By Erica Friedman
New York Comic Con got the combined efforts of six manga specialists on ComiXology’s “Manga Ikkimashou!” panel, which took place Sunday afternoon. ComiXology’s Ivan Salazar and Jose Sagastume, artist Kel McDonald, Kodansha Comics’ Misaki Kido, Anime Herald’s Seth Burns, and Erica Friedman from The Beat and Okazu talked about how they got into manga and then fielded requests from the audience for manga suggestions.
From young people’s desire for something fantasy or heroic to magical realism and a fair amount of dark, some of the most recommended titles were: Demon Slayer (Viz), The Promised Neverland (Viz) from McDonald; Burns and Salazar praised Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira (Kodansha) a foundational manga for them. I pounded the board for Chthulu mythos-inspired Murciélago (Yen Press) as a funky, dark, violent series. Kido was all on board for the serious humor of Golosseum (Kodansha) by Yasushi Baba.
The panel sparked lively discussion about several classic series, like Magic Knight Rayearth (Dark Horse) and Yu Yu Hakusho (a new anime release had been announced by Funimation at New York Comic Con that weekend) — and, of course, current hit My Hero Academia (Viz), which won a Harvey Award on Friday.
ComiXology posted the entire list of recommended titles on Twitter, which you can see below. There are more than 50 titles on the list, with genres and descriptions listed for each. If you want to get into manga but aren’t sure where to start, this is a great entry point from a panel of experts!
We wanted to give a special shout out to @_mckido, @OkazuYuri, @SethBurn, @kellhound, & all the folks who dropped by our Manga panel yesterday!
Check out one of the many amazing titles our panelists suggested! pic.twitter.com/kSRCp7zQOD
— comiXology (@comiXology) October 7, 2019
