Seriously, ever since the Avengers  movie franchise has started up, the weekend of Free Comic Book Day has been super-awesome.

Last year, I saw Thor, went to FCBD at Meltdown Comics and shopped at TOKYOPOP’s Garage Sale down on Wilshire and Fairfax. Obviously the TOKYOPOP Garage Sale was a one time thing and it actually made me pretty sad (my first job out of college!), but it was a great weekend all in all.

This year, I’m going to have a tea party with a bunch of my geeky girl friends, then we’ll head on down to FCBD at Meltdown. I already saw The Avengers last night with my SO (Oh my goodness, it was fantastic! I want to see it again!) and I’m helping TOKYOPOP resurrect its manga publishing biz in a limited capacity. (We announced new releases of Hetalia: Axis Powers earlier this week.) Yaaaaaaaay!

Enough about me, what are your plans for the geek equivalent of Super Bowl Weekend?

Cross-posted to LadiesBuyingComics.tumblr.net.

Let’s start off with the facts: Literary manga seems to be becoming more popular these days. More and more, manga publishers that didn’t used to publish seinen are taking risks with titles for older audiences. The fact that these publishers are placing their bets on manga that used to have poor sales records in the U.S. might have something to do with the existence of Viz’s Signature/SigIkki line, and all the online experimentation Viz did with that.

There’s only one problem: The Viz Signature line has lost a lot of its fizz.

Where, oh, where has SigIkki.com gone? Oh, where, oh, where could it be?

Sure,Viz is still invested in Signature titles and releasing volumes steadily, but there haven’t been a lot of new licenses within the Viz Signature line. Most likely, the line got a small financial boost from the anime adaption of Natsume Ono’s House of Five Leaves being streamed online. Thus, some of the most recent licenses have been her one-shots Tesoro and La Quinta Camera.

One-shots are not very risky, however, especially for a line that used to put up half of its current line up online for free until December, 2011. You see what I mean, right? Viz Signature titles, while very, vocally loved by their small fan-base, do not sell gangbusters.

Luckily, I think there’s a fairly simple solution to the Viz Signature line’s woes. More very, very targeted marketing.

To comic book stores.

I know! I know! This seems like a horrible idea! Comic book stores! Those bastions of evil where manga is, generally speaking, shunned by the majority of patrons as stupid.

But here’s the thing: Viz Signature line titles are a showcase of how broad, meaningful and not “stupid” manga can be. There’s something in Viz Signature for practically everyone (excluding kids, perhaps.) And if you take the time to study what’s popular in nerd culture right now, you’d see that there are more than a few Viz Signature titles that one could easily place in the hands of fans who “just like Tezuka/Urasawa/Takahashi stuff” or even The Walking Dead fans. Because really, this is stuff that a lot of comic-reading adults out there could enjoy if they got the right recommendation. Or even if they were just on the right shelves.

Maybe if you like this...

Obviously, this would take more time, money and effort than what Viz is currently willing  to put forth. And while I respect the fact that they’ve put the majority of their Signature/SigIkki stuff on their e-reader apps, I doubt it brings the manga many more readers. (Too many steps in the way, like knowing the company exists and knowing they publish titles you like.) It seems to me that a little good, old-fashioned boldness needs to happen to get the word out about these titles.

...You might like this manga. Maybe?

So, I would like to propose that one way to get more people interested in the Signature line would be to start teaching comic book shop employees about the diversity of manga, with a little more focus on the diversity of seinen. Educate them and get them interested different kinds of more mature manga titles, even if those manga titles are from another company. The more they become interested, the more likely they’ll read and recommend Viz Signature manga to their customers. Then help the employees decide which books might best fit their customer base, and they do the rest.

Sure, Viz could go a more traditional route and just send out more press releases, maybe put a few advertisements on non-manga sites. But I feel like a lot of readers are a bit too biased for that. They need recommendations from people they trust.

One of the worst ideas behind manga publishing, I think, is the lack of energy when it comes to publishers expanding their existing, fanatic reader base. Yeah, Naruto is only going to appeal to a certain audience and it makes bucket loads of money compared to Saturn Apartments. But that doesn’t mean Saturn Apartments can’t reach beyond the already devoted, manga-reading audience.

