Top Manga of 2002

Zetman

ZETMAN

Jin Kanzaki was created by the Amagi Corporation as the weapon meant to destroy the Players, the monstrous artificial humans that escaped its labs. A defecting scientist, Gorou Kanzaki, carried him out as an infant and raised him among the homeless along the river, hiding the power to become the superhuman ZET. Kouga Amagi, grandson of the corporation's founder, wants to be a hero on his own terms and builds the Alphas combat suit to fight the same creatures. When the Players start hunting openly, the two are set on opposite paths.

Great

Manga|1|2002

FINISHED

Elfen Lied

エルフェンリート

Thriller

Action

Sci-Fi

Lucy is a Diclonius, a horned mutant who can lash out with invisible telekinetic arms called vectors. After a violent escape from the seaside research facility that held her for experiments, a head wound splits her into a second, childlike personality called Nyu. Two cousins, Kouta and Yuka, take the helpless girl in near Kamakura, unaware that a Special Assault Team and rival Diclonius are hunting her down.

—

FINISHED

Air Gear

Action

Shounen

Sports

Itsuki "Ikki" Minami runs the streets as a brawling gang leader until he gets his hands on Air Treck, motorized skates that let riders climb walls and tear through the air. Hooked on the rush, Ikki forms a Storm Rider team called Kogarasumaru and dives into the rooftop world of A-T turf battles. He soon learns the girls he lives with belong to the legendary team Sleeping Forest, and that every Storm Rider is chasing the summit known as the Trophaeum Tower.

—

FINISHED

Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple

史上最強の弟子ケンイチ

Action

Shounen

Comedy

Kenichi Shirahama is a weak, bullied high-schooler until he befriends transfer student Miu Furinji and follows her to Ryozanpaku, a dojo run by her grandfather where six masters of different fighting styles live and train. Taken on as their disciple, Kenichi commits to a punishing daily regimen under all six teachers to stop being a target. His new strength soon puts him in the path of Ragnarok, a gang of delinquent fighters determined to recruit him or break him.

FINISHED

Akumetsu

アクメツ

Thriller

Action

Drama

In a near-future Japan crushed by corruption and a collapsing economy, a masked figure calling himself Akumetsu begins assassinating the politicians and businessmen he blames for the country's ruin. The trail runs through Shou Hazama, an ordinary high-schooler, and his friend Shiina Nagasawa, whose family is driven to debt and desperation by the same rot. Each Akumetsu wears a mask that bores into the skull and copies its wearer's memories, letting the campaign continue even as one killer after another dies.

FINISHED

We Were There

僕等がいた

Shoujo

Drama

Romance

On the second day of high school, cheerful fifteen-year-old Nanami Takahashi develops a crush on the popular Motoharu Yano, the most talked-about boy in their class. As she gets closer to him, she learns that Yano's previous girlfriend died in a car accident the summer before, and that her shadow still weighs on him. Nanami and Yano begin a relationship strained by that loss and by the trouble each of them has in fully trusting the other.

—

FINISHED

Strawberry 100%

いちご100%

Shounen

Ecchi

Romance

Aspiring filmmaker Junpei Manaka glimpses a girl in strawberry-print underwear on the school rooftop and becomes fixated on finding her, certain she is the muse for the movies he wants to make. His search leads him to bookish Aya Toujou and to Tsukasa Nishino, while spirited classmate Satsuki Kitaoji takes a liking to him. Junpei revives the school's defunct film club around them and stumbles through high-school romance, unsure which of the girls is the one he saw on the roof.

FINISHED

Gakuen Alice

学園アリス

Shoujo

Fantasy

Drama

Ten-year-old Mikan Sakura is heartbroken when her best friend Hotaru Imai transfers to a distant boarding school in Tokyo and contact between them is cut off, so she runs away alone to find her. She discovers Alice Academy, a hidden school for children born with special powers called Alices, where a teacher named Narumi tells her she has an Alice of her own and enrolls her. Settling in among gifted classmates, Mikan begins to sense that the academy's bright surface hides stricter rules and buried secrets.

FINISHED

Aria

ARIA

Sci-Fi

Slice of Life

Akari Mizunashi arrives on Aqua, a terraformed Mars whose city Neo-Venezia rebuilds Venice in canals and gondolas, to train as an Undine at the Aria Company, one of the three great water-guide firms. Her mentor is Alicia Florence, among the most celebrated gondoliers in the city, and Akari rows tourists through the canals while slowly earning a standing of her own. Outings with fellow trainees Aika of Himeya Company and Alice of Orange Planet fill her days as she settles into the unhurried rhythm of the water world.

Genshiken

げんしけん

Drama

Seinen

Slice of Life

Kanji Sasahara enters Shiiou University still hiding his otaku interests until he joins Genshiken, short for the Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture, a club devoted to manga, anime, games, and doujin. Among regulars like the blunt veteran Madarame and the hardcore fan Kousaka, Sasahara learns to own his hobbies. Kousaka's girlfriend Saki Kasukabe, the lone non-otaku, keeps getting dragged into the clubroom and reluctantly into its conventions, cosplay, and collecting.

#11

FINISHED

Rainbow: Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin

RAINBOW ―二舎六房の七人―

Drama

Seinen

In 1955, six teenage boys branded violent criminals are shipped to the Shounan Special Reformatory and packed into a single cell numbered 2-6. There they meet Rokurouta Sakuragi, an older inmate and former boxer the others come to call An-chan. Under his guidance, the group's unofficial leader Mario Minakami and the rest learn to endure the brutality of the guards and the doctor who run the place, holding onto each other to survive.

