famous football comics Blue buckle surpassing the two giants in terms of sales, A piece And Jujutsu Kaisen, to take the number one spot as the best-selling manga in the first half of 2023, according to Oricon. The Shonen manga hit record sales in the first part of 2023. Of course, giant titles like One Piece and Jujutsu Kaisen were both best-selling series in the first part of the year, but Blue Lock has confirmed it. positioned as the rising star in the genre.
Oricon (a Japanese company that provides information and statistics about the entertainment industry) has released the manga sales rankings by series for the first half of 2023, and the sales alone show a successful year for manga. The Shonen Jump News Twitter account (an unofficial account that shares news from the manga world) shared Oricon’s semi-annual sales charts for 2023, and the numbers themselves are astounding. . Chainsaw Man, One Piece, Jujutsu Kaisen, and SLAM DUNK are all in the top five, but Blue Lock has completely overwhelmed the competition this year, selling over 8 million copies and beating out some of the most popular names in current anime.
So far, Blue Lock has sold twice as many copies as One Piece and is expected to sell even more with the return of the anime.
The Blue Lock comic series has consistently gained a following since its launch in 2018, and for good reason. The shounen sports genre has always been a favorite, embodied in the classic basketball manga SLAM DUNK sharing a spot in the top five best-selling manga series. However, Blue Lock takes sports to the next level by making football an intense, high-stakes gamble. Instead of focusing on team dynamics or taking place in high school, the series places soccer players from across Japan in an arena with real-world consequences if they lose. This unique premise that fits the variety of genres is what drew so many fans to the series, and if viewers weren’t convinced at first, the anime adaptation closed the deal.
The first season of the Blue Lock anime streamed in 2022 and was so successful that a part 2 of Blue Lock and its spin-off were both announced directly after the first season ended. While the manga has been popular before, with over a million copies sold, the anime has catapulted the series to stardom, resulting in Blue Lock selling more copies this year than Jujutsu Kaisen and One Piece plus again. Although Blue Lock’s popularity is no secret, fans are still surprised and impressed to see how much the series has sold in the first half of 2023 alone.
With another season and a movie coming out, Blue Lock is sure to only become more popular day by day. Sales in the first half of the year prove that Blue buckle should not be underestimated, and it may come for chainsaw man And A piece‘s shounen crown when the anime returns.
Source: @WSJ_manga.