Holyland

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners takes the sprawling video-game world of Night City and does something the games rarely have time to — it makes it hurt. Studio Trigger's ten-episode run follows David Martinez, a street kid who loses everything and claws his way into the life of an edgerunner: a mercenary who trades pieces of his own body for chrome, speed, and a shot at mattering in a city that eats people like him for breakfast. It's loud, neon-drenched, and animated with the kind of kinetic swagger only Trigger brings — but the reason it landed so hard is the love story at its center and the slow, dreadful math of how much humanity you can sell before there's nothing left to save. You do not need to have touched the game to feel every second of it. At ten episodes, Edgerunners is one of the most complete emotional gut-punches anime has produced in years, and a rare tie-in that stands taller than its source. Come for the style; stay for the ending you'll be thinking about long after the credits.

Berserk

Berserk is the towering dark-fantasy epic that half of modern manga is quietly built on. It follows Guts, a lone mercenary raised by the sword, and his fraught bond with the charismatic, ambitious Griffith, leader of the mercenary band Guts calls home. What begins as a story of brotherhood and battlefield glory curdles, across one of the most devastating turns in the medium, into a lifelong hunt for revenge against forces far larger than any human army. Kentaro Miura's artwork is the stuff of legend — pages so dense with detail they can stop you cold — and the story pairs that beauty with genuine horror and hard-won tenderness. It's a meditation on ambition, trauma, and the sheer stubbornness it takes to keep walking when the world has given you every reason to lie down. A word for newcomers: Berserk is long, unflinching, and firmly for adult readers. Following Miura's passing, the manga continues under his studio and closest friend. Start from the beginning and give the early arcs room to breathe — few stories reward patience like this one, and none quite feel the same afterward.

Tokyo Ghoul

Tokyo Ghoul lives in the gap between human and monster, and refuses to let you look away. In a Tokyo secretly stalked by ghouls — beings who look human but survive only by eating human flesh — bookish college student Ken Kaneki goes on the wrong date and wakes up after emergency surgery as something in between: a half-ghoul, cursed with the hunger of a predator and the conscience of the prey he used to be. Sui Ishida's series is body-horror with a philosophical streak, obsessed with identity, belonging, and what a person becomes when survival demands cruelty. Kaneki's slow, agonizing transformation — physical and moral — is one of the genre's great tragic arcs, and the masked, coffee-shop underworld of Tokyo's ghouls gives it a haunting texture all its own. A note for newcomers: the manga is the definitive version — it's dark, complex, and best read in full. The anime adapts the opening stretch and diverges later, so if a scene grabs you, the pages will always take you deeper. Come ready for horror with real weight behind it.

Land of the Lustrous

In a world inhabited by crystalline lifeforms called The Lustrous, every unique gem must fight for their way of life against the threat of lunarians who would turn them into decorations. Phosphophyllite, the most fragile and brittle of gems, longs to join the battle. When Phos is instead assigned to complete a natural history of their world, it sounds like a dull and pointless task. But this new job brings Phos into contact with Cinnabar, a gem forced to live in isolation. Can Phos’s seemingly mundane assignment lead both Phos and Cinnabar to the fulfillment they desire? (Source: Kodansha USA) Note: Nominated for the 8th Manga Taisho in 2015.

Gantz

Tokyo teens Kei and Masaru are killed by a subway train but awaken in a room with an ominous black orb that gives them weapons, suits and orders. Fighting bizarre alien monstrosities in a deadly game, will they win their freedom or die for the final time? (Source: Dark Horse)

Pandora Hearts

The air of celebration surrounding fifteen-year-old Oz Vessalius’s coming-of-age ceremony quickly turns to horror when he is condemned for a sin about which he knows nothing. He is thrown into an eternal, inescapable prison known as the Abyss from which there is no escape. There, he meets a young girl named Alice, who is not what she seems. Now that the relentless cogs of fate have begun to turn, do they lead only to crushing despair for Oz, or is there some shred of hope for him to grasp on to? (Source: Yen Press) Note: Includes two extra chapters and the pilot one-shot.

Choujin X

Best friends Tokio and Azuma do everything together, even if most of the time it feels like Tokio is just stumbling along in Azuma’s cooler, more talented footsteps. But when they’re attacked one night by a superhuman mutant called a choujin, Tokio finally has a chance to shine—by turning into a choujin himself! Being a superpowered creature isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, though. Tokio has to hide his transformation from his family and dodge a truancy charge at school, all while dealing with the increasingly odd incidents happening around town! (Source: VIZ Media) Note: The manga chapters are irregularly released on Tonari no Young Jump. At the same time, it received a serialization in Weekly Young Jump, starting from chapter 1. Some chapters receive a version with fewer pages in the magazine, also counting with additions of new pages in certain situations. After chapter 15, the manga went back to being exclusive to Tonari no YJ, ending the serialization in the magazine.

Mob Psycho 100

Do you or someone you know need an exorcist who works cheap? Reigen's your guy! What's his secret to busting ghosts while keeping prices low? Well, first, he's a fraud, and second, he pays the guy who's got the real psychic power—his student assistant Shigeo—less than minimum wage. Shigeo is an awkward but kind boy whose urge to help others and get along with them is bound up with the mental safety locks he's placed on his own emotions. Reigen knows he needs to exploit Shigeo to stay in business, yet for better or worse he's also his mentor and counselor. And he also knows whenever the normally repressed kid's emotions reach level 100, it may unleash more psychic energy than either of them can handle! (Source: Dark Horse) Note: Includes 12 extra chapters.

I Am a Hero

A mentally unhinged manga artist witnesses the beginning of a zombie outbreak in Tokyo, and he’s certain of only two things: he’s destined to be the city’s hero, and he possesses something quite rare in Japan—an actual firearm! (Source: Dark Horse) Notes: Nominated for the 3rd and 4th Manga Taisho Award (2010). Includes a new epilogue chapter that was released 4 years after the official end of the manga.