295 reviews in this genre
by Sekihiko Inui
A review of Comic Party — Sekihiko Inui's five-volume manga adaptation of the Leaf/Aquaplus visual novel, following a college freshman who gets dragged into the doujinshi scene and Comiket by his best friend, drawn by a mangaka who sells doujinshi himself.
by Novala Takemoto (story), Yukio Kanesada (art)
A review of Kamikaze Girls — Yukio Kanesada's one-volume manga adaptation of Novala Takemoto's cult novel, about a Lolita-fashion girl in rural Ibaraki who befriends a loud, motorcycle-riding yankii.
by Natsumi Ando
A review of Zodiac P.I. — Natsumi Ando's four-volume shojo mystery about a girl who uses magical zodiac rings to solve supernatural and real-world mysteries, aimed at younger readers but with enough charm to work for older shojo fans.
by Sirial
A review of One Fine Day — the Korean manhwa iyashikei about a young wizard and his animal companions living peacefully in the countryside, with no particular goal beyond the specific pleasures of daily life.
by Mari Okazaki
A review of Suppli — Mari Okazaki's josei manga about a 25-year-old woman working in advertising who navigates career ambition, complicated relationships, and the specific exhaustion of trying to have both a professional identity and a personal life.
by Sumito Oowara
A review of Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! by Sumito Oowara — three high school girls form an anime-making club, and the manga keeps stepping inside their imaginations to show you what making something actually feels like.
by Virginia Nitouhei (art), Natsuya Semikawa (story), Kururi (character design)
A review of Otherworldly Izakaya Nobu (Isekai Izakaya 'Nobu') — the iyashikei food manga where a Japanese pub's back alley opens onto a medieval fantasy city, and knights, tax collectors, and guards discover izakaya cooking for the first time.
by Kosuke Fujishima
A review of You're Under Arrest! by Kosuke Fujishima — a slice-of-life police comedy about two traffic cops whose friendship, professionalism, and occasional high-speed bicycle chases make them the heart of their precinct.
by Marimo Ragawa
Baby and Me follows Takuya Enoki, a grade-schooler who becomes a mother and a brother at the same time, raising his toddler brother Minoru after their mother dies and their father works to keep the family going.
by Kakeru Utsugi
A review of Kakeru Utsugi's How to Keep a Mummy (ミイラの飼い方) — 14 volumes on ComicWalker. High schooler Sora receives a tiny adorable mummy from his globe-trotting father. The manga is about caring for small things that trust you. Seven Seas Entertainment's English edition is complete.
by Osamu Akimoto
Osamu Akimoto's *Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Kouenmae Hashutsujo* (mercifully shortened to *Kochikame*) ran in Weekly Shonen Jump from 1976 to 2016 — 40 years, 200 volumes (plus a standalone 201st in 2021), making it Jump's longest-running serialized work. Ryotsu Kankichi is the cop. Gambling and money-making schemes are his main interests. Police work is somewhere distant. Unlicensed in English.
by Takatoshi Yamada
Kensuke Gotoh is a brilliant surgeon from a prestigious Tokyo hospital. He arrives on Koshiki Island — a remote Japanese island with no hospital, no specialists, and a population that has stopped expecting medical care — and becomes its only doctor. Takatoshi Yamada's medical manga has won the Shogakukan Manga Award, sold 12 million copies, and been adapted into multiple dramas and a 2022 film. The manga has been on author-illness-related hiatus since 2010 at 25 volumes.
by Tsuneki Netaro
Kitai Fuku ga Aru follows Mami, a tall college student everyone reads as cool and model-like, who secretly longs to wear Lolita fashion. A five-volume self-discovery story about clothing, conformity, and the gap between how you look and who you are.
by Hitomi Takano
My Boy follows Mashuu Hayami, a 32-year-old office worker adrift in her life after a painful breakup, who meets Satoru Kaga, a 12-year-old boy playing hockey alone in the park. Their unlikely friendship — and the questions it raises — unfolds across seven thoughtful volumes.
by Takeichi Abaraya (art) / Kazuya Konomoto (story)
Hiroshi Odokawa drives a taxi in Tokyo. He looks like a walrus. He has no friends, no romantic interests, and a memory good enough to recall every conversation in every fare he's driven. A teenage girl is missing. Every passenger Odokawa picks up turns out to be connected to her disappearance — and to each other. Kazuya Konomoto's mystery thriller was an anime first; the 5-volume manga adaptation by Takeichi Abaraya is being released in English by Denpa starting in 2026.
by Haruko Kumota
Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu follows the world of rakugo — traditional Japanese comic storytelling — through two performers across two generations: the transcendent and self-destructive Yakumo, and the student Yotaro who inherits what Yakumo cannot save.
by Ryohei Saigan
Yu's review of Always Sunset on Third Street — a long-running anthology of stories set in a Tokyo shitamachi neighborhood during Japan's postwar economic recovery, following the residents of Third Street through the daily texture of life in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
by Norifusa Mita
Kenji Sakuragi is a former biker-gang member turned lawyer. He arrives at Ryuzan High School — a struggling Tokyo prep school facing bankruptcy — and announces his plan: he will get five of its worst students into Tokyo University. Norifusa Mita's 21-volume manga (2003–2007) made Japan rethink its entrance exam system. A sequel ran 17 volumes (2018–2021). Both Hiroshi Abe TV drama adaptations were ratings hits. Unlicensed in English.
by Kenjiro Hata
Hayate the Combat Butler follows Hayate Ayasaki, a kindhearted teen saddled with a 156 million yen debt by his deadbeat parents, who becomes butler to a sheltered 13-year-old heiress after she mistakes a kidnapping attempt for a love confession.
by Hebi-zou (creator), Tsuta Suzuki (story), Tarako (art)
Heaven's Design Team imagines that God outsourced the creation of Earth's animals to a design firm of demigods. Each chapter is a new brief — 'I want a creature that does X' — and the team argues, prototypes, and engineers its way to an animal that actually exists, with real biology notes at the end.
by Fujiko Fujio
The Road to Manga is the autobiographical manga by Fujiko Fujio — the duo who created Doraemon — documenting their childhood friendship, their manga obsession, and their determined journey from provincial Toyama to becoming professional manga artists in postwar Tokyo.
by Noriyuki Konishi
Yu's review of the Yo-kai Watch manga — elementary schooler Nate Adams finds a capsule machine containing Whisper, a ghost butler who gives him the Yo-kai Watch; the device lets him see Yo-kai, Japanese spirits who cause everyday human problems; a comedy series for younger readers that draws on Japanese folklore while being consistently funny for adults too.
by Araki Joh (story) / Kenji Nagatomo (art)
Bartender follows Ryu Sasakura, a young genius bartender who serves the 'Glass of the Gods' at a hidden Ginza bar — the one drink each troubled customer needs at that exact moment in their life.
by Yoshito Usui
A review of Crayon Shin-chan, Yoshito Usui's gag manga about a shameless five-year-old in suburban Saitama who says every embarrassing thing adults are too polite to say out loud.
by Juzo Yamasaki (story) / Kenichi Kitami (art)
Tsuribaka Nisshi follows Densuke 'Hama-chan' Hamasaki — a dead-average salaryman obsessed with fishing — who unknowingly befriends Ichinosuke 'Su-san' Suzuki, the president of the construction company he works for, after the two meet over a leftover grilled fish.
by Etsumi Haruki
Jarinko Chie follows Chie Takemoto, a fifth-grader in working-class Osaka who runs the family horumon-yaki shop while wrangling her gambling, brawling, work-shy father Tetsu. A warm, dialect-soaked comedy about a kid who's the only adult in the room.
by Takeshi Ebihara
Takeshi Ebihara's 1980 comedy manga about a young elementary school teacher whose male students try various schemes to embarrass her. The manga was 8 volumes; the 1981–1983 Studio Pierrot anime adaptation (95 episodes, TV Tokyo) became one of the defining ecchi anime of the early 1980s. The catchphrase 'maicching!' entered Japanese vocabulary. Unlicensed in English; content is significantly dated.
by Miko Yasu
Police in a Pod follows Seiko Kawai, a burned-out policewoman who is about to quit, and her new superior Fuji — a former elite officer with her own complicated reasons for being at a small police box — as they navigate the absurd and occasionally moving realities of police work.
by Tochi Ueyama
Cooking Papa follows Kazumi Araiwa, a Fukuoka salaryman at Kanamaru Sangyo who is secretly a brilliant home cook — feeding his family and, eventually, his whole workplace — across one of the longest-running manga in history.
by Shinji Kubota (story) / Reiji Nakagawa (art)
Ramen Discovery Legend follows Fuuta Kajiwara, an ordinary salaryman with extraordinary ramen sensitivity, as he encounters and evaluates Japan's ramen culture — from regional styles to legendary shops — becoming an unexpected authority through pure palate.
by Daisuke Terasawa
A review of Daisuke Terasawa's Shota no Sushi (将太の寿司) — 27 volumes in Weekly Shōnen Magazine from 1992 to 1997. A Hokkaido boy trains at Tokyo's finest sushi restaurant, learns from masters, and competes at the highest levels of Japanese culinary craft.
by Masayuki Kusumi (story) / Jiro Taniguchi (art)
The Solitary Gourmet follows Goro Inogashira, a self-employed import goods dealer, as he eats lunch alone in various restaurants across Tokyo — a simple premise that becomes a meditation on solitude, pleasure, and the small dignities of everyday life.
by Motoyuki Kaneko
The Tailor of the King follows Yamato Sawabe, a young Japanese tailor who goes to Naples to study the art of Neapolitan tailoring, and returns to Japan to make suits — and make the men who wear them feel who they are.
by Takashi Fujiki (story) / Eiji Nonaka (art)
Tokujou Kabachi!! follows Daisuke Kanie, a paralegal at an administrative scrivener's office, as he takes on bureaucratic injustice and legal gray areas armed only with his knowledge of Japanese administrative law — and a willingness to argue until someone listens.
