Weekly Shonen Jump 50th Anniversary


Today we have received in the mail this Weekly Shonen Jump issue dated January 29, 1986 in which Goku was about to enter Red Ribbon's Muscle Tower. What makes us remember that the first issue of WSJ was published on August 1, 1968 and the magazine is celebrating its 50th anniversary this month. To celebrate the anniversary, this week issue, both the Japanese and the USA digital editions come full of bonus material such as a talk between manga authors Akira Toriyama and Takehiko Inoue. Toriyama has also contributed with a drawing of Goku and a note  congratulating the anniversary.



To celebrate the event, the publisher of the magazine, Shueisha has organized an exhibition divided in 3 volumes by periods of time. It started last summer and will last until September this year. The exhibition was divided in these phases:

Shonen Jump-Ten vol. 1: July 18, 2017  to October 15, 2017
Shonen Jump-Ten vol. 2: March 19, 2018  to June 17, 2018
Shonen Jump-Ten vol. 3: July 17, 2018  to September 30, 2018

A huge amount of merchandise featuring all the series that have been published in the WSJ all over the years was created for this events. Aaron visited Japan last sumer when the exhibition opened, so he managed to buy some cool stuff. For those like me that haven't been able to travel to Japan yet, the catalogues that come packed with lengthy interviews with the featured manga authors luckily are written in Japanese and English and are a great way to take a glimpse of what was exhibited.


Official Shonen Jump sites:
Shonen Jump Japan: http://www.shonenjump.com
Shonen Jump USA: https://www.viz.com/shonenjump
Shonen Jump Ten Exhibition: https://shonenjump-ten.com
Shonen Jump Ten Exhibition News: https://sp.shonenjump.com/j/50th/news/

Most of the merchandise is available in the Jump Character Store:
https://jumpcs.shueisha.co.jp