Manga Rec Thread

Urasekai Picnic or if you prefer a less weeb title "Otherside Picnic", a LN adapted to a manga.

If you're a gamer or a fan of Russian 80's literature that was poorly adapted into a movie you might be hearing "Cheeki breeki" and "Get out of here Stalker".

The series follows Sorawo Kamikoshi, a young adult who is a bit of a loner and whose hobby is urban exploration. She comes across a doorway in an abandoned apartment that when walked through transports the person to another world that seems empty.

On her third visit she nearly dies to a creature she recognizes from an urban legend and is saved by Toriko Nishim, a woman who is searching the Otherside for a friend of hers that went missing there.

Motivated by the promise of cash Sorawo helps Toriko search the otherside for her friend. It quickly becomes apparent that the Otherside is filled with death traps-hazodous natural phenomena referred to as "Anomalies", and there are a number of hostile creatures who seem to correlate to myths and urban legends.

The title, "Otherside Picnic", is a reference to "Roadside Picnic", the game upon which the movie and game series "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." is adapted from. It shares a number of elements from it; the hostile environment and creatures, artifacts that can be found naturally or from dead creatures that esoteric collectors will pay good cash for if someone is brave or suicidal enough to hazard the trip, and the fact that the location itself seems to be breaking down the very laws of reality. It focuses a bit more on the supernatural aspect and the mystery of "What the hell is going on with that place" than S.T.A.L.K.E.R does, which is more focused on the day to day struggles of surviving and the nebulous legend of a wish granting place.

The series has some elements of yuri, the three primary female characters are pretty gay and Toriko very obviously had some sort of crush on the woman whose gone missing but it's not the main focus. The world building and mystery is well done and the characters are well written and have depth.

The character relationships avoid the usual romantic plots and such and focus on their development and learning more about the characters themselves without outright spelling things out for readers and subtly foreshadowing things- Toriko for example seems rather comfortable and knowledgable about guns for a woman her age, especially for Japan. Sorawo's money motivation seems to be more than just having money for the sake of having money or being greedy, and her loner nature seems to go beyond being an introvert-there are indications that she doesn't quite see the world the same way others do.

Anyways I really suggest checking it out, it's done with a level of quality that I would feel comfortable recommending it to people who don't usually read manga. Also it looks like it might be getting an anime adaptation so fingers crossed it doesn't suck.

 

I can't really recommend Chainsaw man. The art is pretty rough, the dialoug is robotic and the author likes to kill off characters for cheap shock value, but there's a single idea from it that really sparks my mind.

Spoiler

In this setting, fears of humanity can manifest in the form of a devil. The more feared it is, the stronger the devil becomes.

The Gun Devil is powerful enough to wipe out a city trivially, because people fear guns very much.

The Titular Chainsawman can somehow eat devils and retcon them out of existence.
Doing so delete the concept that spawned them,

Like, we had hints before that this was an alternate history or AU or something, but having a character just casually drop 'Hey, do you remember the holocaust?' and just get a blank stare in return is pretty amazing.
Of course she doesn't label it by name, because the name doesn't exist anymore because it never happened.

Along with the entire second world war, AIDs, a volcanic eruption.
Those are all pretty understandable.
"The sixth sense every human used to have"
Why did humanity fear their own sixth sense enough to spawn a demon from it?
"A star who's light drove children insane" Yeah, not suprising that one formed a devil. Pretty fucking eldrich.
Nuclear weapons being retconned out of existence actually explains why the Bomb Devil is so underpowered. She should have been way stronger than the Gun Devil, especially in Japan.
But nukes never existed (nor WW2, for that matter) so people's fears of bombs as a whole aren't very strong.

"The four other possibilities other than death that await a living being at the end of it's lifespan"
What?
Like... what?

I love me some of this existential shit.
I can't even fucking imagine what could await you at the end of your life, other than dying. Even if you reincarnae or become a ghost or zombie, you still die first.
To... not die at the end of your life, but have something else happen. I can't wrap my head around it.
Of course I can't, those very concepts were deleted from existence. Now there is only life and death.

 

Remembers me of Nobilis where you have the Excrucians, alien beings from outside reality who destroy concepts of creation and once they manage to erase it, it is retconned and only the highest beings remember it anymore.

Except there the general theme is that even the most banal or horrible thing is actually necessary for existence to work and even losing such things as potato chips, murder, rape and genocide can lead to reality getting weaker and slowly moving in the direction of total erasure of all of reality....

There is regular hinting that various concepts have arleady been lost, emotions that nobody can know anymore, states of being, concepts and forces of nature etc... there have been threads on other forums where people tried to come up with Excruciated Estates and tried to think of which are currently being attacked and possibly in the process of dying...

