159 reviews in this genre
by IO (art), Hiroyuki Fujita (story)
A review of Seraphic Feather — the mature sci-fi action manga set in a future where an alien artifact has been discovered and the factions pursuing it will do anything to control it, following a combat android whose humanity is the series' central question.
by Boichi (art), Inagaki Riichiro (story)
A review of Dr. Stone Reboot: Byakuya — the single-volume companion to Dr. Stone following astronaut Byakuya Ishigami's life after the petrification, laying the foundation that Senku inherits thousands of years later.
by Cain Kuga (art), Hajime Yatate (story)
A review of Cowboy Bebop: Shooting Star — the alternate manga adaptation of the beloved anime, telling its own story with Spike, Jet, Faye, and the Bebop crew in a looser, more comedic key.
by Hajime Ueda (art), Gainax (story)
A review of the FLCL manga adaptation by Hajime Ueda — a deliberately surreal coming-of-age story about a boy whose life is interrupted by a woman on a Vespa and the robots that keep coming out of his head.
by Yu Kinutani
A review of the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex manga — a condensed adaptation of the acclaimed anime series following Section 9's cases in a cyberpunk Japan.
by Johji Manabe
A review of Outlanders by Johji Manabe — a 1985 sci-fi action romance about a photojournalist caught between Earth's invasion and an alien princess who chose him as her husband.
by Masakazu Katsura
A review of DNA² by Masakazu Katsura — a time-travel romantic comedy about a future agent sent to stop a teenage boy from becoming the ancestor of 100 billion people.
by Kei Sanbe
Satoru Fujinuma is a 29-year-old struggling Tokyo manga artist with an involuntary supernatural ability he calls 'Revival' — when something bad is about to happen near him, time rewinds a few minutes. When his mother is murdered in his apartment, the Revival sends him back further than ever before: to his fifth-grade self in 1988 Hokkaido, three months before his classmate Kayo Hinazuki was kidnapped and killed. Kei Sanbe's 8-volume manga is complete in English from Yen Press.
by Jinsei Kataoka, Kazuma Condou
A review of Eureka Seven, the manga adaptation of the mecha anime about a boy who joins a band of rebels and falls in love with a mysterious girl who pilots a unique Limit of Questions.
by Koichi Tokita (manga)
A review of Gundam Wing, the classic mecha manga adaptation about five teenage Gundam pilots fighting for peace in space colonies.
by Kotaro Mori (manga adaptation)
A review of Gurren Lagann, the hyper-optimistic super robot manga about drilling through despair to reach the stars.
by Haruhiko Mikimoto
A review of the original Macross manga, the classic that introduced the idea that pop music could end a war between species.
by Takehiko Itō
A review of Outlaw Star, the manga about a freelance outlaw and his crew aboard a unique sentient ship searching for the legendary Galactic Leyline.
by Gen Urobuchi (story) / Hikaru Miyoshi (manga art)
Psycho-Pass began as a 2012–2013 original anime by Production I.G written by Gen Urobuchi (Madoka Magica, Fate/Zero). Hikaru Miyoshi's 6-volume manga adaptation covers approximately the first anime season. Premise: in 2112 Japan, the Sibyl System measures every citizen's mental state via 'Crime Coefficient' — and anyone whose coefficient exceeds the threshold is eliminated by police, regardless of whether they have committed an actual crime. Complete in English from VIZ.
by Yutaka Izubuchi (story) / Takeaki Momose (art)
The 2002 RahXephon anime by Bones — a music-mythological mecha series often compared to Evangelion — was adapted into a 3-volume manga that director Yutaka Izubuchi himself described as 'another version' rather than a faithful retelling. Takeaki Momose's manga makes its own narrative choices, including different love interest and protagonist origin. Complete in English from TOKYOPOP.
by Kozue Amano
Akari Mizunashi has emigrated from Earth to Aqua — a terraformed Mars whose dominant city, Neo-Venezia, is a meticulous architectural recreation of Venice. Akari is training as an Undine, a gondolier-tour-guide. The work is hard, the days are long, and the city is beautiful beyond reason. Kozue Amano's iyashikei masterpiece spans 2 volumes of AQUA (prequel) and 12 volumes of ARIA. Complete in English in the Yen Press 7-volume omnibus.
by Kosaku Takahashi (story) / Kenji Teraoka (art)
Japan Sinks is the manga adaptation of Sakyo Komatsu's landmark disaster science fiction novel — following the geological discovery that the Japanese archipelago is sliding into the ocean, and the human response to the end of the nation.
by Yuki Hijiri
Choujin Locke is one of manga's longest-running sci-fi sagas — a galaxy-spanning space opera following Locke, an immortal esper who drifts through humanity's rise and fall, protecting people he knows he will outlive. Begun by Yuki Hijiri in 1967 and continued until his death in 2022.
by Osamu Tezuka
The Three-Eyed One follows Sharaku Hosuke, a seemingly simple-minded boy who conceals a third eye beneath a bandage — when uncovered, the third eye reveals his true identity as a descendant of a lost civilization with extraordinary mental powers and a ruthless intelligence.
by Mitsuteru Yokoyama
A schoolboy named Koichi inherits the legacy of an alien stranded on Earth 5,000 years ago — three superhuman servants and the Tower of Babel — and learns that the same servants will obey his enemy Yomi, a distant relative who wants the world.
by Izuru Yumizuru (story) / Yasuhito Takuma / Rukira (art)
A review of Infinite Stratos — the manga about the only male pilot in a world where power suits called IS can only be operated by women, enrolling in an all-female academy.
by Fujiko F. Fujio
21 Emon is Fujiko F. Fujio's late-1960s sci-fi comedy about the 21st heir to a centuries-old Tokyo hotel who dreams of becoming a space pilot instead of running the family inn — and the robot, alien, and rival-hotel girl who keep his ordinary future tangled up with the extraordinary universe outside.