Slice of life in space! Sure, it looks like your typical anime with the huge eyes and the cutesy characters, but there's a deep, very touching story behind all that!

Yes, it’s going to take precious, precious money away from a company that may be having a hard time of making it. Yes, there are no guaranteed sales here. But is it worth a try, in the long term, to expand manga readership? I think it absolutely is. There’s no other way this industry is going to survive. Even if Viz only did this with Barnes & Noble, it would still be a worthwhile effort to convince the chain to stock more of their Signature stuff. Then it would be seen by more and more readers, perhaps flipped through. There would at least be more of a chance that these books are sold. (Assuming they aren’t wrapped, which some of them would have to be.)

Really, this is one of the larger problems I see with the industry. Casual manga fans don’t even know that some of their most anticipated titles have been published or licensed. Since they don’t follow publishers or distributors closely, how else are they going to find out about new titles than in a comic book shop or chain bookstore? Word of mouth cannot always be counted upon. This happens to me constantly as the uber manga aficionado among a sea of casual fans. I’m more than happy to share my knowledge, but it’s alarming how many people don’t hear about new titles. And if casual manga fans don’t know what’s being published, how will new or non-fans find their way?

This does, of course, cause the problem of potentially overstocking a book that won’t sell. But the idea of educating store owners about what’s out there for grown-up readers would be to help them find manga that they want to sell to their customers, not just keeping up with the bestseller’s list and what the kids want to buy. Not just stocking everything Viz puts out each month. Not even just stocking the whole Signature line. Just what the staff wants to sell and thinks would work best for their shop.

Smart manga like the Viz Signature line really need a smart plan to help them find their audience. With any hope, Viz will once again pick up their adventurous, experimental spirit and let the Signature line shine once again.

The perfect manga editing scenario no longer exists, as far as I know. The last time anything came close for me was in October, 2010. But more about that later…

The perfect scenario happens when a script comes back from the adapter (and there is a separate adapter, and they are very good) about six or seven months before print date. This essentially gives the editor at least three whole months to get this puppy done before print deadlines, which are usually three months in advance of the street date.

That gives the editor a good amount of time to spend on the script edit, which is incredibly important. A good script edit and/or a good letterer means way less work in the long run. A bad script edit and/or a bad letterer can cause major problems for the editor later on, but this is the perfect scenario! The letterer is top-notch and knows how to read the instructions left on the script, even if it’s not a great script edit. Even better, the potential lettering problems don’t need to be explained to the letterer in detail. The perfect-scenario letterer will look at how the lettering was done in Japanese and replicate it to the best of their ability.

Of course, there are always little things that any one in the production pipeline doesn’t notice at first. Perhaps the adapter forgets to fix a clunky phrase, the editor doesn’t catch some inconsistencies, the letterer misses a line that should be in a different font. But this is to be expected, no manga comes out perfect on the first round of lettering. That’s what copy-editing is for. In our perfect scenario, there are at least four rounds of copy-edits unless a series turns out not to have too many errors. (Sometimes you just don’t need to copy-edit a manga that much. I find this happens a lot with series that have a lot of sound effects and very little dialogue.) At least one round of copy-editing is done by a separate copy-editor, to catch any little mistakes the editor fails to see.

In the perfect situation here, however, there are two copy-editors.The main editor of the book gets at least two or three rounds of copy-edits before finalizing everything. Four if the book really needs it. Once the covers are checked, the final quality check arrives about two days before it’s due and there is enough time to finish it without it conflicting with other assignments. The result, three months or so later, is your typical volume of manga. There aren’t many editing errors that most readers would notice. Perhaps a few sticklers find a phrase to be too awkward for their taste or think a line has been poorly translated, but the general public is happy with your work. (Although not necessarily the work of the mangaka.)

Like I said, I haven’t come close to this perfect scenario since October, 2010. Back then, I was editing for TOKYOPOP and things were decent. We edited everything by hand, on printed sheets of paper. This, of course, was awesome and awful at the same time. Awesome because we had physical trail and physical examples of our work to keep. Awful because of the amount of paper used, and the amount of trips I had to take to the office just to pick up and return my assignments.

Unsurprisingly, TOKYOPOP moved to a digital system in November, 2010. However, the big problem wasn’t the switch to digital, I found. It was the outsourcing of lettering to a company in a non-English speaking country and a restriction on the number of copy-edits we could do.

