What matters in the end is the percental decline and not the actual numbers. A decline of nearly 100k sales matters far less for a series that sells 600-700k than for a series like BC that only sold 250k at its peak. In BCs case, it lost nearly 40% of its sales in the first month compared to its peak. For a series that sells 700k, it would only be 14.3%, for a series selling 600k it would be 16.7%, both being far below 40%. Not forgetting to mention that BC has a long running anime, while most other Jump manga have seasonal anime, so their sales usually get at least a small boost again once they get another season.
Also, I wouldn't really say that whether there's backlash or no backlash from western fans really matters. There are manga and anime that are more popular in the west and there's some series more popular in Japan. I think you can't deny that BC is obviously a lot bigger in the west. Plus, as someone who has been following BC since chapter 1, I've observed that BC's fan base has evolved into one of the least critical fan bases of any anime or manga in the west. As in, the fan base is less willing to criticize the series than most other fan bases of other anime or manga. To me, it looks like the majority of the western BC fan base is willing to accept nearly any direction the series takes without much criticism or backlash.
So, I'd say whether there's backlash from the Japanese fan base is a lot more important, because the sales in Japan depend on the Japanese fan base and not the western fan base. This is just my opinion and observation though, you're free to disagree with me.
Not really super relevant, but this reminds me of an argument I had with an old friend around 8 or 9 years ago that at the time gave me the impression that most Westerners don't have a fucking clue about manga production and completely project their understanding of western media onto it.
There was a group of four of us and we were discussing various series. I was the only one of that four who read scanlated manga, one other would read official English volumes, the other two were anime only.
Naruto got rather quickly brought up, and I mentioned how I felt the series had suffered a huge decline (and also wasn't even that great in the first place). None of the others seemed to agree which is fine, everyone is entitled to their opinions and I was just sharing my own. However one of the anime only watchers started arguing to me with such arrogant confidence that the only reason for the decline was due to all the original writers having already left by that point.
Couldn't help but assume it was a joke at first but he was serious.
Not accepting my explanation that the manga industry didn't really work that way, and even if we're to accept that editors and assistants can influence the course of a manga (which wasn't something he was aware of to take into account given he was talking out of his ass) there would never be a period where "all of the original writers left".
He couldn't fathom the idea that one person could draw and write a series for as long as a shonen manga serialization. Acted like I was insane for trying to educate him on something so obvious and simple.
The issue is, the other two people in the discussion didn't really know much either so didn't really know who was correct .
Of course that was nearly a decade ago and while manga culture is more mainstream misinformation is still rampant and in ways far worse than it was back then given there weren't twitter personalities blatantly pulling shit out of their ass with gullible simpletons who aren't capable of knowing any better fawning over them as if they were academics.
www.oricon.co.jp