by Akiko Yoshida
Umimachi Diary follows three adult sisters in Kamakura who invite their half-sister — whom they barely know — to live with them after their estranged father's death, and the slow process of becoming a family.
by Katsu Miyazaki (story) / Koji Yoshimoto (art)
Black Jack Sousaku Hiwa is a documentary manga about how Osamu Tezuka created Black Jack — told through the editors and assistants who worked beside him, capturing both the genius and the human cost of his impossible work ethic.
by Mitsutoshi Furuya
A review of Mitsutoshi Furuya's Dame Oyaji — 39 volumes in Weekly Shōnen Sunday from 1970 to 1982. A dark gag manga about a salaryman father with no power at home, winner of the 1979 Shogakukan Manga Award.
by Shimimaru
Dasei 67% follows art-school student Minami Yoshizawa and the three friends who never leave her tiny apartment, drifting through a college life that runs on about 67% effort and 100% dumb, lovable inertia.
by Rieko Saito
Mainichi Kaasan is a newspaper comic strip that ran in the Mainichi Shimbun for over a decade — autobiographical 4-koma strips about being a mother, a manga artist, a wife, and eventually a widow, drawn with humor and complete honesty.
by Kazuo Umezu
Makoto-chan follows an elementary school boy named Makoto whose irrepressible energy, endless mischief, and complete refusal to behave like a normal child make him a terror to everyone around him — depicted in the purest gag manga tradition by Kazuo Umezu.
by Machiko Hasegawa
Sazae-san is Japan's most enduring manga — a newspaper 4-koma that began in 1946 and ran for 28 years, following a cheerful, impulsive young woman named Sazae and her extended family through postwar Japan's transformation from devastation to prosperity.
by Kota Nozomi (story) / 029 (art)
When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace follows the literature club members of Senko High School who suddenly develop supernatural powers — and then find that having powers changes absolutely nothing about their ordinary club activities and romantic dramas.
by Shinya Suzuki
Tsurumoku Dokusin-ryo follows young workers living in their company's bachelor dormitory — a comedy of closeness, romantic complications, and the specific texture of young adult working life in Japan when everyone you know also lives where you work.
by Leiji Matsumoto
Otoko Oidon follows Saburo Oyama, a young man from Kyushu trying to make it in Tokyo — living in a tiny boarding house, perpetually broke, hopelessly unlucky in love, and stubbornly determined to become someone despite all evidence suggesting otherwise.
by Hiroshi Saito
Naniwa Kinyuudo follows new employee Ginji Mita at a small-loan finance company in Osaka — a manga that uses the world of moneylending and debt collection to create one of manga's most honest portraits of Japanese economic life.
by Shirow Shiratori (story) / Karasu (art)
A review of The Ryuo's Work Is Never Done! — the manga about a teenage shogi champion who ends up coaching a precocious elementary school girl, becoming entangled with a cast of passionate junior players.
by Chica Umino
Yu's review of March Comes in Like a Lion — Rei Kiriyama is a 17-year-old professional shogi player drowning in isolation and depression, until three sisters in a small riverside house slowly pull him back toward being able to live.
by Shunji Enomoto
Golden Lucky is Shunji Enomoto's surreal 4-panel gag manga, serialized in Kodansha's Morning from 1990 to 1996. Famous for finishing dead last in reader polls for years — and surviving because of it.
by Iou Kuroda
Nasu collects Iou Kuroda's short manga stories — quiet, precise vignettes centered on food, travel, and the moments when ordinary life opens briefly into something larger, then closes again.
by Hiroshi Motomiya
Ore no Sora follows Ryu Domon, a young man who enters the corporate world with the same attitude he would bring to a street fight — confrontational, direct, and completely uninterested in playing by the rules the establishment considers non-negotiable.
by Motoei Shinzawa
High School! Kimengumi follows five boys who turn their strange faces into a way of life, building one of the loudest, weirdest gag manga of 1980s Shonen Jump.
by Fujio Akatsuka
Tensai Bakabon is Fujio Akatsuka's landmark gag manga about the Bakabon family — a household where the father's complete detachment from logic is presented as wisdom, and the world's attempts to impose reason are the actual problem.
by Etou Asuka
Tondemo-kun follows a trio of delinquent students whose plans to cause trouble consistently backfire in ways that are so spectacularly wrong they accidentally create good outcomes — a comedy built entirely on the gap between intention and result.
by Kamogawa Tsugame
Macaroni Houren-sou follows three high school students living together in a boarding house — Toshio Shingami, the energetic straight man; Kinoshita, the eccentric wildcard; and Trapp, the cool foreigner — in a surreal comedy that uses the school-life setting as a launching pad for increasingly unhinged humor.
by Osamu Tezuka
Ningen Konchuki (The Book of Human Insects) follows Toshiko Tomura, a beautiful and ruthless woman who absorbs the talents of creative people around her — becoming a novelist, then a designer, then an architect — by living with them, learning from them, and discarding them when she's taken everything they have.
by Midori Youkoh
Shonen Ashibe follows Ashibe, an energetic young boy, and his pet baby seal Goma-chan — a white, round, extremely photogenic animal that causes chaos wherever it goes and is beloved by everyone who encounters it, to the exhausted amusement of Ashibe's father.
by Mineo Maya
Tonde Saitama is a satirical comedy where Saitama Prefecture residents are treated as second-class citizens by Tokyo residents — forced to produce their Saitama identity card at the prefecture border, denied fine dining, and generally persecuted for the crime of not being from Tokyo — a 1982 parody that became a 2019 box office hit through sheer absurdist commitment.
by Tatsuhiko Yamagami
Gaki Deka follows Komawari-kun, an elementary schooler who calls himself Japan's first boy police officer and yells 'Death sentence!' at the world. Tatsuhiko Yamagami's 1974-1980 Weekly Shonen Champion smash pushed crude gag comedy further than any children's magazine had dared — and sold a million copies doing it.
by Osamu Tezuka
Ningen-domo Atsumare! follows alien observers who come to Earth to study human behavior and find themselves increasingly baffled — a Tezuka comedy that uses the outsider perspective to expose how strange ordinary human life actually is.
by Fujio Akatsuka
Osomatsu-kun follows the Matsuno sextuplets — six identical brothers — and their neighborhood including the iconic Iyami, a French-pretending show-off whose SHEEH! pose became one of Japanese comedy's most enduring images.
by Yoshida Sensha
Utsuru n Desu. is a 4-page-per-story anthology of complete non-sequiturs — situations that begin without context, escalate without logic, and end without resolution — and which became one of the most influential comedy manga of the early 1990s for showing that humor doesn't require setup.
by Noriko Sasaki
Doubutsu no Oisha-san follows Hamutaro, a quiet veterinary student in Hokkaido, his deadpan husky Chobi, and the warm chaos of vet-school life — a 12-volume Hana to Yume comedy so popular it set off a real Siberian Husky boom across Japan.
by Akiko Higashimura
Gourmet Detective Akechi follows Goro Akechi, a gourmet private detective in Omotesando who solves murders through food — Akiko Higashimura's suspense manga where every recipe hides a motive and a serial killer named Maria of Magdala keeps circling back to him.
by Gyu Jiro (story) / Big Joe (art)
Houchounin Ajihei (1973) follows Shiomi Ajihei, the son of a master chef who walks away from haute cuisine to cook for ordinary people. Serialized in Weekly Shonen Jump, it is the manga that invented the cooking-battle genre — and its Curry War arc, with the addictive Black Curry, is still one of the most insane things ever printed in a food manga.
by Kenshi Hirokane
Kachou Shima Kosaku follows Kosaku Shima, a section chief at electronics giant Hatsushiba, through the faction wars, sudden firings, and tangled romances of 1980s Japanese corporate life — the first arc of Kenshi Hirokane's decades-long salaryman saga.
by Mineo Maya
Patalliro! follows the eccentric boy-king of the fictional island nation Marinera — a comedy that has been running in Hana to Yume since 1978, blending spy parody, historical lampoon, supernatural gags, and the relationship between the king and his bodyguard.
by Yaro Abe
Midnight Diner follows the nameless master of a small late-night diner in Tokyo's Shinjuku district — open from midnight to seven in the morning, one set menu, anything you want if he has the ingredients. Each chapter tells the story of a customer and the dish that connects them to something they've lost or found.
by Yasumi Yoshizawa
Dokonjo Gaeru is Yasumi Yoshizawa's classic 1970-1976 Weekly Shonen Jump comedy about Hiroshi Kaizuka, a middle-school boy whose flattened-but-alive frog Pyonkichi lives on the front of his shirt — 27 volumes of one of Jump's defining early gag manga.
by Shigeru Tsuchiyama
Kuishinbo! is Shigeru Tsuchiyama's 24-volume competitive-eating manga about Mantaro Ohara, a salaryman who is pulled into Japan's pro food-fighting world and rises from a 5-katsudon challenge to the international Kuirin Cup.
by Fujio Akatsuka
Moretsu Ataro is Fujio Akatsuka's late-1960s gag manga following Ataro, a young boy who runs his late father's vegetable shop while surrounded by an outlandish cast of friends and neighbors — a foundational work of Japanese gag comedy from one of its greatest masters.
by Shigeru Tsuchiyama
Shokuking follows Hideyoshi Kitajima, a former chef who travels Japan rescuing failing restaurants by reforming their cooking — a Tsuchiyama food manga that approached cuisine with the seriousness most manga reserve for sword combat.
by Kenji Nishida
Tetsunabe no Jan R is the sequel to Kenji Nishida's competitive-cooking manga — Akiyama Jan returns, older but unreformed, still the chef who cares about winning rather than feeding. 9 volumes that confirmed Jan was never going to soften.
by Kenji Nishida
Tetsunabe no Jan is Kenji Nishida's comedic cooking manga about Akiyama Jan, a Chinese-cuisine prodigy whose only goal is winning — a deliberate inversion of the wholesome cooking-manga tradition where the chef who cared about diners was the secondary character.
