Anyone who is a devout fan of anime and manga at least heard of Shonen Jump long before the American version came to the U.S. Heck, it’s the number one comic magazine in Japan. That very magazine is that starting point to many stories that evolved into mega-hit animated series, like “Dragon Ball”, “Shaman King”, “Yu Yu Hakusho”, “Naruto”, and “Yu-Gi-Oh!”.

If you had read some of Viz’s SJ graphic novels and magazines, you would know that anything with the “Shonen Jump” name will have good entertaining story the way it’s meant to be read by its creator.

…Or at least that was what the Shonen Jump name used to mean until now.

In case anyone reading lives under a rock, 4Kids Entertainment has the rights to “Yu-Gi-Oh!: Duel Monsters” and “Shaman King” in basically everywhere out of Asia, which is something I strongly disagree with. I’ll tell you why

Yu-Gi-Oh!’s manga and anime’s dark storyline, memorable characters, and more epic-looking monsters gained endless popularity in Japan, putting an unofficial end to the era of the $3000 Charizard card. And you want to know how badly the darker Japanese Yu-Gi-Oh is whipping Japanese Pokémon in most fields of entertainment? The Yu-Gi-Oh Trading Card Game’s Japanese Champion got to fly to New York to compete in the TCG’s World Championship in Madison Square Garden while the Japanese champ of Pokémon got next to diddly squat in comparison.

Wanna guess the age of the oldest player in the YGO World Championship? 14, you say? Nope! Nobody in this years competition was any younger than 15 and the oldest competitor was 22. These stats don’t look like one belonging to the next Pokémon. Looks more like a supercharged Japanese Magic: the Gathering franchise that not only has tossed brands like Digimon and Monster Ranchers into the crapper, but also has a Shueisha-caliber manga and anime series (well, two if you count Toei’s show separately).

But 4Kids doesn’t want a Shueisha-quality mega-brand, but a brand to succeed American Pokémon and last about five years while 4Kids look for the next big thing. You would think that a licensing company (they don’t deserve to be called an anime company) would make their own bran from scratch, but 4Kids’s production skills are utter crap. And they can’t find anything in sight specifically appeals to their target audience age (which is no older than 14). So what does 4Kids do and to solve this problem? Go the way of DiC, and Saban and find a popular brand that is really meant for teens and “adapt” it for Saturday morning TV. This is where the desecration of “Yu-Gi-Oh!” begins.

American “Yu-Gi-Oh!” becomes popular with kids who don’t even what Japan is, hated by parents who sees it as another Pokémon, and disowned by those who followed original Japanese “Yu-Gi-Oh!” before it came to America. And the YGO game card are being market more towards the five-year-old who will just gnaw on the cards than the people who actually play the tournaments.

Luckily, the brand had another chance to earn the rep it was supposed to have. When Shonwn Jump debuted, we all got the taste of what “Yu-Gi-Oh!” is supposed to be. There was no censorship (in fact, YGO ranted on censorship in a manga chapter), no flipping, no Americanization, no toning down on the manga’s dark storyline.

Not only did SJ exposed us to were YGO and Duel Monsters originated but also brought us great titles like “One Piece”, “Naruto”, and “Shaman King”.

Now back to 4Kids. YGO is doing well in TV ratings. But that is also a problem for them because YGO is on Kids WB while 4Kids has Fox Box. Now they need to “adapt” another brand for American kids for their Fox Box. They can go for “Sonic X” but that may not be enough to beat YGO. They needed something to that is YGO’s equal and only another Shonen Jump property can do that. So that is why 4Kids got Shaman King.

But raping Shaman King wasn’t enough. 4Kids just HAD to put the Shonen Jump logo in the U.S. Shaman King logo...and then did the same thing with the U.S. “Yu-Gi-Oh!” logo! http://www.yugioh.com/images/yugioh_logo.gif

4Kids can you do us all a favor and stop using Shonen Jump’s name? With all due respect you have done nothing to earn the right to associate your bad dubs with the pure art that is Shonen Jump. I you want to prove that you are worthy of that status, treat the Jump properties with the same respect Viz gives them.