manga recommendations?

Does anyone have any recommendations on manga? I'm looking for something with a lot of kanji but with furigana, I can read up through 3rd grade kanji if that helps. Also, I prefer something suitable for a 20-year old guy, I don't have much of an interest in children books.

Also, this is probably a stupid question, but are those thick, large mangas just a bunch of small stories or what? Thank you for reading.

What do you like to read in general? Action? Romance? Comedy?

If you want a nice starter manga for a guy, Love Hina is extremely popular. Getting Japanese imports shouldn't be too difficult.

Well, you will not find seinen (directed at late high-school and college-age men) manga with furigana. The publishers consider men of that age to be able to read kanji without help.

But that doesn't mean that there are no thoughtful shonen manga out there that would interest you. (Shonen usually are directed toward middle-school or early high-school young men.) Shonen manga nearly always have furigana.

Were I you, I'd look through a Japanese book store looking for the Shonen Sunday, Shonen Jump, or Shonen Magazine lables.

If you are a very secure guy, you could try looking through the shojo shelves. Most shojo deal with more mature themes than their shonen counterparts.

Good luck.

Sorry, I forgot to include the answer to your question.

The Phonebook sized manga are anthologies. They usually have 20 (or so) page installments of continuing manga. The installments are later combined into the smaller paper-back style graphic novels (tankobon).

The Phonebooks make for a good oportunity to look through the manga cheeply to find out what series you would like to buy.

hi,

i think Yotsubato! by Azuma Kiyohiko is a pretty neutral manga that's interesting. it's easy to understand and depicts typical japanese life pretty accurately.

word of warning though, most of the speech in manga is rather colloqial, so be careful what you pick up.

As for manga, I was thinking of recommending Ranma 1/2 which is still available readily.
There used to be a brilliant magazine for students of the Japanese language and Japanese culture; it was called Mangajin and it stopped publishing about 10 years ago. Lots of interesting articles, and it used manga to teach Japanese. I have quite some at home and I still use them and love them for their explanations of Japanese language use you'll never find in a text book. They still have their magazines available for back order so it might be an idea to have a look at their website: http://www.mangajin.com/

Thank you everyone for your responses. Actually, I'm in Japan now, so I shouldn't have any trouble finding recent manga.

I think the most useful type of manga for me would be something that includes everyday life situations, so I could probably improve more on my conversation skills.

Hmm...those anthologies sound like a good idea to sample various manga. Ya, I figured that the ­”N would be a good place to look, it's too bad the manga are always wrapped up though, so I can't get a feel of what it's about.

That yotsubato sounds like a good one, and I've also heard of Ranma 1/2 and Love Hina, so I guess I'll start looking into those. Thanks!

I would recommend manga by Mitsuru Adachi, they are usually romantic comedies with a lot of sport thrown in. I use Short Program and Short Program 2 for my Japanese studies as they are short stories and they do have furigana which makes them perfect for this purpose. They are not brand new, but I managed to find them last year in Japan in a BookOff.

Additional:
Here is a link with summaries and reviews of the short stories:
http://www.mangamaniacs.org/reviews/shortprogram.shtml
http://www.mangalife.com/reviews/ShortProgramv1.htm
http://www.mangalife.com/reviews/ShortProgramv2.htm

The reviews and summaries are about the US version of the manga, but the Japanese version is just as entertaining, of course ^_^

where manga short course in Matsue, Shimana, Japan??

I've never read manga in Japanese, but I really like Death Note (ƒfƒXƒm[‚Ζ). It's a little too violent and confusing for kids (I'm 16, by the way), but it's really interesting and well-written!

Another manga I really love is Fullmetal Alchemist (|‚Μ˜B‹ΰpŽt), but I'm sure you've already heard of that one!

I explored some used manga shops in Ikebukuro (in and around Sunshine city) and found Inu Yasha quite interesting. There are also some bilingual books published by Kodansha (?) that you can get at Kinokuniya (shops at northeast and new south exits of Shinjuku).

Well I totally love Manga and I'm pretty sure that some Volumes of Deathnote has alot of Kanji in it. Last time I got an Volume it did ... so yea and plus Deathnote is awsomly awsome.
So check it out! Oh and when I get Path of the Iga ready for effects I'll through in alot of Kanji just for you. ^.^

So yea I owuld definatly recomend deathnote to you. As the other dude said it is very graphic and hard to follow. For some people. but it has a moral and a very well written plot.
PS: I LUV L!
(srry punk fangirl moment)

Seconding (or thirding) the recommendations for Death Note and Fullmetal Alchemist. Although Death Note may well be a difficult to read in Japanese; I sometimes had trouble following it in English. Bleach (ƒuƒŠ[ƒ`jis also one I enjoy. In some ways it follows the typical Jump fighting-manga storyline, but it's a lot more interesting in my opinion than things like Naruto or One Piece.

If you want a chance to read manga before you buy them, go to the discount places like GEO, Book*Off and other used book stores. Not only are the books cheaper (sometimes only 105 yen each) but you can read through them to your heart's content as there is no plastic binding.