2008 Best Manga Book Readers' Poll Winner: Bleach SOULs

After tallying up the results in 11 polls, and almost 4,000 votes later, we're at the last of the 2008 Readers' Polls, for the 2008 Best New Manga Book Poll. As the poll with the shortest voting period, this category wasn't the busiest -- but that shouldn't diminish the win earned by Bleach: SOULs, an exhaustive guide to Tite Kubo's shonen manga series from Shonen Jump Profiles / VIZ Media.

2008 was also the year that Kubo-sensei took a rare break from his hectic schedule to meet his U.S. fans for the first time at San Diego Comic-Con, so perhaps it's fitting that this book claimed the win in this category. Besides that, Bleach: SOULs included many rarely seen side stories. It also provided an exhaustively detailed guide to the world of Soul Reapers that helped many a fan sort of the who's, what's and what-the-heck-happened questions of Bleach.

With a relatively low volume of votes in this poll, the difference between first and second place was razor-thin. This meant that Death Note 13: How to Read was just narrowly edged out of first place, and two books shared third place honors: Bat-Manga! The Secret History of Batman in Japan and Water, the color art book of illustrations from Takehiko Inoue's samurai epic, Vagabond.

See the rest of the nominees and find out how many votes they got at the Best New Manga Book poll page, and view the full vote tally. Also, see the rest of the results in all of the 2008 Readers' Polls. Thanks for voting, and congratulations to all the winners!

Image credit: © Tite Kubo