Getting into manga

CrashBang

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So, I'm a big comic book collector; most of my money goes on DC or Vertigo trades and single issues. My girlfriend is a huge lover of anime and manga and has been persuading me to give manga a go, but I'm not interested in any of the teen romance stuff she reads.

My first stop is going to be Death Note, that series looks fantastic, but then I don't know where to go and that's where I need help. My girlfriend also got me to try watching D Grey Man but the show is so twisted that I just couldn't hack it so the manga is probably also a no no.

So I'm looking for something action packed. I grew up watching DBZ and at 22 I'm still a lover of that show so a manga in that vein would be great. Or anything with good, solid character/plot progression, like Y: The Last Man or The Walking Dead.

So, yeah, hit me with whatever suggestions and recommendations you got!
 

hazabaza1

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Nov 26, 2008
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First action Manga I read was Rave Master. Great series, even if all the women are stacked like brick shithouses.
There's also the obvious mainstream reccomendations like Naruto or Bleach, but they kinda get dumb fast.

It's been a while since I properly read Manga so that's all I got, sorry.
 

Lunatic High

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Aciton manga huh? Try Black Lagoon thats the only actiony one I think I've read, Also the series is pretty good to dubbed or subbed I recommend both, man makes me realize I only read the twisted mangas
 

Aurgelmir

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I would suggest Gunsmith Cats, Action packed and Fun. It is also quite palitable for people that are used to American comics (as it lacks a lot of the crazy a lot of other popular mangas might have.)
 

jakjay1995

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Hellsing. This is how vampires are meant to be done.
One Piece. Pirates with odd powers, a bit of fun.
Claymore. Hard to think of an explanation here but is quite good.
Did I mention Hellsing?
That's all I can think of right now but they are all worth a look.
 

ZehMadScientist

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Hmm, I don't read a lot of action manga, but I remember reading Black cat a while back, which was pretty solid.
 

Casual Shinji

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Akira and Berserk. Two of the best comicbook stories you'll ever read. And I'm not just saying that; it's a FACT!

And if you're in the mood for some body horror, try Franken Fran. Get ready to have your brain bleached though.
 

The_Blue_Rider

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One Piece and Berserk are both incredibly good. If you're into teen romance then GE - Good Ending is a nice little story. If you like teen romance with monsters and shit then check out Rosario - Vampire, it gets surprisingly serious later on..

Also Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple simply because its awesome as shit, and funny as hell
 

Supercereal

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Fullmetal Alchemist tragic and action packed its finished as well which is a big plus so you don't have to keep looking for updates.
 

aba1

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Casual Shinji said:
Akira and Berserk. Two of the best comicbook stories you'll ever read. And I'm not just saying that; it's a FACT!

And if you're in the mood for some body horror, try Franken Fran. Get ready to have your brain bleached though.
The_Blue_Rider said:
One Piece and Berserk are both incredibly good. If you're into teen romance then GE - Good Ending is a nice little story. If you like teen romance with monsters and shit then check out Rosario - Vampire, it gets surprisingly serious later on..

Also Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple simply because its awesome as shit, and funny as hell
As these guys said Berserk and One Piece are great and Akira is a awesome movie. One Piece starts off ok but gets progressively better as it goes. Berserk is also better read than watched since the anime was low budget and never finishes.
 

Ultress

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Berserk is amazing as others have said.Great action,great violence,great relationships,great story. It's just great.

Jojo's Bizzare adventure is pretty good.It's fighting gimmick(The ripple power) is not that original but it's played with enough to keep interesting. The second part(Battle Tendency) is probably one of my favorite shonen manga.

Princess Knight is an enjoyable gender bender adventure comedy.It can cause stiff neck form some mood whiplash but it's a well done story with a great female protagonist.
 

Bestival

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Personally I love Beelzebub most.
Great humour (lots of breaking 4th wall stuff) and tons of over the top fighting. Especially in the early chapters, where the main character is very much into punching faces first, and not bothering with any questions ever.

All the others I read are fairly obvious; Naruto, Bleach, Deathnote, Dragon Ball... The popular crap basically.
 

Cowabungaa

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Blue Exorcist is the first manga series I'm really following and I really love it to bits. Pretty awesome shonen manga, nothing too special but the action and art direction is pretty awesome. I'll just quote AnimeNewsNetwork's plot summary:
Humans live in the world of Assiah, demons in Gehenna. The two dimensions are not meant to interfere with each other, but demons still possess creatures in Assiah in spite of this. The humans who can fight these demons are known as exorcists. Rin Okumura is a boy who bears the curse of being Satan's illegitimate son. His foster father sacrificed himself to save him from demons. To avenge his foster father's death as well as to prove himself, Rin decides to follow the path of an exorcist.
You might also want to give Ghost In The Shell a shot. It's a pretty serious and really well done cyberpunk series that has only two issues; Major's over-sexualised design, there is no reason for her to show the cleavage she does, and the obnoxious mini-tank AI personalities. Because who in their right bloody mind would give a high-tech warmachine the personality of a 12 year old schoolgirl? But if you can look past those two relatively minor things you've got yourself a winner.

If you want to get into something serious and grounded I suggest getting Monster. I've only seen the anime halfway through but I believe that it's a good translation of the manga.
 

InsipidMadness

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I'm going to echo One Piece. Not many forms of fiction can balance as many characters as OP.
The Breaker
The Breaker: New Waves (You'll wanna' read the previous one first)
I surprisingly like Hajime no Ippo (Boxing)

Really just go to any manga site like mangahere.com, mangafox.com, or what have you, and just read the bios of stuff and if it can't hook you in the first chapter or two, go on to the next one. There's plenty of stuff to be read.
 

