North American manga distributor VIZ Media has added the first eight chapters of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Stone Ocean to the Shonen Jump app. A message on the chapter list says a new chapter will be added in 7 days, indicating the rest of the series will finally start to release in English. At a chapter a week, that’s 150 weeks of Stone Ocean to come.
Mangaka Hirohiko Araki Stone Ocean was originally released over four years from 1999 to 2003 in Weekly Shōnen Jump as the sixth arc of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, which recently concluded its eighth arc, JoJolion. Stone Ocean’s eponymous Jojo is Jolyn Kujoh, the series’ first female protagonist and daughter of Jotaro who inherits the Joestars feud with DIO in Port St. Lucie, Florida, of all places.
VIZ made the announcement on Shonen Jump’s Twitter page, while Stone Ocean is now at the top of the new chapters list on the Shonen Jump app.
The announcement came as a surprise for fans of the series as the manga’s previous arc, Golden Wind, is still being translated into English even after its anime adaptation released in English. The manga will be available to read in full for Shonen Jump subscribers as part of the service’s “digital vault,” which features popular classic manga that didn’t originally release on the digital magazine. The latest chapter of the ongoing manga is available to read for free on the app.
An ongoing anime adaptation of the manga arc by David Production premiered on Netflix last month outside of Japan. New episodes will be released in unscheduled batches moving forward. The series protagonist is voiced by Fairouz Ai in Japanese and Kira Buckland in the English dub.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure’s next arc, titled JOJOLANDS, is expected to begin after mangaka Araki’s hiatus following JoJolion’s conclusion.