It was a rough transition. The letterers there had a little experience with us because they had done the initial layout of our books from our scripts, but getting them to understand our corrections process was tough. I put out one of my worst books to date, and while I’m partially to blame (the translator’s script being put in instead of my edited script was my fault,) higher ups denied me the chance to fix that mistake.

Since I couldn’t get the book re-lettered, get an extension or do more copy-edits, I wound up putting every single line of the correct script into the computer. It took a very long time and I nearly worked right through Thanksgiving. And then the book came back to me and almost nothing was fixed. I had tried to make some concessions so the letterer would not have to re-do everything, but it was clearly too much for them to handle. The book went to print with a lot of errors and I wanted to cry with shame. Not only was it one of my books, but it was by one of my favorite mangaka. One of the mangaka who had gotten me really into manga as teenager. The only way I could cheer myself up was to tell myself that I’d done absolutely everything possible, and committed to memory everything I learned how to do better during the next rounds of editing.

The next few months were still rough, but eventually the editors and the outsourced letterers found a sort-of happy medium. (Now, I really prefer the digital editing system. It’s much faster and much more freeing for me, as someone who travels a lot.) The only problem with this was that the lettering always came back late, forcing the editors to really push the printer’s deadline.

Then TOKYOPOP switched where the lettering was outsourced to in order to combat the deadline problem, but the change in letterers made things worse. The new letterers didn’t know how to read our scripts, had no experience laying out our scripts, didn’t know any English and didn’t know what to do during the copy-editing process. I was relieved that the final month of TOKYOPOP books I worked on were never published. The problems were just that serious.

After the shutdown, I haven’t worked for too many clients, but unfortunately I’m still seeing a loss of interest in the editing process. Routinely, I don’t get more than one copy-edit and no quality check, which I find ridiculous because it means I’m not the last one to look over a manga before it gets re-lettered once again. This leaves an opening for the letterer to misinterpret any of my corrections. (Sorry, letterers, it’s true. But it’s also not your fault, you’re just trying to do your job.) So basically, I get no guarantee that all the work I just did and was paid for holds up to my standards at all. The only time I can check is when it comes to print, and oftentimes I find my corrections not being made. This means that both my script-edit and my copy-edit are reduced to rough guidelines, not strict standards. And a few times -some very sad times for me- I haven’t been allowed to copy-edit the book at all. The results speak for themselves.

It just makes me mad. Sure, the publisher might be more to blame for not allowing for a better editing process, but my name is on there. This means that I’m also to blame to the public, some of whom think that I’m also responsible for changing company policy. Even worse, potential clients reading might think I don’t do good work. But I want to do good work, I want my manga to be as perfect as I could possibly ever make it. What kind of manga fan would I be if I didn’t want that? What kind of professional would I be? Not the kind with a job in the industry, I think.

There are piecemeal solutions, like making myself go over a script-edit or a copy-edit a few more times before turning it in. While I try do to those things when deadlines allow it, those aren’t real solutions to me. More rounds means I get time to refresh my mind while the letterer works on my corrections, then I can come back to the series and read it as a fan. This really helps the voice and the flow of things. I’ll admit these aren’t my strongest points as an editor, but I’ve no doubt I’ll get better with more practice. If I ever get the chance again.  More rounds also means a copy-editor comes in and takes a look at the manga. And while a main editor is necessary to make final decisions and keep things consistent, more eyes on a book is always better.

What sucks even more is the lack of power I have as a freelancer. I’m not there to tell my clients how to run their companies, but I am there to do my job. And it’s been a long time since I felt like I’ve truly done my job. I feel utterly shackled by this inability to oppose anyone, even in the name of personal pride and quality.

It’s high time for someone to destroy the manga-editing status quo because the status is not quo.

This is mostly because I’ve somewhat run out of good ideas, but also largely because of mounting personal problems that I can no longer ignore.

Thus, I’ve decided it’s best to put All About Manga on a semi-hiatus, meaning I’ll post when inspiration hits or when I want to participate in a manga blogging event like the Manga Movable Feast.

