While One Piece is one of Shonen Jump’s flagship manga series, one canceled story shows why the magazine will never have a series like it again.
Although One Piece has been one of Shonen Jump‘s most iconic series for over 25 years, one recently canceled series proves that the magazine will never have another series like it. This is a shame, given how incredible One Piece is, but given Shonen Jump‘s current cancelation policies, the magazine just can’t support a series like Eiichiro Oda’s pirate saga. Unless something changes soon, it never will.
Ginka & Glüna tragically proved this, as the charming manga by Shinpei Watanabe was canceled earlier this year. The series followed a young magician named Glüna and her magical talking snowman mentor Ginka as they traveled the world, acquired a solid group of friends, and collected missing pieces of Ginka. The series shared a lot of aspects of One Piece from its Luffy-esque protagonist to the spirit of adventure infused in almost every panel. However, its biggest similarity came from its narrative structure, which seemed to be slowly establishing the manga’s world and planting the seeds for major reveals later on.
Ginka & Glüna Could Have Been The Next One Piece
This mirrors how One Piece structures its story. Mangaka Eiichiro Oda is a meticulous plotter who plants seeds for future revelations sometimes hundreds of chapters before they occur. This can make the true brilliance of the series often take some time to reveal itself to new readers, many of whom find the initial narrative in East Blue to be too simplistic. In Shonen Jump‘s current environment, this slow approach to storytelling likely would have resulted in One Piece getting canceled before it got the opportunity to truly begin. Ginka & Glüna‘s cancelation is a strong piece of evidence for that theory, given how many revelations it was establishing for its future.
The ending of Ginka & Glüna reveals a lot of awesome twists very quickly. These revelations had been previously foreshadowed, such as Ginka’s original body being used by the manga’s ultimate villain Magaraka. It also unfortunately left many plot threads unresolved, such as the details of the ancient and mysterious Verokian Kingdom that collapsed long before the events of the manga. This is akin to if One Piece had to reveal Im and the secrets of the Void Century immediately after the Syrup Village arc, which would have deprived fans of the masterfully slow buildup of these threats and secrets.
Shonen Jump’s Cancelation Policies Prevents It From Having a New One Piece
The quick cancelation of any series that doesn’t immediately grab readers thus prevents new manga from being able to establish slow-burn mysteries like this lest they share Ginka & Glüna‘s fate. This prevents any series sharing One Piece‘s stellar narrative technique from ever having the chance to grow in Shonen Jump. If the magazine continues with this sort of business model Shonen Jump will never have another story like One Piece and will stifle a variety of other good stories on top of that.
