165 reviews in this genre
by IO (art), Hiroyuki Fujita (story)
A review of Seraphic Feather — the mature sci-fi action manga set in a future where an alien artifact has been discovered and the factions pursuing it will do anything to control it, following a combat android whose humanity is the series' central question.
by Boichi (art), Inagaki Riichiro (story)
A review of Dr. Stone Reboot: Byakuya — the single-volume companion to Dr. Stone following astronaut Byakuya Ishigami's life after the petrification, laying the foundation that Senku inherits thousands of years later.
by Cain Kuga (art), Hajime Yatate (story)
A review of Cowboy Bebop: Shooting Star — the alternate manga adaptation of the beloved anime, telling its own story with Spike, Jet, Faye, and the Bebop crew in a looser, more comedic key.
by Hajime Ueda (art), Gainax (story)
A review of the FLCL manga adaptation by Hajime Ueda — a deliberately surreal coming-of-age story about a boy whose life is interrupted by a woman on a Vespa and the robots that keep coming out of his head.
by Yu Kinutani
A review of the Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex manga — a condensed adaptation of the acclaimed anime series following Section 9's cases in a cyberpunk Japan.
by Johji Manabe
A review of Outlanders by Johji Manabe — a 1985 sci-fi action romance about a photojournalist caught between Earth's invasion and an alien princess who chose him as her husband.
by Masakazu Katsura
A review of DNA² by Masakazu Katsura — a time-travel romantic comedy about a future agent sent to stop a teenage boy from becoming the ancestor of 100 billion people.
by Kei Sanbe
Erased follows Satoru Fujinuma, a manga artist with an involuntary time-reset ability, who travels back 18 years to his childhood to prevent a serial kidnapping connected to his mother's murder.
by Toshimichi Suzuki (original), various manga artists
A review of Bubblegum Crisis, the classic 80s cyberpunk manga/OVA adaptation about female vigilantes in powered suits fighting rogue robots in Mega Tokyo.
by Jinsei Kataoka, Kazuma Condou
A review of Eureka Seven, the manga adaptation of the mecha anime about a boy who joins a band of rebels and falls in love with a mysterious girl who pilots a unique Limit of Questions.
by Masatsugu Iwase (manga)
A review of Gundam SEED, the manga about a war between genetically enhanced Coordinators and natural humans, seen through two childhood friends on opposite sides.
by Koichi Tokita (manga)
A review of Gundam Wing, the classic mecha manga adaptation about five teenage Gundam pilots fighting for peace in space colonies.
by Kotaro Mori (manga adaptation)
A review of Gurren Lagann, the hyper-optimistic super robot manga about drilling through despair to reach the stars.
by Haruhiko Mikimoto
A review of the original Macross manga, the classic that introduced the idea that pop music could end a war between species.
by Takehiko Itō
A review of Outlaw Star, the manga about a freelance outlaw and his crew aboard a unique sentient ship searching for the legendary Galactic Leyline.
by Hikaru Miyoshi (manga adaptation)
A review of the Psycho-Pass manga adaptation of the sci-fi anime about a future where criminality can be measured before crimes are committed.
by Yutaka Izubuchi (story) / Takeaki Momose (art)
RahXephon follows Ayato Kamina, a 17-year-old Tokyo boy who discovers his city has been cut off from the world by alien invaders called the Mu, and that he has a mysterious connection to RahXephon — a massive clay god that responds only to him.
by Kozue Amano
Yu's review of Aria — on a terraformed Mars that has been made into Neo-Venezia, a faithful recreation of Venice, Akari Mizunashi works as an apprentice undine (gondolier guide); the series follows her daily work, her friendships, and the quiet beautiful moments of a life lived with full attention; one of manga's definitive works of healing fiction.
by Kosaku Takahashi (story) / Kenji Teraoka (art)
Japan Sinks is the manga adaptation of Sakyo Komatsu's landmark disaster science fiction novel — following the geological discovery that the Japanese archipelago is sliding into the ocean, and the human response to the end of the nation.
by Yuki Hijiri
Choujin Locke is one of manga's longest-running series — a space opera following Locke, an immortal esper who has existed for centuries, as he moves through a future humanity spread across the galaxy, protecting people from threats that only someone who cannot die can face.
by Osamu Tezuka
The Three-Eyed One follows Sharaku Hosuke, a seemingly simple-minded boy who conceals a third eye beneath a bandage — when uncovered, the third eye reveals his true identity as a descendant of a lost civilization with extraordinary mental powers and a ruthless intelligence.
by Mitsuteru Yokoyama
Babel II is a high school boy who discovers he is the descendant of an alien stranded on Earth millennia ago — and that he has inherited three superhuman servants and a tower with the power to change the world.
by Izuru Yumizuru (story) / Yasuhito Takuma / Rukira (art)
A review of Infinite Stratos — the manga about the only male pilot in a world where power suits called IS can only be operated by women, enrolling in an all-female academy.
by Fujiko F. Fujio
21 Emon is set in a future where space travel is routine and aliens visit Earth as tourists — and follows the 21st heir to a family hotel business who would rather be exploring space than managing check-ins, despite a robot and alien companion who keep bringing the universe to him instead.
by Kazumasa Hirai / Jiro Kuwata
8 Man follows Detective Yokoda, killed in the line of duty and resurrected as a cyborg with superhuman speed and strength — who must now fight crime as 8 Man while navigating what it means to be neither fully human nor fully machine.
