Manga Book Club - What Do We Read Next?

We're 2.5 sessions away from finishing One Piece, which means we need to know what we're going to read next. Cast your vote now and decide our fate!

I've included a short description of every series, so please look them over before you cast your vote in the poll at the bottom.

Multiple choices are allowed. Please limit your voting to no more than 3 choices.

EDIT: OKAY SO STRAIGHT UP Patreon's new update literally doesn't let you do Multiple Choice polls. I ticked the box on this post AND a new one and it just didn't work. So just... comment below with your options. Sorry for the trouble.

EDIT x2: Now it does work. Patreon is gaslighting me.

DUNGEON MESHI - (Adventure/Comedy) 12 Vol.

Also known by it's extremely stupid English title, "Delicious in Dungeon". A series of adventurers work their way through a dungeon while cooking and eating monsters. Highly recommended. Cute art and a strong cast. All three members of the book club have been meaning to read this for ages, the manga just concluded, and it's about to get an anime adaptation. This is our personal pick, but we don't decide what to read, you guys do.

I would like to know more about the cute blonde elf.

PLUTO - (Mystery/Thriller/Sci-Fi) 8 Vol.

A dark retelling of an Astro Boy storyline about a robot murder mystery, told from the perspective of one of the side characters. The murderer appears to be someone set out to destroy the world's greatest robots. Much darker and more violent than One Piece. May require content warnings. A trailer for the anime series that has been in the works for years literally just dropped on Netflix two days ago. Comes highly recommended.

NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND - (Fantasy/Post-Apocalypse/Sci-Fi) 7 Vol.

The manga Miyazaki had to make before getting the movie greenlit. In a world centuries into recovering from nuclear Armageddon, humans live in scattered clusters, separated by vast stretches of desert and poisonous jungles. Monsterous bugs the size of skyscrapers threaten to wipe humanity off the map. One girl, Nausicaa, seeks to understand the mysteries of her world rather than fight them, and in doing so may be the only person who can save humankind.

Nausicaa's manga has a story about seven times longer than the movie. Its conflicts are much more wide-spread and far-reaching. I read this one years ago and I like to describe it as "the place Miyazaki put all his dark thoughts while making children's movies". Much grimmer than you'd expect after watching the movie, which is pretty hopeful. One of the only good pieces of post-apocalyptic media I've ever engaged with.

GOLDEN KAMUY - (Western/Adventure/Cooking Manga Somehow/Also Yaoi) 31 Vol.

The single best Western I've ever read.

Years ago, a famous criminal hid a vast stash of gold in a secret location. After he was captured, he tattooed a complex map to the gold on the backs of dozens of other prisoners. The prisoners escaped in a violet riot, and now the only way to find the treasure is to hunt down the convicts hiding across the Hokkaido wilderness.

60% Western, 40% survivalist cooking guide, 100% gay. If you like drawings of big muscley men, this is the series for you.

Golden Kamuy is one of my favorite manga of all time. Unfortunately Bo, Aloha, and I have all read it before so there's not as much surprise on this one. The final physical copy isn't out yet. This might be one to save for later, but I have to put it here because I love it.

BOYS RUN THE RIOT - (LGBT+, Fashion) 37 Chapters

Ryou Watari is a boy born in the body of a girl. Rejected for being a "tomboyish girl" and a transgender boy, he cannot confide in anyone and suffers in the prison of his own skin. Subtly, he expresses his genuine self through a buzzcut and secret purchases of boys' clothes. Then he starts a fashion brand.

Highly recommended. Short. Might be a good breather between other series.

A BRIDE'S STORY - (Slice of Life, Historical Fiction, Romance) 14 Vol.

A series of vignettes about an expanding cast of interconnected lives on the silk road steppe at the turn of the century, each expanding on what the lives were like for the different types of people living there, from nomadic to pastoral.

PANDORA HEARTS - (Mystery, Fantasy, Shonen but like for Girls) 24 Vol.

Oz, heir apparent to a great noble house, attends his coming of age ceremony. However, he is attacked my mysterious men in robes and sent to another dimension where he meets a strange girl named Alice. Working together, they escape their prison, but find they have both been flung into the future. Oz joins a group called Pandora who fight by forging contracts with creatures like Alice known as "chains". Between fights, Oz and the others investigate the tangled web of mysteries behind his own disappearance and the world of chains known as "the abyss".

Yam has been explaining this one to me. She spent like 6 hours walking me through the arc of the mystery and the clues and when I thought we were at the 80% mark it turned out we were at the 30% mark so there's a lot more going on than I expected. Full of pretty boys. Made by the Vanitas lady.