Rocket Bomber - article - rankings - commentary - Running out of steam - Going Big - and novels - by request.

Before the good stuff: The usual 5 paragraphs on methodology.

Given that 4 days out of last week went *poof*, as personal circumstances kept me from keeping up with the usual daily grind, my schedule this past weekend (looong weekend: 5 days, but not a good long weekend as I still had to work) well, it’s been really tight. I typically don’t mind data entry (…but that’s still not even in the same hemisphere as saying I like data entry) because I can spread it out in one and two hour chunks throughout the week, with four hours on a Sunday or Monday to bring everything together.

Since last Thursday I’ve done 7400 line-items of data entry, compiled the main chart twice, pulled out the new releases and preorders from last week, posted a special supplement on publishers’ estimated market share, and completed not one but two commentary posts (The Broccoli spotlight and this thing) and…

Well, maybe that’s enough for a long weekend. Don’t expect this every week. In future, if I’m not on pace on Thursday or Friday I’ll just scrub that week’s chart entirely.

The time-scale for the 10 August rankings were stretched a bit, because of my missing days, and to make up for one set of missing site checks (went back one Saturday and picked up a smidge of data previously used for 3 Aug) — so instead of two-weeks, it covers a time period of 19 days. The charts for 17 August (just posted) in contrast, are two weeks… but awfully heavy on the recent data: 2/3 of the scores were pulled in just 5 days (Wed-Fri-Sat-Sun.)

Statistically speaking… well, I have no clue, really. It’ll all come out in the wash. Tonight, at least, is a night off.

##

ATTN: Box Sets

Viz is planning another Big, Big autumn: Not only are they re-releasing the coveted Naruto Box (not in black this year, but in a stomach-churning shade of neon green) but alongside, they’re also soaking the fan base for a $100+ a pop acceding to demand and releasing box sets of other popular series:

The Naruto Box appears to be in warehouses now (as of this morning) so if you jump on it you might even have it by Friday. That’s $179.99 MSRP, isbn 9781421525822. Also:

21 vols of Bleach, isbn 9781421526102, $149.99, 2 Sept.
13 vols of Death Note, isbn 9781421525815, $99.99, 7 Oct.
16 vols of Dragon Ball, isbn 9781421526140, $114.99, 4 Nov.
26 vols of Dragon Ball Z, isbn 9781421526157, $185.99, 4 Nov.

(no one actually pays list price, I don’t think — not with so many online retailers undercutting each other to make these sales, but the prices above are the ‘official’ ones)

And of course, there are the new VizBig Editions of Rurouni Kenshin, Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, and Vagabond. Plus maybe some others I haven’t heard of yet, or that are still in the development pipe.

There are enough omnibuses, box sets, collections, Ultimate Editions, and the like to make for quite a pile — 47 listings in my database. I won’t post a full accounting this week because I don’t want to clog up the blog with yet another list and there are other things to cover, but if this sort of thing interests you, let me know and I can post it in a follow-up.

##

Your feedback matters.

In fact, I take requests:

John T at Mecha Mecha Media (via the comments on a post at MangaBlog) specifically asked if I included “light novels” in my manga charts.

The short answer is Yes. Yes I do.

The long answer isn’t that much longer: I rely on the manga category listings of my sources, the 9 online sales sites that I currently check weekly. I reserve the right to skip most of Tokyopop’s Cine-Manga (for obvious reasons) but for the most part if they want to include it with their manga offerings, that’s good enough for me.

The least manga-ish of the items I currently track are the Avatar Lost Scrolls and Avatar Earth Kingdom Chronicles, both from Simon & Schuster. These are two series written in English and based off of an American produced TV show. (well, it’s likely all animated in South Korea but so is the Simpsons so there — and given the Korean connection why Tokyopop or Nick hasn’t solicited a manhwa of Avatar still confuses me)

While I include the Avatar books in the Manga 500, we’ll skip them today. (none of them would have made the following Top 10 anyway)