by Takashi Tajima (story), Takahiro Kochi (art)
Kabachitare! follows Katsuhiro Tamura, a fired cleaning-company worker who becomes an administrative scrivener's assistant — Takashi Tajima and Takahiro Kochi's 20-volume Morning legal-drama where ordinary people fight back not with lawyers, but with paperwork and the law itself.
by Osamu Tezuka
Nanairo Inko (Rainbow Parakeet) follows a master of theatrical impersonation who steals identities to perform stage roles others have abandoned — Osamu Tezuka's late-career meditation on performance, identity, and the moral economy of art.
by Jun Sakura
Yugami-kun ni wa Tomodachi ga Inai (Yugami Has No Friends) follows Yugami Yuuichirou, a high schooler who has chosen — actively, deliberately — not to have friends, and Chihiro Otsuka, the transfer student determined to understand why. A 17-volume Sunday comedy about friendship's value examined through its absence.
by Fumiyo Kouno
Two short stories about the lingering aftermath of Hiroshima — quiet, devastating, and award-winning.
by Yasunobu Yamauchi
A review of Daily Lives of High School Boys — the gag manga where three ordinary boys turn riverbanks, skirts, and stick swords into the funniest nothing you'll ever read.
by Suzue Miuchi
A review of Glass Mask, Suzue Miuchi's legendary acting shoujo manga about Maya Kitajima — a girl of frightening talent chasing the greatest role in theater. Still unfinished after almost 50 years.
by Komata Mikami
Yu's review of Yuyushiki — Yuzuko, Yukari, and Yui form the Data Processing Club, which processes no data; they use the club room's computer to look up random things and have conversations that go nowhere extremely well.
by Namori
Yu's review of Yuru Yuri — Akari Akaza, Kyoko Toshinou, Yui Funami, and Chinatsu Yoshida take over their school's former tea ceremony room after the Tea Club disbanded, form the Amusement Club, and spend their time doing very little of anything.
by Momoko Sakura
A review of Chibi Maruko-chan, Momoko Sakura's semi-autobiographical comedy about a lazy, scheming third-grade girl in 1970s Shimizu — and why the original manga is sharper than the gentle anime everyone knows.
by Fujita
Yu's review of Wotakoi — Narumi hides her fujoshi hobby at every job she has ever had; at her new job she discovers her childhood friend Hirotaka is there, and he knows all her secrets; they start dating, and navigate being adult otaku in a relationship together.
by Hitoshi Ashinano
Yu's review of Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou — an android named Alpha runs a small café in a Japan that is slowly, gently flooding, and finds meaning in the conversations she has and the world she can still observe.
by Fumi Yoshinaga
Yu's review of What Did You Eat Yesterday? — Shiro and Kenji are a gay couple in Tokyo; Shiro is a lawyer who cooks dinner every night; the manga follows their domestic life through the meals Shiro prepares, with complete recipes; a quiet, adult slice of life about partnership and food.
by Mochinchi / Yasuhiro Miyama
Yu's review of A Witch's Printing Office — Mika is a modern Japanese woman who worked at Comiket (the giant doujinshi convention) and wakes up in a fantasy world where magical festivals share printed pamphlets; using her knowledge of convention organization and printing logistics, she builds a business that transforms how the fantasy world shares information.
by Kiyohiko Azuma
A review of Yotsuba&!, the manga about a green-haired five-year-old experiencing ordinary things for the first time — and the most purely joyful manga I have ever read.
by Kousuke Oono
Yu's review of The Way of the Househusband — Tatsu, once the most feared yakuza boss in Japan, has retired to become a stay-at-home husband for his career-focused wife Miku; he applies the intensity, dedication, and specific vocabulary of organized crime to grocery shopping, cooking, and housework.
by Inio Asano
Yu's review of What a Wonderful World! — Inio Asano's short story collection, loosely connected stories about ordinary people in contemporary Japan finding their way through ordinary circumstances; Asano in his most accessible register, before the extended darkness of Goodnight Punpun.
by Nico Tanigawa
Yu's review of WataMote — Tomoko Kuroki is convinced she will be popular in high school because she has extensive experience with otome games; she is not popular; every attempt to change this makes it worse; the manga is simultaneously the funniest and most painful depiction of teenage social isolation in manga.
by Hiroaki Samura
Yu's review of Wave, Listen to Me! — Minare Koda is a restaurant worker in Sapporo who rants to a radio producer at a bar about her ex-boyfriend; the producer records it and airs it; instead of suing, she agrees to do a radio show; a fast-talking adult comedy about a woman who is genuinely funny and genuinely a mess.
by Bin Kusamizu (story) / Saburo Megumi (art)
A review of Fragile, the medical manga about Keiichiro Kishi, a blunt, brilliant pathologist who reads the truth in tissue samples and changes the diagnoses other doctors get wrong.
by Chie Shimizu
Yu's review of Wakakozake — Murasaki Wakako, a young office worker, spends her evenings alone at izakayas, carefully selecting food and sake pairings; each short chapter follows one evening, one food, one drink, and her quiet appreciation; the series is a celebration of eating alone as a specific pleasure.
by Takako Shimura
Yu's review of Wandering Son — Shuichi Nitori is a boy who wants to be a girl; his new friend Yoshino Takatsuki is a girl who wants to be a boy; the manga follows both of them from elementary school through adolescence as they navigate gender identity, friendship, and growing up; a gentle, serious work about transgender experience.
by Karino Takatsu
Yu's review of WWW.Working!! — a parallel web manga to Working!!, set in a different Wagnaria family restaurant with a new cast of eccentric employees; Daisuke Higashida takes a part-time job to pay off his father's debt and discovers his coworkers are even more unusual than the situation suggests.
by Yui Hara
Yu's review of Wakaba*Girl — Wakaba Kohashi is from a wealthy family and has attended elite schools her whole life; entering a regular high school, she wants desperately to experience the normal gyaru life she's seen in magazines; Yui Hara's gentle four-panel comedy about friendship and what 'normal' means.
by Take
Yu's review of Uzaki-chan Wants to Hang Out! — Hana Uzaki decides that her college senpai Shinichi Sakurai is too much of a loner and takes it upon herself to insert herself into his life constantly; Sakurai wants to be left alone; the series follows their evolving relationship from workplace annoyance through something neither of them initially wanted to admit.
by Karino Takatsu
Yu's review of Wagnaria!! — Souta Takanashi starts working at a family restaurant because a tiny girl asked him to; his coworkers include a woman with androphobia, a katana-carrying floor chief, an invisible manager, and a girl who thinks she might be in love with him; chaos is the default state.
by Toshiya Wakabayashi
Yu's review of Tsurezure Children — a romantic anthology following multiple high school couples in short-form episodes; each chapter follows a different couple in a different stage of confession or early relationship; a warm comedy anthology about the specific awkwardness of telling someone you love them.
by Marimo Ragawa
Yu's review of Those Snow White Notes — Setsu Sawamura is a shamisen prodigy whose grandfather, the legendary Matsugorou Sawamura, has just died; unable to play since losing his teacher, Setsu leaves his rural home and arrives in Tokyo, where he must find his own sound separate from his grandfather's influence.
by Sugaru Miaki / Takaki Tsukiji
Yu's review of Three Days of Happiness — in a world where you can sell your remaining lifespan for money, Kusunoki sells most of his and discovers he has only three months left; manga adaptation of Sugaru Miaki's novel about what matters when time is finite.
by Soichiro Yamamoto
Yu's review of Teasing Master Takagi-san — Takagi teases her desk neighbor Nishikata every single day; he keeps making plans to get back at her; she always wins; the series is about two middle school students who are clearly in love with each other before either of them knows how to say it.
by Jiro Taniguchi
Yu's review of The Walking Man — a man takes walks through his neighborhood and surrounding areas; Jiro Taniguchi's single-volume manga about the specific quality of attention paid to ordinary things, rendered with exceptional visual detail; perhaps the most peaceful manga in existence.
by Nozomi Uda
Yu's review of Tanaka-kun Is Always Listless — Tanaka is a high school boy whose entire being is devoted to doing as little as possible; his best friend Ohta carries him when necessary; the series follows Tanaka's profound listlessness encountering the energetic, enthusiastic people around him without disturbing his fundamental peace.
by Kintetsu Yamada
Yu's review of Sweat and Soap — Asako Yaeshima sweats profusely and has always been ashamed of it; Kotaro Natori works in product development for a hygiene company and has an extremely sensitive nose; he encounters Asako and finds her natural scent extraordinary; what follows is an adult romance about two people whose specific qualities fit together in an unexpected way.
by Gido Amagakure
Yu's review of Sweetness and Lightning — Kouhei Inuzuka is a teacher and single father whose wife recently died; he cannot cook and his daughter Tsumugi eats convenience store food; a student named Kotori invites them to her family's empty restaurant and teaches him to cook for his daughter.
by Millitarko
Yu's review of Stella Women's Academy — Yura Yamamoto transfers to Stella Women's Academy and joins the C³ Club, a survival game (airsoft) club; Millitarko's manga about a shy girl finding her place through competitive gaming, with character development that turns darker before finding resolution.
by Taiyo Matsumoto
Yu's review of Sunny — at a group home for children whose families cannot take care of them, a broken-down old car called Sunny becomes a private space where the children go to be alone; Taiyo Matsumoto's meditation on childhood longing, on what it means to be left, and on how children find ways to survive what adults do to them.
by Kazuma Kamachi (story) / Motoi Fuyukawa (art)
Yu's review of A Certain Scientific Railgun — the spin-off of A Certain Magical Index that follows electromaster Misaka Mikoto and her friends through the daily life and dark secrets of Academy City, blending warm slice-of-life with superpowered action.
by Masahiro Anbe
Yu's review of Squid Girl — Ika Musume (Squid Girl) emerges from the sea to conquer humanity as revenge for ocean pollution; she is immediately defeated by the Aizawa sisters who run a beach house and ends up working there to pay for property damage; world conquest is repeatedly delayed.
