Hi everyone, so I've been using this site since 2006 and came here daily for over a decade, so I vaguely remember all the manga trends of releases here. Since 2016 there was the major invasion of Japanese isekai novels (with all those long titles) and I read nearly all the ones that came out, then Korean webtoons became a lot more popular starting in 2018...

I stopped reading manga for a while in recent years because there was nothing that felt like the old classics whether shoujo or shounen (outside of shounen jump).

Examples like:
Cat Street
Sakamichi no Apollon
Sket Dance
Sakamoto, desu ga?
Silver Spoon

So to get back into manga, could you recommend some strictly manga series (not isekai and not Korean webtoons)? Ideally it would be something that has a unique Japanese flavor.

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Nulla in mundo pax sincera
"Always go too far, because that's where you'll find the truth." - Albert Camus

As far as recent classics go there's one that immediately comes to mind, and that's Medalist. It's award winning for a reason.

I expected it to be good, but it still surprised the hell out of me. It's been a while since something kept me up all night reading unable to put it down and immediately stole a spot in my top 10 favorite manga series of all time. Art is 10/10, characters are 10/10, story is a pretty standard sports story but executed flawlessly, feelz are 10/10 and hype is 10/10. So in other words: Go read it now!

Another pretty good one that currently has a popular airing anime is Sousou no Frieren.

I don't read much Josei manga, but you could try revisiting your favourite series and using the "List Stats" feature to see the series other active users are reading and checking out and comparing their public lists. It's also worth checking out other people's complete lists to see if the series you use to follow are now complete. (And making some of your lists public).

You could also check an agregator site to see if you recognise a popular series from the complete list (most usually drop very fast on popularity unless they get adapted).Manga titles are quite volatile. For example Magi - Labyrinth of Magic was a very popular series at that time is almost forgotten.

The invasion of series with long titles continues, they're usually based on novels and manage tu maintain the hype timing well the adaptations. Most bad or mainstream series aren't able to maintain the hype or get axe/ rushed endings after being draged out, so filtering by complete and short series from that period might also work.

All my recommendations were shounen since you asked for that and they're complete.

Some complete series from around 2017 I'd recommend or have absurd humor like Sakamoto Desu ga? would be:
Yakusoku no Neverland (no comedy on this one and great except for some details at the end and horrible extra chapters)
Pochi Kuro (comedy/fantasy)
Agravity Boys (comedy/absurd scifi though some dislike the banal comedy they use at parts)
Memesis (comedy/absurd fantasy)
Chio-chan no Tsuugakuro ( If this one didn't have echi it would be perfect)

These I didn't like but were popular or are from Jump:
Dr. Stone
Cross Account
Saiki Kusuo no Ψ Nan
Ongoing:
Mashle: Magic and Muscles
Spy X Family

As for korean novel/manwas are totally rushed chashgrab that that just mash elements from different genres and plagiarise each other and are absurdly draged out. Unfortunately as with other fast fiction and commercial stories they're popular and mangas are starting get influenced by them (more mangas on still ongoing Lnovels/WN ...).

Not that mangas didn't do that before, but from my POV mangas are starting to get behind (theyre too rigid in introducing certin elements so shoush shounen) especially on the shounen side.If you haven't already One through his free comics was part of that boom and I do recommend his series Mob Psycho 100. And to add a K series based on the only shoujo WN I didn't drop Ending Maker though it's isekai 😢 .

Last edited by Joese at 3:11 am, Dec 5 2023