Manga Demon Slayer Dominates Graphic Novel Charts, Again!
It’s no surprise to anyone in the nerd community that manga has become a huge success here in the United States. With anime becoming such a powerhouse of American media in the past decade, it’s only natural that the books which inspire those stories would also grow in popularity. I’ve noticed it myself in the schools I work at. The libraries have gone from only carrying a few books, to taking over multiple books cases with full collections of some of the biggest franchises out now.
One of those franchises ended it’s first season back in September 2019. The anime in question is Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba. The latter half of that is the actual Japanese title and reads like so 鬼滅の刃 and actually translates to “Blade of Demon Destruction”. Demon Slayer won multiple awards back in February including anime of the year for 2019 on Crunchyroll’s anime awards show. This year’s awards show was special because it was hosted by WWE Superstar Xavier Woods!
Demon Slayer is keeping it’s name fresh in the media by landing in the top ten for multiple months of the NPD Bookscan top 20 adult graphic novels. Bookscan is one of the largest print media trackers in the country, accounting for roughly 85% of sales. This most recent month, manga titles accounted for 16 of the top 20 titles and the latest Demon Slayer title took #2, as reported by Anime news network.
In the past 12 months, Demon Slayer has shared the top 20 with the top dominator of manga sales recently, My Hero Academia. As you can see above, the MHA series is also a very popular title, taking eight of the sixteen slots in May. The MHA books also landed eight slots back in April and February. This could be due to the recent MHA film that played in the US back in the end of March. The dvd for that film My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising, will be released this July!
You can find the full list of adult graphic novels over at ICv2. Demon Slayer was beaten out by a title that seems to have taken the number one slot at least one other time in the past few months called Strange Planet. Created by Nathan W. Pyle, the Strange Planet series is written and drawn in a comic strip style and seems to follow a couple of aliens describing normal human scenarios but almost in a robotic unnatural way of speaking that makes it quite amusing.
If you’re interested in purchasing either of the books mentioned here you can check them out at these respective links: Demon Slayer, Strange Planet. But besides the manga listed here, what are some of your favorite titles?
Co-singer/songwriter for I Can’t Even, father of the ConfectioNerds and all around lover of all things Japan and gaming.