Favorite manga of my 2024

exam season = listicle season

Here’s some manga I’ve recently enjoyed that first appeared in English within the last few years. Ongoing series that have made previous year-ends can appear again if they were better in 2024 than in 2023 (so no Frieren; can we hurry up and see how scary Serie is already.)

1. Hayao Miyazaki: Shuna’s Journey (tr. Alex Dudok de Wit, who incidentally has a very good animation Substack)

Early (1983), short (144 pages), and, predictably, some kind of masterpiece. The narrative, borrowed from a Tibetan folk tale, is straightforward; the power is in the imagery. I don’t know if anyone’s been better at depicting the ways humans shape nature and nature shapes humans since, and you bet I thought about this carefully, Bruegel. People eke out survival where they can; a wheat field is heaven.

Violence is inevitable, and without being gratuitous, Miyazaki is free to show more of it than he's allowed on film, and imply more than that. When the uncanny arrives, it feels like a natural extension of the environment. Giant green guys? Oh sure, they’re farmers. They’re the farm.

2. Yukinobu Tatsu: Dandadan (tr. Kumar Sivasubramanian)

Touch-and-go as to whether it’s better than last year (because it was really good last year.) But the Unji backstory is another escalation in the shonen tragic backstory arms race, while the Danmanra arc climax was the series’s best action sequence to date even before the testicle baseball scene. Plus the faces keep getting goofier.

3. Toranosuke Shimada: Robo Sapiens: Tales of Tomorrow (tr. Adrienne Beck)

See 50 favorite comics of the 21st century.

4. Yuki Suenaga & Takamasa Moue: Akane-Banashi (tr. Stephen Paul)

Just when I thought a series about telling stories on stage meant I didn’t have to worry about power scaling, in chapter 100 Akane enters the rakugo-verse and goes Super Saiyan. A few months later we finally see her master perform and see how much more in control he is than her, and then it’s FLASHBACK ARC time and his master is implied to have both control and a power level over 9000. A series with this subject had better have the best narrative in Weekly Shonen Jump, and it does.

5. Inio Asano: Dead Dead Demon’s Dededede Destruction (tr. John Werry)

The everyday life of teenage girls of varying optimism and horniness, under the threat of alien invasion, but who are the real monsters oh of course it’s us. The comic does fall apart in its final third, but much of the characterization is outstanding, as is the art of the spaceships and the aliens, who are so cute that one can’t imagine the militJESUS CHRIST WHAT DID YOU JUST DO HUMANITY

6. Tatsuki Fujimoto: Chainsaw Man (tr. Amanda Haley)

After a meandering route, Fujimoto’s returned to his core interests. Hand jobs! Cannibalism! Dismemberment! Harrowing loss! Getting kicked in the balls! People who turn into trees! Life without the concept of “ears”! The impossibility of human connection in a world where you can die at any moment! The way that grief stays with us and how that’s not all bad! Mostly cannibalism though.

7. Eiichiro Oda: One Piece (tr. Stephen Paul)

Oda’s just spraying the lore hose at us now. I’ve talked about this many times, but it’s near-unprecedented that an author can set plots in motion and reliably pay them off twenty years later in appropriately tearjerking ways, all while inexorably moving the main story towards its final conclusion. George R.R. Martin should fold up his penis and go home (oh wait, he has.)

8. Mokumokuren: The Summer Hikaru Died vol. 1-2 (tr. Ajani Oloye)

Not the only homoerotic eldritch teen manga, but maybe the best drawn, with effective shadows and chiaroscuro and character blocking and bad haircuts and only sparing use of WTF body horror.

Honorable mentions: Gege Akutami: Jujutsu Kaisen (tr. John Weery)/Aka Akasaka & Mengo Yokoyari: Oshi No Ko (tr. Felicia Sumali)

Two recently concluded, extremely popular, and extremely flawed series that I tip my hat to for granting their rabid fanbases’ wishes in the most monkey’s-paw-cursed ways. Oh, you want Gojo back? You want Aqua to realize that life is worth living? Here you go hahahaha fuck you.

The best stories in Glaeolia 3 were Yamada Isao’s White Dream (I’m always going to stan for Expresssionism) and Nagaharu Yahi’s 2⁹⁹⁹ (exponentiality’s a mindfuck.)

Good bets for next year once I catch up: The Days of Diamond; Girl Meets Rock!

Tomorrow hopefully: Favorite Western comics.