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Note on buying items:
Domu.
IWGP: Ikebukuro West Gate Park.
- Aihara Miki
- Hot Gimmick by Aihara Miki
- VIZ Media
- Hatsumi's younger sister Akane confides in her that she may be pregnant. Akane is too nervous to buy a pregnancy test so Hatsumi does that for her, in disguise. Shedding the disguise she returns home only to bump into the Ryoki who she has feared since she was little. The test drops to the ground and Ryoki takes advantage of the situation to blackmail her. So begins a tale of a shy girl in an abnormal relationship that draws you in and makes you want the next volume as soon as you can get it.
- Cultural Details: Modern school and urban life.
- Cautions: Suitable for teens and older. Some sexual tension, nothing more explicit than clothed touching in a couple of panels.
- Order Hot Gimmick graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Akamatsu Ken
- Love Hina by Akamatsu Ken
- TOKYOPOP
- Continuing series.
- When he was a child Keitaro and a girl promised they would get into the highly prestigious Tokyo University and meet again. Keitaro keeps failing the entrance exams and refuses to give up. he refuses to the point he leaves home after an argument with his parents and goes to his grandmother's inn. But he has not been there in years and quickly, and embarrassingly, discovers that not only is his grandmother gone on a long trip but the inn is now a hostel for young women. His aunt, who has her own business tells him, over the objections of many of the women, that he can be caretaker.
- There is also a Love Hina anime available.
- Cultural Details: Modern school and urban life.
- Cautions: Suitable for teens and older. Some nudity, mostly 'off screen'.
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- Buronson and Ikegami Ryoichi
- Strain Story by Buronson, Art by Ikegami Ryoichi
- VIZ Media
- 5 volumes.
- Mayo is a hit man in Malaysia who works cheap and places almost no value on human life. That is until he meets a young girl who touches a tender part of him that has been buried for some time. Someone wants her dead, someone who thought Mayo was dead.
- Cautions: Contains graphic sex and violence.
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- Fujisawa Toru
- GTO: Great Teacher Onizuka by Fujisawa Toru
- TOKYOPOP
- 24 volumes
- See the description in the anime section.
- Cultural Details: Modern school and urban life.
- Cautions:
Absolutely not for kids, plenty of sexual humor, often at Onizuka's expense, and some violence, often at Onizuka's hands.
However the anime is milder as it was broadcast in prime time in Japan.- Order GTO graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Hotta Yumi (story) and Takeshi Obata (art)
- Hikaru no Go story by Hotta Yumi, art by Takeshi Obata
- VIZ Media
- Hikaru is an energetic kid who does not do too well in school. Punished for bad grades by having his allowance cut off he is looking in his grandfather's attic for something to sell. He finds an old board for the ancient game of Go and proceeds to try to clean the stain off of it, a stain his friend does not see. Then he hears a voice saying "You can see it?" when he responds the speaker is happy he can hear him. Hikaru turns around to see the spirit of Fujiwara no Sai a Heian period Go master who died in exile and who cannot move on until he plays the perfect Go game, known as the Divine Move. How will Hikaru cope with being haunted in this way, and how will he cope with a growing interest in one of the most ancient board games in the world?
- This manga, and the later anime, have resulted in literally millions of Japanese picking up a game that few were playing regularly. The same effect is happening in other parts of Asia especially China the nation where the game originated.
- Cultural Details: Contemporary Japanese life, Go.
- Order Hikaru no Go graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Inoue Takehiko
- Vagabond by Inoue Takehiko
- VIZ Media
- Continuing series.
- Based on Yoshikawa Eiji's famous novel Musashi. This is the story of Miyamoto Musashi, one of the most famous swordsmen of Japanese history. Opening in 1600 at the aftermath of the battle of Sekigahara , the last battle between samurai armies before the founding of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the only battle Musashi was to ever fight in. And from there dramatizing his life. This manga won the 2000 Media Arts Award for manga from the Japanese Ministry of Culture.
