Still, not every entry in this final third fits this description, but all of them do share this fact: None of them are mentioned in any way on Viz's website, even though all but one of them were indeed published under the Shonen Jump (or Shonen Jump Advanced) label. I call these the... Forgotten & Abandoned!
Let's start things with what is easily the most interesting & unique situation there is when it comes to a Shonen Jump manga that Viz has released "all of" in the past... Sort of.... Technically... At the time. Riku Sanjo has been a writer in the entertainment business ever since the mid-80s (from M.D. Geist to Gaiking: Legend of Daiku-Maryu to both Kamen Rider W & Drive), & in late 1989 teamed up with artist Koji Inada to debut Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai, a Shonen Jump manga based on Yuji Horii & Enix's Dragon Quest RPG series; it wasn't based on any specific entry, but rather utilized elements to create an original story. It was a massive hit, running for 37 volumes until late 1996 & even seeing a TV anime adaptation & trio of movies by Toei in the early 90s. Following that, Sanjo & Inada made Dragon Quest IV Gaiden: The Labyrinth of Hell, a single-volume spin-off of that particular game, for Monthly Shonen Jump in 2001, and in early 2002 the duo returned to Monthly Jump with an original series, Beet the Vandel Buster (also known as Bouken-Oh/Adventure King Beet). It tells the story of Beet, a young teen who wishes to bring an end to the "Dark Ages" that the monsters known as Vandels have brought upon the world, especially after the Zenon Warriors, five men who were Beet's idols, seemingly sacrificed their lives to protect Beet by infusing him with their Saiga, weapons brought about by the user's very soul & life force.
Now, to be fair, Beet the Vandel Buster does play a bit too close to its RPG roots, with characters having literal experience & levels to gain, but it also showcases Sanjo's talent for writing a fun & engaging adventure story, while Inada's art style reminds one of Akira Toriyama, but without simply feeling like a blatant copy. Viz got onto the "Beet Train" (get it?) rather quickly, releasing the first volume in late 2004, and after a little over a year of consistent bimonthly releases was slowed down after Volume 8. One would think that it may have been low sales, and for all we know it might have played a factor, but it's really more that Viz was catching up to Japan a little too quickly; had Viz continued, Volume 10 would have come out the same month as Volume 11 did in Japan. Anyway, Viz eventually released Volume 12 in late 2007, a year after the Japanese release, which ended on a massive cliffhanger... Only for Volume 13 to never see release. The reason for this was because the manga had actually entered an indefinite hiatus in Japan back in 2006, after Koji Inada fell intensely ill. Inada had become so ill, in fact, that Beet would go without a new chapter for another 10 years, when the manga finally returned from the dead in the quarterly Jump Square Crown magazine, a spin-off of Jump Squre, which itself was the successor to Monthly Shonen Jump. What exactly befell Inada has never been publicly revealed, but it must have been something horrible, and even upon returning a third person was added to the group: Katsuyoshi Nakatsuru, character designer for the 2004-2005 anime adaptation, who helps design new Vandels & Saiga. After finally finishing the story arc that had been left cliffhanging for a decade, Beet went on hiatus again, but has since returned in 2018 via Jump Square Rise, which itself replaced Square Crown.
Since then, Volume 13 of Beet the Vandel Buster finally came out in Japan in late 2016, with Volume 14 in mid-2019, and it's just great to know that Koji Inada is back to drawing. As for Viz, while the publisher certainly has no problem waiting for a new volume of something like Hunter x Hunter or D.Gray-man to come out, the latter of which is another that currently runs in Jump Square Rise, there is obviously no interest in ever bringing back Beet the Vandel Buster, which likely was never a notable seller in the first place. After all, Viz released everything there was for that manga back in the day & now doesn't even seem to have the license anymore; the publisher completed whatever obligation it had. To release these two new volumes would also require re-releasing those first 12 volumes, and there really doesn't look to be enough interest in the property to do so, sadly; not every manga can get the Banana Fish treatment. Because of that, I highly doubt we'll ever see Beet the Vandel Buster get added to the Shonen Jump Vault.
