In response to the "Manga Tech 2026 Business Plan Contest," a business plan contest organized by the editorial department of Shueisha's manga app "Shonen Jump+," a talk event titled "An Evening to Discuss the Future of Jump+ - Jump+ x Innovation" was held in Tokyo on January 19th. The judges for the contest, Jump+ Editor-in-Chief Yuta Momiyama, creator Kensou (Kensuke Furukawa), CEO of AL, and UI/UX designer Takayuki Fukatsu, CEO of THE GUILD, spoke about the contest's outline, the competition theme, and "the future of Jump+."
Manga Tech 2026 is a business plan contest run by Jump+ with the main theme of "Jump+ x Innovation" with the aim of creating new businesses and value. Jump+ has continued to evolve as a digital platform connecting manga and readers, and is seeking feasible business ideas to help it move to the next stage and grow. Manga Tech 2020, held in 2020, received 334 applications, resulting in the creation of new businesses and projects. Applications are being accepted on a special website. The deadline is March 10th.
Regarding Jump+, Editor-in-Chief Momiyama said, "I think that most manga apps aim to increase the sales rate and number of users of the app, but Jump+ is a little different. Our benchmark, our goal, is whether we can produce a lot of hit manga. Even within the editorial department, there is no talk of sales dropping compared to last year. We value whether new series are a hit compared to last year." He spoke about the importance of mechanisms and systems, saying, "Some people may think that if there are many talented authors and excellent editors, many hit manga will be produced, but personally I don't think that's the case. I have run Jump+ with the idea that whether the mechanisms of the manga app are functioning properly is related to the creation of many hit manga."
Based on his own experience at Weekly Shonen Jump, Editor-in-Chief Momiyama analyzed the four key components of creating a hit manga: "discovering new artists," "developing new artists through manga awards and other means," "tuning the work" by artists by monitoring reader reactions through survey systems and other tools, and "expanding the work's popularity" by continuing the series in Weekly Shonen Jump. He explained that popular works are born through the collaboration of artists and editors, who use these four features to compete with their rivals. Jump+ has also taken on challenges, such as using a manga submission service to discover new artists and collecting various data to improve its content creation. "It's been 11 years since we launched the service, but we're still only halfway there. We wanted to innovate by using various technologies, so we decided to implement Manga Tech," he said, explaining the purpose of the contest.
When the topic turned to data collection at Jump+, Editor-in-Chief Momiyama said, "We collect a variety of data, but it's not quite as accurate as the surveys at Weekly Shonen Jump." He continued, "I think it's good to be able to evaluate each work relative to its content. However, Jump+ publishes works on different days of the week, and some works are published weekly and others every other week, so it can be difficult to evaluate them relatively. Also, with magazines there's the thrill of works being replaced depending on the results of surveys, but with Jump+ it's difficult to motivate authors."
In response to this, Fukatsu, who is involved in the management of the media platform "note," explained his idea: "At "note," we have decided not to have rankings. The reason for this is the idea of 'creating many number one's. We will create point rankings for various categories. For example, in the case of a manga app, we can increase the motivation of authors by creating various number one rankings, such as the most exciting battle manga or the most tear-jerking manga."
Regarding the app's UI, Fukatsu said, "It would be good to have something even more aggressive," and floated the bold idea of charging for "comics of the future," saying, "For example, as soon as the first chapter of a new series is published, we could create a payment button that changes all the comics at once. The most accurate data would not be to ask whether it's good or bad, but whether or not to buy it. Crowdfunding is a similar example." Editor-in-Chief Momiyama commented, "You don't know how long a series will last when it starts, but it's interesting."
Currently, Jump+ collects detailed data for each page, and in the case of one-off stories, analyzes what was good and what was bad about them. Pages with a high number of dropouts are shared with editors, along with panel positioning, dialogue, and the amount of text. Fukatsu said, "It might also be a good idea to digitize the parts where readers go back and reread previous pages. This could be a signal that they went back because they didn't understand the characters or setting."
The conversation also turned to the reader comment section of Jump+. While some participants pointed out that the comment section could have a negative impact on authors, Editor-in-Chief Momiyama emphasized that the comment section is aimed at readers, explaining, "We want readers to experience the excitement of following a serialized work. On Jump+, original works can be read for free from the first chapter, so it's easy to attract people. When we were kids, we would pass around Jump and have fun sharing our thoughts. We want to do that with the Jump+ comment section."
Finally, Editor-in-Chief Momiyama said, "When I was a child, Weekly Shonen Jump had a circulation of about 6 million copies, and it is said that one issue was read by about three people, and that about 18 million people read it. I would like Jump+ to be a place like that. If you have any good ideas or new technologies, I would be happy if you would apply."