Queen Michael

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I'll be focusing on manga that isn't stereotypical, since that might be easier to get into. I read tons of American comics as well, so these comics aren't just good if you're a manga fan.

Sanctuary is a great manga if you can find it. It's got gorgeous realistic art, and the plot and writing is just as great. It's about two childhood friends who grew up struggling to survive in the jungles of Cambodia. One of them, Hojo, wants to be the leader of the yakuza (japanese organized crime organisation), while the other wants to be a politician and win the election despite his youth. It's an extremely good comic, and highly recommended. And it might be available on the web. PM me if you're interested in reading on the web, but I'd recommend getting physical copies if you can find them. Check it out; it's on my top twenty lists of my greatest comics of all time.

Then there's Eagle: The Making of an Asian-American President by Kaiji Kawaguchi. A political thriller/drama. Very well-written, too.

Berserk is good in the beginning but doesn't get great until book two, so keep reading.

Lone Wolf and Cub is about an assasin in old Japan and his son. "Together, they walk the road to Hell." It's the second best manga I've ever read, and I've read about 520 different mangas. You've never seen so poetic and beautiful stories about murder.

Akira? Very good. Recommended as well.
 

Necron_warrior

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Mar 30, 2011
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I'll se..thi...next berserk. It's good.

There's also Bleach, I actually think I would've preferred it to DBZ if I knew it existed as a child.
 

saintdane05

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Dragon Ball: Do I need to explain it to you? Its freaking DBZ!



Rurouni Kenshin: A personal favorite. It is 1878, a peaceful time after the troubles of the Meiji Restoration and the Satsuma Rebellion. Kamiya Kaoru, the spirited and young head of the Kamiya Kasshin kendo school, is having trouble fending off a couple of no-gooders that want to take over the dojo. Through sheer luck, she gets a vagrant swordsman she mistook for a killer to help her against the baddies.
To her great surprise, it turns out that her initial assessment of this vagrant wasn't, strictly speaking, mistaken after all - the swordsman turns out to be Himura Kenshin, who used to be known as the Hitokiri Battousai ("the quick-drawing assassin") during the turbulent years of the Meiji Restoration when he acted as an assassin for the revolutionary anti-shogunate forces. Now he atones for his past sins wandering around and righting wrongs without killing anyone.
Later on, the Kamiya Kasshin dojo adopts two more hangers-on: Sagara Sanosuke, a brash youth with spiky hair and phenomenal physical strength; and Myoujin Yahiko, ex Street Urchin who evolves into a Kid Samurai. We also have Takani Megumi, a beautiful woman who knows her medicine quite well and mothers them all. This is good, as Kenshin's foes from his murky past tend to turn up with distressing frequency.


Buso Reiken: Busou Renkin (literally "Arms Alchemy") follows Hero and Ordinary High School Student Kazuki Muto, who one night is killed trying to protect a mysterious girl who was being attacked by a monster. However, to his surprise, he wakes up again the next day, seemingly good as new. It turns out it wasn't a dream either when the girl, Tokiko Tsumura, shows up again, informing him that she felt responsible for his death and resurrected him with the power of Alchemy. From here on Kazuki discovers his own powers and, together with Tokiko, journeys into the world of Alchemists and their Renkin as they fight the monsters known as Homunculi. No, not the Fullmetal Alchemist ones, though there is definite overlap between the series theme wise.
A manga by Nobuhiro Watsuki, the creator of Rurouni Kenshin, it was later adapted into an anime and a light novel. The series is in many ways a parody of the shonen genre and hence often has tongue planted firmly in cheek. And when it's not being an affectionate parody, it's deconstructing various Shōnen tropes, particularly the Shonen Upgrade.


My personal Favorite: + Anima: A series written by Natsumi Mukai, and licensed in America by TOKYOPOP. Beings who possess animal-like powers walk among humans in this alternate universe. These mysterious mutants, the +Anima, are shunned by society. Four outcasts in particular - Cooro, a boy with crow-like powers; Husky, a fish-boy; Senri, a bear +Anima; and a girl named Nana, who wields the power of the bat - search for others like themselves while trying to gain acceptance in a world cruel to anyone or anything that is different. Think of it as like X-Men, only more adorable.



AKIRA: In July of 1988 (or at 2:17 P.M. on December 6th, 1992), a mysterious black-domed explosion destroys Tokyo and sets off World War III. Thirty-one (or thirty-eight, depending on whether it's the manga or the film you're dealing with) years later, the rebuilt city, now known as "Neo Tokyo" has fallen into decay.
Two rival biker gangs, the Capsules and the Clowns, are having a turf war one night, when one of the youngest Capsule members, Tetsuo, almost literally runs into an escaped government test subject. Moments later, the test subject is taken back into custody by the army. However, they also decide to take Tetsuo with them. He then becomes the newest test subject for the "Akira Project." But when Tetsuo's powers awaken, the combination of an inferiority complex harbored since childhood with power beyond Tetsuo's wildest dreams waste no time in driving him insane. He escapes the lab and goes on a super-powered rampage through Neo Tokyo, killing and destroying everything in his path. It falls to a handful of people, including Capsule leader and Tetsuo's friend Kaneda, to put a stop to the destruction.
 

the December King

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Queen Michael said:
Lone Wolf and Cub is about an assasin in old Japan and his son. "Together, they walk the road to Hell." It's the second best manga I've ever read, and I've read about 520 different mangas. You've never seen so poetic and beautiful stories about murder.
I'm no authority on Manga, but I read Lone Wolf and Cub while I was practicing Iaido in my teens- very cool stories.

I also read some Battle Angel Alita - about a cyborg learning about her past, and the world she has forgotten, while perfecting her martial arts skills; and Domu, about a kid's life in an apartment block and an old man's secret. Very violent, that one.