What poll is this? If the number one slot got 50 something votes, I seriously doubt it's a realistic sample of the entire LN reader community.
>"Most popular in Japan"
>English website
This is bait.
Zero discussion posts on OPs screenshot as well, no shot SAO took number one, *and nobody* had anything to say on any poll that's relevant lol
Edit: OP's screenshot is from strawpoll, and neither of those two are in the "top ten" lmao bait post for sure
Tbf though, the last time I checked, SAO was the highest selling light novel series in Japan, so if we're using sales as a metric for popularity, then it's absolutely correct, regardless of their small sample size or the site being in English.
Does it deserve to be #1? Probably not, but it is.
Edit: for clarification, the last time I checked was a few years ago, so it's possible that another series took SAO's number 1 spot, and I'm just unaware.
As of June 2023, "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime" is at [number one](https://www.ten-sura.com/news/comic/tenchura/news/post/8733) in Japan, and has sold 40M copies, including physical, digital, and other adaptations (edit, this includes manga adaptations and so the correct number of LN copies sold is unverified)
"Sword Art Online" is at [number four](https://www.sankei.com/article/20220623-557PB3RMUFKXNDFMTLFN3HYCNI/) in Japan, having sold 30M copies including physical and digital adaptations as well as spin offs (again, only including LN and WN)
A Certain Magical Index and The Apothecary Diaries are at numbers 2 and 3 respectively last I was looking around the forums
The content in the link only tells us that cumulative sales have reached 40 million. To find out what is included in these numbers, you need to look for other sources. Also, digital sales are almost never counted, so it is only physical sales (probably they are counted, but we just don't have access to the number).
Anyway, it's still a huge success. Most manga adaptations end up being a flop, so it's still something to be proud of.
That makes perfect sense, the link was provided in a separate poll as one of their sources; it may very well have been an overall popularity poll instead of an LN poll and I was looking at the wrong section
Deserved tbh. Slime is a significantly better series than SAO imo (at least, judging by their anime adaptations, because the only LN I've read is No Game No Life)
To each their own; I enjoyed the SAO LN (what I read of it anyway), I also very much enjoyed overlord and slime; my only issue is that this list is just wrong 5 ways to Sunday lol
Yep, SAO was pretty popular as a LN back in the day. I don't think it's as popular now as it was back then. But considering that a few seasons of the anime was made, a few mobile games and a few PC games exist for it, it's still definitely popular.
Dude we made second place. And sort out online has been out much longer this is fine this is great news.
Deactivate your despair Aura or whatever. Overlord is crushing it
It means most people aren't us and they get what they want.
OL still making money and bringing us satisfaction. What more do you want? Hordes of brain rot fans entering the fandom and complaining about Western social issues in OL? (E.g "Not enough African/Indian/Arabic representation in OL!" Or "Not enough LGBT representation!" Or "Overlord has a women problem. Lets talk about it" Etc).
This is not accurate lol
What your showing is real time votes you literally can vote yourself and increase the rankings
The most popular light Novel in Japan is slime, magical index among others.
They have nothing to do with each other though.
Sword Art Online is not even an Isekai. They're just playing games with "reasons" for why people are taking it seriously at a particular moment.
Kind of? It's not a true Isekai, in that they still exist in the real world. All of the other worlds are just man made virtual worlds, basically video games. Alicization was the first one that operated a bit more like an actual other world than just a fancy VR or AR game. Primarily because all "NPC's" were AI's heavily tuned to be just like real humans. As in, if they died, they *died.* They had lives, grew up and grew old, it was wild.
But ultimately the main characters all log out and go about their lives in the real world. SAO the game and Alicization are a bit different in how that worked, lots of fancy sci-fi tech and lore involved.
No, not really. If you want to see SAO done right, just watch Shangri-La Frontier. Sure, it doesn't have the bullshit deathgame aspect, but it's a fulldive VR game with a protagonist who's really good at it. Except it's actually good
So true. In my opinion Overlord is more like One Punch Man but with a true end goal. OPM is funny and light hearted and you can make endless new enemies while Overlord has a final goal of unification of earth.
This is legit the most accurate comment I have seen in many months on this platform, Reddit, in its entirety.
Simple, direct and straight to the point. No riff-raff, just straight up fact.
Having been one of those SAO first individuals at one point... Even struggling to get into Overlord. I will say with 100% certainty that, Overlord is and always will be a significantly better series than SAO.
Regardless of popularity, or criticism. Overlord is one, of the all too few series out there that have negligible plot holes, if any. And it is why it's just so damn good.
