Japan's biggest manga app, LINE Manga, marked its 13th anniversary with a "Favorite Manga Election." One Piece placed in the top three of five separate categories. The real story may be who came next: Demon Slayer, a national institution, and Teenage Mercenary, a Korean webtoon, tied at two categories each. Across 2.89 million votes, you can watch Japanese manga consumption changing shape.

What 2.89 Million Votes Reveal

LINE Manga marked its 13th anniversary on April 9, 2026, by hosting a "Favorite Manga Election" between April 9 and April 22. Users voted across 13 themes, among them "Manga With the Most Memorable Quotes," "Tear-Jerking Manga That Devastates You," and "Manga With the Best Foreshadowing Payoff." Total votes reached 2,889,609.

When the top 3 were revealed for each theme, the standout winner was Eiichiro Oda's One Piece (Monochrome Edition), taking spots in 5 categories: Most Memorable Quotes, Tear-Jerking Manga, Best Foreshadowing Payoff, Most Lovable Villains, and Worth-Buying-Every-Volume Manga.

Tied for second place with 2 category wins each were Koyoharu Gotouge's Demon Slayer (Most Memorable Quotes, Tear-Jerking Manga) and the Korean-origin webtoon Teenage Mercenary by writer YC and artist rakhyun (Lightning-Fast Pacing, Most Cathartic Manga).

Who Voted?

To make sense of these results, you need to understand who actually uses LINE Manga.

According to multiple market research reports, LINE Manga's user profile looks like this:

  • Skews female: among users aged 20+, 54.3% are women, 16.9 percentage points higher than men (Video Research, 2023)
  • Largest segment is women aged 35–49, followed by women aged 20–34 (same source)
  • Heavy usage among teens: 67.2% of Japanese teens have used a comic app, with LINE Manga the most-used at 46.1% (MMD Labo, 2020)
  • Clear age divide between platforms: Ages 10s–30s favor LINE Manga, while ages 40s–60s favor Piccoma (MMD Labo, 2024)
  • High engagement: 37.7% of users open the app nearly every day, with 15+ days of monthly app launches on average (Video Research / Manamina)

So the 2.89 million votes were cast primarily by women in their teens through 30s. That is roughly the mirror image of a male-skewed app like Shonen Jump+.

This reader profile reframes the results. The categories where Korean webtoons swept all three slots (Most Charming Characters, Most Precious Couples, Gripped You from Chapter 1) reflect natural support from female readers. In categories that reward long-form storytelling, such as Lovable Villains, Foreshadowing Payoff and Worth Buying Every Volume, multi-generational hits like One Piece, Dragon Ball, Attack on Titan and Kingdom dominate.

The Top 3 of All 13 Categories

Here's the full picture. Note that within each category, titles are listed alphabetically (Japanese syllabary order), not by vote count.

① Manga to Recommend to Your 13-Year-Old Self

  • Kimi ni Todoke (Karuho Shiina / Shueisha)
  • Ice Wall (Akagawa Kocha / Shueisha)
  • Haikyu!! (Haruichi Furudate / Shueisha)

② Manga With the Most Memorable Quotes

  • Demon Slayer (Koyoharu Gotouge / Shueisha)
  • Fullmetal Alchemist (Hiromu Arakawa / Square Enix)
  • One Piece Monochrome Edition (Eiichiro Oda / Shueisha)

③ Lightning-Fast Pacing Manga

  • Solo Leveling (Manga: DUBU / Original: Chugong / Adapted: h-goon / D&C MEDIA)
  • Jujutsu Kaisen (Gege Akutami / Shueisha)
  • Teenage Mercenary (Story: YC / Art: rakhyun / LINE Manga)

④ Manga With the Most Charming Characters

  • Tears for the Withered Flowers (Gae / LINE Manga)
  • Operation: Pure Heart (Story: kkokkalee / Art: Dledumb / LINE Manga)
  • The Romance of Toudou Tsukasa (Art/Adapted: 248 / Original: Anna Kim / LINE Manga)

⑤ Tear-Jerking Manga

  • Demon Slayer (Koyoharu Gotouge / Shueisha)
  • The Tyrant I Loved (Adapted/Art: LICO / Original: Cersei / LINE Manga)
  • One Piece Monochrome Edition (Eiichiro Oda / Shueisha)

⑥ Manga With the Most Precious Couples

  • Under the Oak Tree (Adapted: Seomal / Art: P / Original: Kim Suji / RIDI)
  • Doting on the Empire's Worst Empress (Aji / SORAJIMA)
  • For My Discarded Beloved (Original: Kim Seonyu / Story: Ryuho / Art: Gimyong / LINE Manga)

⑦ Manga With the Best Foreshadowing Payoff

  • Obsessed by My In-Laws (Manga: seungu / Original: Han Yoon-seol / LINE Manga)
  • Attack on Titan (Hajime Isayama / Kodansha)
  • One Piece Monochrome Edition (Eiichiro Oda / Shueisha)

