By Dustin Cabeal

To be clear, these are not official rankings, but rather my own personal rankings after reading each of the three chapters that debuted in Weekly Shonen Jump this Winter/early Spring/who cares what season.

I’m going to rank them on three things and then an overall average so unlike our other reviews there might be .5’s and crap like that, but here’s the categories: Story, Art, Characters, Overall. Let’s start this mother.

STORY

1. We Never Learn – 6pt
2. Robot x Laserbeam – 5pt
3. Dr. Stone – 4pt
4. Demon Prince Poro’s Diaries – 3pt
5. Hungry Marie – 2pt
6. U19 – 1pt

We Never Learn, wins mostly because it’s three chapters were the most cohesive. They didn’t attempt to build towards a big showdown or action scene that the reader would never get to and likely to forget by the time the series returned. Point in case, four out of six series did exactly that. We Never Learn understood the parameters in which they were working and focused on instead orientating the reader with the world and character and central plot line.

ART

1. Dr. Stone – 6pt
2. Robot x Laserbeam – 5pt
3. Demon Prince Poro’s Diaries – 4pt
4. We Never Learn – 3pt
5. U19 – 2pt
6. Hungry Marie – 1pt

The art for Dr. Stone was tremendous. I would love to see more of the series just for the artwork as it was detailed, clean and very stylized. The character designs were fantastic as well making this by far the best-looking series of the bunch. Three and Four are interchangeable, though, depending on the day I could switch those because they’re that close in quality. The bottom two, well I had to give U19 the advantage since Hungry Marie looked like a manga from the 90s.

CHARACTERS

1. We Never Learn – 6pt
2. Demon Prince Poro’s Diaries – 5pt
3. Robot x Laserbeam – 4pt
4. Dr. Stone – 3pt
5. Hungry Marie – 2pt
6. U19 – 1pt

As much as I liked some of the characters from the middle of the pack, there just wasn’t enough time spent with them. We Never Learn on the other hand gave the reader deep insight into the background story for all three main characters while building the plot at the same time. At first, I wasn’t sure if I’d like them, but after reading the other series, I grew to appreciate just how good they were. As for the bottom of the pack, Hungry Marie has the advantage because I actively hated the main character for U19 as he constantly said the same five things over and over. It was as if that story was actually the first seven chapters since there were so many reminders of what was happening in the story. I hope never to read it again, but I would take more of the top four for sure.

OVERALL

1. We Never Learn – Score: 5
2. Robot x Laserbeam – Score: 4.6
3. Dr. Stone – Score: 4.3
4. Demon Prince Poro’s Diaries –  Score: 4.0
5. Hungry Marie – Score: 1.6
6. U19 -  Score: 1.3

Well, that’s interesting since that’s the same order in which I ranked them by story. Maybe this was all pointless, but it felt good to write it and clear my thoughts on the six Winter/Spring Jump Start series. If you have a ranking of your own, let me know in the comments.