by Kazumasa Hirai (writer) / Jiro Kuwata (artist)
8 Man follows detective Hachiro Azuma, gunned down in the line of duty and reborn when his mind is poured into a super-robot body by Dr. Tani. Now the eighth detective of the police force, he fights crime at 3,000 km/h — and has to smoke special cooling cigarettes to keep his electronic brain from overheating.
by Leiji Matsumoto
Galaxy Express 999 follows Tetsuro Hoshino, a young boy who boards the legendary space train 999 toward a planet where he can receive a free mechanical body — accompanied by the mysterious Maetel — and encounters, on each planet the train stops at, a different meditation on what it means to be human and whether eternity is worth what it costs.
by Kazumasa Hirai (original) / Shotaro Ishinomori (manga)
Genma Taisen is Shotaro Ishinomori's manga adaptation of Kazumasa Hirai's science fiction series — following a group of psychically gifted young people who must unite to face Genma, a cosmic consciousness that destroys civilizations across the universe, in a battle that is as much spiritual as physical.
by Ryu Mitsuse (original novel) / Moto Hagio (manga)
Hyakuoku no Hiru to Senoku no Yoru is Moto Hagio's manga adaptation of Ryu Mitsuse's celebrated science fiction novel — following the collapse of civilizations across billions of years, centered on figures from different historical periods who are drawn toward a single question: what is the nature of creation, and who is responsible for it?
by Moto Hagio
Gin no Sankaku follows characters trapped across multiple timelines by a silver triangle that connects them — a complex, demanding sci-fi work by Moto Hagio that uses time loop mechanics to explore the weight of memory and the impossible arithmetic of rescue and loss.
by Osamu Tezuka
Ginga no Sannin is one of Osamu Tezuka's compact science fiction works — a single-volume story about three people across the galaxy whose lives intersect at a critical historical moment, demonstrating Tezuka's ability to compress epic into modest space.
by Naoki Urasawa
Nagoya, 1959. The Isewan Typhoon kills five thousand people. A tough fifth-grade girl named Asa is kidnapped by a young thief during the storm — and they survive together. Then they find a giant footprint. Naoki Urasawa's late-career masterwork builds slowly and patiently toward something much larger than the disaster it opens with.
by Osamu Tezuka
Earth scientists travel to a planet of plant people and prehistoric beasts in Tezuka's foundational early sci-fi.
by Mike Kennedy, Francisco Ruiz Velasco
Dark Horse's American reimagining of Lone Wolf and Cub — a cyborg ronin and a child, in 2100.
by Moto Hagio
A career-spanning Fantagraphics collection of ten Moto Hagio short stories — sci-fi, fantasy, and quiet domestic horror, from 1970's Bianca to 2007's The Willow Tree.
by Hitoshi Okuda
Tenchi Masaki discovers he's descended from an ancient galactic noble family when several extremely powerful alien women arrive at his family's countryside property. What follows is part sci-fi adventure, part family comedy, part slow-burn romance.
by LINK (Story) / Kotaro Shono (Art)
Yu's review of World's End Harem — Reito Mizushima was cryogenically frozen to await a cure for his illness; when he wakes, a plague called the MK Virus has killed 99.9% of the world's male population; he is one of a small number of surviving men tasked with repopulating humanity while navigating a society radically transformed by the near-absence of men.
by Yuba Isukari / Tatsuyuki Tanaka
Yu's review of Yokohama Station SF — Yokohama Station has been self-expanding for centuries and now covers all of Honshu; the world outside is called the Outside; Hiroto, who has never been inside the Station, gets in; manga adaptation of Yuba Isukari's web novel about an infrastructure apocalypse.
by Mamoru Hosoda / Yu
Yu's review of Wolf Children — Hana falls in love with a man who is the last wolf-human; they have two children, Ame and Yuki, who can transform between human and wolf form; when their father dies suddenly, Hana must raise two wolf-children alone in a society that cannot know what they are.
by Spicy Tails / Isuna Hasekura
Yu's review of World End Economica — Hal lives in a lunar colony slum and dreams of reaching deep space; he discovers he has an exceptional gift for stock trading and uses it to pursue his dream; manga adaptation of Isuna Hasekura's visual novel about finance and ambition in a near-future lunar society.
by Eiichi Shimizu / Tomohiro Shimoguchi
Yu's review of Ultraman — Shinjiro Hayata is the son of the original Ultraman; he has inherited abilities he cannot fully control and is recruited into a secret organization that continues to fight alien threats; this is a tokusatsu legacy story done as serious science fiction manga.
by Tatsuhiko Takimoto / Kendi Oiwa
Yu's review of Welcome to the NHK — Tatsuhiro Sato has been a hikikomori (shut-in) for four years, convinced that Japan's public broadcaster NHK is running a conspiracy to create hikikomori; a mysterious girl named Misaki begins visiting him and offers to help him rejoin society, for reasons he cannot understand.
by Kou Yaginuma
Yu's review of Twin Spica — Asumi Kamogawa wants to become an astronaut; her mother died when a rocket crashed into their town when Asumi was an infant; a ghost in a lion's mask follows her through childhood and into the competitive astronaut training program, where she discovers what it actually takes to reach space.
by Yoshitoki Oima
Yu's review of To Your Eternity — an entity sent to Earth can take the form of anything it touches; after mimicking a dying boy, it begins an eternal journey through human lives, learning what grief, love, and connection mean across centuries.
by Keiko Takemiya
A review of Keiko Takemiya's Toward the Terra (地球へ…) — 3 volumes in Monthly Manga Shōnen from 1977. A landmark of 1970s science fiction manga about psychic humans (Mu) persecuted by an AI-controlled society on their long journey back to a forbidden Earth. Vertical's English edition is complete.
