This post isn’t driven by anything special, I just felt like compiling this for my own purposes and a quick discussion on twitter, and wanted to take advantage of the table format. A lot of my favorite shows come from the Manga Time family, so I’m quite interested in how they’re doing.
Updated as of 2018-07-09Sales data for Houbunsha Manga Time Adaptations
| Title | Average | Vol 1 | Year | Did I Watch? | Did I Import? | Has/Is Sequel | Sequel Type | Kirara | Carat | Forward | Max | Miracle | Home | Ongoing? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hidamari Sketch | 6,507 | 7,839 | 2007 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | TV, OVA | ✓ | ||||||
| Doujin Work | 490 | 500 | 2007 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||
| Hidamari Sketch x365 | 8,687 | 10,026 | 2008 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | TV, OVA | ✓ | ||||||
| K-ON! | 43,878 | 54,257 | 2009 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | TV, Movie | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Kanamemo | 1,218 | 1,441 | 2009 | ✓ | ✓ | |||||||||
| GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class | 4,904 | 5,281 | 2009 | ✓ | ✓ | OVA | ✓ | |||||||
| Hidamari Sketch x☆☆☆ | 8,848 | 9,361 | 2010 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | TV, OVA | ✓ | ||||||
| K-ON!! | 39,472 | 43,904 | 2010 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | TV, Movie | ✓ | ✓ | |||||
| Yumekui Merry [3] | 2,559 | 5,585 | 2011 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||
| A Channel | 5,515 | 6,831 | 2011 | ✓ | ✓ | OVA | ✓ | |||||||
| Kill Me Baby [1] | 987 | 686 | 2012 | ✓ | ✓ | OVA | ✓ | |||||||
| Acchi Kocchi | 2,321 | 2,520 | 2012 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||
| Hidamari Sketch xHoneycomb | 7,530 | 9,975 | 2012 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | TV, OVA | ✓ | ||||||
| Yuyushiki | 3,334 | 3,511 | 2013 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | OVA | ✓ | ||||||
| Kin-iro Mosaic | 6,766 | 8,568 | 2013 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | TV, OVA | ✓ | ||||||
| Love Lab [2] | 3,027 | 5,584 | 2013 | ✓ | ||||||||||
| Sakura Trick | 2,373 | 3,183 | 2014 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||
| Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu ka? | 11,195 | 12,996 | 2014 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | TV, OVA | ✓ | ||||||
| Hanayamata | 3,570 | 5,157 | 2014 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||
| Koufuku Graffiti | 1,650 | 2,022 | 2015 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||
| Hello!! Kin-iro Mosaic | 5,315 | 7,130 | 2015 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | TV, OVA | ✓ | ||||||
| Gakkou Gurashi! | 2,765 | 3,751 | 2015 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||
| Joukamachi no Dandelion | 1,842 | 2,502 | 2015 | ✓ | ||||||||||
| Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu ka?? | 12,260 | 16,199 | 2015 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | TV, OVA | ✓ | ||||||
| Anne Happy | 1,106 | 1,446 | 2016 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||
| Sansha Sanyou | 2,140 | 3,338 | 2016 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||
| New Game! | 5,886 | 7,415 | 2016 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | TV, OVA | ✓ | ||||||
| Stella no Mahou | 670 | 788 | 2016 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||
| Urara Meirochou | 878 | 1,059 | 2017 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ||||||||
| New Game!! | 4,831 | 3,636 | 2017 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | TV, OVA | ✓ | ||||||
| Blend S | 3,885 | 3,167 | 2017 | ✓ | ||||||||||
| YuruCamp | 14,275 | 15,167 | 2018 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 2 of 3 | |||||||
| Slow Start | 1,698 | 1,914 | 2018 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 4 of 6 | |||||||
| Comic Girls | 1,744 | 1,744 | 2018 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | 1 of 6 |
[1] Kill Me Baby had an extraordinarily successful boxset compared to its singles run. The BD box sold 4,907, which is nearly 5 times the sales of the singles. The caveat is that it was a very cheap boxset of only ¥16k, but that’s still ¥78.5m, which is more than double what the DVD/BD singles grossed.
[2] Love Lab is the lone representative from Manga Home, which is also by Houbunsha but not in the Kirara lineup. It’s similar enough to the Kirara adaptations that I’m including it, and more to the point it’s the only Home title to ever get a late night anime adaptation. It has far more in common with Kirara than anything else in Home from everything I’ve seeing.
[3] Yumekui Merry is also pretty out of place in the list as well if you ask me, in terms of tone and genre! But it’s in a Kirara publication, so no reason not to include it. It was the most marginal import of them all for me, I think I only ended up sticking with it because the character designs were too good. Nice posters in the BDs too.
Not Yet Released
Harukana Receive (Forward)
Anima Yell (Carat)
As you can tell, I’ve imported quite a lot of these, and have watched almost all of them. Of the ones I have not imported:
• A Channel I wish I had and will if it gets a BD box.
• Kanamemo and GA I probably would have if I were importing when they aired.
• Doujin Work I liked but it was pre-import and too short/incomplete.
• Kill Me Baby I never finished, but I did watch about half.
• Love Lab, Joukamachi, and Blend S I never watched.
Houbunsha, the saviors of anime.
Bonus: Ultimatemegax put together the production committee members for these shows up through Urara Meirochou: Houbunsha Manga Time anime production committes
A bit late, but Anima Yell (Manga Time Kirara Carat) is also getting an anime adaptation: https://myanimelist.net/news/53843162
Yeah I’m behind on updating this page, will probably get to that tonight.
Hoping Slow Start and Comic Girls at least did well
They didn’t sell many discs, though whether they did well as a whole or not is another question and not one we can answer.
Also I guess I should update this post.
Post updated to current.