I've consumed a ton of manga in my life. I enjoyed it immensely.
Of all those manga I read, I picked three most memorable ones for those who read manga.
So here it goes. I recommend these three manga.
- Dragon Ball/Dragon Ball Z
Probably the most famous Japanese Manga out there, Dragon Ball is about a naive kid from another planet learning martial arts, becoming stronger, fighting bad guys and collecting seven Dragon Balls to call forth Eternal Dragon who will grant wishes to whoever collects them and summon it. It's a combination of famous Chinese Classic 'Journey to the West'(西遊記), one of the four great classical novel of Chinese literature and DC Comics' classic superhero, Superman. The protagonist of Dragon Ball, Goku crash-lands on the earth and found by a loving human being and grew up to be a super hero like Clark kent was.
Goku lands on earth.
Baby Kal-El's landing on earth
Also like Wukong in the chinese novel 'Journey to the West', Goku in Dragon Ball rides cloud and wields magical, length-changing staff called Nyoi-bō.
Goku Riding Nimbus with his Nyoi-bō.
Wukong in Journey to the West
While Dragon Ball was about naive small kid Goku, Dragon Ball Z is about grown up Goku and the stakes are much higher.
In Dragon Ball Z, Goku and his friends uses Dragon Ball as a means to fight the evil Freeza who will likely destory the universe.
However in the Dragon Ball, one of Goku's friend, Oolong asks the 'Eternal Dragon' for girl's panties and wastes the wish.
- Fist of Northstar
This is also Japanese manga I enjoyed much.
First of Northstar's story starts after nuclear war wipes most of humanity on earth and chaos kicks into the remaining society.
Kenshiro, who is a successor to a ancient martial art called Hokuto Shinken, must find his girl friend Yuria who was taken from him by his arch enemy Sin and also save the world from this unending brutality with his Hokuto Shinken - the most powerful martial art in the story.
It's kinda like Bruce Lee becomes post nuclear war Jesus to save the world with his invinsible martial art skill.
First of Northstar has lots of gory scene where you can see human body brutally harmed before they die.
If you don't mind bad guys brutally punished by our hero, you will enjoy it much.
- Guyver
Guyver impressed me the most among all manga I read because not only did I really enjoy reading it but it felt like there's depth to this manga that other manga don't have. The premise of Guyver is that long time ago(pre historic era) alien from other galaxy came to earth to create an army on earth to use in their inter galactic warfare.
So they experimented over and over on humans so they can transform into huge beast like monster who can still take orders from them through telepathically, and they were called Zoanoid.
Zoanoid
And to control those Zoanoid, they created much more powerful superior form of Zoanoid, Zoalord who can also telepathically give orders to Zoanoid. One day, the aliens decided to try to put their standard bio body suit that enhances their ability on the Zoanoid to see how it can further enhance Zoanoid. The result was devastating. The Zoanoid who put on alien's armor became very aggressive and they no longer be able to telepathically take orders from either aliens or Zoalord. It ended up destorying one of the ship that the aliens brought to earth.
Knowing that with the free will, Zoanoid can be threat to their existence, aliens decided to abandon their mission and leave the earth. They called the bio armor, Guyver unit. Fastforward to 20th century, an introverted high schooler Shaw accidentally equips Guyver and Chronos secret organization who is led by remaining Zoalord long time ago, tries to take back Guyver unit by any means.
Shaw now has to use Guyver power to protect his loving ones. Guyver ended incomplete quite some years ago, but it never left my mind for some reason. After years, I found out the story the writter used in the Guyver is the story of Annunaki in the Epic of Gilgamesh - the oldest literature in human history.
Interestingly, all three were influenced by classic literature before them.
Which one would you like to read most? And Why?