by Leiji Matsumoto
Galaxy Express 999 follows Tetsuro Hoshino, a young boy who boards the legendary space train 999 toward a planet where he can receive a free mechanical body — accompanied by the mysterious Maetel — and encounters, on each planet the train stops at, a different meditation on what it means to be human and whether eternity is worth what it costs.
by Kazumasa Hirai (original) / Shotaro Ishinomori (manga)
Genma Taisen is Shotaro Ishinomori's manga adaptation of Kazumasa Hirai's science fiction series — following a group of psychically gifted young people who must unite to face Genma, a cosmic consciousness that destroys civilizations across the universe, in a battle that is as much spiritual as physical.
by Ryu Mitsuse (original novel) / Moto Hagio (manga)
Hyakuoku no Hiru to Senoku no Yoru is Moto Hagio's manga adaptation of Ryu Mitsuse's celebrated science fiction novel — following the collapse of civilizations across billions of years, centered on figures from different historical periods who are drawn toward a single question: what is the nature of creation, and who is responsible for it?
by Moto Hagio
Gin no Sankaku follows characters trapped across multiple timelines by a silver triangle that connects them — a complex, demanding sci-fi work by Moto Hagio that uses time loop mechanics to explore the weight of memory and the impossible arithmetic of rescue and loss.
by Osamu Tezuka
Ginga no Sannin is one of Osamu Tezuka's compact science fiction works — a single-volume story about three people across the galaxy whose lives intersect at a critical historical moment, demonstrating Tezuka's ability to compress epic into modest space.
by Naoki Urasawa
Urasawa's commissioned love letter to the Louvre — and his most playful one-shot in years.
by Naoki Urasawa
A typhoon, a mysterious giant footprint, and a girl named Asa — Urasawa's late-career meditation on disaster and resilience.
by Osamu Tezuka
Earth scientists travel to a planet of plant people and prehistoric beasts in Tezuka's foundational early sci-fi.
by Mike Kennedy, Francisco Ruiz Velasco
Dark Horse's American reimagining of Lone Wolf and Cub — a cyborg ronin and a child, in 2100.
by Moto Hagio
A career-spanning collection of Moto Hagio's most acclaimed short stories — sci-fi, fantasy, and quiet horror.
by Hitoshi Okuda
Tenchi Masaki discovers he's descended from an ancient galactic noble family when several extremely powerful alien women arrive at his family's countryside property. What follows is part sci-fi adventure, part family comedy, part slow-burn romance.
by LINK (Story) / Kotaro Shono (Art)
Yu's review of World's End Harem — Reito Mizushima was cryogenically frozen to await a cure for his illness; when he wakes, a plague called the MK Virus has killed 99.9% of the world's male population; he is one of a small number of surviving men tasked with repopulating humanity while navigating a society radically transformed by the near-absence of men.
by Yuba Isukari / Tatsuyuki Tanaka
Yu's review of Yokohama Station SF — Yokohama Station has been self-expanding for centuries and now covers all of Honshu; the world outside is called the Outside; Hiroto, who has never been inside the Station, gets in; manga adaptation of Yuba Isukari's web novel about an infrastructure apocalypse.
by Mamoru Hosoda / Yu
Yu's review of Wolf Children — Hana falls in love with a man who is the last wolf-human; they have two children, Ame and Yuki, who can transform between human and wolf form; when their father dies suddenly, Hana must raise two wolf-children alone in a society that cannot know what they are.
by Spicy Tails / Isuna Hasekura
Yu's review of World End Economica — Hal lives in a lunar colony slum and dreams of reaching deep space; he discovers he has an exceptional gift for stock trading and uses it to pursue his dream; manga adaptation of Isuna Hasekura's visual novel about finance and ambition in a near-future lunar society.
by Eiichi Shimizu / Tomohiro Shimoguchi
Yu's review of Ultraman — Shinjiro Hayata is the son of the original Ultraman; he has inherited abilities he cannot fully control and is recruited into a secret organization that continues to fight alien threats; this is a tokusatsu legacy story done as serious science fiction manga.
by Tatsuhiko Takimoto / Kendi Oiwa
Yu's review of Welcome to the NHK — Tatsuhiro Sato has been a hikikomori (shut-in) for four years, convinced that Japan's public broadcaster NHK is running a conspiracy to create hikikomori; a mysterious girl named Misaki begins visiting him and offers to help him rejoin society, for reasons he cannot understand.
by Yasuhiro Nightow
Yu's review of Trigun Maximum — Vash the Stampede has a $$60 billion bounty, is the most feared man on a desert planet, and refuses to kill anyone. This is a manga about whether that conviction can survive everything the world throws at it.
by Kou Yaginuma
Yu's review of Twin Spica — Asumi Kamogawa wants to become an astronaut; her mother died when a rocket crashed into their town when Asumi was an infant; a ghost in a lion's mask follows her through childhood and into the competitive astronaut training program, where she discovers what it actually takes to reach space.
by Yoshitoki Oima
Yu's review of To Your Eternity — an entity sent to Earth can take the form of anything it touches; after mimicking a dying boy, it begins an eternal journey through human lives, learning what grief, love, and connection mean across centuries.
by Keiko Takemiya
Yu's review of Toward the Terra (Terra e...) — in a distant future where humanity has left Earth and human society is controlled by a supercomputer system that eliminates psychic humans (Mu) at birth, a young man named Jomy discovers he is one of the Mu and joins their quest to return to the long-forbidden Earth; a landmark of 1970s science fiction manga by a foundational shoujo creator.
by Yū Sasuga (story) / Kenichi Tachibana (art)
Yu's review of Terra Formars — humanity seeded Mars with cockroaches to begin terraforming; centuries later, the cockroaches have evolved into humanoid giants with extreme strength, and human soldiers with insect-based genetic modifications are sent to exterminate them.
