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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lawrence, Briana, author.

Title: The essential manga guide: 50 series every manga fan should know / Briana Lawrence.

Description: First edition. | Philadelphia: Running Press, 2024. | Includes index. | Summary: “A must-have guide written by Crunchyroll senior editor Briana Lawrence compiles the most iconic, contemporary, and “essential” Japanese manga series and popular standalone titles in this one-of-a-kind guide for all manga fans”—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023026690 (print) | LCCN 2023026691 (ebook) | ISBN 9780762481781 (paperback) | ISBN 9780762481798 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Manga (Comic books)—Japan—History and criticism. | Comic books, strips, etc.—Japan—History and criticism. | LCGFT: Comics criticism.

Classification: LCC PN6790.J3 L39 2024 (print) | LCC PN6790.J3 (ebook) | DDC 741.5/952—dc23/eng/20230808

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023026690

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023026691

ISBNs: 978-0-7624-8178-1 (paperback), 978-0-7624-8179-8 (ebook)

E3-20240422-JV-NF-ORI

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

COPYRIGHT

DEDICATION

THE ESSENTIAL AUTHOR’S NOTE

What the Heck Is Manga?

Part One: This Anime Is Based on a Book (Sometimes)

Part Two: Not Quite Like My Sonic the Hedgehog Comics

Part Three: Is It All Like Superman?

No, We’re Not Reading Backward: Manga’s History and Journey West

Part One: All Good Things Have Been Here for a While

Part Two: An Attempt Was Made

Part Three: If You Build It, They Will Come

Part Four: Manga Around the World

All Right, So Where Do I Start?

The Rose of Versailles

Dragon Ball

Berserk

Tokyo Babylon

YuYu Hakusho

Sailor Moon

Pet Shop of Horrors

Revolutionary Girl Utena

Inuyasha

Pokémon Adventures

One Piece

Uzumaki

Fruits Basket

Naruto

Paradise Kiss

Fullmetal Alchemist

Bleach

Ouran High School Host Club

Death Note

What Did You Eat Yesterday?

Princess Jellyfish

Kuroko’s Basketball

Haikyu!!

Mob Psycho 100

given

Wotakoi: Love Is Hard for Otaku

My Hero Academia

My Brother’s Husband

Kaguya-sama: Love Is War

Our Dreams at Dusk

The Bride Was a Boy

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba

Komi Can’t Communicate

My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness

The Promised Neverland

Moriarty the Patriot

Sasaki and Miyano

Blue Flag

BL Metamorphosis

The Way of the Househusband

Jujutsu Kaisen

BLUELOCK

How Do We Relationship?

Chainsaw Man

SPY x FAMILY

I Think Our Son Is Gay

Sex Ed 120%

Boys Run the Riot

I Want to Be a Wall

Until I Meet My Husband

Conclusions Are Always Essential

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

DISCOVER MORE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Navigation

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To the generation who was told they were “too old” for manga, that it was “too weird,” and that they’d “grow out of it,” thank you for proving them wrong.

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THE ESSENTIAL AUTHOR’S NOTE

WHAT DOES ESSENTIAL EVEN MEAN?

“Whatever kind of story you’re looking for, you’ll most likely find it in manga.”

Putting the word “essential” on anything automatically holds it up to a new standard. As a longtime manga reader, I know that everyone has their own list of must-reads and reasons they recommend those works. So, before you dive into this book, know that the manga represented in the following pages have been chosen because I feel they have had significant influence on the medium or because they highlight how the medium has changed and grown, or simply because they are too good for you to not know about them. Of course, we all interact, respond, and connect with manga in different ways, so no one’s list of essentials will be exactly the same.

So, I want to explain what essential means to me.

I’ve been reading manga for more than twenty years—at least half of my life. I started reading it before it was easily available in bookstores, and I’ve been analyzing its stories for several years. When it comes to writing about pop culture, manga is always a medium I enjoy discussing, whether it’s giving a panel at an event or pointing out in an article what a story means to me, personally. That’s why it surprises me that, despite the popularity of manga, there are still plenty of people who overlook it and brush off its significance because they assume it’s just one kind of story.

