Book picks similar to
Sanctuary, Vol. 1 by Sho Fumimura
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Black Blizzard
Yoshihiro Tatsumi - 1956
Tatsumi documented how his love for Mickey Spillane and hard-boiled crime novels led him to create this landmark genre of manga in his epic, critically acclaimed 2009 autobiography, A Drifting Life. With Black Blizzard, Tatsumi explores the dark underbelly of his working-class heroes that five decades later has made him one of the best-known Japanese cartoonists in North America. Susumu Yamaji, a twenty-four-year-old pianist, is arrested formurder and ends up handcuffed to a career criminal on the train that will take them to prison. An avalanche derails the train and the criminal takes the opportunity to escape, dragging a reluctant Susumu with him into the blizzard raging outside. They flee into the mountains to an abandoned ranger station, where they take shelter from the storm. As they sit around the fire they built, Susumu relates how love drove him to become a murderer. A cinematic adventure story, Black Blizzard uncovers an unlikely love story and an even unlikelier friendship.
A Bride's Story, Vol. 1
Kaoru Mori - 2009
Coping with cultural differences, blossoming feelings for her new husband, and expectations from both her adoptive and birth families, Amir strives to find her role as she settles into a new life and a new home in a society quick to define that role for her.
Claymore, Vol. 1: Silver-eyed Slayer
Norihiro Yagi - 2002
Claymores are half-humans, half-demons who willingly transformed themselves by mixing their blood with monster's blood. Claire, nicknamed silver-eyed killer, is such a powerful Claymore, she can slay a Yoma using only one hand. But she must constantly struggle to keep from becoming a monster herself.
Rurouni Kenshin, Volume 01
Nobuhiro Watsuki - 1994
Set against the backdrop of the Meiji Restoration, it tells the saga of Himura Kenshin, once an assassin of ferocious power, now a humble rurouni, a wandering swordsman fighting to protect the honor of those in need. A hundred and fifty years ago in Kyoto, amid the flames of revolution, there arose a warrior, an assassin of such ferocious power he was given the title Hitokiri: Manslayer. With his bloodstained blade, Hitokiri Battosai helped close the turbulent Bakumatsu period and end the reign of the shoguns, slashing open the way toward the progressive Meiji Era. Then he vanished, and with the flow of years became legend. In the 11th year of Meiji, in the middle of Tokyo, the tale begins. Himura Kenshin, a humble rurouni, or wandering swordsman, comes to the aid of Kamiya Kaoru, a young woman struggling to defend her father's school of swordsmanship against attacks by the infamous Hitokiri Battosai. But neither Kenshin nor Battosai are quite what they seem...
Dogs: Prelude, Volume 0
Shirow Miwa - 2001
An action-packed, stylish shoot-’em-up.Boasting furious action, switchback plotting, magnetic characters and dazzling art, Dogs tells the story of four individuals struggling to survive a dystopian urban future by gun and sword and courage and luck.MIHAI, the "Weepy Old Killer": A former hitman now trying to live a quiet life but haunted by the deaths of his victims and his lover.BADOU, the "Gun Smoker": A chain-smoking "information broker" and hired gun whose reckless façade hides a serious intent.NAOTO, the "Blade Maiden": A preternaturally skilled swordswoman with a single desire: revenge against the assassin who cut down her family.HEINE, the "Stray Dog": A cipher with a metal collar bolted to his neck, a disturbing talent for mayhem, and a childhood sacrificed to the thing known as "Kerberos."Driven by their ghosts--both dead and alive--and their desire for truth, all are struggling to solve the secrets of the past while surviving the dangerous present--by gun and sword and courage and luck.
Mushishi, Vol. 1
Yuki Urushibara - 2000
Some eat silence. Some thoughtlessly kill. Some simply drive men mad. Shortly after life emerged from the primordial ooze, these deadly creatures, mushi, came into terrifying being. And they still exist and wreak havoc in the world today. Ginko, a young man with a sardonic smile, has the knowledge and skill to save those plagued by mushi . . . perhaps.
