As one of the few lucky people who got the chance to play Jump Force across the world, I’ve have a unique outlook when it comes to certain topics. One them being a particular one that I’ve seen creep up from time and time again. Is Jump Force going to have a small roster? Is Jump Force going to fail because of a small roster? And why are there so few WSJ in Jump Force? You get the idea! So, I decided to talk about it today because why not.
This isn’t the first time I’ve touched on this topic, I made a VERY CASUAL video on this topic on my YouTube Channel called How Many Weekly Shonen Jump Series Will There Be In Jump Force? (you see how I plugged my shit in, that shit was nice so you better sub)!
Anyways, just in case you SOMEHOW don’t know about this upcoming anime game:
Jump Force is a 3-on-3 tag team fighting game featuring characters from various manga and anime series featured in the Weekly Shōnen Jump line of magazines. It is to celebrate the 50th anniversary of WSJ. So far, 22 characters from 8 series have been confirmed to be playable. Now, where the concern is coming from is that a lot of people are comparing it to another game called J-Star Victory VS, a game similar Jump Force in nature.
J-Star Victory VS featured 52 characters from 32 different Jump series. 39 of these characters are playable, while 13 of them can be summoned by players to provide support. So you can see why people are concerned about Jump Force roster. The numbers speak for themselves. Jump Force currently has a fraction of series that J-Stars had in the past and has less than half of characters than J-Stars. Do I find that to be a problem? Not if they add the right series to the roster.
I’ll be honest, as long as I at least see Black Clovers and My Hero Academia represented in that game, I’ll be cool. Which is very likely to happen when you see my reasoning for being OK with a small roster and why they themselves are going for such a niche choice selection.
The number of characters isn’t where the community seems to have a problem with, it’s the amount of series that’s being represented. And I think I know why that is. It was stated a while back (I can’t find the source so don’t quote me) that Jump Force is a game specifically designed and aimed at the western market. This can be further confirmed when you look at all the series that’s currently available in Jump Force. As of the writing of this blog, every single WSJ that’s in Jump has an English Dub.
That’s the trend I’ve noticed with the game and that how we’ll know what series might show up in Jump Force. I think they’re only selecting WSJ anime that have already had an established English Dub because surprise, surprise, not everyone likes watching anime in Sub. If you want to reach a bigger demographic, you gotta create a service that correlates with their language.
So for me that makes sense. That and giving how ambitious Jump Force looks, I would imagine that balancing would be at their front and center of their concern. Personally, I don’t really care how large the roster ends up being, as long as the they balance out the game and iron out any bugs that I commented on in one of my impression videos. Of course, that’s just my opinion and I know you have your own so please share your thoughts in the comments below.
