Yen Press has revealed their top titles of 2025, and the lists both confirm the publisher’s strength in the fantasy sector and show some interest in other genres.
The top title of 2024 is Delicious in Dungeon, a series that didn’t even make last year’s list (see “Yen’s Best-Sellers of 2023”) but got a significant boost from the Netflix anime that began airing in January 2024. Since then, it has picked up momentum, and Yen just released a complete boxed set of the 14-volume series (see “Delicious in Dungeon All-in-One Collection Coming”). The first season of the anime covered the first eight volumes of the series, and a second season has been announced.
In addition to Delicious in Dungeon, the top five manga/manhwa titles of 2024 were Solo Leveling, Toilet-Bound Hanako-Kun, [Oshi no Ko], and Bungo Stray Dogs, all of which were top titles in 2023. Look for that lineup to change next year, though: Solo Leveling will end with Vol. 13; Yen will publish Vol. 11 in February 2025, so the series will likely end later that year. Similarly, [Oshi no Ko] recently ended with Vol. 16 in Japan; Yen will publish Vol. 9 in February 2025.
That’s what makes the top debuts of 2024 so interesting. They are:
- The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn’t a Guy at All, a quirky romantic comedy manga about a girl who has a crush on the mysterious, black-clad staffer at her local CD shop;
- Unholy Blood, a dark fantasy manhwa that’s currently serialized on Webtoon;
- Bungo Stray Dogs: Official Comic Anthology, a tie-in to the popular series (which itself has numerous spinoffs;
- Dark Souls: Redemption, an OEL manga set in the world of the video game;
- Semantic Error, a BL manhwa that was adapted into a live-action drama and is also available on the Manta platform.
The top novel series are interesting because most of them have manga adaptations, some of which are not published by Yen Press. The top 5 novels of 2024 were
- That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime (manga published by Kodansha Comics);
- Solo Leveling;
- So I’m a Spider, So What?;
- Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody;
- My Happy Marriage (manga published by Square Enix).
Yen also revealed that it published 795 books in 2024 and listed the top genres as (Yen’s wording)
- Dungeon-Crawling Action-Adventure
- Dark, Twisty, and Highly Addictive
- Tried and True Classics
- Fromsoftware à Manga
- Boys Kissing Boys
Source: ICV2
