It's Official: 2025 Was The Worst Year In Shonen Jump History
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Image By Joshua Fox
Published Apr 11, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT
Joshua Edward Ryan Fox is a freelance writer for Screen Rant with a passion for pop culture. Joshua grew up in Connecticut where he developed an appreciation for writing and entertainment and has earned a Master's degree in professional writing and technical writing. His writing has been quoted by both the anime streaming site Crunchyroll and the anime YouTuber Gigguk.
Shonen Jump might be the biggest name in manga, but it’s safe to say that they’re not in the best position right now; in 2024, My Hero Academia and Jujutsu Kaisen, two of the biggest manga of the decade, both ended in quick succession, leaving Shonen Jump without two of its biggest pillars, and with One Piece slowly working through its final saga, it won’t be long before they’re without any notable stories to draw in viewers.
Why 2025 Was The Worst Year For Shonen Jump Manga
Shonen Jump is very much in a transitional period that will be filled with plenty of highs and lows, and unfortunately, 2025 was one of their lowest lows in years. For starters, newer hits were canceled one after another, despite many of them having a niche following among fans with the potential to get even bigger. Granted, Astro Royale and Syd Craft: Love Is a Mystery weren’t too popular, but Kill Blue and Super Psychic Policeman Chojo were both greenlit for anime after their cancellations, so the fact that they ended is utterly baffling.
Worse than that, however, was how Shonen Jump’s new manga faired in 2025. 13 new manga were published throughout 2025, and out of those 13, the only one that didn’t end after a few months was the breakout hit Someone Hertz; while Jujutsu Kaisen's equel, Jujutsu Kaisen Modulo, was always meant to be a short story, but having nearly every new manga be a failure is still nothing short of terrible.
Even worse is how it’s a rare instance where someone can’t disagree with so many cancellations; every new manga published in 2025 was only ever seen as okay at best, and in the case of stories like Nice Prison, Ekiden Bros, and Gonron Egg, they were seen as having some of the worst writing and artwork in the history of the magazine. It was a year of almost all duds, and only one ongoing success doesn’t make up for that.
Between a slew of new stories doomed to fail and the unceremonious end of older stories that never had a chance to find their footing, 2025 was a year that, for Shonen Jump, can only be defined by failure, and with how few prospects they have, combined with how much the manga industry, as a whole, has been falling in recent years, this is the worst possible time for them to have such a terrible year.
Does Shonen Jump Have Anything That Can Be A Major Hit?
2025 was one of the worst years in the history of Shonen Jump, and that, of course, begs the question of how they can bounce back from it. While One Piece likely still has a few years left before it ends, Sakamoto Days and Blue Box are both also poised to end by the end of the year, and while neither series pulls in massive sales, they’re both popular enough that their absence will be more than felt for years to come.
That being said, things are far from hopeless for Shonen Jump. As previously mentioned, Someone Hertz has become a breakout hit in Shonen Jump as a lighthearted, slice of life romcom, so if it maintains its momentum, it’s sure to remain a hit for years to come. Not only that, but Kagurabachi and Ichi the Witch remain the biggest hits in Shonen Jump following My Hero Academia and Jujutsu Kaisen’s finales, and if they can secure good anime adaptations, then there’ll be nothing stopping them from becoming bona fide hits.
There’s also hope in some of the new manga Shonen Jump is publishing; while it’s up in the air if the last batch of Under Doctor, Kinato’s Magic, and Alien Headbutt will last, especially with how poorly they’ve ranked lately, the new batch of manga debuting in April all seem promising, especially with how one series is a new manga by Gintama’s Hideaki Sorachi. There’s no guarantee of anything, of course, but it’s far more promising than any of the batches from 2025, so that’s something to look forward to.
Shonen Jump Needs A Massive Change If It Wants To Survive
Even if Shonen Jump’s prospects aren’t completely hopeless, they’re still doomed for failure if they don’t change how they do things. The main reason why 2025 was such a failure of a year for Shonen Jump was that they kept publishing manga that had no visual or narrative appeal to them, leading to a wave of rapid cancellations not often seen; it’s always good for Shonen Jump to seek out variety in their lineup, but some stories just don’t work, and if something looks like a complete dud, it might be better not to take a chance on it.
Going from there, when Shonen Jump does get something that fans and critics seem to enjoy, they should try and leave it alone for a while to see if it can maintain a fanbase, even if it isn’t selling on the same level as Kagurabachi and Ichi the Witch, or even less popular manga like Hima-Ten and Ultimate Exorcist Kiyoshi. Shonen Jump’s editorial is still being criticized for cancelling Kill Blue and Super Psychic Policeman Chojo right as they got anime adaptations, and that proves that they could benefit from having more manga around that level.
Shonen Jump is always delivering the best manga a person can read, and here's a breakdown of their 25 best manga over the past 25 years.
Back in the late 90s, Shonen Jump was in a similar crisis as it is now when the back-to-back finales of Dragon Ball and Slam Dunk brought readership to an all-time low, and it was only thanks to the popularity of new manga like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Shaman King, and the “Big 3” of shonen that they survived and became even bigger. Unfortunately, not only do they not have anything on that level, but between how popular their competitors have gotten and how manga sales as a whole have been decreasing, this might be an even worse era for them.
Times have changed for the manga industry, and rather than just pump out anime adaptations and make it easier to read their work to maintain viewership, Shonen Jump needs to change how they operate and eliminate some of its worst practices that are finally catching up to it. That’s not the kind of thing that can happen overnight, but if Shonen Jump wants any chance of surviving in 2026 and beyond, it needs to make a change sooner, rather than later.
Image By Joshua Fox
English (US) ·