Animes are only made from the best manga series on the market so it’s only natural we’d have a list featuring some of the most influential and groundbreaking mangas of all time. While they may not all be of the same quality, they each hold immense weight in the history and or future of manga and anime as a whole.
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Dragon Ball
Dragon Ball is the father of Shonen Jump and the progenitor of the genre now known as Battle Shonen which is catered towards young men and can be identified through their heavy focus on sakuga action and battle. While Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball manga series is a rather simple story with simplistic characters, when it comes to fighting it gets your blood pumped up and that’s true even today.
One Punch Man
One Punch Man manga series, written by ONE and illustrated by Yusuke Murata, features one of the best if not the best art in all of animanga save a select few. Murata’s paneling and art almost feel like anime storyboards. The amount of detail, contrast, and spectacle in his art is astounding to the point it actually elevates the story and its characters- as a proper manga should.
Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure
Hirohiko Araki’s Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure has been in serialization since before One Piece- meaning it’s very old and rather even a classic. This manga series mainly follows the young generations of the Joestar family who at this point consider Dio- the antagonist as part of their Jojo lifestyle and struggle. It’s a bizarre story with strange supernatural superpowers- what more do you need to know?
Naruto
None of today’s animes can claim to have made anime itself popular as a medium- none except Naruto which brought anime and manga to the West and soon exploded in popularity worldwide. Written and illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto, this manga series, despite being a Battle Shonen on the surface, deals with issues of depression, loneliness, trauma, and ostracization- but it’s not as grave as you’re making it up to be as there’s also lots of comedy and fun moments in this manga.
Akira
What Naruto was to regular audiences worldwide, Akira was to the worldwide critics. Akira was even adapted into a classic anime film showcasing the horrors of warfare in a post-war setting. It also boasts great action scenes, sci-fi elements, and psychic powers so you can imagine it has a wide appeal. Akira was one of the first mangas to gain popularity in the West and would you believe it- this manga was translated and published by MARVEL itself.
Goodnight Punpun
Perhaps one of the darkest manga series on this list, Goodnight Punpun by Inio Asano is a coming-of-age story about Onodera Punpun. A simple premise but this manga is as realistic as it gets because nothing is happy-go-lucky as they usually are in stories like this. Punpun has to navigate life through depression, trauma, social isolation, and self-identity issues. He has a dysfunctional family and complicated romantic relationships and he must deal with all of them at different stages of his life.
Chainsaw Man
Chainsaw Man is part of the unofficial “Dark Triad” of modern battle shonen- taking its inspiration from the Big 3 of the previous generation. What sets it apart however is Tatsuki Fujimoto’s eccentric nature as an author. With unpredictable storytelling and his art and paneling taking heavy inspiration from film techniques like cinematography and lighting, reading Chainsaw Man feels different than reading any other manga series and it just goes to show the versatility of the medium.
Vagabond
Vagabond is currently one of the highest-rated mangas on MAL and for a good reason. It retells a fictionalized account of a Japanese swordsman named Musashi Miyamoto based on the novel “Musashi” by Eiji Yoshikawa. The author of Slam Dunk fame, Takehiko Inoue’s depiction of this character on the pages of his manga series and his style of storytelling make it nigh criminal to adapt it into just another anime. It’s one of those few mangas that, fans agree, cannot be justifiably adapted into an anime because it makes full use of manga as a medium of storytelling and art.
One Piece
It’s no surprise that One Piece is on this list. Eiichiro Oda went on to be granted a prestigious Japanese title declaring him as one of the geniuses of the current era due to this very manga series, his magnum opus- One Piece. The story began serialization back in 1997 and is still ongoing. It went on to break several Guinness World Records and is the most popular and highest-selling manga of all time. It’s even outsold the likes of Batman comics and is close to beating Superman’s sales in the near future which is mind-boggling to think about. Of course, this is all possible due to the sheer scale and genius of One Piece’s storytelling, worldbuilding, and characters.
Berserk
Written and illustrated by the late Kentaro Miura, Berserk is considered by most to be the greatest manga series of all time in terms of quality, storytelling, characters, and art. The manga is so iconic and powerful that it’s difficult to animate it into an anime and do proper justice to Miura’s art- which is why most anime adaptations of this manga have been a failure. While it is tempting to pick up a volume and start reading this manga- readers be warned that this is the darkest, most gruesome manga on this list so make sure you can stomach it before you get into it.
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While we could have always chosen the top 10 rated mangas from any platform for this list, we focused on both art and story for our list so that both the primary aspects of manga as a medium of storytelling get their shine. If you want to know about the best anime series then you can read our top 5 best anime series of all time.
