出典 : Amazon.co.jp
We’ve put together an examination of the second season of the critically acclaimed anime Vinland Saga, which aired on NHK General in 2019 to great reviews!
Based on disc sales, original sales, and the status of the other anime that aired on NHK, I’m going to make a bold prediction as to whether or not a second season is a possibility!
Best-selling manga with a total of 5.5 million copies published
出典 : Amazon.co.jp
The Vinland Saga is a manga work serialized in the monthly Afternoon magazine by Professor Makoto Yukimura.
The story is set in Northern Europe at the beginning of the 11th century.
It depicts on an epic scale the revenge of the protagonist Thorfin, whose father was killed by the Vikings, and his subsequent life after being freed from their spell.
The Vinland Saga was initially serialized in Weekly Shonen Magazine.
However, it was too difficult to serialize the work in the weekly magazine because of the tremendous amount of writing, so the series was temporarily suspended and moved to the monthly afternoon magazine, where it has continued to this day.
Speaking of Yukimura-sensei, he is a famous manga artist with his debut work “Planetses” which has been made into an anime and is still talked about today as a tear-jerker.
Since the series was serialized since Planetses, this work has been attracting a lot of attention even before it was published, and although it was not a flashy seller, it had a strong fan base due to its high quality, and at the time of the 6th volume, the total number of copies published exceeded 1.2 million.
As of volume 6, the total number of copies sold exceeded 1.2 million and it became the new signature work of afternoon magazine.
In 2009, it won the grand prize in the manga division of the 13th Japan Media Arts Festival.
In 2012, it won the 36th Kodansha Manga Award (General Division) and was highly acclaimed, but other than Hideo Nishimoto’s spin-off manga “Ylva-chan,” there was no other media mix for a long time.
That trend changed in 2018, 13 years after the series began.
Finally, an anime television adaptation was announced.
The animation production was handled by WIT STUDIO, known for “Shingeki no Kyojin”, and was broadcast for two cool months on NHK General from July to December 2019.
Incidentally, Planetses was also broadcast on NHK BS2 and NHK Educational TV, which means that this is the second consecutive NHK anime for Dr. Yukimura.
With this anime adaptation, the fame of the original work has increased dramatically, especially overseas.
As of volume 22, the total number of copies of the comics has exceeded 5.5 million, and as of January 2020, volume 23 has been released.
Anime is popular, but disc sales did not increase
出典 : Amazon.co.jp
The first episode of the Vinland Saga anime was different from the original, and it started with the childhood episode.
The storyline and the way of life of Tolfin were drawn in a way that was easy to understand even for viewers who were not familiar with the original work, and the action scenes were created with powerful images and were well received.
It was also ranked 9th in the “5ch People’s Best Anime Ranking 2019”, and it can be seen that the content is highly evaluated.
However, it is common in this world that historical Blu-ray and DVD (discs) do not sell well.
Even the “Kingdom” has not sold well.
The Vinland Saga also couldn’t resist the rule, and the sales of one volume were 265 copies.
Also, there has been no noticeable effect on the original comics sales.
This work reached 5 million copies at the time of its 20th volume release, and the average for the previous volumes was 250,000 copies.
Therefore, the average of 5.5 million copies for 22 volumes is the same as the pace of the work before it was made into an anime.
Considering the situation, one might be tempted to declare that the second season of Vinland Saga is doomed.
But that’s not necessarily the case.
The film still has the potential for a second season for other reasons.
