Forget Kingdom, the Manga Even Naruto Fans Call a ‘Knockoff’ Just Pulverized One Piece

Kingdom topped Oricon’s Monthly Comic Ranking for August 2026, but buried further down that same top ten is a juicier story. Black Clover, the manga Naruto fans still love branding a knockoff, quietly outsold One Piece by a wide margin.

Yuki Tabata’s final volume landed at #5 with 104,187 copies, while Eiichiro Oda’s Volume 115 slipped to #8 with 68,312, a gap of roughly 36,000 copies inside the same monthly tally. Kingdom’s Volume 80 ran away with #1 at 365,379 copies. Here’s the full breakdown of what actually happened on that chart.

Black Clover Overtakes One Piece in the Top 10 Printed Manga Sales

Oricon’s Monthly Comic Ranking for August 2026, tracking sales from August 3 to August 30, put Kingdom‘s Volume 80 comfortably in first with 365,379 copies, followed by Blue Lock‘s Volume 40 at #2 with 127,399 and The Apothecary Diaries‘ Volume 17 at #3 with 109,244. Sakamoto Days‘ Volume 28 slotted in at #4 with 108,273 copies. Right behind it, at #5, sits Black Clover‘s Volume 38, Yuki Tabata’s final entry, released August 4 alongside the companion guidebook Perfect Grimoire, moving 104,187 copies for the month.

The top 10 compiled print volumes of manga or comics in Japan in August 2026, according to Oricon, were (via ANN):

One Piece landed three spots lower. Eiichiro Oda’s Volume 115 sold 68,312 copies in August, good enough for #8, even though its cumulative total already sits north of 1,088,000 copies. That means Black Clover, a series wrapping up after eleven years, outsold One Piece by nearly 36,000 units in the same monthly chart, with Black Lagoon‘s Volume 14 (101,918 copies) and Haimiya Is Scary Cute Volume 3 (74,713 copies) filling out #6 and #7 in between them. Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun‘s special edition and Made in Abyss rounded out #9 and #10.

It’s a striking result on paper. One Piece is still one of the best-selling manga on the planet by sheer cumulative weight, and its million-plus lifetime total proves it, but for this particular month, in this particular table, it wasn’t even the top Shueisha title, let alone the top seller overall. Black Clover closing out its run by beating One Piece‘s newest volume, in the same ranking where Kingdom took the crown, is the kind of detail that gets buried under a bigger headline unless someone actually reads down the list.

Why Do Fans Consider Black Clover a Naruto Knockoff?

Asta from Black Clover | Credits: Studio Pierrot

This is a debate that’s basically as old as Black Clover itself. Since 2015, whenever a new chapter dropped, somewhere online a thread would pop up dissecting exactly how it lines up with Naruto. Two orphan boys, rivals since childhood, both chasing the top job in their world, Wizard King instead of Hokage – is the comparison that never seems to go away. Toss in Asta’s anti-magic devil, Liebe, living inside his grimoire, and fans immediately drew a line to Kurama sealed away in Naruto, even though creator Yuki Tabata has said Liebe actually takes after Zangetsu from Bleach.

The accusations picked up steam again over the years, with one arc drawing fire for a character awakening an eye power that looked a little too close to the Sharingan for comfort. Screenshots got passed around, old panels got dug up side by side, and the “copy clover” jokes wrote themselves. At a Manga Barcelona appearance, he pointed to Dragon Ball, Yu Yu Hakusho, Bleach, Naruto, and One Piece; all highly acclaimed works from Weekly Shonen Jump as his inspirations.

However, just because he was inspired doesn’t really mean he copied blatantly, as fans have claimed. If anything, the finale reignited them, with fans picking apart the last chapters for parallels to Naruto‘s own ending. Fair or not, “Naruto knockoff” has followed Black Clover since chapter one, and even a decade-plus and 38 volumes later, plenty of people still aren’t ready to let it go.

What are your thoughts on it? We’d love to know them in the comments below.