When it comes to Blue Lock, there is no denying the series is on the up and up. Back in October 2022, the soccer manga saw its anime adaptation go live, and Blue Lock has been recruiting fans to its team ever since. Now, it seems the manga has hit a major milestone as its 2023 sales have made history.
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Yes, you read that right. Blue Lock has been clocked as the top-selling manga by Oricon in 2023. Over the past year, Blue Lock has sold 10.52 million copies in Japan. This total doesn’t account for select store sales or foreign units either. But no matter how you interpret the numbers, Blue Lock sold a lot of manga.
As for what’s so historic about this record, well – it has to do with the story Blue Lock tells. The manga is the first spokon series to top the manga sales chart, and it the first from Shonen Magazine to take the spot. And if you are confused about the term spoken, no worries. The term was popularized in Japan, and it refers to sports titles. Derived from the Japanese words for sport and spirit, spokon titles include tons of series from Haikyuu to Slam Dunk.
Now, it seems Blue Lock is carrying the banner for sports series. The manga managed to beat out total sales despite fierce competition from One Piece and Jujutsu Kaisen. We are sure creators Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Yusuke Nomura are celebrating the rise of Blue Lock this holiday season. And for all of you anime fans, a second season is already in the works at Eight Bit Studios.
If you have never heard of Blue Lock, you can always check out the sports series. The anime’s first season is streaming on Crunchyroll, and Kodansha Comics handles Blue Lock’s manga stateside. So for more info on the soccer series, you can read the official synopsis of Blue Lock below:
“Japan’s desire for World Cup glory leads the Japanese Football Association to launch a new rigorous training program to find the national team’s next striker. Three hundred high school players are pitted against each other for the position, but only one will come out on top. Who among them will be the striker to usher in a new era of Japanese soccer?”
Have you checked out Blue Lock since the anime went live? Let us know what you think in the comments below as well as on Twitter and Instagram. You can also hit me up @MeganPetersCB to share your take!
