It seems that a popular series of light novels is having a little more success than its contemporaries. Hyuganatsu's Apothecary Diaries is having a great year, with the second season of the anime looking to really help boost sales.
From November 2024 to November 2025, the series sold 1,060,890 copies. That's an incredible feat, and when you look at how the rest of the most popular light novels performed over the year, it's not even close.
The Apothecary Diaries is the best-selling light novel of the year
While the rest of the top 10 series didn't perform badly, it's hard to see how well Apothecary Diaries did throughout the year and not be impressed by how much it managed to pull away from the competition.
|
Series |
Copies sold |
|
Apothecary Diaries |
1,060,890 |
|
Classroom of the Elite 2 |
190,737 |
|
Classroom of the Elite 3 |
187,089 |
|
Too many losing heroines! |
166,413 |
|
Is it wrong to try to pick up girls in a dungeon? |
166,413 |
|
The time I was reincarnated as a slime |
158,151 |
|
The angel next door spoils me rotten |
110,785 |
|
Demon Slayer novels |
95,850 |
|
Who killed the hero? |
94,947 |
|
There is no strange way that I should be your lover! Unless… |
89,784 |
Other popular light novel series such as Classroom of the Elite, Too Many Losing Heroines, DanMachi, and The time I was reincarnated as a slime all performed well, but none of them came close to the success it Apothecary's Diaries currently have. Despite being represented twice with both Year 2 and Year 3 series, The classroom of the elite didn't even sell half as many copies as Apothecary's Diaries did.
Apothecary's Diaries isn't even a relatively recent series compared to some of the other light novels in the top 10. So when you look at the incredible success the series has had, the popularity of the anime is probably a big part of why the light novel has done so well. As the second season has ended this year and is popular among anime fans, more and more people are becoming interested in Maomao's adventures.
Anime has positive effects on the franchise
Currently, Apothecary's Diaries has more than 45 million copies in circulation. The franchise had 38 million copies in circulation as of September 2024. With the second season of the anime airing from January to July this year, the renewed interest in the series appears to have increased the amount of copies in print by around 7 million.
Season 1 of The Apothecary Diaries aired from October 2023 to March 2024, with Toho Animation Studio and OLM spearheading the project. Season 2 was released the following year, and now fans are eagerly awaiting the release of Season 3, which should come out sometime in October 2026.
The success of Apothecary Diaries Anime adaptation has definitely helped the light novel and manga sales. The series is one of the most anticipated anime of 2026, and even though it will be airing towards the end of next year, it doesn't look like the excitement surrounding the series will die down anytime soon.
Source: X, Oricon
Apothecary's Diaries
- Release date
-
2023 – 2025-00-00
- Network
-
Nippon TV, RAB, TVI, YBC, JRT
- Directors
-
Jun Owada, Akira Koremoto, Kentaro Fujita, Yukihiko Asaki, Erkin Kawabata, Shintaro Itoga, Tsuyoshi Nakano, Akira Shimizu, Yuushi Ibe, Kyohei Yamamoto, Masahiro Matsunaga, Tadao Okubo, Misu Yamaneko
- Author
-
Yuko Kakihara, Misuzu Chiba, Hitomi Ogawa
-
-
Takeo Otsuka
Jinshi (voice)
