I’ve been a fan of anime damn near all of my life. Still, I formally became a real fan around 2012. Around this time, the print Shonen Jump magazine in america decided to axe its print version and go digital as Shonen Jump Alpha. I had gotten a couple of issues before, and saw that a yearly sub was 25 bucks and got my mom to keep my sub going as long as I kept grades in school up. This also led to me learning that Viz Media, the company behind the magazine, streamed anime. They had a site called Neon Alley where it was a 24 hour kinda thing, and they also streamed on-demand on their own website. This was basically how I started reading manga and watching anime. I had read some Naruto scans prior to this, but otherwise, didn’t really keep up with anything. Learning about anime streaming sites like Crunchyroll and reading manga every week on Shonen Jump is how I’ve become the anime fan I am today.
Also, just to say it now, I have always been big on showing support whenever possible. I was reading scans, but the moment I saw a reasonable price on the SJ magazine, I did what I could to support official releases. I’ve been this way for a long time. Nowadays, I admit pirate a lot of anime and tokusatsu shows, and I have read comics on places like readcomicsonline, but whenever possible, I show up and support official releases. I buy what I can and let people know when something’s good. That’s all I can do, and it’s what I’m going to continue to do. I wanna keep enjoying my hobby, but people gotta see returns. Support what you can when it’s within your means.
Back to the point, I’ve been in the game a long time now, and I’ve seen a lot of series come and go, and I’ve even seen pop culture change a bit as time has passed. This post is really just me rambling about the series I’ve seen, specifically some more underrated ones, a bit like the tokusatsu post from i first started this blog.
Blue Exorcist
This series is arguably the most important one on here. When I came back to anime in the early 2010s, Blue Exorcist was one of the first series I ran into. I remember watching the anime on Viz Media’s website and just immediately getting hooked. The animation was great, especially to me at the time since I had been far removed from anime for a good while at that point. But more than anything, Rin and his struggle just felt very real. It felt far more relatable and earnest compared to something like Naruto, which, mind you, was still great and relatable in its own right. But Rin just being a well-intentioned kid with a bit of a rough side spoke to me, as did seeing him connect with his peers.
Rin is a class act of a protagonist, and he’s been like top 5 for me ever since I saw him. Just so much heart in one character. Him having that period at the beginning where he has to prove himself to his brother and the other students left a mark on me, and he’s delivered moment after moment ever since.
This series is great, and I can’t be any happier that it was the series that welcomed me back to anime & manga. I really wanna stress that people should check it out.
World Trigger
The first word that comes to mind when I think of World Trigger is “payoff”. This series takes its sweet time, but it has proven at every opportunity that the wait is well worth it.
World Trigger took its time at the beginning to really set up the characters and the world. We got some battles against the alines early on, for sure, but the real highlight of first 14-ish chapters was getting know Yuma and learning about Border.And then all that setup pays off and we’re given one of my favorite fights in the genre on top of a major plot development. And it just keeps going on like that. It’s done an amazing job over all these years to make characters and their motivations clear and relevant and give us payoff. It takes longer than some folks probably like, but the shit is honestly crack to me.
World Trigger’s primary claim to fame, tho, is the tactical battles. The series has aggressively denied standard shonen brainrot to ever gain even a fraction of a foothold at every opportunity. We’re constantly given looks into characters’ mindsets while they’re fighting and see them coordinating with their allies or trying to set up a situation where they can gain an advantage, however incremental. Now, World Trigger is not the only series to have battles that don’t devolve into “my power level is bigger than yours, so I win”, but the dedication to keeping these is amazing. You get a great fight with looks into both sides’ thought processes for every fight, and it makes them so much more engaging.
A gem of a series, for sure.
Toriko
I slept on Toriko. I will not lie to you. At first, I was only reading the series because it happened to be in WSJ magazine,a dn it was never actively bad, so I just never had a reason to skip past it. But little by little, the series was slowly winning me over. If World Trigger spoke to the part of me that loved tactical battles and build-up, Toriko spoke to the part of me that just loved old-school shonen brawling. Not to say that it was braindead entertainment or anything of the sort, but Toriko is a battle shonen through and through, and while I don’t necesarily call it the cream of the crop, it’s definitely top tier. The food gimmick is very fun, the Four Kings are a hell of an ensemble, and the series overall had a good message about respecting the things that you eat.
and also, straight up, Toriko vs Starjun, especially in the manga, is the exact type of shit I read manga for. The anime didn’t do it justice. It might just be my fvaorite singular fight in any manga. It’s just insane, man.
Nura
If One Piece is my Michael Jordan, Nurarihyon no Mago is my Allen Iverson. It’s my personal favorite series even though I will always acknowledge that One Piece is probably the best shonen manga ever created. The series ticks every single box in my brain and I found Rikuo’s struggle to balance his human and yokai selves very relatable during a time where I was learning the concept of code-switching.
The art in Nura is immaculate. The only person fucking with Shiibashi art-wise is probably Murata. I’m serious, man. Go look at some of those color pages. They’re somewhere on the internet. They’re just breathtaking.
I promise you I wanted this section to be longer, but I can’t really say much else because I’ve already said the point - this is my favorite manga of all time. I love all the characters, I love the story, I love all the fights. Everything about this series appeals to me, and I’m forever grateful that I read it.
Nisekoi
Nisekoi probably won’t end up too high on my all time manga list, but it’s an important manga for me because it was my first slice-of-life series and rom-com.
The premise was fun as hell, and like any rom-com worth a damn, it gave us lovable girls who the internet would go to war over for years to come. Nisekoi was very important for my weekly readings. In-between reading stuff like One Piece and Toriko and full-color DBZ, it offered a much-needed breather. I could kick back and just enjoy the shenanigans they got up to and root for my favorite girl to get some. (Tsugumi best girl. Fuck what you heard.)
Nisekoi’s claim to fame was definitely its reaction faces. Komi was god at those joints. Nisekoi was funny, but those faces made it hilarious at times.
At the moment, I’d probably rank Yuuna & the Haunted Hot Springs and Ayakashi Traingle higher than Nisekoi, but I can’t deny this series has a spot in my heart. Reading it every week, having it pick me up when I was down, and giving me tomboy brainrot; it was real. I didn’t agree with the ending all that much, but this series was definitely about the journey for me.
Wrapping up
This wasn’t a long post and I didn’t really say anything particularly impressive. I just felt like shouting out these series. They’re from a very unique time in JUMP manga, I feel. That period after the “Big 3” established themselves, but we hadn’t yet gotten to the My hero Academia and Demon Slayer era yet. If I had to describe it, it’d be Golden State’s 3 championships. The new era hadn’t come yet, but there’s clearly a top dawg. These series were great, and they deserve all the love we can give; they were just overshadowed by the other greats running in the magazine.