Highlights
- Oyasumi Punpun is a serious manga that explores real issues like depression and domestic struggles in a unique and curious way.
- The Climber is a grounded and human drama that follows the life of Buntaro Mori as he deals with loneliness, depression, and his ambitious goal of climbing the hardest mountain in the world.
- Blood on the Tracks is a dark and disturbing manga that portrays the ugliness and darkness that exists within a family, without the use of allegorical images like Oyasumi Punpun.
There are slice-of-life dramas, and then there’s Oyasumi Punpun. Written by Inio Asano, the manga follows a young boy called Punpun Onodera through different 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 as he deals with depression, love, and his domestic struggles. As strange as it can get, it’s a serious story that goes into some heavy places.
Oyasumi Punpun doesn’t aim to be deliberately sad, but Asano didn’t want to make it a ‘feel-good’ tale either. It’s simply a relatable comic about real issues done in a curious way that makes it worth checking out. But are there any other manga comics that follow Oyasumi Punpun’s tone? Well, yes. Otherwise, this would be a short article. Here are some other series fans should check out.
Updated on July 23rd, 2023 by David Heath: As the world is still waiting for Production +h's animated adaptation of Inio Asano's Dead Dead Demon's Dededededestruction, the man himself has been releasing his latest work, Mujina Into the Deep, in Big Comic Superior. It's about a young girl who happens to be an assassin finishing off her targets across the city of Tsukumo. It's bloody and action-packed, and on a different path from his classic works. Though just as Dead Dead Demon deconstructed moe stuff, and Oyasumi Punpun deconstructed the slice-of-life genre, fans are expecting Asano to use Mujina to flip action manga on its head too. Only time will tell there. But if anyone came off Mujina wishing it was more like Punpun, or are after more Punpun-esque manga, this list has been updated with a few more options.
15 The Climber
The Climber, created by Shinichi Sakamoto and Yoshiro Nabeda, is a little different from the other entries on this list. Like Junji Ito's No Longer Human, it's an adaptation of a novel- Jiro Nitta's 1973 two-part series of the same name. Yet it's more grounded than that work, or any of the other entries on this list. There's no magic, visions, phenomena, love triangles, or the like. Just solid, human drama.
The Climber has a straightforward premise: it details the life of Buntaro Mori as he goes from starting a mountain climbing club in high school to becoming a world-class professional climber. It's everything in-between that makes it special, as Mori uses climbing to deal with his loneliness and depression. He's also driven to reach the top of K2, the hardest mountain to climb in the world. Will he succeed? Or become the 1 in 4 who die trying to reach the summit?
14 Blood on the Tracks
After Shūzō Oshimi finished Flowers of Evil and other cheery-sounded works like Happiness and Inside Mari, he started work on a piece that YouTube media critic Super Eyepatch Wolf famously described as "The Manga That Breaks People". Like Punpun, it shows how some slices of life can show how ugly and dark things can be in a family. Except it doesn't use allegorical images like Punpun's birds. It shows people can be disturbing enough as they are.
Seiichi Osabe lived a normal life until his family went on a hiking trip. His clingy mother Seiko would always try to keep him safe, but when his cousin Shigeru almost knocks him off a cliff edge as a joke, she breaks. She saves Shigeru from slipping, only to deliberately push him off, with Seiichi as the only witness. He survives, but he's left in a coma. As he slowly rouses from it, and Seiko slowly devolves into a personality disorder, Seiichi is left trapped between looking out for his mother and wanting to escape her manipulative clutches.
13 Arigatou
As great as Blood on the Tracks is, fans might find Naoki Yamamoto's Arigatou much closer to Oyasumi Punpun's tone. On paper, it's about Ichiro Suzuki trying to revive his role as head of his family and help them overcome their hardships. In practice, it's a dark comedy that shows how the Suzukis keep failing and making things worse for themselves.
Ichiro is enthusiastic yet embarrassing and ineffectual. His wife is an alcoholic recluse, and his daughters range from rebellious (Takako) to unresponsive (Akiko). It plays out like a gross-out laughfest at first, with art that borders on being "adult content". However, the story and characters come together after the first few chapters, as its psychological elements become more apparent. The Suzukis may be broken, but they're not the only ones with issues.