 

With only 3 chapters released so far, it's not really an informed rec, but what I've seen so far is hella cute.

Spoiler: Intro Picture

https://mangadex.org/title/55533/fukinoshita-san-is-small is a story about a boy and a girl, except he's half-oni and she's a flower-dwarf. They go to school with other monsters.

Spoiler: Cuteness sample from chapter 1

So far it's just adorable.

 

Eleceed is a manwha made by the same people as Nobleese

Fucking bizarre friendship between psychic/magic/mutants teens in a hidden mystic martial arts world where the MC is taking care of the World's Strongest Man who used his abilities to turn into a cat to disguise himself only to have a hard time gathering the energy to turn back human for extended periods of time.

...This also causes people to start thinking that cats are super-predators because other characters just see this Garfield Level Fat cat beat people to near death while cat fanatics keep saying he is a normal cat.

The secret society's arrogance has the effect of making lots of their teens delinquents with no social skills, which is funny when it is not being played up for the sociopathy and massive amounts of abuse/bullying (the ones who are friends comically misunderstanding how to make jokes vs the guys who pressure people into fights to let out sadistic urges)

One of the MC's best friends has come to the conclusion that cats gain superpowers when they get fat, and has been feeding stray cats and cultivating them "Subject number 9 you will awaken."

Said best friend is constantly embarrassed by his supernatural mob boss sister trying to help him make friends (showing up with food for their parties) and seems to be oblivious that might be holding out for the MC (who is incredibly dense due to social isolation)

Just....everyone in the main group has no social skills (Hiding himself from the world due to previous experience being called a monster, human experimentation test subject turned mad scientist's protege, magic mob young master who became a delinquent to avoid the people saying "you should totally kill your sister and become the boss," and magic mob princess who thinks that borderline stalking people is how to make friends "If I steal my friend's phone and call another girl to get her to show up then tell her that I was at his house and borrowed the phone she totally won't get confused. I just want the two of them to hook up.")

Just, aside from the fight scenes, the results of everyone being around amoral fighting maniacs and mad scientists makes for them all to be mutually horrible at social interaction and it is hilarious.

 

I have mixed feelings about the manga "I fell in love to I tried livestreaming"

The comedy of errors that come from a former YouTuber hiding it from his dorm mates who are all streamers who hide that from everyone else (Virtual Idol, Cosplay Larper/Gamer, two gaming channel girls one of whom is a FPS PvP maniac who loves guns, and a trap who actively goes hunting for cheaters)

The MC knows about everyone but the trap due to the trap thinking that he is leading on the girls in the dorm, leading to the trap crossdressing to try and "prove" that he is a cheater.

The Larper sees the crossdressing trap, immediately sees through the disguise, and goes "Oh, well everyone has the hobbies that they keep secret"

Trap: I'm not a pervert

Larper: I don't judge, don't worry about it *loves cosplay and is full of chuuni that he hides*

Trap: It isn't like that

Larper: This knight shall keep your secret

Trap: *has no idea what the fuck is going on* You don't understand my feelings.

Me: Ah, so the plot will be resolved by the Larper best friend going to town on the trap and causing him to no longer hate guys.

 

Karakai Jouzu No Takagi-San or Teasing Master Takagi is a cute, fluffy, slice-of-life manga that I blazed through (including its sequel/spin-off) recently. A middle-school boy and girl, the latter of whom frequently teases the former because she likes him. The boy tries to get back at her for the teasing by trying to trick her or beat her at contests (and always fails).

 

Not really a rec, but I don't see a 'manga discussion' thread, so it's going here. I talked about kawaikereba-hentai-demo-suki-ni-natte-kuremasu-ka previously and someone confused me by saying that there was 30 chapters out, when I could only find seven. I looked on a bunch of sites and couldn't seem more.

Now i've found a site with all 30+ chapters, but... it's a diffrent manga?
Like, the characters are the same, but the art is better and plot is completely different? The original one ended the first chapter with "My classmate is super kinky and asking me to treat her like a pet" and this one is ending with a Cinderella plot with panties?

Weird.
I guess it was like a... one-volume pilot-episode type this, and this is the official 'serialization' manga?
Even so, publishing two manga under the same name is annoying.

 

Asking this here since I don't know where else to put it.

Does anyone remember a manga that takes place in a world that's obsessed with a trading card game and the MC is a girl who is good at the game but doesn't like playing it but is forced to enter a tournament because her dad lost their money in a scam. In the tournament she does something and essentially takes control of her opponents cards and plays the card combo that her opponent is famous for doing.

