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The age of digital distribution has opened doors for publications to reach more fans at a lower cost, but even it has some limits. Dokodemo Young Champion, the monthly digital magazine that has collected manga like From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordsman, has announced that it will cease publication. Their reason is what makes the story unusual; Dokodemo Young Champion claims it grew too large for most ebook stores, with issues growing to a staggering 2000 pages in recent years.

Owned by publisher Akita Shoten, Dokodemo Young Champion was a manga magazine focused on the seinen (young adult) market. Its most popular series was the aforementioned From Old Country Bumpkin to Master Swordsman, the manga adaptation of Shigeru Sagasaki’s light novels. 

The problem that Dokodemo Young Champion ran into by the end was that it had grown too large to be distributed via most online ebook stores. It routinely collected 60 chapters of manga, most of which were previously published on the Yanchan Live! website then collected into the monthly anthology. The result of having 60 chapters in one collection was that many issues totalled 2000 pages, which is a frankly wild amount to download in a single file.

“We wanted to keep going and grow the magazine to over 3000 pages,” the editorial team said in a statement. “But we’ve come up against the problem of being unable to distribute via certain online bookstores due to the amount of content.” Personally, we probably would have just cut some series, but it is good that they had a lofty goal.

Fans of the magazine shouldn’t despair, though, as its individual current series will continue to be published online. However, the days of Dokodemo Young Champion and their 2000+ pages of manga are at an end.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

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