Top 10 Manga-ish Novels

42. ↑2 (44) : Death Note Another Note (novel) – Viz, Feb 2008 [399] ::
78. ↓-6 (72) : Battle Royale Novel – Viz, Mar 2003 [310.8] ::
170. ↓-13 (157) : Strawberry Panic (novel) 2 – Seven Seas Strawberry, Jul 2008 [184] ::
190. ↓-3 (187) : Ai no Kusabi (novel) 3 – DMP June, Jul 2008 [166.8] ::
194. ↑43 (237) : Strawberry Panic (novel) 1 – Seven Seas Strawberry, Mar 2008 [163.8] ::
221. ↑4 (225) : The Twelve Kingdoms (novel) 2 – Tokyopop, Mar 2008 [142.7] ::
241. ↓-33 (208) : Caged Slave (novel) – DMP June, May 2008 [133] ::
246. ↑89 (335) : Vampire Hunter D (novel) 4 – Dark Horse, May 2006 [129] ::
263. ↓-12 (251) : Full Metal Panic! (novel) 3 – Tokyopop, Jun 2008 [119.6] ::
284. ↑61 (345) : Chibi Vampire (novel) 2 – Tokyopop, May 2007 [111] ::

Manga-ish novels (the ones translated into English, anyway) fall into 3 broad categories: novels with a tie-in to existing manga or anime, stand-alone novels, and a large subset of the stand-alone novels: yaoi prose.

In some cases the novel predates the anime or manga adaptation: I know this is the case for Battle Royale, Crest of the Stars, Strawberry Panic, The Twelve Kingdoms, and Vampire Hunter D. The Ghost in the Shell novels came after the TV anime (which came after the theatrical film, which came after the manga). Full Metal Panic was also an anime first; the plots of the novels don’t deviate at all from the anime, being close to a shot-for-shot-to-page adaptation.

The Chibi Vampire novels were written after the manga debuted (and the first came out while the anime Karin was still in pre-production) and they tell new, parallel stories — not related directly to the main storyline of either manga or anime.

Naruto novels are just a grab for fanboy cash, like the movies, artbooks, video games, calendars, source books, ani-manga based on the movies, plushies, headbands, ‘official’ orange jump suits, etc etc etc. I think there have been a total of five Naruto novels released by Viz in English.

(They did something similar with Fullmetal Alchemist, if memory serves)

.hack// is a tangled web all it’s own, with a couple video games thrown into the mix to make it even more confusing.

##

Light Novels for the sake of being light novels seem to be fairly rare, actually, at least so far. Seven Seas is the only pub currently pursuing these, or at least the only one I’m aware of at the moment; though Viz releases a (non-manga-tie-in) novel very occasionally, as does Del Rey, and there’s the whole Tokyopop Pop Fiction branch if it survives the current slate of cuts & delays — none of these publishers pushed light novels as a branded concept, prefering to stick with either a known property that just happened to have a novel or two, or marketing them as ‘staight’ YA/Teen fiction without expliciting exploiting the Japanese angle.

I had quite a bit to say about novels and manga once before, four months and another blog ago; I’ll point you to this article on Comicsnob.com for more on the topic.

Light novels will continue to be a bit of a puzzle wrapped in an enigma and banished to the back corner behind sci-fi with the rest of the manga and graphic novels, at least until book stores figure out where to shelve them.

Everything tagged ‘novel’ in my database:
(by publisher)

Key:

. (last ranked 20 Jul 08) : Blood+ (novel) 1 – Dark Horse, Mar 2008 [0] ::
1422. ↑new (0) : Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex (novel) 1 – Dark Horse, Apr 2006 [0.1] ::
1616. ↑new (last ranked 18 May 08) : Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex (novel) 2 – Dark Horse, Aug 2006 [0.1] ::
1610. ↑new (last ranked 1 Jun 08) : Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex (novel) 3 – Dark Horse, Nov 2006 [0.1] ::
312. ↓-14 (298) : Vampire Hunter D (novel) 1 – Dark Horse, Jun 2005 [99.3] ::
482. ↓-41 (441) : Vampire Hunter D (novel) 10 – Dark Horse, Apr 2008 [53.5] ::
. (last ranked 8 Jun 08) : Vampire Hunter D (novel) 11 – Dark Horse, Oct 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 10 Aug 08) : Vampire Hunter D (novel) 2 – Dark Horse, Sep 2005 [0] ::
423. ↑58 (481) : Vampire Hunter D (novel) 3 – Dark Horse, Jan 2006 [65.4] ::
246. ↑89 (335) : Vampire Hunter D (novel) 4 – Dark Horse, May 2006 [129] ::
1593. ↑167 (1760) : Vampire Hunter D (novel) 5 – Dark Horse, Sep 2006 [0.1] ::
1290. ↑new (last ranked 20 Jul 08) : Vampire Hunter D (novel) 6 – Dark Horse, Nov 2006 [0.3] ::
1337. ↑77 (1414) : Vampire Hunter D (novel) 7 – Dark Horse, Apr 2007 [0.2] ::
1326. ↑42 (1368) : Vampire Hunter D (novel) 8 – Dark Horse, Sep 2007 [0.2] ::
1278. ↑196 (1474) : Vampire Hunter D (novel) 9 – Dark Horse, Nov 2007 [0.3] ::