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| Yep, Viz had a cover all ready to go! |
Up next is the first in a sub-category in what I call Cancelled with Extreme Prejudice. I say that because, unlike something like Gintama or even Bobobo, Viz not only cancelled four of the series in this final third, but it did so while already having scheduled upcoming books in advance, complete with finished cover art that wound up never being seen in person by any consumer; they're available online, though, so I'm sharing them with all of you. Yeah, these weren't just cancelled... They were executed! First from this "CwEP" sub-category is 2003's (Mahou Tsukai/Magic Witch) Kurohime by Masanori・Okamigumi・Katakura, a Monthly Shonen Jump regular ever since 1994 who had previously had a hit manga in the magazine with Go Da Gun, which ran from 1997 to 2003 for 16 volumes. His second hit manga tells the story of the titular Kurohime, the most powerful witch/gunslinger in the world, who was weakened by the gods themselves when she tried to kill them for starting a war that threw the world into chaos. She was reverted into the form of a child, named Himeko, and told that she can only restore her full power through love, which she has long since abandoned, and helping her is Zero, a young man who had been saved by Kurohime a decade prior & became a gunslinger himself. The main twist with the manga is that over time, and as Kurohime's budding love for Zero grows, she slowly regains portions of her original power, which in turn also gives her access to new forms, which progressively age her back up. Kurohime ran in Monthly Jump all the way until the magazine was cancelled in mid-2007, upon which it also got cancelled... Technically. In reality, it simply got moved to web serialization over at Jump Square's website when the magazine launched at the end of 2007, & in early 2011 the final chapter came out, ending the manga after 18 volumes.
Viz started releasing Kurohime in the latter half of 2007, right as its physical serialization had ended, and it maintained a consistent bimonthly pace all the way through the end of 2009, which brought the release to Volume 14. Had Viz maintained this pace, Volume 17 would have come out literally only a month after its release in Japan, followed by a wait for that last volume to come out, but instead the release stopped cold after 2009. Volume 15 did get scheduled for a January 5, 2010 release, however, and both a cover & synopsis were ready to go, so what happened? Well, as I linked to at the start of this article, Viz apparently found a way at the end of the decade to get out of having to continue releasing some manga that just weren't selling, even if Shueisha had originally forced the publisher to do so, as a sort of obligation to various mangaka. Kurohime was one of those series, which means that it simply wasn't attracting an audience. Personally, I fully understand that, as I gave the manga two tries (one for each of the first two volumes), and it just didn't appeal to me, while the general consensus I can find online says that it's really good for the first major story arc, only to then drop in quality really hard when time travel shenanigans & an overly complicated storyline comes into play. Not only that, but the manga was always kind of treading the fine line of decency when it came to the Shonen Jump label, even with it being released under the SJ Advanced line; to be fair, the only image for Katakura online definitely shows that he's a guy who probably likes to cross lines. Jason Thompson, who edited for it briefly, even verified that content was a supporting reason for Kurohime's cancellation, citing a "rapey sex sequence" in an upcoming volume (possibly 15?) that got it red-flagged. Since then, Viz has preferred to release newer Jump series via older audience-oriented labels due to content if necessary, like Jump+ manga Fire Punch being released under the Signature line; to be fair, though, Signature had already existed when Kurohime started getting released.
Still, it does suck that Kurohime got cancelled when it was only four volumes from finishing up; Viz could have easily gotten that last volume out in mid-to-late 2011, & then wiped its hands clean. However, I do fully understand if a combination of low sales & potentially objectionable content made the manga feel like kryptonite to the staff at Viz, and it wasn't even worth slowing down things to a glacial pace. Today, though, the chances of Kurohime ever getting added to the SJ Vault are effectively zero, due to it's unfinished status because of cancellation; even if it was, though, it'd definitely be a website-only addition, due to the content.