by Yū Sasuga (story) / Kenichi Tachibana (art)
Yu's review of Terra Formars — humanity seeded Mars with cockroaches to begin terraforming; centuries later, the cockroaches have evolved into humanoid giants with extreme strength, and human soldiers with insect-based genetic modifications are sent to exterminate them.
by Mari Yamazaki
Yu's review of Thermae Romae — Lucius Modestus is a Roman bath architect in the 2nd century CE who keeps accidentally slipping through drain holes and emerging in modern Japanese public baths; he returns to Rome with innovations borrowed from Japanese bath culture that make him the most sought-after bath designer in the Empire.
by Moto Hagio
Ten students take a survival exam in deep space. They check the count: there are eleven of them.
by Osamu Tezuka
Yu's review of Swallowing the Earth — a mysterious woman named Zephyrus is so beautiful and charismatic that every powerful man who encounters her is destroyed; Gohonmatsu Seki pursues her across decades; Tezuka's adult drama about power, beauty, and what men do to themselves in pursuit of what they desire.
by Reki Kawahara (original) / Kiseki Himura (art)
A review of Sword Art Online: Progressive — Kiseki Himura's manga adaptation of Reki Kawahara's retelling of Aincrad floor by floor, with Asuna present from the first dungeon, published in English by Yen Press.
by Yasuki Tanaka
Yu's review of Summer Time Rendering — Shinpei Ajiro returns to Hitogashima island for the funeral of his childhood friend Ushio; something is wrong; the shadows of people on the island are not quite right; Shinpei discovers a supernatural threat that copies humans through their shadows and a time loop mechanic that allows him to restart from the same point when he dies.
by Hiroshi Takashige (Story) / Ryoji Minagawa (Art)
Yu's review of Spriggan — Yu Ominae is a Spriggan agent for ARCAM, a secret organization that locates ancient artifacts of catastrophic power and prevents governments and criminal organizations from weaponizing them; a 90s action sci-fi manga with excellent set-piece design and geopolitical scope.
by Nitroplus / 5pb. (story) / Sarachi Yomi (art)
Yu's review of the Steins;Gate manga — a self-proclaimed mad scientist accidentally invents a way to send text messages to the past, and discovers that every change to the timeline costs someone something.
by Chuya Koyama
Yu's review of Space Brothers — a 32-year-old man who was fired from his job reapplies to become a JAXA astronaut, following the dream he abandoned when his younger brother moved forward without him.
by Yuri Shibamura / Ritsuki Futaba
Yu's review of Spirit Chronicles — Rio is a slum boy who witnesses a brutal crime and, in the moment of his trauma, is joined by the soul of Haruto Amakawa, a Japanese high school student who died; the two share a body and memories, and Rio uses Haruto's knowledge and his own determination to build a new life.
by Osamu Takahashi
A review of The Shinji Ikari Raising Project by Osamu Takahashi — the Shōnen Ace spinoff based on the Campus route of the EVA PS2 game, running 2005–2016, where Yui never died, NERV is just a research firm, and Shinji's biggest problem is the girl next door.
by Yumi Tamura
Yu's review of Seven Seeds — the Japanese government preserved groups of young people in cryosleep as humanity's last hope; they wake in a post-catastrophe future Japan, separated and uncertain, and must survive and eventually connect.
by Hisae Iwaoka
Yu's review of Saturn Apartments — humanity lives in a ring habitat orbiting Earth; the surface is a nature preserve; Mitsu is a young window washer who cleans the outer windows of the habitat; his father was also a window washer and disappeared; Hisae Iwaoka's quiet science fiction manga about class, memory, and the view from the outside.
by Shin Takahashi
Yu's review of Saikano — Chise is a clumsy, awkward high school girl who has recently started dating Shuji; she is also the last weapon, a girl whose body has been modified into a living weapon system for Japan's military; the series follows their relationship as the war escalates and Chise's modifications progressively replace her humanity.
by Sho Fumimura (Story) / Ryoichi Ikegami (Art)
Yu's review of Sanctuary — two survivors of the Cambodian killing fields make a pact to change Japan from the inside: one through legitimate politics, one through the yakuza; a politically serious manga by the creators of Crying Freeman and Mai the Psychic Girl about power, ambition, and what it costs to change a corrupt system.
by Okushou (Story) / Shizumu Watanabe (Art)
Ataru Kashiwagi opens the Real Account social media app one evening. He and millions of other users are pulled into a virtual world. The rules: complete the challenges to escape. The catch: when a player dies, every follower they have in Real Account dies in the real world. The first challenge is mass-broadcast to every player simultaneously. Okushou and Shizumu Watanabe's death game thriller ran 24 volumes in Japan (2014–2019); 16 are available in English from Kodansha Comics.
by Saki Hiwatari
Yu's review of Please Save My Earth — Alice Sakaguchi and six other teenagers in contemporary Tokyo discover they are the reincarnations of seven alien scientists who lived on the Moon observing Earth; their past life memories surface through shared dreams; past life emotions and relationships carry into present lives in ways that are not always welcome.
by Naoki Urasawa / Takashi Nagasaki (based on Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka)
Yu's review of Pluto — Naoki Urasawa reimagines a single Astro Boy story arc through the lens of adult science fiction: a robot detective investigates who is systematically destroying the world's seven most powerful robots.
by Osamu Tezuka
Yu's review of Phoenix — Tezuka Osamu's incomplete masterwork — a series of stories set throughout Japanese and universal history, connected by the Phoenix, a bird whose blood grants immortality; the Phoenix appears in each arc but cannot be caught; the arcs range from ancient Japan to the far future and examine what it means to be human across all of time.
by Makoto Yukimura
Yu's review of Planetes — a crew of space debris collectors in the near future of 2075, where someone wants to be the first human to Jupiter and someone else just wants to survive the shift.
