Manga like Reiraku

Solanin

Also known as Solanin.

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

College graduates struggle to cope with the real world. Music offers refuge in this modern manga with an American attitude. Meiko Inoue is a recent college grad working as an office lady in a job she hates. Her boyfriend Shigeo is permanently crashing at her apartment because his job as a freelance illustrator doesn't pay enough for rent. And her parents in the country keep sending her boxes of veggies that just rot in her fridge. Straddling the line between her years as a student and the rest of her life, Meiko struggles with the feeling that she's just not cut out to be a part of the real world.



Notes:
The chapter count contains an epilogue published in October 2017 as part of the new Japanese volumes edition release.
It was nominated for the 2009 Eisner Award for Best U.S. Edition of International Material - Japan.
It was nominated for the 2009 Harvey Award for Best American Edition of Foreign Material.

Tags: Coming of Age , Band , Seinen , Tragedy , Heterosexual , Found Family , Primarily Adult Cast , Female Protagonist , Family Life , College , Urban , Rock Music , Office Lady , Nudity

Sekai no Owari to Yoake Mae

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Slice of Life

Collection of short stories including:
Mudai (無題, Untitled); kakioroshi
Yoakemae (夜明け前, Before Dawn); Big Comic Spirits Zoukan Casual #2007/2/15
Alfalfa (アルファルファ); Sunday GX 2005-07

4-6. Nichiyou, Gogo, 6-jihan. (日曜、午後、六時半。, Sunday, Afternoon, 6:30.); Big Comic Spirits 2006 #36+37~39
"At that time, I absolutely hated Sunday afternoons at 6:30. I hated the word 'family' to death. That's why I couldn't stand seeing them. Besides, whether or not there is an end to the escape from reality, I truly felt the visit of the tiresome days."

Chou Mousou A-ko no Nichijou to Yuuutsu (超妄想A子の日常と憂鬱, The Typical Day and Melancholy of Super-Imaginative A-ko); Sunday GX 2006-09
Kyuujitsu no Sugoshikata (休日の過ごし方, How to Spend a Day Off); Big Comic Spirits Zoukan Casual #2007/9/15
17; Big Comic Spirits Zoukan Casual #2008/2/15
Subarashii Sekai (素晴らしい世界, What a Wonderful World); Sunday GX 2008-08
Tokyo (東京); Big Comic Spirits 2008 #40
Sekai no Owari (世界の終わり, The End of the World); kakioroshi
Jikuu Taisen Snakeman (時空大戦スネークマン, Snakeman and the Great Space-time War); kakioroshi

Tags: Philosophy , Anthology , Seinen , Nudity

Oyasumi Punpun

Also known as Goodnight Punpun.

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

Meet Punpun Punyama. He’s an average kid in an average town.
He wants to win a Nobel Prize and save the world.
He wants the girl he has a crush on to like him back.
He wants to find some porn.
That’s what he wants, but what does he get…?



Tags: Coming of Age , Seinen , Tragedy , Philosophy , Denpa , Suicide , Psychosexual , Urban , Male Protagonist , Heterosexual , Anti-Hero , Time Skip , Fugitive , Surreal Comedy , School , Cult , Meta , Work , Nudity , Gods , Body Horror , Love Triangle , Ghost

Look Back

Also known as Look Back.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Slice of Life

Fujino is a fourth grader who draws a manga strip for the school newspaper. Her art makes her the star of the class, but one day she's told that Kyomoto, a student who refuses to come to school, would also like to submit a manga for the paper...



Note: The one-shot was compiled in a special volume, released on September 3, 2021.

Tags: Drawing , Tragedy , Female Protagonist , Primarily Female Cast , Hikikomori , Shounen , Coming of Age , Work , Meta , Autobiographical , School , Primarily Child Cast , Philosophy , Rehabilitation

Tokyo Higoro

Also known as Tokyo These Days.

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

A requiem for the anguished, lost, and wandering in life over 50.

With Japan entering a new era, the story centers on Shiosawa, a former manga editor for a major publisher. After going into early retirement, he now finds himself wondering about what the world of manga means to him: is it work, a form of expression, or friendship?

Tags: Seinen , Male Protagonist , Work , Primarily Adult Cast , Philosophy , Drawing

Subarashii Sekai

Also known as What a Wonderful World!.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Slice of Life

A dream recaptured. A life on a new track. The absurdity of death. Laughter in the face of reality.

With this series of intersecting vignettes, Inio Asano explores the ways in which modern life can be ridiculous and sublime, terrible and precious, wasted and celebrated.



Tags: Seinen , Episodic , Philosophy , Anthology , School , Youkai , Yakuza , Suicide

Sensei no Shiroi Uso

Also known as Sensei's Pious Lie.

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

Misuzu Hara is a quiet, reserved 24-year-old high school teacher whose world is turned upside down after her friend’s fiancé rapes her. Her attempt to connect with one of her students, himself a victim of sexual trauma, results in an unlikely romance, and the repercussions of these events affect everyone around them in often unpredictable ways.



Notes: Nominated to the 22nd Annual Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize.

Tags: Teacher , Female Protagonist , Seinen , School , Heterosexual , Age Gap , Nudity , Suicide , Work , Psychosexual , Time Skip

Sekishoku Elegy

Also known as Red Colored Elegy.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Slice of Life

Seiichi Hayashi produced Red Colored Elegy between 1970 and 1971, in the aftermath of a politically turbulent and culturally vibrant decade that promised but failed to deliver new possibilities. With a combination of sparse line work and visual codes borrowed from animation and film, the quiet melancholy lives of a young couple struggling to make ends meet are beautifully captured in this poetic masterpiece.

Uninvolved with the political movements of the time, Ichiro and Sachiko hope for something better, but they're no revolutionaries; their spare time is spent drinking, smoking, daydreaming, and sleeping--together and at times with others. While Ichiro attempts to make a living from his comics, Sachiko's parents are eager to arrange a marriage for her, but Ichiro doesn't seem interested. Both in their relationship and at work, Ichiro and Sachiko are unable to say the things they need to say, and like any couple, at times say things to each other that they do not mean, ultimately communicating as much with their body language and what remains unsaid as with words.

Red Colored Elegy is informed as much by underground Japanese comics of the time as it is by the French Nouvelle Vague, and its cultural referents range from James Dean to Ken Takakura. Its influence in Japan was so large that Morio Agata, a prominent Japanese folk musician and singer songwriter, debuted with a love song written and named after it.

"I wanted to live like Sachiko and Ichiro; to have aspirations even while living stoically and humbly." --Morio Agata



Tags: Seinen , Drawing , Work , Nudity , Heterosexual , Suicide , Primarily Adult Cast

Munou no Hito

Also known as The Man Without Talent.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Slice of Life

The Man Without Talent is an unforgiving self-portrait of frustration. Swearing off cartooning as a profession, Tsuge takes on a series of unconventional jobs—used-camera salesman, ferryman, stone collector—hoping to find success among the hucksters, speculators, and deadbeats he does business with. Instead, he fails again and again, unable to provide for his family, earning only their contempt and his own. The result is a dryly funny look at the pitfalls of the creative life, and an off-kilter portrait of modern Japan.



Tags: Autobiographical , Seinen , Philosophy , Rural , Primarily Adult Cast , Male Protagonist , Drawing