Shonen Sunday

2000 Issue #8
Published by Shogakukan
Update by Eri Izawa

What is SUNDAY?
SHONEN SUNDAY is one of the largest weekly manga magazines in Japan. Containing some of the latest and hottest boys' manga series in Japan, SUNDAY has hosted such notables as RANMA 1/2 and the currently popular MEITANTEI CONAN.
Selected News:
There have been some changes in the SHONEN SUNDAY lineup. TUXEDO GIN, by Matsuura Tokihiko, ended in issue 7 with episode 136 (see Selected Brief Updates section). Meanwhile, a new boxing series named MARVELOUS, by Takemura Yuuji, is on its sixth episode in issue 8. Even newer is LIBERO REVOLUTION by Tanaka Motoyuki, a story about volleyball, now on its fourth installment.
MARVELOUS is a manga whose art style follows closely that of the great 70s shonen sports manga, replete with strong lines, charismatic hair, and tremendous action scenes—but with all the tongue-in-cheek wry humor of a modern manga. The hero of MARVELOUS is a young man named Hitotsuya Yuu, who aspires to become a world class boxer. His current task is to find a gym that will train and polish him into a real champ. The first gym he finds is a small, run-down joint that he winds up saving from creditors, yet for some reason, the strange old proprietor warns him against training there. Ex-champion boxer Akagi Tetsu, once of that old gym, finds Yuu, and follows Yuu to a different gym, where Yuu shows himself to be a boxer of incredible raw talent and determination. But something extraordinary happens when Tetsu and Yuu see a certain story on TV about a world-famous boxing trainer called "the Kaiser"—a Japanese man who has raised up many champions, but whose heart is ruled purely by profit and not one bit of love for his trainees. The Kaiser has just dumped another champion for money and, oddly enough, his full nickname is "Kaiser Hitotsuya." That's when Tetsu discovers our hero Hitotsuya Yuu is burning with overwhelming rage, apparently against his namesake...
LIBERO REVOLUTION features Mikimoto Kaname, a young man with a flair for volleyball. Bearing a grudge against famed the volleyball school Fujiwara Gakuen, which didn't acknowledge his skills as an attacker, he has wound up at Seikai high school, the one school that took a set from Fujiwara, except it turns out to be the wrong Seikai high school. To his great disappointment, this school's volleyball team turns out to be full of fluffy young men with no real volleyball drive or sense. Worse, Kaname fails to impress them when he flubs his moves on sand, an unfamiliar surface. But when a slimy high school competitor tries to pull a fast one during a practice game, it's up to Kaname to rally the team and show them a few good moves.