Talk:List of best-selling manga

Update content
Hello there. Please update the content of this article. One Piece has now 108 volumes and Detective Conan has 105 volumes, for example. Please reply! Thanks! 181.93.140.3 (talk) 18:43, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

Unlisted manga
I've been checking the site linked below and while some manga has lower numbers than listed here (most likely because they're outdated) there were some titles missing from the table: - Onihei Hankachō (30 million copies) - Negima is listed but at 20 million copies compared to 26 million copies there. Sword Art Online (30 million copies), The Irregular at Magic High School (22 million copies) and Slayers (20 million copies) are also listed there but looks like those numbers are from light novel sales. Source: Mangazenkan's total sales list 85.140.92.101 (talk) 13:20, 6 April 2024 (UTC)


 * Ok after some googling I've realised that Negima is listed at 26m there because that also includes UQ HOLDER! sales as a part of the series.
 * Also as far as I can see this page has That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, The Apothecary Diaries, A Certain Magical Index, Haruhi Suzumiya which are all originally light novels so there's no reason to not include Sword Art Online, The Irregular at Magic High School and Slayers sales as well after all. 85.140.92.101 (talk) 12:38, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Since no one is answering you, although I was hoping the people who added those sources might say something, it's been over 2 months so I'll give you my take on this.
 * I know some series use Mangazenkan here as a source, and I've brought that up before but no one has addressed it. That's a tertiary source that's just compiling information from actual sources, just like what we do here on this Wiki page. I wouldn't use that as a source because it's effectively the same as citing this page itself as a source. Rather, we should be using the actual secondary sources that Mangazenkan themselves get their numbers from (which we don't even know what their sources are to begin with).
 * As for why some light novel series are here while others are not, I can't really attest to that as I'm not the one who's added any. What I do know is that the figures for series like Tensura & Apothecary Diaries are mostly made up of manga sales, as the light novel industry is only a fraction of the size of the manga industry, and their manga counterparts often sell more in a single week than their entire light novel collection will sell in a year - so I'd say their presence here fits.
 * (Basing these next ones on List of best-selling light novels) SAO's 30m source is solely light novel numbers. Irregular at Magic School is majority light novel. Slayers had 18 million in circulation just based off of the 50 Light Novel Volumes it had (as reported by Crunchyroll), and although it has a few manga spin-offs, the vast majority of its volumes are light novels (56 LN vs 26 Manga). So even if the extra 2m change from 18m > 20m came purely from manga sales (highly unlikely), the vast majority of its copies are made up of Light Novels. So personally I would not add those 3 series here, though someone else might.
 * So I just wanted to give you some semblance of answer so that you weren't just completely ignored, but personally, I am not going to change/add anything regarding those light novel series. ManjirouEdits (talk) 03:38, 19 June 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 May 2024
Hunter x Hunter is still on going though isn't listed as 86.16.212.3 (talk) 18:07, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. M.Bitton (talk) 21:00, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

DRAGON BALL SOLD 300+ MILLION COPIES
Dragon Ball has sold more than 300 million copies worldwide.

Here you will find the list of sales for each country with its source (look at the "reception" section):

https://ultimatepopculture.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon_Ball#cite_note-48

The sum amounts to 293,603,554 million.

However, these figures are yet to be updated, so it is safe to assume that Dragon Ball has sold more than 300 million copies.

Please update the figure, thank you. RagnoKaito (talk) 22:10, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * Fandom is user-generated and not a reliable source, not to mention that "safe to assume" is blatant WP:OR and WP:SYNTH. Link20XX (talk) 23:00, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I am not quoting fandoms. All the sources are in the link I sent, "reception" section where you can find the sales for each country and the link with the respective official source.
 * Take a look. 158.47.227.105 (talk) 23:04, 11 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm assuming you're ? Anyways, I don't have the time to look through all the sources they list, but this would probably fall into WP:SYNTH territory. We should wait until we get an actual announcement with a sales number. Link20XX (talk) 01:02, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I get it. However, the source currently cited for Dragon Ball sales is an article by Toei, but we also have another one from Toei that claims 350 million copies.
 * If you need other sources that sates the 300-350 million copies, here are some you could mention:
 * Source 1 (oricon.jp, 2008)
 * Source 2 (shueisha, 2009)
 * Source 3 (livedoor, 2009)
 * Source 4 (lawson, 2009)
 * Source 5 (datebook, 2019)
 * Source 6 (Dr. Mashirito, 2021)
 * Source 7 (cbr, 2024) RagnoKaito (talk) 18:35, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't see where this specific link confirms 350 million. CBR report is based on a tweet from a random user, so that's not a good source (also, CBR reports after 2023 are considered generally unreliable at WP:A&M/ORS). If these sources from fifteen years ago previously claimed that it had over 350 million, it would be expected that the series would have had a noticeable growth in its numbers since then, so it doesn't make sense that recent figures claim figures lower than that (260 million, including Oricon who in 2008 reported 350). The only reasonable conclusion is that those old reports were simply incorrect, and we should stick to what the most recent sources indicate. Of all the links you posted perhaps the only valid thing is the manga editor's statement, but I don't think his statement alone carries more weight than any of the other recent reports that don't coincide with what he says. Xexerss (talk) 22:18, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I addressed the CBR source in another discussion (see ). Regarding the other sources, WP:AGEMATTERS and WP:CONTEXTMATTERS suggest using the recent secondary sources (which support the 260 million number as shown above) over the older sources or primary sources. This very topic and all the sources you linked above have come up so many times in the past (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 since 2022, this discussion being number 16) that I think we need a banner or FAQ of some type to prevent this discussion from coming up yet again without any new arguments. Link20XX (talk) 03:30, 13 June 2024 (UTC)
 * That table was directly copied and pasted from a previous version of the Dragon Ball (manga) article. For your information, that table was created by, a sockpuppet user known for misinterpreting sales, film grosses and similar. That table was very poorly constructed and was therefore removed from the article. Figures should be provided by official sources and not based on calculations made by editors. Xexerss (talk) 02:41, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Average sales per volume column
Actually, I've had problems with this column since it was created a few years ago. The total circulation of a series, specifically for ongoing series, clearly becomes outdated when new volumes are published, so it seems nonsensical to me to have to divide an outdated figure into the most recent number of volumes of a series when its sales/circulation numbers reports have calculations made long before their most recent volumes release dates. This is, for example, dividing 50 million (2020 figure) into 40 volumes (as of 2023). Also, it doesn't seem appropriate, even if it's only an estimated approximation, to assume that the total figure is distributed evenly for each volume, that is to imply that each volume of a series is printed/sold in the same quantity on a regular basis, when this could not be more wrong. For all these reasons, besides the fact that I personally don't see much use for it, I think the column should be removed.

