As anime continues to break through into general pop culture more, manga has come along for the ride as more and more curious individuals seek out the original manga releases to either read ahead or re-experience the stories from some of their favorite anime series. But with more general awareness also came the unfortunate increase of piracy as scanlation groups offered quick and deceptively easy choices. But the last few years have seen a dramatic shift in this as publishers such as Shueisha have taken a stand against piracy and have been working with other companies (such as Viz Media) to release their works digitally through an official source.
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One of the major benefits of this for fans and Shueisha alike has been Viz Media’s Shonen Jump‘s digital releases, which sees new weekly chapters of the magazine’s favorites drop every week on an official app. But while they used to drop sometime in the afternoon, the official Shonen Jump Twitter account confirmed that they will now be dropping at 7AM PST every Sunday instead.
Shonen Jump confirmed on Twitter with the following statement, “Good news! From now on, Shonen Jump manga chapters will go live at 7:00 AM PT on Sunday mornings! Happy reading!” They mention how this scheduled time release shift will only impact new chapters released on Sundays, so series released on other days of the week such as One-Punch Man and My Hero Academia: Vigilantes may still come out at other times.
Shueisha’s MangaPlus service, which also offers an official digital release option, often released new chapters in the morning as well, so now both services will be launching their chapters around the same earlier times! As manga publishers have continued to crackdown on piracy, this has been coincided with more widely available digital releases.
Viz Media’s Shonen Jump offers readers the latest three chapters of a series completely for free, and $1.99 USD a month gets you access to previous chapters in its extended digital library. There are a few notable series with gaps, such as Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, but even those series are being sped up for English audiences and filling in the gaps at a faster rate.
Are you keeping up with Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump releases? Like that it’s going to be coming in much earlier than ever? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or talk to me directly about all things anime and other cool things @Valdezology on Twitter!
