I just read the list of the current bestselling manga on AnimeNewsNetwork and was surprised to note I’d read almost all of them so far. The ones I haven’t read I’ve watched the anime of, which is almost the same thing. It’s given me 20 days worth of posts too, where I will jot down quick notes and opinions I have of each one. The ones I haven’t seen, well, maybe I’ll put them on my rapidly-growing To Read/Watch list.
Actually, studying the actual numbers shows it’s not really bestselling, it’s manga with the most copies printed. It’s like the difference between copies shipped and copies sold in the videogame market, so there might be quite a discrepancy in actual sold numbers. But probably not enough to knock any of these out of the top 20, so here goes.
Rank – Bestselling manga title – Copies printed – My thoughts, if any
1. One Piece – 300 million
2. Golgo 13 – 200 million – Haven’t read it. It’s always seemed ultra-violent to me.
3. Black Jack – 176 million – Haven’t read it. I tend to shy away from medical series, but I’ll try it.
4. Dragon Ball – 157 million
5. Kochikame – 155.3 million – Haven’t read it.
6. Detective Conan – 140 million – Seen episodes of the anime. Good, but a bit formulaic, no?
7. Naruto – 135 million
8. Oishinbo – 130 million – Haven’t read it. I never knew Oishinbo was so popular.
9. Slam Dunk – 119 million
10. Doraemon – 100 million – Seen an episode. It’s cute.
10. Astro Boy – 100 million – Saw the recent movie, does that count?
10. Touch – 100 million
10. Fist of the North Star – 100 million
14. Kindaichi Case Files – 90 million – Haven’t read it.
15. Sazae-san – 86 million – Seen an episode. I like the characters.
16. Captain Tsubasa – 80 million
17. Hajime no Ippo – 75.5 million
18. Bleach – 74.6 million
19. Sangokushi – 70 million – Haven’t read it. I tend to find Romance of the Three Kingdom series too hard to follow, but I might try.
19. Rurouni Kenshin – 70 million
[from AnimeNewsNetwork]
IIRC this only counts manga printed in Japan, not copies overseas. Maybe the numbers will be a little different once you add in all those printed in China, US, UK, France, Spain, etc. Then again apparently 5,000 copies sold counts as bestselling manga in the US, so it’s probably negligible. I’ll try to find worldwide numbers next time.
2 thoughts on “The 20 best-selling manga of all time (May 2014)”