I am determined to continue, no matter how slowly, with my manga blogging, but worrying about not getting posts out does not make the process enjoyable for both myself and my readers. Not to mention the fact that I’ve got enough other stuff to stress over as it is.

Thanks for your understanding, everyone.

P.S. Can someone start a clock to see how long it takes me to whip up a good post after I publish this one?

I was still awake and online the night of the earthquake and tsunami. True to form, Twitter was quickly inundated with news and video of the disaster unfolding before us. It was quite something to behold and I had a lot of trouble going to sleep that night after watching the black water rush through the Japanese coast.

Perhaps because I also live in an earthquake zone and only a half hour’s drive from the beach at any given time, I felt a special kind of sympathy and pain with the victims. A natural disaster can happen to anyone and everyone, after all.

Thus, I was compelled last year, with the help of Mike Huang of Anime Diet, to start Anime and Manga Bloggers For Japan. Along with Mike Olivarez, Linda Yau and hundreds of other bloggers, we raised a total of $4,846.03 for Shelter Box and Doctors Without Borders, all through small donations from fans, bloggers and other people who felt the need to give responsibly to Japan.

The site hasn’t been updating nor has anyone donated money since April 2011, but my goodness, what we managed to do in a month. It was a truly inspiring experience.

After talking to Mike Huang about the situation, however, we’ve decided to close the Anime and Manga Bloggers for Japan website when its domain expires soon. While we could keep the effort going, we failed to do so before and I would be afraid of failing to do so again. Sometimes, it’s just best to leave things to the more professional and organized fundraising efforts.

Despite this, it is my fervent hope that everyone is still supporting Japan in its efforts to rebuild. Whether through donations, tourism or continuing to buy Japanese imports.

While all of these are fine ways to help, I would recommend planning a trip to Japan as one of the best ways to help rebuild the country. While many of Japan’s most popular attractions are far from the hardest-hit areas of the country, visiting the disaster areas as a tourist gives the region a long-term goal to accommodate tourists and monetary incentive to rebuild faster.

I’ve been around the travel industry all my life and avoiding a country where disaster has struck (both natural and man-made) only delays the country’s progress. Bali was able to rebuild after two terrorist bombings, but years of tourists avoiding the island meant that many people struggled to make a living until the tourists felt it safe to come back. The same thing has happened in Haiti after their devastating 2010 earthquake. There, in the years since the earthquake, little has been done. The money coming into the country is inadequate and not targeted to their needs. Meanwhile, the country’s industries cannot bring enough money into the country to help.

Japan can count itself lucky that it is not a third-world country without enough infrastructure to rebuild, but their struggle is not over. It is our duty as world citizens to not ignore Japan, or any other country marred by disaster, but to actively support the country and its industries.

Thanks again, one last time, to everyone who donated and helped out. Continue to be the kind souls that you are and never forget that even the smallest of efforts can be of great help to those in need.

While I understand that single-issue comics are very important to the American comic industry in that they gauge interest (via sales) before a comic is published as a trade paperback, but floppies are the most annoying way of reading comics.

First of all, the advertising is such that it’s incredibly distracting. I could almost understand having all those pages of ads in such a short amount of pages, the money has to come from somewhere, but I hate the way the ads interrupt the story. As I was reading an issue of Batwoman last night, the sequence of pages went as such: 14 pages, ad, ad, page, double-page spread ad,  page, ad, ad, page, ad, 5 pages, end of comic material. Batgirl was laid out similarly: 4 pages, ad, 3 pages, ad, page, ad, ad, 3 pages, ad, ad, 2 pages, ad, 3 pages, ad, 3 pages, ad, page, end of comic material.

It made me really mad that the story I was reading kept being interrupted. Being familiar with the publishing world, I know I must put up with advertising to keep such publications afloat, but I would rather quit buying floppies entirely than have to deal with this. Putting all the ads at either the beginning or the end of the comic seems like an acceptable option to me, but clearly DC thinks otherwise.

Then there’s the amount of pages you get for each single-issue comic you buy. Argh. 20-22 pages an issue is far too little to truly enjoy for me. It’s all the fault of my long-term manga collecting habit, I know.

See, advertising in manga isn’t as invasive. Even in the original magazine you don’t get full-page ads in the middle of a chapter. Ads wait til the end, or are off to the side, only taking up part of the page. These small in-page ads do interrupt the story a bit, but are far easier to either ignore or skim without breaking up the reader’s concentration too hard.

