8 Manga Featuring Characters Old Enough to Vote

Tokyo Tarareba Girls, by Akiko Higashimura
You may know Akiko Higashimura from her hit fashion manga Princess Jellyfish, but if you haven’t tried her latest creation, you’re missing out. This painfully funny series follows Rinko, a single 33-year-old Tokyoite who wakes one day to the realization that while she was spending her twenties waiting for the perfect man to come along, she may have missed the boat entirely. Determined to get to wedding bells before the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, Rinko gets serious about dating, but finds it’s a lot harder than she remembers. Higashimura definitively nails the anxieties of a thirtysomething woman, from navigating a lackluster career, dwindling dating prospects, and envy toward married friends to the subtle machinery of modern sexism. Tokyo Tarareba Girls is saved from being downright depressing by being utterly hilarious: watching Rinko and her friends get themselves into heaps of trouble with a variety of poorly chosen men while railing against societal expectations is somehow both staggeringly relatable and delightfully larger than life.

What Did You Eat Yesterday, by Fumi Yoshinaga
The domestic life of a middle-aged gay couple in Tokyo is the subject of Fumi Yoshinaga’s lauded slice of life manga. Shiro is a hard working corporate lawyer who spends his lunch breaks dreaming up tasty dinners to cook with his hairdresser boyfriend Kenji. As the two unwind over Shiro’s thoughtfully-prepared meals, they share the minutiae of their day, quotidian frustrations and aspirations, and work through minor speed bumps in their relationship. Yoshinaga perfectly captures the daily ebbs and flows of a long-term adult relationship, delicately exploring the small frictions of Shiro and Kenji’s personalities, work lives, and priorities, as well as the enjoyment and stability they get from each other’s company. In addition to being a winning portrayal of adult relationships, What Did You Eat Yesterday is a window into the additional hurdles facing a committed gay couple in a country in which gay marriage is still not legal. As an added bonus, Yoshinaga’s recipes are so detailed you might learn to cook one or two of them by accident!

Moteki, by Mitsurou Kubo
Mitsurou Kubo is best known to Western audiences as the co-creator and original character designer of the hit ice skating anime Yuri!!! On Ice. Like YOI, her seinen manga Moteki also mostly focuses on characters in their twenties. Fujimoto, a perpetually single 29-year-old, is flabbergasted when, out of the blue, ex-girlfriends, old crushes, and flirty coworkers start blowing up his phone. Is he suddenly popular with women? Well…sort of. Kubo takes what should be a classic harem premise—hapless dude suddenly overwhelmed by fawning female attention—and adds an uncomfortable dose of realism. It turns out Fujimoto isn’t single because he’s just a nice guy who’s been overlooked; he’s also immature, unsteady, passive, and has some pretty misogynistic ideas about what women owe him. Similarly, the women who are seemingly falling into his lap have stories and priorities of their own, and not all of them include dating Fuji. This is an interesting, at times cringe-inducing, take on a common adolescent premise, with decidedly adult perspectives and concerns.

Delicious in Dungeon, by Ryoko Kui
When Laios and his party of adventurers have a disastrous run-in with a dragon deep in the dungeon, the party’s mage, Falin, manages to magic the party out to the surface, minus their cash, gear, and herself (she winds up in the dragon’s stomach). Determined to head back in and rescue Falin before she becomes dragon doo-doo, but without provisions or money to purchase them (and positively famished from just fighting a large dragon), the group’s only option is to head directly into the dungeon and forage for food along the way—a basilisk is edible, right? Combining D&D-style worldbuilding with the joyful appetite of a food manga, Delicious in Dungeon is a laugh-out-loud funny fantasy adventure featuring mature, fully-formed adult characters and more edible uses for slimes than may be strictly advisable. The garnish on top of this already tasty dish is Ryoko Kui’s delectable character and monster art, as well as increasing hints at a slightly deeper (and possibly darker) current running below a mostly light-hearted plot about the nutritional properties of kelpies.

Wotakoi: Love Is Hard for Otaku, by Fujita
If you’re an adult nerd of any kind (and if you’re reading an article about manga, you probably qualify), I can guarantee that you’ll find Wotakoi alarmingly relatable. Momose Narumi, a twentysomething office worker, has given up on dating. After her last boyfriend found out she was a fujoshi (a girl who likes BL manga) and dumped her, she’s trying to keep her otaku side under wraps in her new job. When her childhood friend and geek comrade Hirotaka suggests they try dating each other, she agrees to give it a go. And yeah, they’re adorable together. This romantic slice of life about otaku (geek) office worker couples is a charmer out of the gate. The manga covers real adult nerd problems (crying at your desk over Sailor Moon, anyone?), as well as real relationship struggles of the twenty/thirtysomething set, like sharing each others’ interests (and game controllers), when it’s okay to pop over uninvited, and what color panties to wear to a sleepover.

Arakawa Under the Bridge, by Hikaru Nakamura
Kou Ichinomiya is the young heir to a business empire, raised under a mandate to never allow himself to be put in a position where he owes anyone anything—no favors, no debts, no “I’ll get you next time.” When he falls from a bridge and is saved from drowning by a strange girl who lives under said bridge, he finds himself owing a rather large debt to his rescuer. Kou is determined to pay Nino back, but there’s not a lot he can offer to a girl who lives under a bridge by choice. In fact there’s only one thing she wants: for Kou to help her fall in love. Thus begins Kou’s strange life under the bridge with Nino and her oddball group of social outcasts and misfits. This fish-out-of-water comedy about an emotionally stunted rich kid and a manic pixie dream girl who is actually (maybe) insane is strange, funny, and often surprisingly touching. Arakawa Under the Bridge takes a run at adulthood from a pretty weird angle, questioning what it means to grow up, societal expectations in general, and whether you can care for someone without really understanding them.

ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Department, by Natsume Ono
Natsume Ono is an old hand at seinen manga with adult characters; you might know her other works Ristorante Paradiso and House of Fives Leaves, among others. Her latest to hit the English-speaking shelves is ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Department. This manga is described as a political thriller, and I’m not saying that’s not what it is—it’s just the most low-key thriller you’ve ever read. Following one Jean Otus, second in command of an inspection agency that oversees essential services in the thirteen territories of the kingdom of Dowa, ACCA is about deep political conspiracies, shifting loyalties, and an intricately plotted coup d’etat… but is also definitely about eating fluffy bread in charmingly rustic bakeries. Read for enigmatic motivations, Ono’s loose, idiosyncratic art, regional pastries, and a proliferation of sexy middle-aged men.

Planetes, by Makoto Yukimura
Makoto Yukimura’s masterpiece almost needs no introduction; this award-winning manga is rightly considered a classic. In the increasingly near future of 2070, mankind has a reasonable grip on interplanetary travel and long-term space living. What has gotten out of control is the space debris—hurling satellites into the atmosphere since the 1950s without bothering what happened to all the bits and bobs has left one heck of a litter problem in low Earth orbit. Hachimaki, Yuri, and Fee are a space station crew tasked with dealing with such debris before it damages spacecrafts or causes other hazards. Each crewmember in Yukimura’s multi-layered story brings their own baggage to their work, especially Hachimaki, a young man who dreams of joining an upcoming Jupiter mission even as he’s stuck as essentially a dead-end sci-fi trash collector. Both a fantastic piece of near-future science fiction and a sensitive exploration of the lives, pasts, and ambitions of its adult characters, Planetes is a must-read for any manga fan.