I swear I didn't plan on this being the case, but here's the third Monthly Shonen Jump manga in a row Viz once released but has since avoided acknowledging the existence of. Anyway, it's always kind of awkward when something originally made as part of a multimedia project, known as a "media mix" in Japan, only winds up seeing one part of it actually make it to a specific region. That's what happened with Legendz, which was the creation of WiZ, a company founded by former Bandai employee Akihiro Yokoi back in 1986 that helped in the creation of other multimedia franchises like Digimon, Tamagotchi, Crush Gear, & Onmyou Taisenki, before eventually getting absorbed into the Bandai machine in April 2019; similar to those, Legendz was all about monster breeding & battling. Alongside the pre-requisite toys, it all started with a manga by writer Rin Hirai (who was the creator of the franchise itself) & artist Makoto Haruno that ran in Monthly Shonen Jump from 2003 to 2005 for four volumes, followed by Legendz: Tale of the Revived Dragon Kings, a TV anime that ran for 50 episodes throughout 2004 & 2005 in Japan; both series feature their own casts & plots, though they take place in the same world. Around the time the anime was coming to an end, Viz started releasing the manga in English trimonthly, finishing things up at the start of 2006; it was only four volumes, after all. Meanwhile, though Hasbro did apparently produce a pilot dub for the anime, the series never actually made it to air anywhere in the United States or Canada, nor did it see a home video release of any sort; amusing, since the anime took place in & around Brooklyn, NY.
Similar to Nora: The Last Chronicle of Devildom in the previous part, there really isn't anything more of note regarding the Legendz manga. It really just came & went, as it was simply nothing more than a promotional tool for a short-lived toy line that similarly just came & went. Rin Hirai has never written another manga, from what I can tell, while Makoto Haruno has only done the occasional one-shot or short series since; in fact, Legendz might be Haruno's longest work. Similarly, Viz's release also came, saw, & was promptly ignored & forgotten; it's biggest impact likely is just from the fact that the license was officially announced alongside Dr. Slump. It's also not really considered all that good of a manga, in general, which really isn't surprising; while an anime based on a product can certainly expand beyond its "toy commercial" label, the manga rarely do. Considering that it's status as a cross-promotional product for a toy line, it's not surprising at all that Viz likely no longer has the license to the Legendz manga, so don't go expecting it to ever appear in the SJ Vault, but I guess it's more likely than most of the other entries here, simply because it was finished... And that's all I have to say about that.
You're still here? It's over. Go to the next entry. Go!
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| Well, at least I hope that the art department still got paid for these covers... |
Second in the "CwEP" sub-category is one that people still harp on about as much as Gintama's cancellation, if not more. In fact, this one's all the more annoying for those fans, because the mangaka's later work is actually in the SJ Vault, complete with it referencing the series that got cancelled for promotional purposes! Anyway, (Katekyo/Home Tutor Hitman) Reborn! by Akira Amano debuted back in mid-2004, quickly finding itself a strong (& notably female) cult audience the world over, partially due to Amano's strong bishonen aesthetic. Around the same time the (eventually 203-episode) TV anime adaptation debuted in Japan in October 2006, which itself wouldn't start getting simulcasted until 2009, Viz started releasing the manga via the SJ Advanced label. Considering how vocal the Reborn! fandom has always been, it is interesting to note that Viz didn't start the manga off as a bimonthyl release, but instead went straight to a quarterly schedule. Considering how long the manga wound up being (running until late 2012 for 42 volumes) & how far behind Viz was right from the start (Volume 12 came out around the time we got Volume 1), it's kind of surprising that Viz didn't start with a standard bimonthly schedule; even by the end of 2010, we'd only be up to around Volume 25, whereas Japan was at Volume 32 by then.
Regardless, after Volume 16's release in July of 2010, Viz wound up cancelling Reborn! completely, even though Volumes 17 & 18 were already scheduled for release on October 10, 2010 & January 4, 2011, respectively. What's even worse is that Volume 16 marked the beginning of the "Future Arc", which would go on to become easily the most iconic, complex, & longest story arc in the entire manga, not ending until Volume 30; again, had Viz started with a bimonthly release, we would have at least gotten to the middle of the arc. The strangest thing of all, though, is that Viz's website still has a listing for Reborn!... But only for the anime. In 2011, AFTER the manga got cancelled, Viz started offering the anime via streaming, and to this day still hosts all 203 episodes subtitled, while Discotek later released the entire series across two SD-BD sets, each housing over 100 episodes, in late 2018; Viz doesn't even stream Cross Game or Neuro: Supernatural Detective anymore, so that's interesting. Ask any hardcore fan of Reborn! & pretty much every single one of them will likely bring up how screwed over the series was in North America, and that if it was given just a proper, "real" chance it'd be this big hit, but it's been proven over the years that the fans, though very vocal, likely just aren't big enough in numbers. I do know that there were some complaints early about Viz doing some minor censorship in the early volumes, as well as complaints about the translation, but in the end the manga just couldn't sell; the fact that Viz still even offers the anime is kind of astounding. Honestly, I feel that hardcore fans like this tend to not realize that you can support something while also airing your grievances in a respectful & professional manner, in an attempt to improve upon things. After all, most companies won't bother to fix something that no one's buying in the first place, and they certainly won't listen to people who only demand things in a harsh tone; just look at how Aura Battler Dunbine got its subtitles fixed to see how to "do it right". As for the SJ Vault, this is pretty much the same kind of situation that Gintama would find itself in, i.e. people would be ecstatic about it getting added, but there's just way too much content (another 26 volumes) that Viz would have to translate from scratch to properly please fans. At least, I'm sure that's why, just like Captain Tsubasa, Reborn! is only available on Shueisha's Manga Plus app via Spanish.
