My Hero Academia Confirms Upcoming Manga Delay Due to COVID-19

Early reports indicated that My Hero Academia would suddenly be taking a break from the next issue of Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine, and now Shueisha has confirmed My Hero Academia‘s next chapter will be delayed until the next issue due to complications from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. As a way to continue practice social distancing and better protecting the health of those involved, the series is moving from analog to digital and remote work. This shift in process is ultimately what led to this delay as the manuscript for Chapter 278 of the series now releasing on July 20th, rather than its initially scheduled July 12th release.

The statement from Shueisha on My Hero Academia‘s official Twitter account reads as such, “My Hero Academia won’t be appearing in Weekly Shonen Jump No. 32 (released on July 13th). We are very sorry for the readers who are looking forward to it. In order to reduce the risk of infection from the new coronavirus, we are changing from a conventional analog drawing system to a digital drawing system.

Because of the change, it took a lot of time to complete the manuscript, and it became difficult to publish it in WJ32, so we decided to put it on hiatus. We also apologize for not being able to announce the hiatus in the last issue, as we were working as hard as we could to publish it. The next issue will be the combined WJ33/34 issue, which will be released on July 20.”

This switch from analog to digital has added hiccups to other manga releases in the magazine with Eiichiro Oda‘s One Piece also being one recently impacted by this shift as well. But luckily for fans, this delay isn’t a long hiatus as Chapter 278 of the series will be debuting next week alongside all of the other regularly scheduled weekly manga releases in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump. But what do you think?

How do you feel about My Hero Academia‘s upcoming delay? Which delays during the COVID-19 pandemic have hit you the hardest? Excited to read the next chapter when it debuts next week? Let us know your thoughts in the comments, or you can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!