WSC 2020 Thoughts

2020 has been a peculiar year that definitely stands out from any previous year because of the circumstances we have had to live and still continue to live with at the moment. But we are not here to look at what happened in the world but at what happened to Weekly Shonen Champion. So lets stop wasting time and begin analysing.  

Winter - 

A terrific season for Champion, not only was the Mairimashita! Iruma-kun anime airing and a giving the series a sales boost, it also was when its successful spinoff Makai no Shuuyaku Wareware begun. The rises of the spinoff and its sales alongside the main series to the rank of highest selling series in the magazine crowned Iruma as the new sweet heart of the magazine. Iruma had an incredible journey, as I have highlighted in another post, so it is an even greater achievement for it have reached the status it currently has. 

As well as this there was of course, the serialisation of Koe and Meika. Both series that come from twitter and niconico respectively.  It signalled a new movement by the magazine to bring series that started outside of it in the internet. Needless to say these series found reasonable success in sales, the former especially. A important factor for this was that they already had an audience for themselves before they begun serialisation therefore they started already in a better chance than an usual series. I do think these series would be better served in Manga Cross instead of the main magazine but Manga Cross is probably not a massive source of attention for Akita Shoten yet. I do believe it needs to receive more and more attention however. 

Spring - 

The season of flowers and graduation in Japan was a quieter one for Champion. Iruma-kun's anime ended and with it came the announcement of a second season for the following year. A month after, there was the surprising news of The Vampire Dies in No Time anime adaptation which I have also made a blog post about. The series has always seemed like it was primed for an anime especially after polling high in many series we want to see animated ranking. 

In regards to new series, we had Yankee JK Kuzuhana-chan by Sogabe Toshinori standout. Toshinori is a veteran he had done the Magical Site Sept spin-off which was serialised in Champion Tap as well as works in Monthly Shounen Champion but this was his first time in Weekly Shonen Champion  and in a weekly magazine in general. Needless to say his experience shows and the series is incredibly stable and reminds me of Romcom harems of the past but with the touch of the recent yankee girl trend. 

Summer - 

A quiet season all in all. Tougen Anki by Urushibara Yura began right at the end of spring. It has managed to sell reasonably well and perhaps surprisingly was the fact that Urushibara Yura had not previously published anything or even won an award from what I have researched. It is resounding success that he or she is able to debut and find success so rapidly. Apart from that there was no really anything else in summer that was notable. 

Fall -

The current season we find ourselves in at the moment. The end of Beastars came to a surprise to some and of course it will be dearly missed because it was a rather huge success for the magazine but Itagaki Paru is coming back in due time. In fact probably in a month or two at most now for another round of Beast Complex. 

Aside from that there was the debut of a new round of new series of which two were previously published one-shot in the magazine in the past year. Usotsuki Android is a romcom with a female main character which is rather unusual for a shounen magazine but it is a cute sweet comedic story. The  Suiyou Dou Deshou collab with Champion return for a few more chapters but has already ended at this time. Last but not least was the debut of Hagure Yuusha Isekai no Bible, an isekai story, not the first since there was in 2016 Houkago Wizard Club, but it is the first since the trend really exploded.  The jury is still out for the remaining two series of this three series round but it seems promising so far. 

Concluding Thoughts - 

A good year for champion, it found new hits two of which it plucked from the net. However, on top of that Yankee JK Kuzuhana-chan and Tougen Anki also have shown sign of a success. It does seem like the new head editor might have hit a stride in these last two years after the pitiful 2017 and 2018 when it came to new hits. Lets hope there are more adaptations lined up but I am sure that is on the hands of the media department and sales department as well.