Osamu Tezuka’s vaunted storytelling genius, consummate skill at visual expression, and warm humanity blossom fully in his epic volumes on Siddhartha’s life and times. Tezuka evidences his profound grasp of the subject by contextualizing the Buddha’s ideas; the emphasis is on movement, action, emotion, and conflict as the prince Siddhartha runs away from home, travels across India, and questions Hindu practices such as ascetic self-mutilation and caste oppression. Rather than recommend resignation and impassivity, Tezuka’s Buddha predicates enlightenment upon recognizing the interconnectedness of life, having compassion for the suffering, and ordering one’s life sensibly. Philosophical segments are threaded into interpersonal situations with ground-breaking visual dynamism by an artist who makes sure never to lose his readers’ attention. (Source: Kodansha USA) **Note:** Won the Bungei Shunju Manga Award in 1975 and the Best U.S. Edition of International Material for the Eisner Award in 2004 and 2005.

Among adult readers in Japan Black Jack is Osamu Tezuka’s most popular achievement, and perhaps the most close to the creator’s heart, as Tezuka considered entering the medical field—majoring in medicine in college—before devoting his life to comics. Black Jack is a genius surgeon who never acquired his license due to his clashes with the medical establishment. He is hired out by anyone willing to pay his exorbitant rates and is perceived as a heartless rogue because of his enigmatic nature and antisocial manner. But as readers will soon discover, that is not the whole story. (Source: Kodansha USA) *Note: Won the 1st Kodansha Manga Award in the Shounen category in 1977.*

Hopeless pushover Iruma Suzuki has found himself in a *devil* of a predicament… His trashy parents have sold off his soul, and he now has to live and attend school in the Netherworld. But with his unique survival skills and doting demon grandfather’s support, Iruma will surely make it through this hellish experience. He’ll just need to subjugate rival classmates, summon familiars, and more, all while never revealing that he’s human… Easy as *aleph*, *bet*, *gimel*, right? *Source: Kodansha USA, Vol. 1*

A graveyard in contemporary Israel has an unlikely visitor. The elderly gentleman from Japan, a former news correspondent, lays a bouquet of flowers at the tomb of one Adolf Kamil. For he remembers the tale of three Adolfs: Kamil, a Jew who grew up in Kobe, Japan, the son of a baker; Kaufmann, only child of a German consul stationed at that port city and his Japanese wife; and the Fuhrer with whom the Far Eastern nation made common cause. *Note: Won the 10th Kodansha Manga Award for general manga in 1986.*

**Iruma-kun, the mob boss?!** In this *brand-new spinoff* of the runaway hit series, *Iruma is a dirt-poor but kind young boy* who grows up in a ruthless city slum. One day, Iruma gives a severely injured old man his last loaf of bread and *nurses the stranger back to health*—only to find out that the elder gent is none other than *Don Sullivan*, leader of the Babel Mafia! Soon after, Don Sullivan comes back, whisks Iruma away, and begs the boy to become his grandson. And just like that, the curtains rise on Iruma’s *chaotic new life* as the next in line to a gigantic gang of—dare we say—*demonic mafiosos*! *Source: Kodansha USA, Vol. 1*

In this world, witches must hunt down their magic! Deep in the forest, the terrifying king of magic and the strongest witch are locked in deadly combat. But suddenly, a young boy joins the fray. His name is Ichi and he is just a hunter. But he has the power to flip the magic world upside down in this magic hunting fantasy epic! *Source: MANGA Plus* --- Magic is alive and well in the world, inside beings known as Majiks. By completing a Majik’s trial, a Witch can gain its power. However, only women can become Witches or use magical items. All that changes one day when a young man named Ichi turns the world on its head by defeating an infamous Majik and gaining its magical powers! *Source: VIZ Media*

Set in modern day Tokyo, Dazai's tale details the life of a young man originally from a well-off family from Japan's far north. Yozo Oba is a troubled soul incapable of revealing his true self to others. A weak constitution and the lingering trauma from some abuse administered by a relative forces him to uphold a facade of hollow jocularity since high school. The series is composed of three parts, referred to in the novel as "memorandums," which chronicle the life of Oba from his teens to late twenties. (Source: Kodansha USA) *Adaptation of the original work of Dazai Osamu.*

The stage is Sapporo, Hokkaido. One night, our heroine, Minare Koda, spills her heartbroken woes to a radio station worker she meets while out drinking one night. The next day, she hears a recording of her pitiful grumbling being played live over the air. Minare storms into the station in a rage, only to then be duped by the station director into doing an impromptu talk show explaining her harsh dialogue. With just one recording, the many eccentric facets of Minare's life begin to pull every which direction as she falls ever deeper into the world of radio. (Source: Kodansha USA) *Note: Nominated for the 9th and 13th Manga Taisho Award in 2016 and 2020.*

A samurai lord has bartered away his newborn son's organs to forty-eight demons in exchange for dominance on the battlefield. Yet, the abandoned infant survives thanks to a medicine man who equips him with primitive prosthetics - lethal ones with which the wronged son will use to hunt down the multitude of demons to reclaim his body one piece at a time, before confronting his father. On his journeys the young hero encounters an orphan who claims to be the greatest thief in Japan. Like an unforgettable road movie, Dororo reaches deeper than its swashbuckling surface and offers a thoughtful allegory of becoming what one is, for nobody is born whole (Source: Kodansha USA)

ATOM: The Beginning is an original manga based on the God of Manga Osamu Tezuka’s world-famous series Astro Boy. It works both as a prequel to the original series, telling the stories of the developers of the artificial intelligence that would eventually give birth to the iconic Atom, and as a stand-alone sci-fi manga about the turbulent lives of two robotic engineering students and their latest revolutionary project: the unassuming yet insanely strong A106, or “Six.” *Source: Titan Comics, Vol. 1*

*Ghost in the Shell 1.5: Human-Error Processor* presents the "lost" Ghost in the Shell stories, created by Shirow Masamune after completing work on the original Ghost in the Shell manga and prior to his tour-de-force, Ghost in the Shell 2: Man-Machine Interface, but never collected until now. Focusing on Section 9 agents in their daily battle against technocrime, Human-Error Processor has all the mind-twisting cybermadness you've come to expect from Ghost in the Shell but set in a more police-procedural context with action and suspense galore. (Source: Dark Horse)

During Japan’s tumultuous Sengoku period, one man sells his son to a pack of devils in exchange for the power to rule. Forty-eight devils take forty-eight pieces of young Hyakkimaru, and the boy is left for dead. But through the assistance of a sage and a series of inventive prosthetics, Hyakkimaru survives. Together with the young thief Dororo, the now-grown Hyakkimaru embarks upon a quest to slay all the demons and retrieve the stolen pieces of his body. (Source: Seven Seas Entertainment) *A remake of the original Dororo work by Osamu Tezuka.*