic book, for their final chapters, as a way to pay respect to its legacy, but only four had their final chapters done in full-color for their entire lengths. The first, Ring ni Kakero by Masami Kurumada, will NEVER see an official English release of any sort; hell, it can't even get an unofficial English scanlation of any sort of actual length or dedication! The second & fourth, Dragon Ball by Akira Toriyama & Naruto by Masashi Kishimoto, are two of the most iconic manga ever in North America. Meanwhile, the third series, Slam Dunk by Takehiko Inoue, has had a bumpy road to a full, official, English release. At first, Gutsoon! Entertainment, the US division of Coamix (founded by former Jump editor Nobuhiko Horie & City Hunter's Tsukasa Hojo), gave it a go, serializing it in Raijin Comics, which was essentially the rival magazine to Viz's Shonen Jump, & five compiled volumes would see release from 2003 to 2004, before Gutsoon called it quits. Combined with Toei's own botched DVD release of the anime the next year, it seemed as if one of the most iconic & popular manga in history, one that literally made the entire sport of basketball popular in Japan throughout the 90s, would never see a proper, complete release in North America.
Viz first gave hints of Slam Dunk being given a second chance in mid-2005, where it was revealed in an issue of Shojo Beat (oddly enough) that the manga was "coming soon", though it was coy about which publisher would be handling it. Then, at Comic-Con International 2007, Viz ended its industry panel by announcing that it would be releasing Slam Dunk under the Shonen Jump label, starting in 2008. Viz also did some cross-promotion with the NBA & it was even serialized in the magazine itself for a little under a year to help get interest; it's obvious that this was a manga that Viz had wanted to do, & wanted to do it right. So, from late 2008 to the end of 2013, without a single change to its bimonthly schedule, all 31 volumes of Slam Dunk finally saw release in English, officially; no idea if it sold well or not, though. Unfortunately, though, there was no accompanying digital release at all, and that is mainly because of Takehiko Inoue himself. Similar to Naoki Urusawa, Inoue has been notoriously against allowing his works to be made available digitally, & this isn't just an international thing. This also applies to Japan, which would help explain why a re-release of Slam Dunk last year made the manga the fourth-best-selling series in Japan for the entire year (& ninth-best-selling media franchise, in general) over there.
However, Inoue's stance on digital sales looks to be changing, as it was recently announced that his acclaimed wheelchair basketball manga Real will have a new chapter in Young Jump this upcoming February, and with that will be a digital release of the manga in Japan, the first ever. That might mean that Slam Dunk eventually getting added to the Shonen Jump Vault may no longer be a matter of "if", but rather "when". Who knows, maybe Viz might toss in Real, too, if we're lucky...
Up next in this part we have another case of "Viz licensed the manga because the anime was airing on television", but at least this license made sense by being related to a popular anime; it's also proof that just because something is popular in one format, it won't always translate to others. After ending Kinnikuman in early 1987, manga duo Yudetamago mostly failed to create manga that wound up with even a modicum of their debut work's success. Eleven years later, in early 1998, the duo of writer Takashi Shimada & artist Yoshinori Nakai decided to return to the series that put them on the map with Kinnikuman II-Sei (pronounced "Nisei", as in "Second Generation"), which told the story of a new generation of Chojin/Supermen, many of which were the offspring of the original Kinnikuman cast. Though technically written for adults who were fans of the original manga, seeing as it ran in Shueisha's Weekly Playboy magazine (no relation to what we know as Playboy Magazine), Toei Animation still saw the potential in adapting it into anime to create a new generation of fans; an alternate manga for kids, also done by Yudetamago, then ran in V Jump from 2001 to 2007. So, across all of 2002, a TV anime adaptation aired on TV Tokyo, replacing the more lewd & adult-oriented humor with sillier jokes meant for kids. A year before the anime even debuted, though (even before the first movie!), 4Kids Entertainment had already licensed the anime, first under the name "Kinnikuman: The Ultimate Muscle", which eventually debuted on Fox Kids in mid-2002 as Ultimate Muscle: The Kinnikuman Legacy.
