Browse · Manga · 36 picks
A manga shelf is a commitment problem. The best-known series run to dozens of volumes, and the short ones rarely get recommended because nobody has to ask how long they are. These shelves sort by that question first.
Every pick below is sorted by how much of your time it wants. The first shelf is for series that are finished and fit on one row of a bookcase. The second is for finished runs that take a season to read. The third is for series still going, where catching up is part of the fun, and the last is for Korean manhwa and webtoons, which read top to bottom on a phone and move at a different pace.
Each entry has two lines of ours: why it is on the shelf, and who it suits. The volume counts are for finished series only, since an ongoing one changes every few months. Years are when the series started serializing in Japan or Korea; English editions usually followed within a few years.
Add any of them to your manga library with one tap. Nothing is marked read or rated until you say so, and you can log volumes or chapters as you go.
The chart is being fetched; it appears on the next visit.
Complete stories you can read in a weekend or two. Good first manga, and good palate cleansers between long series.
Thriller, Supernatural · 2003 · 12 volumes · Complete
by Tsugumi Ohba, Takeshi Obata
A student finds a notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in it, and the series becomes a chess match between him and the detective hunting him. The plotting is tight for its whole run, and Obata's art makes a conversation in a dorm room feel like a standoff.
A thriller where both sides are clever. It reads fast; twelve volumes can go in a week.
Drama · 2013 · 7 volumes · Complete
by Yoshitoki Oima
A boy who bullied a deaf classmate in primary school tries, years later, to make amends. The series is honest about how little an apology fixes and how much the people around him are still carrying.
Seven volumes, a complete arc, and one of the few manga that works as well for someone who has never read one.
Science fiction, Mystery · 2003 · 8 volumes · Complete
by Naoki Urasawa
Urasawa retells one arc of Astro Boy as a murder mystery about robots and the war they were built for. You do not need to know the original; the detective, Gesicht, carries the whole thing.
For mystery readers who want something short with a real ending. Eight volumes.
Horror · 1998 · 3 volumes · Complete
by Junji Ito
A small town becomes obsessed with spirals. That premise sounds silly on paper and is anything but on the page; Ito draws the kind of images you remember years later. The chapters are nearly self-contained until the last stretch ties them together.
Three volumes. Read it in daylight if you scare easily.
Drama · 2007 · 13 volumes · Complete
by Inio Asano
Punpun is drawn as a cartoon bird while everyone around him is drawn realistically, and the series follows him from a childhood crush into adulthood. It is funny early and gets much darker. Asano's backgrounds alone are worth the price.
Thirteen volumes, for readers who can take a bleak story. Not a comfort read.
Fantasy, Comedy · 2014 · 14 volumes · Complete
by Ryoko Kui
An adventuring party runs out of money and food, so they start cooking the monsters. The recipes are the joke for the first few volumes; then Kui turns the premise into a surprisingly complete fantasy with a proper ending.
Fourteen volumes. If you liked the anime, this shows where it was going all along.
Science fiction, Action · 1982 · 6 volumes · Complete
by Katsuhiro Otomo
Neo-Tokyo, bike gangs, a government program that went wrong. The film adapts roughly the first half; the manga has the full story and far more of the city. Otomo's drawing of collapsing buildings has been copied for forty years.
Six oversized volumes. Read it if the film left you wanting the rest.
Fantasy, Adventure · 1982 · 7 volumes · Complete
by Hayao Miyazaki
Miyazaki drew this over twelve years alongside his films, and it goes much further than the 1984 movie, into a war between kingdoms and the question of what the toxic forest is for. The pencil art is dense and demands a slow read.
Seven volumes. For Ghibli fans who want to see Miyazaki at his most political.
Slice of life, Science fiction · 2014 · 6 volumes · Complete
by Tsukumizu
Two girls drive a half-track through a dead city, looking for food and talking about whatever comes up. It is calm and strange, and the quiet gives the few big moments room to land.
Six short volumes. Try it when you want something gentle that still has weight.
Finished series that take a month or a season. The payoff is a planned ending, which long-running manga do not always get.
Adventure, Fantasy · 2001 · 27 volumes · Complete
by Hiromu Arakawa
Two brothers try to undo a failed resurrection and uncover a conspiracy that reaches the top of their country. Arakawa plans; threads set up in volume two pay off in volume twenty-five. The 2009 anime follows it closely, and the manga is still the fuller version.
Twenty-seven volumes. If you only read one long shonen series, this is the usual answer.
Mystery, Thriller · 1994 · 18 volumes · Complete
by Naoki Urasawa
A surgeon in Germany saves a boy's life and spends the next decade learning what the boy became. Urasawa writes supporting characters who could carry their own books, and the setting, reunified Germany in the nineties, is unusual for manga.
