Most Popular Tags Ranking

Tags! Everyone has their own specific favorites, but which tags are so popular that they lead to increased manga sales? Well, I have a little too much time on my hands, so let's find out using math!

I'll be evaluating every single release listed in the Manga portion of the website, regardless of publisher. Each title is evaluated and graded based on its age and its popularity, as listed on the site. Of course, I have no idea how popularity relates to actual sales numbers. Maybe the worst selling book has sold 50% as much as the best selling book, or maybe it has sold only 1% as much? Since I have no access to that information, I'm treating popularity as a simple linear scale.

Obviously, the higher the popularity, the higher the book's score. But since the earliest releases have a significant advantage (of the top ten most popular, six are among the first ten books sold), half of the total score comes from each book's popularity placement relative to its release order - thus a newer book with a high popularity will score higher than an older book with the same popularity.

Formula: ((ReleaseOrder-PopularityOrder+TotalMangaCount-1)/((TotalMangaCount-1)/25.0) + (50*((TotalMangaCount-PopularityOrder)/(TotalMangaCount-1.0)))

By this math, 'Renai Sample' earns only 75 out of 100 points for its first place standing in the popularity list because it was also the first released book and thus had the advantage of accumulating its sales for longer and against less competition. The recent release 'Holesome Gals!!!' is down at 60th place in popularity, but earns 67 points by significantly surpassing its expected sales relative to how long it's been available.

The overall highest scoring book is 'How to Conquer Monster Girls' at 84 points. It was the 96th book released but is all the way up in 16th place by popularity. The lowest scoring book is 'Urotsukidoji Volume 2' with a mere 10 points. This volume was the 43rd book released but is down in 132nd place by popularity (though the Kickstarter sales may not be included in these figures). The average book scores 50 points, and the MOST average book on the list is 'Fanaticism' which was the 69th (heh) book released AND the 69th most popular release, earning a perfect 50/100.

Once we know each title's score, we can then evaluate each tag for how much it appears to have contributed to each title's popularity. We do this by averaging the scores for all books associated with that tag, and then subtracting the average score for all books not including that tag. Thus the nearly universal tag 'hentai' earns a mediocre average of 51.5 points, but since the average for the books not marked with the 'hentai' tag earn a significantly lower average of 41.7, the 'hentai' tag overall earns a solid 9.8 points. By comparison, the 'non-h' tag earns a dismal -27.5 points (23.9 - 51.4). Using this math, we can now rank tags relative to each other and see which tags have the greatest impact on popularity (and thus sales).

The last important note is that I'm excluding all tags which only appear on a single book. Thus tags such as 'cheerleader', 'beauty mark', and 'hairy armpit' are eliminated. All of these are very high-scoring tags but only because they're only associated with a single popular book - 'My Bride is the Demon Lord!?', 'Dirty Docking!' and 'Drawn by Brush' respectively. It's possible, I suppose, that 'hairy armpit' might be an extremely popular tag if Fakku released more manga with that focus, but the safe approach here is to eliminate it due to insufficient data.

Anyways, here are the ten most popular tags, and arguably the tags which Fakku should focus on to maximize future sales!

1) Uncensored (24.4)
2) Oni (17.7)
3) Busty (16.4)
4) Horns (14.1)
5) Kogal (14.0)
6) Blowjob (13.4)
7) Dark Skin (13.2)
8) Futanari (13.1)
9) Petite (13.0)
10) Osananajimi (12.9)

The bottom ten tags are listed below. Despite their overall unpopularity, many likely still represent specific demographic slices which Fakku wishes to reach with targetted niche content.

1) Horror (-31.5)
2) Yaoi (-29.7)
3) Crossdressing (-28.8)
4) Non-H (-27.5)
5) Whiteout (-27.2)
6) Ecchi (-17.2)
7) Netorase (-16.7)
8) Sci-Fi (-14.4)
9) Pegging (-14.0)
10) Isekai (-12.4)

Thanks for reading all this! Here are a few other interesting results to ponder:

Yandere (12.2) and Tsundere (11.6) both fall just outside the top 10, but Yandere is just slightly more popular.

Creampie (9.5) and Pregnant (8.7) are both popular tags, despite Condom (5.0) outranking Impregnation (1.9).

Exhibitionism (7.5) is popular, but Voyeurism (-5.6) is not

Big Dick (6.0) is preferred over Huge Boobs (-1.3).

Nurse (6.8) is the highest ranked profession, over Office Lady (5.9), Maid (4.8), Teacher (0.6) and Idol (0.5).

Ugly Bastard (6.1) barely beats out Vanilla (5.8).

Stockings (9.5) are much more popular than Socks (-5.8)

Finally, Monster Girl (10.1) isn't quite as high as I expected, but still beats out Catgirl (9.8), Succubus (6.7) and Elf (-2.1). They all lose out to Oni (17.7), the reigning queen of non-humans.

