Shonen Jump Might Be Ready to Cancel Another Series Early

Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine might be getting ready to give another manga series the axe much earlier than expected as Astro Royale seems to be speeding towards its ending! Ken Wakui brought Tokyo Revengers to an end with Kodansha’s Weekly Shonen Magazine back in 2022, and it has since become a much loved franchise thanks to the success of its manga and anime releases in the past few years. While the end of the series itself sparked some debate, fans were still excited to see what kind of series that the creator would come up with next. Then we saw those results just a couple of years later.

Ken Wakui debuted Astro Royale in the pages of Shonen Jump magazine last year, and introduced fans to a new world of Yakuza who had since gained magical powers thanks to a mysterious asteroid that helped them to grant their wishes. It’s been one year since that debut, and nearly 50 chapters have hit since then. But while the series had its chance at finding its footing with fans, the latest chapters of the series seem to be speeding to such an extent that the grand finale looks like it’s going to hit sooner rather than later as a result of an early cancellation.

What’s Going on With Astro Royale?

Astro Royale‘s latest chapters have been sparking some major fears with fans thanks to how fast some of the developments have been hitting. For example, the latest arc of the series kicked off a special tournament known as the Astro Battle Royale between the representatives of the various Yakuza factions throughout Japan. Starting out with 800 people, only 8 fighters made it to the final round. This was decided within a single chapter, and the rest of the tournament seemed to speed along with its advancements since.

Seemingly key fights were settled within a single chapter, major characters who seemed like they were going to play a big part in the future had been wiped out off screen, and the final round was skipped to as it played out a huge fight between protagonist Hibaru and Shikaba Yotsurugi. This meant that each member of the Yotsurugi Family had been fully reintroduced to the series, and that seemed like something that would take a lot longer to fully bring about.

Cut to the end of the final round of the tournament, and Hibaru wins only to find out that his father didn’t die from an illness, but was actually killed by Yoshiki Tendo, the head of a rival clan who has boosted his power with a Daybreak Ore, a new macguffin that Hibaru and the others were going to be searching for before this tournament began. Then the latest chapters of the series had seen the Yotsurugi siblings unite their power for one final attack on Tendo. It’s really speeding through reveals that likely would have come much later otherwise.

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What Does This Mean for Shonen Jump?

These are stories that could have been expanded on to give fans a much fuller look at the Yotsurugi Family. The original draw of Astro Royale was following Hibaru as he met with the members of his former extended family that were now in a superpowered fueled struggle to rule over the Yakuza world. By this point in the series, Hibaru had come across them all already, and is already settling longstanding beef with many of them within a relatively short time. There are two explanations for this.

The first explanation is that this is just the pace of the series. Hibaru has gone from just finding out that there are those who are going to be faking their use of Astro powers and needing to search for two missing Daybreak Ores, to then using one of these Daybreak Ores against the one that originally killed his father. With all of his siblings uniting around this single cause, the series could just be advancing through all of these character beats so quickly in order to set up what’s coming next.

The other explanation is that its ending is coming imminently. With Shonen Jump already revealing that new series are on the way, others are going to need to end to make room. A year long serialization with 50 chapters is nothing to scoff at, but it’s far from the potentially much longer story that Wakui is telling. There are some final story beats that tease it could be continuing with one of Hibaru’s siblings, Shio, still presenting a threat, but even that’s kind of gotten folded into the tournament as well. Either way, this is the kind of pacing that’s making fans worry that the end is coming very soon and Shonen Jump might be ready to give it the axe next.