#BLUELOCK, Chainsaw Man Top List of Highest-Selling Manga in First Half of 2023

That’s right, half of 2023 has already come and gone before you realized. Although this time of year comes with anime seasonal depression, there is the always entertaining perk of finding out which manga and light novel series are tearing up the charts in Japan, courtesy of industry tracker Oricon.

Well, the numbers are in and so is a winning goal for Muneyuki Kaneshiro’s BLUELOCK manga, which handily leads the pack thanks to the popular anime adaptation that concluded its first season in late March. The full top five manga by series is as follows (in estimated copies sold):

• BLUELOCK – 8,046,032
• Chainsaw Man – 4,492,906
• SLAM DUNK – 4,199,966
• JUJUTSU KAISEN – 3,757,215
• One Piece – 3,550,097

As for per-volume rankings for manga, we get a full top 25 (in estimated copies sold):

• One Piece #105 – 1,758,255
• JUJUTSU KAISEN #21 – 1,553,984
• JUJUTSU KAISEN #22 – 1,318,536
• SPY x FAMILY #11 – 1,177,254
• Tokyo Revengers #31 – 846,297
• My Hero Academia #37 – 726,883
• Chainsaw Man #13 – 698,001
• Kingdom #67 – 618,955
• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime #22 – 529,770
• BLUELOCK #22 – 518,277
• Kingdom #68 – 517,986
• Tokyo Revengers #30 – 482,942
• Chainsaw Man #14 – 479,266
• Kaiju No. 8 #9 – 453,197
• THE FIRST SLAM DUNK re:SOURCE – 448,680
• BLUELOCK #23 – 445,253
• Don’t Say Mystery #12 – 435,559
• Case Closed #103 – 397,185
• One Piece #104 – 360,601
• The Apothecary Diaries #11 – 350,781
• BLUELOCK #12 – 349,636
• BLUELOCK #13 – 347,432
• BLUELOCK #21 – 346,093
• Chainsaw Man #12 – 343,271
• BLUELOCK #14 – 342,045

Now for something a little bit different, here are the top 10 highest-selling light novel series for the first half of 2023 (in estimated copies sold):

• The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten – 389,315
• Suzume – 369,925
• BLUELOCK: Tatakai no Mae, Bokura wa. – 213,779
• Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian – 204,770
• Classroom of the Elite: Year 2 – 183,668
• The Apothecary Diaries – 163,677
•           Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?  – 163,538 
• That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime – 162,904
•   Kirby: Right Back at Ya! novelization – 130,694
• Campfire Cooking in Another World with my Absurd Skill – 121, 552

And finally, the top 10 highest-selling individual light novels (in estimated copies sold):

• Suzume novel – 247,093
• Suzume novel (illustrated) – 122,832
• BLUELOCK: Tatakai no Mae, Bokura wa. – Isagi, Nagi, Bachira – 114,408
• BLUELOCK: Tatakai no Mae, Bokura wa. – Chigiri, Rei, Rin – 99,371
• Classroom of the Elite: Year 2 #9 – 96,943
• The Apothecary Diaries #13 – 95,085
• Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?             #18 – 91,652
• Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian #5 – 73,240
• Rohan Kishibe Does Not Fall: Short Story Collection – 69,697
• Detective Conan: Kurogane no Submarine novelization – 68,700

RELATED: Shueisha Announces New JUMP TOON Service for Vertical Manga

Don’t miss out on seeing what all the fuss is about! The full first season of BLUELOCK is currently streaming on Crunchyroll, which describes the psychological sports series as such:

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?

Source: Oricon

Der shy man behind @Shymander, Liam is a timezone-fluid Aussie with a distinct fondness for anime, Eurovision and creating odd stats projects despite hating math.