Leave no manga behind

Big eyes, spiky hair, crazy plots and characters that refuse to die. Get a start into great manga books here

Leave no manga behind

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  My Hero Academia.

  One for fans of Encanto and The Boys. Izuku ‘Deku’ Midoriya is the only Quirkless kid in a world awash in superheroes. He enrols in a superhero academy, anyway. But All Might, a legendary hero, decides to pass on his power of reserving and transferring energy, to Deku, and life gets a lot more interesting.
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  One Piece.

  Take Monkey D Luffy seriously, despite his name and smirk. The boy can turn himself into rubber (all because he ate some kind of devil fruit as a kid). His band of aspiring pirates have one quest: To find the elusive One Piece treasure that would make Monkey the King of Pirates. Adventures abound: Real pirates, bounty hunters, circuses. Creator Eiichiro Oda’s lifelong obsession with pirates comes from watching the Japanese animated series Vicky the Viking.
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  Bakuman.

  It doesn’t get more meta than this for manga lovers. Middle-school boys, Moritaka Mashiro and Akito Takagi, both aspiring manga artists, hold on to their dreams amid homework, rivals, romantic complications, last-minute chapter changes, editors, boycotts and eventually the dreariness of a full-time job. It’s a funny look at a hard life.
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  Tokyo Ghoul.

  Humans and ghouls inhabit an alternate Tokyo. The ghouls look like humans, but survive on human flesh and are harder to kill. So what’s Ken Kaneki, a half-ghoul, half-human, to do? The show takes on horror, death and betrayal, but also presents how humans perceive anyone not their own.- And how quickly power is won and lost.
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  Uzumaki.

  For horror manga fans, this is the equivalent of Watchmen. Junji Ito’s startling drawings tell the tale of teens Kirie Goshima and Shuichi Saito in the mysterious little seaside town of Kurouzu-cho, which is struck by a peculiar curse—the spiral shape. It’s in the land, the homes, the minds. The stories build up but how does it all end?
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  Death Note.

  Follow Light Yagami, a high-school student, who stumbles upon a notebook dropped on Earth by the death god, Ryuk. It gives its owner the power to kill anyone once their name is scribbled into the book and their face is pictured. Yagami uses it to reign over a world purged of evil. Writer Tsugumi Ohba and artist Takeshi Obata’s iconic series puts new spins on death and justice.
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  Akira.

  Katsuhiro Otomo’s epic isn’t just great manga, it’s great storytelling, great post-modern commentary, great art, great sci-fi. The series about characters in a post-apocalyptic society has been running since 1982. The calamities are orchestrated around secret government experiments on psychic children. The Shotaro Kaneda, dumb, good-looking, reluctant, still has a few secrets 40 years on.
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  Demon Slayer.

  In 20th century Japan, where man-eating demons rule the night, 13-year-old Tanjiro Kamado finds his world upended when his family is slaughtered, leaving just his sister Nezuko. And she’s turned into a demon. Multiple quests begin: To avenge the deaths, find a cure. Tanjiro joins the Demon Slayer Corps. Turns out, changing the world needs more than fire in the belly.
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  Naruto.

  A child bullied by his own caregivers has the spirit of a fabled Nine-Tailed Fox residing inside him. Despite ninjas, fights and sacrifices, the boy must become the hero he needs to be. Naruto’s story endures because there’s so much to unpack. Friendships are tested. Quests turn out to be traps. There are betrayals and rivalries befitting an epic underdog story.
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  Black Jack.

  Black Jack is a prodigy and a gifted surgeon. He’s also unlicensed and is repeatedly rejected by the medical fraternity. The stories follow his ingenious techniques to save patients on the verge of death (even though his prices are outrageous) and his life in the deserted wilderness with his assistant, Pinoko, whose life too he had saved. Symbol of hope or cautionary tale? Maybe both.