Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba to soon claim One Piece's lifetime record

It is a well-known fact among fellow manga-readers and Otakus that One Piece is the ultimate reigning king in the Japanese manga publishing world. With its published chapters almost nearing 1000, One Piece has had over 462 million in circulation since February 2020.

It is needless to say that it is one of the most money-making titles to come out weekly on Weekly Shounen Jump. Written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda, the manga series’s publishing success has almost remained undisputed in the last couple of decades. Until recently.

Apart from being the best-selling manga series, One-Piece also holds the Guinness World Record for ‘the most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author’. But this long-running shounen comic series may not hold on to this title for long.

Going by the weekly numbers released by the data mining and ranking service for the Japanese music/book industry, Oricon, Koyoharu Gotouge’s Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is soon catching up, and even beating One Piece.

As per Weekly Sales Ranking data shared by Oricon on March 30, Kimmetsu No Yaiba has outperformed other series released since the 18th issue of Weekly Shounen Jump came out.

Twitter user ‘Weekly Shonen Jump’ who actively compares several of Jump’s on-going titles rightly puts this into perspective:

Now those who have been keeping a close eye on the weekly rankings may wonder what is new about this week? After all Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba has been consistently outperforming other series.

In fact, it had already become the top-most selling manga series of the year in 2019, beating One-Piece’s12-year run. (This had led to some really nasty fan wars and heated debates in community forums, as One-Piece fans do tend to get touchy.)

Unfortunately for them, Kimetsu No Yaiba is on a path to break few more records that One-Piece had once set. The devil is in the details after all.

This week’s sales data brings Kimetsu No Yaiba to 34,128,478 copies in 2020 alone, beating One Piece’s sales record from 2010. And if it continues on this trajectory, it may soon set a new record for the most sold manga in a year.

A record that One Piece holds for its outstanding performance in 2011, which no other manga series has come close to beat in the last couple of decades. Demon Slayer is now 3.867.895 copies away from beating ONE PIECE’s lifetime record in 2011.

(Image credit: Weekly Shounen Jump)

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