Rec

●Rec

Ecchi

Romance

Seinen

Fumihiko Matsumaru, a salaryman stood up outside a movie theater, ends up sharing his ticket with Aka Onda, a rookie voice actress he's never met. When a fire destroys Aka's apartment that same night, Matsumaru offers her a place to stay, and the two settle into a "more than friends, not quite lovers" arrangement they keep hidden from their coworkers. The manga follows their slow-building relationship as secrecy becomes harder to maintain.

—

#13

FINISHED

What a Wonderful World!

素晴らしい世界

Drama

Seinen

Slice of Life

Inio Asano builds this manga from loosely linked short stories about young people in modern Japan, with no single protagonist carrying the whole. Across its chapters a job-hunting graduate, a bullied student, an aimless musician and others cross paths with the same scenery of train platforms, classrooms and cramped apartments, each facing a small turning point in an ordinary day. The vignettes connect through recurring faces and locations rather than a continuous plot.

#14

FINISHED

Goth

GOTH

Thriller

Horror

Itsuki Kamiyama passes for a friendly, popular student while hiding a cold fascination with murder, and his withdrawn classmate Yoru Morino turns out to share it. The two trade books and clippings on grim subjects until a local case pulls them in: a killer who cuts the hands off his victims and keeps them. Neither of them takes what they learn to the police. Kamiyama means to work out who the man is on his own, and Morino goes along.

Junjo Romantica

純情ロマンチカ

Drama

Romance

Comedy

After failing his college entrance practice exams, Misaki Takahashi is sent for tutoring to Akihiko Usami, an acclaimed novelist and the closest friend of Misaki's older brother Takahiro. Usami also writes BL fiction starring characters named after himself and Takahiro, and he soon turns the lessons into something more, leaving Misaki pulled into a relationship he never expected. Two further couples run alongside them in the Junjo Egoist and Junjo Terrorist storylines, all of them loosely connected.

#16

FINISHED

Baki Tokubetsu-hen Saga

バキ特別編SAGA

Ecchi

Romance

Seinen

Midway through the Most Evil Death Row Convicts saga, Baki Hanma steps away from the ring long enough to close the distance with Kozue Matsumoto, the girl who has stood beside him since childhood. This single-volume side story runs in the same timeframe as the main Baki series and follows the two of them into their first night together, away from the coliseum and the convicts hunting worthy opponents. Told in the same panel rhythm as the fights it sits beside, it treats intimacy as its own kind of contest.

#17

FINISHED

Wandering Son

放浪息子

Drama

Romance

Seinen

Shuichi Nitori, a quiet fifth-grader assigned male at birth who wishes to be a girl, transfers to a new school and is seated beside Yoshino Takatsuki, a classmate assigned female who wishes to be a boy. The two become fast friends and recognize something of themselves in each other. Across grade school and into adolescence, the two navigate gender identity, first crushes, and the start of puberty among friends and family who don't always understand.

—

#18

FINISHED

School Rumble

スクールランブル

Shounen

Romance

Slice of Life

Tenma Tsukamoto, a cheerful but unremarkable second-year, is hopelessly fixated on her aloof classmate Oji Karasuma, who cares about little beyond eating curry. What she never notices is that reformed delinquent Kenji Harima attends school only to be near her, and is just as tongue-tied trying to confess. Across their high school class, crossed signals, eavesdropped half-sentences, and grand plans that collapse keep the love triangle spinning through one comic misunderstanding after another.

#19

FINISHED

Gunslinger Girl

ガンスリンガー・ガール

Thriller

Action

Sci-Fi

Henrietta survived the slaughter of her family and was taken in by the Social Welfare Agency, a modern-day Italian government front that rebuilds broken girls with cybernetics and drugs them into obedient assassins. Each girl is paired with an adult male handler, and the pair forms a unit called a fratello. With her memories erased and her body rebuilt, Henrietta becomes one of the Agency's deadliest operatives, carrying out the state's covert killings at her handler's side.

#20

HIATUS

Zaregoto

戯言シリーズ

Thriller

Experimental

Drama

An unnamed nineteen-year-old narrator known only by nicknames like Ii-chan accompanies his friend, the reclusive computer genius Tomo Kunagisa, to Wet Crow's Feather Island, the private retreat of the exiled heiress Iria Akagami. Iria has gathered a handful of brilliant specialists at her isolated mansion, among them a chef, a fortune-teller, and a scholar. Then one of her guests, the painter Kanami Ibuki, is found beheaded in her studio, Iria refuses to involve the police, and Ii-chan is left to pick apart a locked-island murder among people who are all hiding something.

#21

FINISHED

Phantom of Inferno

Phantom -PHANTOM OF INFERNO-

Thriller

Action

Drama

A tourist in America stumbles into witnessing an assassination carried out by the shadowy Inferno organization's top killer, a girl codenamed Ein. Rather than silencing him, Inferno brainwashes the witness into a second assassin, Zwei, erasing his memories and pairing him with Ein on jobs that slowly wear away what's left of his former identity. Along the way he crosses paths with Cal Devens, a street kid who mistakes him for a vigilante and tries to hire him with money she has unknowingly stolen from Inferno.

