10 Must-Read Manga of 2024

Her Frankenstein

A businessman’s past comes back to haunt him in this stunning psycho-horror manga by Norikazu, which was originally published in 1986. Plagued by visions of a shadowy, faceless woman, Tetsuo recalls suppressed memories of his brief and tumultuous friendship with Kimiko—an infirm teenage girl whose obsessions with old movies and violence prove to be a deadly combination when she manipulates Testuo into donning the guise of a vindictive Frankenstein monster and lashing out against those who have wronged them. When their role-play crosses the line from mean-spirited pranks to mayhem, the results shatter both of their lives. Kawashima’s suspenseful thriller is cinematic and beautiful, full of the indelible imagery—an eerily calm seascape, a discarded mask, a featureless face—that established him as one of the leading names in Japanese horror comics. It’s a must-read for fans of Junji Ito and Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters. (May)

Oba Electroplating Factory

Tsuge (Nejishiki) is at the top of his game in this dazzling collection from the 1970s, which finds the underground manga legend moving from nightmare surrealism to semi-autobiographical pieces that draw horror from unflinching realism. The title story is a highlight, set at a decaying factory where employees waste away from lung poisoning while processing shrapnel for American bombs. Tsuge mocks his own penchant for grimness in “Realism Inn,” in which he visits a run-down rural hotel for inspiration (“People will love it! I’ll ride this domestic tourism boom yet!”) but is upset to find it isn’t gritty in a picturesque way. “Yoshio’s Youth” follows a young artist as he finds work in the disreputable end of the manga industry and is taken under the wing of a fast-talking manga creator. By this point in his career, Tsuge had refined his off-kilter indie art into a clear and evocatively detailed style. His depictions of poor and working-class life have the force of lived experience, and his stories about the early manga industry evoke an intriguingly seedy world of con artists and fly-by-night operations. By turns bluntly honest and slyly self-referential, this is an essential work of alternative manga and 20th-century Japanese literature. (Aug.)

Search and Destroy

Kaneko (Bambi and Her Pink Gun) outdoes himself with this gonzo sci-fi reimagining of Osamu Tezuka’s classic manga series Dororo. In Kaneko’s hands, the feudal Japanese setting of Tezuka’s original becomes a futuristic dystopia with a Soviet brutalist aesthetic. In the aftermath of a war between humans and androids known as Kreachers, Doro, a snarky child thief, runs afoul of the gang lords who rule a snowbound city. He falls in with Hyaku, a young woman dressed in animal hides who’s out to retrieve body parts she believes were stolen from her by Kreachers. The story is packed with wall-to-wall action, stunningly and gruesomely rendered: explosions, bloody assassinations, wild animal attacks, underground cyborg surgery, a fight on top of a speeding semitruck. But beneath the bloodshed is a deceptively well-structured story about injustice, revenge, and the blurred lines between organic life and technology. Kaneko is heavily influenced by American artists like Coop, Frank Kozik, and Charles Burns, as Frederico Anzalone notes in his introduction, and there are even elements of Will Eisner in the book’s rambling cityscapes. It’s a blast of pure cyberpunk energy. (July)

Second Hand Love

With this exquisite collection, Murasaki (Talk to My Back), who died in 2009, shores up her legacy as one of the most insightful and captivating creators of alternative manga in the 1970s and ’80s. Most of the book comprises the masterfully understated graphic novel A Blue Flame, which tells the story of an affair in a series of searing vignettes. The protagonist, Emi, is seeing a married man she sometimes perceives as a predatory “wolf,” other times as “my shadow.” Having ended things with her sexually disinterested fiancé, she dodges men’s efforts to draw her into a more conventional relationship. “Who needs security when you have warmth?” she asks herself, but as the affair wears on she decides that neither is as important as self-respect. The title story follows Yuko, a café owner whose relationships with men are clouded by memories of her father’s infidelity. Also included are illustrations drawn for Mita Masahiro’s 1997 novel A Loving Family and a 1985 interview with Murasaki, whose loose but impeccably clean linework matches the raw simplicity of her storytelling. The result is a perfect introduction to Murasaki’s heady feminist dramas. (June)

Ultra Heaven

Koike (the Heaven’s Door series) brings readers into a dazzling, drugged-out cyberpunk future in the first English language translation of the series widely regarded as his masterpiece. Cub, a stubble-faced junkie who escapes his grimy apartment through daily drug trips, is a typical citizen in a Blade Runner–esque urban landscape where the populace has been medicated into complacency. At “pump bars,” doctors serve up customized drug cocktails that can deliver any desired mental state; those who can’t afford bespoke pharmaceuticals take street drugs with names like Alice and Peter Pan or trip out on cybernetic VR “amps.” “Who in the world isn’t a junkie these days?” Cub shrugs, risking death for a steady high. But even he fears that he’s taken more than he can handle when a walleyed dealer hooks him up with Ultra Heaven, a hallucinogen that shreds Cub’s—and the reader’s—sense of time, space, identity, and reality. Like Akira as envisioned by Philip K. Dick, this manga uses the language and imagery of science fiction to delve into altered states and transcendental expanses. Koike’s hyperrealistic artwork, which renders the futuristic city in obsessive detail, makes his eye-melting depictions of altered states both hypnotic and disorienting. Fans of new wave science fiction, classic underground comics, and psychedelic poster art will want to take this trip. (Dec.)

