Recommend me some good/great MANGA (NOT anime).

Cafe Society
1

I don’t like anime at all…and I only barely like manga…
…however, there have been some that have drawn me in due to pretty fantastic story telling and story lines and plots/characters.

So if you know of any good mangas (aka, in written form), feel free to suggest or recommend them here. Don’t suggest any anime at all, however, I won’t watch it, not even if I like the manga version of it.

Point in case, I have tried watching the anime of THREE mangas that I love…and…
…I just couldn’t get into them. I hated the anime versions, even though I love the mangas and even despite the animes mostly following the same, exact story lines as the mangas. I just don’t like 'em. I don’t know why this is, maybe it’s just because the classic “the book is always better than the movie” saying is true.
But more so is…I just FEEL like I can get more from a manga. I can not only read and get through it faster, but it effects me more so than watching it in motion, in video form.
Anyway, here are a list of the (very few) mangas I’m enjoying and I’m including some that I have tried but that I did not like.
I LOVE:

Death Note (although this was one I hated when I tried watching the anime version of)
Ranma 1/2 (although this one I hated when I tried watching the anime version of)
One Punch Man

I LIKE:

Bleach (although this one was one hated when I tried watching the anime version of)
InuYasha
Deadman’s Wonderland
Berserk
Liar Game
Tower of God
The Gamer

I disliked/found boring/uninteresting/too slow/too confusing/etc:

Sailor Moon
Ghost in the Shell
Suicide Island
High School of the Dead
God of High School
Until Death Do Us Part
Full Metal Alchemist
Dragon Ball Z
Evangelion
Cowboy Bebop
Akira
Eifen Lied

Ones I THINK I’d dislike, but haven’t tried yet:

Naruto
Ones I think I MAY like, but haven’t tried yet:

Trigun
Attack on Titan
Mostly I like mangas that have a simple premise, a non-confusing storyline, and that builds up from an interesting, yet fairly ordinary introduction.
I don’t like space stuff or robot stuff or things that have lots of action on each page or ones with extremely confusing or hard to follow story lines or a lot of “what is going on?” moments or hard-to-follow story lines. As you can see, most of the ones I like or love are pretty explanatory at the beginnings and stay that way, building off simple things introduced and pretty much staying simple without constantly changing characters or situations or what not.

Anyway, feel free to suggest any not listed here that you think I’d enjoy based on what I have enjoyed (and not enjoyed) thus far.

2

Huh. Really tall order there.

Jumping in with a few ideas.My taste in manga tends towards “slice of life” stuff—more about the characters in their everyday lives in an interesting setting than about “action” or an overall story arc. The manga you mention don’t tend towards the style of many of the things I’ll mention, but I suspect it may be just because you’ve never heard of them. For some manga I put up with a weaker story if it has a really pleasing art style (and some possibly well written ones I avoid because I don’t’ like the style.)

One of my all-time favorites is Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. It is a very slow-paced, dialogue-light story about a few remaining people (and androids—despite your “no robots” mention) living during a slow, comfortable, peaceful decline of the human era (for unspecified reasons.) The art style is simple but elegant. You can’t go wrong with anything else by the mangaka Hitoshi Ashinano, either. Kabu no Isaki is the longest running of the others, and the most similar to Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. Both of those are finished; Kotonoba Drive is the current series, and similar in feel to the other two.

Fumiyo Kono—The Town of Evening Calm, The Country of Cherry Blossoms and Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni/All the Corners of the World

Kei Toume—I especially enjoy her art style as well as her serieses. I especially like Acony, and Yesterday no Utatte, but there are no losers in her portfolio. (Current running series is Mahoromi Jikuu Kenchiku Genshitan.)

Inio Asano—writes dark, “gritty” realistic manga. The first one you might want to try is Oyasumi Punpun, which follows a character from childhood through adulthood and is realistic in story and art, except for some reason the author chose to draw the protagonist and his immediate family as abstract shapes (most of the time something somewhat birdlike, but later in the series the shape changes during periods of emotional distress.)

Junji Ito—the Stephen King or H.P. Lovecraft of horror manga. And while in the area of horror, you might want to consider Homunculus.

Oda Hideji—take a look at Coo’s World and Miyori’s Forest.

