Manga like Barbara

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 , Tragedy , Rural , Incest , Crime , Police , Time Skip , Yakuza , Fugitive , Nudity , Rehabilitation , Urban , Gangs

Utsubora

Also known as Utsubora - The Story of a Novelist.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Mystery

The story begins when Aki Fujino, a beautiful girl who the novelist Mizorogi knew, dies under mysterious circumstances. Then a girl appears before Mizorogi, and although she introduces herself as Aki's twin sister Sakura, her true identity is a complete mystery. As Mizorogi's past ties with Aki come to light, people begin to suspect him of plagiarism. Mizorogi's life spirals deeper into darkness as his editor and the police probe further into Aki's death and Mizorogi's connection with her.



Tags: Suicide , Writing , Twins , Age Gap , Josei , Nudity , Tragedy , Meta , Detective , Bisexual , Male Protagonist

I.L

Also known as I.L.

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

Readers are thrown into the life of Imari Daisaku, a filmmaker whose fanciful creations have fallen of favor in a society dominated by scientific triumphs. However, his life changes forever when he encounters a peculiar group led by Count Alucard, and he receives an extraordinary gift; I.L, a mysterious mannequin with the power of shapeshifting.

Together, Daisaku and I.L utilize the phenomenal transformative abilities to help those in need and are propelled into an array of thrilling and haphazard adventures.



Tags: Episodic , Shapeshifting , Nudity , Female Protagonist , Fugitive , War , Seinen

Kirihito Sanka

Also known as Ode to Kirihito.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Psychological

Two doctors, the young, passionate and well-liked Osanai and the veteran, ambitious Tatsugaura, are both investigating the mysterious 'Monmow' disease, found only in one remote village, which causes bizarre bone deformation, making its victims take on a beastlike appearance before their deaths.

Osanai is sent to the village by Tatsugaura to see if he can find a cause for the disease while also treating the victims to the best of his ability. But in reality, Tatsugaura is scheming against Osanai and intends to infect him with the disease in order to clear the way of any obstacles of presenting his own research, and thus gaining high prestige and rank in the medical world.

Tags: Medicine , Philosophy , Conspiracy , Seinen , Foreign , Gore , Male Protagonist , Ensemble Cast , Body Horror , Primarily Adult Cast , Drugs , Nudity

MW

Also known as MW.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Psychological , Thriller

Michio Yuki has it all: looks, intelligence, a pedigree as the scion of a famous Kabuki family, a promising career at a major bank, legions of female admirers. But underneath the sheen of perfection lurks a secret with the power to shake the world to its foundations.

During a boyhood excursion to one of the southern archipelagos near Okinawa, Yuki barely survived exposure to a poison gas stored at a foreign military facility. The leakage annihilated all of the island’s inhabitants but was promptly covered up by the authorities, leaving Yuki as an unacknowledged witness—one whose sense of right and wrong, however, the potent nerve agent managed to obliterate.

Now, fifteen years later, Yuki is a social climber of Balzacian proportions, infiltrating the worlds of finance and politics by day while brutally murdering children and women by night—perversely using his Kabuki-honed skills as a female impersonator to pass himself off as the women he’s killed. His drive, however, will not be satiated with a promotion here and a rape there. Michio Yuki has a far more ominous objective: obtaining MW, the ultimate weapon that spared his life but robbed him of all conscience.

There are only two men with any hope of stopping him: one, a brilliant public prosecutor who struggles to build a case against the psychopath; the other, a tormented Catholic priest, Iwao Garai, who shares Yuki’s past—and frequently his bed.



Tags: Seinen , Conspiracy , Politics , Crossdressing , Psychosexual , Torture , Crime , Urban , Primarily Adult Cast , Religion , Nudity , Boys' Love , LGBTQ+ Themes , Bisexual , Zoophilia , Age Gap , Suicide , Espionage

Nagai Go Ban Barbara

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

Tags: Female Protagonist

Alabaster

Also known as Alabaster.

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

Once a famous athlete, now an infamous villain, James Block seeks revenge against all things “beautiful.” After he’s arrested and convicted for assaulting his girlfriend who insulted his appearance, he meets a mad scientist in prison who tells him of the ‘F Laser’ he invented that can turn any carbon based organism invisible. When James finishes his prison term, he finds the ‘F Laser’ and points it on himself, however the imperfect laser beam leaves him disfigured with only his skin invisible. On a vicious revenge spree, he takes the nom de guerre of Alabaster and is joined by Ami, the granddaughter of the scientist who experimented on his pregnant daughter and left Ami fully invisible. Together they pull off several heists, but Ami’s innocence may cause Alabaster’s downfall…



Tags: Shounen , Revenge , Anti-Hero , Terrorism , Body Horror , Crime , Male Protagonist , Crossdressing

Reiraku

Also known as Downfall.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Slice of Life

Selling copies is the only thing that matters.

So what if your first series just ended and you have no idea how to start the next one, your marriage is breaking up, your pure love of manga has been destroyed by the cruel reality of the industry and nothing seems to fill the sucking void inside you...

Find the secret combo for a new hit manga series and everything will be okay.

Right?



Tags: Drawing , Male Protagonist , Seinen , Primarily Adult Cast , Prostitution , Heterosexual , Work , Nudity ,

Shinkiro Kitan

Status: Finished
Genres: Mystery , Supernatural

Mirage is an old-fashioned bar on a street corner. Men who are lost in life come to the mirage, transcending time and space, and become captivated by Maya, the beautiful proprietress. What do the defeated men want from Maya?

Tags: Seinen , Bar

Kusakabe-san

Also known as Miss Kusakabe.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Ecchi , Psychological , Romance , Slice of Life

A disturbing look into a sad relationship between a broken man who's clinging on a cheating elusive woman he's emotionally addicted to.

A man finds a mysterious young woman on his doorstep. Her passion and hunger for life suddenly shine bright for him in what has been a pretty mundane existence.



Tags: Nudity , Seinen , Psychosexual , Netorare , Crossdressing , Male Protagonist , Primarily Adult Cast , Time Skip , Heterosexual , Urban