In our annual Manga Week interview, we caught up with VIZ Media Director, Publishing Sales Sarah Anderson, who shared lessons from 2025, laid out response to the Diamond disruption, and identified top prospects for 2026.
ICv2: How has the manga market changed over the last year since our last interview (see “ICv2 Interview: Sarah Anderson”)?
Sarah Anderson: It’s been very, very positive. We’ve seen quite a few ongoing series still doing incredibly well, Jujutsu Kaisen. On both Demon Slayer and Chainsaw Man, we saw a big increase because of the movies that came out in the fall, which was pretty fantastic.
Then we’ve had some newer series, like The Climber, like Phantom Busters, which have really taken off. Obviously, last year, we had our Nana 25th Anniversary Edition, so it was nice to see some shojo also really resonating with fans.
I think the package that we did for Nana was so good with our “spredges,” sprayed edges. That’s something that my colleagues who were recently at ComicsPRO said people were asking for more of. No guarantees, but I would love to do that kind of thing again because that definitely seemed to work.
Any differences between channels? Comic stores versus mass versus specialty retail, how did the channels perform last year?
Obviously, there’s been a huge amount of disruption because of Diamond going away. We’ve been really lucky in that respect because we’re distributed through Simon & Schuster and they’ve got a fantastic direct-market sales team. They have been working really closely with John on my team to just get the word out to comic shops and how they can order, what they can order.
We’re really not seeing a huge amount of difference in terms of what’s selling through the direct market and what’s selling through general trade. There’s little differences here and there, like there might be a series that’s done slightly better in the direct market, but overall what works in bookstores seems to also work in comic shops as well.
When it comes to mass, it is very definitely the big titles, it’s the Jujutsu Kaisens, it’s the Chainsaw Mans. Again, we are seeing Walmart in particular are really taking chances. Sometimes they’ve tried some things out, Sakamoto Days, Dandadan, that kind of thing, Frieren. They are building up a section and it’s not just the the classics that have been working incredibly well.
What was the nature of the disruption in comic stores? When did you stop shipping to Diamond Comic Distributors last year?
We continued to do a small amount of shipments until, I think it was maybe around April. Then it just stopped as they were going through the sale process, and then we never heard from them again pretty much.
We’ve looked at various alternatives, but the Simon & Schuster team were really reaching out, so we stuck with that. We are now, through an overall Simon & Schuster deal, going to be working with Lunar. No indications yet as to how big that’s going to be or anything like that, but at least it gives comic shops another alternative.
We’ve changed the style of our retailer newsletters to try and be a little bit more direct, and we’ve had a much better response to those newsletters as a result. Rather than trying to add lots of bells and whistles, which we had been doing before, it’s just, “Here are the titles, and then here’s how you order,” those sort of things. Trying to make it a lot more straightforward for people.
One of the things we’ve heard about Simon & Schuster is that the ordering is not super smooth as far as how the technology works.
One thing I have heard is, yes, the systems could be better. They don’t quite match up to other book distributors, but they’ll be investing and making changes. Exactly what those will be, we don’t know yet.
Let’s talk a little bit about the environment for manga sales. We can assume that streaming is still a big impact. Is there any change?
No, I don’t think so. I think the biggest change we saw last year was through the movies.
We haven’t really seen the impact of movies since probably the “Jujutsu Kaisen ” movie, which was, I want to say, maybe 2022 when that came out. Since then, there have been a couple of movies that have had a fairly major release, and we haven’t seen that same boost in sales that we saw with both the Demon Slayer and the Chainsaw Man movies that came out this fall. That’s really the biggest change.
What’s happening with regards to anime streaming, that really hasn’t changed a huge amount. I think it’s more the fact that there are more titles available. We are seeing an impact on some of the smaller series; it’s not just about the major, major releases any longer. It seems like the overall audience for anime is getting bigger and is more interested in exploring beyond what’s the most obvious. They’re looking for more content all the time.
Other trends?
I think one of the things we are seeing is much more of an interest in not just action and adventure stories, but the more thoughtful stories. One of our best-selling series at the moment is still action and adventure, but there’s a lot of thought behind it: Frieren. It’s not just about the epic quest, it’s after the quest. It’s what do you do when the people that you have this amazing life experience with and you fought together and all of that, and you’re immortal and they’re not. There’s a lot of philosophical questions that are brought up in that.
Then you have things like The Climber, which I mentioned earlier, which is again not your traditional action and adventure, but is so dynamic in the way that it’s illustrated, the way it’s written, the thoughts and the feelings of the main character as he’s almost like trying to escape his life by climbing. You might not think that’s necessarily exciting, but the way that it’s all put together is absolutely astonishing. It’s performed incredibly well, and I can absolutely see why.
Then we have the super-quiet things like Hirayasumi, which I think is going to be a bit of a sleeper hit. The most interesting thing about that is the main character is absolutely content with his life. He’s not striving for more, he is not hustling for the next big thing, he’s happy. I think that’s something that’s relatively unusual to see because it’s all about what’s next and what’s more and the next quest and the next adventure. He’s just happy to have his life with his friends, his job, which he enjoyed, but he’s never going to make a load of money out of it, that kind of thing. I think that’s the kind of thing that people are looking for now. It’s that realization that you don’t have to be hustling all the time, but there can be a quieter life sort of thing. I think that that’s definitely resonating.
VIZ did a big news release on upcoming releases (see “VIZ Announces”). Any titles that you want to highlight for our readers in 2026?
One of the titles that we’ve already had the strongest response to is The Amazing Digital Circus. That’s based on the YouTube and Netflix series. It sounds like it’s one of those things that has already made it into the popular culture. The idea that there’s a manga associated with that will do us really well.
We also announced Apothecary Diaries — Maomao’s Notes on the Inner Palace. Just to clarify, this is not a spin-off story, this is a completely authorized license from the original light novel. It’s just another version of the story with the focus more on the mystery behind it all. Slightly less on the romance, more on the mystery and Maomao’s internal dialogue. So far, our response to anybody we’ve spoken to about this has been, “Brilliant, there’s more coming,” rather than, “It’s just going to be the same.” Because the focus is not the same in terms of the content, but very definitely official, authorized. Both of these editions exist in Japan.
Obviously we have our major box sets coming for this fall. We have a Jujutsu Kaisen box set, we’ve got the second My Hero box set, and then we also have the fifth One Piece box set, which is kind of insane really, the fact that there’s five box sets for a series. Of course, this year, there’s also the second series of the Netflix live-action One Piece. We do not expect interest in One Piece to drop in the slightest because there’s just going to be so much content.
Any other trends or things we should be alerting our readers to for 2026?
I think horror is still going to be a big thing. I was recently at a Books-A-Million store, and it was one of their newly refitted stores, and the most interesting thing I found was the fact that within the horror section, they’d carved out a section for manga titles. It was the cross-merchandising of manga within horror. I thought that was such a smart idea because who’s to say that the readers of Stephen King wouldn’t be interested in Junji Ito, for example. Stephen King himself has said he’s a fan of Junji Ito. I thought that was a really good thing to do, because they’re obviously seeing that within the wider book industry, horror is very much a growing category and manga can absolutely be part of that.
I’d like to see that with other categories as well, like within romance, which again was one of the biggest categories within the book industry. I’d love to see manga romance titles within the main romance section as well, because just because people haven’t read manga before it’s not to say that they’re not going to like it.
We’ve got titles that have hit every romance trope that you could possibly imagine that people love, so why can’t we why can’t we have that in manga as well?
For more great manga features, see “ICv2 Manga Week 2026.”
Source: ICv2
