Favorite/Recommended Manga Titles

I know at least a few people here read those silly Japanese comics too, what are some of your favorite titles and what would you recommend to others to check out?

Like I said in another thread, currently reading the original Ghost in the Shell manga which is pretty good so far and I picked up 1.5 to read once I'm through as well.

Favorite manga of mine is Gunsmith Cats by Kenichi Sonoda, first one I ever picked up and was my first and biggest entry drug into the wide world of anime and manga back in the mid 90's. Still very much enjoy it today, great action series with phenomenal artwork, I often describe this series as the best action movie you'll ever read.

Others I would check out are:

- MONSTER! (anime is coming out on DVD in December which people have to buy as well)
- Yotsuba!
- Evangelion (for those who like the franchise the manga really fleshes everything out a bit more then the TV series)
- Higurashi When They Cry (see sig below ) - a straight up adaptation of the anime but I pick this up for the different artwork

Akira and Death Note are the ones i've enjoyed the most. Both can get you caught up in the story very quickly and tend to make you wanna read through them all as fast as possible.

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Like GITS Kodansha is also doing a reprint of Akira as well for those looking to pick that up.

I'm mainly reading the Love Hina manga at the moment, but I've been getting the Gurren Lagann stuff on the side and its been pretty good so far.

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I read that one, not the greatest but still leaps and bounds better then the anime for sure. The manga was good for a few chuckles, the anime just annoyed me to no end.

Here are a few of my favorites.

-Battle Angel Alita
-Gunsmith Cats
-Ah! My Goddess
-Ranma 1/2
-Ghost in the Shell
-Blade of the Immortal
-Lone Wolf and Cub

Battle Royale
El-Hazard: The Magnificent World (take this over the anime versions - it blows them all out of the water)
Gunslinger Girl
Yu Yu Hakusho

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Trigun for me. It follows the series up to a point, but diverges once it becomes Maximum. Kind of hard to follow some of the fight sequences, but if you're a fan of the series it's worth checking out, Knives gets a much larger role than in the series.

Big O is worth a read too, it's similar to the series, in that it covers the first season pretty well, but then it diverges with an alternate conclusion that works in bits of the second season and other new sections. Don't expect it to explain away the mysteries of the show, though.

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Originally Posted by Lance Halberd Sol Fury can be likened to a German clock. A very exact, complex, and tightly-wound precision instrument that occasionally goes cuckoo.

Divided into "currently reading" and "finished" with stuff I'd recommend in bold:

Currently Reading

- Fullmetal Alchemist - All-around excellent series. I can't wait until the "Brotherhood" anime gets dubbed season sets released.
- Neon Genesis Evangelion - Fixes virtually all of the problems with the TV series. Only major flaw is that releases are so slow.
- Hellsing - Started out great but has pretty much broken down into a nigh-indecipherable mess of effects and speed lines. The last couple of volumes, I've had trouble figuring out what the hell is going on.
- Franken Fran
- My Balls

Finished

- Naru Taru - An excellent, brutal deconstruction of the "battling monster companions" subgenre. Definitely recommended for fans of Evangelion or deconstructions in general.
- Bokurano - From the creator of Naru Taru and deconstructing the whole "fighting robots" genre.
- Junji Ito's work - Includes Tomie, Uzumaki, Gyo and others. Some of the best horror stories I've read.
- Elfen Lied - Not sure whether to recommend this or not. It's generally good, but there's some really stupid stuff thrown in for no reason and it gets absolutely bizarre after the point where the anime ends.
- Death Note - Really good until Volume 7, but never regains it's quality after that.
- Battle Royale
- Parasyte

One of the anthologies I picked up in Japan actually had the ongoing Eva manga in it, there only up to the part in End of Eva were Asuka throws the battleship at the soldiers attacking Nerv HQ.