ICv2: It's been a year since we last interviewed somebody from VIZ Media (see "ICv2 Interview: Kevin Hamric"), so our first question is how has the manga market changed in the period since we last spoke?
Sarah Anderson: It's honestly been really interesting. Overall, we are doing pretty well, but if you look at Circana BookScan results, manga is still down year on year. One thing that we are seeing an awful lot of is box set sales.
Obviously that only records on Circana as a single copy sold, whereas it might be 27 volumes or something like that. That is something that we've seen in every territory. The growth of box set sales is quite astonishing.
Why do you think that's happening?
Sarah: I think a lot of it is people collecting. It is getting the entirety of the series or part of a series all in one go. To be totally frank with you, there's not really anything in terms of a value saving on them, although you can sometimes get them at discounts depending on where you buy them from, but I think it is the collectability of it. They do look really nice, I must admit.
Could it be people that read the series in digital originally and are now trying to have something for their shelves?
Sarah: Possibly. I think it could be people who've already bought the individual volumes because we see that when we do our announcements for box sets. We get people saying, "Ah, I've just bought the entire series. I'm now going to have to buy this as well."
Now whether they then go ahead and sell the original volumes, I don't know, but yes, like I said, box sets just do really, really nicely. I think for some people it's an easier way to collect series. It's all right there as opposed to it could be the case that we're in the middle of reprinting one of the volumes and that's the one that you are missing or something like that.
Or you want to buy the entire series but one of the volumes isn't available right now. It will be, but it's just, if you wanted to buy all 27 volumes of, say, Fullmetal Alchemist in one go, it's way easier to buy the box set.
Kristin McLean [of Circana] in her ComicsPRO presentation, said manga units were down 18 percent in 2024. If there's strength in high price point products, I assume the dollar trend is much different.
Sarah: Dollars grew, yes.
That's amazing. That's a huge swing.
Sarah: It is. It's not just box sets. It's things like, we've just done our Vagabond Definitive Editions (see "The Boom in Deluxe Editions"). Even before that, we've been doing really nicely with these big editions not just of Vagabond, but also Inuyasha and Dragon Ball, and these are obviously older series.
In the case of Dragon Ball, we've got the individual volumes, we've got the 3‑in‑1s, we've got the box sets, and we've got these big editions, but all of those are selling really nicely. I think these big editions, because they're larger format, you get to see a bit more detail on the art. Again, I think they appeal to that collector mindset as well.
Can you give any range for the growth? Under 10 percent, over 10 percent?
Sarah: No, I can't, I'm afraid.
Were there any differences in trends by channel? Particularly, I'm interested in book channel versus comic stores.
Sarah: There were a lot of similarities. There were a few things that surprised us about the comics channel. One of those was the success of the Studio Ghibli film comics. We expected those to do very well in the book trade market, and they did, but in the comics world, it was a bit of a surprise how well they did there.
Outside of that, it's very, very similar in a lot of respects. I'd probably say that maybe before the anime, the comic side of the business was stronger on titles like Dandadan, which is mature content. Since the anime came out, it's just popular absolutely everywhere despite the mature rating.
Let's drill down a little bit on some of those other channel issues. In '24, we talked about the fact that mass pockets were declining, that during COVID, the mass merchants had taken a big position in manga, and that was scaled back in '23. Was '24 similar to '23, or were there any changes in that trend?
Sarah: Fairly similar. Within the mass channel, everything stabilized in 2024. Overall, there's fewer titles going in, but the ones that are have proven track records.
It doesn't seem to be affecting sales elsewhere because we're trying to pick and choose. We're not trying to throw everything into the mass channel because it's just never going to work.
I think that's one of the strengths of our list, that we have titles that are suitable for mass. We have titles that are suitable for the book trade. Then we do have some titles here and there that just do so much better in the library market, in the comics market.
Then we have territory differences as well. There are some titles that do that start off better in the UK, for example. Then there are other things that takes a longer time to be successful in the UK or Australia. Everything usually gets caught up in the end.
What's going on this spring in terms of access to manga for comic stores? Are you still shipping to Diamond?