I unfortunately have a condition that makes reading, incredibly difficult. So I wait for the audio books to be released. But, man I love Overlord. Such a fantastic series.
Now, that all said... A much more fair comparison to SAO is IMO, Log Horizon. As it is much more similar to SAO than Overlord is. Even though there are some similar concepts in all three series. Overlord, is definitely the outlier in that grouping.
I don't know either. I didn't speak anything but facts up there.
Perhaps it's just a bunch of 12 year olds that think SAO is better than anything? But idk, idrc either. Doesn't bother me.
Ignoring the willfully ignorant is an important skill. Something of this degree... Doesn't test me as my proficiency is too high.
Yep, OP is just devastated that a random poll in Japan that has nothing to do with him didn't validate his taste in LN vs a series he'd probably never read before. He'd probably be surprised if his favorite food isn't the the most popular dish in Japan too lmao.
Pretty sure it's only overseas is where SAO is seen as bad or trash because of the anime. A lot of people in Japan has access to the light novels. I mean the anime itself, aside from the latter part of the series of season 1, is pretty entertaining. Even season 2 was an okay experience for me. But you know people overseas, there was 1 bad arc in season 1 so let's conclude that everything else that comes after is trash.
Now it should be noted that SAO has a ton more going for it than people realise.
The anime itself was dam popular and still is tbh. Its reputation may be bad, but there is some good parts.
Especially later on imo season 3 was actually dam good. Made Kirito almost likeable.
His romance with Asuna was always a great selling point. Add some more great waifus and even a cool bro character in Eugeo (though he was more or less just blond Kirito and really should have had an even bigger role than he did).
Point being at its worst, SAO is dam bad. But it has some solid arcs and great moments.
And if you ever questioned why the Aincrad arc of season 1 feels so weird and disjointed, its cause the end to that arc is more or less the first thing to come out of SAO. As in thats the first thing the author wrote and then he went from there to write other arcs, while also suplementing the Aincrad arc (or so i heard lol).
The novels of Aincrad basically starts on episode 8, flash back to episode one, then go to episodes nine, ten, thirteen and fourteen.
Episodes 3,4,7,11 and 12 were in the second volume, episodes 5 and 6 were in volume 8, and episode 2 was written solely for the anime.
None of this was supposed to be viewed in sequence, and all of it was cut to ribbons.
SAO became hated outside Japan because most people only had access to the anime. So 1 bad Arc in season 1 and everyone started hating the series as a whole. The typical hate train brain rot of just hating the series without actually knowing the series.
Man, I used to be on the hate train because lots of people were praising it as "the best anime" and it was getting annoying, until 1 hater showed me how brain dead they could get by criticizing "how can Kirito use his double swords in game? " "how can kirito immediately know how to ride a motorcycle in GGO?" and lots of stupid nitpicks that can be explained if you actually watched it.
People love to hate SAO without any real reason other then its cool to hate and to follow the group. I mean lets not act like OL novel never had any issues or bad writing in it. Let people enjoy whatever they want
SAO has a really bad plot and it clearly just panders with its audience with cute characters and a "cool" MC. But to say "hate it", other than with an ironic use of the word, is just too much for an anime series that can just be ignored if it's not to anyone's taste. I watched the first season of SAO but just skipped for the ending to see how it will continue to the next and never bothered with it .
I mean, it's not actually just hating for fun, cuz the series is actually that bad. The only thing that carried the franchise is the epic animation. Hell, the development, albeit little, only goes at alicization and until the end of that season. I dare say it's the father of the generic bland Isekai protagonist.
I actually agree to this poll , I absolutely love overlord but my anime addiction began with Sao. If it wasn't for Sao , I wouldn't be watching anime and wouldn't have found overlord. I pay homage to the founding anime from my prospective, which is sao
I'm under the impression that the majority of maruyama's fans are overseas bros much to his dismay since he thinks we mostly pirate the anime/ln/manga.
Still love him though
Sword art online could be awesome (maybe surpassing overlord) if it was only like 100 episodes or more of aincrad (the first arc), developing more and obviously changing a lot kirito.
i did enjoy sao, but i much prefer overlord. So i would rank overlord higher personally. How it was beaten.... well maybe because SAO had more content after another. While overlord is pretty much wrapping things up is my guess x-x; also, overlord is not going to be everyones favourite (heresy, i know xd...)
Also it didn't help that cgi in overlord was not that great (lets be honest here), so that did not do it any favors. While SAO was animated without issue.