#22

FINISHED

Eyeshield 21

アイシールド21

Action

Shounen

Sports

Sena Kobayakawa is a timid first-year at Deimon Private Senior High whose years of running errands have given him explosive speed. Yoichi Hiruma, the scheming captain of the Deimon Devil Bats, spots that talent and strong-arms Sena into the American football team as a running back. To hide him from rival recruiters, Sena plays behind a tinted visor under the codename Eyeshield 21, while the underdog Devil Bats set their sights on reaching the Christmas Bowl.

—

#23

FINISHED

My Bride is a Mermaid

瀬戸の花嫁

Fantasy

Romance

Comedy

Nagasumi Michishio nearly drowns on a visit to his grandmother's seaside town, and the mermaid who saves him, Sun Seto, breaks her people's oldest law by letting a human see her true form. Mermaid law says that mistake means someone has to die, unless the two of them marry instead, which is exactly what Sun's family decides to do. Nagasumi ends up living under her parents' roof while pretending, badly, to be an ordinary high schooler with an ordinary wife. This manga is the original source for the multiple anime seasons and OVAs that followed.

#24

FINISHED

Baron: The Cat Returns

バロン・猫の男爵

Fantasy

Adventure

High schooler Haru Yoshioka saves a talking cat from being hit by traffic, only to learn its father is the Cat King, who repays her with a string of unwanted gifts, including a marriage proposal to his son, Prince Lune. Desperate to escape an engagement she never agreed to, Haru seeks help from the mysterious Cat Bureau and its feline gentleman, the Baron. This manga is a spin-off of the earlier Whisper of the Heart, carrying its Baron and antique-shop characters into a stand-alone story.

Elemental Gelade

エレメンタルジェレイド

Action

Shounen

Fantasy

Sky pirate Coud Van Giruet discovers Ren, a living weapon called an Edel Raid who can shift from human form into a powerful blade, stranded during one of his missions. He takes her in as her guardian, and the two set out for Edel Garden, the fabled birthplace of the Edel Raids, picking up Cisqua, Rowen, and Kuea of the Edel Raid protection group Arc Aile along the way.

—

#26

FINISHED

The Legend of the Legendary Heroes

伝説の勇者の伝説

Action

Fantasy

Adventure

This light novel series follows Ryner Lute, a lazy student at the Roland Empire's royal magic academy, after the war with neighboring Estabul kills his classmates and leaves him hollowed out. His friend Sion Astal, the newly crowned king of Roland, sends him searching for the relics of a legendary hero, partnered with the sharp-tongued swordswoman Ferris Eris, and the search uncovers a curse spreading unchecked across the land. A sequel series, The Legend of the Great Legendary Heroes, later continues the story.

#27

FINISHED

Pet

ペット

Thriller

Supernatural

Seinen

Hiroki is a Pet: someone with the psychic ability to enter another person's memories and rewrite them, kept and handled by Tsukasa, an operative of the crime syndicate known only as the Company. Wielding this kind of power is dangerous, since pushed too far a Pet's mind can shatter, or the manipulation can backfire onto the user, so those who control Pets bind them with psychological chains to keep both sides safe. The manga follows Hiroki, Tsukasa, and fellow operative Satoru navigating this underworld arrangement.

#28

ONGOING

Skip Beat!

スキップ・ビート!

Shoujo

Drama

Romance

Kyoko Mogami leaves Kyoto and her old life to follow her childhood friend Sho Fuwa to Tokyo, working herself ragged to bankroll his climb toward pop stardom. When she overhears Sho dismiss her as a dull, convenient servant he never cared for, the heartbreak hardens into a vow: she will break into show business and beat him at it. Kyoko signs with the talent agency LME and runs straight into Ren Tsuruga, a top actor who scorns her revenge as a reason to perform, and discovers that acting may matter to her for its own sake.

#29

FINISHED

MeruPuri

めるぷりメルヘン☆プリンス

Shoujo

Fantasy

Romance

Airi Hoshina, a practical high school freshman who dreams only of a cozy married life someday, carries an old family mirror to school until she drops it. When she goes back for it, a cheeky seven-year-old named Aram has climbed out of the glass. He is the prince of Astale, fleeing his half-brother Jeile through a mirror that turns out to be a portal between worlds. A botched spell ages Aram to seventeen whenever he is left in the dark, tangling Airi's tidy plans around him.

#30

FINISHED

Digimon Tamers 1984

デジモンテイマーズ1984

Sci-Fi

Fantasy

Palo Alto, 1984: Daisy meets Janyu Wong, a student newly arrived from Hong Kong, who takes her to Professor Rob McCoy's university lab and the circle of researchers later known as the Monster Makers. What the group builds there is a parallel world running inside a computer network, and the creatures that eventually become Digimon are its first residents. McCoy pulls in his ten-year-old son Keith, a gamer, to give those early beings their abilities and power ranks. The short story sits years before Digimon Tamers and keeps to Daisy's point of view.

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray

機動戦士ガンダムSEED ASTRAY

Action

Sci-Fi

Shounen

Lowe Guele salvages wrecked battlefields for the Junk Guild and comes away with the MBF-P02 Astray Red Frame, one of three prototype mobile suits that end up far from the front line. The other two are already spoken for: Gai Murakumo of the mercenary outfit Serpent Tail flies the Blue Frame, and the Orb nobleman Rondo Ghina Sahaku holds the Gold Frame. This manga works the edges of Gundam SEED's war between the Earth Alliance, ZAFT and the Orb Union, following pilots the main conflict overlooks.

