Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump magazine and Pokemon are teaming up for a massive new crossover showing off some of their biggest icons in a special collaboration. Both Pokemon and Shonen Jump are two of the biggest franchises in Japan with each having all sorts of multimedia franchises released over the decades, and now the two are going to collide with a surprising new team up. As Shonen Jump magazine continues to go through some big changes meaning the loss of some of its biggest franchises, team ups like this are going to go a long way with fans who will seek it out.
With the release of the latest issue of the magazine in Japan this weekend, Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump has announced it’s teaming up with Pokemon for a huge new team up. Artists from the magazine will be illustrating their characters alongside a cool Pokemonand they will be headlining the cover art for Shonen Jump for the August 4th issue dropping in Japan. To get the first look at this new team up, check out One Piece artist Eiichiro Oda’s contribution to the Pokemon team up below with a cool shot of Monkey D. Luffy and Pikachu.
Shonen Jump Teams Up With Pokemon
This is surprisingly the first ever collaboration between Shonen Jump and Pokemon despite the fact that the two franchises are some of the biggest to ever come out of Japan. This is also the first time that Pokemon’s teaming up with the artists in the magazine as each of the characters will be contributing one of their leads with a special Pokemon for the cover of Shonen jump’s next issue coming on August 4th. These include One Piece‘s Eiichiro Oda, Blue Box‘s Kouji Miura (of which you can check out a preview of below), and Me and Roboco‘s Shuhei Miyazaki.
This isn’t Pokemon’s only jump into the world of manga either as Pokemon’s franchise has been telling stories through the medium for the past few decades. These started out as offering much darker material than fans ever got to see in the Pokemon TV anime releases, and have made waves with fans in the United States thanks to just how starkly different they were than from what fans saw Ash Ketchum getting up to on his journey to becoming a Pokemon master.
What’s Next for Pokemon?
Pokemon has some big plans for the future as not only is it working on its next video game entry, but the franchise has all sorts of new animated works on the way. Pokemon is also teaming up with Wallace & Gromit studio Aardman on a brand new show scheduled for a release in 2027, Pokémon Tales: The Misadventures of Sirfetch’d & Pichu. This will be an entirely stop-motion animated series, and will be taking on a much different region that fans have been wanting to see brought to life for quite some time.
This isn’t the only new stop-motion animated project coming for the franchise either as new episodes of Pokemon Concierge are now on the way too. Pokemon Concierge Season 2 will be releasing worldwide with Netflix on September 4th, and they tease the new episodes as such, “In the new episodes (#5-8), Haru has grown a little and is no longer a newbie. She and her partner Psyduck welcome many new Pokémon to the resort, including Sealeo, Shinx, Luxray, Arcanine, and Corphish. Haru spends fun and relaxing days surrounded by these guests, occasionally handling any problems that pop up.”