Outside of the “I don’t have room on my shelves for more manga, yet I’m buying more manga” spaces I inhabit, there exists this label of “immature” that gets tied to certain media that tell a story through illustration or animation. For example, there are those who believe that cartoons and comic books are “just for kids” and not worthy of attention or accolades despite the emotional response these stories are capable of eliciting. Manga faces similar assumptions and obstacles, on top of having to fight against the trite argument that manga isn’t even printed the “right” way. As a medium from a different country, it is more heavily scrutinized than American comics and graphic novels and is often pitted against its American counterparts as the number of manga has not only been increasing, but gaining more sales and accolades year after year. But there’s no need to pit manga and American comics against each other; they’re just two variations of the same medium with the same goal: giving us interesting narratives to read.

Manga, like comics and graphic novels, is made up of a wide range of genres and sub-genres. While there are a few styles and tropes that a new manga reader might have to get used to, there is almost certainly something for any preference. One of the goals of The Essential Manga Guide is to provide readers with a way to explore the medium and see that manga isn’t just an extension of anime; it’s a legitimate and unique form of storytelling that can, and should, be enjoyed and recommended.

There’s a variety of work that exists within manga. And I don’t just mean that there’s more to Chainsaw Man, Fruits Basket, One Piece, Dragon Ball, and Sailor Moon than there appears to be (though there is more meaning to these stories than what’s on the surface), I mean that manga includes every genre of fiction, and nonfiction, that you can think of. Autobiographies, historical accounts, educational stories, explorations of gender and sexuality, discussions of mental health—manga has it all, just like every other kind of book out there.

I’ve reached a point in my life where, when someone asks for book recommendations, I always have a manga in mind to suggest. That’s why manga is essential to me and why I want it to be part of the conversation. The manga in this volume show just how versatile the medium can be, offering an ongoing collection of stories to get lost in. Or maybe I just wanted validation for my constant trips to the bookstore. That could be it, too.

I hope with this book you find your next new read or, who knows, you find new meaning in a read you’ve always enjoyed.

WHAT THE HECK IS MANGA?

PART ONE:
THIS ANIME IS BASED ON A BOOK (SOMETIMES)

My introduction to manga began with anime. It was 1993, I was ten years old, and a kid whose name I don’t remember (but I hope they’re having a good day) said something about a “cartoon… but not really a cartoon.” What did that mean? Well, in my head at the time it meant a collection of cartoons like some of my favorite nineties series. This included titles like The Pirates of Dark Water, Batman: The Animated Series, and Tiny Toon Adventures, just to name a few. So, to me, anime was that, but different. How different? Well, for one thing, they had the audacity to air it at night.

This was completely unheard of; the cartoons my friends and I watched either aired during weekday afternoons or on Saturday mornings. Nighttime was for parents, be it Red Shoe Diaries or something that involved a pool guy and well-timed synth music. Technically there were exceptions to that rule with SNICK, Nickelodeon’s Saturday night programming for those of us into Clarissa Explains It All or All That, or Nick at Nite, where Dick Van Dyke regularly tripped over a footrest. Still, none of that programming was animated. So, guided by curiosity, I flipped through the different TV channels at night. The “cartoon/not cartoon” wasn’t on a network, but it was, indeed, there. I couldn’t point my finger on why the animation style looked different to me, but I knew one thing: Vampire Hunter D was, most certainly, different. And I loved it.

Eventually, I learned that this cartoon was called Japan-imation, or Japanimation, though the pronunciation varied depending on whom you asked. According to the Anime News Network column “Answerman,” the term originated with Central Park Media, a company that, at the time, was distributing for nearly every anime publisher in the United States. When the vice president of sales, Mike Pascuzzi, tried to use the term “anime” to describe this new animation, there was significant pushback from major retailers who struggled to pronounce the word. In response, CPM decided to just smash “Japan” and “animation” together.

