All signs pointed towards a very bright future for Super Psychic Policeman Chojo. Not only were the collected volumes selling well, Shun Numa’s sophomore series even staged a historic crossover with the legendary KochiKame, positioning it as the potential successor to the long-running Weekly Shonen Jump cop comedy crown. Nevertheless, the axe came down after just 65 chapters on the fateful day of June 9, 2025.
Even at the time, the decision to end Chojo seemed like a baffling one. As mentioned, the series was seeing some impressive numbers: volume one debuted at number 45 on the Shoseki Ranking blog, meaning that it sold somewhere between 8700 and 13,600 copies. Subsequent releases didn’t dropped the ball either, resulting in 300,000 copies in circulation as of the time of writing.
What’s more, the story didn’t seem to be running out of steam one bit. Rather, new plotlines kept being added right up until the very end: not only did chapter 62 saw Chojo’s fate as a psychic policeman brought into the spotlight, Nao’s feelings for her superior also took on a new form in response to personal challenges. Both of these ideas could have provided the fuel for many more chapters in the future, but fate had other ideas.
To make matters even worse, Super Psychic Policeman Chojo then went on to take third place at the 2025 Next Manga Awards in the print manga category several months after Jump had published its final chapter. Fast forward several weeks and yet another piece of baffling news saw the light of day: the series would be receiving an anime adaptation from next year on Fuji TV. Was this series over or not? Talk about mixed messages.
It’s not as if finished manga don’t get animated on a regular basis. Just last season there was a new adaptation of Shou Makura and Takeshi Okane’s Jigoku Sensei Nube from 1993, while it was also announced that all five volumes of Black Torch would be getting the anime treatment sometime in the future. Nevertheless, the relative lack of temporal distance between Chojo’s cancellation and the anime announcement was enough to induce a severe amount of whiplash, perhaps only beaten out recently by Kill Blue having to announce its adaptation after rushing to a half-baked conclusion.
All of this begs the question: why? Why would the editors at Jump choose to end a series that is doing well enough in volume sales to attract attention for a potential anime adaptation? Without the ability to become a fly on the wall in Shueisha’s internal meetings, it’s impossible to provide any concrete answers, but we can make some educated guesses.
First of all, Super Psychic Policeman Chojo’s eventual replacement in the Weekly Shonen Jump lineup was nothing to be sniffed at. At least on paper, Nice Prison seemed like it had a fair amount of potential: the series’s author, Tatsuya Suganuma, is a popular cartoonist whose humorous four panel comics regularly net him over 100,000 likes on Twitter. In fact, you could say that he had a similar profile to Shun Numa prior to starting his series, even if Nice Prison might be enough to tank his reputation forever.
Secondly, comedy series are rarely meant to last very long in Weekly Shonen Jump any more. In stark contrast to KochiKame’s 40 year run, even recent popular gag manga such as High School Family and Magu-chan: God of Destruction fail to last beyond a handful of volumes, with many even failing to make it past the infamous 17 chapter mark. To be fair, Me & Roboco has also been running for five years now, but that is almost definitely the exception rather than the norm.
Finally, it could be that Shun Numa himself requested to end the serialization. Weekly Shonen Jump rarely forces authors to continue working in the name of sales any more, but the sheer energy radiating from his work right up until the very end makes that very hard to believe. What’s more, Numa even expressed his “extreme gratitude” for all of the people who expressed their disbelief at Chojo’s conclusion in his comment for the 2025 Next Manga Awards, hinting at his reluctance to say goodbye.
With this in mind, it seems quite likely that the Weekly Shonen Jump editorial department never had any long term plans for Super Psychic Policeman Chojo in the first place. In addition, Nice Prison had all the makings of a fine replacement with an experienced author tapped into the social media landscape at the helm. It just so happens that information more or less outside of their control, such as the rankings for the Next Manga Awards and the anime announcement, came at the worst possible time to confuse fans in a major way.
Looking on social media, it’s not hard to find comments of utter confusion in response to the current situation. One Twitter user wrote “So why the hell did Jump cancel this?” in response to the anime announcement, while another lambasted the editorial department by saying “You don’t cancel a series if it has an anime in the works. You just don’t.” By far the most common sentiment, however, is the hope of a continuation either in the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine or on the online Jump Plus service.
Indeed, Super Psychic Policeman Chojo wouldn’t be the first series to reverse the fate of cancellation by reappearing on Jump Plus. Perhaps the most famous example is Chainsaw Man by Tatsuki Fujimoto, but Kentaro Yabuki also moved his Ayakashi Triangle there in the middle of serialization for unknown reasons. What’s more, RuriDragon by Masaoki Shindou resumed in the digital version of the Weekly Shonen Jump magazine following a lengthy hiatus, thus presenting multiple avenues for a potential return.
Whether or not Shun Numa would even want to continue the series after its conclusion is another question entirely. In the issue of Jump that broke the news about the Chojo anime, Numa actually had a new one-shot about a boy and an oni titled Ura no Report, so it’s clear that he has other ideas. Either way, one thing’s for sure: the fans would be happy to have him back.
You can read Super Psychic Policeman Chojo for free via VIZ Media’s Shonen Jump. The anime premieres next fall.
