In what I hope will become a longstanding tradition, once again I get to blatantly steal from helpfully re-print a selection from the readers’ comments on last week’s commentary:

Comment from Marfisa
: April 26, 2008, 12:18 pm

“Fullmetal Alchemist” was never serialized in the English-language edition of Shonen Jump, because it didn’t appear in Shonen Jump even when it was initially published in Japan. FMA is serialized in Japan through another, smaller shonen magazine which I believe is put out by a different publisher. (I think the magazine in question is called something like Shonen Gungan, but I couldn’t swear to it.)

I don’t know how precisely, if at all, the trend I am about to describe correlates with the relative sales figures for the manga over the past two or three years. However, I did notice a perceptible decrease in the amount of FMA fanfic, art, etc., posted in the various FMA-related LiveJournal communities shortly after the anime concluded its first run on Cartoon Network about a year and a half ago, followed a few months later by the (very) brief run of the follow-up FMA movie “Conqueror of Shamballa” in selected theaters and its subsequent release on DVD.

In other words, at least some FMA fans’ interest in the series was no longer intense enough to create fan art and fan fiction about it once all the FMA-related anime we are likely to get had already been released.

There’s more to be read at the comments on the previous post

Marfisa’s comments actually answer two questions I had — the first being, of course, what’s up with FMA, and next why some titles were published as Shonen Jump/Shojo Beat titles while others that seemed to fit and would benefit from the tie-in (FMA and Fushigi Yugi, respectively) were instead published as plain-vanilla Viz Media titles. Now we all know, and knowing is half the battle.

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No one has bothered to ask me any questions re: the charts yet, but if they did it might look something like this:

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Why Manga, and not graphic novels in general?
#1: I like manga. #2: Manga are a special case, in that there are a lot of them, but the vast majority are still relatively new; series can be easily defined (and they have a finite number of volumes) and the online sales market is fairly dynamic and worth looking at week to week.

last point first: let’s say we look at a top 25 Graphic Novels, right now. Even before I load it up, I know we’re going to find Watchmen (’86), and Dark Knight (also from ‘86) and Calvin and Hobbes (’85 to ‘95 — though the collection is from ‘05) and tack on a Peanuts book (from the 60s — whichever Fantagraphics reprint is most recent will show up) along with a slate of movie tie-in books (V for Vendetta, Sin City, 300, whatever) …and we’re almost done.

The only reason to attempt such an effort (and I gave it a shot for a month or three) is to point the readership past 20+-year-old comics to Jeff Smith or Jeff Kinney or Shaun Tan, and that is better accomplished directly through reviews and recommendations.

Graphic novels are fine, but with strong sales through both the direct market and bookstores, the fraction that is left as online sales doesn’t lend itself to this type of analysis. That and the market is so fragmented: Strip collections, so called ‘lit comics’ (autobigraphical and indy GNs), collectors editions, mainstream (dc/marvel) GNs, kids books, humour titles, classic reprints, and yes, the manga — it’s all too much. Track any one chunk, sure, but try to do it all at once and there’s no way to untangle that jumble.

Why 500?
I’ve always been willing to post as long a list as the data itself supports. Right now I’m tracking 11 different sites, loading up 3500 listings a week (and since I consider two weeks’ worth of sales that’s 7k) which after the first pass through the spreadsheet yield 1200+ manga (and manga-ish) volumes.

Pulling just a top 500 from that seems almost conservative.

The very last title on the chart (Japanese in Mangaland Workbook vol 1) scored 388 points. This means, at the very least, that it shows up on at least two source charts (since even on one of my bookstore charts as #1 it would only score 300) and in fact it shows up twice: at #94 and #118 on the Amazon Manga Category listing in consecutive weeks.

(in fact JiMl:W1 is tied for 500th place with MÄR vol 15 but these days I employ a hard cutoff so even with a tie score MÄR didn’t make it. Sorry.)

So to even place in my chart a manga has to a) appear twice and b) do so at #1 on a secondary chart, or at least 100th place on a primary, online bookstore listing. Maybe that puts the numbers in perspective for you.

7000!? how long does that take?
I’ve complained about the time commitment before. Things are better now; I’ve streamlined, my spreadsheets are set up well, auto-completion is a godsend… so here’s an update.

I can (relying heavily on OpenOffice Calc’s auto-completion feature just mentioned) enter between 600 and 800 line items (individual manga volumes) each hour, including the time spent loading up sales websites and the occasional distraction (“oooo… Voiceful, what’s that?”).