But, hey, at least you can read all of Akira Amano's later work, ēlDLIVE, via the SJ Vault! Look, I'm just trying to find a silver lining here, people.
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| Seriously, they had covers all ready to go... |
You know, romantic comedies tend to sound like a style that sells to English-speaking fans, especially those from Shonen Jump. After all, there are series like Nisekoi, Rosario + Vampire, We Never Learn, & To-Love-Ru that all found some sort of notable fandom in North America, both in anime & manga form. Yet here's a series from Mizuki Kawashita, who pretty much wrote the book on how to do modern rom-coms in Jump, especially for those who like fanservice, that wound up being a part of that infamous "CwEP" sub-category. After making a name for herself with shojo manga under the pseudonym Mikan Momokuri, Kawashita moved over to Weekly Shonen Jump, with her second work easily being her biggest. Said work is Strawberry 100%, which tells the story of middle schooler Junpei Manaka trying his hardest to figure out the identity of a beautiful girl he caught a glimpse of on the school's roof, but the only thing he remembers is that she wore strawberry-print panties. Naturally, Junpei winds up making friendships with four different girls, with the main plot being about Junpei having to decide which girl he wants to wind up with... And hopefully that girl is the one that wore those specific panties back at the start.
When I say that Kawashita "wrote the book" on modern shonen romance, I'm not exactly lying. After all, Strawberry 100% predates all of the previously mentioned manga by at least two years. The manga itself is also well regarded as an iconic harem-based romantic comedy from Jump, not to mention praise towards Kawashita's artwork, though the predilection towards fanservice might turn some away; if nothing else, Kawashita proves that women are just as horny as guys. Anyway, Strawberry 100% ended in 2005 after 19 volumes, even receiving a TV anime adaptation that same year, and Viz started releasing the manga in mid-2007 with a quarterly schedule, similar to Reborn!. After Volume 14, though, Viz put a stop to the series, even though Volume 15 was scheduled for a January 4, 2011 release. While this sounds eerily similar to what happened with Reborn!, Volume 14 for Strawberry 100% actually came out on October 5, 2010... Just days before Reborn! Volume 17 was supposed to come out; the timings on these cancellations were just all over the place. Not only that, but on July 5, 2010, a single day before Volume 13's release, Viz started streaming the Strawberry 100% anime via its website & Hulu; in fact, ANN still hosts mirrors for the first 13 episodes. Unlike the Reborn! anime, which was simply using CrunchyRoll's translation & likely cost Viz comparatively little, this was the first time that this anime ever saw official English release.
Think about that for a moment... Viz started streaming the anime literally months before the manga got cancelled! Streaming Reborn! after the manga got cancelled is kind of odd, but the fact that Viz cancelled the Strawberry 100% manga release after literally adding the anime to its catalog is just astounding in how audacious it is. Even if the manga (& possibly even the anime?) was forced onto the publisher by Shueisha, this was just downright ballsy. As one can guess from the general theme of this entire final part, the chances of Strawberry 100% ever getting added to the Shonen Jump Vault are pretty low, if not negative, due to the fact that the manga was never finished over here. This one is a shame, too, because the manga is not only generally considered really good, but it's also arguably important, from a modern historical standpoint.
