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Challenge #6
Top 10 Challenge.
top ten of whatever! if the point is recommendations, then.... here's top ten manga (in no particular order) that i adore!! it's a non exhaustive list, because i can't be expected to remember everything i've enjoyed lol
10; kagurabachi
currently ongoing manga in shounen jump! originally memed before the first chapter dropped for being Extremely Generic Seeming, it was introduced as "boy goes on a revenge quest to fight the evil wizard mafia that killed his father. with enchanted swords." and it's like. ok man. whatever. i'm kagura bachi and i'm kaguraing all over the place. but then the first chapter dropped and everyone was like "wait this is fire actually...?" and it's very quickly become The Next Big Thing, i think. part of the appeal is the mangaka's love of a "hollywood japan", and the cinematic inspiration that comes from him watching, apparently, a fuck ton of american action films lmfao. it's very "rule of cool". like it's modern day japan (maybe a decade or two behind) but everyone carries around katanas with their business suits bc..... hokazono thinks it's cool.
personally, i love the writing... the main character, we all expected him to be Edgelord 5000, and instead he's very clearly, very obviously just, a sad 18 yr old who misses his dad.. also, this manga seems to have a lot to say about War and Politics (as many do)... touching on topics like nuclear weapons and genocide... and it has such an understated sense of humor that makes me cackle. i loooove it. Also. The yaoi. HOP ON PEAK!!!
9; ichi the witch
currently ongoing manga in shounen jump! not nearly as memed upon... it's about a world in which a feral boy named ichi becomes a witch by way of defeating "majiks", powerful magic beasts... but the thing is, only women are supposed to be able to Do That. so it's like. what 🧡LMAO i don't know where they're going with that, but i have it on good authority (my friends say so) that the writer isn't totally a stranger to the gender nonconforming... plenty of majiks use nongendered pronouns (i think all of them?) and there's very obvious gnc characters so it's interesting... AND OF COURSE LET ME NOT FORGET. DESSCARAS ‼️‼️‼️‼️BLACK GIRL IN MANGAAAA YUPPP WITH HER DETAILED BRAIDS AND LIGHTER COLORED PALMS UH HUH!!! truly gives me the impression that the artist Cared about her design instead of just going like, picrew grey 😭desscaras is also The Most Overpowered Strongest Witch Ever and she's such a braggart and i looove her.
im kind of selling this based on diversity but like, it's shounen jump so it's worth pointing out. LOL it's also insanely funny and just, ugh, so compelling?! the overarching story is just "big majik wants to end the world so ichi has to get really fucking good at being a witch so that doesnt happen" but the characters have such good writing that honestly, i'd watch them play in dirt and be satisfied, you know?! it's just really fun... And the yuri....!!!!!
a one-volume (i think?) manga that i can only find scans of that blew my fucking mind. about the space dog laika, except her story doesn't end where we think it does- instead she's given a new planet to live on alongside her Best Dog Friend (yuri) and they vow to take vengeance against the humans and earth... it's like, a sort of grief-manga, but also omg the art is just so so so so cute and beautiful and i LOVE the art style and it's really short so anyone can read it!! Go find it rn go read my dog yuri
7; a beast cries in the wilderness
how do i even describe it... i heard of this manga because someone made a post about makura, the half-monkey beastwoman, because she looks cool as fuck. and i was like fuckkk she looks cool as fuck. it's about an amnesia guy who was used in experiments... how his past relates to this beast-virus and those who are affected by it, And Also, central american cultures and like international politics? i don't know how to explain it, but this manga feels really "of its time," except i thought it was from like the 90s and it's definitely post-9/11 so maybe not. maybe i just mean artistically LOL it gives off 90s manga vibes to me.
i ADORE the monster design in this, and one of the beastial women is allowed to have multiboobs, so like, it wins basically. honestly a lot of the deeper stuff went over my head but i like that in a story, i love when the author clearly was influenced by something outside of my range- this is actually an adaptation of a book, i think?! super cool. if you're interested in sci-fi mysticalism bullshit with cool monsters then it might appeal to you.
6; tales of the hundred monsters next door
MY SUPERNATURAL OLD MAN YAOI *RIPPING SHIRT OFF* ongoing manga!! Fucking rules!! about a man in his 30s who ends up tangled with the local spirits and yokais and ghosts and folklore because he got caught up in some Bullshit. more than anything, he wants a normal life... but he begrudgingly tolerates this because it's an excuse for him to be involved with this weird old man who he has a crush on. LMAO
GORGEOUS art, and it has an episodic sort of structure where each chapter revolves around one story. i love love love these sorts of settings so much, where you're left trying to figure out the mystery or understand what's happening, and how is he going to get back to normalcy after this, you know?! AND THE ART IS SO FUCKING GOOD *CRYING( so great if you're at all interested in folklore and weirdo tales, you know!! ghost stories!! With a yaoi subplot.. AWESOME...
