WJ Release Dates

Weekly Jump Background To begin with, the majority of people outside of Japan don't really know when Weekly Shounen Jump is actually released. In most cases, Weekly Jump will typically be released on a Monday. You might be saying, "But wait, aren't my manga scanlations released on Fridays?" Well, yes they are, but that's because even though the release date is on Monday, more often than not, issues will appear at most a week before the actual release date. So all those "scanlations" you download on Friday, are technically the next week's chapter, not the week of that Friday. Weekly Jump will also sometimes be released as a double issue, though the issues chosen changes from year-to-year. Since the issues are at a pace of one issue per week (52 weeks in a year/52 issues a year), these double issues span a two week period and can be released anytime within those two weeks. While some double issues contained only one DragonBall chapter, which meant fans had to wait an extra week for the next chapter, other double issues contained two chapters (yippee). Release Calendars So over the years, I've come in contact with a couple of original issues of Weekly Jump and I'd take note of the release date. Eventually, I had confirmed a couple release dates for just about every year while DragonBall was in serialization and in some cases almost the entire year. Using these confirmed dates, I began to organize a list of the weeks from 1984 through 1995, and figured out how the chapters corresponded to the Weekly Jump issues. All this information has been combined to create the release calendars below. The biggest surprise for me, was to find that the final chapter (1995 WJ #25) was actually released in June, and not May! Every official guide I've seen, specifically the Daizenshuu, lists the final chapter as being released in May 1995, so I assumed it must be true. So "knowing" it was released in May 1995 made my original list all screwed up, since it would never worked out right in the end. After searching the internet, I knew that the only way I could confirm that the final chapter was actually released in June 1995 was to find a copy of that issue for myself... and I did! As you can clearly see, the Weekly Jump issue containing the final chapter was released on June 5, 1995. So why would they list it otherwise? The only conclusion I could come up with, is that someone at Shueisha hadn't done their research. I believe this flaw stems from the fact that Akira Toriyama signed the final page of the chapter with the date "May 1995", which is the date that the chapter was drawn, but clearly not when it was released. Now, of course the calendars wouldn't be complete without some cover images, and thank the stars for the internet! I'd like to give a huge thanks to both the Jump News Channel and Weekly Jump Memories for providing all of the cover images used. They may not be the best quality, but they're better than nothing. Especially since it is nearly impossible to find all of them anywhere else. So here's how the release calendars work. Everything is of course setup like a calendar, starting with the end of 1984 and running through June 1995. All days colored in red denote when issues of Weekly Shounen Jump were released. Though please note that this may not necessarily mean this is the exact day the issue was released, I simply marked issues that were not released on Monday as if they were to create a continuity from week to week. By hovering your mouse over this date, you'll be presented with the issues cover image, issue year and number, and the DragonBall chapter(s) released in that specific issue. I've also provided yearly notes, to give you an idea of what else was happening with DragonBall at the time, and where that year's chapters fall within the arc storylines. Be sure to also check out the table at the bottom of the page that showcases every cover that DragonBall appeared on.