8 (ongoing) manga picks you need to check out

The manga industry continues to boom, both in Japan and internationally, marked by the success of the anime industry churning out television and movie adaptations left and right. Anime has not only helped boost the sales of the original source material, but also increase readers’ global interest for the manga ahead of the anime show’s next seasons (you only need to look at Jujutsu Kaisen’s volume circulation number rising by 560% after its very successful adaptation).

If you’ve gotten down the rabbit hole of manga reading, at some point, you run out of manga to read (or at least you think you have). Maybe it’s because some genres aren’t your thing or reading a thousand chapters of One Piece turns you off.

Don’t fret! Here are relatively new manga picks that are easy to start with, as there aren’t a lot of chapters to catch up on. Whether you’re a first-time manga reader looking for an easy read or a non-mainstream manga reader looking for new titles to read, check this list out.

If you like seeing scary men do cute things

The Way of the Househusband, written and illustrated by Kousuke Oono, is a comedic manga centering around the Immortal Tatsu as we follow his daily life as an ex-Yakuza househusband supporting his wife, Miku.  

This includes making lunch, walking their dog, or buying household appliances for bargain prices at the local store. It’s all very normal,  but the idea of hardened criminals in normal situations makes the funniest of misunderstandings. The way Kousuke Oono draws Tatsu baking bread look like the most illegal thing in the world is hysterical! 

Aside from its slapstick comedy, the wholesomeness of Tatsu’s relationship with his local community, whether it’s participating in the local women’s association or joining a cooking class, has captured the hearts of many readers. 

The Way of the Househusband is a fairly easy read with the first four volumes available online. Each chapter is an anecdotal slice-of-life that doesn’t have an end goal in mind as of yet. This makes picking up the manga from any point of the story quite easy. 

For the artsy fartsy reader

The next manga hits quite close to home – as a high school student, one of the most anxiety-inducing experiences you’ll ever have is applying for universities. 

Written and illustrated by Tsubasa Yamaguchi, Blue Period follows the character Yatora Yaguchi, a smart but ambitionless high school student who stumbles on to his passion, creating works of art. He finds himself in the wonderful but unforgiving world of oil painting where the only college his family can afford has the lowest acceptance rate for any arts school in the country.

Read about his struggles getting into his dream college and along the way learn about art, make new friends, and discover things about himself he never even thought was possible.

One of things the manga does really well is to describe the feeling of making art in its many facets, whether it be the good or the bad. The pain of not being able to make art and conversely, sudden bursts of inspiration are both written and illustrated so beautifully. It’s definitely an inspirational coming-of-age story about people finding their passion and pursuing them at all costs. 

You can purchase the first four volumes of the series online or read it digitally on Kodansha’s digital manga platform.

Powerful men beating each other

All I’m going to say is: man versus god, 1 on 1, in a tournament arc.  It’s simple yet effective and answers the question: “How far can Adam from the Bible go against Zeus in fist fight?” Spoiler alert, he can go pretty far.

The Record of Ragnarok is a manga written by Shinya Umemura and Takumi Fukui, and is illustrated by Ajichika. The manga is set in an unspecified time where every 1000 years, a council of gods and deities of multiple faiths decide on humanity’s survival. Before the gods decide that humanity should perish, a valkyrie named Brunhilde intervenes. She tries to give humanity a chance to prove themselves against the gods through armed combat.

The event called Ragnarok, is a gladiator-style tournament where 13 of humanity’s most famous heroes go up against 13 of the most powerful gods in single combat. Known for its intense fight scenes, Record of Ragnarok sets you immediately into the action.

From the explanation of humanity’s future destruction in the first chapter, readers are then thrust head first into the tournament. It doesn’t try to spring multiple plot-twists but at the same time it keeps things tense enough that each fight ends up being unpredictable.

This series is for those looking for a great fighting manga. If the idea of Jack the Ripper going up against Hercules doesn’t get you excited, then I don’t know what will.

While the series hasn’t been licensed for an english translation, Netflix has acquired the rights to make an anime adaptation for the series and has just released a new trailer. No doubt that the anime series will give the source material a better chance to get officially translated.

If comedies like Gintama are your thing, then say no more

After Gintama ended its publication with over 700 chapters, a comedic void was left on Weekly Shonen Jump. If anyone is to fill that void then Kenta Shinohara, a former assistant who worked on Gintama, is your best bet.

He is most known for his manga Sket Dance, which has drawn comparisons to Hideaki Sorachi’s style. Sket Dance and Gintama once had a crossover chapter, so if that is an indication of success, then Kenta’s newest work, Witch Watch, is something to look forward to.

Witch Watch is a comedic manga about a boy named Morihito who lives with his childhood friend and witch-in-training Niko. The emphasis is on witch-in-training as Niko’s magic often leads to disaster. With Morihito coming from a line of ogre-familiars, it’s up to him to protect his klutzy master, all the while dealing with school-life, meeting adversaries, and making new friends along the way.