I can’t tell you when we finally started calling it anime but, thankfully, we did. According to Anime News Network, fans never really liked the term “Japanimation” but, at the time, it was the only way Pascuzzi could get anime looked at by retailers. Answerman writes, “[Japanimation] sounded too close to a racial slur, and therefore vaguely pejorative. However, for selling anime to big retail chains it was a godsend. The word was entirely self-explanatory—no more sales calls would end with a gruff middle-aged buyer telling Pascuzzi and his team, ‘I don’t know what this ‘ay-naim’ stuff is, but I’m not stocking it.’”

For years, I watched whatever anime came on TV, whether it was the gritty late-night stories I had no business watching (Wicked City) or the story of a young boy named Goku (Dragon Ball) and everything else in between. Thanks to a trip to Suncoast, a retail store that sold movies and, more to the point, international and indie films, I was made aware of the fact that most of the anime I’d been watching had been edited from the versions that had aired in Japan. This is a significant shared experience with older anime fans who talk about “that fateful trip to Suncoast” when an employee revealed how violent Dragon Ball Z really got, how many episodes Cardcaptor Sakura was supposed to have, and how the cousins in Sailor Moon were actually supposed to be girlfriends before it came to the US. In hindsight, discovering how gay Sailor Moon is was a shock, but it wasn’t what surprised me the most about anime. No, the biggest surprise was learning that a lot of it was based on books.

If you haven’t read manga before, the easiest way to explain it is to say that it’s a Japanese comic or graphic novel. While not every anime is an animated adaptation of a manga, there is a good amount of anime that is and, like a lot of media adapted from existing properties, the books can have some wonderful extra details.

PART TWO:
NOT QUITE LIKE MY SONIC THE HEDGEHOG COMICS

Though it’s easy to compare manga to American comics and graphic novels, there are some key differences between them. For one thing, you read manga from right to left instead of left to right. In the US, there tends to be a note in the back of manga (which is actually in the front of the physical book) to let you know that you’re starting in the wrong direction since, to most Western readers, the back of the manga is where we typically think the front would be. This message wasn’t always put inside of manga, but we’ll get to that later here, since the explanation deserves its own chapter.

Another difference is that manga is typically illustrated only in black-and-white. Sometimes you’ll see a few colored pages inside—these are called lead pages—but traditionally most of the book is not in color. While that might sound like a downgrade and a little bit of a bummer compared to full-color comics, you have to understand that manga doesn’t start in a full book (tankōbon) form.

Most manga are serialized and released chapter by chapter in Japan through a manga magazine like Weekly Shōnen Jump, so the reason that manga is printed in black-and-white is because it’s cheaper to print for the magazine. It’s also much faster to print in black-and-white, so manga is also released far more often, typically on a monthly or even weekly basis, depending on the series. Then, if a series is popular, the chapters will be gathered from the magazine and published as its own tankōbon. This is sort of similar to how comics print the single issues first, and then those issues might be collected into the trade edition at a later date, only instead of getting single issues of one story, you’re getting multiple single issues in a magazine. Think of it like this: Instead of getting Spider-Man issue one, then two, and then three, in a manga magazine you would get Spider-Man issue one, Captain America issue one, Ms. Marvel issue one, etc., so you can try out several stories at a time. Then, if Spider-Man gets popular enough, the webslinger would get his own book of collected issues.

Even though a manga might have a tankōbon, that doesn’t mean that’s the end of the manga’s run in its magazine. In fact, most manga continue with this cycle of having chapters serialized in their originating magazine, then gathered and published as the next volume in the series for many years. Manga magazines are one of the medium’s greatest strengths, because you can try a story out chapter by chapter before committing to an entire series or you can just keep reading it through the magazines. Its other strength? The magazine is typically themed or genre-based, so it will have multiple manga series with a similar feel that you can try out! There aren’t too many physical manga magazines in the US, but we do have digital apps that give us access to a huge library of stories. Or you can go to the library! That’s right, we live in a time when manga is available at the library!