by Boichi
Yu's review of Origin by Boichi — a robot built as a killing machine has been living as a human boy for years, hiding his true nature while protecting the family he has come to care for; when other robots of his kind begin appearing and killing, he must fight while continuing to conceal what he is; a sci-fi action manga about identity, purpose, and what makes life meaningful.
by Shirow Masamune (Story) / Rikudou Koushi (Art)
Yu's review of Pandora in the Crimson Shell — Nene Nanakorobi is a full-body cyborg girl who arrives on the artificial island of Cenancle with her android companion Clarion; Nene has the ability to access Clarion's special capabilities through a direct physical interface; the series is a comedic near-future adventure involving a cyborg cat girl, conspiracy, and the island's unusual politics.
by Tasuku Karasuma
Yu's review of No Guns Life — Juzo Inui is an Extended — a cyborg modified for war — whose head is a giant revolver; he works as a problem fixer in a city that fears and restricts the Extended people who fought for it.
by Fumi Yoshinaga
Yu's review of Ōoku: The Inner Chambers — an alternate Japan where a mysterious plague killed 75% of men over a century, women rose to political power, and the Shogunate is run by women while men are rare and precious; a historical alternate-universe manga that examines power, gender, and what history would look like if it went differently.
by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto
Yu's review of the Neon Genesis Evangelion manga — Shinji Ikari is fourteen, has been abandoned by his father, and is told he must pilot a giant biomechanical weapon against beings called Angels or humanity ends.
by Osamu Tezuka
Two superpowers test bombs that mutate animals into intelligent beings — Tezuka's Cold War allegory drawn in 1951.
by Atsuko Asano / Hinoki Kino
Yu's review of No. 6 — in the near future, the utopian city-state No. 6 promises its citizens a perfect life; Shion, an elite citizen, shelters a fugitive named Rat on a stormy night when he is 12; years later, this single act of kindness has destroyed his privileged status and the two are reunited in the city's dark underside.
by Hayao Miyazaki
Yu's review of Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind — the manga Hayao Miyazaki serialized over twelve years, extending far beyond the film's scope: a post-catastrophic world where toxic forests cover Earth, and a princess who understands the insects that everyone else fears.
by Kami Imai
Yu's review of Needless — set in a post-apocalyptic Japan where mutants called Needless have superpowers derived from fragments of forbidden knowledge; a deliberately over-the-top action comedy that parodies shonen conventions while executing them with genuine craft.
by Bow Ditama (Story) / Bunjuro Nakayama (Art)
Yu's review of Mahoromatic — Mahoro is the most powerful combat android in existence, but when she chooses to retire and work as a maid for a teenage boy rather than fight on, the series becomes a comedy about domesticity mixed with action sequences and an unexpectedly moving meditation on limited time.
by Tow Ubukata / Yoshitoki Oima
Yu's review of Mardock Scramble — Rune Balot, a teenage prostitute, is murdered by casino mogul Shell Septinos; resurrected under Mardock Scramble 09, an emergency law that allows dead people to be brought back as cyborgs to testify, she must survive long enough to bring Shell to justice with the help of her partner Oeufcoque.
by Tatsuki Fujimoto
Yu's review of Look Back — a single volume about two girls who connect through drawing, whose friendship is the manga's emotional center, and what one page of someone's art can mean to another person across time.
by Makoto Fukami / Seigo Tokiya
Yu's review of Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka — three years after magical girls saved the world from an invasion of magical creatures, Asuka Otori is trying to live a normal high school life; she has PTSD; her allies need her back; she doesn't want to go back.
by Shinobu Kaitani
Yu's review of Liar Game — Nao Kanzaki, an honest person to the point of being a liability, receives a package with 100 million yen and instructions for the Liar Game: she must deceive and be deceived; the last person holding the most money wins; she enlists the help of a recently released con man named Shinichi Akiyama.
by Haruko Ichikawa
Yu's review of Land of the Lustrous — in a far future where humanity no longer exists, gem beings called Lustrous fight against Lunarians who wish to capture them for decoration; Phosphophyllite, the youngest and most fragile gem, wants to fight but is unfit for combat; the series follows Phos's transformation into something unrecognizable as their body is replaced piece by piece and their original self becomes inaccessible.
by Yoshiki Tanaka / Katsumi Michihara
Yu's review of Legend of the Galactic Heroes — the manga adaptation of the classic novel series following Yang Wen-li of the Free Planets Alliance and Reinhard von Lohengramm of the Galactic Empire across a war that neither believes in the same terms as the people who sent them to fight it.
by Tsutomu Nihei
Yu's review of Knights of Sidonia — a thousand years after Earth is destroyed, the last humans travel space in a massive seed ship, fighting shapeshifting beings called Gauna with mecha called Gardes.
by Seita Horio
Yu's review of Kokkoku — the Yukawa family inherits a stone that can stop time, placing them in 'Stasis' — a frozen moment where they can move while everything else is still; when criminals kidnap family members, they use Stasis to rescue them, only to discover that a cult has been living in Stasis for years, and that Stasis is not as empty as they thought.
by Akira Toriyama
A review of Jaco the Galactic Patrolman — Akira Toriyama's 11-chapter Weekly Shōnen Jump comedy from July–October 2013, collected as a single volume by VIZ in January 2015. A Dragon Ball prequel that doesn't tell you it's one until the last chapter.
by Motoro Mase
Yu's review of Ikigami — In a near-future Japan, citizens are injected with a nanomachine capsule at age six; one in a thousand capsules is activated at a random future date, killing its recipient; the purpose is to make citizens value life; Fujimoto delivers the ikigami — the 24-hour death notices — and must witness what people do with their remaining day.