- Cultural Details: Early Edo Period life.
- Cautions: Contains a little sex and plenty of violence, after all this is a story a swordsman.
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- Ishida Ira and Aritou Sena
- IWGP: Ikebukuro West Gate Park by Ishida Ira (story) and Aritou Sena (art)
- Digital Manga Publishing
- Makoto is just a young guy interested in picking up girls on New Year's Eve when he and his friend meet Hikaru and Rika. They start hanging out together and in time become more than friends. However there is someone drugging and assaulting young women in the area leaving them unconscious in love hotels. When this happens to someone they know Makoto and his friends are drawn into events they would have rather avoided. That is the beginning of the first volume in a series of tales involving Makoto and events in his part of Toyko. Based on a popular novel that went on to be a top rated TV drama.
Cultural Details: Contemporary life in Tokyo.- Cautions: For Adults. Contains some sex scenes and some violence.
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- Kanari Yozaburo and Sato Fumiya
- The Kindaichi Case Files by Kanari Yozaburo and Sato Fumiya
- TOKYOPOP
- Continuing series.
- Known in Japan as The New Kindaichi Files. Tales about high school student Kindaichi Hajime, the gifted grandson of Kindaichi Kosuke a famous fictional detective, Hajime ends up working on some cases providing us with some great entertainment. A great read for whodunit fans.
- Cultural Details: Modern school and urban life.
- Cautions: Suitable for teens and older. The deaths often are gruesome but not dwelled on.
- Order Kindaichi Case Files graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Katsura Masakazu
- Katsura is a master of romance stories for boys. He works in all the indecisveness, fear and insecurity a boy teen has with girls.
- Video Girl Ai by Katsura Masakazu
- VIZ Media
- Continuing series.
- Ai is a video girl, her entire purpose is to comfort those special enough to qualify to rent her tape. But Yota's VCR is defective and Ai comes out of the TV with a very different personality, and, to her anger, smaller breasts. Ai does try to help Yota in her own way, encouraging him to pursue the girl he is in love with, but Ai is now 'defective' and can feel love herself, something which does not please her maker.
- Cultural Details: Contemporary life.
- Cautions: Contains some nudity.
- Order Video Girl Ai graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Kiyama, Henry (Yoshitaka)
- Four Immigrants Manga
- Stone Bridge Press
- One volume.
- The first manga in book form to have been published in the United States. Originally printed in 1931 in San Francisco this is the tale of a group of immigrants living in California in the very early 20th Century. The original was bilingual, with the Americans speaking English.
- Order The Four Immigrants Graphic Novel from The Right Stuf
- Kobayashi Makoto
- Club 9 by Kobayashi Makoto
- Dark Horse Comics
- Continuing series.
- Haruo is a country girl from rural Akita ken. She is now living in Tokyo going to college, She has promised her boyfriend she would remain a virgin until she returns home.But she has an unwanted room mate, ghost of a drowned virgin, a drowned virgin guy, a ghost that does not want to stay a virgin. In desperation she moves in with a class mate, but not wanting to impose she tries to find a job, and is now working as a hostess in a club in the Ginza. Now the fun begins. I had to put this one down a few times I was laughing so hard.
- Cultural Details: Contemporary life.
- Cautions: Slight sexual humor.
- Order Club 9 graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Koike Kazuo and Kojima Goseki
- Lone Wolf and Cub by Koike Kazuo and Kojima Goseki
- Dark Horse Comics
- 28 Volumes
- Long considered one of the great classics of manga with millions of copies printed, some in hardcover editions in Japan. There was an earlier incomplete translation done in the late 1980s of part of the series. Lone Wolf and Cub is the story of a samurai widower who has been forced our of his lord's service and has become a professional assassin traveling the countryside with his young son.
- This time the entire series has been translated straight to book form.
- There are also live action Lone Wolf and Cub movies available subtitled in English.
- Cultural Details: Dense with details on common and samurai life of the Tokugawa Era, each volume has a glossary at the end..