4Kids' adaptation of the anime is easily the most curious one in the history of the company, because it was easily the least "kiddy" one of them all. In fact, whereas Toei removed all of the crass, adult-oriented humor originally in the manga, the writers at 4Kids added to the dub a ton of jokes, references, & innuendo blatantly meant for adults that would otherwise fly over kids' heads (Dik Dik Van Dik, anyone?). Regardless, the anime was a big hit, resulting in 4Kids commissioning Toei to produce two more seasons, another 26 episodes in total, just so that the Chojin Olympics story arc, which the original anime only started, could be told in full! At that point, it was a no-brainer for Viz to finally get a piece of the pie, licensing the original II-Sei manga & releasing it under the Shonen Jump label... Even though that series was NOT a Jump manga. The end result of this choice was some early censorship, mainly because early on Yudetamago really embraced things like erection jokes & bare-breasted women, which really didn't fly with the SJ brand at the time. In fact, after the first volume or two in early 2004, Viz introduced the Shonen Jump Advanced label, meant for titles for older teens & above, with those first couple volumes of Ultimate Muscle quickly getting reprinted under the SJA label; today, those SJ-branded volumes look to be pretty rare. Regardless, the manga itself eventually dropped the adult humor, instead delivering a more standard Kinnikuman experience, complete with harsh & bloody violence; similarly, Viz's censorship stopped after the halfway point. Anyway, halfway through the series (15 volumes of 29), Viz slowed down the manga's release from bimonthly to triannually, due to low sales, before releasing the last volume in mid-2011; obviously, there was no interest in doing the Ultimate Chojin Tag Chapter crossover sequel/prequel.
Since then, Viz has never given Ultimate Muscle any sort of digital re-release, though it still has listings for all 29 volumes on its website, so the publisher likely still has the rights to it. Now one could make a guess that Yudetamago simply aren't interested in digital releases of their manga, but that's actually not the case here, as all of Kinnikuman II-Sei, as well as seemingly the duo's entire catalog (even stuff that wasn't originally done for Shueisha), are currently available for digital purchase under the Jump Comics label in Japan. In the end, this really looks to simply be down to Viz not having any interest at all in ever re-releasing the Ultimate Muscle manga, there's word that some of the people at Viz looked at it as a black sheep, and with the anime never having been license rescued I honestly can't really blame the publisher for a lack of interest. I'd love to see it happen, as it's a great series, but I'm not exactly waiting with anticipation for it, either.
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| At least we got this cover from Viz's release, because it's seriously one of the greatest of all time. |
This next entry is kind of bizarre to explain, but at the same time one could argue that it matches the absurd bizarreness of the manga itself. Running from early 2001 to late 2005 for 21 volumes, Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo by Yoshio Sawai is a gag/action manga unlike any other, combining together a lightning barrage of puns, gags, non-sequiturs, references, & Jump-styled action in a way that truly can be defined as unpredictable, and pity to anyone who actually tries to translate this insanity into another language (just ask the Discotek Media crew who did the soon-to-be-released SD-BD boxset for the entire anime). Still, with the anime's airing on Toonami getting itself some notoriety, Viz decided to give manga readers a taste of Sawai's original version, so an excerpt was included in an issue Shonen Jump magazine, which saw good reception. With that, Viz decided to put out a special, 256-page Bobobo book in late 2005, which covered a story arc housed within Volume 9, plus the epilogue of said arc that made up the start of Volume 10; there was no committal to doing the entire manga, but it wasn't out of the question. Today, this (more or less) standalone release is sometimes referred to as "SJ Advanced Bobobo", since it has no Volume # & that was the label it was released under. Unfortunately, this specific book is not currently listed on Viz's website.
