The Best New Manga of November 2016

One-Punch Man, Vol. 9, by Yusuke Murata and ONE
It’s a fair bet that if you read One-Punch Man, you probably like fights—if so, this volume is for you. There are plenty of fights, thanks to Garo, a human villain who shows up at the superheroes meeting and throws down the gauntlet (as well as several of the superheroes). Garo has sympathy for the bad guys, and that translates into rage against the good guys, so he’s punching his way through all the superheroes he can find. Meanwhile, Saitama gets a visit from Miss Blizzard, Tornado’s slightly less talented sister. Jealous of Tornado’s accomplishments, Miss Blizzard does all she can to keep superheroes from advancing in the ranks—unless they are part of her faction. And she’s making Saitama an offer he can’t refuse. One-Punch Man continues to deliver solid superhero action with a cast of ridiculous characters, making it both a great superhero manga and a great parody of itself.

The Legend of Zelda: Legendary Edition, Vol. 1: Ocarina of Time, Parts 1 & 2, by Akira Himekawa
Based on the video game of the same name, this story reads a lot like a shonen fantasy manga, and you don’t have to know anything about the game to enjoy it. Link is an elf growing up in Kokiri Forest who always feels a little bit different from everyone else; for one thing, he’s the only kid who doesn’t have a companion fairy. Then a catastrophe happens, and Link finds his true calling—teaming up with Princess Zelda to fight the evil Ganendorf, who wants to become ruler of the land of Hyrule. There are some game-ish aspects to the story, such as the three stones Link has to collect, but basically it just reads like a nice fantasy tale, with smooth and imaginative art thanks to the two-woman team of Akira Himekawa. These stories were originally published by Viz in 2008; the Legendary Edition is a deluxe two-in-one omnibus with extra color pages.

Haikyu!! Vol. 5, by Haruichi Furudate
Viz has been releasing Haruichi Furudate’s volleyball manga Haikyu!! at the breakneck speed of a volume a month, and a whole lot has happened. In some ways this is a typical shonen manga, with the plucky outsider hero, Shoyo Hinata, trying to succeed even though all the odds are against him—in this case, he wants to play volleyball despite being short in a game where height counts, and coming from a middle school with no team, so he has no training, just the skills he learned practicing on his own. And there’s the super-talented, super-arrogant opposing player, Tobio Kageyama, to fuel Hinata’s anger and his desire to succeed. When they end up on the same team, they have to resolve that conflict and learn to work together. What lifts this series above standard shonen tropes is the array of other players who surround Hinata and Kageyama, and the genuine emotion many of them bring to the story. With each succeeding volume, Furudate brings in more characters, more emotional conflicts, and more hurdles for the team to overcome. He also explains the rules of volleyball, introducing them gradually so as not to overwhelm the reader. With solid drama and engaging characters, Haikyu!! is a great read for anyone, whether they like sports or not.

In/Spectre, Vol. 1, by Kyo Shirodaira and Chasiba Katase
This is a supernatural buddy thriller with a yokai twist. Kotoko is able to bridge the human and yokai worlds, because she was kidnapped by yokai when she was a young girl—but she also lost a leg and an eye to the spirits. Kuro, a young man who has been given healing powers by the yokai, asks her to work together with him to hunt down and deal with problem spirits. This manga is an adaptation of a novel by Shirodaira, who is the creator of The Record of a Fallen Vampire and co-creator of Spiral: The Bonds of Reasoning.

Attack on Titan Lost Girls: The Manga, Vol. 2, by Hajime Isayama
While Hajime Isayama, the creator of Attack on Titan, is credited with this manga, it was actually written by Ryōsuke Fuji and illustrated by Koji Seko. It has an interesting history, as it started out as two visual novels—video games—created by Hiroshi Seko, a scriptwriter for the Attack on Titan anime. He then adapted the visual novels into a prose novel, Attack on Titan: Lost Girls, which was published in a single volume by Vertical last June. The manga, complete in two volumes, is an adaptation of that novel.

Twinkle Stars, Vol. 1, by Natsuki Takaya
Here’s a treat for fans of Natsuki Takaya, the creator of Fruits Basket. Sakuya Shiina is a sweet girl who lives with her foster father, who is also her cousin. When a stranger shows up at her birthday party, each of them thinks the other invited him. Armed only with his name, Chihiro, Sakuya and her two best friends head out to find him. Of course, this being shoujo manga, he ends up at her school, and things get more complicated from there. Twinkle Stars is a later work than Fruits Basket, and a different type of story, but it has a lot of the elements that Takaya fans love.

Fire Force, Vol. 1, by Atsushi Ohkubo
Fire Force combines shonen manga firefighting action with a story about spontaneous human combustion. People are bursting into flames all over Tokyo. The first group suffered horribly, but it continued to happen, some people developed the ability to control the fires, and even start them. That’s what makes our hero, Shinra, special: he can will his feet to explode into flame, giving him super speed but destroying his shoes in the process. He’s a rookie on Special Fire Force Company 8, together with two other firefighters who can control but not start fire, a tough-guy leader with no special powers, and a nun. Because what’s a good firefighting manga without a nun? She says prayers for the souls of the burning humans, and she’s also kind of cute. Fire Force is by Atsushi Ohkubo, who is also the creator of Soul Eater; this new series looks like a good combination of action and humor.

Cells at Work, Vol. 1, by Akane Shimuzu
Cells at Work takes all those boring things you learned about in biology class—red and white blood cells, T-cells, bacteria, viruses—and transforms them into anime and manga tropes. Our Red Blood Cell is a plucky but rather ditzy young woman in a big cap; the manly White Blood Cell and his paramilitary colleagues come to her rescue when bacteria, viruses (zombies), and allergens (mournful blobs of cedar pollen) invade the body and wreak havoc. The platelets are a team of super-cute kids in oversized T-shirts, and the macrophage is a smiling young woman in a frilly white dress and cap, wielding a machete. Each self-contained chapter is a battle between the hard-working cells and some sort of invader, and actual biology facts are sprinkled liberally throughout. There’s a lot of humor, too (such as the lollipop-shaped detector that pops out of the White Blood Cell’s hat); a couple of the puns and allusions are explained in the translator’s notes in the back of the book.

Megatokyo Omnibus, Vol. 2, by Fred Gallagher
The great-granddaddy of manga-influenced comics, Megatokyo has been running as a webcomic since 2000 and is still updating. For those who don’t want to click through 700 pages of story, this omnibus collects the episodes that were originally published as volumes 4-6. (The first volume of the omnibus came out two years ago.) The story started out with two American otaku gamers getting stranded in Japan, and it has gotten richer and more complex over the years. Gallagher has a nice way of picking up on anime and gaming tropes without seeming artificial or forced, and his art is smooth and polished, if somewhat complex to read visually. If you’re just getting started, the two omnibus volumes are definitely the way to go, especially because they include exclusive print-only material.
What manga are you picking up in November?