Manga like A: A'

11-nin Iru!

Also known as They Were 11!.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Mystery , Sci-Fi

They Were 11 is about ten Galactic University recruits who have passed many levels only to be given one final test. They are told to travel to an ancient spaceship and live there, together, for fifty-three days. This is not a problem until the ten recruits, hailing from diverse backgrounds and planets, discover that there are actually eleven of them on the ship. In fact, this problem turns out to be the test, as they have to trust each other in order to survive, even though one of them is an impostor.



Note: Won the 21st Shogakukan Manga Award for Shoujo in 1975.

Tags: Shoujo , Space , LGBTQ+ Themes , Survival , Aliens , Agender , Primarily Male Cast , Ensemble Cast , Transgender , Memory Manipulation , Adoption

Gin no Sankaku

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Fantasy , Romance , Sci-Fi

The distortion of space-time and the song that amplifies it. The distortion of the world amplified by the song, the tone of which echoes in time with the sound of music. This is a tapestry of sad but beautiful sounds spun by the beautiful space-time god Lagthorin, who tries to stop the collapse of the world while bobbing between these distortions, and Merlin, a trickster who has been tailored for the said collapse.



Tags: Philosophy , Clone , Time Manipulation , Seinen

Barbara Ikai

Also known as Otherworld Barbara.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Fantasy , Mystery , Romance , Sci-Fi

Tokio discovers a phantom island named Barbara. Then there’s a mysterious and missing geneticist, an eccentric clergyman, a grieving grandmother granted temporary youth, a psychologist killed by a freak tornado… Hagio offers a sci-fi explanation for these seemingly random paranormal elements, and makes it all matter with believable characters in complex and subtle relationships.



Note: Winner of Japan's Science Fiction Grand Prize award in 2006.

Tags: Josei , Age Regression , Family Life , Cannibalism , Ensemble Cast , Memory Manipulation , Alternate Universe , Aliens , Male Protagonist

U

Status: Finished
Genres: Horror , Romance , Sci-Fi

Yuu has spent her entire life with a “copy” of herself, her twin sister. Now science has created a copy more perfect than nature ever could, and Yuu seems like the perfect test subject. But as her copy becomes more intelligent day by day and begins questioning its own existence, the experiment threatens to spiral out of control. Who is real and who is a copy? And what is a “copy” that has surpassed its original? Just a copy, the original, or something else entirely?

Tags: Female Protagonist , Twins , Clone , Josei , Tragedy , Cannibalism , Body Horror , Primarily Adult Cast , Work , Heterosexual

Boku no Chikyuu wo Mamotte

Also known as Please Save My Earth.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Fantasy , Romance , Sci-Fi

Life's hard when you're shy, harder still when you move from your quiet hometown to the bustle of a big city and a new high school. Poor Alice also has to cope with being regularly harassed by the bratty neighbor boy, Rin. Her life turns upside-down when she's stuck babysitting Rin and the annoying chore ends in unexpected tragedy. What Alice doesn't realize is there could be a greater force at work than unhappy chance!



Tags: Space , Reincarnation , Shoujo , Body Swapping , Aliens , Female Protagonist , Amnesia , Urban Fantasy , Philosophy , Tragedy , Age Gap , War , Super Power , Heterosexual , Boys' Love , Urban , Environmental , Revenge , Unrequited Love , Nudity , LGBTQ+ Themes

Terra e...

Also known as To Terra....

Status: Finished
Genres: Adventure , Drama , Sci-Fi

A few days before Atalaxian Jomy Marcus Shin's Awakening Day, he has a strange dream of a young blue-haired man. This young man is Soldier Blue, the leader of a group of psionic humans called Mu. The Mu have been fighting for generations for the right to survive against the humans who want them all killed, and have been dreaming to go back to the old homeland - Terra - the old Earth. Little does Jomy know that his awakening is the Mu's last chance - can he unlock his own powers and lead the Mu back to Terra?



