Jujutsu Kaisen Set to Surpass 60 Million Copies in Circulation

The Jujutsu Kaisen series is anything but cursed as the series' publisher announces the manga will surpass 60 million copies in circulation before the end of the year.

The official Japanese Twitter account for the popular Weekly Shonen Jump series announced that the manga series will surpass 60 million copies in circulation on Dec. 25. The manga's circulation has increased by over 700% in the last year as the series received more attention thanks to its well-received anime adaptation and its upcoming prequel movie, Jujutsu Kaisen 0. This sales figure puts the dark fantasy series within the top 50 best-selling manga of all time, and if it can keep up this momentum, there's a very real possibility that it will become the 19th series in history to break the 100 million mark and take its place alongside older manga classics, such as Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, Naruto, Demon Slayer and Bleach.

Jujutsu Kaisen was created by Gege Akutami and begin publication in 2018. The supernatural-action series tells the story of Yuji Itadori, a young man who accidentally becomes the host of Ryomen Sukuna, a powerful spirit. Sukuna is one of the most powerful members of a race known as Curses, which are souls that have been transformed into monstrous beings that now seek to harm the living.

An anime adaptation of the series premiered in late 2020. The show was produced by MAPPA, the animation studio behind the final season of Attack on Titan and the upcoming Chainsaw Man animated series, and was directed Sunghoo Park, who previously directed The God of High School. While critics noted the series' similarities to earlier supernatural shonen anime series such as Yu Yu Hakusho and Bleach, it nonetheless received widespread acclaim for its writing, art, fight choreography and relatable characters. The series was released by Crunchyroll outside of Japan, who revealed that the anime was the second most watched show on the streaming service in 2020, just behind the animated adaptation of Yuki Tabata's Black Clover.

The manga is currently on track to break the 60 million mark by Dec. 25, just a day after the Japanese premiere of Jujutsu Kaisen 0, an animated movie that takes place before the events of the first season of the anime. The movie is an adaptation of a the manga "Tokyo Metropolitan Curse Technical School," which was created by Akutami in 2017. The manga took place in the same world as Jujutsu Kaisen and introduced many of the characters and concepts that would later be expanded upon in Akutami's later series. An international release for Jujutsu Kaisen 0 has not yet been announced, but given the series' huge international popularity, it's safe to assume that the film will be released outside of Japan eventually.

Akutami's Jujutsu Kaisen manga is localized in English and is distributed in North America by Viz Media, while the anime series is available for streaming on Crunchyroll and HBO Max.

Source: Twitter