Skip to main content

Weekly Shonen Jump to be made available for free

Shonen Jump is home to the world's most popular manga

Viz Media have announced that their Weekly Shonen Jump comics will become available for free.

From 17th December, manga fans will be able to access the latest chapters of One Piece, My Hero Academia, Boruto and more every week, free of charge.
Additionally, readers can catch up on any of their 10,000+ back issues for only $1.99 a month.

The new Shonen Jump logo

Hisashi Sasaki, vice president of Viz Media, said: "We saw many new readers come to Shonen Jump when we posted free chapters this year.
"We learned that free access gets more people reading manga."

The former editor-in-chief of the Japanese Shonen Jump magazine described the new format as "legitimate, authentic and safe", drawing attention away from illegal 'scanlation' sites.
Fans can read the new releases on the official app or on the Jump website.

Shonen Jump features the Guiness World Record-winning One Piece

This year, Shonen Jump celebrated its 50th anniversary with special events, a limited-edition clothing line and the announcement of the new Jump Force video game.
2018 also marks 15 years since the magazine was first published in English.

Which series are you excited about reading for free? Will you become a paid member? Sound off in the comments below, or tweet to @JamieMorrisPbiA on Twitter.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Batman Day 2018: The Dynamic Duo Awards

DC's Caped Crusader might be the world's number-one favourite superhero, and today is the time of year where we take a moment to appreciate just how awesome this character is. Since his debut in spring 1939, Batman has starred in an abundance of iconic stories, some of which have been the topic of posts on this blog.  For this reason, I thought I'd make it an annual tradition to round up all of my Bat-favourites on the Dark Knight's special day. However, I'm a strong believer that Batman needs a Robin, so I'm naming it the Dynamic Duo Awards and accompanying the winner of each category with a runner-up. Without further ado, let's light the Batsignal and begin! In  a previous blog post , I declared Grant Morrison's run the ultimate Batman comic - but which parts did I like best? Well, it's Batman & Robin that I believe provided the greatest take on the Bat-mythos. Colourful and campy yet also dark and violent, this masterpiece i...

What exactly is a JoJo reference, anyway?

You may or may not have heard of the ongoing  JoJo's Bizarre Adventure saga, one of the crown jewels of comics. It's constantly referenced by other works that it has influenced, and its fans have been known to swarm the comment sections of prog-rock albums on YouTube. However, it has yet to gain the following that other manga hits like Dragon Ball and Naruto have picked up in the West, leaving many to wonder what it's all about. Creator Hirohiko Araki started JoJo with the  Phantom Blood  arc in 1987 (the year Watchmen concluded in the US). This was the tale of the rivalry between the compassionate Johnathan Joestar and the malicious Dio Brando, serving as commentary on two disparate lifestyles. To begin with, the series didn't really push the boundaries too far - it was really just a hyper-violent martial-arts story paving the way for something far greater. Araki really shattered traditional manga conventions when he wrote the Battle Tendency arc (the second part...