‘Blue Lock’ Beats One Piece and Jujutsu Kaisen As The Best-Selling Manga Series of 2023

As we bid farewell to 2023, let’s brace ourselves to discover which manga series stole the hearts of fans. Spoiler alert: it’s ‘Blue Lock.’

Fortunately, Oricon has already released its list of the best-selling manga series this year, and the results might shock some fans!

Oricon is a trusted Japanese media website that provides statistics on Japanese media like showbiz, manga, and other industries.

A few days ago, Oricon released its list of the best-selling manga series for 2023 (November 2022-2023), and the best-selling manga series for this year is a series not many expected to see.

So, let’s see the winners, alongside the number of copies they were able to circulate in 2023.

Top 10 Best-Selling Manga Series of 2023

The top 10 best-selling manga series include:

1. Blue Lock – 10.52 million copies
2. Jujutsu Kaisen – 8.54 million copies
3. One Piece – 7.19 million copies
4. Oshi no Ko – 5.41 million copies
5. Chainsaw Man – 5.34 million copies
6. Slam Dunk – 4.96 million copies
7. Spy x Family – 4.32 million copies
8. My Hero Academia – 3.52 million copies
9. Tokyo Revengers – 3.21 million copies
10. Kingdom – 3.20 million copies

With its movie just a few months away, “Blue Lock,” by Muneyuki Kaneshiro and Yusuke Nomura, definitely came out as a dark horse, as it was the best-selling manga series in 2023

It beat off some popular manga series like One Piece (by Eiichiro Oda), Jujutsu Kaisen (by Gege Akutami), Oshi no Ko (by Akasaka Aka and Yokoyari Mengo) and some other series.

A spotlight in this list is “Slam Dunk” by Inoue Takahiko, which concluded almost 27 years ago and is still topping the annual charts of best-selling manga series.

Top 11-25 Best-Selling Manga Series of 2023

The other best-selling manga series mentioned by Oricon in their list are as follows:

11. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
12. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
13. The Apothecary Diaries
14. Welcome to Demon School! Iruma-kun
15. Kaiju No. 8
16. Do Not Say Mystery
17. Sakamoto Days
18. Mashle: Magic and Muscles
19. Aoashi
20. Detective Conan
21. Toliet-Bound Hanako-kun
22. My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999
23. Record of Ragnarok
24. Blue Box
25. Bocchi the Rock

“Freiren: Beyond Journey’s End” (by Yamada Kanehito and Abe Tsukasa) and “Apothecary Diaries” (by Hyuuga Natsu, Nanao Itsuki, and Nekokurage) are already topping the Fall Anime Season charts of 2023 with their beautiful adaptations, so their sequel chances are already becoming very high.

“Kaiju no. 8” (by Matsumoto Naoya) and “Blue Box” (by Miura Kouji) have their anime adaptations announced, so expectations are pretty high for them.

A dark horse in this list is “Do Not Say Mystery” (by Tamura Yumi), which has yet to receive some recognition outside Japan.

Best-Selling Individual Volumes of Manga Series in 2023

Although “Blue Lock” was branded the best-selling manga series, “One Piece” takes the cake with the best-selling individual volume of 2023.

Volume 105 of One Piece sold 1,912,008 copies throughout 2023. The top 20 best-selling individual volumes of manga series in 2023 are as follows:

1. ONE PIECE 105 – 1.91 million copies
2. Jujutsu Kaisen 21 – 1.77 million copies
3. ONE PIECE 106 – 1.69 million copies
4. Jujutsu Kaisen 22 – 1.64 million copies
5. Jujutsu Kaisen 23 – 1.45 million copies
6. SPY x FAMILY 11 – 1.39 million copies
7. ONE PIECE 107 – 1.30 million copies
8. Jujutsu Kaisen 24 – 1.19 million copies
9. SPY x FAMILY 12 – 1.04 million copies
10. Tokyo Revengers 31 – 914k copies
11. My Hero Academia 37 – 790k copies
12. Chainsaw Man 13 – 744k copies
13. My Hero Academia 38 – 702k copies
14. Kingdom 67 – 664k copies
15. Kingdom 68 – 630.320k copies
16. Kingdom 69 – 598k copies
17. Blue Lock 22 – 591k copies
18. Chainsaw Man 14 – 587k copies
19. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime 22 – 560k copies.
20. Blue Lock 23 – 545k copies

How Did Blue Lock Manage To Be the Best-Selling Manga of 2023?

As the individual volume sales can tell, the highest place a “Blue Lock” volume could take was #17, which was its volume 22. So, how is it the best-selling manga series in 2023?

Although it didn’t have the best-selling individual volume in 2023, it did sell the most individual volumes in 2023; thus, the overall stats of this manga becoming really high.

So, even if the individual sales of each volume don’t look that much compared to the top volumes, “Blue Lock” volumes appeared eight times in the Top 50 best-selling volumes, thus making its overall sales higher than any other manga series.

You Might Like: Blue Lock Season 2: What We Know So Far

What are your thoughts on this? Are you aware of all these manga series that appeared on this list today? Let us know in the comments below.