Broken Frontier

VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), one of the entertainment industry's most innovative and comprehensive publishing, animation and licensing companies, has announced that ten of its manga titles have again swept the top spots on Nielsen BookScan’s Adult Fiction Overall Graphic Novel list for the week ending May 28, 2006.

This is the second time in the past seven months VIZ Media took the entire Top Ten list - in December 2005 VIZ Media also dominated the weekly sales list. Nielsen BookScan has the best and most comprehensive data in the industry, picking up sales information from over 6,500 retail locations across the country.

This is a notable milestone – it is extremely rare for titles from a single publisher to capture all top ten top spaces on BookScan’s Graphic Novel list. The complete Top Ten list included NARUTO, RUROUNI KENSHIN, BLEACH and DEATH NOTE.

1. NARUTO, Volume 10
2. RUROUNI KENSHIN, Volume 27
3. NARUTO, Volume 9
4. BLEACH, Volume 13
5. FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST, Volume 7
6. NARUTO, Volume 1
7. NARUTO, Volume 8
8. NARUTO, Volume 2
9. DEATH NOTE, Volume 5
10. NARUTO, Volume 7

The NARUTO property in particular continues to enjoy great popularity in North America. The anime counterpart, which is also distributed by VIZ

Media, is seen weekly by millions of viewers on Cartoon Network’s Toonami block of programming. VIZ Media will further support the NARUTO juggernaut with the upcoming release of NARUTO ANIME PROFILES in July and a NARUTO novel titled INNOCENT HEART, DEMONIC BLOOD, slated for release in November.

“We are extremely gratified to see ten of our manga titles on Bookscan’s Top Ten,” states John Easum, Executive Vice President of VIZ Media. “It’s not a stretch to say that NARUTO has become the most popular anime and manga property in North America and the favorable placement of six volumes of the series in the Bookscan list validates that. "We look forward to the continued stellar success of the series.  We also anticipate continued growth for our other top performing titles such as BLEACH and DEATH NOTE, and we are optimistic that some new VIZ titles will also soon break the top ten!"