by Mari Yamazaki
Yu's review of Thermae Romae — Lucius Modestus is a Roman bath architect in the 2nd century CE who keeps accidentally slipping through drain holes and emerging in modern Japanese public baths; he returns to Rome with innovations borrowed from Japanese bath culture that make him the most sought-after bath designer in the Empire.
by Moto Hagio
Ten students take a survival exam in deep space. They check the count: there are eleven of them.
by Osamu Tezuka
Yu's review of Swallowing the Earth — a mysterious woman named Zephyrus is so beautiful and charismatic that every powerful man who encounters her is destroyed; Gohonmatsu Seki pursues her across decades; Tezuka's adult drama about power, beauty, and what men do to themselves in pursuit of what they desire.
by Reki Kawahara / Kiseki Himura
Yu's review of Sword Art Online: Progressive — the manga adaptation of Kawahara's revisit to the original SAO story, told floor-by-floor through Aincrad; the Progressive version provides more detail on floors 1-10 that the original rushed past, with Asuna taking a more central role from the beginning; a more complete telling of the Aincrad arc.
by Yasuki Tanaka
Yu's review of Summer Time Rendering — Shinpei Ajiro returns to Hitogashima island for the funeral of his childhood friend Ushio; something is wrong; the shadows of people on the island are not quite right; Shinpei discovers a supernatural threat that copies humans through their shadows and a time loop mechanic that allows him to restart from the same point when he dies.
by Hiroshi Takashige (Story) / Ryoji Minagawa (Art)
Yu's review of Spriggan — Yu Ominae is a Spriggan agent for ARCAM, a secret organization that locates ancient artifacts of catastrophic power and prevents governments and criminal organizations from weaponizing them; a 90s action sci-fi manga with excellent set-piece design and geopolitical scope.
by Nitroplus / 5pb. (story) / Sarachi Yomi (art)
Yu's review of the Steins;Gate manga — a self-proclaimed mad scientist accidentally invents a way to send text messages to the past, and discovers that every change to the timeline costs someone something.
by Chuya Koyama
Yu's review of Space Brothers — a 32-year-old man who was fired from his job reapplies to become a JAXA astronaut, following the dream he abandoned when his younger brother moved forward without him.
by Yuri Shibamura / Ritsuki Futaba
Yu's review of Spirit Chronicles — Rio is a slum boy who witnesses a brutal crime and, in the moment of his trauma, is joined by the soul of Haruto Amakawa, a Japanese high school student who died; the two share a body and memories, and Rio uses Haruto's knowledge and his own determination to build a new life.
by Osamu Takahashi
Yu's review of Neon Genesis Evangelion: The Shinji Ikari Raising Project — an alternate universe where Shinji Ikari attends the same school as Rei and Asuka, his parents are alive and working at NERV together, and the apocalyptic weight of the original series is replaced by the concerns of a teenage romantic comedy.
by Inio Asano
Yu's review of Solanin — Meiko works a job she hates; her boyfriend Taneda plays in a band that goes nowhere; together they ask what their lives are for in the specific way that only your mid-twenties allows.
by Yumi Tamura
Yu's review of Seven Seeds — the Japanese government preserved groups of young people in cryosleep as humanity's last hope; they wake in a post-catastrophe future Japan, separated and uncertain, and must survive and eventually connect.
by Hisae Iwaoka
Yu's review of Saturn Apartments — humanity lives in a ring habitat orbiting Earth; the surface is a nature preserve; Mitsu is a young window washer who cleans the outer windows of the habitat; his father was also a window washer and disappeared; Hisae Iwaoka's quiet science fiction manga about class, memory, and the view from the outside.
by Chiaki J. Konaka (Concept) / Yoshitoshi ABe (Art)
Yu's review of Serial Experiments Lain manga — an adaptation of the 1998 anime that offers a different perspective on Lain Iwakura's story; Lain is a withdrawn middle school girl who becomes increasingly absorbed into the Wired, a network analogous to the internet, until the boundary between herself and the network becomes unclear.
by Shin Takahashi
Yu's review of Saikano — Chise is a clumsy, awkward high school girl who has recently started dating Shuji; she is also the last weapon, a girl whose body has been modified into a living weapon system for Japan's military; the series follows their relationship as the war escalates and Chise's modifications progressively replace her humanity.
by Sho Fumimura (Story) / Ryoichi Ikegami (Art)
Yu's review of Sanctuary — two survivors of the Cambodian killing fields make a pact to change Japan from the inside: one through legitimate politics, one through the yakuza; a politically serious manga by the creators of Crying Freeman and Mai the Psychic Girl about power, ambition, and what it costs to change a corrupt system.
by Okushou (Story) / Shizumu Watanabe (Art)
Yu's review of Real Account — users of the social media platform Real Account are sucked into a virtual world for a death game; the game's core rule: when you die in the game, all your followers die in the real world; the series becomes a thriller about social media relationships, the nature of online connection, and whether the people who follow you would risk anything for you.
by Saki Hiwatari
Yu's review of Please Save My Earth — Alice Sakaguchi and six other teenagers in contemporary Tokyo discover they are the reincarnations of seven alien scientists who lived on the Moon observing Earth; their past life memories surface through shared dreams; past life emotions and relationships carry into present lives in ways that are not always welcome.
by Naoki Urasawa / Takashi Nagasaki (based on Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka)
Yu's review of Pluto — Naoki Urasawa reimagines a single Astro Boy story arc through the lens of adult science fiction: a robot detective investigates who is systematically destroying the world's seven most powerful robots.