by Takashi Murakami
Yu's review of Stargazing Dog — Daddy adopts a puppy named Happie; the manga follows Happie's life with Daddy through family happiness, family collapse, and the road journey that is their final chapter together; narrated from Happie's perspective, the story is exactly as emotionally devastating as its premise suggests.
by Norie Yamada / Kumichi Yoshizuki
Yu's review of Someday's Dreamers — Yume Kikuchi comes to Tokyo from her small hometown to become a licensed mage under the guidance of Masami Oyamada; the series follows her apprenticeship and her growing understanding that granting wishes is not simple, that magic cannot solve everything, and that some things people want cannot be given.
by Tatsuya Endo
Yu's review of Spy x Family — a manga about a spy, an assassin, and a telepath pretending to be a family, who accidentally become one. Genuinely funny, genuinely warm, and one of the most joyful ongoing series in manga right now.
by Tokumi Yuiko
Yu's review of Slow Start — Hana Ichinose started high school a year late due to illness, making her a year older than her classmates; the series follows her trying to fit in with her new friends while carrying the secret that she is different, in Tokumi Yuiko's characteristic warm and gentle 4-koma style.
by Kotoba Inoya
Yu's review of Smile Down the Runway — Chiyuki Fujito dreams of being a Paris Collection runway model but is told she's too short at 158cm; Ikuto Tsumura dreams of being a fashion designer but can't afford design school; they push each other toward impossible goals; Kotoba Inoya's fashion manga about the gap between dreams and physical reality.
by Hiromu Arakawa
Yu's review of Silver Spoon — a city kid escapes to an agricultural high school to avoid his family, and discovers that farming, animal husbandry, and the people who feed the country have lessons no classroom ever taught him.
by Misaki Takamatsu
A comprehensive review of Skip and Loafer — plot, characters, art style, and whether it's worth reading.
by Aloha Higa
Yu's review of Shirokuma Cafe — a polar bear named Shirokuma runs a café near the zoo; Panda works part-time there (poorly), Penguin is a regular customer, and the humor comes from animal characters behaving with human social conventions while remaining animals.
by Tsukumizu
By the creator of Girls' Last Tour. Shijima emerges from a hole in the ground and goes to high school. Mushrooms grow from her head. Her friend Majime has a fried egg on hers. Their classmates are subtly wrong. The teachers don't ask questions. The world is ending or has already ended or maybe was never started. Tsukumizu's 5-volume follow-up to Girls' Last Tour is complete in English.
by Kaoru Mori
Yu's review of Shirley — a young girl named Shirley becomes maid to a young independent woman in Victorian England; Kaoru Mori's earlier work, smaller in scope than Emma or A Bride's Story but carrying her characteristic attention to period detail and domestic life.
by Karino Takatsu
Yu's review of Servant x Service — Lucy, Yutaka, and Saya are new civil servants at a municipal welfare office; Lucy joined the civil service specifically to find and punish the bureaucrat who approved her absurdly long birth name; what follows is workplace comedy about government office life and the people who work there.
by Hari Tokeino
A comprehensive review of School Babysitters — plot, characters, art style, and whether it's worth reading.
by Tozen Ujiie
Yu's review of Seitokai Yakuindomo — Takatoshi Tsuda joins his recently co-ed high school's student council, which is entirely female; the comedy is built on the gap between Tsuda's straight-man responses and his three female council-mates' constant adult-humor commentary.
by Yupechika
Yu's review of Satoko and Nada — Satoko is a Japanese student at an American university; Nada is her Saudi Arabian roommate; neither knows much about the other's culture; Yupechika's slice-of-life manga about two women sharing an apartment, sharing their lives, and learning that the gap between their worlds is smaller than they assumed.
by Koji Kumeta
Yu's review of Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei — Nozomu Itoshiki is a Japanese teacher whose name, written horizontally, reads 'despair'; his approach to life matches; he is constantly in despair about modern society; his student Kafuka Fuura is pathologically optimistic and refuses to accept any negative interpretation of anything.
by Nami Sano
Yu's review of Haven't You Heard? I'm Sakamoto — Sakamoto is the coolest student at his high school; every situation, challenge, or attempt to embarrass him resolves in the coolest possible way; the manga is a pure comedic statement about the concept of cool.
by Cherry Arai
Yu's review of Sansha Sanyou — Youko Nishikawa (formerly wealthy), Futaba Odagiri (enthusiastic eater), and Teru Hayama (smiling sadist) are three incompatible high school girls who end up eating lunch together and become friends; Cherry Arai's gentle comedy about the friendships that form despite personality differences.
by Natsume Ono
Yu's review of Ristorante Paradiso — Nicoletta travels from her hometown to Rome to confront her mother, who left her as a child; her mother's husband doesn't know she exists; the restaurant Casetta dell'Orso, staffed entirely by older bespectacled gentlemen, becomes the setting for Nicoletta's unexpected new life.
by Hidekichi Matsumoto
Yu's review of Sabagebu! — Momoka Sonokawa joins the Survival Game Club at her new school after being rescued by its president Miou; she discovers she has immediate talent for mock combat and a personality that is significantly less heroic than her appearance suggests; the series follows the club's survival game activities with absurdist comedy.
by Jiro Taniguchi
Yu's review of Quest for the Missing Girl — a professional mountain guide is hired to find a teenage girl who disappeared in the Japan Alps; Jiro Taniguchi's mountain-search story, combining his exceptional landscape rendering with a character study of someone who understands mountains better than people.
by Junpei Inuzuka (story) / Katsumi Enami (art)
Yu's review of Restaurant to Another World — Western Restaurant Nekoya is a small Tokyo restaurant that, every Saturday, has a door that opens from various locations in a fantasy world; fantasy world inhabitants enter and encounter Japanese Western food for the first time; each chapter follows a different customer and the dish that changes them.
by Kokone Nata
A comprehensive review of Play It Cool, Guys — plot, characters, art style, and whether it's worth reading.
by Akiko Higashimura
Yu's review of Princess Jellyfish — Tsukimi Kurashita is a jellyfish-obsessed otaku girl living in an all-female apartment building full of passionate nerds; when she meets Kuranosuke, a cross-dressing son of a politician who barges into her world, her quiet otaku life starts to change.
by Makoto Isshiki
Yu's review of Piano Forest — Kai Ichinose grows up poor in a forest community and has been playing an abandoned piano in the woods since childhood; when the talented but pressured Shuhei Amamiya moves to his town, their friendship and their different relationships with music begin a story about what playing truly means.
by Koge-Donbo
Yu's review of Pita-Ten — Kotaro Higuchi, a quiet boy trying to live simply after his mother's death, finds Misha next door — an angel-in-training of incandescent cheerfulness who has decided to make him happy; also involved is Shia, a polite demon who cannot quite bring herself to be evil.
by Akiho Ieda
Yu's review of Penguin & House — Pen-chan is a penguin who arrives at a young salaryman's apartment and decides to stay; the series follows their daily cohabitation, the small adjustments both make, and the warmth that accumulates in an otherwise solitary life.
by Hijiki Isarbi
Yu's review of Phantom of the Idol — Yuuya Niyodo is an idol who hates performing and tries to be fired; Asahi Mogami is the ghost of an idol who died before she could reach her dreams; when she possesses Yuuya during a performance, they strike a deal — she performs through his body, he reaps the rewards.
by Yuhki Kamatani
Yu's review of Our Dreams at Dusk — Tasuku Kaname is outed to his classmates; he goes to a building to jump; a woman in white tells him to come to a drop-in center; the center is a community of people across the LGBTQ spectrum who have found a way to be in the world; Tasuku begins to find his own way through them.
by Ichiro Sakaki / Yui Haga
Yu's review of Outbreak Company — Shinichi Kanou, an extreme otaku who failed to leave his room for years, is hired by the Japanese government to spread otaku culture in an alternate fantasy world accessed through a portal; the manga adaptation of Ichiro Sakaki's light novel comedy about cultural exchange through manga and anime.
by Shigeru Mizuki
Yu's review of Onward Towards Our Noble Deaths — Shigeru Mizuki's autobiographical war manga, depicting the Japanese Imperial Army unit that survived a suicidal charge order through the Pacific Theater; the survivors were punished for failing to die; Mizuki survived; most of his unit did not.
by Mari Okada / Nao Emoto
Yu's review of O Maidens in Your Savage Season — five high school girls in a literature club encounter adult themes through their reading and must suddenly reckon with their own desires, confusion, and the specific terror of not knowing what you want or whether what you feel is acceptable.
by Nekomaki
Yu's review of An Old Man and His Cat — a widower named Fuku-san adopts Mofu-chan, a large flat-faced cat that nobody wanted; the series follows their daily life together; Nekomaki's manga about loneliness, companionship, and what a cat can give to someone who needs them.
by Umi Sakurai
Yu's review of A Man and His Cat — a gentle, tear-jerking manga about a lonely widower who adopts an exotic shorthair cat that nobody else would buy, and the quiet, mutual healing the two find in each other.
by Fumi Yoshinaga
Yu's review of Not Love But Delicious Foods Make Me So Happy! — the protagonist is a manga artist who won't date but will eat anything; she navigates Tokyo restaurants with friends, colleagues, and editors; Fumi Yoshinaga's semi-autobiographical restaurant guide manga that doubles as character comedy about a woman who prioritizes food over romance.
by Natsume Ono
Yu's review of not simple — Ian is an English young man whose life has been defined by loss, abuse, neglect, and a desperate search for his sister; the manga tells his story in non-linear fragments, assembled by a journalist writing a novel about Ian's life, asking what it means to witness someone's suffering and what fiction can do with it.
by Tomoko Ninomiya
A comprehensive review of Nodame Cantabile — plot, characters, art style, and whether it's worth reading.
by Atto
Yu's review of Non Non Biyori — five students in a tiny rural school (total enrollment: five) experience the small, seasonal rhythms of countryside life in a mountain village far from anything.
