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One Piece Takes Top 5 Spots in 2010 Comic Rankings

The market survey firm Oricon Communications is reporting on Wednesday that the five newest book volumes of Eiichiro Oda's One Piece pirate manga took all five top spots in this year's comic sales ranking chart in Japan. Those five volumes sold 12.5 million copies, and the overall series sold 32.34 million copies in 2010 — more than double the copies sold in 2009 (14.721 million).

Here are the top five best-selling comics in Japan of 2010:

Oricon's year-end book sales ranking chart for 2010 tabulates data from November 23, 2009 to November 21, 2010. 17 volumes from One Piece, Fullmetal Alchemist, Nodame Cantabile, Naruto, and other series each sold over 1 million copies this year. There were only 11 volumes in 2008 and 12 volumes in 2009 that accomplished that feat.

Since the manga series launched in 1997, One Piece now has 200 million copies in print. The newest volume, #60, holds a record for having 3.4 million copies published in its first print run. It is the first book, since Oricon began reporting its book ranking charts in April of 2008, to sell over 2 million copies in its first week of sales — in just four days.