'%20x='0'%20y='0'%20height='100%25'%20width='100%25'%20%0A%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20%20xlink%3Ahref='data:image/jpg;base64,/9j/4AAQSkZJRgABAQAAAQABAAD/2wCEAAMDAwMDAwQEBAQFBQUFBQcHBgYHBwsICQgJCAsRCwwLCwwLEQ8SDw4PEg8bFRMTFRsfGhkaHyYiIiYwLTA+PlQBAwMDAwMDBAQEBAUFBQUFBwcGBgcHCwgJCAkICxELDAsLDAsRDxIPDg8SDxsVExMVGx8aGRofJiIiJjAtMD4+VP/AABEIAAUACgMBIgACEQEDEQH/xABfAAEBAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAABwkQAAIABgMBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAEDAAIEBQYRBxIhUQEBAQAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAwQRAAICAwEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIDAAERIcES/9oADAMBAAIRAxEAPwCbY7yfjF6qqyorcQYXqqLaqRi7s2TxzAokyiTRI15GlQxe3OAYe47jtrf2EIpF7gJnky2fKgNWuxXka0PZ/9k='%3E%3C/image%3E%3C/svg%3E)
A Twitter user and reputable One Piece news source @OROJAPAN1 reported on Friday that Blue Lock had overtaken One Piece, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Chainsaw Man in manga sales. The sales figures referenced the month of December 2022, in which One Piece didn’t even make the top 5 in copies sold.
Author Muneyuki Kaneshiro and illustrator Yusuke Nomura’s Blue Lock series has had quite an exciting 2022. October saw the incredibly popular anime adaptation for the series premiere, while August saw the series’ manga surpass a figure of 10 million copies in circulation.
Follow along as this article fully breaks down the latest Blue Lock news, as well as the top rankings for manga sales in December 2022.
Blue Lock attains top prize in copies sold for December 2022, buttressed by anime adaptation’s earlier premiere
Per the chart that the Twitter user shared, the Blue Lock manga published by Kodansha retained the top spot in copies sold in December 2022 with a final count of 1,531,915 copies.
The series edges out, most noticeably, Gege Akutami’s Jujutsu Kaisen, Tatsuki Fujimoto’s Chainsaw Man, Tatsuya Endo’s Spy x Family, and Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece. Jujutsu Kaisen took the second spot with 1,310,343 copies sold, followed by Chainsaw Man with 1,159,232 copies sold.
In the fourth spot is Takehiko Inoue’s Slam Dunk with 1,064,231 copies sold. Fuse and Taiki Kawakami’s That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime with a massive drop in sales to 575,966 copies sold in the month of December. This is followed by One Piece with 494,699 copies sold, Spy x Family with 453,493 copies sold, and Tokyo Revengers by Ken Wakui with 333,777 copies sold.
Especially shocking is the massive drop in figures from Slam Dunk to Reincarnated as a Slime, with the latter posting a little over half of the total copies sold of the former.
Blue Lock’s dominance is undoubtedly influenced by the series’ anime adaptation, which premiered in October 2022 and has been one of the biggest hits of the year. Fans praised the series for its fresh take on the sports genre, emphasizing the competitiveness that can take place amongst players within a single team who are all playing for the same goal.
Japan’s success in the 2023 FIFA World Cup further helped to bring attention to the series, with Nomura releasing several illustrations to celebrate Japan’s wins throughout the tournament. With the series’ plot itself being centered around Japanese performance in an earlier year of the same tournament, it only helped to draw further attention to the series and create new fans.
Follow along for more anime, manga, film, and live-action news in the upcoming 2023 as well.