#32

ONGOING

Black Lagoon

ブラック・ラグーン

Thriller

Action

Drama

Rokuro Okajima is a mild Tokyo salaryman until a business trip ends with him taken hostage by the Lagoon Company, a crew of mercenary smugglers operating out of the Thai port city of Roanapur. When his employer writes him off and orders him silenced, he cuts ties with his old life, takes the name Rock, and signs on as the gang's negotiator. He works alongside Revy, a foul-mouthed gunhand nicknamed Two Hands, and boss Dutch, running guns and contraband through a lawless underworld where survival is the only rule.

#33

FINISHED

Digimon Tamers

Kids & Family

Action

Sci-Fi

Takato Matsuki, Henry Wong, and Rika Nonaka are just kids obsessed with the Digimon card game until their partners, Guilmon, Terriermon, and Renamon, turn out to be real, living creatures. Caring for actual Digimon forces the three to confront how differently they each see their partners, from playmate to tool to weapon, as they learn to work together as Tamers. This Hong Kong manhua retells the story of the Digimon Tamers anime.

—

#34

FINISHED

Take Moon

TAKE MOON

Comedy

Short comedy vignettes drop characters from across Type-Moon's catalog into set-ups that ignore each series' actual continuity for the sake of the joke. Arcueid Brunestud, Shiki Tohno, and Ciel, from the Tsukihime and Kagetsu Tooya side, rub shoulders with Fate/stay night's Saber, Rin Tosaka, and Gilgamesh, and with the Melty Blood cast, in deliberately absurd, self-aware scenes. This gag manga was the direct basis for the Carnival Phantasm anime, made later to mark Type-Moon's tenth anniversary.

Suicide Circle

自殺サークル

Drama

Supernatural

Horror

Fifty-four schoolgirls join hands on a station platform and step in front of an oncoming train. Saya Kota is the only one who gets up afterward, and back at school she says almost nothing about it before quietly beginning to gather other girls into a suicide club of her own. Her closest friend Kyoko watches her turn into a stranger and starts digging into who is behind the club. Usamaru Furuya keeps the film's opening scene and then takes the story somewhere else entirely.

#36

FINISHED

Aishiteruze Baby

愛してるぜベイベ★★

Shoujo

Drama

Romance

Kippei Katakura is a seventeen-year-old flirt with more interest in chasing girls than in anything else, until his aunt disappears and leaves her five-year-old daughter Yuzuyu with the Katakura family. Kippei is handed the job of looking after her, and the round-the-clock work of feeding her, walking her to nursery and calming her crying forces him to grow up fast. Helping him through it is Kokoro Tokunaga, a reserved classmate who steadily gets closer to him.

#37

FINISHED

Midori Days

美鳥の日々

Shounen

Ecchi

Romance

Seiji Sawamura is a feared high-school delinquent whose unbeatable 'Devil's Right Hand' has scared off every girl he tries to date. After his twentieth rejection, he wishes aloud that his right hand were his girlfriend. He wakes to find Midori Kasugano, a shy classmate who has loved him from afar for years, now living as a tiny girl growing from his right wrist, while her own body lies unconscious at home.

—

#38

FINISHED

Into the Forest of Fireflies' Light

蛍火の杜へ

Shoujo

Drama

Romance

Six-year-old Hotaru Takegawa gets lost in a forest watched over by a mountain spirit and is found by Gin, a masked, human-like being who warns her that he will vanish forever if a human ever touches him. She keeps returning every summer to visit him, and the two grow close across the years even as Gin barely ages while Hotaru becomes a young woman. This Yuki Midorikawa one-shot was collected alongside three other short stories.

#39

FINISHED

Life

ライフ

Drama

Slice of Life

Ayumu Shiiba studies herself ragged to get into Nishidate High School alongside her best friend Yuuko Shinozuka, then passes the entrance exam while Yuuko fails, and the friendship collapses. Isolated and cutting herself for relief, Ayumu starts over at Nishidate, where classmate Manami Anzai takes her in and the loneliness finally lifts. Manami's warmth hides something crueler, and the bullying that follows leaves Ayumu fighting to hold on to herself.

Working!! Web-ban

WEB版 WORKING!!

Slice of Life

Comedy

First-year high schooler Daisuke Higashida already has a joyless home life, and things get worse when his father's company collapses and money runs short. Rather than face a long bike commute for a job near school, Daisuke takes a part-time position at a nearby Wagnaria family restaurant, where coworkers Hana Miyakoshi and Sayuri Muranushi turn ordinary shifts into running comedy. This web serialization follows a separate cast from the mainline Working!! manga, set in a different branch of the Wagnaria chain.

Rozen Maiden

Action

Fantasy

Drama

Jun Sakurada, a middle schooler who has shut himself in at home after being bullied, is chosen as the medium for Shinku, a living porcelain doll built by the maker Rozen. Shinku is one of seven Rozen Maidens, each animated by a gem called a Rosa Mystica and bound to fight the others in the Alice Game to become the perfect doll. Feeding Shinku his life energy drags Jun into the dolls' contest and, slowly, back toward the world he walked out on.

—

#42

FINISHED

Zombie-Loan

ZOMBIE-LOAN

Action

Shounen

Supernatural

Michiru Kita has Shinigami Eyes, which show her a ring around the neck of anyone close to death, darkening as the end comes nearer. The pitch-black rings she spots belong to two classmates who are very much alive, Chika Akatsuki and Shito Tachibana, and the pair turn out to have survived a fatal accident by borrowing their lives from an outfit called Zombie-Loan. Paying that debt means hunting illegal zombies, and Michiru is dragged along because her sight finds the targets.