by Osamu Tezuka
Yu's review of Phoenix — Tezuka Osamu's incomplete masterwork — a series of stories set throughout Japanese and universal history, connected by the Phoenix, a bird whose blood grants immortality; the Phoenix appears in each arc but cannot be caught; the arcs range from ancient Japan to the far future and examine what it means to be human across all of time.
by Makoto Yukimura
Yu's review of Planetes — a crew of space debris collectors in the near future of 2075, where someone wants to be the first human to Jupiter and someone else just wants to survive the shift.
by Boichi
Yu's review of Origin by Boichi — a robot built as a killing machine has been living as a human boy for years, hiding his true nature while protecting the family he has come to care for; when other robots of his kind begin appearing and killing, he must fight while continuing to conceal what he is; a sci-fi action manga about identity, purpose, and what makes life meaningful.
by Shirow Masamune (Story) / Rikudou Koushi (Art)
Yu's review of Pandora in the Crimson Shell — Nene Nanakorobi is a full-body cyborg girl who arrives on the artificial island of Cenancle with her android companion Clarion; Nene has the ability to access Clarion's special capabilities through a direct physical interface; the series is a comedic near-future adventure involving a cyborg cat girl, conspiracy, and the island's unusual politics.
by Katsuhiro Otomo
Otomo's behind-the-scenes companion to Akira — sketches, notes, and unused pages from one of manga's most ambitious works.
by Tasuku Karasuma
Yu's review of No Guns Life — Juzo Inui is an Extended — a cyborg modified for war — whose head is a giant revolver; he works as a problem fixer in a city that fears and restricts the Extended people who fought for it.
by Fumi Yoshinaga
Yu's review of Ōoku: The Inner Chambers — an alternate Japan where a mysterious plague killed 75% of men over a century, women rose to political power, and the Shogunate is run by women while men are rare and precious; a historical alternate-universe manga that examines power, gender, and what history would look like if it went differently.
by Yoshiyuki Sadamoto
Yu's review of the Neon Genesis Evangelion manga — Shinji Ikari is fourteen, has been abandoned by his father, and is told he must pilot a giant biomechanical weapon against beings called Angels or humanity ends.
by Osamu Tezuka
Two superpowers test bombs that mutate animals into intelligent beings — Tezuka's Cold War allegory drawn in 1951.
by Atsuko Asano / Hinoki Kino
Yu's review of No. 6 — in the near future, the utopian city-state No. 6 promises its citizens a perfect life; Shion, an elite citizen, shelters a fugitive named Rat on a stormy night when he is 12; years later, this single act of kindness has destroyed his privileged status and the two are reunited in the city's dark underside.
by Hayao Miyazaki
Yu's review of Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind — the manga Hayao Miyazaki serialized over twelve years, extending far beyond the film's scope: a post-catastrophic world where toxic forests cover Earth, and a princess who understands the insects that everyone else fears.
by Kami Imai
Yu's review of Needless — set in a post-apocalyptic Japan where mutants called Needless have superpowers derived from fragments of forbidden knowledge; a deliberately over-the-top action comedy that parodies shonen conventions while executing them with genuine craft.
by Bow Ditama (Story) / Bunjuro Nakayama (Art)
Yu's review of Mahoromatic — Mahoro is the most powerful combat android in existence, but when she chooses to retire and work as a maid for a teenage boy rather than fight on, the series becomes a comedy about domesticity mixed with action sequences and an unexpectedly moving meditation on limited time.
by Tow Ubukata / Yoshitoki Oima
Yu's review of Mardock Scramble — Rune Balot, a teenage prostitute, is murdered by casino mogul Shell Septinos; resurrected under Mardock Scramble 09, an emergency law that allows dead people to be brought back as cyborgs to testify, she must survive long enough to bring Shell to justice with the help of her partner Oeufcoque.
by Tatsuki Fujimoto
Yu's review of Look Back — a single volume about two girls who connect through drawing, whose friendship is the manga's emotional center, and what one page of someone's art can mean to another person across time.
by Makoto Fukami / Seigo Tokiya
Yu's review of Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka — three years after magical girls saved the world from an invasion of magical creatures, Asuka Otori is trying to live a normal high school life; she has PTSD; her allies need her back; she doesn't want to go back.
by Shinobu Kaitani
Yu's review of Liar Game — Nao Kanzaki, an honest person to the point of being a liability, receives a package with 100 million yen and instructions for the Liar Game: she must deceive and be deceived; the last person holding the most money wins; she enlists the help of a recently released con man named Shinichi Akiyama.
by Haruko Ichikawa
Yu's review of Land of the Lustrous — in a far future where humanity no longer exists, gem beings called Lustrous fight against Lunarians who wish to capture them for decoration; Phosphophyllite, the youngest and most fragile gem, wants to fight but is unfit for combat; the series follows Phos's transformation into something unrecognizable as their body is replaced piece by piece and their original self becomes inaccessible.
by Yoshiki Tanaka / Katsumi Michihara
Yu's review of Legend of the Galactic Heroes — the manga adaptation of the classic novel series following Yang Wen-li of the Free Planets Alliance and Reinhard von Lohengramm of the Galactic Empire across a war that neither believes in the same terms as the people who sent them to fight it.
by Tsutomu Nihei
Yu's review of Knights of Sidonia — a thousand years after Earth is destroyed, the last humans travel space in a massive seed ship, fighting shapeshifting beings called Gauna with mecha called Gardes.
