Yen Press has released the lists of its top titles and genres of 2025, and as predicted last year (see “Yen Press Reveals Top Titles and Genres of 2024”), the lineup has changed quite a bit. Most of the top manga and novels had anime tie-ins, but there were a few interesting surprises in the mix.
The top Yen title of 2025 was The Summer Hikaru Died, although it didn’t actually top the list of manga and manhwa, so it’s not clear how that was calculated.
The top manga and manhwa of 2025 were
- Solo Leveling
- The Summer Hikaru Died
- The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn’t a Guy at All
- Toilet-Bound Hanako-Kun
- Delicious in Dungeon
Solo Leveling tops the list despite a dropoff in sales over the year: There were five volumes in the BookScan Adult Top 20 in January 2025 but none at all in October or November. However, the series has had a solid following for years and it’s likely that the penultimate 14th volume, slated for release on December 30, 2025, will show up on the BookScan chart in January 2026.
The Summer Hikaru Died, which launched in July 2023, makes the 2025 list with a boost from the anime, which premiered on Netflix in July 2025 and made the BookScan Adult Top 20 for the first time in that month (see “July 2025 Circana BookScan”). The series has stayed in the top 20 since then, with both the first and the most recent volume making the charts, which signals continued interest. That’s not surprising, as the series is a well done horror story with a serious emotional underpinning.
The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn’t a Guy at All is unique on this list in that it has no anime adaptation… yet. An adaptation has been announced but details are yet to come. The series, a yuri rom-com told in short chapters with a distinctive green accent color, was Yen’s top debut title of 2024 and has popped up on both the BookScan and ComicHub longlists over the course of 2025; it also won the American Manga Award for Best New Manga of the year.
Toilet-Bound Hanako-Kun has been a perennial best-seller for Yen; this supernatural high school action/comedy is witty and well-written, making it stand out in a crowded genre. And Delicious in Dungeon, Yen’s top title of 2024, stays on the list, despite the manga series having ended, as fans of the anime continue to discover it.
This has been a solid year for Yen in comic shops, with retailers mentioning Solo Leveling, The Summer Hikaru Died, and Delicious in Dungeon as “consistent hits” (see “Pro: Comic Store Report – Summer 2025”).
Yen has established a strong light novel presence as well, with many of their titles tying in to manga or manhwa. Their top five novels of 2025:
- Solo Leveling
- Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint
- Lord of Mysteries
- That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
- 86-Eighty-Six
The first two are Korean webnovels that were adapted into manhwa. Yen also publishes the Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint manhwa, and an anime is in the works and already slated to run on Crunchyroll, although the launch date has yet to be announced. ORV has a similar LitRPG sensibility to Solo Leveling, with the hero facing a series of challenges, and a delightful metafictional premise: The lead character has been reading a webnovel so obscure that he is the only reader, so when the novel ends online and the events start to happen in real life, he is the only one who knows what’s going on.
Lord of Mysteries is a dark fantasy Chinese webnovel with Lovecraftian horror and steampunk sensibilities. It has been adapted into a manhua, which is currently available in English online, and a donghua, which streams on Crunchyroll. In terms of genre, it falls into the category of xuanhuan, which mixes Chinese and foreign fantasy. Yen released the first volume in July and the second in December.
The last two titles are Japanese light novels that have been adapted into manga and anime that are readily available in English, and both have been around for a few years.
The top five debuts of 2025 were
- Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint (novel)
- Lord of Mysteries
- Doodles by Ryoko Kui: Daydream Hour
- Kindergarten Wars
- Bocchi the Rock! Side Story: Kikuri Hiroi’s Heavy-Drinking Diary
Doodles is an art book by the creator of Delicious in Dungeon (see “Yen Press Licenses Art Book”); Kindergarten Wars is an action manga about an assassin protecting the students in an elite kindergarten while battling her attraction toward her good-looking opponents; and the fifth title is a spinoff of the music manga Bocchi the Rock!
Finally, Yen listed their top 5 genres:
- A Summer of Thrills and Chills
- Girls Loving Girls and Boys Loving Boys
- Manga, Manhwa, and Novels Turned Anime
- Delicious Artbooks, Extras, and More
- Books of “Culture”
Source: ICv2
