There are real-life dramas, and then there’s… Oyasumi Punpun. Written by Inio Asano, the manga follows a young boy named Punpun Onodera through various stages in his life, from elementary school to his early 20s. While he and his family are ordinary people, the manga portrays them as birds while dealing with depression, love and his domestic struggles. Strange as it can get, it’s a serious story that gets in some tough places.
Oyasumi Punpun doesn’t want to be sad intentionally, but Asano didn’t want to make it feel-good either. It’s just a recognizable comic about real issues done in a curious way that makes it worth watching. But are there any other manga comics to follow? Oyasumi Punpun‘stone? Well, yes. Otherwise this would be a short article. Here are 8 other series fans should watch.
8 A girl at the seaside
pun was not Asano’s only series. He also wrote and drew A girl at the seaside for Manga Erotics F. If that name doesn’t betray the game, this series is going into some tough territory. However, just like Asano made pun to avoid ‘feel good’ stories, A girl at the seaside is not just made to excite the reader. It’s an equally serious coming-of-age story that honestly and realistically faces the sexual side of things. In other words, it’s clumsier, messier, and harder than a fantasy comic.
It is about Kōme Sato and Keisuke Isobe, two students who enter into a casual relationship with each other. Keisuke loves Sato, but she doesn’t feel the same. Initial. Their feelings become more complicated when Sato finds photos of a girl on a beach on a spare SD card Isobe gave her. Now the two must figure out where the two stand with each other, in addition to dealing with things like peer pressure, drugs, grief, and more.
7 Nijigahara Holography
Before Asano worked on both pun or A girl at the seaside, he created this psychological horror for QuickJapan in 2003. It has a non-linear story, so it jumps between the past and the present. But the story generally focuses on Arie Kimura, a girl who tells the locals a fairy tale about another girl who was sent by God to warn the village about a monster. They sacrifice her to appease the beast, but she is born again and again, as the monster grows bigger with each sacrifice it devours.
Arie’s classmates push her into a well-connected Nijigahara tunnel. She survives, but is left in a coma. Her classmates have to deal with the guilt of their actions. Their problems related to it get worse and worse until they dominate their lives. Some become brutal bullies, others become negligent parents, and others do worse deeds. They all become monsters, as Arie’s story said.
6 homunculus
Away from Asano, this horror story from Ichi the killer creator Hideo Yamamoto isn’t as grounded as pun or holograph. But it involves the same combination of using fantasy to bring out one’s true self. The manga is about Susumu Nakoshi, a homeless man who sleeps out of his car. A strange man attacks him, looking for participants for a trepanation experiment (drilling holes in the skull). Susumu says no, but changes his mind when his car is towed, and he learns that the experiment will pay him 700,000 to participate.
He has medical student Manabu Itō drill a hole in his skull, thinking it would give Susumu ESP abilities. At first it looks like it did nothing. But when Susumu covers his right eye, he sees “distortions” instead of people. Itō tells him that they are homunculi, representations of one’s subconscious. Nakoshi thinks he can use this to manipulate others, but with every interaction he gets a portion of their homunculus. They may have flaws, but he may be the most flawed of them all.
5 Last Tour girls
Created by Tsukumizu for Kurage Bunch, the manga is a life story set after the fall of civilization. Two girls named Chito and Yūri travel the ravaged world in a Kettenkrad (a half-track motorcycle) in search of food and supplies. On their travels, they encounter several survivors, each trying to find their own way in life.
Like Ishii, a scientist who is trying to make a plane to find other cities, or Kanazawa, who is more interested in mapping the city he and the girls live in. It is almost the reverse of Asano’s work. Instead of taking a real setting and distorting it to make it rawer like pun, Last Tour girls takes a hard attitude and loosens it up to offer a more positive outlook. It does not shy away from difficult situations, but does give the reader some hope.
4 Flowers of Evil
Shūzō Oshimi’s manga for Bessatsu Shōnen is perhaps better known for its weird rotoscoped anime adaptation. But the original comic is easier on the eyes with a more typical art style. The tone is quite close to that of Asano A girl at the seaside because it involves students dealing with the difficulties of love, relationships and their own dark sides.
Takao Kasuga gives in to temptation and steals his lover Nanako Saeki’s underwear, only to be caught red-handed by his classmate Sawa Nakamura. She blackmails him into a ‘contract’, creating a strange relationship, while also making him Saeki’s friend. This arrangement only gets more complicated as the three students struggle with their feelings for each other and deal with the consequences.
3 Boys from the 20th century
Naoki Urasawa’s manga for Big Comic Spirits was a big deal when it originally came out. Shortly after it ended in 2007, it spawned a trilogy of live-action films, all released between August 2008 and August 2009. It was about four boys in 1969 who set up their own secret base and celebrated their friendship with their own custom gang logo. , and their own fantasy story called ‘The Book of Prophecy’ in which they join forces to save the world.
30 years later, when they are all adults, they discover that the events in the book are beginning to become reality. The grown-up gang uncovers a plot to spread a virus through cities across Japan. Fortunately, a new political party can offer a vaccine for it. They are led by a figure called Friend, who wears a mask with the boys’ old logo on the front. Who is he really? What connection does he have with the Boys? And how do the events of their Book of Prophecy become reality? Read it to find out.
2 Boys abyss
Ryu Minenamis Boys abyss perhaps more familiar territory for pun fans. Made for Weekly Young Jump, it’s about a young boy named Reiji Kurose. He wants to leave his village in the countryside, but feels trapped there by his family. His brother burns out from studying for exams, his grandmother succumbs to dementia, and his mother works to the bone trying to keep everyone together.
When he meets Nagi, a former pop idol, the two make a pact to end their troubles for good by jumping into the “Lover’s Abyss” outside the city. Their attempt fails when Reiji’s teacher Yuri saves him. That sounds happy enough, except that from then on everyone connected to Reiji finds their lives spiraling out of control and heading towards the Abyss. Only Reiji’s bully Gen gives them hope of breaking the circle, but that’s not guaranteed.
1 Not easy
Of all the suggestions on this list, Natsume Ono’s manga for the webcomic magazine Cosmic Seed is perhaps the most like pun. Like Asano’s work, it is a lifelike drama that follows a young boy and his dysfunctional family. Although, unlike punit throws in a mystery and gets harder.
It is a non-linear story about a man named Ian. His friend Jim is writing a novel called ‘Not Simple’, based on Ian’s life, in which he describes growing up with an abusive mother, an absent father and a missing sister. He endures physical and other abuse and other hardships as he searches for his sister and ends up learning more than he bargained for.
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