Popverse's top stories

• Don't expect Resident Evil's main character to be a Leon Kennedy, Chris Redfield, or Jill Valentine. According to Weapons' Zach Cregger, he is just "an idiot"
• A decade before the X-Men movies even began, Jim Lee confirms he was making Charles Xavier Patrick Stewart
• MarriageToxin creator is "hella grateful" that anime Season 2 has been announced for 2027

The concept of fanservice in manga and anime isn’t exactly new or unheard of. Many series have been built around the appeal of seeing sexy characters in sexy situations, but we imagine many editors try to keep it at a tasteful level. However, one former Shonen Jump creator has come forward to say that his short-lived manga was required to have more fanservice – not less – before Shueisha would publish it.

Lady Justice was briefly serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump back in 2015 and was known for being the other superhero-focused manga in the magazine shortly after My Hero Academia debuted in 2014. Drawn and written by Ken Ogino, Lady Justice was a much more fanservice-heavy take on the superhero genre. It follows a superpowered young woman who is nearly indestructible. The problem is that her clothes aren’t, so she often finds herself in various states of undress in the aftermath of her adventures.

The series was cancelled after just 16 chapters, something that a reader recently attributed to the focus on fanservice in Lady Justice. Ogino countered that, however, by saying that his original concept was to feature a tough female superhero and only have a small amount of fanservice to spice things up.

“However, the editorial department told me that if the protagonist was female, they wouldn’t publish the story unless erotic content was the main focus,” he said in a social media post. “So I reluctantly went along with it.”

Onigo did comment that Shonen Jump seems a much better place to portray female characters today than ten years ago. “I’m feeling envious since Jump now lets its creators depict female protagonists even without erotic content.”

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

• Aggretsuko vs Chainsaw Man: Two Wildly different anine with the same anti-capitalist message
• The Summer Anime season return of Kaiju No. 8, Sakamoto Days, & Dan Da Dan are forcing me to break my vow of watching less anime
• From Tomo-Chan to Oshi No Ko: How some of your favorite manga creators got their start in hentai
• Piracy is baked into anime's past, but, like Crunchyroll, we should move on from it
• Flying whales, mechs, and Miyazaki vibes: Inside Netflix's Leviathan anime with the people who made it
• How AI translations of manga continues the 'enshitification' of the medium, and why Japanese publishers are "less precious" about it
• I never wanted a Cyberpunk Edgerunners sequel, but God help me I'm going to watch it
• The Summer Hikaru Died delivers its cosmic horror at an agonizingly slow pace
• The one thing that Dan Da Dan does better than Demon Slayer ever did
• Studio Ghibli movies have never been as cozy as you think they are and that's what makes them magic