The Best New Manga of September 2015

One Punch Man, Vols. 1 and 2, by ONE and Yusuke Murata
One Punch Man sends up superhero and giant-monster comics but also delivers the genuine goods with plenty of solid action sequences. Saitama, a laid-off salaryman, is inspired to become a superhero after he rescues a child from a monster. After three years of training (with a regimen so intense he lost all his hair), he can now dispatch any monster with a single punch. Unfortunately, this makes life boring again, so with his cyborg sidekick Genos, he goes after greater and greater challenges, and the creators come up with weirder and weirder creations for him to fight. Saitama is an odd protagonist; his superpowers come strictly from hard training and willpower, yet he often seems disengaged from the action, even when Genos and the monsters are going at it. His aloofness is emphasized by the fact that he is drawn as a simple cartoon character, while the rest of the comic is done in superb shonen-action style by Eyeshield 21 creator Yusuke Murata. If the title sounds familiar, it’s because this series has been around for a while, first in Shonen Jump and then as a digital manga; it went over so well that it was nominated for an Eisner award, the first manga to earn that honor while only available in digital format.

Ninja Slayer Kills, Vol. 1, by Kotaro Sekine
This volume starts out with a foreword from its “ninja editor,” Truncator, cautioning the reader to diligently study the translation notes in the back to learn the ways of the warrior before plunging in, “to prevent your head from exploding when you read these pages.” Strong stuff! It’s good advice, though, because Ninja Slayer Kills wastes little time on exposition or world-building, jumping straight into a revenge-fueled series of cyber-ninja battles. These ninja are not the stealth assassins of traditional tales; those dudes “erased themselves from history,” we are told, but have come back as hyper-violent, jacked-up, cybernetically enhanced warriors. This story is pretty much all action, but the character designs and the near-future world of Neo-Saitama in the year 2019 are secondary pleasures. This series is an adaptation of the Ninja Slayer novels, which were supposedly first written in English and translated on Twitter, and it is designed to be accessible to readers who aren’t yet familiar with the world of the stories.

Attack on Titan: Colossal Edition, Vol. 2, by Hajime Isayama
This oversize paperback collects volumes 6-10 of Attack on Titan, so it’s a natural companion piece for the first Colossal Edition, but it’s also a great way to read this series for the first time. It’s larger than the standard manga, the paper is better quality, and it includes not only design notes, but the full-color Attack on Titan/Avengers crossover comic.

Big Hero 6, Vol. 2, by Haruki Ueno
Loosely based on the movie, the Big Hero 6 manga gives you the full story of Hiro and Baymax in just two volumes. It’s an all-ages manga that is kid-friendly but a decent read for adults as well, thanks to Ueno’s clean, open style.

Devil Survivor, Vol. 1, by Satoru Matsuba
In this new series, based on the role-playing video game of the same name, a demon invasion threatens Tokyo and 17-year-old Kazuya must save the day with the help of an invention that can summon monsters and overpower them.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal, Vol. 7, by Shin Yoshida and Naohito Miyoshi
If you’ve fallen behind in this card game/action series, now is the time to catch up: the final battle begins in this volume, and the series will end with volume 8.
What manga are you excited for this month?