Like Sket Dance, the manga is known for its slapstick humor, fourth wall breaks, and even parodies of other famous manga like Demon Slayer. If that’s your humor, then this series is for you. You can read the Witch Watch on Sheiusha’s digital platform.

If you want to try new things

Spy x Family is what you get when you cross a Japanese slice-of-life story with a thrilling spy movie. It has the sweetness of everyday family life with the intensity of an action flick.

The manga is about a spy named Loid who, in order to infiltrate the most prestigious school in the country, decides to get married and adopt a child in order to build a fake family. Little does he know that the person that agreed to marry him, Yor, is actually a super powerful assassin and the only person who’s aware of all of this is Anya, Loid’s adoptive child who’s also secretly a telepath.

With Anya taking the initiative, as a 6-year-old who’s fully aware that her adoptive parents are spies and assassins, she gets in a lot of trouble. Read all about the Forger family’s daily life of subterfuge and mishaps as they slowly get attached to each other as a real family.

With only five volumes translated into english, it’s quite a fast read. You can also read the first few chapters for free on Sheiusha’s digital platform.

For fans of the manga The Seven Deadly Sins

The Seven Deadly Sins is one of the most popular shonen manga series in recent memory. Written and illustrated by Nakaba Suzuki, The Seven Deadly Sins has spawned several volumes, as well as games, anime adaptations, films, and now, a sequel.

Titled the Four Knights of the Apocalypse, this sequel, set 16 years after the events of the 2nd Holy War, centers on a young boy named Percieval as he seeks revenge against the Holy Knight that killed his grandfather. Follow his journey across Britannia, in search for his grandfather’s murderer as he uncovers his role in the prophecies of the four knights of the apocalypse.

Despite being a sequel, it can stand quite well on its own, without any prior knowledge of the title before it.

The series is licensed by Kodansha USA with english translations releasing in tandem with the Japanese release. You can also check out the series on various digital platforms such as BookWalker and Crunchyroll Manga.

An obligatory harem manga pick

From Ichigo 100% to We Never Learn, harem manga have been a staple for shonen manga magazines in the last two decades. The idea of multiple women vying for the attention of one person is very popular, despite how simple its formula is. Get an indecisive yet honest guy, a shy childhood friend, a red-haired tsundere, and you’ve got yourself a harem manga cast. Coat it with some outlandish plot about why they all need to be with that guy, and you’re all set.

It could be said that the genre has been oversaturated but this next manga is self-aware of its own cliches. Girlfriend, Girlfriend, written and illustrated by Hiroyuki, is a manga that sounds really bad when being explained but is so funny when reading it.

The manga follows Naoya Mukai, who at the start of the story has just gotten into a relationship with his childhood friend, Saki Saki. The first test of their relationship comes quickly as their classmate, Nagisa Minase, confesses her love to Naoya just moments after the couple gets together. Won over by Nagisa’s tenacity as she spent months weight training and learning how to cook in order to prepare for her confession, Naoya goes to his girlfriend, with Nagisa in tow, in order to propose a two-timing relationship. 

The deconstruction and self-awareness of the harem genre has never been as explored as it is in this manga and I can compare to how Konosuba deconstructed isekai light novels all those years ago.

I highly recommend this manga to people looking for a good laugh. Read the first four volumes of the series on Kodansha’s digital platform.

Absurd daily school life turned realistic fantasy

Have you ever read a story where the heroes defeat the bad guy and all that’s left in the epilogue are snippets that leave a void in your heart, knowing it’s the last time you’ll be spending with these characters?

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End is different in that it is set after the heroes beat the demon lord, and is centered around the great elven mage Frieren as she finds the meaning of life, given that in her race’s long lifespan, a hundred years feels more like a few weeks. 

Normally, Frieren is aloof and concerned only with magic but with the death of her friend, the hero Himmel, she begins to cry and wonder why she cared for a man she’s only known for a decade, a mere fraction of her life. To that end, she decides to get to know humans a lot more and somewhere along the line train an apprentice, Fern.

It’s a calmer story, not centering around action scenes, though there are some fights. The story has a lot of time skips and can be quite anecdotal, as Frieren reminisces her past adventures, which overlap with the current plot of the chapter. 

Written by Kanehito Yamada and illustrated by Tsukasa Abe, the manga has garnered prestigious awards just a year into its publication – the 14th Taisho new creator prize and the 25th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize. Its beautiful story matched with a surprisingly dead-pan tone of humor makes it a must read for anyone looking to read a good story.

This award-winning manga is slated to have its official release on November 9, 2021. – Rappler.com

Adrian Soriano is a Rappler intern.