Then, in mid-2007 as part of the SJ Evolution initiative, Viz brought back Bobobo as a regular series in the magazine, continuing off from where the previous release stopped at. This "SJ Bobobo" continued until late 2010, with "Volume 5" (which in reality was Volume 15) seeing a compiled release that October. After that, Viz stopped releasing any more Bobobo, with the publisher simply stating that those five volumes-worth of manga was all they were really planning to do, in the first place; at the very least, these books are still listed on Viz's website. Meanwhile, the first eight volumes predating the SJ Advanced book & the remaining six volumes after "Volume 5" have yet to see any sort of official English release, let alone the 7-volume Shinsetsu Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo sequel that Sawai did from 2005 to 2007. Amusingly enough, the original manga has still yet to even be fully scanlated, it's currently only at Volume 19, even though Shinsetsu's fan translation finished up a few years ago. Anyway, I'm of various minds about this situation. On the one hand, I can certainly see why Viz was hesitant with going full-bore into Bobobo, hence why it was given this bizarre, double-segmented, partial release that only covers roughly from Volume 9 through Volume 15. On the other hand, doing the release like this did turn off potential buyers, because as absurd as the plotting can be, it does still have an actual plot to it, so people would prefer to start from the beginning. On the third hand, I can totally understand why the people at Viz have never given Bobobo a digital re-release, & likely will never add it to the SJ Vault, as they'd just get inundated with constant complaints about where "the rest of the manga" is, and in this case they'd be getting it from both sides, as we'd be missing the first third AND the second third.
Again, I pity anyone who has to deal with translating this series, as it's likely the translation equivalent of K2; it may not be the "tallest" out there, but it's definitely one of the most challenging.
On rare occasion, Viz licenses manga from Weekly Shonen Jump's lesser-known sister magazine, Jump Square (formerly Monthly Shonen Jump), & a number of them are currently available in the SJ Vault; also, no, Steam Detectives doesn't count, as it was "flipped" only. Specifically, there's Claymore, Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee, Rosaro + Vampire, Blue Exorcist, Seraph of the End, & Platinum End; other Jump Square manga have also been licensed by Seven Seas & Dark Horse. There are others, though, but only one remains without a digital release, yet is still acknowledged over at the publisher's website, Nora: The Last Chronicle of Devildom by Kazunari Kakei. It focuses on the forced companionship between Kazuma, a straight-A student council president, & Nora, a rebellious member of the underworld's demon police force, and how Nora's boss Dark Liege forces him to stay in the human world & learn obedience by being magically sealed to Kazuma. When outlaw demons start appearing amongst the humans, Kazuma & Nora are the ones who have to stop them by way of Nora's magic... But only if Kazuma allows it, and if Nora starts being a nuisance, a single command will force Nora's collar to choke him. By the way, the choice of a neck collar is because Nora's actually the reincarnation of the mythical three-headed dog Cerberus.
To be perfectly honest, there really isn't much info out there regarding Nora, & my experience with it is only reading the first volume when it originally came out in late 2008, of which I remember little. There isn't even anything of note in regards to Kazunari Kakei, as all I can find is that he did Nora in Monthly Jump from early 2004 to late 2006 for nine volumes, & then in 2007 debuted Surebrec - Nora the 2nd, a single-volume sequel(?) series about a girl named Raika who's hunting after a mysterious drug called Surebrec (which is just "Cerberus" backwards), before running into a boy named Nora Kujo. It's short length was due to Monthly Shonen Jump's cancellation in mid-2007, Jump Square would take its place the following December, & obviously Viz never licensed it. After that, Kazunari Kakei seemingly disappeared, never to be seen again; there isn't even a Japanese Wikipedia page for Kakei or either Nora manga. As for the English release, Viz released all nine volumes from late 2008 to early 2010 without any problems, though why Surebrec never saw release is a little odd (I mean, it's literally just one volume), and even announced that it would receive a digital re-release in late 2013, alongside Saint Seiya, but it never happened; this entire manga just seriously screams "Viz was forced to release it by Shueisha". Had that digital re-release happened, Nora really could have gone either way in terms of being included in the SJ Vault, but as it is today... Who knows?