by Seita Horio
Yu's review of Kokkoku — the Yukawa family inherits a stone that can stop time, placing them in 'Stasis' — a frozen moment where they can move while everything else is still; when criminals kidnap family members, they use Stasis to rescue them, only to discover that a cult has been living in Stasis for years, and that Stasis is not as empty as they thought.
by Akira Toriyama
Yu's review of Jaco the Galactic Patrolman — Jaco is a Galaxy Patrolman who crashes on Earth and befriends a retired scientist; he was sent to Earth on a mission he cannot quite remember, is extremely arrogant about his skills, and the story quietly connects to a larger mythology that Dragon Ball fans will recognize.
by Motoro Mase
Yu's review of Ikigami — In a near-future Japan, citizens are injected with a nanomachine capsule at age six; one in a thousand capsules is activated at a random future date, killing its recipient; the purpose is to make citizens value life; Fujimoto delivers the ikigami — the 24-hour death notices — and must witness what people do with their remaining day.
by Hiroya Oku
Yu's review of Inuyashiki — two people are accidentally destroyed and rebuilt as machines by aliens; a 58-year-old man no one noticed becomes a hero; a teenage boy whom everyone admired becomes a mass murderer; the series asks what the inside of a person determines when they are given absolute power.
by Masakazu Ishiguro
Yu's review of Heavenly Delusion (Tengoku Daimakyou) — two teenagers travel through a destroyed Japan searching for 'heaven,' while inside a mysterious sealed facility, children are raised with no knowledge of the outside world; the two storylines converge toward answers neither group fully understands yet.
by Yoshiki Takaya
Yu's review of Bio-Boosted Armor Guyver — high school student Sho Fukamachi accidentally activates an alien bio-armor unit called Guyver, which bonds to him permanently; the shadowy organization Chronos, which created the armor, wants it back — along with the knowledge of what the armor actually is and what it was designed for; a foundational mecha/bio-armor sci-fi manga.
by Nagaru Tanigawa / Gaku Tsugano
Yu's review of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya manga — Kyon's ordinary high school life ends when he sits in front of Haruhi Suzumiya, who announces she has no interest in ordinary humans — only aliens, time travelers, ESPers, and sliders; what he doesn't know yet is that she is an unconscious god who has attracted exactly what she wanted.
by Tsukumizu
Yu's review of Girls' Last Tour — two girls travel through a massive post-apocalyptic city on a kettenrad, eating whatever they find, watching it snow, and thinking about what it means to be alive when almost nothing is left.
by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko
Yu's review of Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin — Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, the original character designer for the 1979 Gundam anime, re-adapts and expands the One Year War, giving Char Aznable the backstory the original never showed and drawing the Universal Century with 40 years of additional craft.
by Masamune Shirow
Yu's review of Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface — the sequel to Shirow's foundational cyberpunk manga, following a distributed form of Motoko's consciousness in a world where human-machine boundaries have dissolved further; more abstract and philosophical than the original, with Shirow's most complex visual design work.
by Masamune Shirow
Yu's review of Ghost in the Shell — Major Motoko Kusanagi leads a counter-cyberterrorism unit in a future where the line between human and machine has dissolved, and pursues the mystery of a hacker called the Puppet Master.
by Sakae Esuno
Yu's review of Future Diary (Mirai Nikki) — Yukiteru Amano is chosen as one of twelve participants in a death game where each person receives a diary that predicts their own future; the last survivor becomes God; the series is a thriller structured around information asymmetry and the uniquely disturbing character of Yuno Gasai.
by Takumi Yanai / Satoru Sao
Yu's review of Gate — a gate appears in Ginza, Tokyo; a fantasy world army pours through and attacks civilians; the Japan Self-Defense Force pushes back and enters the Special Region, a fantasy world where Rome-like legions, dragons, and magic users coexist; the manga follows JSDF officer Itami Youji's interaction with the Special Region and its inhabitants.
by Yusuke Kishi / Toru Oikawa
Yu's review of From the New World — a millennium from now, a small society of psychic humans lives in apparent peace; Saki and her friends begin to notice the gaps between what they are taught and what is real, and what they discover rewrites everything they thought their world was.
by Shouji Gatou / Retsu Tateo
Yu's review of Full Metal Panic! — Sōsuke Sagara, a teenage military specialist from a private military organization, is assigned to protect high school girl Kaname Chidori who doesn't know why she needs protection; he attends her school undercover, treats every situation as a military operation, and creates chaos wherever he goes; military action comedy with genuine mecha sequences.
by Mingming
Yu's review of Evangelion: Campus Apocalypse — an alternate universe NGE spinoff where Shinji Ikari is a new student at a school hiding a secret connected to the Angels; Mingming's reimagining moves the Eva mythology into a school setting while keeping the core emotional relationships.
by Tatsuki Fujimoto
Yu's review of Fire Punch — Agni has a regeneration blessing; someone with a flame blessing sets him on fire; he cannot die and cannot stop burning; he crosses a frozen post-apocalyptic world looking for revenge while a man with a camera follows him.
by Hiroki Endo
Yu's review of Eden: It's an Endless World! — a plague destroyed most of humanity; a boy named Elijah grows up in the aftermath, in a world run by the Propater organization and his father's network of resistance, becoming something neither of them intended.
by Shinji Kajio / Kenji Tsuruta
Yu's review of Emanon — a young man on an overnight ferry meets a mysterious woman who claims to remember every life she has lived since the first single-celled organism; she carries within her the memories of three billion years of evolution; he doesn't know whether to believe her.