Douman Seiman—especially Voynich Hotel

You didn’t mention humor manga. Probably my favorite is Yotsubato, which I find myself literally laughing out loud at, even on re-read. Something a little like Dennis the Menace if Dennis were a 5-year-old Japanese girl. A somewhat similar one I enjoy is Ichigo Mashimaro. A common format for humor manga is the 4-Koma, which something like a newspaper comic in that it tells a mini-story in 4 panels. Some of my favorite 4-Koma include Azumanga Daioh, Hidamari Sketch, Sketchbook, Wa!, and A-Channel.

I like short story collections. Recommendations in that area include Terrarium in Drawer, Hanashippanashi, Nasu, Nickelodeon Red, Green, and Blue (three separate volumes), and Geko Geko.

This is just scratching the surface, but as much as I may like some manga, the titles/author names are still often Greek to me, and I have to browse through my archives to find many of the works I’m thinking about. I’ll probably try to organize a few more choices later.

(Oh, and the best site for reading manga online is mangapark.me.)

3

I remember “童夢” by Katsuhiro Otomo winning a bunch of awards. There are also translated editions.

4

BTW, this is an excellent site for some highly detailed manga reviews. I’ve found several series that I really like through him. And while not nearly as detailed, these lists are very high quality.

5

They’ve been releasing a lot of manga by Osamu Tezuka so far I’ve liked everything I read. The Phoenix saga is kind of depressing and the quality of the Astro Boy manga can vary from bad to great.
The Dorothy of Oz series by Son He-Joon is very good. Unfortunately they only translated four volumes.

Ignore the OP. Akira may be the greatest manga ever written.

6

Okay, some more ideas.

Kurosagi Corpse Delivery—this is one of my favorites—a group of average students at an average Buddhist college who happen to have a few useful skills (such as “dowsing for the dead” and being able to communicate with them) set up a business transporting corpses—with a side job of fulfilling the dead person’s final wishes. (Up to 13 volumes in English translation via Dark Horse—several volumes beyond that in Japan.)

Narutaru—A few children discover some strange, powerful starfish-like aliens, with which they proceed to start killing each other and attempting world domination.

Alien9—Another manga involving children interacting with aliens. The drawing style is cutesy, the story is dark.

Saike Mata Shite mo—Set in a world where some people are suddenly developing (sometimes weird) superpowers, the protagonist is a guy who’s power is the ability to Groundhog Day himself by drowning himself in a certain lake.

Boku dake ga Inai Machi—Another series about a guy who finds himself jumping backwards along his own timeline during times of stress, allowing him to make some changes to the past.

To Aru Kagaku no Railgun/A Certain Scientific Railgun—A Japanese answer to the X-Men (or New Mutants) set in a high-tech city built to house, educate and train children with superpowers. The protagonist is one of the top five most powerful mutants (not that they ever use that word) in the city, who controls electromagnetism and is essentially Magneto as a middle-school girl. This one is pretty fan-servicey, but has some interesting takes on superheros/mutants and some interesting storylines. (The series is a spinoff of and sometimes overlaps with a different series called To Aru Majutsu no Index/A Certain Magical Index, but I can’t really recommend that one as much.)

Chio-chan no Tsuugakuro—A currently running humor manga about a girl who is just trying to walk to school every day, and is always running into elaborate problems doing so.
A few historicalish manga:

Heureka by Iwaaki Hitoshi—A single volume manga centering around Archimedes and the siege of Syracuse.

Chinggis Kahn by Yokoyama Mituteru—a five volume series about the life of Genghis Kahn

Otoyomegatari by Mori Kaoru—set in the 19th century near the Caspian sea, a 20-year old girl moves to a new village for an arranged marriage to a 12 year old boy. This one is up to 9 volumes translated into English, with a 10th in progress.

Me and the Devil Blues—(Very) loosely based on the life and music of bluesdude Robert Johnson.
A few more collections:

Filament by Urushibara Yuki
The Yellow Book by Takano Fumiko
Scientia by Toda Seiji

And just for the heck of it as an anti-recommendation, you should take a look at the work of Kago Shintaro, especially the collection Yume no Omocha Koujo/Dream Toy Factory. Look at this with rising perplexity and disgust and the epitome of “what the hell did I just read?”.

