Manga Sales 2020–2024: The Post-Pandemic Boom and Its Aftermath

The 2020–2021 manga sales surge was one of the most consequential structural shifts in the modern manga business — a sharp, broad-based lift in print and digital sales that reset baseline expectations for the rest of the decade. When Demon Slayer Kimetsu no Yaiba Mugen Train released in Japanese theaters in October 2020 and went on to break domestic box office records, it coincided with a manga sales pattern that publishers had not seen at that scale in a decade. The two events were not coincidence. They were facets of the same phenomenon: pandemic-era reading patterns colliding with an anime engine running at peak intensity.

This article maps what happened between 2020 and 2024, what changed permanently, and what reverted to prior baselines.

The 2020–2021 surge

The pandemic effect on manga sales was sharp and broad-based:

Domestic Japan. The Research Institute for Publications and other industry trackers reported substantial year-over-year manga sales growth in 2020 and 2021, with digital growth particularly pronounced. Several publishers reported their best fiscal years on record in this window.

North America. ICv2 and Publishers Weekly coverage tracked a manga sales lift in North American bookstore channels that significantly exceeded prior trend lines. Manga moved from a niche category to a top-performing category in many bookstore chains.

Demon Slayer as the visible anchor. The Demon Slayer manga, alongside Mugen Train’s box office success, sat at the center of the lift. Final-volume sales in 2020 set domestic records. The franchise became the most-cited single case study of the period.

The drivers were partly pandemic-specific (more time at home, more time for serialized reading, school closures and lockdown effects on entertainment choices) and partly structural (digital platforms ready to absorb new demand, anime adaptations creating discovery pathways).

Mugen Train’s compounding role

Demon Slayer Mugen Train deserves its own mention because of the compounding effect it produced. The film’s October 2020 release came at a moment when Japanese theaters were operating at restricted capacity but with reduced competition from international releases. The film broke Japanese box office records and became the highest-grossing Japanese film domestically.

The success cycled back into manga sales, anime streaming, merchandise, and broader genre interest. It also established a template that the industry has tried to repeat — anime-driven box office events as franchise centerpieces — with varying success across subsequent years.

Digital platform acceleration

The pandemic accelerated digital manga infrastructure that had been building before 2020 but had not yet reached critical mass:

Shueisha’s Manga Plus. The free legal global digital reader for Shueisha’s Jump titles launched in 2019 and gained substantial international audience during the pandemic window.

K Manga and adjacent platforms. Kodansha’s global digital platforms expanded their catalogues and language offerings.

Magazine Pocket and digital-first releases. Several publishers shifted weekly chapter releases toward digital-first or digital-simultaneous formats, reducing the lag between Japan and international markets.

The digital infrastructure built or expanded in this window has remained operational beyond the pandemic. It is one of the durable changes the period produced.

Post-2022 normalization

The 2020–2021 peak was not sustainable indefinitely. Beginning in 2022 and continuing through 2024, year-over-year manga sales growth slowed and in some segments contracted. This was widely expected — the pandemic-specific demand drivers were unwinding, and 2020–2021 comparisons created difficult base effects.

What did not happen, however, was a return to pre-2020 baselines. North American manga sales settled at a level meaningfully higher than 2019. Japanese digital manga sales held substantial portions of their pandemic-era gains even as physical volume normalized. The baseline reset upward — a smaller lift than 2020–2021 implied at the peak, but a real one.

The yen depreciation effect

A separate factor reshaped the international royalty picture in 2022–2025: significant yen depreciation. From late 2022 through 2024, the yen weakened sharply against the dollar and other major currencies, with effects on multiple sides of the manga business.

For Japanese publishers receiving international licensing revenue, yen-denominated royalty payments translated into more yen than they would have at prior exchange rates — a positive translation effect. For Japanese manga itself becoming relatively cheaper in international markets at headline yen prices, demand at the consumer level was supported. The net effect was supportive of Japanese publisher revenue in this window even as broader macroeconomic conditions tightened.

The anime-manga link

Across the 2020–2024 window, the structural link between anime adaptations and manga sales spikes remained the dominant near-term sales driver for individual titles. The pattern is familiar: anime announcement lifts pre-release sales; broadcast launch triggers a back-catalog sales spike; subsequent seasons re-trigger sales events.

Demon Slayer, Jujutsu Kaisen, Spy x Family, Chainsaw Man, and other titles all followed this pattern across the window. The anime-as-marketing function — where the anime acts as a global advertisement for the source manga — has remained the most reliable structural mechanism through which publishers convert anime budgets into manga revenue.

What the post-pandemic baseline looks like

By 2024, the picture had clarified. Manga sales globally remained above 2019 baselines but below 2020–2021 peaks. Digital infrastructure was permanently expanded. The anime-driven sales pattern remained dominant. Yen depreciation was supporting Japanese publisher revenue translation. And the genre had moved further toward mainstream Western retail acceptance than it had been at the decade’s start.

The structural lessons publishers have drawn from the window — invest in digital, build global infrastructure, treat anime adaptations as discovery engines — are likely to continue shaping editorial and business strategy through the rest of the decade.