Our Manga shelf spans shonen classics to modern hits. Here are five must-read series worth diving into — Naruto, One Piece, Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Pokemon Adventures.
1. Naruto — Masashi Kishimoto
Naruto follows Naruto Uzumaki, an orphaned young ninja shunned by his village because he secretly hosts the Nine-Tailed Fox demon sealed inside him at birth. Written and illustrated by Masashi Kishimoto, the series ran in Weekly Shōnen Jump from 1999 to 2014 across 72 collected volumes. Naruto's core dream — to earn the respect of his village and become its leader, the Hokage — drives the entire saga. Along the way he forms Team 7 with rival-turned-friend Sasuke Uchiha, teammate Sakura Haruno, and mentor Kakashi Hatake. The story is as much about found family and belonging as it is about ninja combat, especially in Naruto and Sasuke's fractured, decade-spanning relationship. Sasuke's descent into vengeance after his clan's massacre, and the long road toward his possible redemption, forms one of the series' most debated arcs. Kishimoto builds an elaborate world of hidden villages, tailed-beast lore, and generational conflict that widens dramatically in the sequel arc, Naruto: Shippuden. With more than 250 million copies in print, it ranks among the best-selling manga series ever published. Its anime adaptation ran for hundreds of episodes and introduced the franchise to a massive global audience beyond print readers. Whichever volume you start with, Naruto rewards readers with a story about perseverance, trauma, and breaking cycles of hatred.
2. One Piece — Eiichiro Oda
One Piece follows Monkey D. Luffy, a young pirate whose body turned to rubber after eating a Devil Fruit, as he sails in search of the legendary treasure that gives the series its name. Eiichiro Oda has written and drawn the series continuously since 1997, making it one of the longest-running and most consistently successful manga in publishing history. It holds the Guinness World Record for the most copies published for a comic series by a single author, with well over 500 million copies in circulation. Luffy assembles the Straw Hat Pirates, a crew whose individual backstories — swordsman Zoro, navigator Nami, chef Sanji, archaeologist Robin, and others — are given as much narrative weight as the central plot. Oda's worldbuilding across the Grand Line is famously intricate, weaving political intrigue, ancient history, and a shadowy World Government into what starts as a lighthearted adventure. The series balances broad comedy with genuinely devastating emotional arcs, particularly around loss, freedom, and standing up to injustice. Long story arcs like Marineford and Wano are frequently cited as high points of modern shōnen storytelling. Its anime adaptation has aired continuously since 1999, and the franchise has expanded into films, video games, and a 2023 live-action Netflix series. Despite its length, Oda has stated the story has a definite planned ending, which he has been building toward for over two decades. New readers are often surprised by how quickly the crew and world become genuinely emotionally involving.
3. Attack on Titan — Hajime Isayama
Attack on Titan is set in a world where the last remnants of humanity live behind massive walls to protect themselves from giant, mindless humanoid Titans that devour people. Hajime Isayama serialized the story from 2009 to 2021 across 34 volumes, and it has sold more than 100 million copies worldwide. The story follows Eren Yeager, who vows to destroy every Titan after witnessing the death of his mother during a wall breach. What begins as a survival horror premise steadily unfolds into a much larger political and historical epic, revealing that the Titans and the walled nation have a far darker, more complicated origin than anyone knew. Isayama is known for relentless plot twists and a willingness to kill off major characters, which kept the series' direction genuinely unpredictable for over a decade. As the story widens, it becomes an allegory for cycles of war, nationalism, dehumanization, and the impossibility of easy moral answers — themes that sparked extensive real-world discussion and analysis. The acclaimed anime adaptation, produced by Wit Studio and later MAPPA, is widely credited with introducing the series to an even larger global audience. Its ending proved controversial and much-debated among longtime fans, a testament to how invested readers became in its outcome. The series is frequently ranked among the most significant and influential manga of the 2010s. It rewards readers willing to sit with moral ambiguity rather than clear heroes and villains.
4. Jujutsu Kaisen — Gege Akutami
Jujutsu Kaisen follows Yuji Itadori, a high schooler who swallows a cursed talisman — one of the fingers of the powerful Cursed Spirit Sukuna — to save his friends, and becomes Sukuna's living host as a result. Gege Akutami has been serializing the story since 2018, and it has become one of the defining shōnen series of its generation. Yuji enrolls at Tokyo Jujutsu High, where sorcerers are trained to exorcise curses born from negative human emotion, alongside classmates Megumi Fushiguro and Nobara Kugisaki. Their teacher, Satoru Gojo, is one of the most powerful sorcerers alive and quickly became a breakout fan favourite for his combination of overwhelming strength and irreverent humour. Akutami is known for inventive, rule-based cursed techniques that make fight scenes feel genuinely strategic rather than purely spectacle. The Shibuya Incident arc, roughly midway through the series, is widely regarded as a turning point that reshaped the story's stakes and tone. The series blends horror, dark comedy, and tightly choreographed action in a way that has drawn comparisons to classic shōnen while carving its own identity. Its anime adaptation by MAPPA, beginning in 2020, became a global phenomenon, with its films breaking box office records for anime releases outside Japan. The manga's popularity has made it one of the best-selling series in Weekly Shōnen Jump's current lineup. It's an excellent entry point for readers newer to manga who want something dark, fast-paced, and emotionally sharp.
5. Pokemon Adventures — Hidenori Kusaka
Pokemon Adventures is the official manga adaptation of the Pokemon video games, written by Hidenori Kusaka and illustrated over the years by artists including Mato and Satoshi Yamamoto. Running since 1997, it is one of the longest-running manga tied to the Pokemon franchise and is distinct from the more widely known Pokemon anime. Rather than following the anime's Ash Ketchum, each story arc follows different protagonists based on the games' player characters — Red, Blue, Green, Gold, Silver, and others — as they travel through regions catching and training Pokemon. The series is known among longtime fans for hewing closer to actual game mechanics and lore than the anime does, giving it particular appeal to players who grew up with the games. Its tone is also notably darker and more mature at points than the anime, with real stakes, injuries, and moral complexity in its battles and villain organizations like Team Rocket. Character writing tends to be more grounded, with protagonists who grow and change substantially across each region's arc. The Collector's Edition releases repackage the story in bind-up volumes that make it easier to follow multiple protagonists' arcs together. Because it covers every generation of the core games, it also functions as a kind of illustrated history of the Pokemon franchise itself. For readers who love Pokemon but have only experienced it through the games or anime, the manga offers a genuinely different take on familiar characters and regions. It remains a strong, accessible starting point for manga newcomers thanks to its instantly recognizable world.