#43

FINISHED

Pretty Face

プリティフェイス

Shounen

Romance

Comedy

Masashi Rando, a karate-fighting high schooler, secretly loves classmate Rina Kurimi. After a bus accident leaves him burned beyond recognition and comatose for a year, a deranged surgeon rebuilds his face from the only photo found on him, a snapshot of Rina. Masashi wakes looking exactly like the girl he loves, and when Rina mistakes him for her long-missing twin sister Yuna, he plays along, moving in with the Kurimi family while searching for the real Yuna to reclaim his identity.

#44

FINISHED

Seeds of Anxiety

不安の種

Supernatural

Horror

Seinen

Dozens of two-page horror vignettes drop an ordinary person into a brush with the paranormal and cut away before the dread resolves. Schoolyards, stairwells, train platforms and quiet apartments host glimpsed figures, wrong silhouettes and presences that should not be there. Seeds of Anxiety groups the pieces loosely by theme, school life in one set and unexpected visitors in another, and favors creeping unease and urban-legend texture over gore or explanation.

#45

FINISHED

Voices in the Dark

闇の声

Supernatural

Horror

Voices in the Dark collects seven standalone horror stories by Junji Ito, among them 'Blood-sucking Darkness', 'Glyceride', 'The Earthbound' and 'Mystery of the Haunted House'. Each builds an ordinary situation into grotesque body horror or creeping psychological dread, from a household where unease festers into decay to people fixed in place where they stand. The anthology runs on Ito's blend of physical revulsion and quiet wrongness rather than a single continuing cast.

King of Thorn

いばらの王

Thriller

Action

Sci-Fi

Kasumi Ishiki is one of 160 people infected with the Medusa virus, a plague that turns the body to stone, picked by the Venus Gate Corporation for cold sleep until a cure is found. She goes under without her twin sister Shizuku, who was not selected. When Kasumi wakes, the sealed facility is overgrown with thorns and roamed by monsters, most of the other sleepers are already dead, and the handful of survivors have no answers about what happened while they slept.

—

#47

FINISHED

Kare First Love

「彼」first love

Shoujo

Drama

Romance

Sixteen-year-old Karin Karino hides behind thick glasses and keeps to herself until a mix-up on the bus puts her in front of Aoi Kiriya, a photography-mad student from a nearby boys' school. He notices the girl behind the glasses and asks her out, and Karin's first relationship starts almost before she understands it. Her classmate Yuka Ishikawa, who has been passing herself off as Karin's friend while wanting Kiriya for herself, turns on her the moment the two become a couple.

#48

FINISHED

Love Monster

ラブ・モンスター

Shoujo

Romance

Supernatural

After failing the entrance exam for the high school she wanted, Hiyo Osora gets an acceptance letter from SM Academy, a school she never applied to, and discovers that its students are monsters wearing human faces. Student council president Kurou Tenma greets her by announcing that he is her fiance, then unfolds a pair of huge black wings. Hiyo turns out to come from the same line of crow monsters he does, which leaves her enrolled, engaged and surrounded by yokai she never knew existed.

#49

FINISHED

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED

機動戦士ガンダムSEED

Action

Sci-Fi

Drama

Kira Yamato is a Coordinator, genetically enhanced and raised among ordinary Naturals, when the war between ZAFT and the Earth Alliance reaches his neutral colony of Heliopolis. Forced to pilot the prototype Gundam Strike to protect his friends, he finds himself facing his own childhood friend Athrun Zala, now fighting for ZAFT on the opposite side. This manga adapts the original TV series' account of a war that turns former friends into enemies.

#50

FINISHED

Heads

ヘッズ

Thriller

Sci-Fi

Drama

Junichi Naruse works at a machinery maker's service plant and paints in his free time, which is how he comes to know Megumi Hamura, a clerk at the art-supply shop he frequents. Caught in a robbery at a real estate office, he shields a young girl from the gunman and takes a bullet to the head; he survives only because surgeons replace the ruined part of his brain with a donor's. The recovery is quick, but his tastes, his temper and his hand for painting all start to change.

—

#51

FINISHED

Bakuon Rettou

爆音列島

Action

Drama

Seinen

Takashi Kase transfers into a school in Shinagawa in 1980 and falls in with classmates who live for motorcycles. The local gang ZEROS pulls him in, and in a Tokyo where bosozoku packs own the night, speed and the open road come to outrank anything a classroom has to offer. Takashi rides further into the gang and further out of the ordinary future he was headed for.

—

#52

FINISHED

The Embalmer

死化粧師

Drama

Romance

In a Japan where cremation is the norm and embalming is treated as unclean work, Shinjurou Mamiya practices the trade and carries the stigma that comes with it. Each chapter follows a separate case at his table and what the job leaves behind in him, from the families he serves to his own restless need for closeness. He keeps women at a distance and refuses a real relationship with Azuki, his landlord's daughter, the one woman he loves.

Pastel

ぱすてる

Shounen

Romance

Comedy

Mugi Tadano has kept house mostly on his own since his mother died and his father's work started taking him away for long stretches. Sixteen and freshly heartbroken after his first love moved away, he lets his friend Kazuki Sanmiya drag him into a summer job at a seaside inn, where he crosses paths with Yuu Tsukisaki and makes an embarrassing first impression. Not long after, Yuu and her younger sister Tsukasa lose their father and move into Mugi's house, and the quiet place fills up fast.

