A major Shonen Jump series has come to an end this week after five long years, and the creator behind it all has bid goodbye with a final message shared with fans. Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine has had a much better year thus far than last year as not as many of its new series have been cancelled due to low overall interest from fans. But in exchange, many of the longer running series instead have been reaching the end of their respective runs with the natural conclusion of each of their stories.
Kouji Miura’s Blue Box came to an end with Shonen Jump this past week after five years of serialization, and 250 chapters under its belt. With the final chapter sending Taiki and the others into the future now that they are graduating from high school, the original creator behind it all took to social media to share some final art along with a special goodbye to the series as they thank fans for all of their support through the years.
「アオのハコ」250話で完結となります。
自分がいいと思って描いたものが、他の人にいいと言ってもらえるなんて
これ以上の幸せありません。
私の人生を変える大切な作品になりました。
すごく幸せな日々でした！
ありがとうございました！ pic.twitter.com/ICYPLi3taW
Blue Box officially ended with Chapter 250 of the manga series, and it didn’t really have a lot of story to actually wrap up. The final slate of chapters have been great at putting a final bow on Taiki and Chinatsu’s budding romance, so the final chapter was more of a ceremonial epilogue to the already complete story. It worked quite well with the fact that the series ended with each of the characters graduating from high school, and Miura shared their final message with Shonen Jump, “This is the end of Blue Box. Thank you so much! It was a very precious time for me.”
Their goodbye continued on social media with, “The fact that what I drew because I thought it was good gets praised by others as good too— there is no greater happiness than this,” Miura stated. “It became an important work that changed my life.” Fans are sad to see the series go as Blue Box was a much different kind of manga than the action magazine usually highlights. With both sports and romance at its core, it was adept at bringing both of those energies to life with a balance no other series has been able to do.
Blue Box ending its run with Shonen Jump unfortunately makes it the second major romance series that ended this Summer. Following the conclusion of Genki Ono’s Hima-ten!, these series are leaving a major gap in the magazine needing to be filled by a new romance series in the future. It’s yet to be revealed if any of the newer hits will be able to match up to either of these longer running series, but there are also some other endings to keep an eye out for.
Both Sakamoto Days and Witch Watch are now in the midst of their respective final arcs, so it’s likely that either of them will end within the next year of two. Yuto Suzuki’s Sakamoto Days seems to be the one closest to its own end, however, as it’s already working through what looks to be its final battle. We’ll have to see if Shonen Jump is ready to say goodbye to another long running hit.
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