⑧ Manga to Read When You Want to Laugh

  • Gintama Monochrome Edition (Hideaki Sorachi / Shueisha)
  • The Takanashi Family (Kozueko Morimoto / Shueisha)
  • The Way of the Househusband (Kousuke Oono / Shinchosha)

⑨ Manga With the Most Lovable Villains

  • Dragon Ball Monochrome Edition (Akira Toriyama / Shueisha)
  • My Hero Academia (Kohei Horikoshi / Shueisha)
  • One Piece Monochrome Edition (Eiichiro Oda / Shueisha)

⑩ Manga That Gripped You from Chapter 1

  • The Remarried Empress (Original: Alphatart / Art: SUMPUL / Adapted: HereLee / LINE Manga)
  • Cry, You May Beg (Manga: VAN JI / Original: Solche / LINE Manga)
  • The Problematic Prince (Original: Solche / Manga: CACTUS / LINE Manga)

⑪ Manga Worth Buying Every Volume

  • Akatsuki no Yona / Yona of the Dawn (Mizuho Kusanagi / Hakusensha)
  • Kingdom (Yasuhisa Hara / Shueisha)
  • One Piece Monochrome Edition (Eiichiro Oda / Shueisha)

⑫ Most Cathartic Manga

  • May I Make One Last Request? (Original: Nana Otori / Manga: Sora Honoki / Alphapolis)
  • Teenage Mercenary (Story: YC / Art: rakhyun / LINE Manga)
  • Marry My Husband (Story/Art: LICO / Original: sungsojak / LINE Manga)

⑬ Manga to Enjoy in Under 5 Volumes

  • Astra Lost in Space (Kenta Shinohara / Shueisha)
  • Karaoke Iko! (Yama Wayama / KADOKAWA)
  • Tacopi's Original Sin (Taizan 5 / Shueisha)

For positions 4 and below, LINE Manga publishes the top 30 titles for each category on its event page and inside the app.

Where Korean Webtoons and Japanese Manga Each Excel

A clear pattern emerges from the 13 categories.

Categories dominated by Korean webtoons:

  • ④ Most Charming Characters (all 3 are Korean webtoons)
  • ⑥ Most Precious Couples (all 3 are Korean-origin)
  • ⑩ Gripped from Chapter 1 (all 3 are Korean webtoons)
  • ③ Lightning-Fast Pacing (2 of 3 are Korean-origin)
  • ⑫ Most Cathartic (2 of 3 are Korean-origin)

Categories dominated by Japanese manga:

  • ① Recommend to Your 13-Year-Old Self (all 3 from Shueisha)
  • ②, ⑤, ⑦, ⑨, ⑪ (Memorable Quotes, Tear-Jerking, Foreshadowing, Lovable Villains, Buy-Every-Volume: all three in each are Japanese manga)
  • ⑧ Want to Laugh (Shueisha and Shinchosha)
  • ⑬ Under 5 Volumes (Shueisha and KADOKAWA)

In other words, Korean webtoons dominate character love, romance, opening hooks and pace, while Japanese manga dominates long-term accumulation, iconic scenes, complex foreshadowing and comedy. It is a clean division of territory, born naturally from the production models: weekly vertical-scroll updates versus weekly serialization that piles up volumes.

A Personal Rant from an Old-Timer

Time for an honest confession. Looking at all 39 slots, did anyone else react like this?

"Where's Phoenix? Where's Devilman? Where's AKIRA? Where's Fist of the North Star? Where's JoJo's Bizarre Adventure? Where's Parasyte? Where's Ushio and Tora? Where's Ping Pong Club?"

Not a single one. No Raoh in Lovable Villains. No Ping Pong Club in Want to Laugh. JoJo, a series that is basically nothing but quotable lines, doesn't crack Most Memorable Quotes.

It makes sense if you think about it. Fist of the North Star ended its serialization in 1988, AKIRA wrapped in 1990, Devilman concluded in 1973. Some of these predate the voters' parents. We use the same word, manga, but the masterpieces an old-timer remembers and the ones capturing today's young readers may already be separate genres. The result isn't wrong. The world simply moved on.

Still, somewhere ought to keep those names alive. If you'd sign up for an "Old Guys' Manga Poll, Run by Old Guys, for Old Guys," yell about it in the comments.

Why One Piece Swept 5 Categories

One Piece has been serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump since 1997. With Volume 114, released March 4, 2026, the series passed 600 million copies in circulation worldwide: over 450 million in Japan and over 150 million overseas. That is 90 million added in the three years and seven months since the 500 million mark, and uncharted territory for a single work by a single author.

The breakdown of its 5 wins reads like a textbook on long-form storytelling. "Most Memorable Quotes" reflects nearly three decades of accumulation. "Best Foreshadowing Payoff" captures the current wave in which decades-old setups are finally resolving, Volume 114's full account of the God Valley Incident among them. "Most Lovable Villains" speaks to the rich gallery of antagonists from Crocodile to Doflamingo to Kaido. "Worth Buying Every Volume" is helped by the sheer fact that the series has 114 volumes. And "Tear-Jerking" hits because of moments like Hiluluk's cherry blossoms and Ace's death, scenes burned into Japanese readers' collective memory.