#54

FINISHED

Voices of a Distant Star

ほしのこえ

Sci-Fi

Drama

Romance

Middle schoolers Mikako Nagamine and Noboru Terao share an unspoken bond that's tested when Mikako is selected for the U.N. Space Army and sent out with the fleet against an alien threat called the Tarsians, leaving Noboru behind on Earth. As Mikako travels farther into space, the text messages she sends Noboru take longer and longer to arrive, stretching their connection across a gap that keeps growing. This light novel is the original novelization of the Voices of a Distant Star OVA.

#55

FINISHED

Slayers Premium

スレイヤーズぷれみあむ

Action

Shounen

Fantasy

Lina Inverse and Gourry Gabriev stop in the seaside town of Acassi, where octopus tentacle is the local delicacy and a single meal leaves the eater able to speak only Takogo, the octopus tongue. Amelia and Zelgadis get caught by the same curse and Xelloss turns up to watch, while the white sorceress Ruma goes looking for her long-lost master and the cure he knows. The octopi, meanwhile, enlist a mazoku to be rid of humans for good. This manga retells the Slayers Premium film in five chapters.

#56

FINISHED

Ultra Red

ウルトラレッド

Action

Shounen

Sen Sumeragi is thirteen and fights with a style his absent father taught him, one built on taking a body apart the way you would take apart a puppet. He moves in with his grandfather at the Akiba dojo and finds it emptying out, its students drawn away by Ryu'en, the full-contact gym down the road. Sen walks into Ryu'en, challenges the man who runs it and puts Hideto Katakura in hospital, which only brings out fighters made to answer him, and Sen starts finding out where his own limit sits.

RahXephon

ラーゼフォン

Action

Sci-Fi

Tokyo has spent years sealed off from the rest of the world inside a barrier called Tokyo Jupiter, held there by the otherworldly Mu, and Ayato Kamina is a student living inside it who awakens the ancient mecha RahXephon and is pulled out into the world beyond. Told across chapters that shift into different characters' first-person perspectives, this light novel series retells the TV anime's events while adding scenes the anime never showed.

Strawberry Marshmallow

苺ましまろ

Seinen

Slice of Life

Comedy

Nobue Itou, in her early twenties and mostly directionless, spends her days looking after her much younger sister Chika and Chika's friends Miu Matsuoka, Matsuri Sakuragi, and Ana Coppola in the city of Hamamatsu. Nothing here builds toward a plot: the manga just follows the five of them through summer breaks, part-time jobs, and small neighborhood outings, letting Nobue's dry teasing bounce off the girls' more earnest chaos. It's the source material behind the Strawberry Marshmallow anime and OVA.

#59

FINISHED

Scrapped Princess

スクラップド・プリンセス

Action

Fantasy

Adventure

Pacifica Casull was marked for death as an infant, when a prophecy named her the child who would end the world on her sixteenth birthday. Adopted and raised by the Casull family, she now travels the countryside at fifteen with her siblings Shannon and Raquel, staying one step ahead of the church knights sent to carry out the old order. This manga adapts the early volumes of the original light novels.

—

#60

FINISHED

Kurozuka

黒塚

Action

Drama

Supernatural

Kuro, a wanderer modeled on the historical general Minamoto no Yoshitsune, flees into the mountains with his retainer Benkei after his own brother turns on him and marks him for death. There they find Kuromitsu, a beautiful, solitary woman living alone in a house cut off from everything, and the secret she is hiding is that she has been immortal for centuries and feeds on blood. Their bond forms fast, but Kuromitsu's true nature threatens to unravel it as much as any pursuit from Kuro's past.

#61

FINISHED

Sorcerous Stabber Orphen MAX

魔術士オーフェンはぐれ旅 MAX

Action

Shounen

Fantasy

Ancient automated weapons wake up across the world with a single goal: wipe out every sorcerer left alive. Orphen, one of their targets, has to draw on what he learned from his old master Childman Powderfield, the Tower of Fang's strongest black sorcerer, to keep himself and his apprentice Majic Lin alive. This two-volume side story sits alongside the Sorcerous Stabber Orphen light novels, trading Orphen's usual money-lending troubles for a straight fight to survive.

#62

FINISHED

Princess Princess

プリンセス・プリンセス

Shoujo

Romance

Comedy

Toru Kouno transfers to an all-boys academy and learns of a tradition that will upend his year: select students are chosen as "Hime," dressing in feminine princess attire to cheer on the school at events. Kouno becomes one of three, alongside sharp-tongued Shihoudani and short-fused Mikoto, and the trio has to manage costume fittings, crowd duties, and each other while keeping the act going.

—

#63

FINISHED

Secret Sweethearts

僕は妹に恋をする

Shoujo

Drama

Romance

Yori and his twin sister Iku were inseparable as children, but adolescence pulls them apart when he starts pushing her away for reasons she cannot guess. What he is hiding is that his fondness for her has quietly turned into something more, and when a quarrel finally forces the confession out of him, Iku is left with no idea what to do about it. Her own confusion runs deeper than she wants to admit, and the two of them have to decide what to do about a relationship their family would never allow.

