Summary
- Monthly schedule confuses fans, affects sales, and slows down the pacing of the story.
- Boruto moved from Shonen Jump to V-JUMP, impacting its reach despite being in a larger magazine.
- Despite drawbacks, the monthly schedule may be saving Boruto, considering the health of the authors.
Boruto has been serialized on a monthly schedule for a while now, and it even moved from Shonen Jump to V-JUMP back in 2019. A good portion of the Boruto fandom are Naruto fans who keep following the story, so there are some discussions about whether the publishing schedule is potentially hurting the series, especially considering that Naruto was published on a weekly basis.
Boruto Two Blue Vortex is currently at a very interesting point right now, so it's natural for fans to worry about whether the series could reach an even larger audience if it were serialized weekly like most shonen hits.
Boruto: Ikemoto Teases A Major Role For Kakashi Hatake In The Future
Kakashi is a beloved but sidelined character in Boruto. He still has a huge role to play however.
The Problems with the Monthly Release Schedule
The biggest issue with the monthly schedule is that fans sometimes get confused about when new chapters are coming out, especially for those who just enjoy the series without getting into too many online discussions.
Weekly schedules keep people engaged because it becomes part of their routine. On the other hand, it's very easy to forget about something if it only happens once a month — this can also affect sales, as monthly series tend to sell less than weekly series (because dropping new chapters weekly can bring more attention to a series).
Another problem is the pacing of the story. On a monthly schedule, the chapters are usually longer, about 40 pages — weekly chapters are usually about 20 pages. But a month usually lasts four or five weeks, so the weekly series gets about 80–100 new pages each month, the monthly series. Thus, the weekly series progresses at twice the speed of the monthly series, so fans can feel a difference in the pacing.
Not only that, but, even though the monthly series drops more information on each chapter, fans may feel that the story is progressing even slower than it actually is due to the longer time between chapters. This seems to be the case with Boruto.
As chapters need to set the stage for the story to advance properly, many fans think that chapters with less action are "a waste of time," or they don't feel the impact of an event when it takes many months/chapters to unfold.
For this reason, many fans may choose to wait a few months to read a lot of chapters at once, so that they don't feel like things are moving too slowly.
Boruto Actually Followed A Monthly Schedule in Shonen Jump
Boruto: Naruto Next Generations began serialization in Shonen Jump, but even though it was in a weekly magazine, the series followed a monthly schedule for a while before moving to V-JUMP, a monthly magazine .
While this may seem like just protocol — moving a monthly series from a weekly magazine to a monthly magazine — it is actually more than that. Shonen Jump's circulation is much larger than V-JUMP's, so the series would have more potential to attract a larger audience in Shonen Jump, even with a monthly schedule.
Also, since Boruto readers usually also read other Shonen Jump titles as well, they would hardly miss new chapters just because they forgot, as the magazine would advertise a week in advance that a new Boruto chapter would be coming soon.
Is The Monthly Schedule Hurting the Series?
Despite Its Drawbacks, It's Probably For The Better
For international audiences, being serialized in Shonen Jump or V-JUMP may not make that much of a difference, as new chapters are added to MANGA Plus. They are also published in Shonen Jump+ in Japan.
However, fans might have felt that the series was being less marketed after it moved to V-JUMP, since it is a smaller magazine. If the authors could serialize it on a weekly schedule, it would probably be better in terms of sales and popularity, but let's not forget that the work routine at Shonen Jump is very hard, and many authors develop health problems due to the exhausting routine.
Dragon Ball Super is also serialized in V-JUMP, and fans hardly say that it is an issue. In Boruto's case, it may have seemed like a "downgrading" of the series — and it may indeed have impacted its potential reach, especially with the anime on hiatus —, but this routine is probably for the best when it comes to writing the series in a viable way. So, despite its drawbacks, the monthly schedule is probably saving the series rather than killing it.
Boruto: Two Blue Vortex's latest chapters are available to read on MANGA Plus.
- Release Date
- April 5, 2017
- Network
- TV Tokyo
Boruto is an action anime series that continues years after the events of Naruto, now in the shoes of the next generation - many of which are the children of the protagonists from the original series. Boruto follows the titular character, the son of Naruto, who seeks to impress his father. Together with the other ninjas-in-training, Boruto will battle to overcome trials and threats even more significant than his father ever faced.
- Creator
- Masashi Kishimoto
- Streaming Service(s)
- Crunchyroll