The sense of an approaching finale adds momentum. The TV anime began its Elbaph arc on April 5, 2026, and the 600 million milestone launched a second worldwide character popularity poll, WT100. Fan temperature is at a peak.

What Demon Slayer's 2 Category Wins Mean

Demon Slayer placed in two categories, both shared with One Piece: Memorable Quotes and Tear-Jerking. This is symbolic of Japan's manga landscape in 2026.

Timing helped. Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle Chapter 1, Akaza Returns opened on July 18, 2025 and closed on April 9, 2026, taking ¥40.2 billion in Japan (second-highest domestic gross ever) and, with 98.52 million admissions worldwide, ¥117.9 billion (about $753 million) globally, the highest worldwide gross of any Japanese film. Voting ran April 9 to 22, right as the run ended, with the Infinity Castle tragedies fresh from the theater.

That said, Demon Slayer finished serialization in 2020, while One Piece is still running, so the two carry different kinds of heat. Two category placements still came, thanks to the film trilogy in progress and the earlier anime arcs staying on streaming.

Teenage Mercenary: A Korean Webtoon Among Japan's Giants

The most striking result is Teenage Mercenary placing in 2 categories: "Lightning-Fast Pacing" and "Most Cathartic Manga."

Teenage Mercenary is a Korean action webtoon written by YC and illustrated by rakhyun, serialized on Korea's NAVER platform since November 7, 2020. In Japan it has run on LINE Manga since 2021 with heavy localization: the setting moved from Korea to Japan and the protagonist's name changed from Yoo Ijin to Tatewaki Soma. It topped LINE Manga's annual ranking in both 2023 and 2024.

The story follows a boy who survived a plane crash at eight, spent ten years abroad as a mercenary to stay alive, then returned home and enrolled in the same high school as his younger sister. Internationally it runs as Teenage Mercenary across ten languages. As of May 2025 it had logged 730 million views in Japan and 1.86 billion globally.

An anime adaptation was announced on June 19, 2025. The Japanese edition then went on its first-ever hiatus with chapter 280, published April 30, 2026.

That a Korean webtoon ranked alongside titles from Shueisha and Kodansha in a Japanese app's poll suggests that for readers themselves, the "Japanese manga versus Korean webtoon" framing is dissolving.

LINE Manga: A Japan-Korea Hybrid Platform

Understanding what LINE Manga actually is matters here.

LINE Manga launched in 2013 as a digital manga app from LINE Corporation, originally distributing standard Japanese manga from Shueisha, Kodansha, and other publishers. In 2019 it absorbed XOY, a Naver Webtoon-affiliated Japanese webtoon app, and from that point became a hybrid platform offering both Japanese manga and Korean webtoons.

It is operated by LINE Digital Frontier Corporation, a subsidiary of Nasdaq-listed Webtoon Entertainment, whose largest shareholder is Korea's Naver. LINE Manga is the Japanese arm of the WEBTOON Worldwide Service, alongside the English WEBTOON site and Korea's Naver Webtoon. That federation counted roughly 150 million monthly users as of the end of March 2025.

This means Japanese users can read One Piece and Teenage Mercenary in the same app. International readers don't have that convenience: Japanese manga lives on MANGA Plus by Shueisha, Korean webtoons on WEBTOON.com.

How International Readers Can Access Each Title

Here's where the three top finishers can be read outside Japan:

One Piece / Demon Slayer: Both are Shueisha titles, so they're available on MANGA Plus by SHUEISHA (free, with the latest 3 chapters and early chapters), Viz Media (paid English volumes), and partial coverage on Crunchyroll Manga. Japan has near-complete official coverage across several platforms; international editions tend to lag behind the newest Japanese chapter.

Teenage Mercenary: Available globally on WEBTOON.com for free under the title "Teenage Mercenary" in English. Multilingual versions include "Mercenario adolescente" (Spanish), "High School Mercenary" (French), "High School Soldier" (Indonesian), and others. This is a textbook example of a globally accessible webtoon.

A note: the LINE Manga app itself is only accessible from Japanese IPs to protect copyright agreements, and Coins are not interchangeable between language platforms. This is a Webtoon Entertainment-wide policy based on regional licensing.

On the Same Ballot

The pipeline turning webtoons into anime keeps widening. After Solo Leveling took Anime of the Year at the 2025 Crunchyroll Anime Awards, vertical-scroll properties started landing production slots in numbers. Teenage Mercenary's adaptation sits in that current.

What makes this poll interesting isn't which titles won. It's that a voter pool centered on women in their teens through 30s put a 30-year shonen institution and a vertical-scroll newcomer on the same ballot and weighed them against each other. That fact says more than the rankings do, and it would have been hard to picture ten years ago.

How well known are One Piece, Demon Slayer and Teenage Mercenary where you live? Do you read Japanese manga and Korean webtoons in the same app, or switch between services? Let us know in the comments.

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