My Hero Academia and Demon Slayer Dethroned as 2021 Best-Selling Manga

The manga series My Hero Academia and Demon Slayer have been hits. For years they’ve been selling millions of copies and might have been expected to dominate sales charts this year. That is not the case. Jujutsu Kaisen has instead taken the top slot for 2021.

Demon Slayer, from creator Koyoharu Gotouge, began publishing in Weekly Shonen Jump in 2014. It ended last year yet has continued to see high sales. This could partially be due to the increased global popularity of the series with the newly translated anime series and the film, Demon Slayer: Mugen Train. Mugen Train is the highest-grossing anime film in Japan – and worldwide, topping Spirited Away. My Hero Academia began serializing in the same year as Demon Slayer, but it is still being serialized. It has continually been a top-performing series domestically and globally.

On Twitter, Shonen Jump News shared the yearly comic sales for the year, as presented by Oricon. Jujutsu Kaisen ranks at the top, followed closely by Demon Slayer, with Tokyo Revengers coming in at third. Attack on Titan and My Hero Academia complete the top five. The rest of the chart includes One Piece, Chainsaw Man, Spy X Family, Kingdom, and Haikyu!! 

The past several months, each of these titles have been hit or miss week to week in terms of sales. However, collectively, they’ve produced the highest numbers. Jujutsu Kaisen, from creator Gege Akutami, began serializing in Weekly Shonen Jump in 2018 and is still running. It currently has seventeen volumes spanning one hundred and forty-seven chapters, though there are currently a total of one hundred and sixty-six. It is a supernatural dark fantasy story that follows Yuji Itadori. It is actually a sequel series, with its predecessor being Tokyo Metropolitan CurseTechnical School, which was published in a Jujustu Kaisen precursor volume (#0). Jujusu Kaisen currently ranks as one of the top fifty best-selling manga of all time, despite undergoing a brief hiatus earlier this year. However, if its sales continue to increase, it could find itself entering the top twenty mark, alongside series like One Piece, Dragon Ball, Attack on Titan, and Bleach – among others.

This year, Crunchyroll awarded Jujutsu Kaisen the “Best Anime of the Year” award, and the manga has been nominated for several awards since its release in 2018. While it may not have the global popularity that the other manga series have earned over several years, it will likely rise to their ranks sooner than later. It has proven to be a top contender, beating out the previous reigning champion. Demon Slayer was the top-selling manga series of 2020, with it also being the best-selling manga in Japan in 2019. Going back-to-back is certainly an impressive feat, but Demon Slayer has met its match in Jujutsu Kaisen. My Hero Academia was edged out by One Piece for a couple of years, before Demon Slayer snatched the top spot. Next year’s manga sales will be interesting to see – could My Hero Academia finally take a top slot or will Jujutsu Kaisen prove to be another back-to-back series following in Demon Slayer’s footsteps?

Source: Shonen Jump News

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Samantha King
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Samantha King is a Comic News Writer for Screen Rant. She has a B.A. in English & American Literature with a concentration in Shakespeare and a minor in Creative Writing from UTEP. She also has a M.S. in Library Science from the University of North Texas.

Samantha used to get in trouble for reading comics in class back in high school, but she gets the last laugh. She took a graphic novel course in college and now gets paid to write about comics. She runs her own blog at: www.therealworldaccordingtosam.blogspot.com

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