As with all books, the length of a manga series can vary. Sometimes a story will be finished in a couple of chapters (then gathered into a few volumes), and other times it can have thousands of chapters. If you’re already a manga fan, you probably have a very specific pirate-themed story in mind when you hear the words “thousands of chapters.” While a manga might have hundreds of chapters, manga characters very rarely get “rebooted,” unlike comic book mainstays like Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, who have all been reinvented numerous times by various writers. That’s another thing that makes manga feel special. For example, One Piece (more here), that pirate-themed manga I mentioned, centers on a character named Luffy who hasn’t been re-envisioned and so readers have been able to watch him grow up throughout the series because it is one continuous story.

Creators of manga, also known as mangaka, typically do both the writing and the art instead of having a separate writer and artist like US comics often do, though there are some exceptions. While there are others involved in helping to make a manga, like editors and assistants, mangaka tend to be the primary creators of their series. That doesn’t mean that manga series and characters don’t change at all, though. In fact, there are plenty of series that have their own spin-offs with new creators, but you don’t necessarily need to read the spin-off to understand the main plot. Some spin-offs, like My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, do add more context, but you aren’t going to be completely lost without it.

Since most mangaka are working on their own, keeping up and updating their series on schedule can be pretty hectic. The demands and pressures of the job often mean that some mangaka need to take extended hiatuses to protect their health. Arguably, one thing creatives across the world have in common is burnout; there are still very necessary conversations to be had about heavy workloads, aggressive deadlines, and a need to better respect creatives and their time.

Just something to keep in mind the next time a manga chapter release is delayed.

PART THREE:
IS IT ALL LIKE SUPERMAN?

Since manga is, essentially, a Japanese form of comic book, you may think that it primarily revolves around superhero stories like many of the ones in the US do. Even though American comics and graphic novels have always been more than just capes and secret tech caves, it would be silly of me to deny that superhero comics tend to be the first thing someone thinks of when talking about comic books. Manga has plenty of heroes, ranging from “plucky underdog who wants to save the world” to “I’m a literal teenager, please leave me alone,” but those aren’t the only kinds of protagonists you run across.

Manga can be found in countless genres and sub-genres from romance, slice-of-life, action, and adventure to horror, comedy, and even nonfiction genres like self-help, auto-biography, and educational texts. In the mood for a sports story that takes the time to actually show and explain the rules of basketball so that it feels like you are watching a live game instead of reading it? There’s a manga for that. There are no limits to the kinds of stories manga can tell, blending storytelling and art to get the mangaka’s point across.

Thanks to the creativity found in the medium, mangaka often push the limits of what is expected even in an illustrated form. As VIZ Media, one of the primary manga companies in the US, points out in their website FAQ, “While manga has similarities to American comics, there are some stylistic aspects that distinguish them, such as bigger eyes on characters and more speed lines in action scenes.” They also talk about how mangaka add visuals for their sound effects as well. Another example that I personally love is when characters break through a panel to try to grab something they want as if the manga’s box can’t contain them. A single powerful moment in a manga can take up an entire two-page spread, emotions can literally burst out of someone, and, sometimes, the mangaka will break the fourth wall and talk directly to the reader, especially if the story is about their own personal life.

Manga typically can be categorized into five main targeted audiences, and each category has certain themes, topics, and aesthetics that are associated with it. Those groups are: shōnen, shōjo, seinen, josei, and kodomomuke. Though each group has a specific audience that it’s targeting, readers of all genders and ages can enjoy titles in these groups.

✷ Shōnen is generally aimed at young boys and typically features protagonists who are young men or teens. This is your coming-of-age story with the main character who declares, “I’m gonna be a hero who keeps smiles on everyone’s faces.” The stories are more action- and adventure-oriented with a focus on building bonds with others. Though action narratives are this group’s bread and butter, you’ll also find sub-genres like slice-of-life, romance, sports, and comedy here, just to name a few.

