Leading manga series Japan 2021, based on sales volume

The manga series "Jujutsu Kaisen" sold approximately 30.9 million volumes in Japan from November 2020 to November 2021, which made it the best-selling manga series in the country during that period. "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba," which had topped the ranking in the previous year, came in second with about 29.5 million copies.

A popular pastime

Manga are a popular form of entertainment in Japan. The origin of modern-day manga is usually traced back to Osamu Tezuka, who is credited with crucially developing the medium in the postwar years. The 1950s and 1960s were marked by a growing number of manga magazines, which played a pivotal role in introducing new artists and stories to the readers. Comparatively low technical entry barriers and the availability of niche publications encourage creative expression and make it possible for the Japanese content industry to discover new aspiring artists. Today, the medium covers a wide range of genres and is read by people of all ages. As of 2020, the total market size of comics in Japan amounted to almost 613 billion Japanese yen. The sales value of digital comics has strongly increased in recent years and overtook the combined sales value of printed comic books and printed comic magazines for the first time in 2019.

The flourishing of manga apps

While there has been concern about the decline of printed manga works since the 1990s, which is usually thought of as a result of competing pastimes, such as video games and online content, the 2010s saw a renewed flourishing of the medium in the form of manga apps. As smartphones and tablets have made the mobile consumption of content increasingly convenient, more and more companies started to release their own manga apps, which intensified the competition in the market. Apps enjoying a high popularity include LINE Manga, which was released in 2013 by LINE Corporation, Shonen Jump+, which was released in 2014 by Shueisha Inc., and Piccoma, which was released in 2016 by Kakao Japan Corporation. As a ranking of the leading comic apps in terms of downloads shows, the most popular apps are downloaded several million times in the course of a single year.