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Sep 16, 2026
It's quite good for a shounen, but placing it in the top 10 manga of all time is a giant stretch.
I think one of its strong points is that it "disguises" the fact that it is a shounen to some extent: yes, it has childish moments, but many of them are also comedic, so they come across as funny or at least cute. Furthermore, this manga also knows how to portray some truly emotional or tragic scenes, and it's not afraid to show some real consequences of violence (like losing an arm), which other shounen tend to avoid.
Also, although it has a good number of
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fights, I like that this comic dedicates a lot of pages to investigations and intrigue (having hidden agendas and mysteries to unravel is way more interesting than just showing action scene after action scene).
However, it also has some serious pacing problems that prevent it from being a masterpiece:
First of all, after a certain point, the plot follows many different characters who are investigating the same "evil scheme" in different parts of the country. This means that every time a group of characters uncovers a new clue, the author has to dedicate several pages to showing how they communicate their discovery to the other groups (and doing this every time can really mess up the pacing), or, even worse, leave the rest of the characters unaware of this new information. In the latter case, constantly switching to the POV of characters who haven't discovered certain information yet and continue to investigate it makes it feel like the plot is moving backwards.
Also, what you could call the "final arc" of the manga occupies the entire last third of it, which is a total exaggeration. This makes it feel too stretched out, with the initial "preparations" filling entire volumes and making it seem as though the author was doing everything in her power to avoid moving towards the conclusion of the story.
Not to mention that some minor arcs feel like complete filler, such as the Ishval War (which takes up several chapters and offers barely a shred of useful information).
Besides that, Fullmetal also has some other minor flaws, like occasionally portraying old-fashioned ideas about what a man should or shouldn't do (although this can be somewhat justified by the setting), or the boring explanations/justifications that the "villains" give for their actions (which are completely plain and cliché). And personally, I would also have liked to see more development of the romantic interests of some of the characters.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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Sep 12, 2026
Simply put, the best shoujo (more like josei) manga I've ever read.
First of all, it was a really good decision to make most of the protagonists be in their 20s instead of being the typical high school students, because this way they still have some innocence, but at the same time they face problems that make it easier for adult readers to empathize with them (things as mundane as not having enough money to make ends meet).
This more "adult" setting is also reflected in other aspects, such as how sex is treated: while this is not a hentai work, it portrays sex in a pretty
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open way, and there are some quite explicit scenes. To be honest, it's very refreshing to see a manga so relaxed about this, and it makes the story feel much more realistic and credible (in fact, censoring all references to sex in a work full of young couples would make it feel too fake).
Also, this is one of the few romantic comics where I've seen such an insight into how couples can fail: yes, it's more dramatic to throw in some infidelities to break them apart (you can also see some of that here), but in the real world, many couples can end simply because their personalities or hopes for the future are too different to coexist, and this manga portrays that anguish in such an organic way.
Apart from that, Nana also has other strong points, like its many charismatic (and sometimes adorable) characters, lots of genuinely funny remarks (I've never been a fan of the Japanese boke & tsukkomi style of humor, but in this case I think they can really resonate with Western readers), strategically placed time jumps that foreshadow a tragic future, etc.
However, this manga also has two major flaws that prevent it from being a perfect masterpiece, the first one being that it sometimes feels too stretched out: I think it would have been perfect at around 15 volumes, but instead the author ended up considerably lengthening it.
Yes, the plot is never completely stale, but at some points it feels like it keeps cycling through the same types of situations, or that it makes the relationships between the characters too convoluted just to avoid moving towards the ending, and this starts to make the plot feel a bit fake or artificially dramatic.
And the other weak point is, of course, that it was never finished. It's been more than 15 years without a single chapter, and sadly, it stopped just when it was finally reaching the dramatic climax of the story... If someday the author actually resumes the manga and gives it a good conclusion, I can see the score rising to 8.5 or more.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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Aug 23, 2026
An ode to the Japanese mindset of "the customer is king (and the store clerks are slaves)".
What is depicted here is not the normal "be kind to the customers and try to help them", but more like "your only goal in life is to make customers happy, no matter what you have to do to achieve it". In fact, throughout the entire story, the protagonist doesn't show any emotion unrelated to wanting to serve the customers better, to the point that she feels the need to read their expressions to guess what they need even before they tell her (or before they even know they
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need something).
To be honest, this servility is so obsessive and continuous that it feels a bit disgusting, it's like the protagonist is not a real person with normal worries (I don't know, does she have any family? Is she interested in anyone? Is there anything she likes to do besides occasionally eating sweets?). Although the last few pages hint at a reason why she might have such a blank personality, it doesn't change the fact that I've seen literal robot clerks in other works who seem less submissive (for example, in Apocalypse Hotel).
Oh, and all of this is decorated with many of the typical, not-at-all-funny Japanese comedic remarks...
The only things that more or less save this manga are its very relaxed / cozy pace, the interesting facts about nearly extinct animal species that it inserts from time to time, and the sweet and cute side characters that it occasionally portrays (in this case, I think they feel cuter precisely because they are portrayed as little animals...).
Reviewer’s Rating: 5
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Aug 21, 2026
It's interesting because most of the story revolves around a single woman, narrating years of her life and how she rose to fame, yet by the end, you still can't say for sure why she acts the way she does.
Being able to portray such a mysterious character is obviously a strong point, but this manga also has a couple of flaws that prevent it from being truly good:
For example, all the business-related parts are quite dense and boring, which breaks the overall pace of the plot. Also, the comedic drawing style diminishes the intensity of the story, and the ending feels quite bland (it just
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doesn't manage to bring the story to a satisfying conclusion).
