It's really all about sales, I'm afraid; which makes things even more disheartening considering the publishers took the mourning period to silently study and produce the eventual continuation.
It's a component for sure – Berserk being their best-selling series – but I'm not sure it's
just about sales, that feels a little too cynical to me. At least people like Mori, Kurosaki or even Shimada (Berserk's former editor) seem to have genuinely cared about Miura. But you can produce something bad even with the best of intentions. See the now famous picture of "
monkey jesus", lovingly "restored" into an abomination.
Is there any info about the current magazine circulation rate? I understand is kind tricky due to digital format and all, but is there a circulation track by individual issue? I'm a bit curious about the contemporary sales regarding the ones which include Berserk episodes and how much it dropped ever since Miura's passing.
Young Animal does provide circulation numbers, but not for individual issues, they're averaged over the quarter. 2024 Q2 had 41,000 issues sold per month. The same quarter in 2021 had 77,300 issues/month. We can see that a strong decline started in early 2022 and is still ongoing. This is felt across the entire market though, it's not limited to YA. I think it's mainly indicative of the transition to digital manga that people read on electronic devices. In short, it doesn't tell us much.
Besides, Berserk's publication had become irregular in recent years, so they weren't relying on it all that much. A more interesting comparison would be between the heyday of 1995-2005 and 2020-forward, but again the market conjuncture can't be ignored. Young Animal's sales numbers have been going down for years, same than for the rest of the industry. As a reference point, it had sold 160,167 issues in the first quarter of 2010. Twice more than it did for the same quarter in 2020, and fourth times more than last quarter.
One thing that is noteworthy is that for 2021's third quarter, when the issue dedicated to Miura (that contained his last episode) was published, the sales average saw a boost to 84,400 issues sold. It was no doubt carried by that one issue.
Aren't the sales going extremely well?
This has nothing to do with what we're talking about.
@MommySlan is asking about Young Animal's sales in Japan since the Continuation started. Volume 42 won't be out in the USA until next year and even then it won't necessarily be an indicator given that regular people, who just read volumes as they come out, wouldn't necessarily know what to expect.
it seems to be just the sales of the Deluxe Edition back in late 2023. It makes sense for these to sell well since Berserk had a huge boost in popularity post Miura's death because of everyone talking about it.
Indeed, and maybe that is ultimately the Continuation's purpose from a sales perspective: to reassure people that they can (and should) buy the series since it's getting a conclusion. In that sense, it's fine even if they're disappointed when they get to it, because they've already read Miura's 41 volumes.
By the way I did this just to check, don't take this as a fact. But at least based on
Oricon sales, it looks like Volume 41 and 42 sales are similar (This is one month post each of their release, total sales on the right, and the sales of that week on the left).
Yes, volume 42's early sales were roughly equivalent to that of volume 41, that's not new.
