Direct market sales figures for the month of October are up at Comic Book Resources and The Pulse. As with bookstores, Tokyopop’s Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories leads the manga pack, coming in at number 9 in graphic novels overall.
It’s a good month for Juné, with three manga titles and a novel making the manga top 10. They all lag behind Tokyopop’s Loveless in the BL stakes; the third volume came in second in manga and 22 in graphic novels. And while Juné’s books ranked higher, Blu’s books were nipping at their heels.
A total of 28 manga titles made the top 100 GN list. I’m particularly glad to see Dark Horse’s Ohikkoshi (reviewed here by Jog) crack the GN rankings, placing at roughly the same spot Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (reviewed here by Christopher Butcher) did in September.
On the much-discussed global front, the second volume of Svetlana Chmakova’s Dramacon leads the pack, hitting #25 in manga and #89 in GNs, Kingdom Hearts aside. The second volume of Sokora Refugees just missed the cut, hitting #30 on the manga list.
For me, the oddest question posed by the list is why did the fourteenth volume of Fruits Basket (Tokyopop) return to the list when it’s been on the shelves for months? It hit 17 in manga and 75 in graphic novels in October, and came in 32nd in GNs in August. I love the series, and I’m used to seeing earlier volumes crop up on these lists from time to time, but the resurgence of this chapter seems odd. Did Tokyopop ship it again?