by Shotaro Tokuno
Yu's review of New Game! — Aoba Suzukaze joins Eagle Jump, the game company that made her favorite childhood game, as a character designer; the series follows her first year in professional game development alongside an all-female team; a workplace slice-of-life that treats game development with genuine procedural interest.
by Keiichi Arawi
Yu's review of Nichijou — a high school slice-of-life where ordinary situations escalate to catastrophic absurdity, a robot girl tries to hide what she is, and the Professor is an eight-year-old genius who made her.
by Minatsuki / As Futatsuya (art)
Subaru Mikazuki is a young mystery novelist who lost both parents recently and has stopped going outside. He finds a stray cat at his parents' grave and takes her home for research. She names herself Haru. Every chapter is told twice — once from his perspective, once from hers — and the gap between those two readings of the same scene is the manga.
by Shiromanta
Yu's review of My Senpai Is Annoying — Futaba Igarashi is a small and serious office worker; her senpai Harumi Takeda is loud, cheerful, and treats her like a little sister in ways she finds aggravating; she is slowly falling in love with him and is annoyed about this; office romance slice of life with workplace context.
by Takuma Morishige
Yu's review of My Neighbor Seki — Rumi Yokoi sits next to Seki in class; Seki never pays attention to lessons and instead constructs elaborate in-desk activities of increasing complexity; Rumi, who is trying to pay attention, keeps getting distracted; a one-joke manga that executes its joke perfectly.
by Yutaka Kondo
Yu's review of My New Boss Is Goofy — Momose Shinya carries severe anxiety from years under a genuinely terrible boss; at his new job he is placed under Aoyama Keita, a boss whose enthusiasm, sincerity, and accidental wholesomeness begin to undo years of workplace damage.
by Nagata Kabi
Yu's review of My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness — Nagata Kabi's autobiographical manga about her experiences with depression, an eating disorder, her difficult relationship with her parents, and her gradual understanding of her own sexuality and loneliness; one of the most honest mental health memoirs in manga form.
by Aruko / Wataru Hinekure
A comprehensive review of My Love Mix-Up! — plot, characters, art style, and whether it's worth reading.
by Naru Narumi
Yu's review of Ms. Koizumi Loves Ramen Noodles — Koizumi is beautiful, cold, and unapproachable; she also has a complete and total dedication to ramen; she knows every shop, every regional style, every topping combination; Naru Narumi's food manga about a woman whose single passion is executed with absolute seriousness.
by Yuki Urushibara
Yu's review of Mushishi — Ginko travels through a Japan that exists before modernity, investigating and treating afflictions caused by Mushi — ancient lifeforms that exist at the edge of perception and disturb the boundary between the living and something else.
by Masayuki Ishikawa
Tadayasu Sawaki has been able to see microorganisms with his naked eye since childhood — they appear to him as cute deformed cartoon characters who talk to him in cheerful voices saying things like 'Let's brew!' (kamosu). He enrolls at a Tokyo agricultural university. The first thing his fermentation professor wants is access to Sawaki's ability. Masayuki Ishikawa's 13-volume manga (2004–2014) is a comedy-education hybrid about microbiology, agriculture, and college life. A sequel ('Moyashimon+') started January 2025.
by Coolkyousinnjya
A review of Coolkyousinnjya's Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid (小林さんちのメイドラゴン) — 12 volumes in Monthly Action. Kobayashi is a programmer who drunkenly invited a dragon home; the dragon shows up the next morning as a human maid and refuses to leave. Seven Seas publishes the complete English edition.
by Izumi Tsubaki
Yu's review of Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun — Chiyo Sakura confesses to her crush Umetaro Nozaki and he hands her his autograph; she discovers he is the author of a popular shojo manga and accidentally becomes his assistant; the series is a comedy about manga creation that uses the genre conventions of shojo manga as its comedic material.
by Shigeru Mizuki
Mizuki tells the story of 20th century Japan — and of his own life, including his time as a soldier — across four English volumes.
by Coharu Sakuraba
Yu's review of Minami-ke — three sisters at different schools (eldest Haruka in high school, middle Kana in middle school, youngest Chiaki in elementary) share an apartment and their daily life generates endless comedy from their completely different personalities and the rotating cast of friends, admirers, and chaos that follows them home.
by Tamifull
Yu's review of It's Not Meguro-san's First Time — Seiya Furutachi confesses to Ryo Meguro, an unusual woman at his workplace who doesn't fit the typical romance heroine template; both of them are adults who have had previous relationships, which makes their developing relationship proceed differently than the typical manga romance.
by Itokichi
Yu's review of Merman in My Tub — Tatsumi finds a merman named Wakasa collapsed in the river and moves him into his apartment's bathtub to recover; Wakasa refuses to leave, other sea creatures begin visiting, and Tatsumi's apartment becomes a surprisingly crowded supernatural domestic comedy.
by Hiroyuki
Yu's review of Mangaka-san to Assistant-san — manga artist Aito Yuuki draws romance manga but has never had a girlfriend; his assistant Ashisu Sahoto helps him understand women so he can write them authentically, which leads to increasingly absurd 'research' situations.
by Oyuki Konno / Satoru Nagasawa
Yu's review of Maria Watches Over Us — Yumi is a first-year student at the Lillian Girls' Academy, a Catholic school with a tradition of 'soeur' relationships between older and younger students; she is noticed by the beautiful third-year Sachiko; Nagasawa's adaptation of Konno's beloved light novel about ritual, belonging, and the specific intensity of all-girls school friendships.
by Rumiko Takahashi
Yu's review of Maison Ikkoku — Yusaku Godai is a ronin student living in a boarding house called Maison Ikkoku; when the new building manager Kyoko Otonashi arrives, a young widow, he falls in love; the series follows their relationship across years of misunderstandings, interference from neighbors, competing love interests, and the specific difficulty of two people who both want the same thing failing to communicate it.
by Aiko Koyama
Yu's review of The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House — Kiyo comes to Kyoto with her best friend Sumire to train as maiko, but lacks the aptitude; instead of giving up, she becomes the house's makanai — the cook who feeds the maiko — and finds that her real gift was always in the kitchen.
by Izumo Ito
Yu's review of The Demon Girl Next Door — Yuko Yoshida wakes up one day with horns and a tail, awakened as a descendant of a demon clan; her clan's curse can only be lifted by defeating a magical girl; she confronts her school's magical girl, Momo Chiyoda; the magical girl turns out to be friendly, competent, and far stronger; Izumo Ito's comedy manga about the most gentle rivalry.
by Azu
Yu's review of Magical Sempai — the assistant joins the magic club to fill a club requirement and meets his sempai: a girl who loves magic with genuine passion but suffers from stage fright severe enough that every public performance goes catastrophically wrong.
by Afro
Yu's review of Laid-Back Camp — a quiet girl who camps alone near Mount Fuji meets a sleepy newcomer over a cup of curry noodles, and somehow that becomes the warmest manga about cold weather I have ever read.
by Kagami Yoshimizu
Yu's review of Lucky Star — Konata Izumi, an anime-obsessed high schooler, and her friends Kagami, Tsukasa, and Miyuki talk their way through school life in Kagami Yoshimizu's 4-koma comedy. It starts with a debate about how to eat a chocolate cornet and somehow never needs more plot than that.
by Kozue Amano
Yu's review of ARIA The Masterpiece — the deluxe omnibus edition collecting all of Aqua and ARIA, Kozue Amano's masterpiece slice-of-life set on a terraformed Mars where Akari trains to be a gondolier in Neo-Venezia. The definition of healing manga.
by Sakuya Amano
Yu's review of Konohana Kitan — Yuzu is a young fox girl who begins working at Konohanatei, a hot spring inn that welcomes both humans and gods. Staffed entirely by fox-girl attendants, the inn becomes the setting for gentle, self-contained stories about hospitality, connection, and letting go.
by Nene Yukimori
A review of Kubo Won't Let Me Be Invisible — the romcom about a boy nobody can see and the one classmate who refuses to stop noticing him. Story, characters, scenes, and whether it's worth reading.
by Hikaru Nakamura
Yu's review of Arakawa Under the Bridge — an absurdist comedy in which a self-made elite young man, saved from drowning by a woman who lives under a bridge and believes she's from Venus, must repay the debt by becoming her boyfriend and joining the strange community by the river.
by Natsumi Eguchi
Hozuki is the deadpan, sadistic chief aide to King Enma of the Japanese Hell — and the only person keeping the afterlife's enormous bureaucracy from collapsing. This is his workplace comedy.
by Yui Hara
Yu's review of Kiniro Mosaic — a four-panel slice-of-life about a Japanese girl, Shinobu, and the shy English girl, Alice, she met on a childhood homestay, who later moves to Japan to be near her. A gentle, all-ages comedy about friendship across a language barrier.
by Tomohito Oda
Yu's review of Komi Can't Communicate — Shoko Komi is mistaken for the most aloof, intimidating beauty in school, but she actually has a communication disorder and can barely speak. Her ordinary classmate Tadano figures out the truth and promises to help her make 100 friends.
by Jiro Taniguchi
Yu's review of A Distant Neighborhood — Jiro Taniguchi's quietly devastating story of a middle-aged man who falls asleep on a train and wakes up in his 14-year-old body, in his hometown, months before his father will disappear forever.
by Gido Amagakure
Yu's review of A Galaxy Next Door — from the creator of Sweetness and Lightning, a gentle romance about a widowed manga artist raising his younger siblings who accidentally gets engaged to his mysterious new assistant, a girl from an otherworldly lineage.
by Kozue Amano
Yu's review of Aqua — the two-volume prequel to ARIA where Kozue Amano first introduces Akari Mizunashi and the canal city of Neo-Venezia on terraformed Mars; the gentle beginning of one of manga's most beloved healing series.
by Yuki Kodama
Yu's review of Kids on the Slope (Sakamichi no Apollon) — 1966 Sasebo, Kyushu. Kaoru is a lonely classical pianist; Sentaro is a half-American delinquent who plays jazz drums in the basement of a record shop. Their friendship grows through music, the school festival, and a reunion years later at a church.
