Naruto is *over*. [updated!]
[title selected to incite the fan base and garner more links.]
I’m always running 6-8 weeks ahead. Part of that is my natural tendency to vacuum up all available data, part of it is that—at work—I’m sitting on the final, retail end of a truly frightening distribution chain — and when if I can find the time to slack off at work there is this really delicious database, search functionality, and user interface that honestly makes any internet sales site seem weak. I mean, you can’t even search by release date. (You can’t. I can. Love the in-house system.) (not surprisingly, most of the folks who work at the bookstore have no idea what kind of beast they have access to. I can train the minions at *my* big box outpost, but most of you are missing out just because the kids we have working at your local have no idea what the system is capable of)
(and you miss out twice because — blah blah blah proprietary information blah blah corporate blah I don’t want to be fired — even though I have access to data at work I’m forced to reconstruct it in toto from secondary sources because I don’t want to be fired and every now and then I just can’t find an independent source so I try to forget that I know something and it goes missing, never to be posted. — Sorry. Gotta eat.)
On top of what I know, and occasionally I even know that I know and can share what I know, there is my very odd hobby and my voracious reading habits (online and off) — and my spectacular brand of insanity. :) …there’s no way you can keep up with me and a six pack. Can’t imagine why you’d want to… but you can’t. neener neener.
I came up with the ‘Naruto Glacier’ metaphor around beer five and…
Heck, there’s our lead:
##
Right now, Naruto owns the sales charts. Imagine this as the Naruto Ice Age, when a vast Naruto glacier holds fast to the peaks and valleys of the greater Manga Land Mass.
We are approaching the end of this age, though, slowing entering a post-Toonami world where what seemed to be the basic tenets of fandom, our very foundation and history as it were, are shown to be as solid as ice — fine in the early January of my-extended-and-forced-metaphor — but a bit dicey as time goes on and things warm up.
The melt shows first along the border, with Borders, and in the southern latitudes of the Amazon (Yes! go, metaphor, go!) where Naruto long since gave (partial) ground to titles newer, flasher, weirder, and with more androgynous bishies. Naruto still holds solid to the kids too young to know the difference, out at the store next to the mall, and (in my charts) at places like BN.com and Books-a-Million. Slowly, though, the thaw continues. Change is coming.
Will Naruto continue to be a Top 10 title a year from now? Duh. Yes. Naruto isn’t going anywhere fast — much like the belaboured metaphorical glaciers. Will Naruto, even after retreating to the furthest reaches of the manga mountains, leave behind a residual landscape where other titles will follow like meltwater down U-shaped valleys and across the same well-scoured ground?
Again, duh. Naruto is indeed a big ol’ mass of something. Many will try to fill the hole it leaves, without recognizing that it was the product of some weird weather combined with the right climate: ultimately, a big fluke. Later titles can be just as impressive — the Great Lakes followed the Ice Age after all — but the conditions on the ground are different, the pathways are different (changed, in fact, by Naruto) and lighting never strikes twice in the same place unless you’re firing a laser beam into thunderheads to create an ionized pathway.
[Do you have 1.21 gigawatt laser, or its metaphorical equivalent? No? Then lightning doesn’t strike twice: despair of ever ever duplicating Naruto. Can’t be done.]
RocketBomber: “We Combine Publishing Trends and SCIENCE! Because We Can!“ [sm]
Anyway: The point of the long, metaphorical side-trip through galciology (with a smidge of laser-powered meteorological research) is that even though “the fundamentals of the Naruto Economy are strong” I’m noticing some weakness in the leading indicators of my sales charts. With 31 extant volumes, 4 more already showing up as pre-orders, a number of source books and novels and other extras, and continued releases keeping pace every other month
the series isn’t going away any time soon,
but I think a chunk (the female contingent? kids naturally aging-out of the franchise?) may have moved on to other pastures, and while strong sales will keep it on the charts out in the ‘suburbs’, the hip ‘intown’ kids are already buying other books. Also, the bump from the 2007 Fall Sales Putsch (more Naruto, honestly, than most of us could stomach) may finally have worked through the system, and we’re left with merely the demand of a popular series running in monthly installments in a widely available anthology magazine that also has an anime adaptation showing daily on cable. Oh the hardships this poor little title from Viz is suddenly confronted with!
But…
Naruto is over. You heard it here first. Believe It!