But also, for the price of three floppies, I can get 10 times the pages for my money with manga. I know this is because mainstream comics rely on color and shiny paper. I know this, and yet I can’t feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth. And I’m fairly certain that manga publishers need my dollars more than Marvel and DC do.

I’m just going to give up and give in to my illogical hatred of single-issue comics.

Man, am I glad manga isn’t published like that anymore.

It’s part of a manga editor’s job to keep up with and suggest new titles to publish too. Unfortunately, as a freelancer, I don’t get to do this much. So instead of having dream titles that I’d love to see published, I have dream titles that I’d love to publish myself.

One of those titles is Osamu Tezuka’s Nanairo Inko or Rainbow Parakeet.

This dream came about one day when I was doing research on the extent of Tezuka’s manga oeuvre and consulted my senpai (for lack of a better word), Annaliese Christman.

Annaliese, if you haven’t heard of her, is a freelance letterer and touch-up artist for Viz Media. She’s worked on the new editions of X, Solanin and more shounen titles than I can remember. We also went to university together and served as officers in the school’s anime club at the same time. We were the biggest manga fangirls in the club and she’s the one who let me borrow the first Tezuka manga I ever read.

So, when I asked her what Tezuka manga she’d most like to see published, she started fangirling over Rainbow Parakeet. I’d never heard about it before, so I looked the series up.

Just from looking at the covers alone, it was easy to get hooked on Rainbow Parakeet.  Annaliese and I both have a thing for manga about phantom thieves, so it was love at first sight.

So then we decided that one day we were going to team up and publish it.

Really, it’s a great little Tezuka manga. It’s seven volumes long, which means it won’t be too much of a risk to publish. In fact, France’s Asuka has already jumped on it. It seems like Tezuka Pro has begun to license Tezuka’s manga to US companies other than Vertical now, so there’s a chance that we could buy the license some day.

Most of all, it’s a FUN Tezuka manga. We don’t get too many of those in the U.S. since readers here are mainly interested in his dramatic stories. But we all know that Tezuka’s lighter manga can be a real joy, especially after reading Princess Knight.

And let’s face it, Tezuka does his best work when his manga revolves around strong, somewhat eccentric characters like this titular thief. Just look at Black Jack, Buddha, MW, Ode to Kirihito, Princess Knight…

Some day… Some day! We will publish Rainbow Parakeet!

Right after we tackle Rose of Versailles and make a lot of money, allowing us to publish more great, older manga. (It may seem like a pipe dream, but hey! If you asked me two years ago whether I expected to work on certain big-name manga, I would have laughed at the idea! Anything is possible!)

For more about Osamu Tezuka’s manga, you can check out the Manga Moveable Feast on Kate Dacey’s blog, the Manga Critic. For more posts from other manga bloggers, you can also take a look at the Tezuka MMF archive.

…Which leads me to a small conundrum. All the manga apps on my iPad have become somewhat stagnant. To begin with, there aren’t too many titles I want to buy. I’ve already bought all the volumes of series I’m collecting digitally and there don’t seem to be too many new additions to any of the apps. There are, however, a lot of manga that I’m already collecting.

These fall into two categories: manga where I’ve bought volume 1, but haven’t bought more if because I’ve been saving my money for other titles; and manga I’ve been collecting for quite a number of volumes.

It seems to me that if I’m having trouble keeping up with these titles, perhaps getting them digitally would help. That way I could get two for the price of one print volume, not to mention, not have to worry so much about space in my apartment. This seems particularly plausible for series like Story of Saiunkoku, Saturn Apartments and Cross Game, where I just keep forgetting to pick up volume 2. But what about series like Otomen, Natsume’s Book of Friends, Oishinbo and Grand Guignol Orchestra? (Yeah, so far this only applies to Viz series.) Am I just supposed to have half of a completed series on my shelves? Do I really care that much about having every print volume of a series I’ve already started in print?

BAH! SO CONFUSING!

Which leads me to ask: What would you do in this situation?

I think I might go ahead and start digital collections of manga where I only have one volume, it’s less of a issue there. But I’m still hung up over series where I’ve bought more than one print volume.

