K-ON!! Dominates Bestseller Charts

The frenzied buzz over K-ON!!’s new season has driven pre-orders for the new season on Amazon Japan, giving the series the stratospheric state of possessing 10 of the Top 13 rankings on Amazon’s DVD / BD Top Sellers.

In related news, one prankster made 999 pre-orders for K-ON!! Vol. 1, an order that would cost over $66,000 USD to actually purchase, presumably to affect Amazon’s Charts, apparently unaware that Amazon’s rankings only count 1 order per customer.

These two screenshots include the #1 through #16 rankings, including all of the K-ON! related item on the Top 25 list as of April 09:

The titles should be mostly self-explanatory; けいおん!!(第2期) 1 (Blu-ray 初回限定生産) would translate to: K-ON!! (Season 2) Vol. 1 (Blu-ray 1st Release Special Edition).

The odd-man-out K-ON! disc at #6 is けいおん! ライブイベント ~レッツゴー!~ / K-ON! Live Event ~Let’s Go!~, containing footage from a December 2009 live concert at Yokohama Arena.

The sole other anime release to be mixed in with the K-ON! discs is mighty Eva’s  Evangelion 2.22 BD release, with pre-sales of Angel Beats!’s first volume coming in at #15.

Some other notable releases not visible above are Nodame Cantabile Final Movement (Live Action) Part 1 at the #20 spot, and Gundam Unicorn Vol. 1 at #21

The “Arashi” holding the #1 title happens to be part of the famous Japanese boy band’s 10th Anniversary celebrations and should be more than familiar to fujoushi fans of Japan’s legendary Johnny’s talent agency.

Quick-thinking fans might remember the large number of K-ON!! pre-orders present (9 in total) as being the same strong evidence for K-ON!! being a 2-cour series (24/25 episodes, rather than 12 or 13) currently spreading online.

These two following images come from 2ch, apparently posted online by the prankster himself:

Since the actual order would require ¥6,210,011 ($66,641.75 USD) to complete once Vol. 1 becomes available, the immediate conclusion by many on 2ch was that the phony orders were a sort of sales ranking chart manipulation.

However, since Amazon (at least the Japanese site) reportedly only counts one order per customer account, the prank apparently does little more than allow for some memorable screenshots of the Amazon order screen.

Just whether there is a technique by which the rankings are manipulable by excessively eager fans is not clear…

The low-res K-ON!! promotional artwork currently being used on Amazon as placeholders for all K-ON!! pre-orders.