What magazine did Attack on Titan run in?

Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine, a monthly Kodansha built in 2009, and it was there from issue one.

Bessatsu Shōnen Magazine (“Bessatsu” means a special or extra issue) is Kodansha’s monthly companion to Weekly Shōnen Magazine. It launched in 2009, and Attack on Titan was a headline title of its first issue, the October 2009 issue released on 9 September 2009. The final chapter ran in the May 2021 issue, released 9 April 2021: the series and the magazine grew up together, cover by cover, for eleven and a half years.

The monthly rhythm shaped the book. Where a weekly series burns four short chapters a month, Isayama delivered one long chapter (around 45 pages) per issue, which is why the 34 volumes hold four or five chapters each and read in arcs rather than episodes. Bessatsu also carried most of the family: Junior High and the Lost Girls manga both serialized there, while Before the Fall ran in Monthly Shōnen Sirius and No Regrets in the shōjo magazine Aria.

Bessatsu Shonen Magazine October 2009 first issue front cover — **ISSUE ONE**The first issue of Bessatsu Shonen Magazine, October 2009, the magazine the series ran in from debut to finale.

READING THE MAGAZINE RUN

For the shelf

The debut issue

The October 2009 Bessatsu is the series’ true first appearance in serial form. Magazine collectors treat launch issues of new magazines as key objects, and this one carried a future 140-million-copy series.

The final issue

The May 2021 issue closed the run with chapter 139 and is the counterpart key: first and last issues of Bessatsu bookend the whole phenomenon.

Monthly, not weekly

Despite the “Shōnen Magazine” name it shares with Kodansha’s weekly flagship, Bessatsu is a separate monthly magazine with its own numbering and its own identity.

What magazine did Attack on Titan run in?

READING THE MAGAZINE RUN

THE FIRST WORD