Speaking of Yu-Gi-Oh, I feel like it's so successful I feel like most people often forget that it was originally a Shonen Jump series. The 2000 anime and Konami's card game surely helped to form a different image of the series in most people's minds.
Now I wonder if Shueisha and/or Takahashi gets some of the profts from Konami's OCG/TCG.
Yeah Shueisha is partnered with Konami, V-Jump has lots of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and I'm pretty sure there's always a Yu-Gi-Oh! manga is running, V-JUMP pretty much is for Yu-Gi-Oh! (And Digimon, Boruto and Dragon Ball) what Coro Coro is to Pokemon, a magazine aimed at selling merch at kids. So yeah, Shueish takes their cut indirectly.
Takahashi 100% sure gets some kind of money it is his property after all, though if it's a 10% cut of everything sold (like royalties) or maybe a special arrangment that's something only he knows.
@DreamcastDazia
I loved your post haha.
BLEACH to me always looked like an evolution of Saint Seiya, the Gotei 13 are basically modern versions of Saint Seiya's Gold Saints...
And while I haven't read Kimetsu I have seen a couple pages here and there and know about the breathing techniques, Kimetsu in a sense reminds me of BLEACH, like the Pillar dudes are pretty much the Gotei 13 of the KnY universe, which in turn was inspired by Saint Seiya.
Reminder that there is no solid source for the "Black Jack has 176m units in circulation" thing
Considering
this website said it was at 40m in 2006, I'm inclined to believe the lower number
45.64m would put it at under 2m per volume, which is great, for sure, but it's nowhere near Demon Slayer
Regarding the conversation, I think it all depends on the coming years/decades and how they manage the IP on all the relevant fronts. So we can't really predict how things will go.
But people gotta remember that Demon Slayer has not stopped selling yet. We don't even know how high they will go, so trying to predict the future of the IP using them is kinda weird.
Black Jack most definitely hasn't sold 170 million, since I think it was you that mentioned that the site that reported those numbers then changed it to other number.
But if we are talking manga that have supposedly sold BIG numbers then
Devilman has sold 50 million worldwide with only 5 volumes? This would mean each volume on average sold 10 million.
This is a trustable source i think, the problem is that it's worldwide numbers (So no way to know how much it sold locally) and that while the original Devilman is 5 volumes long it has plenty of spin-off titles (And it's not stated whether that number counts spin-off titles).
Personally, I don't think the article refers to only the original five-volume manga, but maybe the whole Devilman franchise worldwide, which I think is still astounding numbers.
I don't know that much about the subject, but what can realistically be compared to the current Kimetsu craze? Is there anything that peaked at this level of popularity in Japan? I'm thinking of maybe pokémon in the late 90s?
Speaking of which, I feel like the Pokémon/Yokai Watch situation is an interesting comparison for Demon Slayer. Like Pokémon, Yokai Watch exploded out of nowhere, and even got close to Pokémon's popularity for a short while, only to die as a franchise really quickly because of mismanagement of the IP by Level 5.
Right now, Demon Slayer is still in that peak popularity phase. The rest entirely depends on the coming years. It could become either a pokémon or a Yokai Watch.
Yokai Watch is the only thing that comes to mind, also it didn't come close to Pokemon, in some fronts it
obliterated Pokemon numbers, maybe its games didn't sell as much as Pokemon but once its anime started it exploded so much that its movie broke Japan records (then Frozen 2 broke a lot of those, and now KnY broke those).
Yokai Watch literally lost 90% of its audience in the following years, movies nowadays make literally less than 10% what the first one made, I can only imagine merchandise sales are more or less the same.
But what happened to Yokai Watch is easy to understand, its audience outgrew it and it didn't captivate a new one, I don't think this will happen to Kimetsu as its average consumer must definitely are people around 15-25 (My guess?) so they won't get tired of the franchise because it will seem "kiddish" to them later (Which it's probably what happened to the Yokai Watch audience).
Other example I can think of is Dr. Slump exploding in popularity, though I have only heard/read anecdotes of this, it's backed up by some data we have of volume 6 iirc also it's known that Dr. Slump was the most watched JUMP anime adaptation, 20 average viewers per episode and i think 35 was its biggest rating).. Also iirc volume 6 of Dr.Slump had an intial print run of 2.2 million, breaking records for initial print run until Slam Dunk broke it in 1994ish.
But yeah neither of these were as big as KnY.
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As for "legacy" I see some of you guys are equating legacy with "artistic legacy" like how it will influence mangaka in the future, while I was more or less thinking "legacy" as how much it would sell in the future either locally/worldwide.
As for
artistic legacy, as plenty of people here have already said I don't think there's anything new Kimetsu did -at least from what I watched- plot wise (like how for example Jojo basically created a new power system with Stands that was later used in Shaman King, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Persona, etc.) but art wise maybe some manga will try to make pupils more like Kimetsu no Yaiba, I think the pupils in KnY look cool, like they are not completely circular, Tanjiro's even look hexagonal.
As for
sales, or potential to go worldwide, as I said I think its explosive popularity will mostly stay in Japan (maybe some Asian countries) but I don't think it will reach Dragon Ball or even Naruto levels of recognition elsewhere.
For example, there's plenty of non-anime watchers here in Mexico that would have an idea of who Naruto is (Mostly by memes, like Naruto running), but I don't think they will ever know who Tanjiro is.
Basically, I think if Kimetsu no Yaiba manages to attain the same success that My Hero Academia has outside of Japan I think that will be a huge success for the franchise, but I doubt it will get to the level of popularity MHA has in other territories other than Asia.
BTW
@Rouk' do you have any numbers of how much Kimetsu and MHA sell in France? I think maybe that would be a good indicator of how KnY has growth outside Asia, it most likely is a best seller but does it sell better per volume than for example MHA or One Piece?
Sometimes it feels like no one likes Bleach anymore