12 My Broken Mariko
Waka Hirako's manga is unique as it started off as a webcomic on Comic Bridge, which was pulled together into a single volume for release by Kadokawa and Yen Press. The jōsei genre, works for young women than its younger shojo equivalent, is no stranger to dark, sad stories. My Broken Mariko stands out because it feels rawer than its competition.
The story follows Shiino, a girl grieving the death of her best friend Mariko. Driven to fulfill her last wishes, she steals her ashes from her abusive father and heads towards the ocean to scatter them. It sounds simple enough, though she finds herself plagued by memories and thoughts of her 'broken' friend. The manga is an honest portrayal of what grief does to a person and how they handle it, mixing lovely art with crude sketches to capture the shifting emotions a la Punpun.
11 No Longer Human
Oyasumi Punpun isn't strictly horror, though it frequently has off-putting scenes that can be hard to stomach. If it were more obviously part of the genre, it would probably resemble No Longer Human. Based on the novel of the same name by Osamu Dazai, it told the story of Ōba Yōzō, a troubled man who puts up a façade of friendliness because he can't connect with others.
It covers Ōba's life through his notebooks, as he recounts how those around him end up suffering terrible fates. This includes Dazai himself, as it received extra scenes of the author getting permission from Ōba to write his story, followed by Ōba recounting Dazai's death. If the art looks familiar, that's because it's by famous horror manga artist Junji Ito, who brings every skin-crawling, unnerving moment of the novel to life. It's not his only adaptation of a novel, but it is his most successful.
10 Scum's Wish
Mengo Yokoyari's Scum's Wish is a similar tale of broken homes and broken hearts. It just has a more romantic angle to things. Originally published in Big Gangan, the manga told the story of high school students Hanabi and Mugi. They each have a crush on their teachers Narumi and Akane, but the two tutors love each other instead. So, Hanabi and Mugi make a pact to form a fake relationship to fill the void in their hearts.
If either of their teachers end up falling for them, they'll agree to end things amicably. They just have to avoid actually falling in love with each other. The manga was acclaimed enough to receive equally popular anime and live-action TV drama adaptations as well, which captured the story's tense atmosphere quite well. If this premise sounds familiar to some Punpun fans, that's because Asano did a similar one of his own.
9 A Girl On The Shore
Punpun wasn’t Asano’s only series. He also wrote and drew A Girl on the Shore for Manga Erotics F. If that name didn’t give the game away, this series goes into some racy territory. However, just as Asano made Punpun to avoid ‘feel good’ stories, A Girl on the Shore wasn’t made just to titillate the reader. It’s a similarly serious coming-of-age tale that faces the sexual side of things honestly and realistically. In other words, it’s more awkward, messy, and difficult than a fantasy comic.
It’s about Kōme Sato and Keisuke Isobe, two students who enter a loose relationship with each other. Keisuke likes Sato, but she doesn’t feel the same way. Initially. Their feelings get more complicated when Sato finds photos of a girl on a beach on a spare SD card Isobe gave her. Now the two have to figure out where the two stand with each other, alongside dealing with issues like peer pressure, drugs, grief, and more.
8 Nijigahara Holograph
Before Asano worked on either Punpun or A Girl on the Shore, he created this psychological horror for QuickJapan in 2003. It has a non-linear narrative, so it skips between the past and the present. But the story overall focuses on Arie Kimura, a girl who goes around telling the locals a fairy tale about another girl who was sent by God to warn the village of a monster. They sacrifice her to appease the beast, but she just keeps getting reborn, while the monster gets bigger with each sacrifice it devours.
Arie’s classmates shove her into a well-connected Nijigahara tunnel. She survives but is left comatose. Her classmates are left dealing with the guilt of their actions. Their issues relating to it get worse and worse until they dominate their lives. Some become brutal bullies, others neglectful parents and others do worse deeds. All become monsters, just as Arie’s story said.
7 Homunculus
Moving away from Asano, this horror story from Ichi the Killer creator Hideo Yamamoto isn’t as grounded as Punpun or Holograph. But it does involve the same combination of using fantasy to bring out a person’s true self. The manga is about Susumu Nakoshi, a homeless man sleeping out of his car. A strange man accosts 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 away, and he learns the experiment will pay him ¥700,000 for taking part in it.
He lets medical student Manabu Itō drill a hole in his skull, thinking it would give Susumu ESP abilities. At first, it seems to have done nothing. But when Susumu covers his right eye, he sees ‘distortions’ in the place of people. Itō tells him they are homunculi, representations of a person’s subconscious. Nakoshi thinks he can use this to manipulate others, but he gets a part of their homunculus with each interaction. They may have flaws, but he may be the most flawed of all.