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| Technically not a cover meant to be shown sideways, but I wouldn't want the Part 2 cast to be shown awkwardly. |
Similar to Hoshin Engi, this is a manga release that happened a few years after the anime adaptation had already seen release in North America... And, for the last time, we return to the Monthly Shonen Jump well! Not only that, but this is the only manga from this last selection that I can somewhat realistically see actually get added to the SJ Vault!! While Legendz was blatantly obvious as being nothing more than an expanded advertisement for a toy line, 2001's Dragon Drive by Ken-ichi Sakura is a tougher nut to crack. On the one hand, every cover of the manga does credit "In Collaboration with Bandai・Chan's・Org" under Sakura's name, and there was a collectible card game that came out around the same time as the manga, not to mention three video game adaptations, two of which told original stories that simply took place in the same world as that of the manga; the last was based specifically on the anime adaptation, even including a bonus epilogue OVA(!). On the other hand, the CCG that the Dragon Drive manga was technically created alongside never really went anywhere (it never even left Japan), while the 38-episode TV anime adaptation from 2002 was based directly on the manga, not to mention that Sakura wound up continuing to make the manga all the way until early 2006, likely long after the CCG died out, ending it after 14 volumes that's evenly split across two story arcs, each with (mostly) its own cast.
The first arc, which the anime adapted from, focuses on Reiji Ozora, a notorious quitter who winds up getting involved with the hot new eponymous VR game where you fight alongside dragons, only to find out that the game is actually linked to an alternate world called Rikyu, which is under siege by the mysterious organization RI-ON. The second, which takes place a few years later, deals with Takumi, the little brother to Part 1 supporting cast member Maiko (& a completely different person in the anime & games), who winds up getting involved with Dragon Drive, especially when it results in everyone in the real world not playing the game going missing, the world is left in ruins, & the dragons have come to Earth, all because of a new organization called RI-IN. In the end, while the Dragon Drive manga does carry over some of its CCG-based ideas, Ken-ichi Sakura wound up giving the manga its own overall identity, and today the series is known more as an "original" manga (& later anime adaptation) than as the card game it was technically meant to promote. Viz started releasing the manga in early 2007, a couple years after Bandai Entertainment finished releasing the anime on DVD, and released all 14 volumes bimonthly without a problem, finishing up in mid-2009; today, Ken-ichi Sakura is doing The Prince of Afterschool, a gag manga spin-off of The Prince of Tennis. With Dragon Drive technically being part of a larger multimedia franchise, it's not difficult to see why Viz likely no longer has the license to the manga, & never re-released it digitally, but unlike Legendz, the only other "finished" release in this part, I do think that there is merit in Viz possibly re-licensing Dragon Drive, offering the volumes digitally, & making the entire series available in the SJ Vault, mainly on the merit of it becoming more than simply a promotional tool & instead just be a really good standalone series, in & of itself.
Whether or not this will actually happen is anyone's guess, though.
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| All that work was rendered pointless... |
Finally, we end this entire cataloging with the manga cancellation that annoyed me the most... Because this is my blog & I can do that. This is also the fourth & final of the "CwEP" sub-category, and while it annoys me the most of all, I can also absolutely understand why it got the ax... Though, considering the main character, it wouldn't have truly killed him, anyway. Yep, we finish with 1988's Bastard!!: Destructive God of Darkness (or "Heavy Metal Dark Fantasy", as Viz subtitled it) by Kazushi Hagiwara, a series that still astounds in just how it managed to even run in Weekly Shonen Jump, even if only via seasonal specials for most of its time there. For those unfamiliar with the manga, this high-fantasy/post-apocalyptic series is unabashedly violent, absolutely sexual, & gleefully lewd, mainly because of its infamously over-powered (& always horny) main character, Dark Schneider; Viz's "Parental Advisory: Explicit Content" badge on the covers is more than earned here. Even for the 80s, Bastard!! went further down the path of hyper-violence than Fist of the North Star ever did, & the sexuality went to places that Kimagure Orange Road (which Hagiwara was an assistant on) would never even think of, but it brought results & readers wanted more. So after a year of weekly serialization, Bastard!! was moved to a seasonal schedule, and when those special issues stopped happening in the late 90s it returned to the regular magazine on an irregular schedule, before finally getting moved to the adult-oriented Ultra Jump in 2001, where it runs to this today (technically, because it's been on hiatus ever since 2010).
