The fourth season of the beloved shonen Haikyuu!! ended last December and left us all on a pretty hype note of a cliffhanger. While a large number of fans have been patiently waiting for the announcement of the fifth season so they can finally see the much-awaited battle at the trash heap, a huge number of fans have moved towards reading the manga.
The Haikyuu manga series has now sold a whopping 4 million copies in Japan just between the December of last year and this September. The manga is currently the 10th best-selling manga series of 2021 so far in Japan during this fiscal year even though volume 45 aka the final volume came out back in July 2020.
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Although, it’s not a big surprise that the manga is selling so well as it was consistently selling around 500,000 copies every month even after the manga ended but as soon as it had looked to be settled about in the 200k range, the new season of the anime gave it a massive boost as it had sold over 869,000 copies in December alone.
And the streak has continued even in the current year as it has constantly managed to chart on Oricon often among the Top 15 Manga Series of the Month.
The Haikyuu manga series sold 725,805 copies in January alone.
The Haikyuu manga sold 725,805 copies in January while approximately selling 294,000 copies the following month. The series continued its hot streak in the months to come selling over 425,000 and 265,000 copies respectively in March and April.
The manga also managed to rank 9th in Oricon Monthly Charts for May selling over 260,000 copies again and ranked 11th in June selling 245,030 copies.
The series got a slight boost with the commencement of the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics towards the end of July and had its best run since March. The Haikyuu manga sold 310,206 copies in the month of July.
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The Olympics boost continued during August as well with the manga ranking 8th in Oricon’s Monthly Charts for August selling 290,176 copies.
Japan’s Volleyball matches in Olympics also saw heavy use of the anime’s OST after the national team scored points and during set breaks with all of the anime’s openings and endings being played during the Ryujin Nippon’s run till the Quarter-Finals.
The series sold 221,436 copies in September which brought its total to 4,063,974 copies during this fiscal year. The Haikyuu manga currently has more than 55 million copies in circulation.
The anime series has also been doing very well in streaming. According to GEM Partners, the anime was Japan’s 20th most-watched TV series for the first half of the year.
Haikyuu: To the Top’s second cour aired during the fall anime season in 2020 and aired the final episode of the season in December. The season featured Karasuno’s battle with the ultimate challengers of Volleyball, Inarizaki High, as they continue to rise to the top to win the Spring Inter-High Volleyball tournament.
Haikyuu!! is written and illustrated by Haruichi Furudate sensei and follows the story of Shoyo Hinata who gets inspired after watching a volleyball ace nicknamed “Little Giant” in action. He then revives the volleyball club at his middle school. The newly-formed team even makes it to a tournament; however, their first match turns out to be their last when they are brutally squashed by the “King of the Court,” Tobio Kageyama. Hinata vows to surpass Kageyama, and so after graduating from middle school, he joins Karasuno High School’s volleyball team—only to find that his sworn rival, Kageyama, is now his teammate.
Thanks to his short height, Hinata struggles to find his role on the team, even with his superior jumping power. Surprisingly, Kageyama has his own problems that only Hinata can help with, and learning to work together appears to be the only way for the team to be successful. Haikyuu!! follows the story of these two and Karasuno’s attempt to make their high school volleyball team the best in Japan.
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Haikyuu was also the third biggest show on Twitter last year. The anime will most likely resume its flight to the top next year.
Source: Oricon Charts, WSJ Oricon.
