After Jujutsu Kaisen and SPY x FAMILY, we were all wondering what manga would be the next big thing. Many were tipping Chainsaw Man to take the baton, while many thought Mashle could also be a huge hit. But it has been Weekly Shonen Magazine’s Blue Lock, which is the Best-Selling Manga Series of 2023, following the debut of the anime last year.
Best-Selling Manga Series of 2023: Blue Lock beats Jujutsu Kaisen and surpasses 10 Million.
Blue Lock has now surpassed over 10 million copies in sales this year with the release of its latest volume. Volume 26 of the Blue Lock manga has sold over 280,000 copies within its three weeks of release, while the series continues to do tremendously well in backlog sales more than six months after the end of the first season of the anime.
Meanwhile, Jujutsu Kaisen continues to have another solid year and is the Second Best-Selling Manga of the Fiscal Year of 2023, with a cumulative total of 6.58 million copies sold. With the help of the anime’s standout second season, which has already surpassed the previous season in terms of global hype and popularity, the manga will probably be ushering into the next year with plenty more success. Jujutsu Kaisen Volume 24, the latest instalment of the manga series, has sold over 1.073 million copies so far.
Best-Selling Manga Series of 2023: One Piece set to end the year in the Top 3, with Oshi no Ko likely to surpass Chainsaw Man.
One Piece is all set to end the year in the Top 3, with the series selling 5.67 million copies this year so far and its Volume 107 set to release right before the end of the fiscal year in November. Volume 106 had sold over 1.58 million copies as of the last update.
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Chainsaw Man may not have had the success everybody imagined it to have, certainly with the amount of massive hype surrounding the series, but regardless of that, the series has had a great year. The Chainsaw Man manga has sold over 5.2 million copies this year and is the Fourth Best-Selling Manga Series of 2023.
Volume 15 of the series sold over 356,000 copies in its first month, which was, however, a pretty significant dropoff from the 450,000 copies Volume 14 sold in its debut month.
Meanwhile, Oshi no Ko has had rapid success and, within a mere few months after its anime blew up, is on course to outdo Chainsaw Man before the fiscal year’s end with a new volume set to be released this month. Oshi no Ko has already sold over 5 million copies, and its backlogs have continued to do extremely well.
Oshi no Ko Volume 12 sold over 415,000 copies in its debut month.
Slam Dunk is in the sixth spot for 2023 and will most likely remain in this spot for the remainder of the year. With the release of the movie The First Slam Dunk, the Slam Dunk manga once again picked up some huge traction a couple of decades after the series ended and went on to sell over 4.77 million copies. The film grossed over $250 million globally.
SPY x FAMILY is the Seventh Best-Selling Manga Series of 2023, selling a total of over 3.175 million copies this year so far. With the Second Season of the anime airing right now and an anime original movie on the way, the series is all set to end the year on a high note and will start 2024 in a similar fashion as well. Needless to say, the SPY x FAMILY hype train is not stopping anytime soon.
Tokyo Revengers released its final volume in January, and with the end of the manga, the hype for the series slowly drowned out. Despite two anime seasons this year, there hasn’t been any significant backlog boost in the last nine months. The series has still sold over 3.1 million copies this year, with the final volume selling over 800,000 copies.
Meanwhile, My Hero Academia has sold over 2.8 million copies during this fiscal year, with Volume 38 selling over 440,000 copies in its debut run. The anime’s standout sixth season finished airing in March, with the seventh season expected to be released sometime in 2024. Historical seinen epic Kingdom concludes the Top 10 with over 2.7 million copies sold. The latest volume of the series has sold over 544,000 copies so far.
READ MORE: Tokyo Revengers Season 2: The Biggest Falloff Anime Has Ever Seen?
The Tezuka Cultural Prize winner, Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End, has been growing rapidly with the release of its anime, which has seen a great deal of success so far. Its backlogs have been performing incredibly well, with Volume 1 of the series now having sold over 800,000 copies. The final volume of Mashle has sold over 82,000 copies in its first month, with the series now having sold over 1.1 million copies this year, while the latest volume of Bersek has sold over 157,000 copies in just three weeks.
You can check out the full list below.
Top 25 Best-Selling Manga Series of 2023 So Far (As of October 01):
- Blue Lock; 10,210,000
- Jujutsu Kaisen; 6,580,000
- One Piece; 5,675,000
- Chainsaw Man~ 5,200,000
- Oshi no Ko~ 5,050,000
- Slam Dunk~ 4,775,000
- SPY x FAMILY~ 3,175,000
- Tokyo Revengers~ 3,100,000
- My Hero Academia~ 2,875,000
- Kingdom~ 2,700,000
- That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime~ 2,075,000
- Welcome to Demon-School! Iruma-kun~ 1,750,000
- Kaiju No. 8~ 1,400,000
- Bocchi the Rock!~ 1,165,000
- Mashle~ 1,160,000
- Ao Ashi~ 1,125,000
- Sakamoto Days~ 1,115,000
- Record of Ragnarok~ 1,100,000
- Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End~ 1,060,000
- Detective Conan~ 915,000
- Hell’s Paradise~ 915,000
- My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999~ 900,000
- Blue Box~ 850,000
- Haikyuu!!~ 825,000
- The Apothecary Diaries~ 800,000.
Source: Oricon Charts.
READ MORE: Top 15 Most Popular Anime in Japan Right Now, Jujutsu Kaisen vs Spy x Family
Did any of your favourite manga series make this list of the Top 25 Most Popular Manga of 2023 in Japan right now? Comment below and let us know.