by Q Hayashida
Yu's review of Dorohedoro — a man with a lizard head and amnesia searches for the sorcerer who transformed him in a brutal city where sorcerers use humans as test subjects.
by Masamune Shirow
Yu's review of Dominion Tank Police — in a future city where crime requires a Tank Police division, officer Leona Ozaki is assigned to the unit and falls deeply in love with her miniature tank Bonaparte; Masamune Shirow's comedic sci-fi action, lighter than Ghost in the Shell but with the same worldbuilding attention.
by Katsuhiro Otomo
Yu's review of DOMU — Over several years, residents of the Tsutsumi housing complex have been dying or going mad at an inexplicable rate; a detective investigating the deaths suspects something supernatural; an old man with psychic abilities has been killing residents for entertainment; when a young girl moves into the complex with her own abilities, a confrontation becomes inevitable.
by Inio Asano
Yu's review of Dead Dead Demon's Dededede Destruction — giant alien motherships have hovered over Tokyo for three years; Kadode and Ouran go to high school underneath them, play games, take photos, and try to stay friends while the world ends slowly around them.
by Yuji Iwahara
Yu's review of Dimension W — in the near future, limitless energy is drawn from Dimension W through coils; illegal coils are dangerous; Kyoma Mabuchi, a coil hunter who hates coils, teams up with Mira, an advanced android girl who may be the key to the most dangerous illegal coil mystery.
by FLIPFLOPs
Yu's review of Darwin's Game — high school student Kaname Sudou downloads the Darwin's Game app at a friend's recommendation and discovers it is a real-world death game where participants with supernatural abilities called Sigils fight for survival and prizes; a battle royale survival manga with strategic combat and character development.
by Kakeru Kobashiri / Ichiro Sakaki
Yu's review of Dawn of the Witch — a spinoff of Grimoire of Zero set in the same world; Saybil, a magic student with no memories before entering the academy, is sent to a remote village on a special field course with a mysterious teacher; the village's history and the world's ongoing religious conflict force him to confront who he actually is.
by Yutaka Nanten
Yu's review of the Cowboy Bebop manga — a manga adaptation of the classic anime; Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, Faye Valentine, and the crew of the Bebop pursue bounties across a solar system that is both future-advanced and perpetually broken down; short episodic stories in the visual register of the anime.
by Code:000 / Kentaro Yabuki
Yu's review of Darling in the FranXX — in a future where humanity lives in mobile cities and children are trained from birth to pilot giant mechs called FranXX in male-female pairs, Hiro and Zero Two find each other and something neither was supposed to feel; the manga adaptation of the Studio Trigger/A-1 Pictures anime.
by Ichirou Ohkouchi / Majiko!
Yu's review of Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion — the manga adaptation of the Sunrise anime; Lelouch vi Britannia, an exiled prince, is granted Geass by the mysterious C.C., the power of absolute obedience; he uses it to lead a resistance against the empire that exiled him, creating the masked identity Zero; political mecha with a morally complex protagonist.
by Tomonori Inoue
Yu's review of Coppelion — 20 years after a nuclear disaster has devastated Tokyo, genetically engineered schoolgirls called Coppelion who are immune to radiation are sent into the contaminated zone to search for and rescue survivors.
by Yuu Kamiya / Tsubaki Himana / Sino
Yu's review of Clockwork Planet — in a world where the entire planet was rebuilt from gears a thousand years ago by a clockwork god, Naoto Miura, a gearhead with superhuman hearing, discovers a legendary automaton named RyuZU in a falling case; together with Marie Bell Breguet, a genius clocksmith, they work to maintain the world's massive geared infrastructure.
by CLAMP
Yu's review of Clover — in a futuristic world, humans with magical ability are rated with clover leaves; Suo is a four-leaf clover, the most powerful and the only one; she has been isolated her whole life and has one wish: to visit a place called Fairy Park; she is escorted there by soldier Kazuhiko in a story told in CLAMP's most experimental visual style.
by CLAMP
Yu's review of Chobits — Hideki Motosuwa, a country boy studying in Tokyo, finds an abandoned persocom — a human-shaped personal computer — in the trash; he names her Chi; she can say nothing but his name, has no installed programs, and seems to be something unusual among persocoms; as they grow closer, the series asks whether a machine can truly feel.
by Abi Umeda
Yu's review of Children of the Whales — The Mud Whale drifts across an endless sea of sand, carrying a community of people who use a power called thymia; Chakuro, their archivist, records everything; when another ship appears carrying a girl who has never been allowed to feel emotion, it sets in motion the end of everything Chakuro has known.
by Leiji Matsumoto
Yu's review of Captain Harlock — in a future where humanity has given up its freedom in exchange for comfort, Harlock is the space pirate who still fights; aboard his ship the Arcadia, he battles the alien Mazone who have come to reclaim the Earth they seeded long ago.
by Haruyama Moto
Yu's review of Cells at Work! Bacteria — the bacteria living in the human gut have their own lives and their own work to do; this spinoff follows gut bacteria characters as they maintain the microbiome; Haruyama Moto's educational spinoff focusing on the bacteria that live inside us.
by Lynn Okamoto
Yu's review of Brynhildr in the Darkness — Ryouta Murakami is haunted by the childhood death of a girl named Kuroneko; years later, a girl with the same face and impossible powers appears at his school; she has escaped from a laboratory where girls are implanted with harness devices that grant them supernatural abilities — and kill them when removed.
by Junya Inoue
Yu's review of Btooom! — Ryouta Sakamoto is unemployed and lives for the online bomb-combat game Btooom; he is abducted and dropped on a deserted island with real versions of the game's weapons, forced to fight other players who have been dropped there by people who want them dead.
