Let's talk about Jump GIGA
Jump GIGA covers, 2016-2024. Volumes are published (left to right per row) as Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn releases, with 2018 and 2019 briefly breaking the pattern by having three Winter and three Summer volumes each. 2023 has an Early Spring volume in addition to the standard four.
So, people have pointed out that the 2024 Spring cover is, uh, not like other covers.
But I've only seen comparisons to other MHA GIGA covers and MHA Weekly Shonen Jump covers. Out of curiosity for what GIGA's typical marketing aesthetics might be, I put together a comparison between all of Jump GIGA's covers to date.
And, um. Some things stand out, to say the least.
First, let me clarify what Jump GIGA even is: it is a seasonal magazine from Shonen Jump, published separate from Weekly Shonen Jump. SJ is an absolutely massive brand and they have a number of magazines serialized outside of the most well-known weekly magazine.
The content of Jump GIGA is primarily made up of one-shots and spin-offs. From the beginning, a lot of the appeal has been the cool cover illustrations which showcase special merchandise that comes with the purchase of GIGA. Usually the cover also promotes big things going on related to the WSJ series, like movie events, new games, or special figurines for sale.
The marketing aesthetic has been clear from the start: the cover consists of one core illustration and a number of ads surrounding it. Most often you get a cover illustration of a protagonist, and then ads and merch for other series, e.g. Food Wars protagonist cover with One Piece film promotion and Haikyuu!! merch.
The purpose of this marketing direction is pretty obvious. Spin-offs and one-shots are not likely to generate a ton of interest consistently, so they lure people in with the cool covers and tempting limited edition merchandise of the series they already know and love. In this way, highlighting one series with the cover and different series with the merch makes sense, because maybe somebody doesn't care about Food Wars, but they definitely want those Haikyuu!! stickers, stuff like that.
Starting from 2020's Autumn volume, you can see a shift. For the first time, basically all of the merchandise is for the cover series. The Demon Slayer manga had already ended five months earlier in May, but a two-chapter spin-off was scheduled for release in WSJ during October. This GIGA was released exactly one day before the second chapter was published and it capitalizes on the hype.
After this point, only MHA and Jujutsu Kaisen dominate the cover and the merch in quite this way, with Black Clover getting attention last volume as a way to highlight the fact that it actually switched syndication from WSJ to GIGA.
Anyway, most commonly the cover illustration is a solo shot of a core cast member (usually but not always the protagonist), and if it's not a solo, it's a big cast illustration.
Only a few covers focus on two characters, and usually it's a crossover as opposed to characters from same series sharing the limelight.
Here we've got Food Wars' protagonist with the main characters from Dr. Stone and Act-Age.
The two covers most similar to the Izuku & Kacchan cover are 2022 Winter and 2023 Autumn.
Winter depicts the main trio of Blue Box in a seasonally-appropriate aesthetic. Not gonna lie, this one kinda makes me laugh--Blue Box is a romance and sports manga, and even though Christmas has a romantic air to it in Japan, instead of depicting any sort of like, hesitant but hopeful romantic energy between the heterosexual couple that actually get together later in the series, they focus primarily on the two girls being cute with the guy is a wee footnote? I mean, all right.
Meanwhile, Autumn depicts one of the protagonists with the series antagonist with a typical cool action style. I'm not very familiar with JJK, but I hear these two have got Some Drama going on, so, there's that.
The merch itself has also evolved over the years. Stickers and posters were present early on, but they have since expanded to decorative folders and now acrylic stands and coasters. 2021 Summer sees the first time the cover illustration is marketed as merch, with the Jujutsu Kaisen cover included as a decorative folder.
Right after that, the Kacchan cover of 2021 Autumn is included as a poster alongside earlier covers featuring Todoroki and Izuku.
2023 Summer's cover is a huge, wrap-around MHA cast illustration and it was published three days after chapter 396 came out, strategically timed to highlight the big shift in the final battle as Ochako vs Toga ends and All Might vs. AFO begins. Merch includes a decorative folder of the wrap-around cover and character motif stickers.
And then we get this!?
A duo cover illustration where the cover art itself has been merchandised to hell and back!?!?
Acrylic stand and pin set!?
Double-sided coaster showing bkdk greatest hits!? With volume 29's river scene cover!?
There's also a double-sided poster featuring the Spring cover with the ninth popularity poll art and a decorative bag with the anniversary art. The cover art itself is plastered all over the volume, front, back, and spine, apparently a total of 19 times.
I honestly don't know what to say about this. It feels wild that this is actually what the cover is. Obviously it is a huge marketing push in anticipation of season 7, and Izuku and Katsuki are the most popular characters, but. it just feels... unique.
In the course of Jump GIGA's publication, this direction is kind of unprecedented. Genuinely no one could have expected this. This seems to be the first time there's been this much merch for a cover. And it was a solid fucking move, marketing-wise--it's sold out basically everywhere, everyone is talking about it. And even people who don't follow the series or ship these two can't help but comment on how strikingly romantic it looks!?
I don't know how much say Horikoshi had in what the cover was, but damn it sure feels like he drew this with immense affection. I kind of wonder if he personally pushed for it to be these two, rather than the typical solo shot, cast shot, or even a protagonist vs. antagonist shot.
I'm KO'd, man. idek if this post is useful to anybody I'm just on my hands and knees here.
Everybody knows what we're all here for, and it's these cute boys finally getting their happy ending.
