Manga (Anime) series info?

[goddess47]

I'm writing a story where my main character stops his friend, a dad to a 13-ish year old boy, from purchasing some anime manga books because the main character knows the book series is too adult (sex, violence, both) for a 13 year old. The main character then recommends a different series because the story line is more appropriate for the age of the teen.

The story is the relationship between the main character and the dad, so this is a small piece of the larger story. But I know absolutely nothing about anime (or manga, obviously!) and would appreciate some recommendations of titles that would fit those categories.

Thanks!


ETA: I'm looking for currently available titles and perhaps where they are best purchased (a bookstore, a comic book store, a specialty shop, online?)


ETA2: I'm looking US-centric here.

Comments

[ariaflame]

Well for a start the books are called manga. Anime is the screened stuff, manga is the printed version.
And what titles would likely depend on when it is set.

[rodo]

You might want to specify time and place here. What's available in the US is not going to be the same as what's available in Germany, even if there's going to be some overlap.

[anehan]

It also depends on whether that 13-year-old character is already into manga or if this would be something new for him, too, because it would affect what your main character would recommend to his friend.

If the 13-year-old character is relatively new to manga, a good choice as the recommendation might be Fullmetal Alchemist. It's shounen, so it's geared towards teenaged boys, but it also has a lot of appeal for wider audiences, so your MC might think that the dad character might like it, too. At 27 volumes, it's fairly long for a newbie, but not really all that long for a shounen series. It's also famous and probably easily available, so it's a good choice in that way as well. Of course, that also means that if the 13-year-old is a dedicated manga fan, he's probably already read it.

It does have a fair bit of violence, since the setting is a military dictatorship and the events include the aftermath of a genocide among other things, so whether your characters would consider it appropriate for a 13-year-old would probably depend. If they didn't consider it appropriate, it could be the series that was rejected by the MC.

[silverblade219]

Titles within the Shounen Jump are generally marketed teenage boys, and have a high popularity in the US; so you could see from the popular ones which might fit your story best for the time period.

As a note to clarify further, in terms of demographic labels:
Shounen - younger male
Shoujo - younger female
Seinen - older male
Josei - older female

Although there is a lot of crossover in terms of demographics, the above labels are generally used due to the original magazines the manga chapters are published in.

[puddlesock]

This is so funny because it literally happened to me. A middle-aged mom in the bookstore walked into the manga section, picked up the first book she saw without looking at it, said “she likes this stuff, right?” and walked off. As she left I noticed the book was shrink-wrapped (in the U.S., that is only done to books that are A) special collector’s editions or B) pornographic) and then glanced to where she pulled it from and saw it was yaoi hentai (yaoi referring to stories of love between men and hentai meaning pornographic anime or manga). It took me a while to work up the courage to talk to the woman, but when I did she told me she was buying the book for her 12-year-old niece. I explained what I did here, and also pointed out that many manga have an age rating printed on the back (once again, at least in the U.S. I’m not as familiar with other international releases) and that this one was rated for adults only. I helped her look around for something more age-appropriate and we settled on the Ocarina of Time manga adaptation.

[lexicology]

Since it looks like other people have the "good suggestions" covered, here's my suggestion for the inappropriate title: Berserk, by Kentaro Miura. It's available in English, quite popular, obviously a fantasy series from the covers, and looks like it would appeal to a teenage boy...except for all the extreme violence and occasional rape inside. (Which, I suppose still appeal to older teens...)

[rugessnome]

I'm not super knowledgeable about manga but besides Fullmetal Alchemist, another classic-ish 2000s series I'm aware of with somewhat wide age appeal is Death Note, which seems to be classed as shonen, but does involve murder so might or might not be considered appropriate for a young teen. I got into it--though I haven't yet finished it--because someone pointed out that the story reflects on police corruption. It's not super long, at 12 volumes. (quick rundown on the premise: shinigami, which iirc are referred to as "death gods" and are very roughly analogous to grim reapers, have notebooks that give humans the power to kill, when a name and optionally some other stuff is written in there. A high school student (and son of a police chief) named Light Yagami obtains one of the Death Notes and engages on a secret crusade to eliminate crime ...by killing criminals, only for this killer/"Kira" (Japanese transliteration of "killer", I believe) to become the most wanted criminal of all, and a specialized young and very private detective known as L to take up the case...)

Some of my fellow USian online friends, although around 30 so rather older than teens, are currently into the shonen manga/anime Mob Psycho 100 (I have not gleaned a ton, beyond the central character being a young ~psychic, the involvement of a con-man, some sort of spirit, and one storyline involving broccoli, but you should be aware that apparently the title is meant to suggest something more like "common-man psychic" due to meaning-migration in Japanese use of the English words in the title. It is not supposed to suggest psychopath leading a mob.) and Dungeon Meishi/Delicious in Dungeon, which got an anime last year. Dungeon Meishi, which is apparently seinen/intended for a slightly older audience than shonen (I'm guessing mostly for moderate violence/fantasy butchering reasons but not totally sure), is influenced by stuff like Dungeons & Dragons and the rogue-like game genre, and has a party venturing back into a dungeon to try to rescue one of their former comrades, resorting to foraging/hunting the local monsters and flora due to the urgency of the situation and their lack of supplies/funds.

I technically haven't looked for the latter two, but my Barnes and Noble has a decent manga selection and I bet they'd have them; the secondhand bookstores I tend to frequent more, like Half Price Books, don't necessarily have popular manga in stock at any given time, although they do usually have some manga. I have actually seen My Hero Academia and a few other random manga in the book section at Meijer, a supermarket chain in the Midwest, and I think I've seen a small selection of manga at some Walmarts, too. At least some public libraries have manga; I've found Death Note and several others in a small county library.

[arctowardthesun]

I'm pretty out of the loop on modern shonen, but will nth the library suggestion.

I might be a bit biased, as my local library system is 3rd in the country for circulation (behind NYC and Cincinnati of all places) and 5th for visits (behind the LA area and NYC) but I've never had an issue finding a manga through them.

Depending on the area your story is set, you could easily send the dad to the library.

ETA: the link is to the ALA website, not my local library system, to be clear.

[mews39]

I have a suggestion for the inappropriate series: Chainsaw Man. It's pretty popular and can be found in book stores in the USA, so it would work for this scene. I could see how someone might think it's a good story for their teenage son at first glance, but it's very violent and deals with mature themes like grooming and sexual assault. The only thing is you can tell it's violent from the cover (though it's not as gorey as the manga itself), so this would depend on how concerned your character is about his son seeing violence in fiction.