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USA Today Booklist, August 20-26: All 3 New Naruto Volumes Place

Naruto volumes 16, 17 and 18, the first three volumes brought out under Viz Media's recent plan to speed up the publication schedule of the manga to catch up to the Japanese release, all placed on the USA Today list of the nation's 150 top best-selling books for the week of August 20-26. Volume 16 entered the list at #131, while 17 opened a few positions higher (at #123), and 18 highest still, at #116. As announced earlier in the year, Viz plans to put out three new volumes of Naruto a month, ending with Volume 27 in December. This will still not be enough to catch up with the Japanese release, volume 39 was published in Japanese earlier this month.

The only other manga title on this week's list is Fruits Basket Volume 17. After rising as high as #34 last week, which was the third best-ever placement for a manga, it has fallen to the #88. Volume 14 of Fruits Basket placed at #24, while volume 16 was the highest of any manga to ever appear on the list, reaching the #15 spot in April of this year. Of the seventeen volumes of Fruits Basket that have been released in the US so far, fourteen have appeared on the USA Today list.