by Yasuhiro Nightow
Yu's review of Blood Blockade Battlefront — New York City has become Hellsalem's Lot after a dimensional barrier opened and merged the city with another world; Libra, a secret organization, works to maintain order in a city where humans and supernatural beings now coexist in constant chaos; Leonardo Watch, a young man who received the All-Seeing Eyes of the Gods at the cost of his sister's sight, becomes Libra's newest member.
by Mohiro Kitoh
Yu's review of Bokurano — fifteen children at summer camp discover a game and sign a contract to pilot a giant mech called Zearth; the contract terms, which they did not understand, require each pilot's life as the cost of each battle won; the series follows each child's final story.
by Hiroyuki Yoshino / Ichiro Okouchi (story) / Rino Mizukami (art)
A review of Guilty Crown — the manga adaptation of the anime about a high school boy who gains the 'Power of Kings' to extract weapons from others' hearts.
by Jiro Mochizuki
Yu's review of Black Torch — Jiro Azuma is the grandson of a ninja master who can communicate with animals; when he rescues a cat that turns out to be a powerful spirit, the spirit fuses with him to survive, giving Jiro access to demonic power while complicating his participation in a secret organization that deals with the supernatural.
by Tsutomu Nihei
Yu's review of Blame! — in a city that has grown to planetary scale and is controlled by murderous AI, a silent man named Killy walks through the infinite architecture searching for humans with the Net Terminal Gene.
by Yukito Kishiro
Yu's review of Battle Angel Alita — a cyborg warrior with no memory of her past is discovered in a junkyard and rebuilt, and must fight her way through a brutal cyberpunk world to discover who she is.
by Tsutomu Nihei
Yu's review of Biomega — in a future where a virus is turning humanity into zombie-like drones, a synthetic human named Zoichi Kanoe travels a dying Earth on a motorcycle with his AI bear partner, searching for immune humans.
by Yukito Kishiro
Yu's review of Battle Angel Alita: Last Order — the direct sequel to Battle Angel Alita picks up after the original's ending and sends Alita into the Zenith of Things Tournament, a solar-system-spanning martial arts competition; Last Order expands the original's world into a genuinely cosmic scope while maintaining Alita's fighting identity as the series' center.
by Yukito Kishiro
Yu's review of Battle Angel Alita: Mars Chronicle — the third series in Kishiro's Battle Angel saga returns to Mars to reveal what happened to young Yoko (Alita) before she ended up as a disembodied head in the Scrapyard; a brutal and emotionally devastating origin story that answers questions fans have carried for decades.
by Osamu Tezuka
Yu's review of Astro Boy — Dr. Tenma creates a robot child in the image of his deceased son; when the robot fails to satisfy his grief, he abandons it; the robot, Astro, is bought by a circus and eventually freed and becomes a defender of both humans and robots in a world that is learning to coexist with artificial life; Osamu Tezuka's foundational manga.
by Masami Yuuki / Tetsuro Kasahara
Yu's review of Atom: The Beginning — a prequel to Astro Boy set in the near future after a disaster, following two young scientists Umataro Tenma and Hiroshi Ochanomizu as they build A106, a robot of unprecedented capability who eventually becomes the prototype for Astro Boy; a thoughtful sci-fi prequel that expands Tezuka's world with genuine care.
by Ark Performance
Yu's review of Arpeggio of Blue Steel — in a near-future where the Fleet of Fog has blockaded Earth's oceans using technology beyond human comprehension, student Gunzō Chihaya has somehow formed a contract with a Fog submarine, I-401, whose Mental Model avatar goes by Iona; the series follows their voyages and the growing questions about what the Fog fleet actually wants.
by Kenta Shinohara
Yu's review of Astra: Lost in Space — eight students and one child are sent to a planet for a camp trip; an energy sphere ejects them 5,000 light-years away; they find an abandoned spaceship called the Astra and use it to navigate back home one planet at a time; the survival mystery is tighter than its premise suggests.
by Masamune Shirow
Yu's review of Appleseed — Deunan Knute and her partner Briareos are rescued from the ruins of the world war and brought to Olympus, an ideal city governed by bioroids and human cooperation; the city's peace requires constant maintenance that involves violence, conspiracy, and the question of what humanity actually is.
by Kaoru Shintani
Yu's review of Area 88 — Shin Kazama, a Japanese airline trainee, is tricked by a friend into signing a contract with a Middle Eastern desert nation's air force; trapped in a war mercenary squadron at Area 88, he can only leave by earning enough money through combat or surviving three years; a 1979 classic about the cost of war and the people who fight in one they didn't choose.
by Ryosuke Takeuchi (story) / Takeshi Obata (art) / Hiroshi Sakurazaka (original novel)
Yu's review of All You Need Is Kill — a soldier in a war against alien invaders dies in battle and wakes up at the start of the same day. He dies again. He wakes up again. Each loop makes him a better soldier.
by Key / Jun Maeda / Yuriko Asami
Yu's review of the Angel Beats! manga — Otonashi wakes up in an afterlife high school and joins a group of dead teenagers who are fighting against Angel, the student council president, in rebellion against the rules of their existence; Key/Jun Maeda's afterlife story adapted to manga.
by Tetsuya Imai
Yu's review of Alice & Zouroku — Sana is a young girl who escaped from a research facility where she and other children with the power to materialize their imagination were studied; she encounters Kashimura Zouroku, a cantankerous elderly florist, who decides she needs food, safety, and someone to tell her firmly what is and isn't acceptable — and who is entirely unimpressed by her reality-warping powers.
