General Discussion

So welcome to the newly-Mondayified Listurday! Here's this week's stats and top tens and whatnot:

Naruto

Stateside:

• This week's USA Today Booklist is topped by J.K. Rowling's Tales of Beetle the Bard, and has absolutely no manga whatsoever. While not totally unexpected, I'm still disappointed.
• TOKYOMANGO has this year's top baby names in Japan lists (one for girls and one for boys); girls were mostly blessed with Aoi while boys are stuck with Hiroto. (Sorry, it just doesn't appeal to me.)
• Aaaand Matt Blind has a preliminary list of the top 25 best-selling manga for the week ending yesterday (12/14)-- Naruto takes up nine total spots on the list, but the #1 spot goes to Vampire Knight volume 4. (VK had four of its five released volumes on the list.) The rest of the slots go to BLEACH, Fruits Basket, Hellsing volume #9, Death Note #1, and interestingly, Rosario + Vampire #4. Blind also compiles the top ten series, which are Naruto, BLEACH, Fruits Basket, Death Note, Vampire Knight, Kingdom Hearts, Fullmetal Alchemist, Rosario + Vampire, TOKYOPOP's Warriors OEL, and Ouran High School Host Club.

Japan:

• For the past weekend, the number one movie in Japan is Wall-E, but there's anime and manga related stuff to be had as well: number two is Major, a part of the popular baseball franchise; and number three is BLEACH Fade to Black. Also, number ten is Yes! PreCure 5 GoGo! Okashi no Kuno no Happy Birthday. Good times!
• No anime in the top five DVDs, although Clannad After Story volume one took sixth place.
• Now, you already know that Nodame Cantabile Parihen's 9 episode earned a time slot record-breaking 6.6% rating, which ranked it #8 on the TV anime charts for the past week. The usual suspects take the top levels: Sazae-san, Chibi Maruko-chan, Crayon Shin-chan, One Piece, Ge Ge Ge no Kitarou, etc.
• In comics, One Piece volume 52 outsold BLEACH #36, D.Gray-Man #17, Gintama #26, and Vagabond #29, respectively.
• On the music side, we'll start with singles: Gundam 00 Second Season's second ED theme, Chiaki Ishikawa's “Prototype,” is the #2 best-selling single this week. Mouryou no Hako ED “Naked Love,” by Ikimono Gakari, is #5.
• We'll end with music albums; #2 on the list is the Macross Frontier Vocal Collection Musumetama.