#64

FINISHED

Saint Seiya: Episode G

聖闘士星矢EPISODE.G

Action

Fantasy

Adventure

Seven years before the events of the original Saint Seiya, Leo Aiolia still lives under suspicion inside the Sanctuary: his older brother Aiolos was branded a traitor and killed, and the other Gold Saints have not forgotten it. When the Titan gods are loosed from Tartarus and move against Zeus and Athena's Sanctuary, Aiolia has to fight alongside the same Gold Saints who distrust him, with Hyperion, the first Titan set free, among the first to come for them. This spinoff manga, supervised by original creator Masami Kurumada and drawn by Megumu Okada, gives Aiolia's Sanctuary years their own story outside the main series.

#65

FINISHED

Welcome to the N.H.K.

NHKにようこそ！

Drama

Slice of Life

Comedy

Four years into life as a hikikomori, university dropout Tatsuhiro Satou is convinced his isolation is the work of a secret organization he calls the N.H.K., until Misaki Nakahara, a strange and persistent girl, shows up at his door offering to cure him. Their arrangement turns into nightly meetings in a nearby park, where Misaki's amateur psychoanalysis needles at exactly why Satou has shut himself off from the world. This original novel follows Satou's paranoid, often darkly comic descent and uneasy reckoning with his own self-imposed exile, the basis for the later manga and anime adaptations.

#66

FINISHED

Shakugan no Shana

灼眼のシャナ

Action

Fantasy

Drama

Yuji Sakai is an ordinary high schooler until a Flame Haze named Shana reveals he has already died, sustained now only by a Treasure Tool called the Reiji Maigo, the Midnight Lost Child. Drawn into the war between Flame Hazes and the Crimson Denizens who feed on human existence, Yuji joins Shana's fight in Misaki City while trying to hold on to an ordinary life. Their bond deepens as they face down Denizens hunting for the Reiji Maigo's power.

—

#67

FINISHED

Kaze no Stigma

風の聖痕

Action

Fantasy

Drama

Kazuma Kannagi was raised to inherit the Kannagi family's fire arts and the sacred blade Enraiha, until he lost the succession duel to Ayano, his younger second cousin, and his father cast him out of the family. Four years later he returns as Kazuma Yagami, having mastered wind magic instead, only to find the family he left behind unraveling from within. This light novel, source material for the 2007 TV anime, follows Kazuma navigating old resentments with Ayano and his younger brother Ren while the Kannagi name comes under threat.

#68

FINISHED

Princess Tutu

プリンセスチュチュ

Fantasy

Drama

Romance

Ahiru is an ordinary duck transformed into a ballet student by the mysterious Drosselmeyer, and given a pendant that lets her become Princess Tutu. As Tutu, she can help the prince Mytho recover pieces of a heart he shattered to seal away a monstrous Raven, dancing them back to him one fragment at a time. Her efforts draw the attention of Fakir, Mytho's protective roommate, and Rue, a girl who has loved Mytho since childhood and guards him fiercely.

—

#69

FINISHED

Doctors in Isolated Room

冷たい密室と博士たち

Thriller

Drama

Seinen

Souhei Saikawa, an assistant professor of architecture, is taken by a colleague to watch a demonstration inside his own university's sealed low-temperature laboratory. Before the day is out, two graduate students are found dead in separate rooms behind doors nobody could have used. Saikawa and his student Moe Nishinosono are left working out how a killer got in and out of a chamber locked against the cold. This manga adapts the second novel in the S&M mystery series, following The Perfect Insider.

#70

FINISHED

Green Green

グリーングリーン

Ecchi

Romance

Slice of Life

At the isolated all-boys Kanenone Academy, high schooler Yuusuke Takasaki spends his days with the self-styled Baka Trio until the school agrees to a month-long co-ed trial with a nearby girls' school. When the bus of visiting students arrives, Midori Chitose leaps out and hugs a bewildered Yuusuke before he can even introduce himself. This light novel adapts the Green Green visual novel, the same source the 2003 anime series was built from, and follows the shaky first weeks of the trial run.

#71

FINISHED

Yakitate!! Japan

焼きたて!! ジャぱん

Shounen

Comedy

Kazuma Azuma leaves his hometown for Tokyo to invent Ja-pan, a bread meant to represent Japan the way rice defines its cuisine. He sits the employment exam at Pantasia, a nationwide bakery chain, where fellow hopeful Kyousuke Kawachi spots his Solar Hands: a rare, naturally warm grip that speeds yeast fermentation. The two land jobs at the chain's South Tokyo branch under manager Ken Matsushiro, and the loaves Azuma bakes there open an escalating run of public baking contests.

Birdy the Mighty

鉄腕バーディー

Thriller

Action

Sci-Fi

Space Federation investigator Birdy Cephon Altera accidentally kills high schooler Tsutomu Senkawa while chasing an alien criminal on Earth, then saves him the only way she can, by merging their bodies into one. The two have to share a body and a daily routine, trading control between Tsutomu's school life and Birdy's actual job: tracking the terrorist Christella Revi through Federation politics and alien crime rings that keep spilling into his ordinary world.

#73

FINISHED

Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch

マーメイドメロディーぴちぴちピッチ

Shoujo

Fantasy

Romance

Lucia Nanami is a mermaid princess living undercover as a human, running a public bathhouse with her older sister while hiding her true identity from everyone around her. When she falls for a surfer named Kaito, Lucia has to juggle a budding human romance with her real duty: defending the ocean kingdoms from forces working to destroy them. This manga is the original source material behind the Mermaid Melody anime, with Lucia's romantic and royal lives constantly pulling her in opposite directions.