7

This site (in French) has a list of top user-rated series, overall and by category.

8

Well, if you are into Death Note, the same authors released this amazing exercise in meta language titled Bakuman (It means something like “Bubbleburst”, apparently). It’s about a pair of manga artists. They try to write manga stories with the same intensity and addictive quality the stories with big fights and explosion have, but in their stories the fights are all about characters outsmarting each other. Yeah, like in Death Note.

And yeah, this manga about doing manga, which is the most mundane possible thing for a manga artist, since it’s, well, just their job, also has the same heart-pounding, hair-rising, edge-of-your-seat quality a really addictive action manga has. Also, the artist Takesha Obata is so immensely talented that the story can afford to show the work of the different characters, and you will swear that each comic - within - the - comic shown is a real one.

9

I came in to say ‘Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service’ and saw I was beaten to the punch. It’s terrific.

I also really enjoyed Naoki Urasawa’s PLUTO, the re-imagining of the most famous story arc from the seminal 50s-60s Osamu Tezuka series “Tetsuwan Atomu” aka Astro Boy. It is going to be made as an anime series soon, though, so better read it fast!

Tezuka’s BLACK JACK has been made into anime a few times, but the manga is an all-time great.

10

Maybe too much Japanese stuff listed already? How about a nice French/Spanish manga like Blacksad?

11

Yes, let’s also list some American manga like The Avengers and X-Men.

Most people (Americans, at least) when they say “manga” they mean* by definition* Japanese comics. So the reason I have been listing Japanese comics is because the OP was asking for Japanese comics, and last time I checked (Tokyo tower withstanding) France is not in Japan.

12

I don’t know the OP’s taste, and I wasn’t trying to be cute. I already listed one good Japanese manga. This time I suggested a different comic that also has no “space stuff or robot stuff or…”, but, for a change of pace, is not Japanese. Japan is definitely a huge dominant player in the comics world, but it’s not everything (if the OP only wanted Japanese titles then I apologize).

(Btw the French review site I linked to just lumps together all comics and cartooning, so there are French ones, Japanese ones, American ones, Italian ones, etc, sorted by topic)

13

I can’t speak for the OP, but I’m pretty sure that he meant “manga” in the American sense of “Japanese comics”, just as a request for “manhwa” would be for Korean comics and a request for “manhua” would be for Chinese comics. (I don’t know of a term used in English for specifically French comics, but I nominate “franga.”)

14

French speakers use the term “bande desinee” (lit. “Drawn Strip”) usually shortened as “Bedé”.

15

So do English-speaking fans. Although we often just type “BD”. Also called Franco-Belgian comics because many of the good ones, even though in the French language, are actually Belgian.

16

I’m not a big manga fan, but I loved Hitoshi Iwaaki’s Parasyte ( 寄生獣 ) and bought and read the entire series. It’s a sort of Japanese take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers, with more horror and more thought.

They did do an anime adaptation, but I only caught a little of it, and wasn’t interested. (also, according to the Wikipedia piece, a two-part live-action film, but I haven’t seen this)

17

Vinland Saga and Kingdom are both good. Both have a heavy focus on fighting. I’ve heard people compare them to Berserk. Vinland Saga is a vaguely historical series, using real-life people from the early 11th century Europe, and following the struggles of a viking child as he looks first for revenge for his father’s death, and then for the fabled land of Vinland. Kingdom is also historical, loosely retelling the story of China’s Warring Stares period. It has a vast scale, recounting the conflict between various states, with a focus on a few soldiers’ journeys to become great generals.

And yes, both are manga.

18

I quite enjoyed Junk Force. It’s short, but fun.

I never finished Sorcerer Hunters, either, but every volume was packed full of laughs.

I’d nominate Marvano’s adaption of Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, which might be challenging to find, as well as Tardi’s Adèle Blanc-Sec comics, which have a delightful League of Extraordinary Gentleman feel to them.

19

That is a fine comic, but it is a stretch to claim that The Forever War is free from “space stuff,” even if said space stuff is not the point of the story.

Tardi has also published a lot of fine hard-boiled detective stuff.

20

Miyazaki’s Nausicaa is a masterpiece. The movie that it spawned only covers a heavily pruned first third or so of the manga. The manga has a wonderful intricate epic story and great characters.