Going a little off topic, but somewhat related nonetheless, I think that notes related to magazine circulations (and the circulation tables found in articles such as Weekly Shōnen Sunday, Weekly Shōnen Jump and Weekly Shōnen Magazine should be removed as well, since these definitely fall into WP:SYNTH territory and were the work of, who had created these kinds of tables and made these kinds of calculations from all kinds of sources in various articles. Xexerss (talk) 04:27, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * You make a good argument for removing the sales per volume column, so I think I would support that. Regarding that user, anything they've done should be removed, not just because of WP:BANREVERT but also because their misuse of sources is exactly why they were blocked. The damage done is quite severe; Akira (1988 film) and One Piece (1999 TV series) are two examples among many of articles they edited that should be cleaned up. Link20XX (talk) 04:59, 12 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I personally do find value in that column, but I won't oppose it's removal if that's what the majority want. I will add my perspective and say that it provides another angle at viewing the data we provide here with added convenience. Sure, people who want that data can just do the math themselves, but having it visibly there right next to each series' entry, while also being able to easily sort everything, just adds a lot of convenience and accessibility for using that data. Pertaining to the discrepancy between volume count and older figures - I had always thought that the volume count should coincide with that of the circulation figure's source in the first place. Even without the column, for example, having OP's volume count at 108 next to a 516.6 million circulation figure already portrays the message that OP has 516.6m in circulation for 108 volumes, even though the source is for Volumes 1-103. Regarding your final point on the matter, I feel like that's already understood and implied given what an "average" is.
 * For the magazine circulations, as we've talked about before, I'll again state my full support for removing them. ManjirouEdits (talk) 22:52, 18 June 2024 (UTC)
 * In my opinion, if the purpose of the column is perhaps to roughly estimate the performance of a series in terms of its volumes, mentioning the number of collected volumes along with the number of copies in circulation is enough for readers to infer on their own how well a series is performing depending on the ratio between both parameters at first glance, without us, the editors, having to do any kind of calculation (i.g. a 15-volume series with 20 million copies in circulation, a 60-volume series with 20 million copies in circulation, etc.). That's why it's ideal to use updated sources as well. Now, to exemplify my problem with the column, let's say that a 20-volume series has 10 volumes with 8 million copies in circulation each; 6 with 2 million copies each, and 4 with 800,000 copies each, that means that the series has 95.2 million copies in circulation; all good with that, but the problem would be then implying that those 95.2 million copies are evenly distributed in those 20 volumes, and that there are 4.76 million copies on average for each volume, despite the real difference in the previous numbers, and is for that reason that I consider this estimate meaningless. Okay, in reality it's most likely that the number of copies per volume may not be as disparate as in my example, but it's not something we can say for sure for every series and since sources rarely give this kind of information when stating the total figures, I don't think it's our responsibility to make these estimates. For these cases, I'm more the kind of person who believes that an average without knowing the standard deviation doesn't provide valuable information, and since it's virtually impossible to know the latter, I feel the best option would be to remove the column. Not to mention as well that our list simply considers the number of collected volumes as the number of collected volumes of tankōbon editions, but the total figures from sources may be counting other editions, like bunkoban, kanzenban, wideban, etc. I mean, for practical purposes, I'm fine with using the term tankōbon as a synonym for collected volume in the article, but assuming that the copies in circulation estimated by the sources refers literally and only to tankobon editions (although this is not usually specified) and then making divisions by the number of volumes of these editions can be very inaccurate. Xexerss (talk) 09:26, 19 June 2024 (UTC)
 * I could definitely agree that it's not necessary to have here. I'm just saying that personally, for me, it's really convenient being there - and I know there are people that appreciate it being there. Overall, I'm not "supporting" its removal, but I'm also not opposing it.
 * I understand your issue with the averages, but like I said before, I really feel like that's already implied based on what an "average" is, in and of itself. I don't think anyone is genuinely looking at, let's say One Piece for example, and thinking that, based on the average, every single OP Volume equally has exactly 4.78 million copies printed. It's not like we're giving people data that's wrong or incorrect. If a series had two volumes with Volume 1 having 10m copies & Volume 2 having 2m copies (extreme example), the average copies/volume being 6m is actually the case - not just an "estimate" anymore than the circulation figure we provide is. It does serve to represent the success of the series overall - throughout the entirety of its run - not just what it looked like at its peak or lowest. Yeah, it would be great if we were able to have information so comprehensive that we knew every single volume's circulation, sales, revenue even, etc. We'll never have that though, so these averages are the best we can use.
 * But again, just giving my opinion on the matter. I'm abstaining so don't let it stop you from removing it if you think that's best! ManjirouEdits (talk) 02:57, 20 June 2024 (UTC)