I've found a good manga to read recently, entitled
Pluto. It's done by two mangaka - Urasawa Naoki and Tezuka Osamu. Some of you may recognize the name Urasawa Naoki from his
20th Century Boys and
21st Century Boys fame, or even his spectacular
Monster fame. An awesome mangaka who specializes in psychological thrillers and mysteries, Pluto is not a manga to be missed. In my opinion, it's just about as good as Monster, though this one's set in the future (or so it seems). No child-Hitler-breeding this time, though it's quite international once more with settings all over Europe, including Turkey and England, just as Monster was set in Germany. Pluto's set in a world where robots and humans co-exist (robots even have equal rights to humans, though they still suffer some degree of discrimination - kind of like the typical racial discrimination we see in society today), and the manga begins with the murder of a world famous role model/hero, who's a robot, and once again - each chapter introduces more characters, murders (serial killings once more, all linked mysteriously), mostly from the view of a detective (who, yes, is a robot too, though he looks exactly like a human). I highly recommend it, though the series hasn't concluded yet, so you'll probably have to wait for more (the scans come out irregularly, it seems, so we might have to wait months) if you read through it too quickly.
If you're into psychological thrillers, Urasawa Naoki's definitely your god-on-earth for this genre, but
Liar Game by Kaitani Shinobu is pretty good too. There's even a
j-drama for it (through I think the plotline deviates quite a little from canon, since the manga is far from finished and still ongoing. The drama has quite a few famous actors and actresses including Toda Erika from
Death Note fame, Matsuda Shota from
Hana Yori Dango (he played Soujiro of the F4), and the very attractive Kichise Michiko who's also in
Bloody Monday.
Another few good manga that have caught my eye include
Change123 (possibly the only manga other than
MPD Psycho that contained a main character with a split personality disorder),
Bakuman, and
Takeru. Change123 is a little ecchi though, so if you don't like random partial nudity and sexual innuendos, avoid it. (I like Fu, by the way. Go read to find out what I mean. Hehe~) Bakuman, on the other hand, is another awesome manga done by the collaboration genius of Obata Takeshi and Ohba Tsugumi from
Death Note fame. It's about two young boys who want to take on the world of manga (kind of like the authors themselves, really) and become uber famous. It's quite cute. There are some romantic elements too, including a girl who wants to become a popular seiyuu (voice actor). It comes out weekly, since it's a feature in the Weekly Shounen Jump, alongside One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach. Thirdly, Takeru - Opera Susanoh Sword of the Devil (yeah, long name) is a lesser known manga, but an interesting one based on a legendary sword. Lots of traditional shounen elements (though not so dominant), and the setting is really nice (very amazonian-like too) too. You might this one fun to read in your spare time - it's ongoing, and the chapters come really slowly. But check it out anyway~!
Now onto one-shots! Remember Hiromu Arakawa? The mangaka of the currently ongoing
FMA? It turns out that she had a few published one-shots too! I read two of them (if there are more, I haven't seen/found them yet) -
Souten no Koumori and
Stray Dog. As usual, Arakawa-sensei manages to play on the reader's emotions, though it's hardly as intense as FMA, if you've read that (of course you have, go read it if you haven't, it's genius). Stray Dog contains elements of unethical experimentation (kind of like FMA, in a way, though no alchemy). It didn't really stand out to be though, unlike Souten no Koumori - this one was really good. It's about a girl who's actually an ex-assassin during a civil war of some sort, and she ends up having to protect the people safeguarding her. It ends quite sadly, in a beautiful sort of way. Oh, yeah. She has a bat-shaped birthmark on her face too. That was cool~
Anyway, that's all for today. Here are some extra links to some famous manga that I keep up to date with (for simply being awesome/unique/well done for its genre):
One Piece,
Vampire Knight,
Skip Beat! Have fun!
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