Personally-followed manga, under-the-radar for everyone else

(I'm taking "personally-followed" manga as meaning manga that is still being released, though I can go into some finished under-the-radar series too...)

Alyosha! - Teenage girl from fictional Ruritania nation who was raised as an assassin since she was born gets sent to infiltrate a high school to kill the president of an enemy country, but her mission gets aborted and she has to learn how to live as a normal high school girl. Of course, there are enemies still out to get her. I guess it's a more serious take on Kill Me Baby, but it has funny moments as well, especially when the Occidental Otaku Katie Lindberg enters the scene.

Also, Taiyou No Ie, which has its own page, which I follow because it has a nice story and also because Taamo's art is ridiculously adorable.

Oh yeah, it does look like people are hoarding hidden gems here.

A few more (I'm just adding a bit at a time, since I have to think about the descriptions, heh):

Asamiya no Imouto/The Sister of Ms. Asamiya — In an unspecified far future Kyouko, a wandering merchant recently down on her luck, encounters a girl apparently on a journey (the huge backpack she has is a massive clue). She's been using her father's sketchbook as a guide, but as Kyouko soon finds out it's NOT a simple sketchbook: it's filled with maps, plans, and all sorts of information, some of which date prior to the war that recently took place on the world. Opportunistic person that she is, Kyouko tries to steal the sketchbook, but soon finds that the girl, named Asamiya Aoi, is not as normal as she first seems. Regardless, she's still interested in the sketchbook, so she joins Aoi on her travels. As they go, the inadvertedly touch the lives of many people, for good or ill. The setting kind of reminds me of Yokohama Kindaishi Kikou, but the atmosphere more like a mix of ARIA and Kino to Tabi.

Usotsuki Lily — This is a shoujo manga, so beware. Saotome Hinata, as normal a girl as you can be, is confessed to by Shinohara En, as a bishounen guy as you can get in the genre. While one might think this is an extremely lucky windfall, there's an unfortunately catch to this, as Hinata soon finds out: En is actually a crossdresser, and indeed normally comes to school dressed as a girl. En of course has his own reasons for doing this, but it's pretty much what you get when you put Inami Mahiru (from Working!!) into a guy. In other words, to Hinata, it doesn't make a whit of sense. Regardless, since they're now going out (technically), Hinata will try her best to help cure him of his "affliction". If it was so easy though...

Dokuhime/The Princess of Poison — Josei alert! Well, it's good josei in my opinion... Anyway, the setting is Mitragyna, a small country with little political power, has somehow managed to survive the often tumultuous politics of the empire it is part of. This is due, in part, to its Poison Princesses. While outwardly they look like your usual noble ladies, they're in some ways assassins, as their bodies are so poisonous (due to a process that is done gradually from the moment they're born) that even a single kiss is enough to kill a man. However, after a single mission, they are usually discarded like a used tool. But what happens when a "tool" suddenly decides that she wants to live her own life?

The Legend Of Koizumi - To me, it's always reminded me of a Silver Age comic book in how batshit insane it is. The whole idea about a politician duking it out with other world leaders with Yu Gi Oh styled majhong duels is insanely entertaining as a premise. Throw in entertaining characters, intense battles, and a Nazi Moon Base run by Super Sayan Hitler and you've pretty much got Holy Shit Quotient : The Manga.

Also, the amounts of Shout-Out and Genius Bonus in this manga is staggering.

edited 19th Jul '12 9:30:04 PM by PippingFool

The manga adaptation of Boku Wa Tomodachi Ga Sukunai is fantastic, but it's frustrating to follow because there are a handful of lackluster spinoffs that update way more often, plus a plethora of hentai doujins which show up if you're checking Baka-Updates. The real thing only comes around once in a blue moon.

Yes, which is bad because the manga adaptation not only is it good but also quitte funny.

Something I haven't been following since it's hard for me to stay invested in plot-thin comedy manga, but I really like it.

Yandere Kanojo is a gag manga about the love between honor student Manabu and delinquent girl Reina. I don't have much to say except that it's really funny and cute.

The two or three that I actively look forwards to at any given time:

Witch Craft Works - School clocktower falls on our resident Ordinary High-School Student. He gets saved by our resident Witch. They are then attacked by an army of stuffed animals. After burning the enemy to ashes, our heroine lovingly embraces our protagonist and tells him she will always protect him, because he is her Princess.

Absolutely gorgeous art and a fascinatingly mysterious urban-fantasy setting. It's got more than it's fair share of action, but the heart of the story is the nature of the relationship between the two leads.

Arpeggio Of Blue Steel - A mysterious enemy known only as the Fleet of Fog has appeared, destroying anything that attempts to cross the seas. With the nations of the world isolated and cut off, our Captain and his crew aboard the captured Fleet of Fog submarine I-401, along with it's Mental Model are the only ones who can fight back

Sci-fi naval combat with personified WWII warships. That's either enough to sell you on it, or it isn't.

