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When you think back to some of the major manga hits of 2024, most of them are going to come from series that either had an anime adaptation this year or in 2023. And sure, Jujutsu Kaisen, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, and Reincarnated as a Slime all feature in Kadokawa’s top ebook sales for the first half of 2024, but there is one title that stands out from the rest of the top ten. My Dress-Up Darling, the slice-of-life romantic comedy that was last on Crunchyroll back in 2022, is the only non-fantasy or isekai series on the list.

There are obvious caveats here - these are volume sales rather than chapters in circulation, so it skews toward series that can be binged rather than read chapter-by-chapter like most Shonen titles. It also represents the sales of one publisher rather than across the industry as a whole. However, My Dress-Up Darling still managed to snag the Number Five spot on Kadokawa's sales chart for the first six months of this year. To put things into perspective, My Dress-Up Darling Volume 13 sold better than the latest volumes of Jujutsu Kaisen, Spy x Family, and Oshi no Ko, despite all of them either having recent anime series or films released recently. This is both a testament to the dominance of the fantasy and isekai genres in the manga industry and to the exceptionally strong fanbase that My Dress-Up Darling has. 

Even after waiting nearly three years (and probably waiting at least one more) for season two, they are still obsessed with seeing if these two kids ever get themselves sorted and finally manage to hold hands. While the will-they-won’t-they tension was strung along for a bit longer than I would have liked in the manga, it is clearly working for the vast majority of fans. The manga makes people wait for it, just like they seem to be waiting forever for news about when season two is coming out.

Each week, Popverse's resident anime expert Trent Cannon runs down the latest and, dare we say "greatest," in anime and manga in Popverse Jump. Some recent columns have included... 

• Aggretsuko vs Chainsaw Man: Two Wildly different anine with the same anti-capitalist message
• The Summer Anime season return of Kaiju No. 8, Sakamoto Days, & Dan Da Dan are forcing me to break my vow of watching less anime
• From Tomo-Chan to Oshi No Ko: How some of your favorite manga creators got their start in hentai
• Piracy is baked into anime's past, but, like Crunchyroll, we should move on from it
• Flying whales, mechs, and Miyazaki vibes: Inside Netflix's Leviathan anime with the people who made it
• How AI translations of manga continues the 'enshitification' of the medium, and why Japanese publishers are "less precious" about it
• I never wanted a Cyberpunk Edgerunners sequel, but God help me I'm going to watch it
• The Summer Hikaru Died delivers its cosmic horror at an agonizingly slow pace
• The one thing that Dan Da Dan does better than Demon Slayer ever did
• Studio Ghibli movies have never been as cozy as you think they are and that's what makes them magic