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Aug 4, 2026
I really wanted Biomega to have the same excellent setting as Blame!, but with an actual plot and dialogue... now I wish this manga was silent too.
To keep it short: this comic starts with an excessively simple plot, but it quickly devolves into an absolutely confusing mess of half-baked explanations, riddled with some of the most mind-blowingly absurd decisions I've ever seen characters make (for crying out loud, who would put their brain into a bear if they wanted to live in a city?!)
Yes, Blame! has less than 30 written sentences in more than 300 pages, but that absence of an actual plot leaves plenty
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of room for your imagination: you don't really understand what's happening, but you can try to imagine an elaborate storyline that would explain the different situations, leaving you wondering whether it might actually be a deeply rich work (it isn't). But with Biomega, you know for a fact that the plot and its explanations are nonsense, which is actually worse.
But yes, it does show plenty of gunshots and explosions in a dystopian setting, if that is the ONLY thing you are looking for.
Reviewer’s Rating: 2
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Jul 30, 2026
This is a compilation of short chapters, each focusing on different new characters (although they very rarely appear again in later chapters)... and since each story is so short, it's almost impossible to empathize with any of them.
The only common thread between all the characters seems to be that they all live in the same city, and that most of them are losers, misfits, or simply tired of their current lives. As a result, the chapters are depressing at best and absolutely boring at worst.
What was the point of creating this compilation of mediocre stories with no clear focus and so little substance that you'll
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forget them just minutes after reading them?
Reviewer’s Rating: 3
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Jun 13, 2026
This is one of the most bland slice-of-life manga I've ever read: it's made up of many very short (7-11 pages) and semi-independent chapters, and being so short they can't build any kind of meaningful plot, so in most cases they end up giving the feeling that they haven't told you much at all.
There are only a handful of exceptions, rare chapters where the overall story advances a little or that show you more about the relationship between a married couple who seem to have lost all feeling of love... and if that and the boring routine it usually represents weren't depressing enough, you can
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also see in those special chapters how outdated (and misogynistic) the values of all the characters are, which is not surprising considering that this comic was published more than 40 years ago.
Reviewer’s Rating: 4
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Jun 8, 2026
It's a shame because I really like the setting, but the story is completely forgettable.
In fact, while looking for this manga to mark it as completed, I accidentally clicked on the anime adaptation and realized I'd already seen the entire anime series! This surprised me greatly because I don't usually forget any series (even bad ones leave a mark on me), but in this case, I read the manga without realizing I already knew the story. There wasn't a single moment that reminded me of anything; it was like watching it for the first time from beginning to end.
I think there are several factors at
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play here: yes, being a slice-of-life story it's not supposed to have a frenetic pace or be super absorbing, but in this case I'd say the story has a complete lack of focus (especially in the second half, when it starts to scatter among various characters and time periods), and you simply can't sustain a moderately long series like this without providing a proper plot that can act as the "skeleton" to support the different slice-of-life scenes.
Furthermore, most of the characters are quite bland, having only a few interesting moments throughout the entire story, and a manga of this genre relies heavily on the charisma of its protagonists to be enjoyable... not to mention that the main character's long philosophical hallucinations were dense and completely disrupted the already weak pacing of the story.
At least it has a good drawing style and provides a lot of interesting information about space exploration... or, to be more precise, about how they imagined in the 2000s what life in space would be like in the future (for example, it's very curious to see how it depicts people using floppy disks in 2075 as if it were a super advanced technology).
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jan 31, 2026
Although you may find this work a bit lacking if you read it as an adult, I think it can really resonate with teenage readers (especially boys):
Exaggeratedly intense emotions, frequent drama in relationships, sudden moments of pessimism where you think "the world is against you", obsession with sex, indecisiveness/shyness, overthinking every little situation...
They are all characteristic of the adolescent phase, when you are full of raging hormones, and I think the author captures them very well in this manga. Of course, he includes some exaggerated situations to make it more interesting, and you probably won't like the protagonist's unfaithful behaviors, but I think if you're
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a boy in your teens you'll identify with how some characters act or think (and if you're an adult you might remember those days).
It's worth mentioning that, while this comic also has some of that repetitiveness shared by many long-running romance manga (where you feel like it keeps repeating the same situations over and over again with almost no plot progression), at some point the story really does move forward and you can see changes in the protagonists' relationship (in fact, I liked the second half of the manga more than the first).
Reviewer’s Rating: 6
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Jan 21, 2026
Considerably better than their previous work, Death Note: I think it's because these authors' style, with its dense dialogues and slow-paced chapters, is much better suited to a story about the daily lives of two mangakas like this one, rather than a comic like Death Note, which was supposedly more action-packed and revolved around world domination.
As for the strengths of this manga, I would highlight all the interesting information it portrays about the inner workings of Shonen Jump magazine, as well as its truly charismatic secondary characters (to be honest, at times I was more interested in the comedic or dramatic scenes between the secondary
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characters than the work of the protagonists).
Furthermore, is incredible how the authors keep showing really solid plot ideas like it's nothing, simply as an explanation of the manga created by the different characters (especially in the first half of the story, I would say that many of them could be adapted into real manga without problems).
However, it's a shame that Bakuman's plot itself feels too drawn out; it would have been perfect with 12-15 volumes instead of the 20 it has, because in the second half there are entire arcs that feel like filler, with repetitive and even boring situations...
Curiously, the story of this comic discusses how some mangakas are tempted to unnecessarily prolong the story if the manga is popular, just to keep selling more volumes... I wish the authors of Bakuman themselves hadn't fallen into this trap.
Reviewer’s Rating: 7
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