Manga like Ayako

Saint Rosalind

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Horror , Mystery , Thriller

The main character, Rosa, is the child of the devil. Although her appearance is patently innocuous, the terrible things that befall everyone around her soon prove that she is anything but.

A dark, gruesome story, made all the more eerie by the sparkly, feminine 1960s shoujo art style Watanabe continues to use.

Tags: Shoujo , Tragedy , Religion , Female Protagonist , Primarily Child Cast , Foreign , Gore , Ojou-sama , Detective , Demons , Suicide , Butler , Nun , Adoption

Yami no Purple Eye

Status: Finished
Genres: Horror , Mystery , Psychological , Romance , Supernatural

Rinko is an ordinary girl who was born with a mysterious birthmark on her left arm. But when that mark starts to get darker, strange accidents begin to happen everywhere around her, involving even the people she cares about. What will the powerful magic awakening inside Rinko bring her?

Tags: Shoujo , Animals , Henshin , Torture , Tragedy , Female Protagonist , Adoption , Shapeshifting , Time Skip , Heterosexual , Pregnancy

Ayako

Also known as Ayako.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama

Opening a few years after the end of World War II and covering almost a quarter-century, here is comics master Osamu Tezuka’s most direct and sustained critique of Japan’s fate in the aftermath of total defeat. Unusually devoid of cartoon premises yet shot through with dark voyeuristic humor, Ayako looms as a pinnacle of Naturalist literature in Japan with few peers even in prose, the striking heroine a potent emblem of things left unseen following the war.

The year is 1949. Crushed by the Allied Powers, occupied by General MacArthur’s armies, Japan has been experiencing massive change. Agricultural reform is dissolving large estates and redistributing plots to tenant farmers—terrible news, if you’re landowners like the archconservative Tenge family. For patriarch Sakuemon, the chagrin of one of his sons coming home alive from a P.O.W. camp instead of having died for the Emperor is topped only by the revelation that another of his is consorting with “the reds.” What solace does he have but his youngest Ayako, apple of his eye, at once daughter and granddaughter?



Tags: Historical , Politics , Seinen , Espionage , Psychosexual , Incest , Fugitive , Crime , Yakuza , Rural , Tragedy , Nudity , Police , Time Skip , Gangs , Urban , Rehabilitation

Akujo Seisho

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Psychological , Romance

A wedding ruined by the suicide of a woman rumored to be a witch...

Eiichi's affair ends in disaster as his lover hangs herself during his wedding to another woman. To the horror of the wedding guests, the dead woman gives birth to a girl. Eiichi and his new wife are forced to raise a child they don't want and don't care for. They name her Tsumiko (Great Shame).

Now as a teenager Tsumiko resembles her dead mother more every day. She must compete with a younger sister, Megumi, who is everything she is not. As tensions rise at home and at school, Tusmiko will do everything she can to make her life better...

Tags: Female Protagonist , Josei , Revenge , School , Suicide , Family Life , Tragedy , Gore , Nudity

Senrei

Status: Finished
Genres: Horror , Psychological

Izumi Wakakusa is a renowned actress obsessed with beauty. When an hideous mark shows up on her face she suddenly disappears and gives birth to a little girl: Sakura.

Sakura is always pampered and overprotected by her mother, until the day that she discovers why she was born.

Tags: Female Protagonist , Dissociative Identities , Torture , Anti-Hero , Gore , Body Swapping , Age Regression , Body Image , Shoujo , Yandere , Tragedy , Age Gap , Fugitive , School , Time Skip , Nudity , Rural , Primarily Female Cast , Meta

Tomie

Also known as Tomie.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Fantasy , Horror , Supernatural , Thriller

Tomie Kawakami is a femme fatale with long black hair and a beauty mark just under her left eye. She can seduce nearly any man, and drive them to murder as well, even though the victim is often Tomie herself. While one lover seeks to keep her for himself, another grows terrified of the immortal succubus. But soon they realize that no matter how many times they kill her, the world will never be free of Tomie.



Notes:
While a collection of mainly independent short stories, Tomie was originally published as Volumes 1 and 2 of the Ito Junji Kyofu Manga Collection. This entry is for the standalone release of Tomie first published in February 2000 with previously unreleased chapter "小指/Little Finger".
Later collections such as the 'Complete Deluxe edition' by VIZ combines this and the sequel entry Tomie: Again for a total of 20 chapters.
The short story “Painter” has been adapted in the first part of episode 9 of Ito Junji: Collection.

Tags: Body Horror , Monster Girl , Gore , Tragedy , Female Protagonist , Episodic , Shoujo , Male Harem , Yandere , Demons , Urban Fantasy , Suicide , Nudity , Succubus , Bullying , Cannibalism , School