Read Akira

Major Kusanagi and Section 9 in Shirow's dense cyberpunk pages, with footnotes.

Childhood friends and a cult leader who copies their game; Urasawa's conspiracy epic.

Light Yagami and the notebook that kills; the manga the anime followed closely.

Miyazaki's seven-volume manga of the toxic jungle and the princess who understands it; darker than the film.

A robot boy built by a grieving scientist; Tezuka, the god of manga, from 1952.

Urasawa remakes an Astro Boy story as a murder mystery about robots and war.

A boy in Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, drawn by a survivor; the manga on the bomb.

A disgraced executioner pushes his son across Edo Japan in a cart of hidden blades.