Japan's Weekly Manga and Light Novel Rankings for Mar 3 - 9

Great to see Kuroko there. I hope that they will release a 3rd season, cause the manga is doing so well.
And to One Piece, nothing more then expected from it. Always great!

What i find funny about male lead in LN is, if i pay closer attention to the recent trend, whereas the default for slice of life/romcom-oriented seems to be "resourceful but bitter loser" (Oregairu, Sakurasou), the default for action/plot-driven oriented is "hidden badass with tragic past" (Mahouka, Black Bullet. Emphasis on "hidden" since for whatever reason they tend to be treated like underdog at the start of series), which, while inherently more interesting, tends to mean that i have to swallow one emo backstory after another that (usually) get forcibly inserted into an otherwise well-written narrative over and over again throughout the series. Crap like Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance gets banal very fast for its excessive, but cheap use of MC's past as the main plot device.

I see. Someone should indeed notify them about the mistake ;o. I'm letting someone else better than me in english redo the sentence with high school boy rather boy's high school though.

''I'm A High School Boy and a Successful Light Novel Author, But I'm Being Strangled By A Female Classmate Who's A Voice Actress And Is Younger Than Me''

Maybe this would work around.

Not my translation, lad. I copied straight from the MAL page. Guess someone should correct it.

I might not have phrased that correctly. HxH has had 2 anime adaptations, the first of which came out less than 2 years after the launch of the manga. That means it's had years and years to reap the per-volume effect of any anime boost, whereas SnK has had less than 1 to do the same to date. "Bump" is in quotes because there's plenty of evidence that series which get increased popularity from their anime tend to keep that popularity for a long time. I've spent a long time cataloging the effects of anime on manga sales, and I've seen numerous cases where the manga sales kept up at peak or near-peak levels for upwards of 5 years. SnK may have stopped repeating on the weekly charts with old volumes, but I have yet to see anyone here offer up numbers that would indicate the majority of people who bought volume 12 in December will not buy volume 13 whenever it's out. Every manga faces an inevitable decline at some point before the heat death of the universe, but some go a very long time without crashing.

HxH had sold 60 million volumes to date as of February 2013, which is a historic number (it's #10 on the list of all-time Jump sellers, closing in on Hokuto no Ken). But it took 15 years to get there. SnK surpassed 30 million just recently, after less than 5 years of circulation. It's still no contest as to which has been the most valuable property over time, but if you want to compare sales per volume (which was the original question being debated), SnK has sold 30 mil/12=2.5 million per volume, and HxH has sold 60 mil/32=1.9 million copies per volume. At the very least, they're comparable in terms of which is more valuable at the present time, especially since SnK puts out a tankobon more than once a year.

It is true that no new chapters of manga came out over the period you cited. But you were citing tankobon sales statistics, and 2 new tankobon came out over that period (I think it's reasonable define a version of the product that could not have been bought previously as new). We know from their weekly oricon chart data that at least 2 million of the 3.6 million copies sold over that period were from volumes which had just come out. If you were simply saying that those were after the manga stopped coming out with new chapters, that's correct, and I apologize. But I took your original wording (which was "with no volumes being released") to mean that HxH was selling that many volumes without having anything new to sell, which would not have been accurate.

Since it came up, I'd like to clarify. I'm not a fan of SnK. I could name 20 other currently running manga that I like considerably better (of which HxH, if you can count it as running, is almost certainly one of the first 5 onto the list), and I couldn't even finish the anime. I'm posting here for no better reason than I care way more than I should about anime/manga/light novel data being fairly represented and not used to form narratives that aren't necessarily accurate. Please don't assume that I'm trying to say this out of blind fan pathology.

No, it's just a problem in his translation. "danshi koukousei" never meant "boy's high school", it means "High school boy".
No gender bender. BTW, it's by Kino no Tabi's author.

While HxH did have its new anime adaptation out, the numbers by 2012/2013 were roughly on par with pre anime release numbers. Comparing the supposed "gains" from HxH anime, and that of SnK, which had an outstanding effect, is dishonest at best, but likely foolish to the extreme. To prevent a nonsensical counter i'll quote estimates of the extreme Anime boost which already impacted the time period.

