Shonen Jump and Neo-Shonen

A lot has been written about Shonen Jump’s evolving readership. The magazine has become one of the most popular manga magazine in Japan, even bringing in new audiences. In recent decades, Weekly Shonen Jump has reportedly been about evenly split between its female and male readerships becoming one of the most popular magazines for everyone. Shueisha estimated the female readership for the magazine would only grow over time. I bring this up because generations have grown up with Shonen Jump in that time and this opens the door for new markets for expansion for Jump. Shueisha has been trying to capitalize on this reader base. With Japanese publishers beginning to understand digital media, expanding into international markets, tapping readerships they previously could not connect with in print. Shueisha recently launched Spobat Labo a web manga service focused on researching the future of sports and battle manga with social media marketing aimed at women, in addition, Shueisha has launched a digital manga magazine version of content from their Shonen Jump Plus service. This all happened in November. Both moves seem to be attempts to capitalize on their adult women readerships, Shonen Jump Plus includes a number of queer centric storylines and has titles from You, Manga Mee, and Ribon running in it. With the high sales of Kimetsu no Yaiba to name one of many examples, Shueisha has plenty of reasons to capitalize on this new audience for Jump.