by Kaduho
A review of Kaduho's Kill Me Baby — ongoing in Manga Time Kirara Carat since July 2008, 16+ volumes in Japan. Sonya is a trained assassin; Yasuna is her completely unfazed school friend. Yen Press publishes the English edition.
by Mari Okada (story) / Mitsu Izumi (art)
Yu's review of AnoHana — Jinta, a teenage shut-in, is visited by the ghost of his childhood friend Menma, who died years ago and wants a wish granted she can't remember; reuniting their fractured friend group forces all of them to finally face the grief they buried.
by Nobuyuki Fukumoto
Yu's review of Gambling Apocalypse Kaiji by Nobuyuki Fukumoto — Kaiji Itou is buried in someone else's debt when a loan shark offers him a way out: board the Espoir and gamble. From restricted rock-paper-scissors to the electrified steel beam crossing to the E-Card game against Tonegawa, this is the gambling thriller that inspired Squid Game.
by Koji Kumeta
Yu's review of Kakushigoto by Koji Kumeta — an ecchi manga artist hides his job from his daughter Hime, and a daily gag comedy slowly reveals itself as a father-daughter love story across ten years.
by Norifusa Mita
Yu's review of Angel Bank — the Dragon Zakura spin-off in which a disillusioned teacher becomes a job-placement agent under a charismatic career consultant, and learns that most people don't change jobs, they just change companies.
by Kakifly
Yu's review of K-On! — four high school girls join the light music club, drink tea, eat Mugi's cake, barely practice, and accidentally build a place worth crying over when it's time to leave.
by Kumiko Saiki
Yu's review of Kageki Shojo!! — Sarasa Watanabe, a tall girl pushed out of kabuki as a child, enters the Kouka School of Musical and Theatrical Arts dreaming of playing Oscar from The Rose of Versailles. Her roommate is Ai Narata, a former JPX48 idol who fled an abusive past into all-female spaces. A Takarazuka-inspired drama about what performance costs the people who carry damage onto the stage.
by Kozue Amano
Yu's review of Amanchu! — from the creator of ARIA, a gentle healing manga about a shy girl who moves to a seaside town and is pulled into the school diving club by the most enthusiastic person she's ever met, learning to breathe — underwater and otherwise.
by Yukiya Sakuragi
Yu's review of Inubaka: Crazy for Dogs — Suguri Miyauchi moves to Tokyo with her mutt Lupin, ends up working at the Woofles pet shop after Lupin gets the manager's purebred Lab pregnant, and turns out to understand dogs better than anyone alive. A warm, messy, breed-accurate seinen comedy that Viz cancelled in English at volume 17 of 22.
by Koi
Yu's review of Is the Order a Rabbit? (Gochuumon wa Usagi Desu Ka?) by Koi — Cocoa Hoto moves to a European-styled town and ends up boarding at the Rabbit House café, where she meets quiet barista-in-training Chino and a small circle of friends who slowly become family. A CGDCT comfort manga where the house Angora rabbit, Tippy, carries the spirit of Chino's grandfather.
by Daisuke Terasawa
A schoolboy with a magic palate takes on Japan's culinary establishment — the manga that defined cooking competition tropes.
by Shuzo Oshimi
Yu's review of Inside Mari — Isao Komori, a hikikomori who watches a high school girl from his window, wakes up one morning inside her body. But the body-swap mystery he thinks he's living turns out to be something far stranger and sadder.
by Petos
Yu's review of Interviews With Monster Girls (Demi-chan wa Kataritai) — biology teacher Tetsuo Takahashi interviews four demi-human students and colleagues about their daily lives. A vampire, a dullahan, a snow woman, and a succubus teacher turn a monster-girl premise into one of the gentlest, most thoughtful slice-of-life manga out there. Complete at 11 volumes from Kodansha USA.
by Asato Mizu
Yu's review of Aharen-san wa Hakarenai — Raido can never read the distance with his tiny, near-inaudible deskmate Aharen, who has no sense of personal space; a gentle, absurd romantic comedy about two awkward people slowly finding their rhythm.
by CHIROLU (original), Hota (art), Truffle / Kei (character design)
Yu's review of the If It's for My Daughter, I'd Even Defeat a Demon Lord manga (art by Hota, original by CHIROLU) — a young adventurer named Dale finds an abandoned demon girl named Latina in the forest and raises her at the Dancing Ocelot tavern, and discovers that being her father is the thing that saves him, not her.
by Ayuko Hatta
A review of Ima Koi: Now I'm in Love by Ayuko Hatta — the shoujo manga that begins after the confession, following Satomi and Yagyu as they learn to actually be a couple.
by Hiro
Yu's review of Akebi's Sailor Uniform — a country girl enrolls at a prestigious all-girls school with a handmade sailor uniform, bringing overwhelming, infectious enthusiasm to every ordinary moment, all drawn with extraordinary beauty.
by Miyuki Tonogaya
Yu's review of The Ice Guy and His Cool Female Colleague (Kōri Zokusei Danshi to Cool na Dōryō Joshi) — Himuro-kun, a descendant of the yuki-onna snow spirit, sprouts snowmen and miniature blizzards whenever he feels something, which makes hiding his crush on his quiet coworker Fuyutsuki-san completely impossible.
by Barasui
Yu's review of Ichigo Mashimaro — Nobue Itoh and the four grade-schoolers around her (her sister Chika, the chaotic Miu, the timid Matsuri, and British transplant Ana Coppola) drift through ordinary days in suburban Hamamatsu. Barasui's long-running deadpan comedy is built on Miu's relentless schemes and the cruel running joke of Ana forgetting her own English.
by Okura
A review of I Think Our Son Is Gay by Okura — a warm family comedy about a mother who quietly knows her son is gay and just waits, with love, for him to say it himself.
by Yoru Sumino (original story) / Idumi Kirihara (art)
Yu's review of the I Want to Eat Your Pancreas manga — Idumi Kirihara's adaptation of Yoru Sumino's novel. A withdrawn boy finds classmate Sakura Yamauchi's secret diary and learns she's dying of a pancreatic illness. She chooses him precisely because he won't treat her like a dying girl. Seven Seas collected the two Japanese volumes into one English omnibus.
by Hiroyuki
Yu's review of Aho-Girl — a relentless gag manga about Yoshiko, a girl of profound, weaponized stupidity, and Akkun, the long-suffering honor student who endures her.
by Honobu Yonezawa (original novels) / Task Ohna (manga art)
Yu's review of the Hyouka manga — Hotaro Oreki lives by the motto 'if I don't have to do it, I won't; if I do have to do it, make it quick,' but Eru Chitanda's 'I'm curious!' keeps dragging him into the small mysteries of the Classic Literature Club. Adapted by Task Ohna from Honobu Yonezawa's novels.
by Coolkyousinnjya
Yu's review of I Can't Understand What My Husband Is Saying (旦那が何を言っているかわからない件) — a 5-volume 4-koma comedy by Coolkyousinnjya about Kaoru, an ordinary office worker, and Hajime, her shut-in otaku-blogger husband. Their marriage works precisely because she doesn't always get the reference.
by Ishiki
Yu's review of Acchi Kocchi — a four-panel comedy built around the unbearably cute mutual crush between tiny tsundere Tsumiki and gently oblivious cool-guy Io, surrounded by a warm group of friends.
by Katsuwo
A review of Katsuwo's Hitoribocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu — 9 volumes in Monthly Comic Alive. Bocchi Hitori starts middle school with a mission to make friends with everyone in her class; she is so socially anxious that she faints, vomits, and freezes up at the slightest interpersonal challenge. Yen Press's English edition is complete.
by Natsume Ono
Yu's review of House of Five Leaves — Masanosuke Akitsu is a master swordsman too timid to keep a job, until the charismatic Yaichi hires him as bodyguard for the Five Leaves, an Edo kidnapping gang whose leader is hiding a brutal past.
by bb Kuroda
Yu's review of A-Channel — a cozy four-panel comedy about Tooru and her three friends, built almost entirely on the small, funny rhythms of high school friendship and Tooru's possessive devotion to her best friend Run.
by Masao Ohtake
Yu's review of Hinamatsuri — a metal pod drops a deadpan telekinetic girl named Hina onto a yakuza man's head, and the deadpan comedy slowly turns into one of the most quietly moving found-family manga I've ever read.
by Chorisuke Natsumi
A review of Hitomi-chan Is Shy With Strangers — the gap-moe romcom about a terrifying-looking girl who is secretly too shy to speak. Plot, characters, and whether it's worth reading.
by Atsushi Nakamura
Yu's review of Agravity Boys — a fast, absurd sci-fi gag manga from Shonen Jump about four young men who are among the last survivors of Earth, stranded together on the distant planet α-Jumbro and failing hilariously at saving humanity.
by Mitsuki
Yu's review of Hinako Note — Hinako Sakuragi is so shy she freezes into a scarecrow pose and attracts birds, so she moves to Tokyo to join a theater club and learn to speak. Mitsuki's four-panel slice-of-life from Comic Cune. No official English edition yet.
by Ryo Nakama
Yu's review of High School Family: Kokosei Kazoku by Ryo Nakama — a Weekly Shonen Jump gag manga where Kotaro's whole family, his dad, mom, little sister and even the cat Gomez, enroll in his high school class. 11 volumes, complete, in English digitally on VIZ and Manga Plus.
by Sankaku Head
Yu's review of Himouto! Umaru-chan — Umaru Doma is the school's flawless honor student, but the moment she's home she shrinks into a chibi gremlin in a hamster hoodie demanding chips, cola, and games from her tired brother Taihei. Twelve complete volumes from Seven Seas, and the warmth under the gags is what kept me reading.
by Rensuke Oshikiri
Yu's review of Hi Score Girl — Haruo Yaguchi lives for 1990s arcade fighting games, until silent rich-girl prodigy Akira Ono beats him 30 times in a row at Street Fighter II. Ten volumes, complete in English, and the most quietly devastating love story I know that never needs its heroine to say a word.
