Apothecary Diaries Vol. 17 Seizes Japan’s Book Charts

The palace intrigue keeps selling. Volume 17 of Square Enix’s The Apothecary Diaries manga has climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard Japan Book Hot 100 chart dated Aug. 6, after opening at No. 2 the prior week. The multi-metric ranking blends brick-and-mortar sales, e-commerce, e-books, library loans, and social buzz—and Maomao’s newest installment topped the physical store column while stacking points online.

Oricon’s weekly manga estimates paint an even sharper picture of the surge. The same volume moved roughly 121,378 copies in the tracked week, finishing about 84,860 ahead of second place and alone accounting for more than a third of the Top 10’s combined sales. Square Enix titles also claimed a hefty share of the chart’s weekly total, underscoring how hard the publisher’s current lineup is landing in shops.

Around the new chart-topper, the rest of the list read like a snapshot of midsummer reading. Chuya Koyama’s Space Brothers Vol. 46—last week’s No. 1—slipped one spot to second, while Medalist Vol. 15 held third. Jinushi’s Smoking Behind the Supermarket with You Vol. 9 and Yoshihiro Togashi’s Hunter × Hunter Vol. 39 also stayed in the conversation, and Nagano’s Chiikawa Vol. 8 rocketed into the Top 10 as the hit mermaid-island movie continued packing theaters.

For a franchise already riding strong anime seasons and a third TV cour plus film on the calendar, the dual chart win is less a surprise than a reminder: readers still can’t get enough of the imperial court’s sharpest pharmacist.

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