When Tokyopop started releasing manga in the form of graphic novels, the way America looked at manga would never be the same again. Now we have book stores dedicating large sections of their stores to manga, comic book shops are begging more and more American comic companies to release comics in the manga size and form, and more comic book companies are making their comics with the “manga look” as its being called. Yes, manga has definitely changed the way we read comics, so the next smart thing to do would be to make a manga anthology (a magazine). But who would take up the challenge? Tokyopop themselves tried to crack the magazine market with poor success, and after their failure no one figured the market could be cracked (Let's face it, if the kind of American manga couldn't make a manga anthology work then who could). Well two companies thought differently. These two companies were Viz and Gutsoon.
These two companies decided that there was a market to be cracked, and they both went ahead and released their own manga anthologies with their own plans in hopes of capturing a new market. And so Viz’s “Shonen Jump” and Gutsoon’s “Raijin Comics” were unleashed on the world. So the big question is how do the two compare to each other? Let’s take a look and find out.
1. The Series
Obviously the first pull of any magazine is going to be the content that is offered within the pages. Because let’s face it, if you don’t have the content, you don’t have the readers. So what series did each magazine get? Well Viz stocked up on action/boys series for “Shonen Jump.” In “Shonen Jump” you can read “Dragon Ball (Z),” “Yu-Gi-Oh,” “Shaman King,” “Naruto,” “Yu Yu Hakusho,” “One Piece,” and “Hikaru No Go.” You may notice a pattern with the selection I listed above. That pattern is that all these series are either on TV and/or are geared towards the action loving boy crowd (With the exception of "Hikaru no Go"). That’s not to say these series are bad by any means, it’s just that Viz has decided to target a specific audience with “Shonen Jump.”
And now let’s take a look at the lineup for “Raijin Comics,” which has a little bit more of a diverse selection of series. The series (As of this moment) include “Slam Dunk,” “City Hunter,” “Fist of The Blue Sky,” “Guardian Angel Getten,” “Nemuri Kyoshiro,” “Bow Wow Wata,” “Revenge of Mouflon,” “Baki The Grappler,” and “Keiji.” This selection of stories is a far more unusual choice of series since all these stories are of different genre's. It's as if Gutsoon is trying to attract every possible audience it can with this selection. Unlike “Shonen Jump” where all the series are geared towards male teens who love action, Gutsoon has included a little something for everyone. Including the sports fans (Just for the record, “Slam Dunk” may be the first major sports manga to hit America), the romantic comedy fans, the martial arts fans, and the drama fans! Heck there's even a couple of political series in here, which is something you usually don't see printed at all!
2. Price and Substance
Obviously something to consider whenever you buy something is “Am I getting my money’s worth.” Seriously, whenever most people buy something they always ponder whether or not their going to get enough substance for your dollar, and with these two series people may have different opinions on what is truly considered “getting your money’s worth.” Case in point, Viz’s “Shonen Jump” retails $4.99 an issue and clocks in at around 350 pages an issue, while Gutsoon’s “Raijin Comics” retails for $5.95 an issue and clocks in at around 230 pages an issue. Also if you want to subscribe to these magazines “Shonen Jump” will cost you $29.99 for a year (12 issues) while “Raijin Comics” will cost you $47.40 a year (12 issues)!
When you compare the size and price to the two series you might automatically think that “Shonen Jump” is the way to go, but before you completely write off “Raijin Comics” let’s look at what’s being offered inside the covers of both series. With “Shonen Jump” you get several series of the same genre in the magazine, and each of those series gets two or three chapters in each issue. Despite each series getting a good chapter count in each issue, all these series are just plain LONG! Meaning that it might still be three to five years before any of these series actually get completed, and if advertisers don’t swarm to Viz then the chances of them upping the page count is slim. However “Raijin Comics” contains far more series then “Shonen Jump” does, and each series gets one chapter a month with one story getting two chapters a month.
This may seem like a bad thing as the stories in Raijin may seem to take longer to finish at this rate then the series in Shonen, but Raijin has a policy to always keep things fresh and interesting for the readers, which means that Gutsoon always makes it a point to have at least two or three short stories that may not be incredibly long, but they leave for an opportunity to swap out stories more often. “Slam Dunk” and “City Hunter” may take a long time before they come to their end, but Raijin has already finished publishing shorts series like “Bomber Girl,” “The First President of Japan,” and have finished a few of the “Mountain Climbers Saga” series! Whether these short stories be hit or miss, the content is at least changing, making sure that the content in “Raijin Comics” does not go stale. Plus Raijin always makes it a point to print short stories that would NEVER see the light of day in America otherwise!