by Ume Aoki
Yu's review of Hidamari Sketch — Yuno moves into the Hidamari Apartments across from her art high school and finds a found family in Miyako, Hiro, and Sae. A four-panel slice-of-life about ordinary days that quietly turn out to matter.
by Miho Obana
A review of Kodocha — the 1990s Ribon classic about hyperactive child actress Sana Kurata, and how her noise becomes the only thing that can reach a boy his own family has given up on.
by Hidekaz Himaruya
A review of Hidekaz Himaruya's Hetalia: Axis Powers — 6 volumes. Countries personified as young men with national stereotypes as personality traits navigate world history as interpersonal comedy. Originally a webcomic, collected by Gentosha; Right Stuf published the complete English edition.
by Manta Aisora (original) / Kei Okazaki (art)
Yu's review of Haiyore! Nyaruko-san — Kei Okazaki's manga of Manta Aisora's light novel, where Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos shows up as a cheerful silver-haired alien girl, moves into an ordinary boy's house, and mostly wants to talk about anime and games while he fends her off with a fork.
by Satsuki Yoshino
Yu's review of Handa-kun — Sei Handa is a high school calligraphy prodigy worshipped by the entire school, but a single bad joke from his only friend convinced him everyone hates him. This Barakamon prequel runs on the gap between adoration and his paranoia.
by Jiro Taniguchi
Yu's review of Guardians of the Louvre — Jiro Taniguchi's commission for the Louvre's comics collection. A Japanese manga artist falls ill in Paris and is guided through the museum by the spirit of the Winged Victory, meeting Van Gogh, Corot, and the people who saved the Louvre during World War II.
by Ai Yazawa
Yu's review of Gokinjo Monogatari (Neighborhood Story) — Ai Yazawa's 1995 Ribon manga about Mikako Kouda, a fashion student building her Happy Berry brand, and her childhood-friend neighbor Tsutomu. The early-Yazawa series that sits one universe over from Paradise Kiss, finally complete in English from VIZ.
by Kenji Inoue (story) / Kimitake Yoshioka (art)
Yu's review of Grand Blue Dreaming — Iori Kitahara moves to a coastal town expecting a relaxed seaside college life and a diving hobby, but the dive shop above which he lives is run by a club that spends far more time drinking and stripping naked than underwater. A raucous college comedy with real diving woven through the chaos.
by Rumiko Takahashi
Takahashi's early short stories collected — from comedy to horror to domestic drama.
by Shimoku Kio
Yu's review of Genshiken — the Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture is a university otaku club, and across nine volumes Shimoku Kio follows Sasahara, Madarame, Saki, Ohno, Tanaka and Ogiue as they graduate, fall in love, make a doujinshi, and figure out what being a fan costs and gives you.
by Sayori Ochiai
Yu's review of Gingitsune — Makoto Saeki can see Gintaro, the herald fox who has guarded her family's Inari shrine for fifteen generations. A gentle Shinto slice-of-life about a girl, a grumpy fox spirit, and the quiet work of standing between gods and people.
by Kei Sasuga
A review of GE: Good Ending by Kei Sasuga — the timid boy, the tennis-club crush, the love coach who becomes the real love, and the messy detour before the title comes true.
by Shimoku Kio
Yu's review of Genshiken: Second Season (Genshiken Nidaime) — the sequel that hands the otaku club to a new generation of fujoshi and one crossdressing fudanshi named Hato, then turns into one of the most surprising romance arcs in slice-of-life manga.
by Kei Murayama
Yu's review of A Centaur's Life — a gentle school slice-of-life about a centaur girl and her monster-species friends, built on top of an unusually elaborate, sometimes unsettling alternate-history world where civilization evolved from many sentient species.
by Marii Taiyou
A comprehensive review of Gal Gohan — plot, characters, art style, fanservice, and whether it's worth reading.
by Satoko Kiyuduki
Yu's review of GA: Geijutsuka Art Design Class — a four-panel comedy about five girls in a high-school art and design course, where color theory and a freeze-tag game become the punchline.
by Ukami
Yu's review of Gabriel DropOut — Gabriel White Tenma graduates top of her angel class, gets sent to Earth to guide humans toward happiness, discovers online games, and rots into a slovenly NEET. Her demon classmate Vignette is the responsible one; demon Satania keeps losing her melon bread to a dog; angel Raphiel just enjoys watching everyone suffer.
by Shiro
Yu's review of Encouragement of Climb (Yama no Susume) by Shiro — Aoi is a shy, indoor high school girl who is afraid of heights, until her energetic childhood friend Hinata pulls her back outside and up real Japanese mountains. A gentle four-panel slice of life about fear, friendship, and the climbs you don't finish.
by Chihiro Ishizuka
Yu's review of Flying Witch — a fifteen-year-old trainee witch named Makoto Kowata moves to rural Aomori with her cat Chito to live with her cousins, pulls screaming mandrakes out of the garden, and quietly turns ordinary days into magic.
by Tadashi Agi / Shu Okimoto
Yu's review of Drops of God — Shizuku Kanzaki, a young beer-company salesman who hates wine, has to identify the twelve 'Apostles' and a final wine called the Drops of God from his late father's will to inherit a legendary cellar, racing the adopted wine prodigy Issei Tomine. Written by Tadashi Agi, drawn by Shu Okimoto, complete in English from Kodansha.
by Akihiko Higuchi
Yu's review of Otaku Elf — Elda is a 600-year-old elf summoned to Japan by Tokugawa Ieyasu and enshrined as a goddess at Tokyo's Takamimi Shrine, but she's become a video-game-loving shut-in. Sixteen-year-old miko Koito Koganei tries to coax her out of her shell. Akihiko Higuchi's cozy comedy from Kodansha, in English from Seven Seas.
by Fujiko F. Fujio
Yu's review of Doraemon — a robot cat from the 22nd century, sent back to help a hopeless boy named Nobita with gadgets from his four-dimensional pocket. Fujiko F. Fujio's most beloved work, and the manga every Japanese kid grows up inside.
by Inio Asano
A review of Downfall (Reiraku) by Inio Asano — a one-volume manga about a successful mangaka who finishes his hit series and watches his whole life come apart.
by Hideo Azuma
Hideo Azuma was a popular comedy and ero-manga artist in 1970s–80s Japan. He left his life twice without telling anyone — once to live as a vagrant in winter forests, once camped under a Tokyo bridge. He developed severe alcoholism. He drew all of it as a gentle comedy. Disappearance Diary won the 2005 Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize and the Bungeishunjū Manga Prize. Complete in a single volume, available in English from Fanfare-Ponent Mon.
by Shunsuke Sarai (story) / Kamon Ōniwa (art)
Yu's review of Dog & Scissors — Kazuhito Harumi is shot dead protecting a stranger in a café robbery, and because he refuses to die before finishing his favorite author's last book, he comes back as a dachshund — owned by that exact author, who terrorizes him with scissors.
by Rin Asano
Yu's review of Deaimon (であいもん) by Rin Asano — Nagomu Irino comes home to his family's Kyoto wagashi shop after ten failed years chasing music, and finds a ten-year-old girl named Itsuka already living there, already learning the craft, already named his rival for the shop he walked out on.
by Kiminori Wakasugi
Yu's review of Detroit Metal City — Soichi Negishi moved to Tokyo to write gentle acoustic pop about kisses and raspberries, and ended up as Johannes Krauser II, the demonic frontman of a death metal band the fans believe murdered his own parents. He hates it. He is incredibly good at it. That gap is the whole joke, and it never stops being funny.
by Kotoyama
Yu's review of Dagashi Kashi by Kotoyama — Kokonotsu Shikada wants to draw manga, but his father runs a rural dagashi (cheap candy) shop and wants him to inherit it. Then Hotaru Shidare, the candy-obsessed heiress of a confectionery company, shows up to recruit his father and turns each cheap snack into a passionate lecture. A slice-of-life comedy about Japanese childhood candy culture.
by Kaori Hanzawa
Yu's review of Comic Girls (こみっくがーるず) by Kaori Hanzawa — Kaoruko 'Kaos' Moeta is a shy four-panel manga artist who ranks dead last in a reader survey and gets sent to a dormitory full of other young female manga creators. A gentle Manga Time Kirara comedy about making things while terrified you aren't good enough.
by Tomoya Haruno
Yu's review of D-Frag! — Kenji Kazama is a delinquent who wants to be feared, and instead gets dragged into the Game Creation Club (provisional) by four girls who are not afraid of him at all. A loud, fast school comedy where the joke is a tough guy who can't scare anyone.
by Tadataka Kawasaki
Yu's review of Chio's School Road — a gamer girl named Chio Miyamo turns the simple walk from her house to school into a daily disaster by applying Western video game logic to ordinary obstacles. Complete in 9 volumes from Yen Press.
by Minoru Furuya
Yu's review of Ciguatera — Minoru Furuya's coming-of-age seinen about Yusuke Ogino, a bullied, anxious 17-year-old who dreams of a motorcycle and falls for Yumi Nagumo. A youth story that never sands down the discomfort.
by Akane Shimizu
Yu's review of Cells at Work! — the cells of a human body are personified as workers in a city. Red Blood Cell AE3803 delivers oxygen, White Blood Cell U-1146 kills pathogens, and a cancer cell asks why he has to die. Educational comedy that quietly breaks your heart.
by Konami Kanata
Yu's review of Chi's Sweet Home — a lost kitten is taken in by the Yamada family in a no-pets apartment, and the full-color manga follows her growing up entirely from inside her own cat brain, all the way to a final volume about what 'home' really means.
by Taiyo Matsumoto
Yu's review of The Cats of the Louvre (ルーヴルの猫) by Taiyo Matsumoto — a colony of cats living in the Louvre's attic, a kitten who can walk into the paintings, and an old night guard still searching for the sister who vanished into the art decades ago. Published in English by VIZ Media.
