Tag Archives: Toriko

Fun With Numbers: August 2014 US Amazon Data (Initial Numbers)

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July’s almost over, and while I’m not totally done tracking releases for that month, I think it’s reasonably safe to say none of them are likely to snag an elusive top 20 BD/top 30 DVD slot – Naruto and Hetalia were the only series to spend multiple days in triple digits and neither cracked the top 500.

This August looks pretty thin in terms of series likely to chart: the only releases currently better than 20,000th are DBZ’s sixth BD set, Love Lab, and Shinsekai Yori’s second half. Tracking them, as always, to add to the dataset and hopefully eventually enable analysis of the US market.

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Manga Chapter of the Week: Diamond is not Crash Chapter 30 (Let’s Go Out for Italian, Part 3)

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I’m a sucker for a good cooking manga. I’m even more a sucker for it when it’s pulled out of nowhere in a superpowered battle series and yet feels totally welcome. It’s why Toriko is so balls-on amazing under normal circumstances. And why it’s so lackluster now, when nary a character has had their muscles restored by a delicious cake in over half a year. So I’ve been satisfying my hunger* with a number of manga, most notably the raws of an almost-finished Akagi and the charmingly-amateurish classic Duwang scans of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. This week’s featured chapter comes from the latter, not for the unintentional comedy, but because this spaghetti looks really, really good:23_10_24_2011_21_54_23

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Fun With Numbers: Anime as Manga Advertisments in 2011 (Part 1: The Solid Baselines)

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Update 2 (July 15, 2014): New, more accurate data is here.

Update (Jul 1, 2014): This post doesn’t measure releases in 2-week totals, which turns out to be a huge deal in many, many cases. I’m currently working on an updated version of both this and the other 2011-2012 manga boost posts. Just be aware of that before citing the data from here regarding any one show.

Some time ago, I published an article looking at how anime adaptations produced in early 2012 affected the sales of their source manga. It was interesting data to take a look at, and it was interesting to see which anime really boosted the manga sales. Long story short, there are cases where a manga really jumps from mid-tier to franchise level (Space Brothers, Kuroko’s Basketball, Inu x Boku SS) soon after the anime airs, and cases where the anime doesn’t have much visible effect.

It was very intriguing to look at, but it wasn’t a sample large enough to draw real definitive conclusions from. So I’ve recently been pulling sales records for manga that had an anime adaptation air in 2011, to get a better idea of how the two media are interrelated. This post contains the first half of that data, specifically the data for which I have specific totals from both before and after the anime first aired, and some observations on that data.

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Lists Are Fun to Make: Mangaka Off the Top of My Head

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I thought it’d be a fun little exercise to try and pull out as many mangaka names as I could without relying on references. This is that list, written on lockdown mode and complete with the reasons why I remember them.

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Manga Olympics for Bloggers (Shonen/Seinen Round 1): Shonen Manga and Redefining Manliness

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This post represents the first of three entries our blog is submitting to the Manga Olympics for Bloggers. Voting begins in a few days on June 16th, so just enjoy the article for now. Or check out our illustrious competition.

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Shonen manga, as literally defined, are manga marketed towards young boys. There are several implications of this definition, but I’m going to zero in on one in particular for the moment. Because shonen manga is popular with and being marketed towards younger boys, it must to some degree adhere to their notions of manliness, but still holds a unique opportunity to redefine what they see as cool, manly traits to aspire to. Let’s dive right in and take a look at some of the many shonen manga that subtly teach kids life lessons.

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First Reactions: Devil Survivor 2 Episode 8

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I don’t want to make too much sport of a show that’s already been dragged through the mud a number of times, but I’ve been calling it Dull Survivor 2 to myself throughout the episode. Make of it what you will, or read on for a more detailed analysis.

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Manga Chapter of the Week: Natsu no Zenjitsu Chapter 16 (Being Touched)

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Yoshida Motoi is an irregular manga artist who makes up for his bi-quarterly release pace with the best aesthetic concepts this side of Yusuke Murata and a detail-fixated, thorough art style.* It’s fitting, then, that the manga he’s currently drawing, Natsu no Zenjitsu, deals with art itself.

As the title suggests, this particular chapter focuses on the male lead’s sense of touch, and aims to convey how it factors into both his life and his paintings to the readers. Part of that goal is accomplished in conventional means via the script, but the chapter also provides a clinic of how to incorporate the sense of touch into seemingly flat pages of manga. Nor does it just run an art clinic; these depictions are intimately related to a growing and somewhat contradictory set of emotions in the manga’s male lead.

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First Reactions: Muromi-san Episode 4

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Though the premise of each episode thus far has been fairly similar, I’d never accuse this show of being on cruise control. It’s simply too well-handled. Muromi-san a roller coaster ride that has as much fun making fun of its own ideas as it does playing them straight up.

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Fun With Numbers: The Evil Genius of Weekly Shonen Jump

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If you know anything at all about manga, you’ve probably heard the name Weekly Shonen Jump before. Armed to the teeth with megahits like One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, and Toriko, it stands undisputed atop the manga industry. But did you ever wonder how that dominance came to be, or why it’s been largely unchallenged for upwards of 20 years? Here’s a hint: it’s no accident.

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