For example, Hojo Tsukasa (Best known for his famous manga “City Hunter”) wrote a manga called “A Gift From An Angel,” which was a wonderful and touching story of two lifelong friends who are brought together by a girl who claims to be their future daughter...or that’s what she claims anyway, thing is they aren’t dating, and they have certainly never had sex before. While they are trying to figure out what to make of the girl, the two start to realize that they might have feelings for each other that they never knew. It’s funny, it’s tear jerking, and it’s a great story...it’s also a mere 30 pages. Even so this is a real gem, and no one in America would have likely heard of this except for the fact that this story DID appear in “Raijin Comics” issue 24, and thank goodness they printed it too (Although there are no plans to put this story in a book as of this writing)!
As you can see "Shonen Jump" (Left) is considerably larger then "Raijin Comics" (Right)
So even though Raijin is half the size of Shonen, as you can clearly see Raijin has some interesting material that should not be missed. To date the only short series “Shonen Jump” has show cased was “Sand Land,” and even that, a series that shouldn’t have taken very long to complete, was stretched out so that it wasn’t finished until a year later (Inexcusable in my mind considering how short the story was).
3. The Articles
Even though the manga itself is the main attraction to these two anthologies there are a few articles that need to be included so that these two magazines could officially be labeled as magazines and put on the magazine rack in all major stores. And as far as articles go this is where the two series are almost completely different. “Shonen Jump” is mainly targeted for the pre-teen crowd, so the articles reflect that target audience perfectly. First off we have the occasional anime DVD reviews. These reviews are supposed to be there to help people decide what to buy and what not to, however whoever said this has lied. These are some VERY poor reviews! They summerize the movies, they tell you it’s good and all that, but their opinion is pretty much the same every time. They’ll usually tell you that this DVD is good for fans of the series, pick it up, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Features on the DVD’s? Not likely to be mentioned. What version are they reviewing, subbed or dubbed? This distinction is very rarely made. If the DVD is edited only will hard core anime fans want to pick it up? They never even mention if the DVD is edited only. In short, these reviews are more like ads, and I would avoid actually reading them at all costs. Other features include (anime) game previews and reviews, and “Yu-Gi-Oh!” card game strategies. Every now and then they interview one of the creators of one of the series inside the magazine, but these reviews tend to be very simple and basic, they never really give any information you would really want to know about the author. The best feature by far is “Manga Explorer,” this is a feature that sort of “previews” different manga series that were/are being published in the Japanese “Shonen Jump.”
These series could either be well known through their anime counterpart or they could be totally unknowns that sound interesting, either way this feature gives people a chance to write down titles to vote for whenever Tokyopop or Viz does their annual “What Manga Series Should We Pick Up Next” poll. It may be a relatively small part of each issue, but this is still one of the best features they came up with, otherwise though most of the articles and features won’t appeal to you unless your under 12. If you are by chance over 12 then the articles in “Raijin Comics” may be more your cup of tea. In every issue you’ll get a free mini poster by various manga artists (One time they even gave the readers a “Love Hina” poster drawn by Ken Akamatsu), which isn’t technically a feature, but it’s still nice to have. For starters we have all of Raijin’s American comic strips, which are used to tell the stories of management turmoil, Japanese events, and other things of that sort. They’re kind of pointless, but they’re funny none-the-less.
The real meat of the articles though can be found in the back of the magazine. There is a feature called “Japanese Culture” which describes what Japanese culture is like, why Japanese do some of the things they do, and it’s a real interesting series that may tell you a few things about Japanese culture that you never knew (Even if you do watch lots of anime). Next we have “Manga Connoisseur,” which is basically Raijin’s version of “Manga Explorer,” with the real difference in being that you will have NEVER heard of ANY of the manga showcased here (And if you have heard of these, then you are a true manga lover)!!! Another feature hard core manga fans may enjoy is “Manga Retrospective,” which looks at the state of the manga industry (In Japan), has comments from manga artists who give their insight to the manga business, and the history of Japan that shows why some particular genre’s are popular, and why some are not. Out of all the features in this magazine, chances are everyone will like “Manga Retrospective” the most.
