It seems as though one popular light novel series is enjoying a bit more success than its contemporaries. Hyuganatsu's The Apothecary Diaries is having a great year, with the second season of the anime looking like it really helped boost sales.

From November 2024 to November 2025, the series sold 1,060,890 copies. That's an incredible feat, and when you look at how the rest of the most popular light novels performed over the year, it's not even close.

The Apothecary Diaries is The Best-Selling Light Novel of The Year

While the rest of the top 10 series didn't perform poorly, it's tough to look at how well The Apothecary Diaries did throughout the year and not be impressed with how much it's managed to pull away from the competition.

Series	Copies Sold
The Apothecary Diaries	1,060,890
Classroom of the Elite 2	190,737
Classroom of the Elite 3	187,089
Too Many Losing Heroines!	166,413
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?	166,413
That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime	158,151
The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten	110,785
Demon Slayer Novels	95,850
Who Killed the Hero?	94,947
There's No Freaking Way I'll be Your Lover! Unless...	89,784

Other popular light novel series like Classroom of the Elite, Too Many Losing Heroines, DanMachi, and That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime all performed well, but none of them got close to the success that The Apothecary Diaries is currently having. Despite being represented twice with both the Year 2 and Year 3 series, Classroom of the Elite didn't even sell half as many copies as The Apothecary Diaries did.

The Apothecary Diaries isn't even a relatively newer series compared to some of the other light novels in the top 10. So when you look at the incredible success the series has been having, the anime's popularity is likely a big part of why the light novel has been doing so well. With the second season having concluded this year and being popular among anime fans, more and more people are becoming interested in Maomao's adventures.

The Anime is Having Positive Effects on the Franchise

Currently, The Apothecary Diaries has more than 45 million copies in circulation. The franchise had 38 million copies in circulation as of September 2024. With the second season of the anime airing from January to July of this year, the renewed interest in the series looks to have increased the amount of copies in print by around 7 million.

Season 1 of T he Apothecary Diaries aired from October 2023 to March 2024, with Toho Animation Studio and OLM spearheading the project. Season 2 was released the following year, and now fans eagerly await the release of season 3, which should be coming out sometime in October 2026.

The success of the Apothecary Diaries anime adaptation has definitely helped out the light novel and manga sales. The series is one of the most anticipated anime of 2026, and even though it's set to air towards the tail end of next year, it doesn't look like the excitement surrounding the series is going to die down anytime soon.

Source: X, Oricon

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