The way the formula works gives no significant advantage to common tags. 'Uncensored' rates so high not due to the number of manga it's associated with, but because the typical manga without this tag scores significantly lower than average. The 'Book' tag is actually the most common tag, appearing on every single release. It thereby earns a fully neutral 0.0 score (0.5 - 0.5). Meanwhile 'Futanari' appears significantly less often than 'Petite', but it scores higher because the very few 'Futanari' books are quite popular.

The bottom 10 tags do tend to have fewer releases than the top 10 tags, but that's probably because Fakku already has a good sense of which tags sell the best and uses that information to help plan their releases.

'Forced' has never appeared as a tag on any manga release. It does appear on individual chapters for manga such as 'Lust Mix' and 'Honey Pot Style', but the manga themselves have not received the tag.


Monster Girl vs. Oni is an interesting case. The books which are tagged with 'Oni', but aren't tagged with 'Monster Girl' are:

Hanafuda (46) - By visual design, these oni could be classified as monster girls, but these are dangerous predators to be feared and hunted, not seduced. 'Monster Girls' tend to be more benign than these oni.

Futabu! Mix (78) & Gimme That Semen! (78) - These appear to be mis-tagged, as they both contain a Succubus but not a traditional Oni. (Gimme That Semen! is also tagged with Succubus, but Futabu! Mix is not.)

Maidens of Steel (67) - Most of the monsters in this book are male, so although 'Monster Girl' could apply to the Oni chapter, it would also be misleading to customers looking for Mizone-style monster girls.

If Futabu! Mix and Gimme That Semen! were reclassified, there would be a significant drop in Oni popularity and a corresponding increase to Succubus popularity.

Good news! All your tags made it into the top third of the list! There's definitely consumer demand for all the variants of 'multiple partners'!

Harem (10.9)
Group (7.2)
Anal (7.7)
Double Penetration (8.5)

There's never been a 'Swinging' book release, but I wonder how that would do...

Another few things to consider too is that things that go on sale often are likely going to have much higher popularity than things that are rarely on sale. For example, Metamorphosis has been on sale three or four times in the five months I've been using this site. Some of the books I've kept my eye on which haven't been on sale will likely be lower in the rankings just because those waiting for a bargain haven't snatched them up yet.

Another possible 3rd variable is whether there is a controversial tag associated with the manga. For example, Wild, Wild, Wildlife suddenly disappeared from my library one day and I didn't know why. I thought it must have been removed from the website or something, but then I found out recently about the controversial tag filter and when I disabled that, it reappeared. Apparently, it got the humiliation tag and so it disappeared. Since most users who don't actively go and disable that filter won't even know that book exists, it will naturally lower its sales.

As you say, there's only one proper yuri-focused book so far but we can still evaluate the tag, which also appeared on 'The Pollinic Girls Attack! Complete' and 'twin Milf Vol. 1'.

Yuri currently earns a score of 8.5, which does put it in the top third of all tags. Unfortunately, 'When Budding Lilies Blossom' is the lowest ranked of the three which bodes somewhat poorly for exclusively yuri-focused releases. We're more likely to continue seeing it as a sub-theme for a book rather than a primary focus.



This is a good point. If there's a known list of all the controversial tags, I might go back through my formulas and eliminate books with those tags since they would tend to skew the numbers.

I'm not sure if there is a list per see, but if you have that filter on and check the tags, then turn off the filter and check the tags, that will let you know the difference. I know Loli, Shota, Incest, and Humiliation are affected by the filter, as those started appearing after I disabled it, but I don't know what else. It's kind of funny that 'humiliation' is affected by the filter but NTR isn't, given that Humiliation is usually a big part of NTR.

As it turns out, the 'Tentacles' tag is also controversial. By excluding controversial tags, we end up eliminating only three books - 'Bosshi's XXX Mix', 'Hanafuda' and 'Wild, Wild Wildlife'

Here are the new top 10 tags:

1) Uncensored (23.9)
2) Oni (20.2)
3) Futanari (18.5)
4) Busty (16.2)
5) Horns (14.2)
6) Kogal (14.0)
7) Blowjob (13.8)
8) Petite (13.2)
9) Dark Skin (12.9)
10) Osananajimi (12.5)

It's almost identical to before except 'Futanari' has jumped up dramatically in the list! 'Bosshi's XXX Mix' was apparently holding this tag back from its true potential! If you exclude 'Oni', which as mentioned earlier appears to be the result of mistagging, then 'Futanari' actually becomes the most popular content tag.

Time for more Futanari books, Fakku!

Edit: Weirdly, Hanafuda still appears in the store when logged out despite its controversial tag.