1633. ↑new (last ranked 22 Jun 08) : Dark Wars: The Tale of Meiji Dracula (novel) – Del Rey, Jan 2008 [0.1] ::
. (last ranked 6 Jul 08) : Train Man Novel – Del Rey, Apr 2007 [0] ::

. (last ranked 10 Aug 08) : Fafner: Dead Aggressor (novel) – DMP, Jul 2008 [0] ::

363. ↓-57 (306) : Body Language (novel) – DMP, Jan 2008 [81.2] ::
1242. ↓-651 (591) : A Promise of Romance (novel) – DMP June, May 2008 [0.3] ::
632. ↑103 (735) : Ai no Kusabi (novel) 1 – DMP June, Nov 2007 [26.3] ::
849. ↑569 (1418) : Ai no Kusabi (novel) 2 – DMP June, Mar 2008 [9] ::
190. ↓-3 (187) : Ai no Kusabi (novel) 3 – DMP June, Jul 2008 [166.8] ::
. (last ranked 22 Jun 08) : Ai no Kusabi (novel) 4 – DMP June, Nov 2008 [0] ::
812. ↓-256 (556) : Better Than a Dream (novel) – DMP June, May 2008 [10.6] ::
241. ↓-33 (208) : Caged Slave (novel) – DMP June, May 2008 [133] ::
. (last ranked 27 Jul 08) : Dark Walker (novel) – DMP June, Dec 2008 [0] ::
678. ↓-273 (405) : Eternal Love (novel) – DMP June, Jun 2008 [19.7] ::
319. ↓-45 (274) : Gentle Cage (novel) – DMP June, Jul 2008 [95.9] ::
318. ↑264 (582) : Immoral Darkness (novel) – DMP June, Jul 2008 [96.8] ::
. (last ranked 10 Aug 08) : Like a Love Comedy (novel) – DMP June, Jul 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 29 Jun 08) : Little Darling (novel) – DMP June, Nov 2007 [0] ::
599. ↓-26 (573) : Only the Ring Finger Knows (novel) 1 – DMP June, Mar 2006 [31.5] ::
633. ↓-6 (627) : Only the Ring Finger Knows (novel) 2 – DMP June, Jul 2006 [26.2] ::
890. ↑4 (894) : Only the Ring Finger Knows (novel) 3 – DMP June, Oct 2006 [7.4] ::
1295. ↓-655 (640) : S (novel) 1 – DMP June, May 2008 [0.2] ::
. (last ranked 22 Jun 08) : S (novel) 2 – DMP June, Aug 2008 [0] ::
. (last ranked 3 Aug 08) : S (novel) 3 – DMP June, Dec 2008 [0] ::
1612. ↑new (last ranked 10 Aug 08) : Sleeping with Money (novel) – DMP June, Jun 2008 [0.1] ::
837. ↓-294 (543) : Sweet Admiration (novel) – DMP June, Mar 2008 [9.2] ::

