Manga Everyone Should Read
Series that expand what manga can be
Vagabond, by Takehiko Inoue, is a fictionalised account of the swordsman Miyamoto Musashi drawn in a painterly style that has no equivalent in any other manga. It has been on hiatus since 2015, but the chapters that exist are among the most visually accomplished pages in comics.
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, running since 1987, is impossible to describe accurately. It begins as a Victorian gothic story, becomes a time-travel narrative, then a mob story, then a prison drama, and so on across eight complete parts, each with a different protagonist and a different art style. It is entirely sincere in its absurdity.
Series for readers who say they don't like manga
Dungeon Meshi, recently concluded, is a fantasy cooking manga about a group of adventurers who cook and eat the monsters they kill in a dungeon. This premise is funnier and more emotionally resonant than it sounds. Its recent animated adaptation made it globally visible; the source manga handles food, ecology and grief with a specificity that most prose fiction does not approach.
Solanin, by Inio Asano, is a single volume about post-university aimlessness and the gap between the people we imagine becoming and the people we are. It is the manga that has made the most readers cry who thought they did not read manga.
Series that demonstrate the medium's range
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Hayao Miyazaki's seven-volume manga, is longer, darker and more politically complicated than the 1984 film adaptation. The film is one of the great animated films; the manga contains a critique of its own narrative that the film could not accommodate.
Berserk, by Kentaro Miura, who died in 2021, is unfinished and very long and very dark. The first arc, the Golden Age arc, is one of the best extended narratives in any medium about friendship, ambition and betrayal.
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