by Hiroya Oku
Yu's review of Inuyashiki — two people are accidentally destroyed and rebuilt as machines by aliens; a 58-year-old man no one noticed becomes a hero; a teenage boy whom everyone admired becomes a mass murderer; the series asks what the inside of a person determines when they are given absolute power.
by Masakazu Ishiguro
Yu's review of Heavenly Delusion (Tengoku Daimakyou) — two teenagers travel through a destroyed Japan searching for 'heaven,' while inside a mysterious sealed facility, children are raised with no knowledge of the outside world; the two storylines converge toward answers neither group fully understands yet.
by Yoshiki Takaya
Yu's review of Bio-Boosted Armor Guyver — high school student Sho Fukamachi accidentally activates an alien bio-armor unit called Guyver, which bonds to him permanently; the shadowy organization Chronos, which created the armor, wants it back — along with the knowledge of what the armor actually is and what it was designed for; a foundational mecha/bio-armor sci-fi manga.
by Nagaru Tanigawa / Gaku Tsugano
Yu's review of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya manga — Kyon's ordinary high school life ends when he sits in front of Haruhi Suzumiya, who announces she has no interest in ordinary humans — only aliens, time travelers, ESPers, and sliders; what he doesn't know yet is that she is an unconscious god who has attracted exactly what she wanted.
by Tsukumizu
Yu's review of Girls' Last Tour — two girls travel through a massive post-apocalyptic city on a kettenrad, eating whatever they find, watching it snow, and thinking about what it means to be alive when almost nothing is left.
by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko
Yu's review of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin — Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, the original character designer for the 1979 Gundam anime, re-adapts and expands the One Year War, giving Char Aznable the backstory the original never showed and drawing the Universal Century with 40 years of additional craft.
by Masamune Shirow
A review of Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface — Masamune Shirow's 11-chapter Young Magazine sequel from 1997, collected into a single volume by Kodansha (Solid Box 2000, mainstream 2001). Dark Horse Comics's English edition came out in 2003.
by Masamune Shirow
Yu's review of Ghost in the Shell — Major Motoko Kusanagi leads a counter-cyberterrorism unit in a future where the line between human and machine has dissolved, and pursues the mystery of a hacker called the Puppet Master.
by Sakae Esuno
Yu's review of Future Diary (Mirai Nikki) — Yukiteru Amano is chosen as one of twelve participants in a death game where each person receives a diary that predicts their own future; the last survivor becomes God; the series is a thriller structured around information asymmetry and the uniquely disturbing character of Yuno Gasai.
by Takumi Yanai / Satoru Sao
Yu's review of Gate — a gate appears in Ginza, Tokyo; a fantasy world army pours through and attacks civilians; the Japan Self-Defense Force pushes back and enters the Special Region, a fantasy world where Rome-like legions, dragons, and magic users coexist; the manga follows JSDF officer Itami Youji's interaction with the Special Region and its inhabitants.
by Yusuke Kishi / Toru Oikawa
Yu's review of From the New World — a millennium from now, a small society of psychic humans lives in apparent peace; Saki and her friends begin to notice the gaps between what they are taught and what is real, and what they discover rewrites everything they thought their world was.
by Shouji Gatou / Retsu Tateo
Yu's review of Full Metal Panic! — Sōsuke Sagara, a teenage military specialist from a private military organization, is assigned to protect high school girl Kaname Chidori who doesn't know why she needs protection; he attends her school undercover, treats every situation as a military operation, and creates chaos wherever he goes; military action comedy with genuine mecha sequences.
by Mingming
Yu's review of Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse — an alternate universe NGE spinoff where Shinji Ikari is a new student at a school hiding a secret connected to the Angels; Mingming's reimagining moves the Eva mythology into a school setting while keeping the core emotional relationships.
by Tatsuki Fujimoto
Yu's review of Fire Punch — Agni has a regeneration blessing; someone with a flame blessing sets him on fire; he cannot die and cannot stop burning; he crosses a frozen post-apocalyptic world looking for revenge while a man with a camera follows him.
by Hiroki Endo
Yu's review of Eden: It's an Endless World! — a plague destroyed most of humanity; a boy named Elijah grows up in the aftermath, in a world run by the Propater organization and his father's network of resistance, becoming something neither of them intended.
by Shinji Kajio / Kenji Tsuruta
Yu's review of Emanon — a young man on an overnight ferry meets a mysterious woman who claims to remember every life she has lived since the first single-celled organism; she carries within her the memories of three billion years of evolution; he doesn't know whether to believe her.
by Q Hayashida
Yu's review of Dorohedoro — a man with a lizard head and amnesia searches for the sorcerer who transformed him in a brutal city where sorcerers use humans as test subjects.
by Masamune Shirow
Yu's review of Dominion Tank Police — in a future city where crime requires a Tank Police division, officer Leona Ozaki is assigned to the unit and falls deeply in love with her miniature tank Bonaparte; Masamune Shirow's comedic sci-fi action, lighter than Ghost in the Shell but with the same worldbuilding attention.
by Katsuhiro Otomo
Yu's review of DOMU — Over several years, residents of the Tsutsumi housing complex have been dying or going mad at an inexplicable rate; a detective investigating the deaths suspects something supernatural; an old man with psychic abilities has been killing residents for entertainment; when a young girl moves into the complex with her own abilities, a confrontation becomes inevitable.
by Inio Asano
Yu's review of Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction — giant alien motherships have hovered over Tokyo for three years; Kadode and Ouran go to high school underneath them, play games, take photos, and try to stay friends while the world ends slowly around them.
by Yuji Iwahara
Yu's review of Dimension W — in the near future, limitless energy is drawn from Dimension W through coils; illegal coils are dangerous; Kyoma Mabuchi, a coil hunter who hates coils, teams up with Mira, an advanced android girl who may be the key to the most dangerous illegal coil mystery.
