So what exactly is Shonen Jump?

As you can tell from the word "shonen", it means "boy" in English. From that word, you can infer that these mangas are targeted towards males because males have larger roles and there is a lot of action, male characters with some sort of super power, and "manly" problems occurring. Not 100% of all of the people that read the Shonen Jump manga are all males, so all you girls out there, feel free to pick up a copy and start reading it!

Shonen Jump is a company that distributes some of the most popular manga, such as Naruto, Bleach, and DBZ. There is a weekly Shonen Jump, which distributes magazines with bits and pieces of various animes and a monthly Shonen Jump that serves basically the same puropse as the weekly issues. You can find a variety of things in these magazines, such as new video game releases, new DVD releases, fan art, and a lot more!

The weekly Shonen Jump was launced by Shueisha in 1968 and it was in competition with the spectacular Shonen Magazine and Shonen Sunday. At the peak of Weekly Shonen Jump's sales, there was a circulation of over 6 million copies. The Weekly Shonen Jump manga titles were translated/distributed in South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Sweden, Norway (published by Schibsted Forlagene with the first issue appearing in March 2005 and consisting of the same series as the Swedish Shonen Jump), and Germany.

The Weekly Shonen Jump magazine that is distributed in Germany is known as BANZAI!, which was published by Carlsen Verlag. BANZAI! consists of some popular titles such as Hikaru no Go, Hakuchi One, Naruto, I"s, Hunter X Hunter, and Shaman King. There is also an original German manga series called Crewman 3. BANZAI! was discontinued in December 2005 because the license was not renewed by Shueisha.

Want to purchase one of these awesome magazines? Go to your local book store or comic store. They're not very expensive at all. They're much cheaper than the average manga book and contain much more information.

If you purchase one and want to subscribe for an entire year, you can just fill out the subscription form that's located at the end of the magazine or click here!