##
Update: Numbers. (lies, damn lies and statistics)
currently ranked Naruto Titles
1. ↔0 () : Naruto 31 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2008 [792.9] ::
4. ↓-2 () : Naruto 30 – Viz Shonen Jump, Jul 2008 [698.8] ::
8. ↓-3 () : Naruto 28 – Viz Shonen Jump, Mar 2008 [589.7] ::
14. ↓-7 () : Naruto 29 – Viz Shonen Jump, May 2008 [567.8] ::
19. ↓-1 () : Naruto 2 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2003 [551.3] ::
20. ↑3 () : Naruto 1 – Viz Shonen Jump, Jul 2003 [545] ::
23. ↓-7 () : Naruto 3 – Viz Shonen Jump, Apr 2004 [512.9] ::
26. ↑7 () : Naruto 7 – Viz Shonen Jump, Aug 2005 [497.4] ::
27. ↑1 () : Naruto 5 – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2004 [497.3] ::
28. ↓-2 () : Naruto 27 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2007 [494] ::
30. ↔0 () : Naruto 4 – Viz Shonen Jump, Jul 2004 [471.5] ::
31. ↑17 () : Naruto 15 – Viz Shonen Jump, Jul 2007 [460.8] ::
34. ↑4 () : Naruto 6 – Viz Shonen Jump, Apr 2005 [454.9] ::
46. ↑5 () : Naruto 8 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2005 [415.1] ::
50. ↑3 () : Naruto 18 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2007 [388.8] ::
51. ↓-1 () : Naruto 20 – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2007 [383] ::
58. ↑3 () : Naruto 10 – Viz Shonen Jump, Jun 2006 [371.6] ::
59. ↑4 () : Naruto 17 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2007 [365] ::
60. ↑8 () : Naruto 12 – Viz Shonen Jump, Dec 2006 [361.1] ::
64. ↑7 () : Naruto 24 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2007 [354.4] ::
66. ↔0 () : Naruto 21 – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2007 [353.2] ::
69. ↓-2 () : Naruto 14 – Viz Shonen Jump, May 2007 [348.9] ::
76. ↑9 () : Naruto 13 – Viz Shonen Jump, Mar 2007 [328.9] ::
87. ↓-11 () : Naruto 26 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2007 [313.9] ::
88. ↑3 () : Naruto 11 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2006 [311.1] ::
98. ↓-11 () : Naruto 16 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2007 [295.3] ::
106. ↓-17 () : Naruto 9 – Viz Shonen Jump, Mar 2006 [280.1] ::
119. ↓-20 () : Naruto 25 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2007 [259.9] ::
139. ↓-37 () : Naruto 23 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2007 [223.5] ::
159. ↓-8 () : Naruto 19 – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2007 [205.7] ::
178. ↓-54 () : Naruto 22 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2007 [184.8] ::
192. ↓-66 () : Naruto The Official Fanbook – Viz Shonen Jump, Feb 2008 [170.5] ::
232. ↑34 () : Naruto Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2007 [147.6] ::
235. ↓-23 () : Naruto 33 – Viz Shonen Jump, Dec 2008 [146] ::
244. ↓-27 () : Naruto 32 – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2008 [142.6] ::
253. ↓-18 () : Naruto vols 1-27 box set – Viz Shonen Jump, Aug 2008 [137.8] ::
277. ↑48 () : Naruto Anime Profiles 2 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2007 [123.5] ::
373. ↑62 () : Naruto Anime Profiles 1 – Viz Shonen Jump, Jul 2006 [86.7] ::
439. ↑114 () : Naruto Forever: The Unofficial Guide – Cocoro Books, Feb 2008 [67.8] ::
616. ↓-148 () : Naruto The Art of Naruto: Uzumaki – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2007 [37.8] ::
683. ↑122 () : Naruto Anime Profiles 3 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2008 [29.6] ::
996. ↓-31 () : Naruto Collector’s Edition Hardcover 1 – Viz Shonen Jump, Sep 2008 [7.8] ::
1469. ↓-66 () : Naruto 34 – Viz Shonen Jump, Mar 2009 [0.3] ::
1490. ↑95 () : Naruto Mission Protect the Waterfall Village (novel) – Viz Shonen Jump, Oct 2007 [0.3] ::
1502. ↑305 () : Naruto Innocent Heart Demonic Blood (novel) – Viz Shonen Jump, Nov 2006 [0.3] ::
1585. ↓-52 () : Naruto 35 – Viz Shonen Jump, May 2009 [0.2] ::
1774. ↑new () : Naruto Wall Calendar 2009 – , Dec 1899 [0.1] ::
Sure, vol 31 is the number one manga. whee.
