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Blue Lock manga recently overtook One Piece and Jujutsu Kaisen as the highest-selling series in 2023. Considering the commercial and cultural influence of both franchises, there is no doubt that Muneyuki Kaneshiro's manga has reached a significant milestone.
The 2022 anime adaptation had a huge impact on this achievement as well. This series has been extremely consistent since it first came out back in 2018, and the celebration of individualism, along with the themes of thinking outside the box and prioritizing yourself to achieve your goals that have resonated with people, has made it a unique sports manga.
Disclaimer: This article contains spoilers for the Blue Lock series.
Blue Lock overtakes Jujutsu Kaisen and One Piece as the highest-selling manga in 2023
According to Oricon, a Japanese platform dedicated to tracking manga sales, Blue Lock has sold more manga copies than the likes of One Piece and Jujutsu Kaisen, which are usually regarded as the most popular series at the moment. It is also worth noticing that these numbers are focused on general manga copies sold, not on specific volumes. From that perspective, the two other series sold more specific volumes than Kaneshiro's manga.
As of this writing, the manga has sold over 30 million copies since starting publication back in 2018. It is also worth pointing out that the anime adaptation by Eight Bit was probably a huge factor in this series' success, as it allowed a lot of people to get to know the story and get into it. Interestingly, Blue Lock is the first Kodansha series to top the yearly rankings ever.
Another element that has probably helped Blue Lock from a commercial perspective, at least compared to One Piece and Jujutsu Kaisen, is its focus on football. It is the most popular sport in the world, and it attracts the attention of those who aren't necessarily manga aficionados, which is an added plus.
The appeal and premise of the series
Part of the reason Blue Lock has been such a successful series is that the premise is quite different from most sports stories: Yoichi Isagi is a teenager who plays as a striker and struggles a lot with decision-making. Because he is very promising, he is offered a chance at the Blue Lock project. The best young strikers in Japan have to go through trials to earn a place in the country's Under-20 national team, and those who fail cannot play football ever again.
It is an eat-or-be-eaten kind of story where Ego, the leading figure in the project, promotes the players to be selfish and prioritize their own success because, according to him, that's how the best strikers are born. The series has a lot of twists and turns, and Isagi, the protagonist, develops a great capacity to read the game and adapt, which is phenomenal as he faces players who have a lot more natural abilities than he does.