by FLIPFLOPs
Yu's review of Darwin's Game — high school student Kaname Sudou downloads the Darwin's Game app at a friend's recommendation and discovers it is a real-world death game where participants with supernatural abilities called Sigils fight for survival and prizes; a battle royale survival manga with strategic combat and character development.
by Kakeru Kobashiri / Ichiro Sakaki
Yu's review of Dawn of the Witch — a spinoff of Grimoire of Zero set in the same world; Saybil, a magic student with no memories before entering the academy, is sent to a remote village on a special field course with a mysterious teacher; the village's history and the world's ongoing religious conflict force him to confront who he actually is.
by Yutaka Nanten
Yu's review of the Cowboy Bebop manga — a manga adaptation of the classic anime; Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, Faye Valentine, and the crew of the Bebop pursue bounties across a solar system that is both future-advanced and perpetually broken down; short episodic stories in the visual register of the anime.
by Code:000 (original) / Kentaro Yabuki (manga)
A review of Darling in the FranXX — 8 volumes in Shōnen Jump+. Manga adaptation by Kentaro Yabuki of the Studio Trigger/A-1 Pictures anime. Children pilot giant mechs called FranXX in pairs; Hiro and Zero Two find each other in a world that has eliminated the purpose of human connection. VIZ Media's English edition is complete.
by Majiko! (art), Ichirō Ōkouchi (story), based on the Sunrise anime by Goro Taniguchi
Yu's review of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, the 8-volume manga by Majiko! that retells the Sunrise anime without its Knightmare Frame mecha. Exiled prince Lelouch gains Geass, the power of absolute obedience, from the mysterious C.C. and becomes the masked rebel Zero — but the manga is lighter, more comedic, and more romance-focused than the anime.
by Tomonori Inoue
Yu's review of Coppelion — twenty years after a nuclear meltdown turned Tokyo into a forbidden ruin, three genetically engineered schoolgirls who are immune to radiation walk into the dead city to find the survivors everyone else abandoned.
by Yuu Kamiya / Tsubaki Himana (story), Kuro (art)
Yu's review of Clockwork Planet — in a world where Earth was rebuilt entirely out of gears by a clockmaker called Y, Naoto Miura, a boy with impossibly sharp hearing, repairs RyuZU, an automaton nobody had been able to wake for 206 years. Together with the genius engineer Marie Bell Breguet they get dragged into stopping the government from purging a city of twenty million.
by CLAMP
Yu's review of Clover by CLAMP — in a dystopian future, children with magic power are ranked by clover leaves, and Suu is the only four-leaf clover ever found. Locked away her whole life, her one wish is to visit a place called Fairy Park, escorted by the ex-soldier Kazuhiko. A four-volume fragment of a story CLAMP never finished, told in their most experimental page design.
by CLAMP
Yu's review of Chobits by CLAMP — Hideki, a country boy in Tokyo, finds an abandoned persocom in the trash, names her Chi, and slowly learns she may be a legendary 'Chobit' capable of real feeling. A sci-fi romance about whether you can love a machine — and whether that question even matters.
by Abi Umeda
Yu's review of Children of the Whales — the Mud Whale drifts across an endless Sea of Sand carrying people called the Marked, who can move things with a power named thymia but die young for it. When archivist Chakuro finds a girl on a ghost ship, the world that has been hidden from his island comes for them.
by Leiji Matsumoto
Yu's review of Captain Harlock — in 2977, humanity has grown comfortable and given up. Harlock is the one man who still fights. Aboard the Arcadia he stands against the Mazone, alien women who came back to reclaim the Earth they once seeded.
by Haruyuki Yoshida (original concept by Akane Shimizu)
Yu's review of Cells at Work! Bacteria by Haruyuki Yoshida — a Hataraku Saibou spinoff set inside the human gut, where the good Bifidum army and the bad Clostridium Perfringens fight over a host's intestines, until a bigger threat forces them to team up.
by Lynn Okamoto
Yu's review of Brynhildr in the Darkness — from Elfen Lied creator Lynn Okamoto, a sci-fi horror about lab-made witches who survive only on daily death-suppressant pills, the boy who tries to save them, and the harness implant that liquefies any witch the moment it's removed.
by Junya Inoue
Yu's review of Btooom! — Ryota Sakamoto, Japan's top player of an online bomb-combat game, wakes up abducted on a deserted island forced to play it for real, fighting other players with live BIM explosives to collect the chips that let one person leave.
by Yasuhiro Nightow
Yu's review of Blood Blockade Battlefront — New York has become Hellsalem's Lot, a city fused with a supernatural Beyond, and a crew called Libra keeps it from tearing itself apart. Leonardo Watch joins them carrying the All-Seeing Eyes of the Gods, paid for with his sister's sight. Yasuhiro Nightow's wild, episodic post-Trigun work.
by Mohiro Kitoh
Yu's review of Bokurano by Mohiro Kitoh — fifteen children sign a contract to pilot a giant robot called Zearth, only to learn each victory costs the pilot's life, and that every battle won erases another Earth.
by Hiroyuki Yoshino / Ichiro Okouchi (story) / Rino Mizukami (art)
A review of Guilty Crown — the manga adaptation of the anime about a high school boy who gains the 'Power of Kings' to extract weapons from others' hearts.
by Tsuyoshi Takaki
Yu's review of Black Torch — Jiro Azuma is a ninja-trained kid bullied for talking to animals, until he rescues a black cat who turns out to be the immortal mononoke Rago. When Jiro is killed protecting him, Rago fuses with him to bring him back, and the two are dragged into the Bureau of Espionage's war against demonic spirits.
by Tsutomu Nihei
Yu's review of Blame! — in a city grown to planetary scale and ruled by murderous machines, a near-silent man named Killy walks endless architecture hunting for a single human with the Net Terminal Gene that could stop the city from expanding forever.
