Love Manga

Using a mixture of Comic Book Resources and ICV2 articles, here is the compiled Top 50 Manga chart according to Diamond’s direct market sales in the US.
These are sales from the direct market only, e.g. Local Comic Shops, this chart isn’t the same as the weekly bookscan top ten listing which is complied by Neilsen and reflects sales in bookstores, e.g. Borders, Barnes & Noble.

There are two charts complied, Top 300 comics (i.e. Monthly floppy format) and Top 100 graphic novels (i.e. Trades, Paperbacks, Mangas). Recently there has also been a Top 50 Manga chart which takes the titles that made it into the Top 100 graphic novels and then rounds it out at 50. This is the chart that I publish here on Love Manga.
On to this months, as before the emphasised titles at the beginning are those that were in the Top 100 Graphic Novel chart, in the position column the parenthesis number is where they placed in that chart. Using ICV2’s article I also have the estimated quantities too, but as ICV2 does not run the Top 50 manga chart the numbers only last for those that made the Top 100 Graphic Novel chart.

(The rest of the Top 50 chart will be added when CBR publish theirs!)

I’m publishing this chart a little early, i.e. before Comicbook Resources has the full top 50 so currently it only goes to 27 as that was the total Manga which made Diamond’s top 100 Graphic Novel chart.

There is though an added bonus of doing this, and that is it gives a much more interesting snapshot of which titles are the most popular this month and more intriguingly a more unusual breakdown of the publishers present. It is quite well know that Tokyopop general can fill up the last half of the Top 50 manga chart which inflates their total titles present to at least half. But now with just the Top 100 titles currently listed the makeup is extremely different, so much so that Tokyopop is relegated down to 4th spot with just 4 of the 27 titles belonging to them. Viz Media non-surprisingly take 9 titles and thus has the greatest representation but both Dark horse with 6 and Digital Manga Publishing with 5 have a very good month.

DC/CMX must be rubbing their hands with glee with their successful release of Megatokyo as it takes the top manga slot and now I would think is set to become their biggest series in the direct market, taking over from the controversial Tenjho Tenge which has been a constant stalwart of the chart. In much the same way Cannon God Exaxxion from Dark Horse doesn’t appear to have suffered either from it’s little bout of internet editing conflab.

Just thinking about Megatokyo not giving Dark Horse their top spot anymore and with the ending of Samurai Executioner which has been an excellent seller in the direct market, what is their next big seller going to be? Well the first volume of Path of the Assassin which seems the obvious successor does well in fourth place and Crying Freeman is slowly creeping upwards as the second volumes makes #12. Should be interesting contest to see if either can emulate Samurai Executioner in later volumes.

I know I mentioned earlier that Tokyopop sat in 4th place in terms of titles present but this is sort of a misnomer really as the cause of their drop is in part due to this month being a Digital Manga Publishing month. Every couple of months DMP has a real glut of titles in the chart and it creates this result. This isn’t to take away from DMP, in fact it just goes to show the strength of their titles as each volume consistently places at least equal to its preceding volume. One exception to this has always been Yellow. now in to its 4th volume we see it places its highest yet in the Top 100 GN at #43, making it the 9th highest manga which I think is mightily impressive.

Oh and does anyone think that it should be Rurouni Kenshin vol.28, or is vol.27 really having a resurgence? ^.^

This entry was posted on Monday, July 17th, 2006 at 11:48 am and is filed under ADV Manga(t) , DC/CMX(t) , Dark Horse(t) , Digital Manga Publishing(t) , Manga(t) , Manga Sales(t) , Tokyopop(t) , VIZ Media(t) . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.