Eighteen volumes, slow at first and hard to put down after volume five.
Action, Supernatural · 2016 · 23 volumes · Complete
by Koyoharu Gotouge
A boy whose family was killed by demons joins the corps that hunts them, with his sister, now part demon, in a box on his back. The fights are clear and the villains get their own stories. It ends when the story ends, which is rare for something this popular.
Twenty-three volumes. For readers who watched the anime and do not want to wait for the films.
Action, Supernatural · 2018 · 30 volumes · Complete
by Gege Akutami
Curses born from human fear, and the sorcerers who fight them, in a school that does not expect most students to survive. Akutami's fight choreography is some of the most legible in modern manga. The last arc divides readers; the middle is close to unanimous.
Thirty volumes, finished in 2024. For fans of Demon Slayer who want higher stakes and more grief.
Action, Drama · 2009 · 34 volumes · Complete
by Hajime Isayama
Humanity lives behind walls, giants eat people, and the first volume does not hint at how far the answers go. Isayama's early art is rough and improves markedly. The ending is argued about to this day, which says something about how invested readers were.
Thirty-four volumes. Best read without spoilers, which gets harder every year.
Sports · 2012 · 45 volumes · Complete
by Haruichi Furudate
A short boy wants to play volleyball, and the series makes you care about rotations and receive formations. Every opposing team is given a reason to win. The final arc, set after high school, is a model of how to end a sports manga.
Forty-five volumes, so a season of reading. You do not need to know volleyball.
Sports · 1990 · 31 volumes · Complete
by Takehiko Inoue
A delinquent joins the basketball team to impress a girl and discovers he is good. Thirty years on it is still the series other sports manga measure themselves against, and the last game is drawn almost without dialogue.
Thirty-one volumes. If you liked the 2022 film, the manga has the full season behind it.
Romantic comedy · 2015 · 28 volumes · Complete
by Aka Akasaka
Two student council officers are in love and each refuses to confess first, so every chapter is a scheme to make the other one crack. It starts as a gag series and slowly becomes a real romance without losing the gags.
Twenty-eight volumes, finished in 2022. A good choice if most romance manga feel too slow.
Mystery, Science fiction · 1999 · 22 volumes · Complete
by Naoki Urasawa
A group of childhood friends invented a doomsday story in the sixties, and someone has started acting it out. The series jumps across decades and keeps a large cast straight. Read it after Monster if you want Urasawa at a bigger scale.
Twenty-two volumes plus a two-volume epilogue. Give it until the end of volume three.
Comedy, Supernatural · 2012 · 16 volumes · Complete
by ONE
A boy with enormous psychic power works part time for a con man and wants nothing more than to be ordinary. ONE, who also wrote One-Punch Man, draws it himself here, and the loose art suits a story that is really about adolescence.
Sixteen volumes. Read it if the anime made you laugh and then unexpectedly made you cry.
Dark fantasy, Action · 2000 · 23 volumes · Complete
by Q Hayashida
A man with a lizard head hunts the sorcerers who cursed him, in a city where magic users treat people as practice. It is gory, funny and oddly warm; the villains cook dinner together. Hayashida's grimy linework has no real equivalent.
Twenty-three volumes. Not for the squeamish, and very hard to put down.
Series still being published. Volume counts are left out because they change; most of these have decades of story already waiting.
Adventure · 1997 · Ongoing
by Eiichiro Oda
Pirates, a world government, and a crew that keeps growing. The size is the obstacle and also the point: by the time you reach the stretch most readers call the best, you have known these characters for a thousand chapters. Oda has said the ending is in sight.
A multi-year project. Start when you want a series to live inside, and track volumes as you go.
Dark fantasy · 1989 · Ongoing
by Kentaro Miura
A mercenary with a sword taller than he is, a kingdom at war, and a betrayal the whole genre still references. Miura's art is as detailed as anything in comics. After his death in 2021 the series continued under his friend Kouji Mori and Miura's assistants.
Violent and often grim. Begin with the Golden Age arc if the first volumes feel disconnected.
Historical, Action · 2005 · Ongoing
by Makoto Yukimura
A Viking revenge story that turns, after its first long arc, into a book about a man refusing to fight. The research is careful and the second half rewards anyone who stuck with the first.
Pick it up if you liked the anime and want to know how far the farm arc goes.
Action, Horror · 2018 · Ongoing
by Tatsuki Fujimoto
A broke teenager merges with his chainsaw dog and goes to work for the government hunting devils. Fujimoto likes to pull the floor out from under a scene, and the first part ends on a note nobody saw coming. The second part is quieter and stranger.