Personally, I love Ode to Kirihito the best. It was the very first Tezuka manga I remember reading and I still find it to be one of his most solid works.

That being said, I really enjoyed Princess Knight! And I really want to read Rainbow Parakeet in English! (I swear I will never stop talking it up until it gets published in the U.S.!)

So what’s your favorite Tezuka manga? What are you dying to see published in English? Have you read any of his work recently? (I just finished Black Jack Volume 10 myself.)

But I think it’s a good list and that it’s worthy of it’s own spot on All About Manga, so I’m going to re-do the whole damn post. Right here. Right now.

Most of these aren’t in any order, except the first two. Beware that a lot of these are out of print. The reason I suggest them is because they are WORTH hunting down and perhaps paying a little extra for a certain volume. Mind you, I’ve only had to do this for one of these series so far.

1. From Far Away

From Far Away is my favorite love story and I will never get tired of pimping it out to people. I think it’s the best example of a fantasy world being full of different kinds of people I’ve ever seen in a manga. In fantasy, I see a lot of authors have problems developing characters beyond what side of the story’s main issue they’re on. With Hikawa’s characters, you could spend hours describing all their little quirks. Do be warned, the series takes a little bit to warm up and volume 1 doesn’t feature the most amazing writing. Keep reading!

I collected From Far Away when it was still being released, so I have no idea how out of print it is aside from friends who are looking to collect it.

2. Monster

Naoki Urasawa is one of my favorite manga-ka of all time and Monster is one of his best series. They call him the Master of Suspense because of Monster, I’m sure of it! It follows a Japanese surgeon in Germany who gets caught in a strange, very scary conspiracy because he saved the life of a young boy ten years before. This is probably the series that got me collecting something other than shoujo manga.

This one, unfortunately, seems to be very out of print, from what I hear. Is it worth it, you ask? Well, when this manga was still coming out, my anime club passed this manga around like it was a pipe filled with the best hashish ever. There was a waiting list at least a half a dozen long for a number of volumes. (So glad that I started buying it after I borrowed the series…)

If Monster eludes you, check out Pluto and 20th Century Boys, also by Urasawa. Both are excellent.

3. Basara

Basara! My love! This epic shoujo manga reads a lot more like a shounen manga, but with a heavier dose of romance than normal.  It follows the struggle of a young revolutionary, who must hide her gender as she strives to exact revenge upon a tyrannical ruling class in post-apocalyptic Japan.

This manga is incredibly out of print. In fact, it’s the only manga where I’ve dared to spend much more than MSRP for a single volume. (Volume 19, which is heavily out of print. I got a slightly damaged library copy for $60. But I had incredible luck with the rest of the volumes and bought most of them at below MSRP, so it all evens out.)

4. Banana Fish

I just finished Banana Fish and it was one of those series where I was reading the volumes with such intensity, it was a little scary. Banana Fish wouldn’t be called a shoujo manga if it weren’t for the intense relationship between its two main characters, Ash and Eiji, who are so close it’s almost sexual. The rest of the time, it’s guns, drugs, violence, mafia-types and anything else typical of 1980s-era gangs in New York City.

Even though it’s been a long time since Banana Fish was published, I had no trouble collecting the series. People tell me it’s out of print, so I may have been very lucky, but check your local comic book store anyway. They might have extra copies laying around. (Buy those if you see them and really want this series. I always recommend buying stuff out of order if it’s OOP.)

5. Please Save My Earth

I’m actually still in the middle of reading Please Save My Earth. That’s how much I like it. I don’t even know how it ends yet and here I am recommending it to you. But I always get so SAD whenever I finish a chunk of volumes…

Please Save My Earth is about a bunch of teens (and one kid) who find out that they have memories of a past life on an alien moon base. As they get to know each other better, they find themselves entangled in the same relationships and drama that dominated their former selves.

Anyway. I’m not having any trouble getting volumes, even though I thought I would have more trouble. A quick scan of Amazon tells me you can get all the volumes for at or below MSRP though.

6. To Terra…

There’s a reason why Keiko Takemiya is considered one of the pioneers of shoujo and yaoi manga and To Terra… profiles everything that makes her great. Beautiful art with more experimental paneling than you’ll see in most modern-day stuff; amaaaaaaazing scifi writing; and more subtle boys’ love than you can shake a stick at!

