Recommend some Manga please!

[Thudpucker]

Here's some I would recommend:

Spoiler:

Alive by Tadashi Kawashima

A strange virus is making its way around the globe, causing its victims to commit suicide–and becoming a lethal pandemic in less than a week. Now a group of Tokyo teens who have survived the outbreak are wondering why they are still alive.

Spoiler:

Airgear by Oh!Great

This is my favorite manga right now, so much fun! Whatever description I type will just sound lame, it seems like every bad manga cliche. Trust me, this is a fantastic story with great characters and art.

Spoiler:

Bombos vs Everything! by Maximo V. Lorenzo

Kind of weak on story but the art is fantastic

Spoiler:

The Drifting Classroom by Kazuo Umezu

Classroom, originally published in 1972,tells the story of sixth-grader Sho, who has a bitter fight with his mother before leaving for school one morning; later that day, his entire school vanishes in a violent earthquake, transported to a mysterious desert. When a girl falls to her death, teachers and students begin to panic. Nerves continue to unravel when the school's inadequate food supply is discovered.

Spoiler:

Eden by Hiroki Endo

A gay man, near death from the paralysis that has killed billions already, and two teenagers--one his best friend's son--live in a huge experimental facility, now dilapidated, that was built to foster plague-resistant individuals. The teens are its only success stories. Now the boy's father, his brain joined to a mechanical body, returns with soldiers and UN personnel. Amid revelations of friendship betrayed, a fight breaks out. With the help of an AI the boy has reanimated, the teens prevail. Twenty years later, the boy's son, accompanied by the same AI, explores a deserted city, and three men and a seeming girl capture him. Endo mutes manga distinctives for realism's sake (e.g., eyes look normal, not the size of saucers), keeps the violence short and sharp, inserts a few low-key satiric jibes at late-twentieth-century sociopolitics, and paces the narrative to facilitate milieu and character development. He conjures a postapocalyptic aura of near-palpable mystery. Why did what happened occur?

Spoiler:

Genshiken: The Society for the Study of Modern Visual Culture by Kio Shimoku

This is a manga everyone on the board would enjoy I think. It's a very normal slice of life story about nerds who participate in a comic book club. It's the most realistic portrayal of what nerd life I have ever seen, just in and out every day events as people learn to come out of thier shells and not be ashamed of thier hobby. Wonderful stuff.

Spoiler:

Planetes by Makoto Yukimura

I love this story so much!

Planetes almost defies description, but it's nominally about a space debris clean-up crew in the near future who work ceaselessly at clearing away all the now-useless junk we've launched into orbit. It has all the stillness and mystery of 2001: A Space Odyssey, without the detachment and tension. The characters deal with real-life issues of loss, inadequacy and loneliness against the vast backdrop of limitless space, and without bringing out a stick to beat the moral into us, Planetes proves that companionship and purpose make us whole and give meaning to life.

Spoiler:

King City by Brandon Scott Graham

The hero, Joe, employs a magic cat, Earthling J. J. Cattingworth the Third, to do his fighting, lock picking and spy-gizmo work. (PETA members, beware—Joe makes the cat "work" by flinging syringes full of drugs at it.) Joe and his friend Pete do jobs for various shady characters, until Pete falls in love with a water-breathing alien he is charged to deliver to a club for nefarious purposes. Meanwhile, Joe is spying on mob bosses who eat cannibal sushi. Joe and his cat meet a Sasquatch named Lukashev who spent his youth "as part of a super-naut program, along with a chupacabra and a dinosaur from the future." The fun with words points to an older audience, but the humor has juvenile moments (at one point, Joe uses the cat as a periscope by looking up its butt). The art, while not sophisticated, has a funky sense of movement that suits the hilarious whole. Where Graham really succeeds is in making readers care about these oddballs, especially when Joe risks his life to save his ex-girlfriend from a bad guy (if you can imagine throwing a drugged cat at a mobster as a dramatic moment).

Spoiler:

Next Exit by Christy Lijewski

Welcome to Alkaline, a world where humans are the minority and fragments of memory come to life. Here reality is a whim that can be bent to one’s will. Those who can manipulate reality are governed by those who cannot, and existence is held in a tenuous balance.

Join Markesh and Retrab, two young adventurers who may have found the only means to escape this reality—an Exit map leading to an ancient gateway said to release one from the bounds of Alkaline. But escape is never easy. Hunted by the government, attacked by serial killers and haunted by their own pasts, they may have found an Exit, but getting out alive is going to be harder than they ever imagined possible.

Spoiler:

Random Encounter by Nicc Balce

Strange things are afoot at the circle..eh...the Kwik Mart. With their errie tromp through the latest Silent Hill game interrupted by a strange sound - Migo, Mica and Mona begin a journey into the perplexing and uncharted.

The discovery of a dead girl in a pool of blood on the roof of Migo's parent's Kwik Mart sends the kids lives into a malestorm of confusion, freakish aliens, precipitous resurection and enigmatical secrets.

Spoiler:

Spirit of Wonder by Kenji Tsuruta

I am in awe of this artist

China is a lovely young woman, the kind of beauty people write songs about or name stars after. She`s as spectacular as Fourth-of-July fireworks and as striking as lightning, and Jim Floyd -- the technical assistant to the crazed Professor Breckenridge -- just got struck! In fact, he`d give China the moon if he could. Odd thing is, he can. So that`s just what he intends to do. Spirit of Wonder is a delightfully touching tale by one of Japan`s most respected manga masters.

Spoiler:

Negima by Ken Akamatsu

A little pervy but tremendous fun, the characters are so likeable! It goes to shit after volume 7 unfortunately.

Spoiler:

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki

What is there to say? This is the single greatest comic ever created, anyone who has not read it is missing out

[Ben]

[Thudpucker]

I enjoyed Love Hina, that was fun. Negima I like a bit more, the art is much better and I like the magical element.

Never heard of Monster, I'll pick it up!

[Dark Sasha]

Lone Wolf and Cub. You all need to read it.

[Thudpucker]

Lone Wolf and Cub. You all need to read it.

I wish Darkhorse hadn't made them so small.

[Mister Mets]

I wish Darkhorse hadn't made them so small.

But it leads to them being ten bucks (cover price) per three hundred page volume.

I'd also highly recommend Osamu Tezuka's Buddha. The first volume was stunning.

[greg donovan]

I wish Darkhorse hadn't made them so small.

but you can fit them in your pocket.

[greg donovan]

planetes is s series i have been meaning to check out. both the DVDs and the comics.

[TheKraken]

I wish Darkhorse hadn't made them so small.

There's a segment in Paul Pope's art book that explains that. I had never heard this before, but he sez manga collections that big in Japan are considered a mark of distinction. The reason the best books are collected so small is space. In such a notoriously crowded country, people are less likely to keep comics they've read because they have nowhere to store them. Important books are printed in that tiny size so you'll be able to keep them even if your apartment is basically a closet with a window. According to Pope, printing a book that size is like having "One million copies sold" written on the cover.

[NeverWanderer]

I've got the same five I always recommend..

AKIRA

DOMU

SHORT PROGRAM

VIDEO GIRL AI

NEON GENESIS EVANGELION (yes, it's an anime... the manga is good too, though, and it tells the story slightly differently)