Rec Request: Manga

[forestofglory]

I've been reading a lot of manga and comics lately. I want to read more manga but I don't really know what's out there, since its been such a long time since I really paid attention manga. So please tell me about manga you like. I'm up for trying anything, though please warn me if something is gory or dark or there is a dead mom. Here's some thoughts on some things I've read recently to give you an idea of where I'm at.

Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon v1 by Naoko Takeuchi I've never read or watch any Sailor Moon before so I thought it was high time I tried some. This was cute but confusing in places. Also transformation sequences are much less awesome in comics than in anime.

Yotsuba&!, Vol. 1 by Kiyohiko Azuma Cute slice of life manga about toddler who moves to a new town. I thought it did a good job of portraying what's awesome about little kids -- and why they are exhausting.

A Bride's Story, Vol. 1 by Kaoru Mori I liked all the historical detail but I couldn't get past the child marriage that's central to the plot. It's just not ok!

Cross Game vol. 1-3 by Mitsuru Adachi I read the 1st omnibus. I really liked the art in this. The faces are very expressive. But I was upset by the fact that child character dies suddenly. I was not expecting that. Its most a sports manga about baseball which is fine but wasn't really grabbing me.

Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya I got up to volume 10 in the collectors edition and someone else at the library has checked out the last two volumes -- and they are now two and half weeks over due. I have ordered a different edition ILL because I really want to finish this and find out how it all works out.

Golden Kamuy vol 1 by Satoru Noda Well this really gory and thus not my usual fair at all. But I've got the next volume form the library and am enjoying it. It historical fiction set in early 20th century after Russo-Japanese War on Hokkaido Island, and I'm loving all the details of the setting and the art. There's a lot of wilderness survival (including eating squirrel brains and other gross things) and I'm especially enjoying those bits.

Anyways I'd love some more recs for manga to try out!

Comments

[rachelmanija]

That's what Golden Kamuy is about?? I'd somehow osmosed that it was trashy barely subtextual MM vampires, sort of like Vassalord.

[coffeeandink]

Some relatively recent stuff:

Ichikawa Haruko, Land of the Lustrous: genderqueer rock people fight mysterious moon creatures in the far future; intricate world-building. Very good one-season anime on Amazon Prime.

Hagio Moto, Otherworld Barbara: beautiful and deeply bizarre story combining a dream world, invaders from Mars, psychic therapy, and cannibalism, from a classic mangaka.

Yamazaki Kore, Frau Faust: Female Faust! That was all I needed, honestly, but the ambiguously romantic relationship between Faust and Mephistopheles was also a plus. Yamazaki's Ancient Magus' Bride is longer and better known.

Nagabe, The Girl from the Other Side: Siuil, A Run: a mysterious and melancholy fairy tale about a little girl abandoned in a wood where people turn into monsters.

[alchimie]

My tastes tend to run to either gentle slice-of-life stories or out-and-out shoujo romance (often with a darker tone), and I am not certain if either of these would be your speed, but here are some things I have been reading recently --

My Brother's Husband is delightful slice-of-life about a Japanese man meeting his dead brother's Canadian husband and learning to love him as family. It is very charming and nothing terrible happens except the off-screen before-book death of the brother.

Flying Witch is also delightful and slice-of-like -- a teenage witch is sent to stay with her cousins as part of a witchy cultural rite of passage, and gentle humour ensues with mild cultural conflicts (her witchfulness is real magic, but treated more like a cultural tradition in that people are just not as surprised as they would actually be) and some really nice numinous bits of exploring the setting.

Silver Spoon is about an unhappy teenage boy from Tokyo going to an agricultural high school in rural Japan, written by a mangaka who actually grew up in rural Japan and thus cared to get details right. There is a lot of humour, a lot of culture clashes around the realities of agricultural life (raising animals for food, getting up at 4am to take care of cows, what counts as 'intelligence' in the agricultural school vs. what he learned to value in the standard urban school system), and some gradual character growth as our protagonist struggles to come to terms with the ethics around various parts of farming. I watched the anime first and am now reading the manga and it is marvelous.

Do you watch anime at all? I agree that Sailor Moon is much more effective as anime, and I definitely have anime recs were you to be interested.