Sarah: Yes.
Last year, during the interview, we were talking about the fact that there's been a general trend in the comic store channel of retailers diversifying their supply more than they had in previous years, that comic stores were increasing their VIZ purchases from Simon & Schuster just for better access to backlist, or returnability, or whatever. Are you seeing any changes in that trend?
Sarah: Not any further changes, but I do think probably a lot more comic stores now have accounts with more suppliers. Some will be getting them from Diamond, and Simon & Schuster, and Ingram, for example. Some will only want to use one. I'd say there's a lot more variation now than there used to be. As you say, years ago it used to be all via Diamond.
One of the underlying trends that started during COVID and then reversed a little bit in '23, according to last year's interview, was hours of anime viewing. What was the 2024 trend in terms of aggregated hours of anime viewing? Is that up or down?
Sarah: I don't know, I'm afraid. I'd say that we still store strong impacts on sales from some really key series. Especially Jujutsu Kaisen, Frieren ‑‑ Beyond Journey's End, and then towards the end of the year, Dandadan.
In terms of how many hours of anime are being watched, I don't know. I'd still say it's a massively popular genre as you can see by the fact that Netflix have invested in Frieren. That just started on Netflix just last weekend (not this weekend, just the weekend before) after being on Crunchyroll previously. There's still a lot of demand. Obviously, Dandadan was absolutely massive.
Looking at the top VIZ titles from 2024, a lot of titles were from series that were long‑running, and not a lot of introductions. Did you have fewer introductions in the pipe, or is it just that those old titles are super strong?
Sarah: I think a lot of it is the older titles are super strong. You've got things like One Piece, which is such a long‑running series now, but it's been completely revitalized. There's a whole new audience into One Piece as a result of so many other things. We've got the Netflix live‑action series. We've got Film Red, which came out in I think 2022. The fact that we hit Volume 100 of the manga, which is quite a milestone, and it's going from strength to strength.
Obviously, there's the new season of the Netflix live‑action due to come out possibly next year, and they're doing new anime as well. There's likely to be a lot more coming with One Piece even though it's such a long series for us.
We did have a couple of newer series, Kagurabachi, where the first volume of that one came out in November. That had a fantastic launch. Then another series which is a Shonen Jump series, which had a slightly slower start but picked up some really good momentum was Gokurakugai. There are titles that seem to be coming up to take the place of those long‑running series, they're just not quite there yet.
We're up to 2025. Can you talk a little bit about what your expectations are in general first, and then we'll drill down a little bit on titles?
Sarah: I think we're going to have a fairly flat year; that would be my expectation. It would be nice if the BookScan decline could stop and we move up again on that, but I'd be happy if we were just selling more overall. That seems to be the pattern. Again, we're seeing that in almost every territory as well.
Obviously, we went up a massive amount during COVID, as did most manga publishers, and so we did have an adjustment, I'm going to call it, particularly in 2023 and the early part of 2024, but I will say the second half of 2024 was very positive indeed.
We're also seeing a lot of more of what I would call a longer tail backlist. That is something that people just seem to be getting into again. You've seen, we've done a new edition of Vagabond, the Definitive Edition. We have a new edition of Nana. That was very definitely a mid‑pandemic book talk success. We're doing a 25th anniversary edition later this year.
People are rediscovering some of the backlist (see "The Second Life of Classic Manga"). Obviously, reprints are still something we need to keep pressuring on because we have so many backlist titles. We have over 6,000 titles. Trying to keep all of them in print all of the time is impossible, but we are doing our very best.
We've recently been reprinting, for example, all of Natsume's Book of Friends, which took a while to get all those reprints set up, but we've done it and we'll be doing that with other series as well. It's just it's going to take a bit of time.
During COVID, when we were talking about supply chain, we were told that Viz manga were generally printed in the States, so they’re not super-susceptible to tariffs except for paper prices. Any thoughts on whether that's going to have any impact on pricing this year?
Sarah: It's a concern. It's very definitely a concern. Obviously, we hope it won't have any major impact on pricing because we've just gone through a price increase on nearly all of our titles, and it was the first one we'd done for nearly 20 years. I would hate for that to be another price increase so quickly on top of that.