"Thanks to an animated adaptation that premiered last spring, “Attack on Titan” has sold an additional 10 million copies over the last three months.

Before the animated adaptation started its run on Tokyo MX, MBS and other networks this past April, the manga’s nine volumes had sold a total of 12 million copies. But as of July, the series’ 10 books have sold more than 22 million copies."

source-http://ajw.asahi.com/article/cool_japan/culture/AJ201308170034



The reality is that the last chapter, 340, was released in March 2012.
Source- http://hunterxhunter.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Volumes_and_Chapters

This is inline with my accurate comment that the nov 2012-May 2013 period had HxH dominating SnK, without having had new material for a year. I see that you won't accept the facts, but I'm sure others who can do basic arithmetic agree with the statistics.



All us fans would love for SnK to hold on with good numbers, but its best to accept reality in the face of the obvious inevitable decline which is already in progress.



Yes that is the most optimistic estimate we can hope for, which will allow it to put out HxH numbers for another couple years if we are fortunate. The reality is that HxH has well over double the total manga sales of SnK, and SnK will never match it. If SnK can be dragged out for a couple more years it will narrow the gap, however HxH can easily go on for another 10-20 years before completion. This is partially due to the abhorrent everpresent Hiatus, and also due to the nature of the story which is theoretically never ending. What has been proven over the past nearly 20 years is that HxH can maintain its prestige and popularity regardless of time gaps and hiatus, and easily churn out 1-2mil+ volume sales. To think that a series like SnK after 1 good peak year can do the same as an All Time Legend, is nothing short of Delusional.

Comparing the two in a period with 4 months of pre-anime SnK doesn't necessarily mean that much, especially since HxH had an anime running for years prior to that interval to keep its popularity going (as well as 3 times as many back volumes for people back-buying the series to buy). SnK was almost 4 times as large in the end-year 2013 numbers.

Edit: Stupidly forgot to connect these dots earlier, but that Nov2012-Dec2013 period saw the release of not 0, but 2 new volumes of HxH (31 and 32), which presumably accounted for most of those 4 million. That's the same as the number of new, pre-anime volumes of SnK that came out over the same period. That's a lot less favorable of a comparison for HxH than you make it out to be.



I really don't see the evidence that people are saying there is that SnK will inevitably peter out. Blue Exorcist got a fairly permanent manga bump, and while its absolute sales total declined, its per-volume sales have been fairly consistent for the first 2 years after the anime, and it's still selling 250k+ in its first week (comapred to 40k pre-anime and a 400k peak). Even if SnK sees a similar 150k decline from its 1.2 million copy release week this December, that's still going to put it in 1 million copy first week territory. With a 40% decline, it's still in 700k first week territory. Which would be more than the 620k HxH's most recent volume got in its December 2012 release week.

Edit 2: Did some checking, and the best release week for HxH since 2008 was volume 27's 693,458 in August of 2011, so that figure is pretty typical of the series.

Only reason SNK is still around is because it's monthly (reading it monthly it isn't as good as I thought), if it was weekly it would of ended a year ago or earlier and we wouldn't even be talking about it.
Ansatsu will surpass it anyway when it gets a long running anime - Koro sensei <3

One Piece is too OP...

Well ofcourse now that Hunter has been gone for nearly 2 years it seems like your claim is valid, but that is skewing the facts.

Here are the numbers for the initial half year after HxH no longer had new material, namely after its hiatus had begun.

Top 10 Manga Nov 2012 - May 2013 (In Japan)
This has been out for awhile, but for those who never saw it.

01 - One Piece (7.,944,680 copies)
02 - Magi (4,787,519 copies)
03 - Kuroko no Basket (4,712,773 copies)
04 - Shingeki no Kyojin (4,292,208 copies)
05 - Hunter x Hunter (3,616,288 copies)
06 - Naruto (2,860,385 copies)
07 - Assassination Classroom (2,504,200 copies)
08 - Silver Spoon (1,926,298 copies)
09 - Fairy Tail (1,853,510 copies)
10 - Terra Formars (1,721,651 copies)

Source- http://www.myhunterxhunter.com/thread-225.html

As we can see, HxH was nearly on par with SnK, and that was with no volumes being released, just old sales. Furthermore SnK already was getting an anime boost to its manga sales. Even still the dead HxH was neck in with the thriving SnK.