by Hitoshi Tomizawa
Yu's review of Alien Nine — Yuri Otani hates aliens; she is elected to the Alien Party, the school organization that catches the aliens that fall on the school grounds daily, because she got the most votes; she partners with a symbiotic alien called a Borg that lives on her head; she spends most of the series crying while somehow continuing.
by Katsuhiro Otomo
Yu's review of Akira — 6 massive volumes that changed what manga could be. Set in 2019 Neo-Tokyo, a teenage biker's best friend gains supernatural powers that could destroy the world. The manga that made the world take Japanese comics seriously.
by Osamu Tezuka
Yu's review of Alabaster — a Black man named Rock Holmes is so consumed by racial hatred toward white society that he gains a device allowing him to turn himself and others invisible; he becomes a destructive villain; Tezuka's controversial dark manga that explores what hatred does to a person, and why Tezuka chose to write it.
by Reki Kawahara / Hiroyuki Aigamo
Yu's review of Accel World — Haruyuki Arita, a bullied student who escapes into online games, is recruited into Brain Burst, a secret augmented reality fighting game where time can be accelerated; the manga adaptation of Reki Kawahara's light novel series explores themes of acceleration, identity, and what it means to fight for something real.
by Kumiko Suekane
Yu's review of Afterschool Charisma — St. Kleio Academy is a school for the clones of history's most significant people: Beethoven, Napoleon, Florence Nightingale, Marie Curie, Hitler, Freud, Joan of Arc; Shiro Kamiya, the only non-clone student, must navigate a school where his classmates carry the weight of the greatness they were created to surpass.
by Kazuma Kamachi / Arata Yamaji
Yu's review of A Certain Scientific Accelerator — Accelerator, the most powerful esper in Academy City, is recovering from brain damage when he encounters Last Order, a young girl connected to the MISAKA network; her fragile existence becomes the focus of his protection and the target of dark organizations operating in Academy City.
by Tsutomu Nihei
Yu's review of Abara — a short but dense Nihei work about Gauna, white biological weapons, and the city infrastructure they shatter; told almost entirely through visual storytelling with minimal dialogue, Abara is Nihei's most purely visual work.
by Asato Asato (Story) / Motoki Yoshihara (Art)
Yu's review of 86—EIGHTY-SIX manga — the Republic of San Magnolia wages war against autonomous mechs using unmanned drones; the 'unmanned' drones are actually piloted by Eighty-Sixers, people ethnically cleansed from the republic who fight and die in squadrons no one acknowledges; Vladilena Milizé is the one military officer who treats her squadron as human beings.
by Kazuma Kamachi / Kiyotaka Haimura / Chuya Kogino
Yu's review of A Certain Magical Index manga — Touma Kamijou's right hand nullifies all supernatural powers; when a girl named Index who has memorized 103,000 grimoires appears on his balcony, he is drawn into the conflict between Academy City's science-based espers and the church's magic users; manga adaptation of the light novel.
by Nobuaki Tadano
Yu's review of 7 Billion Needles — Hikaru Takabe is a high school girl who has fused with an alien entity called Horizon after being struck by it in space; Horizon needs Hikaru's help to hunt Maelstrom, another alien that has infiltrated human society and is causing deaths; the series adapts Hal Clement's classic sci-fi novel 'Needle' into a contemporary Japanese high school setting.
by Yumi Tamura
Yu's review of 7SEEDS — seven groups of young people are cryogenically preserved and awakened in a devastated future Japan; each group navigates a changed world with no preparation; Yumi Tamura's survival manga about ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances and what they choose to become.
by Naoki Urasawa
Yu's review of 20th Century Boys — a childhood game about saving the world becomes real decades later, and a convenience store manager realizes a mysterious cult leader called 'Friend' is following a plan he wrote as a kid.
by Katsuhiro Otomo, Takumi Nagayasu
After Earth shatters, a mother walks across the wasteland to find her children — Otomo's other apocalypse epic.
by Ken Ishikawa
A review of Getter Robo by Ken Ishikawa — the original combining mecha manga that gave the genre its most mythologically intense ideas about evolution, consciousness, and what machines become.
by Osamu Tezuka
A boy cursed to fall in love and lose her in every life he ever lives — Tezuka's most personal meditation on romance.
by Kazuya Kudo, Ryoichi Ikegami
A 14-year-old psychic girl runs from a global conspiracy in one of the first manga to break out in the West.
by Osamu Tezuka
A review of Metropolis by Osamu Tezuka — a sweeping sci-fi manga about a stratified future city, an android child, and what it means to be human.
by Hiroki Endo
A virus collapses civilization, and what comes next is messier and more human than any standard apocalypse story.
by Hajime Segawa
A review of Tokyo ESP, the manga about a girl who acquires ESP powers and becomes a hero in a Tokyo where people with supernatural abilities are fighting over the city's future.
by Naoki Urasawa, Takashi Nagasaki
A Japanese-American comic artist discovers his cartoon bat character is older than he is — and may have shaped human history.
by Osamu Tezuka
A masked gunslinger fights for the rights of Mars's indigenous people — Tezuka's allegory for the American West.
by Masamune Shirow
A review of Dominion (Dominion Tank Police), Masamune Shirow's anarchic sci-fi action comedy about a tank-obsessed police officer in a polluted future city.
by Shotaro Ishinomori
Nine people from around the world are kidnapped and turned into cyborg weapons against their will. Then they escape and have to decide what to do with the power they were given — fight for the people who made them, or fight for humanity itself.