- Cautions: Violence, occasional sexual situations.
- Order Lone Wolf and Cub graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Mikimoto Haruhiko
- Marionette Generation by Mikimoto Haruhiko
- VIZ Media
- Izumi is a manga artist, Kinoko is his assistant. One day she arrives to find him in bed... with a doll, literally. But the doll talks and acts like a person, she also does not know who she is.
- Cultural Details: Contemporary life, manga industry
- Cautions: Contains some mild sexual humor, usually at Izumi's expense.
- Order Marionette Generation graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Miyazaki Hayao
- Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Miyazaki Hayao
- VIZ Media
- Internationally famous director Miyazaki's only manga series. The story was begin in the 1980s but sat unfinished for a decade until fan pressure convinced Miyazaki to complete the tale. This is the story of Nausicaä a young princess who find herself and her small kingdom caught up in a war between larger empires.
- The Nausicaä anime is also available in English.
- Order Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Otomo Katsuhiro
- Akira by Otomo Katsuhiro
- Dark Horse Comics
- 6 volumes.
- The most famous manga by Otomo. Now reissued in the original black and white format in a series of very large volumes. Each volume is about 360 pages long and the height and width of a typical US comic. This title was originally issued in the late 1980s and early 1990s in a colorized version with needless additional explanatory text added to many of the wordless sequences. the extra text is not included in this edition.
- There is also an Akira anime available
- Order Akira graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Sadamoto Yoshiyuki
- Neon Genesis Evangelion by Sadamoto Yoshiyuki
- VIZ Media
- Continuing Series described in the anime section
- Order Neon Genesis Evangelion graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Samura Hiroaki
- Blade of the Immortal by Samura Hiroaki
- Dark Horse Comics
- Continuing Series.
- Manji is a swordsman with an interesting curse, he is infected with a type of worm which makes it almost impossible for him to die. He does not age, cut him deeply and it heals, chop off a part and he can reattach it. He has been told that if he kills a thousand he can be free from his immortality.
- Cultural details: Daily life in Tokugawa Japan.
- Cautions: Not for kids, graphic violence and some sexual situations.
- Order Blade of the Immortal graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Shirow Masamune
- Appleseed by Shirow Masamune
- Dark Horse Comics
- 4 volumes and The Appleseed Databook
- Shirow Masamune is best known for his Ghost in the Shell manga. This earlier series involves two survivors of a world war, Deunan and her partner Briaros, who are recruited by Olympus, a large utopian nation playing a role in the emerging new international order. But all is not peaceful in utopia as is shown by the fact that these new recruits skills are only applicable to the police. Appleseed is a very complex story that not only deals with the lives of the protagonists but the political and economic structure of a world very different and vaguely familiar to ours.
There are also two Appleseed anime.- Order Appleseed graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Ghost in the Shell and Ghost in the Shell 2 by Shirow Masamune
- Dark Horse Comics
- 1 volume.
- Described in the anime section. The manga is different in many ways from the anime with detailed discussions that would not work so well on the screen.
- There is also a Ghost in the Shell anime feature available, a TV show and second feature and a second manga. The first manga is also available in a very hard to get Kodansha bilingual edition.
- The second volume takes place a few years after the first and includes large color sequences.
- Cautions: Violence and nudity. The second edition of volume one has a page of sexually explicit content.
- Order the Ghost in the Shell Graphic Novel (2nd Ed)
Order the Ghost in the Shell 2 Graphic Novel: Man-Machine Interface
- Soda Masahito
- Firefighter! Daigo of Fire Company M by Soda Masahito
- VIZ Media
- Continuing Series
- Daigo is all gung ho for his first assignment as a firefighter. Ready to combat flames he arrives two days early for his new assignment. To his disappointment he finds that he has been stationed in a station that is in an area with almost no fires, and his fellow crew members seem far too laid back for someone as ready to go as he is, in fact they seem like slackers more interested in their paychecks. Then they get a call and he has to change all of his opinions fast.
