How Many Blue Lock Volumes Are There and What Is the Best Order to Read Them?
Blue Lock is a Japanese sports manga series, specifically football, the series is set after the results of the Japan soccer team after the 2018 World Cup. On August 12, 2021, an anime adaptation produced by 8-Bit was announced, which premiered in October 2022 with a 24-episode first season. While we’re waiting for more episodes and seasons of Blue Lock, we have brought you a full and detailed reading order of the series so you know your way around it.
Blue Lock started its run on August 1, 2018, when the first chapter appeared. As is normal with various manga titles, the individual chapters are later collected in tankōbon volumes, and as of February 2023, there are 22 tankōbon volumes in total. Since Blue Lock is an ongoing title, the number of volumes will certainly increase later.
While we’re waiting for new chapters and episodes of Blue Lock to come up, you might want to catch up on the original manga, and that is why we have decided to tell you how to read the chapters that have already come out by giving you a detailed reading order for the Blue Lock manga, including all the 22 volumes of the series.
How many Blue Lock chapters and volumes are there?
The structure of the Blue Lock manga is not overly complex, and it’s not even such a big work. The series consists of one main manga series that has been in print since August 1, 2018, and is still ongoing. As of the time of writing, there are 204 published chapters, 194 of which have been collected in a total of 22 tankōbon volumes. Volume 23 is scheduled for a March 2023 release, but we don’t know which chapters it will collect. This means that there are 204 chapters and 22 volumes of the Blue Lock manga as of the time of writing, with the number set to increase in the future.
In what order should you read Blue Lock?
Reading Blue Lock is quite easy. You should simply follow the regular release schedule of the Blue Lock manga and follow the volumes as they have come out, as the chronological order is completely identical to the release order. It wouldn’t make sense to read it in any other way. As we have said, Blue Lock is a manga with no overly complex structure and is very easy to read and follow.
Blue Lock reading order
The volumes published so far include the following:
| No | Chapters | Publication Date | ISBN |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1-4 | November 16, 2018 | ISBN 978-4-06-513400-9 |
| 2 | 5-13 | January 17, 2019 | ISBN 978-4-06-514121-2 |
| 3 | 14-22 | March 15, 2019 | ISBN 978-4-06-514447-3 |
| 4 | 23-31 | June 17, 2019 | ISBN 978-4-06-515450-2 |
| 5 | 32-40 | August 16, 2019 | ISBN 978-4-06-516336-8 |
| 6 | 41-49 | October 17, 2019 | ISBN 978-4-06-517167-7 |
| 7 | 50-58 | January 17, 2020 | ISBN 978-4-06-517887-4 |
| 8 | 59-67 | March 17, 2020 | ISBN 978-4-06-518559-9 |
| 9 | 68-76 | May 15, 2020 | ISBN 978-4-06-518854-5 |
| 10 | 77-85 | August 17, 2020 | ISBN 978-4-06-520360-6 |
| 11 | 86-94 | October 16, 2020 | ISBN 978-4-06-521018-5 |
| 12 | 95-103 | December 17, 2020 | ISBN 978-4-06-521638-5 |
| 13 | 104-112 | March 17, 2021 | ISBN 978-4-06-522073-3 |
| 14 | 113-121 | May 17, 2021 | ISBN 978-4-06-523148-7 |
| 15 | 122-131 | August 17, 2021 | ISBN 978-4-06-524479-1 |
| 16 | 132-140 | October 15, 2021 | ISBN 978-4-06-525141-6 |
| 17 | 141-149 | December 17, 2021 | ISBN 978-4-06-526286-3 |
| 18 | 150-158 | March 17, 2022 | ISBN 978-4-06-527288-6 |
| 19 | 159-167 | May 17, 2022 | ISBN 978-4-06-527913-7 |
| 20 | 168-176 | July 15, 2022 | ISBN 978-4-06-528501-5 |
| 21 | 177-185 | October 17, 2022 | ISBN 978-4-06-513400-9 |
| 22 | 186-194 | December 16, 2022 | ISBN 978-4-06-514121-2 |
| 23 | 195-203 (TBC) | March 16, 2023 | ISBN 978-4-06-530927-8 |
What is Blue Lock about?
Yoichi Isagi is a young soccer player from Saitama prefecture, his high school soccer team does not qualify for the national championships by losing to the team of Ryousuke Kira, a young talent candidate for the national youth team. Isagi and Kira are invited to join the Blue Lock, an academy that aims to create the strongest striker in the world who will lead Japan to World Cup victory, in fact, in reaction to Japan’s defeat against Belgium at the World Cup in Russia Jinpachi Ego (the director of the Blue Lock) have invited three hundred of the strongest strikers from the high school leagues to undergo a series of special training sessions.
Isagi and Kira are placed in the Z-Team along with other footballers such as Meguru Bachira, Hyoma Chigiri, Gin Gagamaru, Rensuke Kunigami, Wataru Kuon, Gurimu Igarashi, Jingo Raichi and Asahi Naruhaya. The first test consists in eliminating a player from his team. The participants challenge each other in an enclosed space with a ball. The last one who is hit by the ball when time runs out is eliminated. Isagi kicks the ball, hitting Kira, who is immediately eliminated from Blue Lock.
The teams are divided into five groups according to the level of skill of the players where. They will have to face each other in a round-robin; only the players of the teams who will get the first two positions in their blocks will access the next test, while in the case of the others, only the players will be promoted. The footballer who will get the most goals. Team Z is placed in the fifth block, where less talented players called up to the Blue Lock have been selected together with Team V, Team W, Team X, and Team Y.
In the first match, Isagi faced Team X losing due to the fact that the opponents had a more organized game scoring five goals; in fact, the very strong bomber Shoei Baro scored more than half of the goals, and the only goal of Team Z was scored by Kunigami thanks to a pass from Isagi. In the next game, the opponents are Team Y, who at first take the lead thanks to Ikki Niko, who launches his partner Hibiki Okawa in attack with a deep pass allowing the latter to score a goal, and Isagi shots on goal. Still, Niko deflects the shot, but Gagamaru drives the ball into the net with his left foot. Finally, Isagi scores the winning goal.
Team W plays Keisuke and Junichi, the Wanima twins; at first, Team Z seems to dominate the match with a hat-trick from Kuon, but then the Wanima twins manage to score four goals. Kuon put them in the position to score easily for them to win; in exchange, the twins would allow Kuon to score a large number of goals. Kuon’s plan is to have the Z-Team eliminated and be promoted to the only player getting the most goals. Thanks to Chigiri, who manages to score one last goal, Team Z draws.
Will there be more Blue Lock manga?
The Blue Lock manga is still ongoing. The first chapter was published in Kodansha’s Weekly Shōnen Magazine magazine on August 1, 2018, and the manga has been ongoing since then. With 22 collected volumes published as of February 2023 and numerous uncollected chapters, we can confirm that the manga is still ongoing, which means that the Blue Lock series is alive and well and that we can expect more of the manga in the future. And this is no surprise as the manga is one of the hottest ongoing titles in the world.