✷ Shōjo is generally aimed at young girls and has stories that focus more on drama, romance, and emotional storytelling. These young girl and teen protagonists are often navigating life, exploring gender and sexuality, and defying traditional roles and societal norms in real and/or fantastical settings. This is your coming-of-age story that may have a similar beat to “the high school cafeteria is divided like a class system” or “your crush has six months to live” or both.

✷ Seinen is generally aimed at older teens and adult men and shares some similarities with shōnen titles, but often will have a darker tone and explore more serious themes. These stories can also be more violent and sexually explicit. A good way to think of it is that seinen is like an R-rated movie to shōnen’s PG or PG-13 rating.

✷ Josei is generally aimed at older teen and adult women and can have a similar vibe to shōjo. However, it doesn’t shy away from more serious themes and topics as well as more graphic depictions of sex. You’ll also get messier, more dramatic relationship dynamics. A good way to think of it is as a steamy romance novel, prime-time television shows, or, like seinen, an R-rated movie.

✷ Kodomomuke is generally aimed at younger children and focuses on joyful stories that are cute, energetic, and fun. Think Saturday morning cartoons!

Two other terms I want to address are “boys’ love” and “girls’ love,” which touch on homosexual relationships. These terms have become more frequently used compared to the previous terms: shōnen ai/yaoi (boys’ love) and shōjo ai/yuri (girls’ love). While boys’ love and girls’ love generally focus on romance (hence the love), there’s also manga that touch on LGBTQIA+ themes that don’t center on romance. In my experience, stories use LGBTQIA+ terms to describe them, identifying a story as gay, transgender, asexual, and more depending on the plot. Another term you may hear that’s not used as much anymore is “bara,” which is gay manga created by gay men. That said, the term is seen as outdated and holds negative connotations, so the term more widely used for these kinds of stories is “gei komi.” Gei komi tends to be more adult than BL, but both are valuable forms of queer manga.

A quick note: If any of your manga—regardless of the genre or type of romance—are wrapped in plastic, that usually means there’s explicit content inside like graphic violence or sex scenes. These manga also tend to have a parental advisory label on them.

Like all books, the groupings and terms I listed above aren’t strict definitions at all. Just as fiction can encompass multiple genres at once, manga can, too. Manga has no problem having an action-packed adventure teach you science or a wholesome slice-of-life that leads to some extremely heavy trauma. Sometimes, you won’t know the full scope of the story and the themes and topics it’s going to cover until you’re deep into it. Just because shōnen is aimed at young boys, for example, doesn’t mean girls won’t be into it, nor does it mean you won’t get the emotional weight of shōjo in the story. Sports manga, for example, is a notoriously emotional genre, and series like Death Note (more here) are more psychological than action packed. You’ll likely find more action in a magical girl story than the back-and-forth game of mental chess in Death Note.

The same goes for seinen and josei, and it’s good to remember that sometimes a manga might be placed into this age group because of the more mature or serious topics covered and not just because there is violence or explicit sexual content. My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness, for example (more here), is an auto-biographical manga that doesn’t really feature any graphic content, but the situations the mangaka explores—she shows herself using an escort service—and the difficult topics she talks about—she discusses developing an eating disorder and self-harm—are why the manga has that older demographic label.

Manga has many layers to it, with many kinds of narratives. If it’s in the manga section of the bookstore, it can have elements of other genres, and be geared toward all types of people. Manga is for everyone and tells stories about everything; it all depends on what you want to read.

OMAKE

This means “extra” in Japanese and usually refers to special video features in anime, like deleted scenes or outtakes. In this book, “extras” are fun bits of trivia or interesting facts about manga, its creators, or the history of a title.

✷ Weekly Shōnen Jump first began publication in 1968.

✷ One Piece is more than 1,000 chapters but it’s not the only manga to break that number; manga like Hajime no Ippo, Detective Conan, and Crayon Shin-chan are also over 1,000 chapters.

✷ Not all manga are created by one person. Death Note, for example, has a separate artist (Takeshi Obata) and writer (Tsugumi Ohba) working together, and so does The Promised Neverland, which is written by Kaiu Shirai and illustrated by Posuka Demizu.