School Shock - Chinese manhua. Frequently described as Infinite Stratos minus everything that people disliked about Infinite Stratos. Arguable the best manhua currently coming out of China.

edited 19th Jul '12 11:18:38 PM by HighVelocityPointyThings

@post 24: Gah. I forgot to list Majin Tantei Nougami Neuro! Editing~

Let's see, my current comic bookmarks...

Franken Fran: Crazy zombie surgeon performs any body modification people want and can pay for, even if the end result is rarely desirable. Also turns people into undead abominations sometimes because hey, at least they're sorta alive.

Love My Life: Short series focusing on two young lesbians and their daily life. Hardly any action or drama, and mostly a quiet reflection on homosexuality in Japan.

Jojos Bizarre Adventure, a comic series that is as immortal as its author. Given the number of separate storylines, it's closer to a universe than a unified story.

Seven Seeds: A small group of people collectively wake up from cryogenic sleep with nothing to their name but basic survival gear, and discover that they're among the few that survived the end of the world.

Super Robot Wars Original Generation - Divine Wars - Record of ATX: Basically the game's story in comic form, focusing on Kyosuke's story route.

Ganota No Onna, also known as Gundam Otaku Girl. A comic that is probably mostly funny to Gundam fans since most of its humor revolves around the franchise and, in particular, around its fanbase. The line between the two can get blurry sometimes, since this is a world full of characters who will act out parts of the show at the drop of a hat.

If we're talking about great yet obscure manga then I've got

Tetragrammaton Labyrinth: A story about an immortal demon girl and a nun. Technically Yuri Genre though the manga focuses more on the demon slaying and the deaths than anything else .

Ubel Blatt: A Dark fantasy story about a reincarnated hero's attempt to take revenge on seven of his former comrades who betrayed him and the rest of the comrades and took credit for defeating the enemy forces.

Hajimete No Aku: A slice of life action comedy about a girl, and her family which happens to be part of an evil organization.

Bloody Monday: About a Teen Genius hacker who is hired by the Japanese Public Security Intelligence Agency to find out about a deadly Russian virus. A very plot based manga with plenty of plot twists, that somewhat resembles 24

edited 20th Jul '12 12:26:21 PM by Mt

Ubel Blatt is both fairly well-known where I am AND has an entry in the wiki here though. The fact that I'm still putzing around trying to find profile pictures for the character page shows that it's not as obscure as you think.

freakin' Air Master: epic badass streetfights, yet all attempts to get the scanlation continued have failed [HINT! HINT!]

Karakuridoji Ultimo:

epic brainchild of Takei-sensei & Stan Lee, hasn't been scanlated in years. deserves more respect.

edited 2nd Oct '12 7:07:25 PM by ComradeClaus

Gash Bell. My absolute favorite work in the Mons genre, and a Cult Classic at best. You know something's not all that popular when the anime version is forced to end early because the card game wasn't selling well enough.

I remember that it was broadcasted here in the tv some years ago in Cartoon Network, so at least it got international release.

Here's another good one. Lets Lagoon (we have a page, but only barely, it isn't even properly indexed.) A supernatural romance/mystery. I'm particularly impressed by the protagonist, who manages to distinguish himself in a realistic way through strong character and perseverance.

...Was my list too big? I'm wondering whether people actually read it. :/

Or maybe I was brief to the point of meaninglessness?

Or perhaps both.

I read this one cool one-shot called Tokyo Department Store Sensou Taikenki (Records of the Tokyo Department Store War). It takes place in a post-apocalyptic Japan in there's a huge shopping mall filled with just about everything you can imagine. But it's also filled with dangerous monsters, the animal-like mutations of the things the store sells. The main characters is one of the only people skilled enough to survive the place, taking stuff from the store to fill his never-ending greed.

That's half the reason I refused to list anything. The other half is my tastes apparently not being in line with most people on this site, not that I give two sh!ts.

Still, this thread has served to extend my really long backlog list. So I guess I should reluctantly thank people for listing stuff.

edited 23rd Jul '12 2:11:19 PM by burnpsy

Well not exactly backlog, but it does show how many series have very tiny followings, at least compared to the big mainstream shounen stuff.

Gunjo

@Hamburger Times

I loved Gash Bell too! By the way, I heard that anime was cut short because it caught up with the manga earlier than expected, due to Raiku(the mangaka) injuring his hand. There might have been some issues between the mangaka and the publisher of Shonen Sunday as well, since Raiku sued Shogakukan over losing some of his artworks and also called them out on treating mangakas badly.

I think the series itself is pretty well-known in Japan. It had two movie adaptations, you know...

edited 23rd Jul '12 10:47:51 PM by heejung

Well shounen series in general are easy to market. Everyone will have heard of, oh, Naruto for example, but will the same people know about Non-Non Biyori?

Well, Non-Non Biyori is also Shounen. Unless you mean Shounen action series.

That's what I meant. Heh, wasn't able to finish as I had to log off work.

@ Sabbo I've read most of what you listed so... yeah. XD The descriptions are kinda sparse, too.