Naruto vols 1-30 dropped a combined 175 places. (an average of 5 ranks each)
Naruto Preorders (vols 32-35) dropped a combined 168 places. (an average of 42 ranks each)
The minor gains are in the middle of the series — the collectors filling in volumes they can’t always find in bookstores — roughly speaking vols 5-15. Even using those gains to offset other losses, the Naruto manga volumes lost an average of 8 ranks apiece.
The anime guides are up, a bump from the release of brand-new volume 3, a gain of 232 places. But the art book is down, the official fan book is down — the box set is down 18 places. The glacier is melting.
##
And now, (oh, you only wish I’d forgotten about it)
The Usual Five Paragraphs on Methodology:
This morning (at the time of this writing, a point 18 hours ago) I was all set to post the lovely finished numbers when a minor point — something that doesn’t even affect the top 500 (or the midlist, which takes us down through the top 610 or so) or any of my other primary charts, started to annoy me just a little.
It’s this ‘last ranked’ business: historical information stored in the spreadsheet for a title previously ranked—sometimes a week ago, sometimes three months ago—that returns to the charts. Since returning titles (or at least, titles previously appearing as preorders that have in the interim become new releases, and again ranked) are now something I’m tracking on a weekly basis I thought I’d nail these down with a bit more rigor (to the limits of my method).
…Or at least, make the process a bit less half-assed. What I had done—months and months ago—was just type in e.g. “last ranked 19 Sep 1899” in place of a zero (new title) or some other ordinate (the actual ranking from the last week). This worked quite well, but when sorting data, the spreadsheet treated this as text (alphabetical) rather than a date. That is to say, August before January, that kind of thing.
Fixed it. Oh, it’s not a pretty fix. In fact, it looks like this:
=IF(D2="last ranked";(CONCATENATE("*";A2;".* ";B2;C2;" (";D2;" ";(TEXT(E2;"d mmm yy"));") : ";G2;" ";H2;" ";I2;" - ";K2;", ";(TEXT(L2;"mmm yyyy"));" [";M2/10;"] ::"));(CONCATENATE("*";A2;".* ";B2;C2;" (";E2;") : ";G2;" ";H2;" ";I2;" - ";K2;", ";(TEXT(L2;"mmm yyyy"));" [";M2/10;"] ::")))
IF functions are great. The Backbone of the spreadsheet, to an extent. Concatenate is also a powerful and oft-used function. Between the two of them, I can think in advance, plot, plan, and do the hard part *once* — and then I get an output to a single field that has digested a whole row of the spreadsheet into plain, preformatted (for textile) text that I can select copy and paste directly into the blog. Elegant in execution, though quite messy behind the scenes.
There was another fix this morning, differentiation between new titles and those historically ranked, so far removed from the ‘relevant’ rankings (only showing up past #745 this week, all titles above that point appearing and ranked on last week’s chart) and in execution so trivially different as to be invisible [the difference, in fact, between 1986. ↑new (last ranked 8 Jun 08) : One Thousand Years of Manga – Rizzoli, Feb 2008 [0.1] :: and 1986. ↑ (last ranked 8 Jun 08) : One Thousand Years of Manga – Rizzoli, Feb 2008 [0.1] ::] such that that if I’d never mentioned it, no one would have noticed. (yes, it involves another IF function, and is also in a field called by the big honking formula above) (and even having mentioned it I still suspect no one will notice)
Math doesn’t quite get me hard, but after solving these two minor, minor technical glitches in my steam-powered clockwork spreadsheet-giant-robot, I went into work with a big ol’ smile on my face. You’d think I’d gotten laid. Yes, I know I’m a bit… different. And yes, that was more than five paragraphs.
I don’t want to hear about it. Shut up and enjoy your rankings.
##
The Autumnal Equinox was the 22nd, this past Monday, and I haven’t been at this long enough for you to know, but that means that another quarterly post is coming with all the rankings for the past 3 months.
If you are a regular Comicsnob/RocketBomber reader, you might recognise it as the big honkin’ list.
Yes, I will be posting the whole damn spreadsheet again (OpenOffice and Excel formats). Yes, I’m going to break it down into digestible chunks and post those, too (in text, as posts to the blog.) Yes, I’m going to milk the data for a whole week’s worth of articles, with varying degrees of commentary and analysis.
Weekly Data posts First, however, including the usual weekly charts posted below — and the trends report, posting tomorrow.