- Cultural details: Daily life.
- Order Firefighter! Daigo of Fire Company M graphic novel from The Right Stuf
- Sonoda Kenichi
- Cannon God Exaxxion by Sonoda Kenichi
- Dark Horse Comics
- Continuing Series
- This report is based on volume one. I never expected to be so excited about this title as I was when I finished the first volume. Sonoda has created a giant robot manga like no other. In this series the main character has to face alien invaders, but he is armed with weapons built by his grandfather a successful inventor who in some cases built his weapons by reverse engineering alien technology, and not technology from the invaders.
- Cautions: Realistic portrayals of sex and violence are promised in the author info.
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- Gunsmith Cats by Sonoda Kenichi
- Dark Horse Comics
- 9 volumes
- Rally Vincent is a gunsmith and bounty hunter who is also a serious firearms nut, Minnie-May is her friend and assistant who has a certain obsession, and skill, with explosives. The setting is Chicago, need I say more?
Also available is the Gunsmith Cats OVA series.- Cautions: Violence, occasional sexually explicit situations and nudity.
- Order Gunsmith Cats graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Takahashi Hiroshi
Worst by Takahashi Hiroshi
Digital Manga Publishing- Continuing Series
Hana has just moved to Tokyo to attend High School. Born and raised in the country, so far from anything that cell phones don't work in his area, he is a bit lost in the city. He find his boarding house run by two brothers that look more like a yakuza and a woman than landlords and makes new friends with his house mates. Then on the first day of school the new students are called into the auditorium for the traditional challenge, to see who will be the last standing after a fighting competition. Hana has found himself in a place that he find exciting. And that's just the first volume.- This is a surprisingly well written story for a fight manga, the characters have distinct personalities and I was easily drawn into the story.
- Cautions: Violence, this is a fight manga after all.
- Order Worst graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Takahashi Rumiko
- Inu-Yasha by Takahashi Rumiko
- VIZ Media
- Continuing series.
- The title can be translated as Dog-Demon. The story involves a girl who's family has run a shrine for centuries. One day she is pulled into a sacred well by a centipede woman, find herself hundreds of years in the past and part of a struggle against various demons that could result in the deaths of many innocent bystanders.
- There is also an anime available.
- Cultural Details: Historical setting, folklore.
- Order Inu-Yasha graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Maison Ikkoku by Takahashi Rumiko
- VIZ Media
- Described in the anime section.
- Order Maison Ikkoku graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Ranma 1/2 by Takahashi Rumiko
- VIZ Media
- Continuing series, described in the anime section.
- Order Ranma 1/2 graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Return of Lum / Urusei Yatsura by Takahashi Rumiko
- VIZ Media
- Continuing series, described in the anime section.
- Note for Librarians:
- There are no volume numbers in this series. Librarians should consider adding the numbers in the cataloging record and on call number labels to reduce patron confusion as new characters are often introduced as the series progresses.
- Order Urusei Yatsura graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Tezuka Osamu
- Astro Boy by Tezuka Osamu
- Dark Horse Comics
- 23 volumes.
- Tezuka's classic story of a robot boy. Written for children this work is surprisingly sophisticated for it's audience dealing with issues of discrimination, war, and dignity.
- Order Astro Boy graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Metropolis
- Dark Horse Comics
- 1 volume.
- The tale of the creation of a robot who is raised as a child. She does not know her origins and searches for the parents she feels must exist. But those who had her made have other plans. Many themes found in later Tezuka works are found in this early story. There is also a Metropolis anime.
- Order the Metropolis graphic novel from The Right Stuf
- Princess Knight by Tezuka Osamu
- Kodansha
- 6 volumes.