Tags: Space , Fugitive , Space Opera , Artificial Intelligence , Shounen , Male Protagonist , Super Power , Reincarnation , War , Tragedy

Marginal

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Fantasy , Mystery , Sci-Fi

In the year 2999, only eleven cities still survive on Earth. The climate has changed drastically, and a biochemical apocalypse has made women extinct. For centuries, the male population of Earth has survived by depending on only one woman, called the Holy Mother, whose ova are harvested to create genetically engineered children. By now, any concept of a world in which women exist as ordinary people is long gone. Society has re-structured itself around all-male families, and gay relationships have become the norm.

At the beginning of Marginal, the Holy Mother is assassinated by a terrorist known as Grinja. The government in power doesn't want to start a mass panic, so it pretends that the Holy Mother has only shed her vessel, and that she will be miraculously "reborn" in the near future. The public, which is superstitious and devout, believes this easily. Only government officials know that behind the scenes, there is a frantic effort to create a new being with an XXY chromosome -- a male capable of giving birth. (This is a BL misrepresentation of an actual phenomenon known as Klinefelter's Syndrome.)

The manga's story revolves around one such boy -- Kira, the product of a genetic experiment, who becomes involved in a three-way relationship with Grinja, the aforementioned terrorist, and Ashijin, a young man who calls himself Kira's owner. A complex plot and flawless world-building make the story irresistible, and Kira's search for freedom is as symbolic as it is gripping.



Tags: Dystopian , Boys' Love , Primarily Male Cast , Post-Apocalyptic , Terrorism , Shoujo , Clone , Slavery , Amnesia , Religion , Nudity , Desert

Joker e...

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Romance

About a boy who is transformed into a girl through a freak accident and is caught up into a love triangle.

Notes:
Includes the one shot "Umi ni Iru no wa... (海にいるのは…)"
Includes the one shot Housenka Pan (ほうせんか・ぱん)"

Tags: Shoujo , Gender Bending , Love Triangle , Tragedy , Foreign , Time Skip

Shuuseki Kairo no Himawari

Also known as IC in a Sunflower.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Psychological , Romance , Sci-Fi

A cyber-punkish collection of stories revolving around the theme of the "DOLL."

Gum no Iranai Kodomo-tachi (Keep Those Condoms Away From Our Kids)
The tale of boys and girls who have lost their sexual desire.

Rissa no Tetsu no Hitsugi (The Iron Maiden)
The tale of the strain a girl experiences from having grown up in a home without love.

Shuuseki Kairo no Himawari (The Sunflower Quality Of An Integrated Circuit)
Vanilla is a maidroid in the home of an elderly master and his younger wife. The atmosphere in the house is cold and stiff because the wife is having an affair with a younger man. The lonely master comes to look upon Vanilla as his own dear child. He suggests that when the sunflowers bloom, they go outside together to watch them. "Is that a command, sir?" asks Vanilla. "It is not a command," he replies. "It is a promise." And so forms the piercing and painful integrated circuit—the alternating current of intercourse—between a lonely old man and the emotionless Vanilla.

Bara Tessen no Mukougawa (The Other Side of the Rose Wire)
What was the thing a girl like an angel endlessly carried?

Kago no Sakana (Fish Out of Water)
A mermaid is brought out of her dream.

Koubutsu-kun (Mister Mineral)
Inside the body of a cute girl who's just like a doll... are internal organs, and blood, and...

Anata wa Ikiteiru (Alive)
The sad tale of a human and a clone who pass right by each other.

Tags: Tragedy , Josei , Artificial Intelligence , Heterosexual , Anthology , Cyberpunk , Nudity , Maids , Mermaid , Female Protagonist , Male Protagonist

Star Red

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Psychological , Sci-Fi

At the end of the 23rd Century, a girl stares at a red star in the sky. Her name happens to be Red Star, born on Mars. The series tells of Red's adventures at the center of the Milky Way.

Note: Won Seiun Award 1980 in manga category.

Tags: Shoujo , Space , Female Protagonist , Ensemble Cast , Tragedy , Gender Bending , Reincarnation , Super Power