by Shigemitsu Harada (story) / Issei Hatsuyoshiya (art) / Akane Shimizu (supervision)
Yu's review of Cells at Work! CODE BLACK — the seinen spinoff that takes the same cute cell premise and drops it inside an unhealthy adult body that smokes, drinks, and overworks. Red blood cell AA2153 and neutrophil U-1196 fight to keep a dying man alive, and one death changes everything.
by Yumi Unita
Yu's honest review of Bunny Drop (Usagi Drop) by Yumi Unita — bachelor Daikichi adopts Rin, his late grandfather's young illegitimate daughter, on impulse and learns to parent. The first half is some of the best family manga ever made; the second half time-skips and turns into something many readers reject. I tell you exactly what happens so you can decide.
by Wataru Nadatani
Yu's review of Cat + Gamer — Riko Kozakura is a 29-year-old office worker who spends every free hour on video games, until a stray kitten named Musubi turns up in her office parking lot and she starts running her whole life like a game she's trying to clear.
by Keito Gaku
Yu's review of Boys Run the Riot — Ryo Watari is a transgender high schooler who can't tell anyone who he is, until he meets Jin, a loud transfer student who pulls him into starting a streetwear brand. A four-volume manga, drawn by a trans creator, about fashion as the language you use when words won't come.
by Tsubasa Yamaguchi
Yu's review of Blue Period — Yatora Yaguchi is a popular but empty high schooler who sees one painting at dawn and decides he wants into Geidai, Japan's hardest art school, with no training and no safety net.
by Aki Hamaji
Yu's review of Bocchi the Rock! — Hitori 'Bocchi' Gotoh is a brilliant, completely self-taught guitarist who is so socially anxious she can barely speak to a classmate. When a girl recruits her into the band Kessoku Band, she has to learn to do in person what she could only ever do alone in her room.
by Shinichi Ishizuka
Yu's review of Blue Giant Supreme — Dai Miyamoto leaves Japan with his tenor sax, lands alone in Munich, and builds a band across Europe. The Europe arc of Shinichi Ishizuka's jazz manga. No English release yet, but the Japanese volumes are out there.
by Shinichi Ishizuka
Yu's review of Blue Giant — Dai Miyamoto, a Sendai high schooler with no talent and no friends in jazz, decides he will become the greatest jazz saxophonist in the world, moves to Tokyo, and forms the trio JASS with a cocky pianist and a total drumming beginner.
by Miyuki Nakayama
Yu's review of Blend S — Maika Sakuranomiya's smile looks terrifying even when she's being kind, so a café manager hires her to play the 'sadistic' waitress. The gap between her gentle heart and her scary face is the whole joke, and it never gets old.
by Shinichi Ishizuka (story di: NUMBER8)
Yu's review of Blue Giant Explorer — Dai Miyamoto lands in Seattle with a tenor sax and a thousand dollars, buys a used Honda, and drives across America building a band from strangers. The third chapter of the Blue Giant saga, complete in 9 volumes, only in Japanese.
by Osamu Tezuka
Black Jack is an unlicensed surgeon of impossible skill who lives on a cliff, charges fees that would bankrupt corporations, and decides which patients are worth saving. Osamu Tezuka — the God of Manga, who was himself a trained doctor — spent ten years and 242 standalone chapters on him. Vertical Inc.'s 17-volume English edition is complete.
by Akiko Higashimura
Yu's review of Blank Canvas (Kakukaku Shikajika) — Akiko Higashimura's autobiographical manga about Hidaka-sensei, the bamboo-sword-wielding art teacher in rural Miyazaki who screamed 'Draw!' until she became the artist she is. A memoir, a comedy, and a eulogy all at once.
by Bisco Hatori
Yu's review of Behind the Scenes!! — Ranmaru Kurisu, a pessimistic art student who feels useless next to his fisherman family, gets dragged into a university Art Squad after wandering onto a zombie movie shoot, and learns that the people who build the props no one notices are exactly the people a production can't live without.
by Kiyohiko Azuma
Yu's review of Azumanga Daioh — Kiyohiko Azuma's four-panel comedy that follows six high school girls across three years of ordinary school life, from Chiyo the child prodigy to Osaka the daydreamer.
by Satsuki Yoshino
Yu's review of Barakamon — a young calligrapher punches a critic, gets exiled to the Goto Islands, and a seven-year-old girl named Naru slowly dismantles everything he thought made him good.
by Rin Suzukawa
Yu's review of Asobi Asobase by Rin Suzukawa — three middle-school girls, Hanako Honda, Olivia, and Kasumi Nomura, run the unofficial Pastimers Club, where ordinary games collapse into grotesque facial expressions and slapstick chaos. A gag comedy that weaponizes the gap between its adorable character designs and what those faces actually do.
by Quro
Yu's review of Asteroid in Love (Koisuru Asteroid) by Quro — Mira promised to find an asteroid and name it after her friend Ao, because there's already a star called Mira but nothing in the sky carries Ao's name. A Manga Time Kirara Carat earth-sciences-club story about astronomy, geology, and a childhood promise that grows up with the girls keeping it.
by Kei Ohkubo
Yu's review of Arte by Kei Ohkubo — a noble girl in Renaissance Florence cuts off her hair, gets rejected by eighteen workshops, and forces the painter Leo to take her as an apprentice. A historical slice of life about a woman fighting a system, not a villain.
by Sō Hamayumiba
A review of Hanayamata, the slice-of-life manga by Sō Hamayumiba about an ordinary girl, an American transfer student, and the yosakoi dance club that pulls five very different girls together.
by Inio Asano
Inio Asano's two-volume manga (2005–2006) about Meiko, a 24-year-old office worker who quits her job without a plan, and her boyfriend Taneda, a guitarist in a band that has been almost-something for years. VIZ Media's English release combines both volumes into one omnibus.
by Shuho Sato
A young man trains to become a Japan Coast Guard rescue diver in Sato's painstakingly researched workplace drama.
by Kana Akatsuki (story) / Akiko Takase (art)
A review of Violet Evergarden — the manga adaptation of the Kyoto Animation light novel about a former child soldier who becomes an Auto Memoir Doll, writing letters that help others express what they cannot say.
by Naoki Urasawa
Pre-Monster Urasawa writing a quiet salaryman comedy — a fascinating glimpse into his early style.
by Etsushi Ogawa
A 13-year-old prodigy named Mao becomes the youngest Super Chef in Qing-dynasty China and cooks his way through the Underground Cooking Society — tournament cooking before Food Wars existed.
by Yumiko Oshima
Yumiko Oshima's quiet 1970s shojo classic about a girl who can't grow up, a fake marriage, and the fear that lives in the dark.
by Tone Koken (story) / Hiro Ogai (art)
A review of Super Cub, the manga about a girl with nothing in her life who discovers a Honda Super Cub motorcycle and, through it, discovers connection.
by Taishi Miyake
A review of Long Riders!, the cute-girls-and-bicycles manga by Taishi Miyake about a college freshman named Ami who falls for a folding bike and slowly pedals her way into the world of road cycling.
by Tatsuya Egawa
A review of Golden Boy, Tatsuya Egawa's cult comedy about Kintaro Oe — a Tokyo University law dropout who bicycles across Japan, working menial jobs and writing down what each one teaches him.
by Fumi Yoshinaga
A review of Flower of Life, Fumi Yoshinaga's warm and funny slice-of-life manga about a boy who returns to high school after surviving leukemia and the chaotic, manga-obsessed class he falls into.
by Tetsu Kariya (story), Akira Hanasaki (art)
A review of Oishinbo: A la Carte, the legendary food manga that has documented Japanese culinary culture since 1983 through the story of creating the Ultimate Menu.
by Shigeru Mizuki
Mizuki's autobiographical novel about his unit's suicide charge in New Guinea — a brutal, funny, devastating war story.
by Taizan 5
A review of Takopi's Original Sin by Taizan 5 — the 16-chapter Shōnen Jump+ story about an alien who lands in fourth-grader Shizuka Kuze's life on the day she's planned to die, and what his attempts to fix it cost everyone.
by Konari Misato
Nagi Oshima is a 28-year-old office worker in Tokyo who has spent her life reading the air for everyone else. She has a salaryman boyfriend who treats her as background. She has coworkers who use her without acknowledging her. One day at the office, she collapses. She quits everything, moves to a tiny apartment in Tachikawa, embraces her natural curly hair, and starts over. Konari Misato's 12-volume josei manga concluded in 2025. Unlicensed in English.
by Kaori Tsurutani
A 75-year-old widow discovers Boys' Love manga for the first time. A 17-year-old bookstore clerk who loves BL has never had a friend who shares her passion. This is the story of their friendship.
by Gengoroh Tagame
A single father in Japan welcomes his late twin brother's Canadian husband — and confronts everything he didn't know about his own family.
by Rumiko Takahashi
Takahashi's serialized adult dramas, mostly about women navigating marriage, infidelity, and ordinary life.
by Masaoki Shindo
A review of Ruri Dragon — the Shonen Jump slice-of-life about a high school girl who wakes up with dragon horns and has to navigate normal teenage life with increasingly un-normal biology.
by Osamu Tezuka
A girl uses magic candy to age forward and back — Tezuka's strangely tender attempt at biology education for children.
by Tetsuji Sekiya
A Fukuoka college student walks into a top Tokyo Italian kitchen sure he can cook — and gets sent to the dish sink. Bambino! is the most honest kitchen manga I have read.
by Shigeru Mizuki
Mizuki's autobiographical memoir of his childhood and the old woman who taught him about yokai.
by Hidekichi Matsumoto
A review of With a Dog AND a Cat, Every Day Is Fun — the four-panel manga about an artist living with a gentle, perfect dog and a psychopathic cat who wants to destroy everything.
by Keiko Tobe
A review of With the Light: Raising an Autistic Child, Keiko Tobe's landmark manga about a mother raising an autistic son — honest, educational, and deeply human.