- A manga classic finally translated into English. Prince Sapphire has a secret, the prince is actually a girl. Secretly raised as a prince to prevent the succession from going to Plastic the son of Duke Duralmin Sapphire's training includes horsemanship and sword fighting. But after the death of the king Duke Duralmin's loyal henchman sir Nylon uncovers her secret which sets in motion a tale of valor, magic and romance that has delighted Tezuka fans for years.
- Cultural Details: The style of this tale is heavily influenced by the famous all female musical theater troupe of Takarazuka, the home town of Tezuka.
- Utatane Hiroyuki and Morimoto Yo
Seraphic Feather by Utatane Hiroyuki (art) and Morimoto Yo (story)
Dark Horse Comics- Sunao had his best friend Kei move to the moon when he was little. Years later he goes there to visit her grave and one day runs into Kei but she does not remember him. Quickly he is drawn into an adventure he never expected, an adventure involving interesting alien technology, as he stays to find out what happened to Kei.
- Cautions: Some nudity, Utatane established his reputation as an erotic manga artist and it shows.
- Order Seraphic Feather graphic novels from The Right Stuf
Watase Yu- Fushigi Yûgi by Watase Yu
- VIZ Media
- Continuing series.
- Miaka likes to eat and is struggling to get into an exclusive high school, in Japan you have to take entrance exams for high school. An incident happens when she is in a special collection at the National Library of Japan and she find herself in another world, a world very much like ancient China. She is recognized as the priestess of Suzaku and to get home she must gather together seven heroes. The gathering proves to be a daunting task and with many emotional consequences. One of the heroes is gay and very sympathetically portrayed.
Excellent for teens, very popular with girls.- There is also a very popular anime series.
Cautions: Violence and mild nudity.- Order Fushigi Yûgi graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Yasuhiko Yoshikazu
- Gundam: The Origin by Yasuhiko Yoshikazu
- VIZ Media
- Continuing series,
- The retelling of the Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 story by the character designer for the original TV show.
- Order Gundam: The Origin graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Yoshida Akimi
- Banana Fish by Yoshida Akimi
- VIZ Media
- Continuing series.
- The story of Ash a young gang leader who enters into a conflict with the mob over a strange drug. A drug somehow connected with his older brother's mind being seriously damaged in Vietnam. Ash is assisted by several friends including a Japanese photographer and his assistant. As the story develops they hunt for clues as to the meaning of Banana Fish and hide from those out to kill them.
- Cautions: Violence, as would be expected, and sexual situations.
- Order Banana Fish graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Yuki Masami
- Mobile Police Patlabor by Yuki Masami
- VIZ Media
- Continuing series, described in the anime section.
Note: Viz stopped issuing this series after 2 volumes, if sales are good they may resume releasing it.- Order Patlabor graphic novels from The Right Stuf
- Adam Warren's Pseudo-manga:
- Bubblegum Crisis:
- Dark Horse Comics
- Inspired by the original OVA series. This is Warren's own take on the characters and situations of the series.
- Bubblegum Crisis Graphic Novel: Grand Mal
- Dirty Pair:
- Dark Horse Comics
- Inspired by the Dirty Pair anime, there is no manga series in Japan as the stories were originally novels. Warren has given the stories his own twist, one which delights fans of science fiction as well as fans of the original anime.
- To date there Five graphic novels have been issued, almost all are out of print:
- Dirty Pair: Biohazards Graphic Novel
Story by Toren Smith and Adam Warren, art by Adam Warren- Dirty Pair: Dangerous Acquaintances Graphic Novel
Story by Toren Smith and Adam Warren, art by Adam Warren- Dirty Pair: A Plague of Angels Graphic Novel
Story by Adam Warren and Toren Smith, art by Adam Warren- Dirty Pair: Sim Hell Graphic Novel
Story art by Adam Warren- Dirty Pair: Fatal But Not Serious Graphic Novel
- Story art by Adam Warren
Dirty Pair: Run From the Future- Story art by Adam Warren
There are also Dirty Pair anime.
Back to the Recommended Anime and Manga main page.
Created August 8, 1999 | Updated September 17, 2007