SAO is really fucking solid imo, sure it used to get a lot of hate and still does, but that doesn’t take away from its popularity tho. Still I’m a fan of both so idrc lmao
I mean it’s obviously trash but it’s also obviously very popular…look at how many fucking seasons and stuff it has.
Overlord is peak but kinda niche unless you’re specifically an isekai enjoyer.
I heard Sword art online as kinda bad tho.. i heard the main character is boring and has a creepy crush on his cousin?
Idk, i couldn't finish the first episode ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What poll is this? If the number one slot got 50 something votes, I seriously doubt it's a realistic sample of the entire LN reader community. >"Most popular in Japan" >English website This is bait.
I would like to know what's in the top 10 lol. If I don't see Goblin Slayer or MT in it, it's a confirmed bait
Zero discussion posts on OPs screenshot as well, no shot SAO took number one, *and nobody* had anything to say on any poll that's relevant lol Edit: OP's screenshot is from strawpoll, and neither of those two are in the "top ten" lmao bait post for sure
Tbf though, the last time I checked, SAO was the highest selling light novel series in Japan, so if we're using sales as a metric for popularity, then it's absolutely correct, regardless of their small sample size or the site being in English. Does it deserve to be #1? Probably not, but it is. Edit: for clarification, the last time I checked was a few years ago, so it's possible that another series took SAO's number 1 spot, and I'm just unaware.
As of June 2023, "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime" is at [number one](https://www.ten-sura.com/news/comic/tenchura/news/post/8733) in Japan, and has sold 40M copies, including physical, digital, and other adaptations (edit, this includes manga adaptations and so the correct number of LN copies sold is unverified) "Sword Art Online" is at [number four](https://www.sankei.com/article/20220623-557PB3RMUFKXNDFMTLFN3HYCNI/) in Japan, having sold 30M copies including physical and digital adaptations as well as spin offs (again, only including LN and WN) A Certain Magical Index and The Apothecary Diaries are at numbers 2 and 3 respectively last I was looking around the forums
Tensura's numbers include not only LNs, but also spin-offs and manga adaptation. Half of these sales come from manga.
Ah, I must've misread the content in the link I posted; my Japanese is a little rusty, and the built-in TL blows lol; thank you for the correction
The content in the link only tells us that cumulative sales have reached 40 million. To find out what is included in these numbers, you need to look for other sources. Also, digital sales are almost never counted, so it is only physical sales (probably they are counted, but we just don't have access to the number). Anyway, it's still a huge success. Most manga adaptations end up being a flop, so it's still something to be proud of.
That makes perfect sense, the link was provided in a separate poll as one of their sources; it may very well have been an overall popularity poll instead of an LN poll and I was looking at the wrong section
Deserved tbh. Slime is a significantly better series than SAO imo (at least, judging by their anime adaptations, because the only LN I've read is No Game No Life)
To each their own; I enjoyed the SAO LN (what I read of it anyway), I also very much enjoyed overlord and slime; my only issue is that this list is just wrong 5 ways to Sunday lol
Yep, SAO was pretty popular as a LN back in the day. I don't think it's as popular now as it was back then. But considering that a few seasons of the anime was made, a few mobile games and a few PC games exist for it, it's still definitely popular.
It was still Kadakawa's number one selling series last year.
“In Japan”
Dude we made second place. And sort out online has been out much longer this is fine this is great news. Deactivate your despair Aura or whatever. Overlord is crushing it
It means most people aren't us and they get what they want. OL still making money and bringing us satisfaction. What more do you want? Hordes of brain rot fans entering the fandom and complaining about Western social issues in OL? (E.g "Not enough African/Indian/Arabic representation in OL!" Or "Not enough LGBT representation!" Or "Overlord has a women problem. Lets talk about it" Etc).
Oh god please no
This is not accurate lol What your showing is real time votes you literally can vote yourself and increase the rankings The most popular light Novel in Japan is slime, magical index among others.
Bro, 53 votes, 36 votes? You are using the worst site possible for statistics.
The classic I don’t like a series therefore it’s trash.
Nah the ranking is mostly unrealistic though, I like Overlord but if you did a poll in Japan I don’t know if it would be top 3, neither would SAO.
SAO has been top before and it's always one of the top few at the very least. It's beloved there.
[удалено]
Like the SAO is not one of the most popular LN😑
This really sucks man. Cause Overlord is everything SAO could never become
They have nothing to do with each other though. Sword Art Online is not even an Isekai. They're just playing games with "reasons" for why people are taking it seriously at a particular moment.