#74

FINISHED

R.O.D: Read or Dream

R.O.D −READ OR DREAM−

Action

Supernatural

Adventure

In Hong Kong, sisters-in-everything-but-blood Anita King, Michelle Cheung, and Maggie Mui run a detective agency that trades on their shared power to control paper, turning stacks of it into shields, blades, or wings on command. Michelle chases romantic notions, Maggie buries herself in books, and Anita would rather punch a problem than read about one, and together they take on book-recovery cases that keep drawing them toward the shadowy Dokusensha Corporation. This manga spins the Paper Sisters out of Read or Die into their own series, with Read or Die's Yomiko Readman making a guest appearance.

#75

FINISHED

Naruto: Innocent Heart, Demonic Blood

NARUTO -ナルト- 白の童子、血風の鬼人

Action

Shounen

Adventure

Freshly graduated from the Ninja Academy, Naruto Uzumaki joins squadmates Sasuke Uchiha and Sakura Haruno on what looks like a routine bodyguard mission to the Land of Waves under sensei Kakashi Hatake. What starts as simple escort work turns dangerous when the team is ambushed by the Demon Brothers, then confronted by the far more dangerous rogue ninja Zabuza Momochi and his young companion Haku. This novel retells Team 7's first major mission from the early Naruto manga in prose form.

#76

FINISHED

Another Monster: The Investigative Report

もうひとつのMONSTER

Thriller

Drama

Seinen

German journalist Werner Weber spends 2001 reconstructing the Johan Liebert case, convinced the trail leads to a second predator every bit as dangerous. Built as a sequence of his interviews with people tied to that case, among them Inspector Heinrich Lunge and Eva Heinemann, the book works as fictional reportage rather than a retelling, filling in gaps the main story left open across Germany and Czechoslovakia. It is a companion volume to Monster, written from outside the story and after its events.

#77

FINISHED

Saiyuki Reload

最遊記RELOAD

Action

Shounen

Fantasy

Genjo Sanzo, Son Goku, Cho Hakkai, and Sha Gojyo press on with their journey west toward India, still charged with stopping the resurrection of the demon Gyumao. Along the way they meet a lone guardian the Minus Wave seems to have passed over, along with the band of children in his care; that same wave is turning peaceful youkai violent across Shangri-La. Reload picks up directly after the original Saiyuki, deepening the fear and mistrust the phenomenon has spread through the land, including inside the group itself.

#78

FINISHED

Ouran High School Host Club

桜蘭高校ホスト部

Shoujo

Romance

Comedy

Scholarship student Haruhi Fujioka stumbles into the Third Music Room at the elite Ouran Academy and accidentally shatters an eight-million-yen vase belonging to the school's Host Club. To work off the debt, Haruhi, mistaken for a boy thanks to short hair and a plain uniform, is drafted as a host alongside flamboyant club president Tamaki Suoh and the calculating Kyoya Ootori. The club entertains wealthy classmates while Haruhi navigates a world of privilege from the outside.

#79

HIATUS

He is My Master

これが私のご主人様

Shounen

Ecchi

Comedy

Sisters Izumi and Mitsuki Sawatari, runaways with nowhere else to go, take live-in maid jobs at the mansion of Yoshitaka Nakabayashi, a 14-year-old orphan whose massive inheritance funds his uniform fetish and his insistence on being called 'master.' He manufactures a debt to keep them from leaving, and Mitsuki's pet alligator, Pochi, who needs somewhere to live, gives them one more reason to stay. Between the two sisters, fellow maid Anna Kurauchi, and the alligator, the household runs on running gags about servitude rather than on any real authority of his own.

Top 250

Top 250

Zetman

Elfen Lied

Air Gear

Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple

Akumetsu

We Were There

Strawberry 100%

Gakuen Alice

Aria

Genshiken

Rainbow: Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin

Rec

What a Wonderful World!

Goth

Junjo Romantica

Baki Tokubetsu-hen Saga

Wandering Son

School Rumble

Gunslinger Girl

Zaregoto

Phantom of Inferno

Eyeshield 21

My Bride is a Mermaid

Baron: The Cat Returns

Elemental Gelade

The Legend of the Legendary Heroes

Pet

Skip Beat!

MeruPuri

Digimon Tamers 1984

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Astray

Black Lagoon

Digimon Tamers

Take Moon

Suicide Circle

Aishiteruze Baby

Midori Days

Into the Forest of Fireflies' Light

Life

Working!! Web-ban

Rozen Maiden

Zombie-Loan

Pretty Face

Seeds of Anxiety

Voices in the Dark

King of Thorn

Kare First Love

Love Monster

Mobile Suit Gundam SEED

Heads

Bakuon Rettou

The Embalmer

Pastel

Voices of a Distant Star

Slayers Premium

Ultra Red

RahXephon

Strawberry Marshmallow

Scrapped Princess

Kurozuka

Sorcerous Stabber Orphen MAX

Princess Princess

Secret Sweethearts

Saint Seiya: Episode G

Welcome to the N.H.K.

Shakugan no Shana

Kaze no Stigma

Princess Tutu

Doctors in Isolated Room

Green Green

Yakitate!! Japan

Birdy the Mighty

Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch

R.O.D: Read or Dream

Naruto: Innocent Heart, Demonic Blood

Another Monster: The Investigative Report

Saiyuki Reload

Ouran High School Host Club