Ghost in the Shell
Masamune Shirow - 1989
In the rapidly converging landscape of the 21st century Major Kusanagi is charged to track down the craftiest and most dangerous terrorists and cybercriminals, including ghost hackers When he track the trail of one hacker, her quest leads her to a world she could never have imagined.
Blood+, Vol. 01
Asuka Katsura - 2005
Horrible nightmares are the only hints at the violent life she once led, but her past is about to catch up with her and awaken the merciless warrior within. Chiropterans -- powerful shape-changing creatures who need and crave blood -- threaten humanity once more, and a mysterious organization called the Red Shield needs Saya's deadly sword skills and mysterious powers to aid in the fight against these beasts. As her submerged abilities begin to reawaken and as she seeks to regain her memories, Chiropteran warriors are guided by a mysterious leader to threaten Saya and her loved ones. Asuka Katsura's manga series successfully expands upon the original Production I.G./Aniplex feature, delivering moments of jarring violence and thrilling action in a tale that spans several centuries.
Ōoku: The Inner Chambers, Volume 1
Fumi Yoshinaga - 2005
Within eighty years of the first outbreak, the male population has fallen by seventy-five percent. Women have taken on all the roles traditionally granted to men, even that of the Shogun. The men, precious providers of life, are carefully protected. And the most beautiful of the men are sent to serve in the Shogun's Inner Chamber...
Honey and Clover, Vol. 1
Chica Umino - 2001
But with friends like his, life is never going to be that tame.
Tokyo Tarareba Girls, Vol. 1
Akiko Higashimura - 2014
She wants to be married by the time the Tokyo Olympics roll around in six years, but...that might be easier said than done! The new series by Akiko Higashimura erupts with sharp opinions on girls and tons of laughs!!
I Am a Hero Omnibus, Volume 1
Kengo Hanazawa - 2016
The zombie apocalypse has never been more surreal! A mentally unhinged manga artist witnesses the beginning of a zombie outbreak in Tokyo, and he's certain of only two things: he's destined to be the city's hero, and he possesses something very rare in Japan--an actual firearm! Kengo Hanazawa's award-winning series comes to Dark Horse, and this realistically-drawn international bestseller takes us from initial small battles for survival to a huge, body-horror epidemic that threatens all of humanity! These special omnibus volumes will collect two of the original Japanese books into each Dark Horse edition and include all of the color pages."Probably the greatest zombie manga ever." --Jason Thompson (Manga: The Complete Guide)
Opus
Satoshi Kon - 2011
But before he became a director, he was a manga artist, and Dark Horse is honored to remember Kon with the release of Satoshi Kon’s OPUS,an omnibus collection of a two-volume manga from 1996, created by Kon on the eve of his first film. OPUS contains the mastery of both realism and surrealism that would make Kon famous in Perfect Blue,as a manga artist planning a shocking surprise ending to his story gets literally pulled into his own work—to face for himself what he had planned for his characters!OPUS is Kon's metafictional tale of Chikara Nagai, a creator under pressure to finish his latest graphic novel, Resonance, who finds that the harshest critic of the shock ending he's got planned is the character who'll have to die in it! Nagai's stregths and weaknesses as a creator are tested beyond their limits as his present and his past, and the worlds of the manga and of reality, become the levels of a maze he may never escape... let alone get a chance to resolve the story!
In Clothes Called Fat
Moyoco Anno - 2002
In Clothes Called Fat details the lives of young women earnestly revealing the struggles women may have with their bodies and sexuality.Noko appears to be living a great life, she's got a good job and a loving boyfriend, but beneath a thin veneer is a young woman who is struggling with her self-image and self-confidence as she fights to keep her weight down. To Noko, being 5 pounds overweight means being miles away from happiness in her lovelife and in her work-place.Originally serialized in a major weekly newsmagazine for adult women (Shukan Josei, the first of its kind to be launched in Japan), this early gem from graphic novel megastar Moyoco Anno may be her most searing work to be published in English yet, closer in spirit to some of the best stateside indie comics—ironically, given its mainstream pedigree—than to most translated manga. In Clothes Called Fat is an indispensable addition to your growing library of sequential art for mature readers.