Manga like Black Jack

MONSTER

Also known as Monster.

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

Everyone faces uncertainty at some point in their lives. Even a brilliant surgeon like Kenzo Tenma is no exception. But there’s no way he could have known that his decision to stop chasing professional success and instead concentrate on his oath to save peoples’ lives would result in the birth of an abomination. The questions of good and evil now take on a terrifyingly real dimension.

Years later, in Germany during the tumultuous post-reunification period, middle-aged childless couples are being killed one after another. The serial killer’s identity is known. The reasons why he kills are not. Dr. Tenma sets out on a journey to find the killer’s twin sister, who may hold some clues to solving the enigma of the “Monster.”



Tags: Seinen , Conspiracy , Tragedy , Philosophy , Amnesia , Fugitive , Twins , Noir , Foreign , Memory Manipulation , Male Protagonist , Primarily Adult Cast , Detective , Historical , Ensemble Cast , Police , Medicine , Time Skip , Crossdressing , Orphan , Adoption , Suicide , Torture , Gore , Achronological Order , Assassins

Franken Fran

Also known as Franken Fran.

Status: Finished
Genres: Comedy , Horror , Psychological , Sci-Fi

Somewhere, out in the sticks of rural Japan, there is a mysterious manor that is home to the greatest surgeon who ever lived. But when the surgeon goes missing, his reanimated daughter, Fran, takes up the family profession, and despite her Frankenstein-like ways, cares deeply for her patients and holds steadfast to the Hippocratic Oath. Fran’s creed? “All lives must be saved, no matter the cost!”

Join Fran, her twisted sister Veronica, and the rest of her monstrous entourage in a gruesomely hilarious tale that would put Mary Shelley to shame! Because for Franken Fran, the ends always justify the means, no matter what ungodly creations emerge from her lab.



Tags: Episodic , Body Horror , Female Protagonist , Medicine , Seinen , Parody , Urban Fantasy , Gore , Satire , Monster Girl , Philosophy , Cannibalism , Educational , Chimera , Ero Guro , Nudity , Superhero , Zombie , School ,

Black Jack ni Yoroshiku

Also known as Give My Regards to Black Jack.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Psychological

"What is a doctor?"- a young intern faces the dark side of the medical world.
The reality awaiting intern Eijirou Saito at the ultra-prestigious Eiroku University hospital turns out to be brutally long hours of work for a paltry salary of less than $500 a month. 3 months after his graduation from the university, his patients-first idealism crashes head-on into a medical system that's a veritable tangle of contradictions and competing interests.



Note: Won Excellence Prize for Manga in Japan Media Arts Festival (2002) and Grand Award in Japan Cartoonist Association Award (2004).

Tags: Medicine , Seinen , Primarily Adult Cast , Male Protagonist , Philosophy , Rehabilitation , Educational , Work , Disability , Episodic , Nudity , Heterosexual , Suicide

Midnight

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama

Midnight is the story of a taxi driver named Shinya Mito (whose name is literally Japanese for "mid" and "night") and his various passengers, each of whom he helps in various ways. Shinya drives a taxi as a way to earn money for the treatment of a young woman named Mari, whose brain was injured sometime earlier as the result of an accident Shinya was responsible for causing. The taxi Shinya drives is equipped with a fifth wheel which makes the car more maneuverable under any kind of road conditions.

Tags: Cars , Shounen , Ghost , Episodic , Male Protagonist , Urban , Tragedy , Twins , Gender Bending , Adoption , Anti-Hero , Anthropomorphism

Tetsuwan Atom

Also known as Astro Boy.

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

In the distant year 2003, Japan is a technological utopia, and robots are everywhere. One such robot, Tobio, was built by the brilliant Dr. Tenma to replace his dead son. But when it soon becomes apparent that Tobio is an imperfect copy of his departed child, Dr. Tenma throws him out. He is rescued from the scrap heap by the benevolent Professor Ochanomizu, a crusader for robot civil rights. Now the little robot, renamed Astro Boy, is given a mission to defend Japan and the world from all manner of sinister threats. Using his seven super-abilities and 100,000 horsepower worth of strength to battle evil, Astro hopes to set an example to the world of the good which all robots are capable of.