Viz announced that it had licensed Bastard!! at Anime Expo 2001, & it was originally released in the old "flipped floppies", i.e. like it was an Western comic, that the publisher was still doing at the time. The first compiled volume came out August of 2002, but at the end of 2003 Viz started re-releasing Bastard!! in its original "unflipped" form, with the new Volume 1 coming out just a month before the "flipped" Volume 5, which was the last one to be released in that first style. From that point on, Bastard!! saw a quarterly release schedule, with Volume 6 (the first to only see one release) coming out at the end of 2004, and 2005 & 2006 each saw four volumes released. After that, though, Viz put the brakes on Bastard!! hard, slowing things down to just two volumes every year starting in 2007, before outright cancelling the series entirely after Volume 19's release in July of 2009; like others series in this part, Volume 20 was scheduled for January 12, 2010, complete with a finished cover & synopsis. Similar to Reborn!, though, the biggest problem with this sudden cancellation is that the last volume released marked the start of a brand new story arc, giving readers a taste of something that they'll now never be able to continue, at least officially.
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| Since this got so long, here's the cover to Viz's original "flipped" release of Volume 1. |
Really, though, Bastard!! was always going to have a massively uphill battle from the very beginning with Viz. The publisher couldn't really promote it in any way because of the fact that the title is a literal swear word; Jason Thompson admitted this in his 2010 article about the manga. Its release predated the launch of the Shonen Jump label, but even then there's no way Viz would have ever moved it over, as its violent & sexual content was infinitely more than beyond acceptable for it, while even Shonen Jump Advanced would have been too soft a label; Viz could have easily moved it to the Signature line, though. The content itself was even a problem at least once, as Thompson once stated that Volume 2 used the original tankouban as its base, rather than the "Complete Edition" which featured redrawn artwork, due to "content concerns". How much of the "Complete Edition" Viz actually used for its release is debatable, though, as all nine books came out throughout the entire decade of the 00s, with only the first book actually predating Viz's release in any way. For example, the fifth book, which would have covered up to half-way through Volume 15, came out in December of 2007, while Viz's Volume 15 came out the previous July, so there's no way Viz's release could have been based off of the "Complete Edition".
The craziest thing of all, though? Viz never even got past the Shonen Jump chapters! Yeah, the Ultra Jump content doesn't start until partway through Volume 22, so if Viz felt that content was a problem already, the staff there likely would have had their minds literally explode had they reached the point where Hagiwara no longer had to hold back his penchant for gib-filled bodily evisceration & sexual perversion.
Regardless, while pretty much all of the other series in this part can still be had for perfectly reasonable prices on the secondhand market, a handful of books notwithstanding, Bastard!! doesn't have that luxury, with many volumes ranging anywhere from $20 to over $75! This is why, alongside simply catching up with what's out in Japan, I'd love to see a new release for Bastard!!; Seven Seas' Ghost Ship label would be a perfect fit, for example. Even in an perfect world where the Shonen Jump Vault contains all of Viz's prior releases, however, Bastard!! would never get anywhere close to being added to the Shonen Jump app itself, simply because of its content.
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And that's it; we're done! Those are all 22 Shonen Jump manga series that Viz has published in the past, yet have not made available for reading via the Shonen Jump Vault through subscription. Among them are some obvious omissions, some underappreciated gems, some scrappy underdogs, some absolutely forgotten series, & a whole bunch of unfinished cancellations. Obviously, the ideal for the Shonen Jump subscription service would be to make everything Viz has ever released from the magazine available for subscribers to read anywhere & anytime they want, but even with Shueisha co-owning the publisher there are still things like licensing agreements to write up & the wishes of the original creators to honor. While the chances of each series being added to the SJ Vault have essentially lowered with each of these three parts, I think it's still imperative that none of these manga be forgotten, and we as fans should still ask Viz to try its hardest to realize that ideal as closely as possible.
Just, you know, do so in a respectful & professional manner.
Happy 1st Anniversary, "the new" Shonen Jump!
Beet the Vandel Buster © Riku Sanjo・Koji Inada
Kurohime © Masanori・Okamigumi・Katakura
Legendz © Rin Hirai・Makoto Haruna・WiZ
Reborn! © Akira Amano
Strawberry 100% © Mizuki Kawashita
Dragon Drive © Ken-ichi Sakura・Bandai・Chan's・Org
Bastard!! © Kazushi Hagiwara
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