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Arakawa's Silver Spoon Prints 1 Million More After Award Win

Silver Spoon, Fullmetal Alchemist creator Hiromu Arakawa's manga about a boy's life in an agricultural high school, has printed one million more copies in less than one month. Before the manga won this year's Manga Taisho (Cartoon Grand Prize) on March 23, its three compiled book volumes had 1.5 million copies. Shogakukan then ordered additional printings, and as of this week, the manga has a new grand total of 2.5 million copies.

The Manga Taisho award has only been around for five years, but it has significant influence since the winners are selected by bookstore staff members from all over Japan. Media Factory's Da Vinci magazine said that Silver Spoon "seems to have anime adaptation plans" like several previous winners have had.

Shogakukan only ran 330,000 copies for the first print run of the first Silver Spoon volume last July, and had to order an additional printing after 90,000 sold in the volume's first three days of sale. By December, there were one million copies printed of the first two volumes. Mainichi Shimbun paper's Mantan Web anticipates that each of Silver Spoon's three volumes will eventually be a million-copy best seller.

Update: Corrected copies sold to copies printed. Thanks, Darkmagick.