by Yukito Kishiro
Yu's review of Battle Angel Alita (Gunnm) — a memoryless cyborg pulled from a junkyard fights through bounty hunting, Motorball, and a doomed first love in the brutal world beneath the sky city of Zalem.
by Tsutomu Nihei
Yu's review of Biomega — Tsutomu Nihei's six-volume sci-fi where a synthetic agent named Zoichi Kanoe rides a virus-eaten Earth, hunting humans immune to the N5S plague while a talking grizzly bear named Kozlov fights at his side.
by Yukito Kishiro
Yu's review of Battle Angel Alita: Last Order — Yukito Kishiro's direct sequel to Battle Angel Alita. It reboots the original's ending, sends Alita into the Zenith of Things Tournament aboard the space station Ketheres, and explodes the cyberpunk world out to Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. A 19-volume tournament epic that is bigger, weirder, and more divisive than the original.
by Yukito Kishiro
A review of Yukito Kishiro's Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle — ongoing in Evening. The third series in Kishiro's Battle Angel saga returns to Mars to reveal what happened to young Yoko (Alita) before she ended up as a disembodied head in the Scrapyard — a brutal and emotionally devastating origin story. VIZ Media's English edition is ongoing.
by Osamu Tezuka
Yu's review of Astro Boy (鉄腕アトム) — Osamu Tezuka's foundational manga about a robot child built by Dr. Tenma to replace his dead son, abandoned, then raised by Professor Ochanomizu into a hero who defends both humans and robots. Includes 'The Greatest Robot on Earth.' Complete in 23 volumes from Dark Horse.
by Osamu Tezuka (concept) / Masami Yuki (concept works) / Tetsuro Kasahara (art)
Yu's review of Atom: The Beginning — the Astro Boy prequel by Osamu Tezuka, Masami Yuki, and Tetsuro Kasahara, following grad students Umataro Tenma and Hiroshi Ochanomizu as they build A106 'Six,' a robot with a self born from the Bewusstsein system, and drag him into the brutal Robot Wrestling circuit against the champion Mars.
by Ark Performance
Yu's review of Arpeggio of Blue Steel — humanity has lost its oceans to the Fleet of Fog, a fleet of sentient WWII-era warships with humanoid Mental Models. Former cadet Gunzō Chihaya captains the defected submarine I-401, whose avatar Iona left the Fog of her own will. A naval sci-fi about what happens when weapons start to feel.
by Kenta Shinohara
Yu's review of Astra: Lost in Space — nine kids on a school camp trip get hurled 5,012 light-years from home, find an abandoned ship called the Astra, and hop planet to planet to get back. But the survival story hides a murder mystery: someone sent them out there to die, and that someone is on the ship. Complete in 5 volumes from VIZ.
by Masamune Shirow
Yu's review of Appleseed — Deunan Knute and her cyborg partner Briareos are pulled out of the post-war wasteland into Olympus, a half-human, half-bioroid utopia run by the supercomputer Gaia, only to discover the city's peace is built on a decision about whether humanity even deserves to inherit the future.
by Kaoru Shintani
Yu's review of Area 88 — Shin Kazama, a Japanese airline trainee, is drugged and tricked by his best friend into signing a three-year mercenary contract with the air force of a fictional desert kingdom. Trapped at Area 88, he can only buy his freedom by killing — earning $1.5 million in combat bonuses. Kaoru Shintani's 1979 aviation classic about a good man becoming an ace he never wanted to be.
by Hiroshi Sakurazaka (original novel) / Ryosuke Takeuchi (story) / Takeshi Obata (art)
Yu's review of All You Need Is Kill — Takeshi Obata's manga adaptation of Hiroshi Sakurazaka's time-loop war novel. A rookie soldier dies fighting alien Mimics, wakes at the start of the same day, and loops 160 times into a killing machine. VIZ published it as a single omnibus.
by Jun Maeda (story) / Yuriko Asami (art)
A review of the Angel Beats! manga — 3 volumes in Dengeki G's Comic. Otonashi wakes up in an afterlife high school with no memories and joins the Battlefront, a group of dead teenagers fighting against the rules of their existence. Yen Press's English edition is complete.
by Tetsuya Imai
Yu's review of Alice & Zouroku — Sana, a girl with the power to materialize anything she imagines, escapes a research facility and runs into Kashimura Zouroku, a stubborn old Shinjuku florist who is utterly unimpressed by her god-like abilities and decides what she really needs is dinner, a bath, and someone willing to tell her she's wrong.
by Hitoshi Tomizawa
Yu's review of Alien Nine — Yuri Otani, a frightened sixth-grader, is elected to her school's Alien Party and forced to fight the aliens that fall on the school grounds while wearing a symbiotic creature called a Borg on her head. Drawn in a soft, cute style that makes the body horror underneath it so much worse.
by Katsuhiro Otomo
Yu's review of Akira — Katsuhiro Otomo's six-volume monster, serialized 1982–1990. Set in 2019 Neo-Tokyo, a teenage biker tries to save the best friend who suddenly has the power to end the world. The manga that dragged Japanese comics onto the world stage.
by Osamu Tezuka
Yu's review of Alabaster — Osamu Tezuka's bleakest manga. A Black sports star named James Block, ruined by the racism of the woman he loved, botches an invisibility ray and turns himself into a skinless monster who hunts beautiful people out of pure envy. Tezuka hated drawing it. That's exactly why it's worth reading.
by Reki Kawahara (story) / Hiroyuki Aigamo (art)
Yu's review of the Accel World manga — Hiroyuki Aigamo's adaptation of Reki Kawahara's light novels. Haruyuki Arita, a bullied middle schooler who hides inside online games, is handed Brain Burst by the school's vice president and becomes Silver Crow, the only avatar in the Accelerated World who can fly. Across 8 volumes the manga races from his recruitment through the Dusk Taker arc to the Hermes Cord.
