Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Cruxador]

It was easy to find. I just googled "top selling light novel/manga 2015" and got ANN's lists
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2015-11-29/top-selling-light-novels-in-japan-by-series-2015/.95914
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2015-11-29/top-selling-manga-in-japan-by-series-2015/.95913

Perhaps I'm dumber than I thought, but I'm still not seeing totals, only top series. The fact that manga sales are heavily stratified towards the most popular IPs wasn't what I was calling into question.

[Culise]

It was easy to find. I just googled "top selling light novel/manga 2015" and got ANN's lists
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2015-11-29/top-selling-light-novels-in-japan-by-series-2015/.95914
http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2015-11-29/top-selling-manga-in-japan-by-series-2015/.95913

Perhaps I'm dumber than I thought, but I'm still not seeing totals, only top series. The fact that manga sales are heavily stratified towards the most popular IPs wasn't what I was calling into question.

Second column, "Estimated sales in period," between the rank and the series title.  The totals Reelya referenced appear to be only total sales in the time period in question, rather than total sales overall. 

EDIT: In case it helps, a quick top-five of each.
Top-Selling Light Novels, November 17, 2014 to November 22, 2015

• Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?: 1,220,217
• The Irregular at Magic High School: 1,175,978
• My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU: 1,050,446
• Overlord: 927,413
• Naruto Story Series: 883,833

Top-Selling Manga, November 17, 2014 to November 22, 2015

• One Piece: 14,102,521
• The Seven Deadly Sins: 10,304,112
• Attack on Titan: 8,778,048
• Assassination Classroom: 8,605,861
• Kingdom: 8,569,215

[Insanegame27]

My friend invited me to sleepover before his 18th birthday and he's looking to watch something. He loves Japanese culture, would Girls und Panzer be good to show him?

[Twinwolf]

That seems less Japanese culture, more Tank culture, to me.

[Flying Dice]

That... would further reinforce the claim. Y'know, with the text/graphic gender split.

This is starting to get convoluted now. Which claim are you referring to, and how do you think a text/graphic split reinforces it? I really have no idea what you're referring to as "the claim" here.

Normally men are said to prefer visual media and women are said to prefer textual/imaginative media. Arguing for a gender split the opposite way would seem counter-intuitive.

The "men = visual, women = textual" split is what we've observed in the West pretty consistently (at least in terms of the smut/romance/porn genre grouping). The predominance of male-centric textual media and relative prominence of female-centric visual media in Japan suggest that that generalization doesn't hold (and might even be reversed) there, with men favoring textual media and women favoring graphic media, though the substantial volume of male-targeted graphic media in the same genre grouping and lack of data re: genre novels targeted at older demographics limits how far we can take things.

That's what I meant by "the claim", the idea that the pure "male = visual, female = textual" paradigm doesn't hold for Japan.

[Reelya]

@FlyingDice: gotcha on what you were saying, but I don't really think that was the point that Cruxador was going for.

Cruxador's main points seemed to be:
1) there's less gender difference in the romcom novel market in Japan than in the West, so you get e.g. "dude versions of 50 shades" in Japan.
2) manga is more niche, so it's more quality driven than LNs.

@Culise, thanks for printing the figures.

What I did further with those, was to look up the number of volumes each series released per year, then divide 1 years worth of sales per series by the number of volumes each series puts out. That gives a good "per volume" estimate, which shows the most popular mangas outsell the most popular LNs by a decent margin (around 3 to 1). Basically the highest selling LN volume sold about half a million copies, and the highest selling manga volumes are around 1.5 million copies (not counting serialization). Both LN and manga sales slump off at around the same rate (the top manga series sold about 10 times the volumes of the top LN series, and the 30th manga series sold about 10 times the volumes of the 30th LN series), so it's not a case where a handful of super-popular manga artificially spike the sales: they really do sell more manga than LNs by a goodly margin.

Manga are ahead on both sales-per-volume (how many people bought it) and total sales (which includes people who buy a whole series). And that's before considering those people who only read mangas in serialization.

[Orange Wizard]

1) there's less gender difference in the romcom novel market in Japan than in the West, so you get e.g. "dude versions of 50 shades" in Japan.

I always found this pretty interesting. I hate Western romances because they're usually dumb, being targeted towards a lowest-common-denominator type market. Japan, however, actually has some really good romances that are written by people who give half a shit and don't assume the viewer/reader has the emotional and intellectual depth of a muskrat.
And that puts us in a chicken-and-the-egg scenario for the West, where men/smarter people/whatever don't watch/read romances because common perception says they're not written for that demographic, and they're not written for that demographic because no-one will read them.

My friend invited me to sleepover before his 18th birthday and he's looking to watch something. He loves Japanese culture, would Girls und Panzer be good to show him?

Does he like cute anime girls and military hardware? "Japanese culture" is kinda vague.

[Insanegame27]

OW: I do believe so, yes.

[Chevaleresse]

Idk, I haven't heard much in the way of good reviews of Girls und Panzer. My personal recommendation would be something like TTGL.

[Flying Dice]

GuP was fine as long as you want tanks and cute girls. Not top-notch, but it's enjoyable.

For a more serious answer to clanky mech action:
Votoms might do it, and it hasn't aged as badly as some stuff.
08th MS Team is the same sort of Real Robot action.
Break Blade could also fit the bill, though it could be considered sub-par for other reasons.

@FlyingDice: gotcha on what you were saying, but I don't really think that was the point that Cruxador was going for.

Fair cop, I may have misread what he was going for.

[MagmaMcFry]

I just finished watching Madoka in one big sitting.

Same here.

EDIT: Also the movie. WTF tho

[Flying Dice]

I found a film to watch.

[Chevaleresse]

I just finished watching Madoka in one big sitting.

Same here.

EDIT: Also the movie. WTF tho

Being meguca is suffering.

[Bauglir]

I just finished watching Madoka in one big sitting.

Same here.

EDIT: Also the movie. WTF tho

I gotta be honest with you, at this point I'm kind of "meh" on the original series and deeply in love with the movie. It's been an interesting transformation of perspective >_>

[Chevaleresse]

Not gonna lie I basically worship both the series and the movie