So data entry now takes me about 5-6 hours a week. I have to add on an additional hour or so to double check all data (i.e. Boys over Flowers does not equal Boys Over Flowers… hint: case matters) but after the source data has been prepped and massaged, it only takes a half hour or so to produce the four charts.

Yes, it’s all about the quality of the source data. (think of it as reverse GIGO.) I’ve had a lot of time to tweak all the fiddly little bits; I’ve taught my spreadsheets well. If the data is ready to go I can post within the hour.

In the past I’ve used any time savings I’ve scraped toward finding additional input. Now that the process has more or less stabilized we’ll have to see what I do with the extra time.

So, 500. Just how big of a chunk are we looking at?
According to B&N, there are 5,888 manga titles
According to Amazon, there are 15,190 manga titles, but they include things like japanese originals as imports, spanish translations, library-edition hardcovers, used books, stupid Disney tie-ins, random Christopher Hart titles, Indiana Jones, and My Favourite: Strangers in Paradise, vol 3 en español.
Borders clocks in with 3,804; Books-a-Million with 6,519; Chapters with 3,903; Buy.com with 6,917; Deepdiscount.com with at just a shade under 3,500; and Powell’s with 6,331.

It’s interesting to note the breakdown between those at less than 4,000 — and those over 6,000.

Actually, 6,000 is the number I pull out of [*ahem*] thin air, though I know that includes a number of titles (Oh my Goddess, Uzumaki, Vagabond, Cardcaptor Sakura) that were reprinted as ‘2nd edition’ titles subsequent to their first release, and probably a fair number of titles that while not technically out of print just aren’t going to be generally available.

A top 500 is one-twelveth or 8.33% of the total — or as much as 12.5% if you subscribe to the there-are-fewer-manga-than-we-think school of thought.

And of course there are more titles being released every week.

What’s with all the volumes of [insert Ecchi-Omnimanga-Robot-et-al.]; I hate that crap. Why aren’t you looking at good manga?
Oh, the tyranny of numbers.

I know the top ten occassionally looks like a Viz wasteland with few (if any) oases of good manga, but then again the Viz titles aren’t all bad (and they certainly sell well) and this isn’t an opinion column or a top ten recommendation list.

These are sales numbers.

They’re comparative rankings, actually, since (much to my regret) no one is feeding me actual sales figures (…yet) but even with that caveat, the comparative rankings, um, compare how individual manga volumes [wait for it…] rank on numerous online sales sites. So no matter what your beef may be with Ecchi Omnimanga Robot and its ilk, if they show up in the top 10 of my source charts, then they’re outselling other, ‘better’ manga in the marketplace.

The most you can do (besides complain on some random dude’s website) is buy two or three copies of everything you like.

Assuming you’re buying it at all… do you perhaps subscribe to the internet ‘truth’ that content demands to be free?

I sense some snark in that last response. Are you trying to say fansubbing is wrong?
Yes, it’s wrong.

That said, I need to buy another terabyte drive in the near future.

This is a complex issue (and so, I guess I’m blogging about fansubs next week…) and while one could defend it in numerous ways, piracy — no matter how convenient — is still piracy, and this is a much different world from the 80s and the days of nth generation VHS tapes passed via snail mail between True Fans who were sure (back in the day) that there was no way Japanese TV shows would ever be available generally to the North American viewing public, let alone the really weird stuff like harem shows or anime based on visual novels.

And time marches on and proves us all to be fools.
(and did I just commit to writing another research paper for the blog? [*sigh*] I should never have mentioned it.)

What’s Next?
More of the same, for now.

I also plan to resume a weekly posting of new manga. After all, I’ve developed a system to track 1200 titles a week; I think I can use that to help me process the new releases each week.

If you have your own [real] questions, you should ask. I’m writing a commentary post each week and (as this week may or may not demonstrate) who knows when I’ll run out of topics…

Do you really like Angelic Layer that much?

While the 5 vol manga is, frankly, a bit crude (I guess Clamp couldn’t afford a QC department back then) the characters and concepts were laid out in their basic form, and then were expanded on and transformed when the title made the jump to the 26 ep anime.

Yes, I like the Angelic Layer anime bunches. I’ve posted on that before (methinks, on the other blog) but I’m not even going to bother with a link because rather than research past reviews for your benefit, I’m just going to watch it again. The only question is whether to watch it with the original dialog, or with ADV’s rather fine dub. Decisions, decisions.