Luckily, these volumes are almost always available due to their publisher (Vertical Inc.) being awesome and always keeping all their titles perpetually in print.

7. Ode to Kirihito

Tezuka is a great manga-ka and there are plenty of his works on the English language market right now, but Ode to Kirihito is one of my favorites. It’s a heavily emotional journey and easy to sympathize with the main characters, more so than some of his other manga. I think this is the very first Tezuka manga I read, but it’s just good and a lot easier to get into than some of his other dark stuff.

If you want something lighter, I do recommend Princess Knight, which will give you crazy feelings of Disney nostalgia. Dororo is a good middle ground, in case you’re not into fluff. All three titles are available from Vertical Inc. If you have trouble finding Dororo, it’s probably because they’re putting out a new omnibus edition.

8. Genkaku Picasso

I don’t know if Genkaku Picasso will always been on my top ten list, but it blew me away when I finished it last week. It was such a great example of using a standard manga formula (battle/problem of the week), that the manga was able to mock itself for using it. Personally, I could relate to the main character and I even cried a bit at the ending. I seriously wish that more shounen manga were like Genkaku Picasso.

It should still be available from Viz Media, seeing how it’s a fairly recent release.

9. MARS

MARS was an important title to me in high school. In a fit of obvious stupidity, I sold off all my copies before college and now I have to recollect them all.  I’ve gotten through about half the series so far and it still holds up beautifully. A somewhat dark, but sometimes uplifting look at the struggles the more creative types can face in high school.

I’ve looked at Amazon for the volumes before and most of them seem to be well below MSRP. Take advantage of this because you’re much less likely to see it in stores.

10. Ooku

I’m not entirely sure whether or not to feature Ooku or Antique Bakery, which are both by Fumi Yoshinaga. But I know this for sure, I will always love Fumi Yoshinaga manga. She is a master of emotional faces and simple paneling. She draws food manga, yaoi, historical manga and slice of life, and somehow manages to make each story nearly perfect.

Ooku is currently running and in print. Antique Bakery is out of print, but SO WORTH IT. But do be warned that both manga contain fairly explicit sex scenes, in case that bothers you.

Honorable Mentions-

A Drunken Dream & Other Stories

Moto Hagio is kind of my manga hero after hearing her speak about how she creates at Comic-Con 2010. (Where this book of her short stories debuted.) It’s still in print and ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS. All shiny and golden. *_*

Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad

If you’re even slightly into indie rock, you’ll probably have a good time with Beck. It’s like a good teenage anthem song. Unfortunately it has been long out of print and was never actually finished in English. It’s still a good read!

Planetes

Personally, I like the anime better, but it’s such a good story! If you really can’t find the manga (it’s really out of print), go take a look at the anime and you won’t miss much. The manga is gorgeously drawn, though, so my only real argument for the anime is having seen it first.

Bunny Drop

This series is currently being released by Yen Press, so you’ll be able to find it easily. About an adorable kid and her not-so-adorable, older nephew who winds up adopting her. (Her father is his grandfather, who dies at the beginning.) SO CUTE.

A Bride’s Story

I LOVE A Bride’s Story! I never expected it to get licensed because of a slightly squicky May/December relationship, despite the fact that it has some of the most gorgeous artwork ever. It’s a historical manga, set in the Middle East in 19th Century and   is currently being released by Yen Press. If you want more of Kaoru Mori, Emma has also been released in English, but it’s getting hard to find.

Twin Spica

Oh, Twin Spica. Could there be a cuter slice of life, kind-of scifi series out there? I’m not sure. Everyone thinks Yotsuba&! is cute, but I think Twin Spica is better. Vertical just released the last volume has almost finished releasing the entire series, so it’s definitely still in print.

Barefoot Gen

I began reading Barefoot Gen for one of the Manga Moveable Feasts. It’s not happy, it’s about a family struggling before, during and after the nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, but it’s important and mostly true. (The author is a survivor of Hiroshima.) It’s still in print, as far as I know.

Nodame Cantabile

There are more than a few manga about serious music students out there and Nodame Cantabile has got to be the most entertaining, especially when it comes to the titular character. Sadly out of print, but wroth the read!