 

MangaDex seems to be like 10% back, the content is there but the interface looks very unfinished.

Also not yet bug-free.

Spoiler: For example some buttons have missing letters

 

Well its quite late and you may have already found it again but if not the manga you're asking about is Wizard's Souls by Aki Eda.

 

Finally took a look at Dr Stone.
It's goofy and dumb and awesome, but the part I appriciate the most so-far is that you have a blatantly superhuman Charles Atlas villain who can catch crossbow bolts and kill tigers with his bare hands, and the moment he realizes that the protaganist is planning to fight him by inventing primitive firearms, he instantly starts to panic.

"If he's able to complete gunpowder, I have no chance of winning. I need to stop him before he can get there."

It's refreshing to see someone who wouldn't look out of place in History's Strongest Disciple saying "Yeah, no, I can't win against guns."

 

That does sound refreshing!
(Speaking of, I actually found History's Strongest Disciple Kenchi's approach to guns interesting - sure, an HSDK super-martial artist could beat a small army of gunmen, but guns were treated like any other weapons - people who mastered them were considered as respectable as people who mastered swords or karate.)

 

Sleepy Princess in the Demon King's Castle. Holy shit this manga is fantastic. Great comedy, great art design, great characters, and it doesn't get stale even after almost 250 chapters (there are 241 out right now).

Seriously, if you enjoy comedy, go read this now.

EDIT: Now that I'm not on my phone, let me give a brief summary. The setting is basically a generic JRPG. The Demon King abducts the princess that everyone loves, and the hero and his party set out to rescue her. The princess is pretty bored with it, though, because there's really nothing for her to do but sleep. She's not happy with how sub-par her bed is, though, so she breaks out of her cell, hunts down some monsters, and uses them as materials for a new one. The demons mostly let this slide, because their priest can resurrect anyone that's killed, and the Demon King is against harming hostages. Plus, she looks really cozy and they don't want to interrupt her sleep. This pattern continues, the demons eventually getting used to how strange she is, and even growing attached to her.

 

I recommend cheeky angel and angel densetsu.

Cheeky angel is a "genderbender" that has a rather interesting story but has a rather stupid ending for one of the villains.

The heroes just let him walk away with kidnapping and attemptive murder.

Angel Desetsu is basically a life lesson the manga with cool characters and close to being the perfect manga. I can't really say anything bad about it.

Both older manga before the same shit was rehashed over and over. So you know they're good!

 

Anyone not reading Onepunch Man, why not?

It's got some of the greatest characters ever.

Spoiler

What an amazing gimmick. I love this big pointy-chin idiot.

Ball&chain dude is pretty good too, and of course, everyone is mad thirsty for Captain Mizuki.

Spoiler: I wonder why

 

Oh, damn, this really brings back memories. I remember reading this one back in high school. I loved it so much that I... "bought" it, and still have it today. Haven't reread it in a while, though.

If you're looking for older manga, try out Kyou Kara Ore Wa! (two freshmen decide to become delinquents in their new school), Kenji (young Japanese boy learns martial arts from his grandfather, time-skips a few years, grandfather goes missing in China and the boy goes to find him, learning more about martial arts on his journey), and Katteni Kaizo (formerly genius boy got knocked on the head by his childhood friend, time-skips a few years, and the head injury turned him into a nutjob).

 

Been reading Ayakashi Triangle.
It's about youkai, exorcists who are also ninja and gender-bending.

Cool story, kinda low-brow but the art is good and the character designs are very nice.
The recent chapter earned my respect bigtime though, because since the start it's been going on with this "Not all Ayakashi (spirits) are evil, being uncompromisingly hostile to all of them is the wrong approach" towards the main character, who is the aforementioned exorcist ninja.
A stance that has only redoubled since the childhood friend character (Suzu) was revealed to have a strong connection to youkai and began taking up a role as a mediator.

Then in the latest chapter, she extends a hand in friendship towards a heatwave/draught Ayakashi (after an extended hot-springs/ecchi sequence) and it looks like the spirit going to accept her peace-offering and stand down, when the main-character excorcist ninja suddenly cuts it down without warning, only to reveal after the fact that he saw that the spirit was preparing for a sneak-attack that would have burned her alive.

The ending message of the chapter is a melancholy "Some Ayakashi don't want to live in peace with humans and there's not a lot we can do about it besides kill them whenever they appear."

Too many manga go all-in on the idealistic hippy stance, not defending yourself or seeking retribution against people who attack you.