Going back to the last year where both manga were active, we see this

Here are the yearly manga sales rankings for fiscal 2012. (Nov 21 2011 - Nov 18 2012)

Series by series
*1, 23,464,866 One Piece
*2, *8,070,446 Kuroko no Basket
*3, *6,495,240 Naruto
*4, *5,413,899 Uchuu Kyoudai
*5, *4,128,665 Fairy Tail
*6, *4,039,715 Kimi ni Todoke
*7, *3,603,710 Gin no Saji
*8, *3,439,839 Hunter x Hunter
*9, *3,437,182 Magi
10, *3,211,191 Bakuman

11, *3,005,339 Toriko
12, *2,974,750 Bleach
13, *2,850,072 Gintama
14, *2,786,109 SKET Dance
15, *2,682,504 Shingeki no Kyojin

And this

Volume by volume
*1, 3,336,992 One Piece vol.65
*2, 3,320,744 One Piece vol.66
*3, 3,044,901 One Piece vol.67
*4, 2,390,625 One Piece vol.68
*5, 1,281,309 Naruto vol.61
*6, 1,266,244 Naruto vol.60
*7, 1,242,035 Kimi ni Todoke vol.15
*8, 1,212,883 Kimi ni Todoke vol.16
*9, 1,192,100 Naruto vol.59
10, 1,090,309 Hunter x Hunter vol.30

11, 1,088,947 Kimi ni Todoke vol.17
12, 1,055,220 Naruto vol.62
13, *,865,836 Ao no Exorcist vol.8
14, *,813,989 Gin no Saji vol.2
15, *,777,445 Shingeki no Kyojin vol.6

In short, HxH clearly dominated, whether in overall sales, or on a volume vs volume basis. This is not disputable, the 3 years that both were active together were overall dominated by HxH.

Sure SnK over the past year during its absolute series peak put up good numbers. However you missed my point and that of others like ToG25thBaam, namely that in the long run the only series that can put up numbers in the ballpark of OP are True Elite Series like Hunter x Hunter. This has been the case since Last Millenium. Thats the proof of a consistent and Legendary Powerhouse. Snk had its flavor of the year, We won't deny that, but only a fool thinks it can stay popular for much longer, yet alone rival something like OP or HxH. It was a good few year run, but its decline is already evident.

JUMP domination week. Nisekoi's anime boost is really great. Hozuki is really doing great as well because of the anime.

Oremono and AssClass should be getting anime adaptions soon.

Volume every 5 months is a bit odd. Shingeki releases like every other manga every 3 months

Strike the blood at the top of the light novel list...

This is why we can't have nice things.

I'm sorry, but I disagree with the facts you spouted.

It is true that there is nothing that could match One Piece at the moment. One Piece is basically Japan itself, unless another hidden gem takes Japan by storm again.

Hunter x Hunter cannot out out the same sort of numbers as Shingeki, let alone One Piece.

You are perhaps misinformed, but Shingeki volume 12 came with a limited edition of the Isle's Notebook OVA, and that sold about or around 500k. Combined with the standard edition's sales, you'd get 2 million or close to 2 million. That is elite class... No that is above elite class.

Reaching 1 million is considered a feat only 'elite' series can manage like Sakamoto desu ga?, Naruto (give or take about 1 month), Kimi in Todoke (again, long term sales), Yotsubato!.. Few right? Berserk, Vinland Saga and Vagabond can't even reach those numbers yet they are extremely popular and well received. Hunter x Hunter belongs to the 1 million class, with its recent manga sales.

Disclaimer: I am a fanboy of and I read all 3 series.

glad to see Toriko in the top10!

One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach.
Aw, yeah!

if toriko just had a proper anime adoptation the manga would sell like hotcackes

instead we have this censored, crappy animated toei version atm

As expected from OP.. Overkill..

So the current Strike the Blood arc is "Return of the Alchemist" and the anime is about to end so that means there will be three wonderful volumes not adapted, that's a shame.

Doesn't look like anything but chapter one is translated so far.