by Kumiko Suekane
Yu's review of Afterschool Charisma — St. Kleio Academy raises clones of history's greatest people: Napoleon, Mozart, Marie Curie, Joan of Arc, Freud, Hitler. Shiro Kamiya is the only ordinary human student — until he learns who he really is. A 12-volume sci-fi drama about whether a clone is doomed to repeat the death of the person they were copied from.
by Kazuma Kamachi (story) / Arata Yamaji (art)
Yu's review of A Certain Scientific Accelerator — after losing most of his power protecting Last Order, Academy City's strongest esper can barely speak without a collar that links his broken brain to the network of clones he once slaughtered. When the rogue group DA and a necromancer named Esther Rosenthal collide over Last Order, Accelerator has to fight as a protector, not a monster.
by Tsutomu Nihei
Yu's review of Abara — Tsutomu Nihei's two-volume body-horror nightmare about Kudou Denji, a man who turns into a bone-armored Black Gauna to fight the human-eating White Gauna. The dense Nihei work that Tatsuki Fujimoto later called the blueprint for Chainsaw Man.
by Asato Asato (Story) / Motoki Yoshihara (Art)
The Republic of San Magnolia tells its citizens the war is fought by unmanned drones. The drones have pilots — children stripped of citizenship and conscripted to die in squadrons the republic refuses to count. Lena is a military officer who refuses to lie. Shin is the squadron leader who has stopped expecting to live. The manga adaptation of Asato Asato's light novel ran 3 volumes (2018–2021) before being suspended due to the artist's health; the LN and anime cover the full story.
by Kazuma Kamachi (story) / Chuya Kogino (art) / Kiyotaka Haimura (character design)
Yu's review of the A Certain Magical Index manga — Touma Kamijou's right hand, the Imagine Breaker, nullifies every supernatural power it touches. When a nun named Index, whose mind holds 103,000 forbidden grimoires, falls onto his balcony, he is pulled into the war between Academy City's science espers and the Church's magicians. Manga adaptation of Kazuma Kamachi's light novel, drawn by Chuya Kogino.
by Nobuaki Tadano
Yu's review of 7 Billion Needles — Hikaru Takabe, a withdrawn high schooler, is killed by a meteor and revived by an alien called Horizon, who needs her help hunting Maelstrom, a destructive alien hiding inside one of her classmates. Nobuaki Tadano's four-volume series reimagines Hal Clement's 1950 novel 'Needle' as a quiet, strange story about a girl learning to stop hiding.
by Yumi Tamura
Yu's review of 7SEEDS — after a meteor wipes out civilization, young people cryogenically frozen by a secret government project wake up in a transformed Japan with no instructions. Yumi Tamura's 35-volume survival epic about ordinary, frightened people who were never asked if they wanted to save the human race.
by Naoki Urasawa
Yu's review of 20th Century Boys — childhood friends once wrote a 'Book of Prophecy' about saving the world. Decades later a cult leader called 'Friend' is using it as a blueprint for real mass murder, and convenience store manager Kenji realizes he helped write the script.
by Katsuhiro Otomo, Takumi Nagayasu
After Earth shatters, a mother walks across the wasteland to find her children — Otomo's other apocalypse epic.
by Go Nagai (story) / Ken Ishikawa (art)
The original 1974–1975 Getter Robo manga by Go Nagai and Ken Ishikawa — three pilots (Ryoma Nagare, Hayato Jin, Musashi Tomoe) controlling a combining machine powered by the cosmic Getter Rays, against the underground Dinosaur Empire. Six volumes complete in Japanese; unlicensed in English, though later franchise entries (Getter Robo Devolution, Getter Robo Arc) have been published in English.
by Osamu Tezuka
A boy who hates love so much he kills any creature he sees in affection — until a goddess curses him to fall in love and lose her in every life he lives. Tezuka's rawest, ugliest, most personal work.
by Kazuya Kudo, Ryoichi Ikegami
A 14-year-old psychic girl runs from a global conspiracy in one of the first manga to break out in the West.
by Osamu Tezuka
A review of Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis — serialized in Manga Shōnen in 1949, complete in one volume. A loose adaptation of Fritz Lang's film about a stratified city, an android child named Mitchi, and the question of what makes someone human. VIZ Media's English edition is complete.
by Hiroki Endo
A virus collapses civilization, and what comes next is messier and more human than any standard apocalypse story.
by Hajime Segawa
A review of Tokyo ESP, the manga about a girl who acquires ESP powers and becomes a hero in a Tokyo where people with supernatural abilities are fighting over the city's future.
by Masatsugu Iwase (manga) / Hajime Yatate, Yoshiyuki Tomino (original)
Masatsugu Iwase's five-volume manga adaptation of the 2002 anime Mobile Suit Gundam SEED — Kira Yamato and Athrun Zala, childhood friends on opposite sides of a war between genetically engineered Coordinators and natural humans. Del Rey Manga's complete English release from 2004–2005.
by Naoki Urasawa, Takashi Nagasaki
A review of Naoki Urasawa and Takashi Nagasaki's Billy Bat — 20 volumes in Morning from October 2008 to August 2016. A century-spanning conspiracy centered on a cartoon bat symbol that may have shaped human history.
by Osamu Tezuka
A masked gunslinger fights for Mars's persecuted native people in Tezuka's 1960 space western — and the mystery of who he really is fooled almost 40,000 readers.
by Masamune Shirow
A review of Dominion (Dominion Tank Police), Masamune Shirow's anarchic sci-fi action comedy about a tank-obsessed police officer in a polluted future city.
by Shotaro Ishinomori
Nine people from around the world are kidnapped and turned into cyborg weapons against their will. Then they escape and have to decide what to do with the power they were given — fight for the people who made them, or fight for humanity itself.