BOOK☆WALKER, Kadokawa’s online portal for buying manga and light novel ebooks has released its top 50 best selling titles for 2023…and isekai reigned supreme once again.
Light novel series Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation by Rifujin na Magonote and Shiotaka from Seven Seas Entertainment was the #1 bestselling title, possibly boosted by the Summer 2023 release of the second season of the anime series (now streaming on Crunchyroll) about an unemployed man who gets a new life in a fantasy world.
In the #2 spot is So I’m a Spider, So What?So I’m a Spider, So What?, an isekai story by Okina Baba, and Tsukasa Kiryu published by Yen Press’ Yen On imprint is about a high school girl who gets reincarnated as a spider in a fantasy world. The manga and audiobook versions of this 16+ volume light novel series is also available from Yen Press, and the anime series is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
#3 on BOOK☆WALKER’s 2023 bestseller list is Ascendance of a Bookworm: I’ll Do Anything to Become a Librarian by Miya Kazuki and You Shiina. In this twist on an isekai story, a college student/librarian is reborn as a child in a world where books are scarce. Her mission in her new life? To publish books so she can enjoy reading again. This J-Novel Club-published light novel series is now up to 29 volumes offered in 5 parts, plus a short story collection and a “fan book,” along with a 16+-volume manga series by Kazuki and artist Ryo Namino that’s also published in English by J-Novel Club. The 36-episode anime adaptation of Ascendance of a Bookworm is now streaming on Crunchyroll.
All three series enjoyed a sales boost from having a new or recently released anime series to raise its profile with fans to grow its global fanbase. It’s also worth noting that all three titles were originally published in Japanese by triple-threat entertainment giant Kadokawa, a company that publishes manga, produces anime, and is the leading publisher of light novels in Japan. According to 2022 sales data, the overall market for light novels in 2022 was roughly 12.3 billion yen ($87.95 million USD), with Kadokawa titles representing over 60% of the light novels sold in Japan last year. Kadokawa is also the corporate parent company of BOOK☆WALKER, and Kadokawa World Entertainment, which includes manga and light novel publishers Yen Press and J-Novel Club.
Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro by Nanashi (from Kodansha) was the only manga title on this year’s BOOK☆WALKER bestseller list, coming in at #5. Here’s the rest of the BOOK☆WALKER Global Store top 10 for 2023:
GLOBAL STORE OVERALL RANKING: Ranking reflects downloads from November 1st, 2022 PT ~ October 31st, 2023 PT on the Global Store. ※Please note that the ranking changes depending on safe-search setting.
- Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation (Light Novel) – Seven Seas Entertainment
- So I’m a Spider, So What? (Light Novel) – Yen On / Yen Press
- Ascendance of a Bookworm (Light Novel) – J-Novel Club
- That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime (Light Novel) – Yen On / Yen Press
- Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro (Manga) – Kodansha
- Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs (Light Novel) – Seven Seas Entertainment
- Overlord (Light Novel) – Yen On / Yen Press
- Reincarnated as a Sword (Light Novel) – Seven Seas Entertainment
- Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest (Light Novel) – J-Novel Club
- The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady (Light Novel) – Yen On / Yen Press
You can see the entire Top 50 list here.
In case you’re wondering why hugely popular manga series like Chainsaw Man and Jujutsu Kaisen are missing from this list, there’s a good reason for that. While BOOK☆WALKER has a large selection of manga, light novels and audio books from several top English language publishers (including Seven Seas, Kodansha, and Dark Horse), their Global (English language) ebook site only offer a limited selection of manga titles in English from VIZ Media, notably excluding many top series originally published in Japan by Shueisha and Shogakukan. This is an interesting omission, given that the Japanese BOOK☆WALKER ebook site sells manga and light novels from just about all of the major Japanese publishers, including Shueisha and Shogakukan. You can see for yourself in the Top 50 ebook bestseller list for the Japanese BOOK☆WALKER site, which currently has Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, a Shogakukan title by Kanehito Yamada and Tsukasa Abe topping the list (This series available in English from VIZ Media, and is not currently available for sale on BOOK☆WALKER’s Global ebook site )
WHAT IS ISEKAI AND WHAT ARE LIGHT NOVELS?
Isekai is a subgenre of “portal fantasy” where the protagonist, who usually is living a miserable life in the “real world” gets transported to a different world (or “isekai”). Once in this new fantasy world (with most of their “real world” memories and experiences intact), they have (or eventually gain) magical powers, make friends, encounter powerful enemies and have amazing adventures far beyond their anything they imagined in their dreary lives as overworked/stressed out students or office workers.
Isekai isn’t a new or uniquely Japanese story genre. If you think about it, Alice in Wonderland, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Wizard of Oz are basically isekai stories too. But isekai stories are so popular and ubiquitous in both manga and webtoons nowadays, they’re basically a genre fiction category unto itself. There’s a wide variety of isekai stories – some skew dark and violent, while others are romantic and heartwarming. There are also hilarious parodies that skewer its common tropes, like the isekai about a guy who gets reborn as a soft drink vending machine who travels around a fantasy world with a busty elf girl. (In case you’re curious, this series is Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon, and yes, it’s available as a light novel, manga AND an anime series)
A lot of isekai stories start out as webnovels or “light novels” – which are basically illustrated prose novels. They’re called “light novels,” because they’re meant to be light, entertaining reads (versus more “heavy” literary reads.) Some are original stories that later get adapted into manga and/or anime series, while other light novels can be “spin-off” stories of popular manga series, like the One Piece light novels like One Piece: Ace’s Story, (now available from VIZ Media) that tells side stories about Luffy’s brother Ace D. Portigal that aren’t depicted in the main manga series.
While not a huge category in N. America, light novels are big sellers in Japan, with top selling series attracting a devoted readership who pick up each new volume as they come out. According to the Oricon book sales report for the first half of 2023 (Nov. 2022 – May 2023), the top selling light novel series was The Angel Next Store Spoils Me Rotten by Saekisan and Hanekoto (available in English from Yen On / Yen Press), selling 389,315 copies in 6 months in just Japan alone. Compare with the 12-month N. American sales for the top selling YA fiction title for 2022, Holly Jackson’s A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder, which sold about 556,000 copies, and you’ll have some idea of why publishers are placing their bets on light novels in the English language market. If this year’s BOOK☆WALKER sales chart is any indication, anime fans are turning to light novels to go deeper into the stories they’re seeing on screen.