1156. ↓-260 (896) : Ballad of a Shinigami (novel) 1 – Seven Seas, Mar 2008 [1.2] ::
489. ↓-40 (449) : Ballad of a Shinigami (novel) 2 – Seven Seas, Jul 2008 [51.9] ::
1415. ↑new (0) : Boggiepop at Dawn (novel) – Seven Seas, Aug 2008 [0.1] ::
. (last ranked 13 Jul 08) : Pita-Ten (novel) 1 – Seven Seas, Mar 2008 [0] ::
1233. ↑147 (1380) : Pita-Ten (novel) 2 – Seven Seas, Jul 2008 [0.4] ::
194. ↑43 (237) : Strawberry Panic (novel) 1 – Seven Seas Strawberry, Mar 2008 [163.8] ::
170. ↓-13 (157) : Strawberry Panic (novel) 2 – Seven Seas Strawberry, Jul 2008 [184] ::
967. ↑new (0) : Strawberry Panic (novel) 3 – Seven Seas Strawberry, Oct 2008 [5.4] ::

. (last ranked 6 Apr 08) : .hack// Another Birth (novel) 1 – Tokyopop, Jun 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 10 Aug 08) : .hack// Another Birth (novel) 2 – Tokyopop, Oct 2006 [0] ::
991. ↑108 (1099) : .hack// Another Birth (novel) 3 – Tokyopop, Feb 2007 [4.7] ::
. (last ranked 13 Jul 08) : .hack// Another Birth (novel) 4 – Tokyopop, Jul 2007 [0] ::
1117. ↑135 (1252) : Chibi Vampire (novel) 1 – Tokyopop, Jan 2007 [1.9] ::
284. ↑61 (345) : Chibi Vampire (novel) 2 – Tokyopop, May 2007 [111] ::
. (last ranked 20 Jul 08) : Chibi Vampire (novel) 3 – Tokyopop, Sep 2007 [0] ::
702. ↓-201 (501) : Chibi Vampire (novel) 4 – Tokyopop, Jan 2008 [17.7] ::
367. ↓-17 (350) : Chibi Vampire (novel) 5 – Tokyopop, Jul 2008 [79.6] ::
. (last ranked 20 Jul 08) : Crest of the Stars (novel) 1 – Tokyopop, Sep 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 20 Jul 08) : Crest of the Stars (novel) 2 – Tokyopop, Jan 2007 [0] ::
. (last ranked 10 Aug 08) : Crest of the Stars (novel) 3 – Tokyopop, May 2007 [0] ::
1204. ↑191 (1395) : Full Metal Panic! (novel) 1 – Tokyopop, Sep 2007 [0.5] ::
612. ↓-210 (402) : Full Metal Panic! (novel) 2 – Tokyopop, Dec 2008 [29.7] ::
263. ↓-12 (251) : Full Metal Panic! (novel) 3 – Tokyopop, Jun 2008 [119.6] ::
. (last ranked 6 Jul 08) : Gravitation Novel – Tokyopop, Mar 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 6 Jul 08) : Love Hina (novel) 1 – Tokyopop, Apr 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 3 Aug 08) : Love Hina (novel) 2 – Tokyopop, Aug 2006 [0] ::
332. ↓-56 (276) : The Twelve Kingdoms (novel) 1 – Tokyopop, Feb 2008 [91.5] ::
221. ↑4 (225) : The Twelve Kingdoms (novel) 2 – Tokyopop, Mar 2008 [142.7] ::
833. ↓-119 (714) : Welcome to the NHK Novel – Tokyopop, Oct 2007 [9.3] ::

78. ↓-6 (72) : Battle Royale Novel – Viz, Mar 2003 [310.8] ::
756. ↑347 (1103) : Brave Story (hardcover) – Viz, Aug 2007 [13.8] ::
42. ↑2 (44) : Death Note Another Note (novel) – Viz, Feb 2008 [399] ::
1232. ↑134 (1366) : Shakugan no Shana Fight Day (novel) – Viz, Oct 2007 [0.4] ::
581. ↑150 (731) : Shakugan no Shana The Girl with Fire in Her Eyes (novel) – Viz, Apr 2007 [34.2] ::
776. ↑new (last ranked 27 Apr 08) : Socrates in Love (novel) – Viz, Feb 2008 [12.6] ::

. (last ranked 22 Jun 08) : Kamikaze Girls (novel) – Viz Shojo Beat, Jan 2008 [0] ::

. (last ranked 13 Jul 08) : Naruto Innocent Heart Demonic Blood (novel) – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2006 [0] ::
. (last ranked 6 Jul 08) : Naruto Mission Protect the Waterfall Village (novel) – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2007 [0] ::

More Next Week. Promise.