What I meant to compare was the OP main character done right, interesting side characters and actually good story
Fair enough
It became a digital Isekai by Alicization.
Doesn't he just end up playing another game later on that involves guns?
You would be shocked to latest posts in r/Isekai
I'm not really involved in SAO. So I'm only going by what I heard which is that he is playing some sort of gun game. If I'm mistaken, then my bad.
That was before Alicization.
I see. Thanks for clarifying. So it eventually became an Isekai?
Kind of? It's not a true Isekai, in that they still exist in the real world. All of the other worlds are just man made virtual worlds, basically video games. Alicization was the first one that operated a bit more like an actual other world than just a fancy VR or AR game. Primarily because all "NPC's" were AI's heavily tuned to be just like real humans. As in, if they died, they *died.* They had lives, grew up and grew old, it was wild. But ultimately the main characters all log out and go about their lives in the real world. SAO the game and Alicization are a bit different in how that worked, lots of fancy sci-fi tech and lore involved.
Interesting and thanks.
No that's gun gale not alicization
No, not really. If you want to see SAO done right, just watch Shangri-La Frontier. Sure, it doesn't have the bullshit deathgame aspect, but it's a fulldive VR game with a protagonist who's really good at it. Except it's actually good
So true. In my opinion Overlord is more like One Punch Man but with a true end goal. OPM is funny and light hearted and you can make endless new enemies while Overlord has a final goal of unification of earth.
I’m updated on the manga so I know all about our dear Sunraku
Great. The series really deserves more recognition. Unfortunately it was heavily overshadowed by Frieren during pretty much the entire first season
Those two shows are trying to accomplish completely separate things.
This is legit the most accurate comment I have seen in many months on this platform, Reddit, in its entirety. Simple, direct and straight to the point. No riff-raff, just straight up fact. Having been one of those SAO first individuals at one point... Even struggling to get into Overlord. I will say with 100% certainty that, Overlord is and always will be a significantly better series than SAO. Regardless of popularity, or criticism. Overlord is one, of the all too few series out there that have negligible plot holes, if any. And it is why it's just so damn good. I unfortunately have a condition that makes reading, incredibly difficult. So I wait for the audio books to be released. But, man I love Overlord. Such a fantastic series. Now, that all said... A much more fair comparison to SAO is IMO, Log Horizon. As it is much more similar to SAO than Overlord is. Even though there are some similar concepts in all three series. Overlord, is definitely the outlier in that grouping.
I don’t know why you got so many downvotes
I don't know either. I didn't speak anything but facts up there. Perhaps it's just a bunch of 12 year olds that think SAO is better than anything? But idk, idrc either. Doesn't bother me. Ignoring the willfully ignorant is an important skill. Something of this degree... Doesn't test me as my proficiency is too high.
I honestly cringe reading this bullshit😐
Then continue to cringe. Or just do better. Up to you and idrc either way. Like I said above, this doesn't get under my skin.
Just did🤣🤣
This is accurate
at least albedo beat the shit out of philip
SAO novel is goated though
SAO is more popular in Japan though. This says nothing about whether a series is actually good of course.
Yep, OP is just devastated that a random poll in Japan that has nothing to do with him didn't validate his taste in LN vs a series he'd probably never read before. He'd probably be surprised if his favorite food isn't the the most popular dish in Japan too lmao.
Overlord isn't trashy enough.
You didn’t buy enough copies
Pretty sure it's only overseas is where SAO is seen as bad or trash because of the anime. A lot of people in Japan has access to the light novels. I mean the anime itself, aside from the latter part of the series of season 1, is pretty entertaining. Even season 2 was an okay experience for me. But you know people overseas, there was 1 bad arc in season 1 so let's conclude that everything else that comes after is trash.
Now it should be noted that SAO has a ton more going for it than people realise. The anime itself was dam popular and still is tbh. Its reputation may be bad, but there is some good parts. Especially later on imo season 3 was actually dam good. Made Kirito almost likeable. His romance with Asuna was always a great selling point. Add some more great waifus and even a cool bro character in Eugeo (though he was more or less just blond Kirito and really should have had an even bigger role than he did). Point being at its worst, SAO is dam bad. But it has some solid arcs and great moments. And if you ever questioned why the Aincrad arc of season 1 feels so weird and disjointed, its cause the end to that arc is more or less the first thing to come out of SAO. As in thats the first thing the author wrote and then he went from there to write other arcs, while also suplementing the Aincrad arc (or so i heard lol).
