The Great Manga Gift Guide

Last year David Welsh of The Manga Curmudgeon started the Great Manga Gift Guide, where manga bloggers and reviewers made their own lists for the best manga to buy for Christmas. The gift guide has been started up again this year by Daniella Orihuela-Grueber on her website, All About Manga. I've been writing about manga for quite a few months now, so obviously I feel qualified enough to present my own list.

For a list of guides that are likely way better than mine, see Daniella's post. Otherwise, here's my list, starting off with something cute.

For Animal Lovers of All Ages: Chi's Sweet Home by Kanata Konami

Chi's Sweet Home is about the life of a kitten - that was honestly enough to pique my interest. Chi's loses her mom and siblings, but is picked up by a human family and brought into their home, the big problem being their apartment doesn't allow pets. A story about the antics of a cute cat sounds pretty one-note, but Konami consistently delivers cute, funny, and heartfelt stories about the kitten's life. Publisher Vertical, Inc. decided to release Chi's Sweet Home flipped, an act that generally enrages manga fans, but this makes it easy to give Chi as a gift as a gift to kids or adults. And even though this makes the books pretty expensive ($14.99 U.S.) the North American edition of Chi's Sweet Home has been enhanced with soft, bright colors that give this manga the potential to be a great book to read aloud with your little one.

More Chirstmas shopping picks after the jump.

Slice-of-Life Manga: Cross Game by Mitsuru Adachi 

Though it's a baseball manga, I hesitate to recommend buying Cross Game for your favorite sports fan. Baseball is more of a backdrop for the series, giving a common ground for the heroes and a battlefield for fighting the series' villains. Instead, we have a very simple but heartfelt story about a boy who wants to play baseball, not just because he's good at it but because someone he cared very much about believed in him. And as much as I love the story, I wouldn't recommend this manga so strongly if Mitsuru Adachi hadn't taken such care in the creation and development of his characters. If you know the person you're buying for is looking for something that will get their heart racing this might not be the right gift for them, but I'd suggest it for everyone else on your shopping list.

For the Science Fiction Fan: Twin Spica by Kou Yaginuma and Saturn Apartments by Hisae Iwaoka

I'm generally more of a fan of fantasy than sci-fi, but two great series came out this year, both so equally awesome that I'm bringing them both up here.

In Twin Spica, tragedy involving an accident with a space ship tore Asumi's family apart, but she still yearns to be close to the stars. So she enrolls in the special space academy for high school students so she can learn to be an astronaut, and works with her classmates to be the next generation of space travelers. Conversely, Saturn Apartments introduces us to characters that want to return to earth, having left the planet long ago to live in a series of apartments that circles the earth in a giant ring. Young Mitsu is now old enough to take his father's place as a window washer, but he has to deal with the nagging question of whether his father tried to kill himself, or if he had been desperate to continue living even in this closed-off world. Both are very poignant tales of growing up and the painful yearning for a place you've never been. They're both melancholy, sometimes sad tales (Twin Spica has yet to fail at making me tear up), but they also manage to make you feel just so darn good when you're done.

For the Sentimental Fool: Bunny Drop by Yumi Unita

Bunny Drop is about a young man becoming a parent - by adopting his grandfather's secret love child. Despite the soap opera-y plot summary, this manga is actually not that cheesy, and it's not even about goofy situations despite main character Daikichi's cluelessness about being a parent. Really, it's just a sweet, uplifting story about having a family, and loving each other no matter who the person is our how you came to be together. This manga didn't make me cry like some others on this list, and it didn't make me burst out laughing, but it sure made me smile a whole lot.

For Every Shojo Fan: Cardcaptor Sakura by CLAMP

The first manga I ever bought was a copy of Cardcaptor Sakura, about 10 years ago. It was the original Tokyopop print run, a small - and flipped! - edition. The new omnibus from Dark Horse brings us the first three volumes of the 12-volume series, when Sakura is given the powers of the cardcaptor and is given the task of gathering up the missing magical Clow Cards. Dark Horse's release of the magical girl manga boasts colored pages and even remastered images. If I wasn't so unwilling to give up my old volumes (this was my first manga, so there's a lot of sentimental value there) I'd be getting this re-release for myself. Fun fights, wonderful characters, beautiful art, and a leading female that manages to be strong and adorable all at once - Cardcaptor Sakura is definitely a great choice for the little lady comic fan, and also quite a few older manga readers.

Other Gift Ideas

The manga listed above are all series that I would personally recommend to anyone, but there are still other comics that would make great gifts for the right reader.

Cactus's Secret by Nana Haruta is a typical high school romance story, but it's a cute light read that would be perfect for the pre-teen crowd.

Another light read is Hyde & Closer from VIZ Media's Shonen Sunday line, and unlike most shonen manga this one caps out at 7 volumes, so you don't have to feel guilty about getting a friend hooked on this series.

If your shopping for a history buff, or you want to get your kid to learn a bit about world history, Penguin came out with two fantastic biographies in manga form: The 14th Dalai Lama and Che Guevara.


Kingyo Used Books is basically a manga about how reading manga is wonderful. It's great for the bibliophile in your life, or good for the person who wants to learn about out-of-print or unlicensed manga classics.

My Manga Wishlist

• A Drunken Dream and Other Stories. I have not stopped hearing about how wonderful this manga is. It's a hardcover, making it a bit pricey, so on the Christmas list it goes.
• Spice & Wolf. I just read the third volume for a review, and I loved it. Now I want to fill in the holes.
• Very, Very Sweet. This is a manhwa, which I've read the last volume of (again, for a review). That was enough to get me to enjoy the story, so now I want to read it all.
• One Piece omnibuses. It's really inevitable, right? I'm going to own this series eventually. Might as well start now and get it over with.

So how much do you disagree with my list? What are going to buy for presents? And what manga or comics do you want?