ToC placements are more important to wsj than sales, We just saw Samurai 8 get cancelled despite selling probably 5 times as much (or more) than Mitama, since nobody voted for it in the magazine. Agravity Boys might sell well enough but if it stays in dead last most weeks it won't live for too long. Same for anything else that drops (especially if their sales don't grow much in their next volumes).
That said, there are 5 long-running series that could end this year so, between that and the 8 spots filled by series less than a year old, there may actually be space for 7 new hits.
Sales and TOC placements have always been related.
If WSJ starts losing trust in a series because of declining sales and franchise value, it'll slowly start going down the TOC as well until eventually it's rushed or cancelled.
It's why S8's impending cancellation was all but obvious.
I feel like it more so has to do with a series growth, the expectations editorial has for a series, and how much they invested into a series.
Even though RxL and S8 sold much more than a lot of usual axed series, editorial likely had higher expectations for each series. They also invested a lot more promo into both series than they typically do for newcomer mangaka. Maybe the return didn’t justify what they spent in promo. And the lack of growth per volume didn’t inspire much hope.
However, I highly doubt they’d cancel a series that’s doing very well sales wise even if it wasn’t doing well in the TOC. And besides they create the TOC themselves, which isn’t entirely based on reader votes.
If all of the new series are doing well something obviously has to be on the bottom
S8 definitely fell short of any and all expectations, there is no doubt about that. Just the overprinting of 1st volume fiasco with S8 was proof of how out of line their expectations were from what was the actual reality of the series' reception.
Think RxL would've survived if it hadn't dipped in the following volumes. 100k for the first volume was solid, even for a returning veteran. But then it lost 1/3rd of that in the next few volumes which was indeed a big blow.
If I recall correctly, KNB had decent sales when it started but was always towards the bottom half of the TOC.
Si Viz posted this yesterday
I'm assuming it means My hero has sold 5million in the US? That's A LOT! Like seriously..
For example BLEACH had sold 1.2 millions in the US alone by 2007 (and 52 millions worldwide).. don't know about other manga sales in the US to compare it.
Does anyone know Naruto or DB manga sales in the US? I think maybe HeroAca has sold more than Naruto in the US in that time period?
Again, not saying 5 million in print from Viz alone isn't impressive because it is.
But such comparisons are moot since the manga/anime market in the US and outside Japan is vastly different to what it was when DBZ, Naruto or Bleach were popular.