Given how up until now a lot of the manga has been pushing Suzu's ideology of peace with ayakashi and suggesting that the main character is wrong for wanting to resort to violence against them, it was nice to have a scene that shows actual wisdom, instead of just idealistic caricature.

"You can be full of love and kindness, but you cannot sleep next to a mad dog."
The proper approach to a potentially hostile creature is to walk towards it slowly with hands open in friendship, but have someone just behind you who's prepared to fucking kill it at any moment, should it take that opportunity to try to eat you.

Anything less is just suicide by monster.

Edit: Images.

Spoiler

 

Kushuku Gakkou No Juliet (En: Boarding School Juliet) was a manga that I originally skipped when it first got to my attention. I am not actually quite sure when, but I think the description made me think it was a generic "will they or won't they" story where the MC wants to confess but keeps failing. Though I think I may also have mixed it up with another manga that had a similar description.

Instead this turns out to be a surprisingly solid romance. The love confession happens right at the start, with the twist being that the romance needs to be kept secret due to tensions between the male and female lead's countries. (Japn expy vs. France/Italy expy.) The romance plot was rather simplistic and nothing particularly complicated, but there was a feeling of... genuineness? Yes, perhaps that is the right word. It remembered me a bit of some older romance mangas that I enjoyed like Lovely Complex and Toradora, though the romance between the two leads is not nearly as volatile outside of a rare few situations. Perhaps another similar story would be
Jitsu wa Watashi wa (My Monster Secret) in all honesty.

I basically binged it over the last few days and can honestly say, it is quite nice. Has a good range of fun characters without taking away from the main couple focus for the most part. Its not a particularly deep story but still, quite nice for a straightforward romance plot. I can recommend.

As a bonus, it is completed at just slighgtly less than 120 chapters so you don't need to worry about getting stuck without translation or the manga getting axed etc..

 

I love how for once, Mask doesn't act like a jerk. In both translations, he offers genuine praise even as he is weirded out.

The first and last signs that he's got depth whenever his ego isn't leading him around by the nose.

 

A couple manga I got into recently:

This Village Sim NPC Could Only Be Human stars a hikikomori who receives a mysterious computer game where he plays the "god" of a small group of refugees trying to survive in a fantasy world. Up to him to make sure those guys survive in a harsh, unforgiving environment. But... the graphics are suspiciously realistic, the NPCs well-rounded, and every time they perform a sacrifice (of wooden offerings, of what food surplus they have...), something much like it gets sent in the mail to the player.
But the thing is... our lead gets increasingly invested in helping these folk out. Which in turns leads to him starting to come out of his own shell...

Liar Satsuki Can See Death stars a high school girl (almost certainly on the autism spectrum) who is able to see corpses a day before the actual death. Which leads her to try to use what forensic abilities she has available to her to figure out the cause of death and how to prevent it.
Thing is, since she does prevent the fatal incidents, she ends up looking like a total nutbag to most of the people around her. Being a hero can be hell on one's social life.

 

Seconding this one hard. honestly Satsuki is lucky to be gathering a harem, I mean friends, to look after her well being because she has the survival instincts of a lemming.

 

It's not that she has bad survival instincts.
It's that her instincts prioritize everyone else's survival over her own.

 

Heh, fair enough.

 

Wizard's Soul. I highly recommend it to others, there's this incredible sequence in the backstory of why the MC hates the card game. Chapter 3, it's not a bad chapter to test and see if you'll like the writing and person insight.

The same author also wrote an incredibly cute manga called Okite Kudasai, Kusakabe-San, which is a pair of young workers trying to date on the weekend, but the girl just loves napping. Each chapter is a battle of wills as he tries to convince her to wake up and go out with him, and she tries to stay asleep and convince him to nap with her.

 

Searching for another manga that I think exists. The MC is a female Vampire/Lich/Death Knight in a fantasy setting but i don't know if its also Isekai. I think the MC eventually kills like half of an entire kingdom or something. Like I said I think it exists and this is about all I remember about it.

Someone already found it earlier in the thread but yeah it was a fun manga. I'll check this other manga as well.

 

Anyway I'm going to recommend The Mute Girl and Her New Friend (webcomic)/A Girl Who Can't Speak Thinks "She Is Too Kind."(manga). Its a cute and comfy story about a mute girl and her female classmate who can secretly read minds.

 

Spirit Circle is an interesting (and fairly short) manga about a boy and the girl who transferred into his class. It turns out that the two had known each other in multiple past lives, and she wants to kill him. Before that, though, she wants him to know why she'll kill him, so she uses a tool on him that will make him dream about his past lives, telling him that she'll kill him afterwards.