Money makes the world go round, the world go round, the world go round... We Are One Piece Anime!anime! offers up some word on Oricon's 2009 manga sales chart, and the top series-- to no one's surprise! --was Eiichirou Oda's One Piece, and subsequently its publisher, Shueisha. One Piece sold over 14 million books last year in Japan-- and can you believe we can't even get the anime adaptation to stay on North American TV? Second and third place for individual titles were, of course, Naruto (6.83 million) and Bleach (6.47 million), in that order. The entire manga industry in Japan, according to these charts, was 1.156 trillion yen ($12.85 billion USD). By contrast, ComiChron guesses the overall North American comics market to be $680-710 million for 2008 (the 2009 estimate isn't available yet-- but note that it's based entirely on Diamond sales alone). Whew. Of the publishers, Shueisha-- who publish One Piece, Naruto, AND Bleach, topped the company charts; Kodansha followed behind with big names like Saint Oniisan and Fairy Tail, and Shogakukan (Rinne, Hayate no Gotoku, Detective Conan) placed in third. After them came Square Enix (Fullmetal Alchemist), Kadokawa (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya), and Hakusensha (Vampire Knight) in fourth, fifth, and sixth. Interesting stuff, but nothing too surprising. I still can't believe Saint Oniisan hasn't been licensed for North America yet, either!    
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