5; sleeping dead
WEIRD YAOI *RIPPING SHIRT OFF* about a man who gets turned into a living corpse, and forced to eat humans! he's kept alive and tested on by a Weirdo Murderer...!!!!! but due to this circumstance they end up bonding... learning more about each other... Flustered emoji...
what i adore so much about this manga is that it does have this sort of "holding your breath" feeling about it, like, how fucked up is it gonna get, you know?! but it's also insanely Earnest and sweet, and you realize that neither of the characters are how they seem at first, which rules.
there's also a conversation about aromanticism/asexuality from both of the mcs, and one of them is definitely Neurodivergent Coded at the very least... it had an approach to this kind of character that i don't really see in bl manga frequently, much less one with a cannibalism cw lmfaoo
it's so peak... i love a "weirdly wholesome" story so much
4; witch hat atelier
honestly feels like my little pony, but i didn't really watch my little pony, but it gives me the same feelings. witch hat atelier is DROP DEAD GORGEOUS manga about one little girl (and her four little friends) who are learning to become witches together :-). magic in this world is basically drawing. it's awesome. it feels like such a sweet sweet "we are four little girls who are using drawing to fix the world yay!!!!" story, but in a way that doesn't talk down to anyone at all. coco (main character) doesn't flinch from the pain of the world and challenges the adults around her... "oh, witches aren't supposed to--" "witches are supposed to HELP and you're NOT HELPING!!" so she grabs her pad and goes to fix it herself. you know?! it's so. UGH
the mangaka i know is pretty #woke #based in real life and makes sure that it comes through in her writing, i think, so we love to see it... wha touches on disability and gay rights, human agency, stuff like that... you can just feel the empathy radiating off of her story, you know?!
DID I MENTION IT'S GORGEOUS? IT'S INSANE. also there's an anime coming out and i feel like people are going to DIE when it happens.
just bc of how pretty it is....
very much, i feel like, it's intending to be an optimistic story above all else. it's not finished yet but what is out is totally worth reading!!
3; beastars
MY BELOVED.... Furry Bullshit. truly it is.. Furry Bullshit the manga. about a wolf named legoshi and the way a society develops when half of its citizens have a biological desire to eat the other. it's very social issues (allegory)... for that reason, a lot of people compare it to zootopia, but that's just because they don't know many furry things. 😭the art style goes through a few shifts throughout its publishing but i kind of love that, i love how weird and unusual the original art was, and i love how it still feels Very Paru Itagaki even after it gets a little more normal..
it's all sorts of stuff. about love and growing up and the world being unusual and people being imperfect and always hurting each other, love as a form of violence, Societal Failings, taking control of your own destiny...
honestly i find myself thinking about legoshi a LOT constantly, i'm like. (is a socially anxious person existing in adulthood) damn...im just like legoshi rn
or also "your life isn't over just because you did something wrong." i love that so much....
out of all of the manga i listed, beastars is definitely the most personally important to me...
i also adore the world building like "small animals have different staircases and sometimes will ride on the larger mammal's shoulders to class" and stuff like omg it's just so FUN. you know she had so much fun coming up with shit. It's so fun!!!
2; golden kamuy
only second because it's a little hard to sell due to some Things. but it's a fucking incredible manga. it's about a japanese ex-soldier named sugimoto who, after the russo-japanese war... something something... he's panning for gold to try and get money after the war... and ends up learning that the local natives, the ainu, have a stash of gold that could make him rich- BUT (spongebob ice cream truck gif) IT'S NOT LIKE THAT!!!!!!!!!!! he ends up working with a little ainu girl named asirpa and they go on Adventures Together and have So Much Fun and eventually sugimotos like ok well i will die and kill for asirpa ok. meanwhile, two other groups (a bunch of deserters from the japanese military led by a freak named tsurumi and his group of freaks THEYRE SO FREAKY) (and also a handful of escaped prisoners following toshizou hijikata (sword grandpa)) who also want the gold. for their own purposes...
the way to the gold is; tattooed on the backs of prisoners...! in a code that no one knows how to solve!
so it's a hard sell because like 80% of the story revolves around killing and skinning people and also people getting their faces ripped off by bears. Like a lot.
but like
IT'S REALLY GOOD... :(
i think it's fucking incredible historical fiction and near as i've heard, the mangaka did such intense research about the ainu while he was writing it... Like of course it's a little fictionalized but you get the impression that accuracy was his highest priority, so you end up learning a lot about various customs, tools, clothes, and the religious beliefs of various groups of ainu across japan... it's like damnnnn...
there are a fair few content warnings (besides the skinning and bear mauling) so you might need to check, but, you know. Ah...
i recommend it because it's such a COMPLETE experience. it has an ending that leaves you totally satisfied, i think, which is kind of rare, so i value it when it happens...
also, again, insanely solid sense of humor that leaves me with my head in my hands because for as much of a serious, intense type of manga it is, it's also complete batshit in equal measure. i loooove iiiiiit soooo muuuuuuch
1; dungeon meshi
it's almost a too obvious recommendation.... i'm sure you've heard about it because of the anime but the manga is ppeeeeeeaaaaaak. also being an anime only is lame //shot
but it seriously deserves all the praise it gets, i think. i love more than anything when a mangaka has such a Clear Passion for their work, like, when an inspiration for the manga is so obvious... and the love that ryoko kui has for d&d type games totally shines in this...
adventurers go in a dungeon to save their fallen comrade and then shit gets insanely weird. what's not to love?
the art is gorgeous and the speculative biology makes me want to run in circles with how Fucking Awesome it is.
and much like golden kamuy, the ending is SO satisfying, and i can't express to you enough how rare that is!!!
in fact i kind of struggle to recommend it just because it's... i mean... it's dungeon meshi!! just go read it!!!
with this rec list...
i have made it very clear...
that i fucking suck at recommending things. (nodding emoji)
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if you ever get around to reading either of them you HAVE to tell me your thoughts okay!! or else ill Die
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I WILL tell you my thoughts! I'm going to see if my library has either...
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i truly love the shameless "yes she's the most uber badass powerful character" of it all. common writing advice tells you to Not Do That, but i think there's ways to make it work without destroying a story.. and there's something so refreshing about a character with a big ego who has the skills to back it up, if that makes sense. like she's 100% earned it. also. she is just. So pretty and so funny. desscaras we love you...!!!
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She's just so cool and confident that somehow her being super powerful just works! She's the best (not an exaggeration lol) 🥰
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i hope you end up checking some of them out someday :D i'm biased of course, but they're all truly peak in their own ways.......