Another great feature is “Sound Effects Corner,” where the editors show you exactly what all those untranslated sound effects mean, and this feature also gives you tips on how you can learn to read kanji yourself. For those of you who are learning Japanese this feature makes perfect sense for you to read every month. And then finally we have “Raijin Game & Anime,” which is a feature that is included every other month in “Raijin Comics.” This feature is done with full color pages, and it discusses games and anime in Japan. Again, this is one of those features that looks at the state of these things in Japan, so for people who want to know how the Japanese react to games like “Halo” then they’ll love this feature. There are other features in Raijin that I didn’t mention (Raijin shuffles their features around like they do with their manga), but these are all very interesting articles and most hard core manga fans will appreciate the features in “Raijin Comics” then they will the features in “Shonen Jump.” Still you can’t go wrong with either magazine, it just depends who you are and what you like.
4. Paper Quality
While it may not seem like a big deal, the quality of the paper also reflects the costs of the magazine. It may sound kind of silly that each issue of Raijin is one dollar more expensive then each issue of “Shonen Jump,” however it may help you to know that the paper used in Raijin is of much higher quality then the paper in Shonen is. For “Shonen Jump” Viz decided to use paper that is about on par with the paper quality of a newspaper, nothing fancy at all. With the exception of a few plastic pages for the ads and the color the pages for the manga that they print every now and then, it would be completely safe to assume that Viz doesn’t break their necks with quality paper in this magazine, making it so that after a few years of constant reading the paper will dither, and then you would have to go out and buy their much better quality made graphic novels.
Now let’s take a look at the paper in “Raijin Comics,” which is noticeably much better. While Viz has opted to go with cheap newspaper quality paper for “Shonen Jump,” Gutsoon has decided to use paper that is usually reserved for such books as “Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix” and “The Sum of All Fears.” Another thing that Raijin does that Shonen doesn’t is print color pages in pretty much every issue. Sometimes an entire chapter will be in color, and Raijin will use plastic paper and make everything look all good and fancy. Another thing to keep in mind is that because Raijin includes their extra feature “Raijin Game & Anime” every other month, they use cardboard like quality paper for these issues, making the whole magazine itself look very good. With such expensive paper in each issue, your copies of “Raijin Comics” is pretty much guarantied to last a lot longer then your issues of “Shonen Jump.”
While not everyone really cares about the paper quality in their magazines (Most people throw away magazines after a couple of reads anyway), for those of you who are collector nuts like me, paper quality does play an important role of what to buy and what not to. And chances are if you plan to read these magazines multiple times, then “Shonen Jump” readers may want to find some protection for their magazines so that they will longer then they are supposed to (Keeping both magazines in plastic collector bags will help the life span of both the magazines a lot in the long run).
5. Availability
Now that we’ve analyzed these two magazines to the core the next step is where to find them, and in this regard finding “Shonen Jump” is pretty much guarantied to be a much easier find then “Raijin Comics” will be. In this area Viz has taken every measure possible to make sure that you can’t ignore “Shonen Jump.” You can find this magazine at any comic book shop, book stores, magazine stands, Target, grocery stores, Blockbuster, online, and you can even get subscription forms in many Viz graphic novels and DVD’s! Viz has done their homework when it comes to getting the product out there, and it shows. And this is where Gutsoon ultimately fails, as “Raijin Comics” requires quite a bit of effort to find. To this date I’ve only found three places where I was actually able to buy Raijin, and those places were Waldenbooks, Raily's, and Fryes Electronics (Of all places).
Otherwise though the only place that you are guarantied to be able to get Raijin is online at www.raijincomics.com, where you can not only subscribe to the magazine, but you can also purchese back issues for a discounted price. Otherwise though you may want to call book stores or any other places that carry magazines ahead of time to make sure they carry “Raijin Comics.” And for those of you who would like to find back issues of “Shonen Jump” you can find them here.
In Conclusion
There is no way I can choose one magazine over the other, nor am I here to tell you which magazine is best suited for you, I’m just presenting the facts as is to help you make a better choice on which magazine you want to commit to buying. Anyway I hope this guide has helped you, and good luck on finding the magazine you want to go with.
- -Kevin T. Rodriguez- -