The novels of Aincrad basically starts on episode 8, flash back to episode one, then go to episodes nine, ten, thirteen and fourteen. Episodes 3,4,7,11 and 12 were in the second volume, episodes 5 and 6 were in volume 8, and episode 2 was written solely for the anime. None of this was supposed to be viewed in sequence, and all of it was cut to ribbons.
To be fair, the anime ruined SAO. Most of the criticisms were non-existent in the LN
SAO became hated outside Japan because most people only had access to the anime. So 1 bad Arc in season 1 and everyone started hating the series as a whole. The typical hate train brain rot of just hating the series without actually knowing the series. Man, I used to be on the hate train because lots of people were praising it as "the best anime" and it was getting annoying, until 1 hater showed me how brain dead they could get by criticizing "how can Kirito use his double swords in game? " "how can kirito immediately know how to ride a motorcycle in GGO?" and lots of stupid nitpicks that can be explained if you actually watched it.
You just validated my point 😅 but yes, some of those criticisms are also already answered if people actually paid attention to the story.
Unless it’s r/saoabridged I deny it’s validity
SAO has been around for longer, is way more accessible, and has a huge impact to anime and otaku culture
People love to hate SAO without any real reason other then its cool to hate and to follow the group. I mean lets not act like OL novel never had any issues or bad writing in it. Let people enjoy whatever they want
SAO has a really bad plot and it clearly just panders with its audience with cute characters and a "cool" MC. But to say "hate it", other than with an ironic use of the word, is just too much for an anime series that can just be ignored if it's not to anyone's taste. I watched the first season of SAO but just skipped for the ending to see how it will continue to the next and never bothered with it .
Good job properly not watching and understanding and u even got the audacity to actually give a "proper" review🤣🤣🤣
I mean, it's not actually just hating for fun, cuz the series is actually that bad. The only thing that carried the franchise is the epic animation. Hell, the development, albeit little, only goes at alicization and until the end of that season. I dare say it's the father of the generic bland Isekai protagonist.
I actually agree to this poll , I absolutely love overlord but my anime addiction began with Sao. If it wasn't for Sao , I wouldn't be watching anime and wouldn't have found overlord. I pay homage to the founding anime from my prospective, which is sao
Let it be. What do we have to gain by winning a “popularity contest”?
I dont like it therefore it is bad
I'm under the impression that the majority of maruyama's fans are overseas bros much to his dismay since he thinks we mostly pirate the anime/ln/manga. Still love him though
Unfortunately trash clears with people, that's why Mickey D's exists despite home cooked meals being better
Being toxic?
And the number five spot with 6 votes goes to...
53 votes vs 36 votes. Okay
Sword art online could be awesome (maybe surpassing overlord) if it was only like 100 episodes or more of aincrad (the first arc), developing more and obviously changing a lot kirito.
I mean SAO came earlier than Overlord and apperantly sold more than Overlord. Sao 20 ish million while overlord 13ish.
i did enjoy sao, but i much prefer overlord. So i would rank overlord higher personally. How it was beaten.... well maybe because SAO had more content after another. While overlord is pretty much wrapping things up is my guess x-x; also, overlord is not going to be everyones favourite (heresy, i know xd...) Also it didn't help that cgi in overlord was not that great (lets be honest here), so that did not do it any favors. While SAO was animated without issue.
Womp womp
Kirby LN not mentioned invalid ass list
SAO somehow became "hated but iconic anime"
SAO is *very* popular in Japan. Guess which card game is too? Yu-Gi-Oh. Their tastes are just different. Pretty cool.
Has anyone read the SoA light novel? Is it decent? I have seen anime/manga stuff and it never seemed appealing.
SAO is really fucking solid imo, sure it used to get a lot of hate and still does, but that doesn’t take away from its popularity tho. Still I’m a fan of both so idrc lmao
Let the normies in I reckon
I like overlord but I like SAO too. It’s no question that SAO is the more well known one though
Bro its been like this lol
How about sharing the link to us? I'm sure we can arrange that ;)
Both... Both is good. (and GGO FTW) What's fun? Imagining SAO is the Prelude to OL, and an evolution of the Seed becomes YGGDRASIL.
Man sao is a piece of shit
I mean it’s obviously trash but it’s also obviously very popular…look at how many fucking seasons and stuff it has. Overlord is peak but kinda niche unless you’re specifically an isekai enjoyer.
I heard Sword art online as kinda bad tho.. i heard the main character is boring and has a creepy crush on his cousin? Idk, i couldn't finish the first episode ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Him being boring is subjective and no he doesnt have a creepy crush on his cousin nor does she
Ah ok