I am surprised I couldn't find a thread for this already, but here is a thread to discuss the international releases of Weekly Shonen Jump. The current regions they are available in are the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.
Customers from the US and Canada can read their issues through their browsers on http://vizmanga.com/ , or through Viz's iOS and Android applications.
Customers from the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Austarlia, and New Zealand can currently read their issues through Viz's iOS application. They are planning on releasing an Android application soon. (They also seem to be working on browser reading, but they will probably get the andoid application out first.)
US and Canadian customers will be able to access their issues permanently, as well as be able to download them on certain devices. (I believe on iOS you can download
each issue as its own file.)
I am not sure about the customers from the United Kingdom, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand, so some help here would be nice.
Here are the release schedules and pricing.
Release Schedule
US & Canada: Monday, 10 AM (Pacific Standard Time)
UK & Ireland: Monday, 6 PM
South Africa: Monday, 7 PM
Australia: Tuesday, 3 AM
New Zealand: Tuesday, 5 AM
Pricing US and Canada: ____$25.99/year__________or $2.99/month_________or $0.99 for a single issue
UK: __________________****£1.99/month_________or £0.69 for a single issue
Ireland: _________________________________2,69 €/month________or 0,89 € for a single issue
Australia: _______________________________$2.99 AUD/month_____or $0.63 AUD for a single issue
New Zealand: ____________________________$4.19 NZD/ month____or $1.29 for a single issue
South Africa: _____________________________R24.99/month_______or R7.99 for a single issue
**FREE Weekly Shonen Jump Starter Pack is now available in all regions above on Viz's Shonen Jump Newsstand app on iOS. It includes the first chapter of Jaco the Galactic Patrol Man.
Subscriptions are now available in all 6 regions above on Android as well.** I really wanted to start this thread before they announced they were going international so people could discuss what they wanted to see, but I am happy they went international so soon. As a US subscriber I can say I am entirely satisfied with my subscription and it is worth way more than the $26.99 a year. I definitely want to hear what international customers want though. I do think it is honestly just going to get better though. They seem to always deliver in the end. In about a year they went from two weeks behind Japan and only had issues that at most would expire in a year, to simultaneous with Japan and permanently owning issues and the abilitly to download your issues. They even gave all the people who ever bought single issues that had already expired months ago all of their issues back permanently.
I do think in few months international subscribers will probably have almost all the abilities North American customers do.
I would also like to see what people think might happen for countries where Shonen Jump titles aren't distributed by Viz. Shueisha always has the supreme power over it's titles, but I can't see them forcing other long-time partners to work with Viz Media or go digital. I do believe Viz and Shueisha want to partner with as many countries as will take them though.