Anime News

Fruits Basket Tops Bookstore Sales
Date: 5/3/2005
Tokyopop's Fruits Basket Vol. #8 took the top spot in the BookScan list of graphic novels sold in bookstores for the week ending April 24. Dark Horse's Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith adaptation remained in the second spot and six of Frank Miller's Sin City volumes stayed in the Top 25 (and Vol. #7 was at number 27). Viz had four top 10 titles starting with Naruto Vol. #6 in third place followed by Rurouni Kenshin Vol. #13 in fifth, Bleach Vol. #6 in seventh and Inuyasha Vol. #21 in tenth. Tokyopop's DN Angel Vol. #7 took the sixth spot, while Del Rey's Tsubasa Vol. #5 was ninth.



The R. Crumb Handbook & CD from MQ Publications moved up to number 20 and could well climb higher--Crumb is doing publicity for book (he was on NPR's Fresh Air on Monday) and the mega-volume has sold over 20,000 copies in the U.K., where it reached #1 on the list put out by the U.K. wholesaler Bertram. With its $25.00 cover price, the 432-page Crumb volume, which comes with a free CD, actually finished fifth in dollar share (the BookScan ratings are calculated only in terms of the number of copies sold -- ICv2 did the dollar share extrapolations). Star Wars was number one in dollar total followed by Sin City Vol. #1 (number 4 in piece total), Fruits Basket Vol. #8, and Sin City Vol. #2 (number 8 in copies sold) and the R. Crumb Handbook.



Viz's Fullmetal Alchemist #1 had a very strong debut, vaulting to number 11 in its first week of release, while Tokyopop's shonen ai title, Gravitation Vol. #11 remained strong at #12. Embroideries, the new graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) debuted at number 29. In spite of strong performances from the movie-related Star Wars and Sin City volumes, forty of the top 50 BookScan titles were manga.
Source: ICv2