Jujutsu Kaisen Tops Bookscan's June Adult Graphic Novel Chart in the U.S.

Anime News Network reports that Jujutsu Kaisen took the number one spot on Bookscan's June list of adult graphic novels in the United States, with seventeen manga volumes charting overall. The rest of the field reads like a roll call of the past few years in manga. One Piece and Demon Slayer are there, which surprises nobody. So are Blue Lock, Dandadan and Chainsaw Man. And so are The Apothecary Diaries, Witch Hat Atelier, Gachiakuta and The Summer Hikaru Died, none of which had a decade-long head start on the shelf.

What a chart like this actually measures

It measures books being bought, which is the whole reason the list looks the way it does. What surfaces on a retail sales chart is a mix of long-running evergreens, titles riding the momentum of an anime adaptation, and newer work that built its audience through word of mouth rather than a weekly broadcast slot.

The breadth is the interesting part. Gachiakuta and The Summer Hikaru Died charting alongside Demon Slayer and One Piece suggests U.S. manga readership is no longer a handful of megabrands carrying everything behind them. Horror, fantasy, sports, and historical mystery are all moving units at the same time.

Why almost none of it is free to watch

Here is the honest part, and we would rather say it plainly than tease you through three paragraphs. Manga publishing rights and anime streaming rights are separate businesses, licensed separately to different companies. A series selling well in American bookstores tells you nothing about which service holds its streaming rights, and the highest-profile titles tend to be the ones paid services have the strongest incentive to keep to themselves.

So a chart-topping manga list and a legal free-streaming catalogue barely overlap. Of the ten titles named above, our free, U.S.-viewable catalogue holds exactly two entries, and both are single episodes uploaded by Crunchyroll to its own YouTube channel:

• **Jujutsu Kaisen**, episode 1 only, Japanese audio with subtitles.
• **Blue Lock**, episode 1 only, Japanese audio.

For Chainsaw Man, Dandadan, The Apothecary Diaries, Demon Slayer, and One Piece we have no free episodes at all. Not a partial run, not a first arc, nothing we can legally point you to.

What that's still worth

Two premieres is a small offer, but it is a real one, and both are unusually good introductions. Jujutsu Kaisen's first episode is a strong case for what MAPPA can do with a fight scene. Blue Lock's establishes its entire premise before the credits roll. If you have read either manga and never watched the adaptation, or watched and want to see how it compares, those are free, legal, and one click away.

If you came here hoping to binge the whole chart tonight, the answer is that this chart lives in bookstores. Buying the volumes remains the most reliable way to actually read these titles, which is presumably what the seventeen entries on Bookscan's list are telling us.

*Source: Anime News Network*