Proper Japanese Title: ヤングキング
Young King is a seinen manga magazine and for its publisher, Shonen Gahosha, it has become their oldest ongoing manga magazine. Shonen Gahosha was one of the few modern manga publishers heavily active in the early decades of the industry (40's and 50's) and in 1963 they launched the third of the long-lasting weekly shonen magazines (Weekly Shonen King); but in the early 80's when the "Young" seinen manga movement took off, Weekly Shonen King was ended and replaced with Shonen King which released twice a month. This twice-a-month incarnation of Shonen King was the beginning of several Young King stylistic trends and where some major early Young King authors first found success.
In 1987 Young King was then launched as a monthly special issue of Shonen King but by early 1988 Shonen King was cancelled and Young King increased to releasing twice-a-month, essentially making it the ongoing legacy of Shonen King and Shonen Gahosha's primary manga magazine within a year of its launch. A couple years later (1990), the publisher launched Young Comic which reuses the name of a 60's magazine that also ended in the 80's but the two Young Comic magazines are not actually related and neither is explicitly related to Young King in history or target demographic.
Young King is distinctive from the other Young seinen magazines because it carried over from Shonen King a specific stylistic trend toward yankee and bosozoku manga (known colloquially to Western audiences as "delinquent manga"). This style of manga was beginning its cultural peak around the launch of Young King and many other major magazines had their own singular hits in this genre in the late 80's and through the 90's but Young King has made it their lasting focus with many of its classics running concurrently. Significant serializations in the genre include Bad Boys, Arakure Knight, Hey! Riki and Gang King while similarly action or bike-focused manga include Kirin, Donketsu and Sun-Ken Rock.
Like other seinen magazines, different genres are serialized as well with notable examples including Namikibashi-doori Aoba Jitensha-ten and Yancha Gal no Anjou-san but many of these outliers are instead serialized in the various other magazines in the Young King family. The first major spin-off Young King OURs (1993) has serialized many of the best-known books in the Young King Comics line that and more recent Young King branch magazines have included:
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