2018 Trends of New Series in Weekly Champ

2018 has passed and the magazine changed and new head editor completed one in his new post. Beastars breaking out and Iruma-kun graduallly gaining more popularity came at a good timing to balanced out the loss of key series notably Shuujin Riku, Dokaben Dream Tournament and Samejima, Saigo no Juugonichi due to Takahiro Satou's tragic passing which unfortunately means the manga will be left unfinished. 

2018 might have been a great year for some ongoing series, however, it was not the best of years for new series. There are currently 4 series from 2018 still running in the magazine and they seem to have mild popularity but have not stuck out as hits so far. They could eventually become hits in the future and I put my hopes into 'Ippon' Again to become a hit eventually. As for the other two, it is still up in the air but they are not disliked but have not sold too well judging by Shoseki estimates. I know shoseki does not cover net store sales or specialty comic shops like Ana no Tora; so in a sense there is a need to be conscious that it does not give a full picture of the sales of a series.

One thing all 4 series Junior, Oni no Youna Love Comedy and 'Ippon' Again share is the presence on twitter be it from an official account or the author himself. Editor and authors should not underestimate how useful having online exposure in social media is.  For instance, the editor for 'Ippon' Again is quite active and recently he shared the first chapter of the series in tweets and it gained traction with it having now close to 1.8k retweets and 4k+ likes in a few days. In advertising the series this way they can attract non-champion readers who might buy the volumes and maybe even the magazine.

Trends of new series

Since the new head editor took charge, he pushed quite rightly for sports series as they are historically a popular genre in Shonen Champion. 'Ippon' Again and Junior, judo and soccer series respectively,  are still ongoing but Mound no Taiyou, a baseball series, has ended. It is quite unusual for Champion not to have a baseball series after Dokaben has featured in the magazine for many years.

When it comes to other series, this was a year with Baki Dou, Super Radical Family and Harigane ending but returning soon after with a different name, in Baki Dou case, the same name with just 'Baki' in katakana differing from the past name. So there is not much to comment in these 'new' series. 

There was also an attempt to push action based fantasy series like Great Old, Gyakushu Inferno, Akatora used a historical setting it was a fantasy series. All three did not succeeded and none are left in the magazine at the moment. I can not pin point why these manga failed but fantasy series have always struggled in WSC. These series firstly, Great Old, I believe the name of the series is peculiar and unattractive plus the start of the series was a bit muddled and confused the reader. Gyakushu Inferno suffered from similar issues with awkward pacing and battle scenes being a hard to follow plus the art was lacking in some places. I did not follow Akatora closely but it seemed too simple and cliche and the story took too long to get moving.

Battle orientated shonen series with a fantasy aspect have a big commercial appeal. In other weekly shounen magazines namely Magazine and Jump, Sunday much less so, it is something that usually has space in the magazine. Champion has lacked successful series in this regard, there only a couple that managed to become hits in the magazine notably Full Ahead! Coco, Goku Road, Kakugo no Susume. In the interview for the 50th anniversary of WSC, in the recent issue with Hideyuki Yonehare, he mentioned the difficulty to get editorial support to serialise Full Ahead! Coco. This, he adds was because they were a bit reluctant due to the relatively lack of success of fantasy series had in the magazine. It ended up being a big success but successes in the same genre have been sparse after it. Hakuaki Kyouryuu Kitan Ryuu no Kuni no Yut, a fantasy adventure series featuring dinosaurs, was one of those and together with a sequel it ran for a total of 14 volumes, not a long series but a success, it has featured in the 50th anniversary introduction project. Finding a fantasy, that is serious and battle oriented unlike Iruma-kun will be a struggle but a feature the previous all shared is their unusualness.

I did not count Saint Seiya Next Dimension or Lost Canvas series since they obviously held prior popularity that was to their benefit.

Whatever happens, the magazine will be gradually changing into what the new head editor envisions obviously this will be done with support and ideas from the others members of the editorial department. So it is just a wait an see, series like Ashigei and Panzer show his intent to add more ecchi material together with Atsumare and Rororro becoming ecchi themselves as well. Now it just wait and see what rests in stock for the rest of 2019 when it comes to new series.