HxH had (recent) volumes where it sold more than Naruto despite being in a totally unusual schedule and having extremely low quality drawings in the weekly release.
No it didn't!
2013
*16 1,205,558 NARUTO 63
*17 1,193,383 HUNTER×HUNTER 31
2012
**5 1,281,309 NARUTO 61
*10 1,090,309 HUNTER×HUNTER 30
2011
**5 1,229,170 NARUTO 54
*12 1,043,782 HUNTER×HUNTER 29
2010
*10 1,211,849 Naruto vol.49
*19 *,941,550 Hunter x Hunter vol.27
Also don't forget that in 2011 HxH got a new anime adaptation and so boosting its sales!
We have no way of knowing what heights it could reach if it was released normally. HxH got breaks and shitty releases way too early for it to truly compete with a series that is so much longer. In my opinion if you let HxH naturally release for a few years and build up to the size of OP, it would give it serious competition.
HxH got 8 years without "breaks and shitty releases", that is more time than most series get of release. So in reality it really competed with One Piece for a long time. It was even the 2nd most popular series in the Magazine for some time, and appearing in the group cover next to One Piece.
Also note that HxH anime started airing 6 days earlier to the start of One Piece anime.
There is really no big excuse for the difference between HxH and One Piece.
Note: One Piece entered Skypiea, where it got a print of 2.63 Million copies, breaking the record of Slam Dunk of 2.50 Million, in 2002(manga) and 2003 anime. HxH started getting irregular hiatus in 2006(though 2004 also was a bad year).
By the way, I meant this popular in terms of making a long-running mainstream shonen, meaning Toriyama (who was popular with Dr Slump but significantly less than something like Naruto) or Tezuka who had like a gazillion series and also lived in a different time is irrelevant.
Takehiko Inoue is a good point, so I'll grant you that.
I'm confused? Are you saying that Slam Dunk is a long-running mainstream shonen, but Dr. Slump isn't? Because Slam Dunk ran for 6 years and got an anime for 2.5 years. While Dr. Slump ran for 5 years and got an anime for also 5 years.
Dr. Slump was more popular than Naruto without a doubt! This is only not true if you're talking outside of Japan, where Dr. Slump didn't even got coverage(or got really little of it).
Dr. Slump not only has the best TV rating of WSJ manga, 22.8%. But also got the record in 1st print number, for every manga, at the time: 2.2 Million copies. Naruto in its heyday had TV ratings of 8%(One Piece at the same time was doing 13.8%) and its best 1st print number is 1.62 Million copies.
In japan the only thing that Naruto is better than Dr. Slump is that is way longer than it, like 3 times longer.
---------- Post added at 03:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:15 PM ----------
I would like to know from where and how is obtained the information sales outside of Japan, especially of Dragon Ball, because for example, here in Spain, it was published first in comic-book format. That is to say:
More of 250 issues in comic-book format, with 50k buyers, equals more than 12.5 millions copies sold, BUT it's cheating, 42 volumes with these 50k buyers equals less of 2.5 millions copies sold. So, how counting?
I don't know how they count, but the information was given by Toei and Shueisha.
I would assume that they only count the Tankobon, the volumes in a similar format to those in Japan.
For example in Japan One Piece had special edition called Log Books, that were basically a Magazine like Weekly Shonen Jump, but with only One Piece chapters, and that wasn't counted in the "normal" One Piece sales.