A Cat from Our World and the Forgotten Witch

This endearing isekai with a furry twist, the English-language debut from Kashiwaba, launches a slice-of-fantasy-life series. Madam Jeanne was once a powerful sorceress who helped a dashing hero defeat a Demon King in the Kingdom of Grifford. But saving her world was only rewarded by fearful townspeople deeming her magic dangerous and “sealing it away.” Decades later, she’s shunned as a grumpy loner who’s “always in a foul mood [and] prone to complaining.” Enter Torata, a cat from the “real world,” who’s hit by a truck and instead of dying, gets transported into Jeanne’s realm—and tripled in size—when the sorceress summons a Guardian Beast. Humor and mischief ensue as the oversize feline gets used to her new home and cranky companion (in their opening scene, Torata balks at a meal Jeanne’s cooked, demanding “my usual crunchies”), while more dramatic backstory fills in how Jeanne lost her glory. Pairing crisp visuals and an adorable, larger-than-life mascot, this will remind readers of Frieren and A Man and His Cat. While the premise isn’t unique, the developing bond between Jeanne and Torta tugs on the heart strings. Cat fanciers will be curious to see what this duo gets up to next. (Jan.)

Hereditary Triangle

In this luminous small-town drama, Hayashi’s English-language debut, a man faces the unresolved issues of his teenage years. In flashbacks, introverted Koutarou Fujiki and charismatic aspiring photographer Tooru Kajiwara are best friends who fall for the same girl, Touko. Then Kajiwara suddenly disappears. Years later, Fujiki and Touko, now married, return to their rural hometown and meet Kajiwara’s teenage son, Kaoru. The entrance of Kaoru into the couple’s lives creates a new emotional triangle and forces Fujiki to address long-held secret anxieties—and accept the inevitability of change. The story initially unfolds as a mystery—why did Kajiwara vanish?—but becomes more focused on digging into the trio’s inner worlds and their efforts to understand one another. “To me, Kajiwara’s life had frozen in time,” Fujiki realizes. “But in reality, it had gone on without a care.” Hayashi’s delicate linework captures pensive expressions and suggestive images: footprints in the sand, water running over a pair of hands. This subtle narrative will appeal to manga readers who are hungry for genuinely mature themes. (Dec.)

Fears and Hates (Ultimate X-Men #1)

Momoko (the Demon Days series) teams up with Davisson (The Ultimate Guide to Japanese Yokai) to lend the X-Men a pastel jolt of teen-friendly J-horror. At her middle school graduation, Hisako—whom X-fans may already know as Armor—accidentally activates her mutant power: a pink bubble of samurai armor that surrounds her like a force field. In high school, she meets more mutant teens, including Mei, who can control the weather, and Nico, who uses a magnifying glass to focus her psychic powers. (“You’re like a super hero,” Mei reassures Hisako. “That’s so cool.”) Meanwhile, Hisako is stalked by a shadowy figure who haunts her with ghostly visions and the painful memory of a classmate’s suicide. Hisako and her friends investigate this phenomenon and learn about the Children of the Atom, a cult that believes in mutant superiority and is recruiting other young mutants for sinister purposes. Momoko’s loose and inviting watercolor art blends the visual languages of Japanese and American comics. Her talent for spooky imagery transforms the superhero tropes into a tale of supernatural horror, and her lively character art makes the interpersonal conflicts as dynamic as the fight scenes. This fast-paced introduction to an eccentric new team of superteens is perfectly calibrated to draw younger manga readers into Marvel fandom. (Nov.)

Ninja Sarutobi Sasuke

“Ninjutsu Is Awesome!” blares the opening of this rollicking ride through manga’s back alleys, created in 1969 by Sugiura—an artist who drew children’s gag manga before developing a postmodern pastiche of his own style aimed at older readers. Sasuke, a master ninja drawn to look like a mischievous little boy, uses his ninjutsu to steal food, wanders into rambling conversations peppered with fart jokes and pop music references, gets into slapstick fights with bizarre rival ninja and even more bizarre monsters, and occasionally, as if by afterthought, participates in vaguely historical samurai adventures. Sugiura mixes rubbery cartoon characters, realistic figures painstakingly copied from American comic books and movie stills (the ninja frequently fight cowboys and dinosaurs), imaginatively freakish monsters that sometimes wander behind the panels, and whatever else he feels like drawing, turning his pages into frenetic collages with surrealist and pop art notes. Manga expert Holmberg supplies an appropriately irreverent translation (“Eat my topknot!”) as well as a scholarly essay on the cultural context behind Sugiura’s freewheeling, relentlessly wacked-out visions. This eye-popping mash-up of kiddie cartoons and underground art is perfectly weird. (Sept.)

Somali and the Forest Spirit

Gureishi’s ornate fantasy showcases the cozy charms of iyashikei (“healing”) manga, character-driven stories designed to draw readers into a setting that seems real enough to step into the page. In a Miyazaki-influenced world inhabited by monsters, fairies, animal people, and other fantastical beings, humans have all but vanished, wiped out in a half-forgotten war. But a little girl named Somali survives, and a robotic, emotionless golem leaves his post as a forest guardian to help her find her family. Together they wander forests and fields, learn to survive on the road, and encounter colorful characters in whimsical settings. The history of their world and the fate of humanity are gradually revealed, but this narrative is more about the journey than the destination. Gureishi lavishes detail on the characters’ day-to-day: they fish and forage, encounter beings ranging from antlered rabbits to a talking “false cat,” learn from a forest herbalist how to make medicines, and visit a witches’ library infested with book-eating ghost fish. Though reminiscent of Nagabe’s The Girl from the Other Side, this series, with its lush nature art and creative creature designs, offers enchantments all its own. Fantasy readers will be transported. (Dec.)