Tags: Robots , Artificial Intelligence , Philosophy , Shounen , Politics , Male Protagonist , Episodic , Aliens , Space , Time Manipulation

Hi no Tori

Also known as Phoenix.

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

"All things are born and all things die. That is the law of heaven." According to legend, the Bird of Fire called the Phoenix is the eternal spirit of life, death and rebirth. She oversees the cycle of reincarnation and the rising and falling of civilizations and species. Those who can obtain her blood will be granted eternal life, while to others she can grant infinite wisdom, or eternal suffering. Throughout history, from the dawn of civilization to the extinction of the human race, those human souls touched by the Phoenix have hunted her over and over in multiple reincarnations, and their actions in one life determine or reflect the sins and sufferings of other lifetimes.



Note: This is an incomplete series due to Tezuka's death.

Tags: Philosophy , Reincarnation , Episodic , War , Historical , Mythology , Time Skip , Achronological Order , Environmental , Dystopian , Anachronism , Space , Coming of Age , Primarily Adult Cast , Shounen , Male Protagonist , Cyberpunk , Gods , Tragedy , Body Swapping , Post-Apocalyptic , Robots , Aliens , Anti-Hero , Artificial Intelligence , Fugitive , Revenge , Satire , Love Triangle , Age Regression , Amnesia , Ensemble Cast , Clone , Swordplay

Dororo

Also known as Dororo.

Status: Finished
Genres: Action , Adventure , Drama , Fantasy

A samurai lord has bartered away his newborn son's organs to forty-eight demons in exchange for dominance on the battlefield. Yet, the abandoned infant survives thanks to a medicine man who equips him with primitive prosthetics - lethal ones with which the wronged son will use to hunt down the multitude of demons to reclaim his body one piece at a time, before confronting his father. On his journeys the young hero encounters an orphan who claims to be the greatest thief in Japan.

Like an unforgettable road movie, Dororo reaches deeper than its swashbuckling surface and offers a thoughtful allegory of becoming what one is, for nobody is born whole



Tags: Demons , Youkai , Swordplay , War , Coming of Age , Samurai , Rural , Anti-Hero , Male Protagonist , Historical , Meta , Shounen , Ghost , Crossdressing , Female Protagonist , Gender Bending , Disability , Curses

Dr. Koto Shinryoujo

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

After making a serious mistake in his work in Tokyo, talented surgeon Goto Kensuke is invited to take charge of the only clinic on the small island of Yonaguni, Okinawa. It is difficult to get competent doctors to serve on this remote island, and the islanders are now used to traveling for hours via boat for proper medical care. Despite seeming weak and unreliable (he gets very seasick, and does not have a driving license), he wins over the skeptical islanders with his skill and dedication. Some children of the island make a flag for his clinic, but get his name wrong. Thereafter he is known by all as Koto.

Tags: Medicine , Male Protagonist , Rural , Seinen , Primarily Adult Cast , Heterosexual , Work

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

Mushishi

Also known as Mushishi.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Fantasy , Mystery , Slice of Life , Supernatural

Some live in the deep darkness behind your eyelids. Some eat silence. Some thoughtlessly kill. Some simply drive men mad. They are known as mushi—creatures that came into being shortly after life emerged from the primordial ooze. They still exist parallel to our own lives and can only be seen by a select few. As a mushishi, Ginko is one of the few who are aware of their existense, and this young man with a sardonic smile roams from place to place with the knowledge and skill to aid those unwittingly affected by mushi.



Note: Won the Excellence Prize for Manga at the 7th Japan Media Arts Festival in 2003 and the Kodansha Manga Award for General Manga in 2006.

Tags: Travel , Episodic , Environmental , Youkai , Seinen , Mythology , Rural , Eco-Horror , Iyashikei , Philosophy , Male Protagonist , Tragedy , Urban Fantasy , Historical , Work , Demons