Finally, we have our first truly "cancelled" manga from Viz for the list, and it's one that still stings for some to this day. Debuting back at the tail end of 2003, Gintama by Hideaki Sorachi quickly became a special series for Weekly Shonen Jump, being able to switch between zany manzai-style comedy that prided itself on anachronisms & pop-culture references, almost like it was Kochikame, & serious action spectacle filled with deep characterization & heartfelt emotion, like it was a standard action series, & it could do so at the drop of a dime. Not surprisingly, Viz wanted a part of it ASAP, so it previewed the first chapter in its Shonen Jump magazine in December of 2005, only two years after it debuted in Japan. A year later, "Gin Tama" (as Viz spelled it) became a regular part of the English SJ magazine for the next four months, before becoming only available via compiled volumes, starting in mid 2007. By this point, the manga was already 18 volumes long in Japan, so it's obvious that Viz would likely never truly catch up, but Viz stuck with it, releasing new volumes bimonthly all the way until mid-2010, which coincidentally happened to be Volume 18. After that, the release slowed down to trimonthly, not as bad as some other series we've covered, but only a year later it all came to an end with Volume 23 in mid-2011.
Of course, Volume 23 wasn't anywhere near the end of Gintama, no matter what Viz's website claims. In Japan, the manga was entering the 40s, & only actually came to an end earlier this year, after 77 volumes! As for why Viz stopped releasing the manga, it was obviously due to low sales, not to mention it being a much more intensive translation effort than most other Jump manga; it could be debated whether this or Bobobo was the tougher one to translate. Also, & this is something we'll get into more detail with in Part 3, there's also the strong possibility that Gintama was just another manga that Shueisha forced onto Viz to release, and while it likely did marginally better than some others (since most of those were stopped in 2010), it still just wound up under-performing & was deemed expendable in a time where Viz was apparently going through some changes. To be fair, Gintama has only really achieved a notable fandom in North America within the past few years, and even then it's not exactly one of the biggest ones out there, all of which was really only due to the anime being simulcast over at Crunchyroll. Sentai Filmworks' attempted sub-only DVD boxset release of the first 50 episodes happened back during Viz's release of the manga & similarly under-performed, though Sentai did at least release the first movie in 2012, so it could be argued that Viz was simply well ahead of the curve when it started releasing the manga. At the same time, though, Viz kind of had no other choice but to start releasing the manga when it did, especially now that we know just how long the manga wound up being. To be fair, however, Viz has continued to supply its release of the manga to those who want it, as my local Barnes & Noble has a copy of Volume 1 for sale, and it's that specific book's eighth printing, which happened back in late 2018, years after new volumes stopped being released.
Similar to Bobobo, though, I highly doubt that Viz will ever make Gintama available digitally at all, let alone make it a part of the SJ Vault, because doing so will only prompt people to ask for more of it, and that's not something Viz will likely want to deal with.
Now, for a bonus, here are two manga Viz once fully released that I can guaran-DAMN-tee will never appear in the Shonen Jump Vault, and I'll explain why. During the serialization of Rurouni Kenshin, Nobuhiro Watsuki had himself a bunch of assistants who wound up getting nicknamed the "Watsuki-gumi", especially when some of them wound up becoming legendary mangaka in their own right; reportedly, Watsuki himself hated the nickname. One of the Watsuki-gumi was Hiroyuki Takei, who was the first to break off & make his solo debut in 1997 with Butsu Zone, which wound up only running for a few months. Following that, though, Takei hit pay dirt with 1998's Shaman King, which mixed together a standard tournament structure with an obvious JoJo's Bizarre Adventure influence (the ghosts each shaman uses are essentially sentient Stands), all blended together with a main theme of shamanism, which Takei chose simply because it wasn't a common thing to see in manga. It was notably successful & popular during its run, but experienced a truly bizarre end game when the manga was suddenly finished in mid-2004, right before the final battle; the last page in particular is one of the most infamous non-endings in manga history. Takei has since admitted that he prematurely ended the series due to fatigue, but Shueisha indefinitely holding off on releasing the final volume until ~50,000 people demand it still gives an indication that there's likely more to the story that we'll just never know. Viz got a hold of the manga as soon as it could, eventually releasing all 32 volumes from 2003 to 2011 at a consistent bimonthly pace, followed by a digital re-release across 2012 & 2013.
