Manga like Kyousantou Sengen

Shihonron

Also known as Capital in Manga!.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama

As the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, a new generation is reflecting on the insights of Karl Marx. Marx not only stood against the global economic system but he also helped us understand it. He explained how wealth was created on the backs of workers, how “surplus value” is realized and how accumulation is achieved through unpaid labour-time, the intensification of work and the tyranny of credit.



Tags: Class Struggle , Historical , Classic Literature , Economics , Politics

Ashita no Joe

Also known as Ashita no Joe: Fighting for Tomorrow.

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

Joe Yabuki is a troubled young man who runs away from an orphanage. Wandering through the Tokyo slums, he meets former boxing trainer Danpei. Joe is later arrested and goes to a temporary jail where he fights Nishi, his future best friend, ​and leader of a group of hooligans. He and Nishi then go to a juvenile prison miles away from Tokyo. There Joe meets Rikiishi, a former boxing prodigy, and a rivalry develops between them. They face each other in a match in which Rikiishi dominates Joe until the latter hits him with a cross-counter, resulting in both being knocked out. This inspires the other prison inmates to take up boxing. Joe and Rikiishi vow to fight again.



Tags: Boxing , Tragedy , Coming of Age , Male Protagonist , Rehabilitation , Orphan , Urban , Athletics , Class Struggle , Shounen , Primarily Male Cast , Delinquents , Prison , Foreign , Yakuza , War

Boku no Mura no Hanashi

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama

A story based on real life events. The Sanrizuka Struggle, told from the perspective of the peasants fighting for their land.

Tags: Seinen , Rural

Itsuka, Nemuri ni Tsuku Hi

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama , Romance , Supernatural

Hotaru Morino is a second year high school student who has had an unrequited crush on Ren Otaka since junior high school. One day, while on a school trip with Ren and her good friend Shiori Yamamoto, their bus gets into an accident. When Hotaru wakes up, a young man who is dressed fully in black appears in front of her. He is Kuro, a grim reaper. A shocked Hotaru shoves him away but he has shocking words for her: "I'm your guide. Hotaru Morino, listen carefully. You're dead."

Hotaru learns that if she does not get over her attachment to three things within 49 days, she will end up becoming a ghost bound to a specific physical location and wouldn't be able to rest in peace. She had slept for one month after the accident and has only 19 days left. And so, Hotaru sets out to settle the three lingering regrets with the limited time she has, in the company of Kuro.

One of them is to confess her feelings to Ren, her crush of five years. However, when he is in front of her, she finds it impossible to tell him how she feels. As Hotaru settles her first lingering regret, dark clouds begin to gather over her and Kuro...

Tags: Afterlife , Female Protagonist , Shounen , Male Protagonist

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

Hadashi no Gen

Also known as Barefoot Gen.

Status: Finished
Genres: Drama

1945, Japan. Gen Nakaoka is a spirited six-year-old boy who lives with his poor yet loving family in wartime Hiroshima. As the second World War rages on, Gen's father Daikichi stands among the few outspoken who are opposed to the emperor and stand for the innocent civilians bearing the brunt of the war. However, in a society with nothing but feverous support for their nation, Gen and his family are ostracized as traitors. Unbeknownst to them, a terrible fate awaits the people of Hiroshima...

One quiet morning, the US forces drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. In an instant, the city is completely destroyed, leaving thousands dead and many more exposed to radiation. Though Gen manages to survive the blast, he finds his life irreversibly changed. Regrouping with what's left of his family, Gen must now grapple with starvation, destitution, and an unsympathetic public who see survivors as little more than disease-ridden beggars.

Based on author Keiji Nakazawa's real-life experiences, Hadashi no Gen follows Gen and his fellow survivors in their struggle to survive in post-war Hiroshima. Gen resolves to soldier on with unwavering determination, while never forgiving those who caused the atrocity, never forgetting the pain of the bomb, and never letting his spirit be broken by the tragedy.

Tags: Tragedy , Historical , War , Found Family , Delinquents , Autobiographical , Gore , Adoption , Male Protagonist , Body Horror , Coming of Age , Crime , Shounen