Shonen Beam

Early internet reports indicate that the final chapter of Lock On! will run in Issue 30 of Weekly Shonen Jump, which hits store shelves in Japan on June 28.

Lock On!, the first major series by newcomer mangaka Tsuchida Kenta, never strongly established itself within Jump, but fans of the series could be justified in crying foul over its cancellation prior to Kiben Gakuha, Yotsuya-senpai no Kaidan, another Jump series which debuted a week after Lock On!. Since both series became eligible for fan-voted rankings, Yotsuya has ranked below Lock On! in every week except for two, one of those being the upcoming issue in which Lock On! publishes its last chapter. Yotsuya itself is still far from safe, and could very well be canceled the week after Lock On! ends publication; this depends on whether the Jump editors will treat Hunter x Hunter (again on hiatus) as the other title to move aside in favor of new series. If the editors don’t regard HxH as such, another series would need to be cut to make room for the two debutants, and that series would likely be Yotsuya.

The two new series that will grace Jump are SWOT and Oumagadoki Doubutsuen, both of which received one-shots in Jump in 2009. SWOT, by Sugita Naoya, is a hybrid delinquent / romantic comedy series about a “swot” (defined as a person who spends too much time studying) with lofty ambitions who transfers into a once-prestigious school that has been overrun with delinquents. Soon, he meets a weak boy and a legendary delinquent girl, the latter of which causes him to experience unfamiliar feelings. The other series, Oumagadoki Doubutsuen (“Oumagadoki Zoo”) by Horikoshi Kouhei, is about a clumsy, animal-loving high school girl who applies to work at a nearby zoo which turns out to have a decidedly bizarre secret.

Read the one-shots that preceded each new series: SWOT, Oumagadoki Doubutsuen. (Remember that characters, events, and other plot elements in one-shots may be changed for their series publication.)