Dragon Ball's Ranking Statistics in Shonen Jump

Discussion regarding the entirety of the franchise in a general (meta) sense, including such aspects as: production, trends, merchandise, fan culture, and more.
The Dark Knight
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Dragon Ball's Ranking Statistics in Shonen Jump

Post by The Dark Knight » Thu Aug 06, 2026 9:24 am

I accidentally found a site that kept track of Dragon Ball's ranking throughout its run in Weekly Shonen Jump; I assume these are the reader polls we regularly hear about, the ones Jump use to determine whether to keep a series or cancel it.

https://www.jajanken.net/en/sakuhins/QvL0By28NV/

Interesting facts:

During its first year of publication in 1985, Dragon Ball was Jump's #3 highest ranked series, then it climbed to the #2 spot in 1986.

It took the #1 spot starting in 1987 (the year began with the conclusion of the Baba tournament), and remained at the top all the way until 1994.

As a result of only being published for half of 1995, it fell down to the #2 spot, but those individual chapters remained within the top 4.

In terms of the individual chapters as a whole, the first 76 chapters (half way through the underwater cave section of the RRA arc) were always in the top 10, with the exception of chapter 31 coming in at #12.

In fact, 42 of these chapters ranked in the top 5, disputing Torishima's claim that Dragon Ball wasn't popular.

Starting with chapter 77, and lasting until it ended in chapter 519, Dragon Ball was regularly ranked within the top 4 spots, with the occasional drop into #5.

Contrary to popular belief, fans were not burned out on Dragon Ball during the Buu arc, as the manga continued to rank within the top 4 spots, with only a single chapter ranking at #5.

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kiarasuraru
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Re: Dragon Ball's Ranking Statistics in Shonen Jump

Post by kiarasuraru » Thu Aug 06, 2026 12:11 pm

First arc really had mediocre results, no wonder they decided to try to rework things as they did.
So much for the fabled adobencha.
Series seem to have really hit its stride with the tail-end of Red Ribbon and never let the momentum stop.

Zebra
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Re: Dragon Ball's Ranking Statistics in Shonen Jump

Post by Zebra » Fri Aug 07, 2026 11:08 pm

The series only started with high rankings because it was riding Dr. Slump's popularity. You can still see that the rankings were gradually slipping, though, and the series would've been axed if things remained as they were. The Tenka'ichi Budoukai starting was when the series truly became popular.

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