Are you still printing most of your books in the States?
Sarah: Yes.
Sarah: Probably the biggest one just in terms of anticipation, but also in terms of how long it's going to be going for, is going to be Kingdom (see "VIZ Launches ‘Kingdom’"). We will be launching the first volume of Kingdom in November. We'll be doing one volume a month because we've got a lot to catch up on.
Japan has already published, I think, 74 volumes of this series. We are going to be publishing Kingdom for at least the next 10 years, which is a lot. It is our most requested series ever. The reaction to our announcement was basically like, "You've made my dream come true," from an awful lot of people, which was obviously very, very nice to see. This is a very long‑running series.
I believe it's the first time we've taken on anything that's that many volumes already out in Japan. Normally, even if it's a long‑running series, we've been there from a much earlier point.
Then we also have a brand-new series from the creators of The Legend of Zelda. It's an original work called Kamudo. More of this epic fantasy should appeal to anybody who liked The Legend of Zelda, but it's a brand new series from them. We're really excited to see what will come from that.
We've got a box set for Hell's Paradise coming this October, which is a really nice series that's done very, very well for us. A gorgeous box set, it's going to have a special 80‑page book that's never been available anywhere else. I think even in Japan it was only ever available digitally.
For us, it'll be not just the first printing in English, but the first printing full stop. We do have another more of a slipcase set for our Disney Twisted‑Wonderland, but we don't have a big 20‑odd volume box set this year but next year. [laughs]
Is the pattern on the box sets that there's a huge surge when they first come out and then it drops off, or do they have a tail?
Sarah: They definitely have a tail now. I have to admit, in the past, it used to be the case that it was very much focused on those initial orders and then the long tail would be long but small, if you know what I mean.
Whereas now it just seems like they keep on going. We published the Demon Slayer box set, I think it was back in 2021, towards the end of the year. That has just continued to sell phenomenally well ever since.
Almost every time we reprint that we are astonished at how many we're still reprinting. Then in 2023, we did the Chainsaw Man box set, the first part. That's another one where we did a very big initial printing on that. We've reprinted that one as well.
The box sets continue to do very, very well indeed. Then you've got obviously the much older ones, like Naruto and Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, we've got Bleach, we've got so many box sets now.
You mentioned Demon Slayer, and that brings up a question I probably should have asked earlier, which is there's more and more theatrical releases of anime, sometimes event releases for a couple of nights, sometimes they're playing longer. What impact do those have on sales?
Sarah: They vary. There've been, I'd probably say, two fantastic ones. That would've been the original Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Mugen Train, and then Jujutsu Kaisen. Both of those as theatrical releases had not just opening weekend impact, it was fairly long term in terms of the impact on sales.
I'd probably say everything else that there's been since then has been a little bit more we have a lot of excitement around the release, the launch, but then it tails off. I think that's largely to do with the fact that those two were in cinemas for a long time.
Overall, I'd probably say with few exceptions, we do see a stronger impact when those movies then end up on streaming.
Are there any other trends in the manga business we should be watching?
Sarah: One thing we've been asked for more is series with older protagonists. I think as the audience is aging somewhat, there's a bit more interest in characters where their experiences are mirroring what's happening to the readers.
One of the series that we released last year, which is in no way, shape or form a bestseller, but it's absolutely a favorite is Hirayasumi. That is about a 30‑year‑old man who is content with his life. He's not fighting demons, he's not battling evil. He's just content with a fairly quiet life. It's just a really quite refreshing thing to read.
Also, the cozy element. That's been something that's been cited to me by a couple of different retailers that people are looking for cozy content. I think a lot of it is escapism from the world.
Something that doesn't quite reflect everybody's day‑to‑day, that is a little bit different, that is a little bit kinder in a way, or is just so different from life. The fantasy, the real extremes of your content like Jujutsu Kaisen or even the horror side, like the Junji Itos.
I don't think anybody's reading Junji Ito particularly for comfort, but in terms of escapism from everyday life, absolutely.
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