On The Cheap: Best Bets For The Viz Manga 'Shonen Jump' Sale

This week, Viz and Comixology launched what is probably the most overwhelming digital comic sales since... well, since last month, I guess, when someone decided that it was a good idea to put literally every Dark Horse comic on sale for half off. This time, its's a sale on action manga from Shonen Jump, featuring almost a thousand volumes, including popular series like Akira Toriyama's Dragon Ball, Masashi Kishimoto's Naruto, and Eichiro Oda's One Piece, but it's going fast. The sale ends tomorrow.

Admittedly, it's not quite as dramatic a price cut as the usual sale --- most volumes are dropping down from $7 to $5 each --- but that makes for a whole lot of manga that you can grab for a pretty good price. As always, we're here to help you narrow down your choices.

If you've got a treasure chest full of cash and you're looking for a long run to check out, I can highly recommend jumping on One Piece --- or at least, the first 15 volumes. Sadly, that's all I've read so far, but it's well worth getting into, especially given that it features one of the greatest fight scenes of all time.

There's just one caveat: Even at the sale price, getting One Piece digitally is about the same price as picking up the three-volume collections in print (and actually a little more if you're getting them from Amazon or a local store that offers a discount), so if you've got a preference for paper over digital, that's something to keep in mind.

For something a little shorter, though, the sale's must-have offering is most definitely One-Punch Man, which currently clocks in at seven volumes and counting.

Created by ONE and Yusuke Murata, OPM is arguably the best and funniest superhero comic coming out right now. Set in a world full of superheroes who are all officially ranked, and who have to deal with world-threatening events on a daily basis, the story follows Saitama, a businessman who became a superhero for fun and ended up becoming so powerful that he can defeat any foe with a single punch.

It's the same joke again and again, but done so well and with such great tweaks --- and a lot of really fantastic underlying character work and world-building --- that it never gets old. It walks that line between parody and genuine adventure in a way that makes me jealous every time I crack it open.

Finally, if you only want to grab a single volume (and you've already got One Punch Man Vol. 1), or if you're just looking for an extra book to tack onto your order before you hit the shopping cart, then you should definitely check out Akira Toriyama's Jaco the Galactic Patrolman, a complete story in one book. I've never been that into Dragon Ball, but this story, set in the same world, is incredibly charming and fun. Read more about it here, if you're curious, but watch out for mild spoilers.

One final note: The sale exists on both Comixology and the Viz Manga app and site, but accounts on the two platforms are not linked to each other. If you pick 'em up on one, it won't carry over, so keep that in mind if you prefer one platform.