Aight, guess I'll be submitting my first character for this thread - and right at its end! I probably won't submit a Capcom character, as most of my investment in this thread has been directed towards the Jump side, but I do want to participate. And although there are other big ones we've missed so far, there is one character that, to me, stands head-and-shoulders above anyone else when it comes to important Jump characters who aren't on this roster yet. And that would be...
Job #33: Kankichi Ryotsu from Kochikame
Kochira Katsuhika-ku Kameari Koen Mae Hashutsujo - better known as just Kochikame - is a Weekly Shonen Jump comedy manga that began in 1976.
The series follows the misadventures of one Kankichi Ryotsu - a middle-aged cop who works at a neighborhood police station in downtown Tokyo. The typical plot in the series revolves around Ryotsu coming up with some get-rich-quick scheme based on the latest fad or a new gadget of his and achieving great success, only for it to always come crashing down on him at the end. Believe it or not, Kochikame is actually a very very important series to Jump history - it's
immensely popular in Japan, to the point that real-life Japanese celebrities often made appearances in it. Although most of the characters never aged, the series always evolved with the times, often centering chapters around - and subtly mocking - recent trends or events in Japan. Interestingly enough, the chapters actually weren't numbered - each one was its own completely self-contained little story, which meant it was a lot more accessible than most other Jump series which you oftentimes have to, like, actually catch up to. This also allowed it to go for a really long time - it ran for
40 whole goddamn years, clocking in at 1,960 chapters and 200 volumes, until it finally ended in 2016. This makes it not just the longest-running series in Jump history, but one of the longest-running manga of all time. In fact, it's also the seventh highest-selling manga of all time, beating out such series as Demon Slayer, JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Crayon Shin-chan, Attack on Titan and goddamn Astro Boy. It's gotten such things as an anime, three animated films, a live-action series, two live-action movies and several stage adaptations.
So Kochikame is generally just a very revered series within Jump's library of franchises. They went all out when it reached its 30th anniversary, with several special events being held, and it's a near-constant presence in Jump crossover games. In fact, the only notable large-scale Jump crossover game (so not counting stuff like Battle Stadium DON that's only supposed to cross over a select few properties) that Ryotsu has missed out on.....is Jump Force. J-Stars? He's there! The Jump Stars games on the DS? He's there! The two Jump crossover RPGs on the Famicom? He's there! The mobile games like Jumputi Heroes and Jikkyou Janjan Stadium? He's there! The obscure Game Boy quiz game Cult Jump? You bet your sweet bippy he's there.
There's also the fact that as it stands, our roster is pretty light on characters from non-action series on the Jump side and I'd really like it for us to fix that ever so slightly now that we have the opportunity. So when looking at all this, I think I've made a good case for Ryotsu. Despite the regional barrier oftentimes preventing him from getting acknowledgement, he's a surprisingly iconic and important character to Jump history, and it definitely kinda weirds me out seeing the amount of rosters that omit him. He'd also just be a generally fun character that helps diversify the Jump side's genre representation a bit more, but above all else, I feel he's genuinely too important to exclude.
I'll admit also part of it is nostalgia cause the anime used to air where I live but LETS NOT WORRY ABOUT THAT-