6 Girls’ Last Tour
Created by Tsukumizu for Kurage Bunch, the manga is a slice-of-life story set after the fall of civilization. Two girls called Chito and Yūri travel the ruined world in a Kettenkrad (a half-track motorbike) in search of food and supplies. They come across a range of different survivors on their travels, each trying to make their own way in life.
Like Ishii, a scientist trying to make an airplane to find other cities, or Kanazawa, who’s more interested in mapping out the city he and the girls live in. It’s almost an inverse of Asano’s work. Instead of taking a real setting and distorting it to make it rawer like Punpun, Girls’ Last Tour takes a harsh setting and eases it up to provide a more positive outlook. It doesn’t shy away from dire situations, but it gives the reader some hope.
5 Flowers Of Evil
Shūzō Oshimi’s manga for Bessatsu Shōnen is perhaps better known for its odd rotoscoped anime adaptation. But the original comic is easier on the eyes with a more typical art style. Its tone is quite close to Asano’s A Girl on the Shore as it involves students dealing with the difficulties of love, relationships, and their own dark sides.
Takao Kasuga gives into temptation and steals the underwear of his crush Nanako Saeki, only to be caught in the act by his classmate Sawa Nakamura. She blackmails him into a ‘contract,’ forming an odd form of relationship while he also becomes Saeki’s boyfriend. This arrangement only gets more complicated as the three students wrestle with their feelings for each other and deal with the consequences.
4 20th Century Boys
Naoki Urasawa’s manga for Big Comic Spirits was a big deal when it originally came out. Soon after it ended in 2007, it led to 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, celebrating their friendship with their own custom gang logo, and their own fantasy story called ‘The Book of Prophecy’ about them joining forces to save the world.
Then 30 years later, after they’ve all grown up, they discover the book’s events have started coming true. The grown-up gang discover a plot to spread a virus through cities across Japan. Luckily, a new political party are able to provide a vaccine for it. They’re 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 to the Boys? And how are the events from their Book of Prophecy becoming real? Give it a read to find out.
3 Boy’s Abyss
Ryō Minenami’s Boy’s Abyss might be more familiar ground for Punpun fans. Made for Weekly Young Jump, it’s about a young boy called Reiji Kurose. He wants to leave his rural town, but he feels trapped there by his family. His brother is burnt out on studying for exams, his grandmother is succumbing to dementia, and his mother is working herself ragged to hold everyone together.
When he meets Nagi, a former pop idol, the two make a pact to end their troubles for good by leaping into the ‘Lover’s Abyss’ outside town. Their attempt fails when Reiji’s teacher Yuri saves him. That sounds happy enough, except from then on, everyone connected to Reiji finds their lives spiraling out of control and towards the Abyss. Only Reiji’s bully Gen gives them hope of breaking the cycle, but that’s not guaranteed.
2 Not Simple
Out of all the suggestions on this list, Natsume Ono’s manga for the webcomic magazine Cosmic Seed is perhaps the most like Punpun. Like Asano’s work, it’s a slice-of-life drama that follows a young boy and his dysfunctional family. Though, unlike Punpun, it throws in a mystery and gets harsher.
It’s a non-linear story about a man called Ian. His friend Jim writes a novel called ‘Not Simple’ based on Ian’s life, detailing how he grew up with an abusive mother, an absent father, and a sister who went missing. He endures physical and other forms of abuse and other hardships as he goes looking for his sister and ends up learning more than he bargained for.
1 Annarasumanara
Better known as The Sound of Magic via its Netflix adaptation, Il-Kwon Ha's manhwa for Naver Webtoon throws in a little more whimsy than its more stark counterparts. It's perhaps more akin to Girls' Last Tour in that, among its harsh realities and thought-provoking philosophy on life, Annarasumanara still finds some time for some genuine light and happiness in the darkness.
Without her parents or any decent income, Yoon Ah-Ee's life is spent studying, working, and looking after her little sister. Like her friend Na Il-Deung, she believes work and education are the only ways to make a decent living. Then she meets the mysterious Lee Eul, a magician capable of real magic. Or a bum trapped in his childish dreams. It all depends on what people believe, and after Ah-Ee sees him in action, there may be something to magic after all.