For readers who want a shonen series that behaves like an indie film. Expect gore.
Comedy, Action · 2019 · Ongoing
by Tatsuya Endo
A spy, an assassin and a telepathic child pretend to be a family for a mission, and the pretending becomes the story. Each chapter is nearly standalone, which makes it easy to read in small pieces.
A safe pick for someone new to manga, and a good one to read with a family.
Fantasy · 2020 · Ongoing
by Kanehito Yamada, Tsukasa Abe
An elf mage outlives the hero party she travelled with and sets out to understand what those ten years meant. The fantasy is familiar on purpose; the series is about time and regret, and it is unhurried in a way few weekly manga get to be.
Suits readers who found most fantasy manga too loud, and people who cried at the anime.
Drama · 2017 · Ongoing
by Tsubasa Yamaguchi
A high school student who has never cared about anything discovers painting, and the series follows him through art school entrance exams and into the first years of study. It explains technique without turning into a textbook.
Best read by someone who has tried to make something and been frightened by how hard it is.
Fantasy · 2016 · Ongoing
by Kamome Shirahama
In this world magic is drawn, and a girl who was told she could never learn it becomes an apprentice. Shirahama's pages are the most beautiful in current manga, with ink work closer to old European engravings than to anything on the shonen shelf.
A good gift book. Read it slowly and look at the backgrounds.
Slice of life, Comedy · 2003 · Ongoing
by Kiyohiko Azuma
A five-year-old moves to a new town with her adoptive father and finds everything astonishing. Nothing happens, and each chapter is a small joy. Azuma publishes a volume every year or two, so catching up takes an afternoon.
For bad weeks. It is impossible to be stressed while reading it.
Adventure, Action · 1998 · Ongoing, with long hiatuses
by Yoshihiro Togashi
A boy searches for his father and the series keeps reinventing what kind of story it is: tournament, heist, war, a dense political arc on a boat. Togashi's health has meant long hiatuses, and readers plan around them.
Read what exists; most of it is finished arcs. The Chimera Ant arc is the one people mean when they call it a masterpiece.
Historical, Action · 1998 · On hiatus
by Takehiko Inoue
A loose retelling of the life of the swordsman Musashi Miyamoto, drawn with brushes once Inoue got far enough in. The duels are famous, and so are the chapters where nothing happens except farming.
Thirty-seven volumes are out and it has been on hiatus since 2015. Still worth reading as it stands.
Mystery, Historical · 2017 · Ongoing
by Natsu Hyuuga, Nekokurage
A young apothecary is sold into service in an imperial palace and starts solving poisonings because she cannot help herself. The court politics are handled lightly and the medical detail is a pleasure. This is the manga adaptation of Hyuuga's novels.
For mystery readers who want a setting they have not seen a hundred times.
Korean comics, mostly drawn in full color to be read vertically on a phone. The pacing is faster and the chapters shorter, so a hundred chapters goes quicker than it sounds.
Manhwa · Action, Fantasy · 2018 · Complete
by Chugong, Dubu
The weakest hunter in a world of dungeon gates gets a second chance and a system that lets him level up alone. It is a power fantasy and knows it, and the art gets better with every arc. The story is finished, which many webtoons are not.
The usual first manhwa. One hundred and seventy-nine chapters; most people read it in a week.
Webtoon · Adventure, Fantasy · 2010 · Ongoing
by SIU
A boy follows a girl into a tower where each floor is a test, and the tower turns out to have politics, families and a long memory. It has run for well over a decade and the world keeps widening.
For readers who want a series as big as One Piece in a different format.
Webtoon · Drama · 2016 · Complete
by Jeong Ji-hoon
Two children walk through a country destroyed by war, and that is the whole story. It is short and mostly wordless, and it will sit with you.
Twenty-one chapters. Read it in one sitting.
Webtoon · Action, Fantasy · 2020 · Ongoing
by singNsong, Sleepy-C
An office worker is the only person who finished an obscure web novel, and then the novel starts happening. Knowing the plot is his power. The webtoon adapts the novel with some of the best color work on the platform.
For fans of Solo Leveling who want a cleverer lead and a stranger story.
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These shelves are OmniTrackr's own picks, written by the site and checked against publisher pages and MyAnimeList. Nothing on this page is a member rating, and nothing is sponsored. Popularity data in the chart at the top comes from MyAnimeList via the Jikan API and refreshes a few times a day.
Volume and chapter counts are for finished series and follow the Japanese or Korean editions. Status reflects serialization, so a series can be ongoing in Japan while its English release is still catching up.
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