Regardless, in 2007 Shaman King was re-released in kanzenban/"Perfect Edition" form, and with this re-release came the true finale that Takei had always wanted to tell, with the last kanzenban coming out in early 2009, finally ending the manga. Around the same time as that final book's release, Takei debuted a new manga in Jump Square, Karakuri Douji/Clockwork Boy Ultimo, which he co-conceived with comics legend Stan Lee & his company, Pow! Entertainment. Conceptually, Ultimo isn't too dissimilar from Shaman King, detailing a battle between "ultimate evil" & "ultimate good", with all of the players battling by way of their own karakuri douji, which act similarly to the ghosts in Shaman King. The main difference here is that Takei apparently goes full-bore with the Stan Lee-esque bombasity, even featuring the late legend himself in probably his wildest "cameo" ever... As the main villain! It ran from early 2009 to late 2015, & Viz wasn't far behind, releasing all 12 volumes from early 2010 to late 2016, more or less keeping up with Japan; digital versions started in 2012, but then effectively came out simultaneously with new volumes. So with both Shaman King & Ultimo both having complete digital releases by Viz, why aren't either in the SJ Vault? Also, why will they NEVER appear in it?
Well, at the very end of 2017, it was revealed that the Shaman King trademark had moved from Shueisha to Kodansha, and that this applied to Japan, Europe, & the United States. While Hiroyuki Takei had remained loyal to Shueisha for 20 years, there did seem to always be trouble when it came to Shaman King, whether it was the stuff with the original series' run at the end, or the constant early finishes to Takei's attempts to continue the story via a sequel. In the end, Takei decided to finally leave Shueisha & take his work to another publisher, which he had every right to do. Remember, in Japan, manga is technically creator-owned; some mangaka just prefer to let publishers handle things more than others. For example there's Yukito Kishiro, who moved Battle Angel Alita: Last Order from Shueisha's Ultra Jump magazine to Kodansha's Evening in 2011, which in turn also moved the English license of all Alita manga from Viz to Kodansha USA. Just like that situation, Viz would then confirm in mid-2018 that it no longer had the rights to Shaman King, and though it wasn't stated anywhere, this also applies to Ultimo. Indeed, if you were to search for Shaman King or Ultimo over at Viz's website, all you will find are old blog posts about either manga, as their entire pages featuring where to purchase them have been excised completely. As it is right now, if you want to read either of these two Hiroyuki Takei manga, you either have to hunt down the physical books or hope that Kodansha USA does some sort of new release, because I guarantee that neither Shaman King nor Ultimo will ever appear in the Shonen Jump Vault.
[8/2022 UPDATE: Don't know why I forgot to update this part, but Kodansha USA has long since started releasing Shaman King, both the OG series' kanzenban release via omnibuses & its various spin-offs as digital-only releases. Nothing for Ultimo yet, though.]
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And we have come to the end of the second part of this look at manga that are not currently in the Shonen Jump Vault. Compared to last time, which all had at least a glimmer of being added one day, this third definitely feels a bit more bleak, as there's only one that I'd actually say is honestly possible, which would be Slam Dunk; the rest are either not relevant enough or have their own snags. Still, we haven't quite hit the dimmest of possibilities, so come back next week as we finish things up by looking at the Jump manga that Viz doesn't even admit were released by them... Including some that were notoriously cancelled with extreme prejudice!
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And we have come to the end of the second part of this look at manga that are not currently in the Shonen Jump Vault. Compared to last time, which all had at least a glimmer of being added one day, this third definitely feels a bit more bleak, as there's only one that I'd actually say is honestly possible, which would be Slam Dunk; the rest are either not relevant enough or have their own snags. Still, we haven't quite hit the dimmest of possibilities, so come back next week as we finish things up by looking at the Jump manga that Viz doesn't even admit were released by them... Including some that were notoriously cancelled with extreme prejudice!
Slam Dunk © Takehiko Inoue
Ultimate Muscle: The Kinnikuman Legacy © Yudetamago
Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo © Yoshio Sawai
Nora: The Last Chronicle of Devildom © Kazunari Kakei
Gintama © Hideaki Sorachi
Shaman King © Hiroyuki Takei
Karakuri Douji Ultimo © Hiroyuki Takei・Pow! Entertainment
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