It's that time of year again -- a time to look back on the many, many new manga that came out in 2010, and decide which ones were the best of the best. To start out, I've posted my picks for the Best New Manga of 2010.
This time around, I chose 21 new and noteworthy titles in 14 categories, including Best New Shonen Manga, Best New Shojo Manga, Best New One-Shot, and two picks for the overall Best New Manga of 2010. In some categories, the choices were pretty tough, so I had to resort to one winner and two runners up, while in other categories, the choices were pretty cut-and-dry, so I only picked one winner. See which ones made the cut in this year's list!
I made one significant change to this year's list. Instead of choosing Best New Seinen (mens') Manga and a Best New Josei (womens') Manga picks, I divided the general group of "manga for grown-ups" into four categories: Drama, Action, Comedy and Slice of Life.
This was mostly because as usual, the seinen category was pretty packed, and the josei category had pretty slim-pickings. But also, I felt the genre gender differences kinda... well, it doesn't matter as much here in the U.S. as it would in Japan. I wanted to make sure that these books were considered by a broader audience for the quality of their content and appeal to English-speaking readers from both genders rather than their limit it by using its original Japanese genre designation.
2010 had lots of great new shojo and shonen titles, but not many new releases in the Korean manhwa, all-ages or "classic" manga categories, a trend that is probably a reflection of the overall contraction in the North American publishing industry. (Especially in a year when Aurora, Go Comi and CMX Manga closed up shop, and Del Rey Manga's offerings were folded into the as-yet-dormant Kodansha America imprint.) Still, it was great to see indie publishers like Top Shelf Comics and Fantagraphics join Drawn and Quarterly and Fanfare-Ponent Mon in the manga arena, a trend that I hope to see continue in 2011.
Anyhow, check out my picks for the Best New Manga of 2010 and let me know what you think! Do you agree or disagree? Did I pass over one of your favorites? Just for fun, check out my picks for the Best New Manga of 2009, and the 25 Most Anticipated Manga of 2010 that I picked back in January.
Also, stay tuned next Wednesday for my picks for the Best Continuing Manga of 2010, including my picks for the most best new but under-appreciated manga of the year and the two worst manga released in 2010. Your turn to talk back will come soon too as I'll be posting this year's editions of the Manga Readers' Polls in early December.
Image credit: © Moto Hagio, © Kanata Konami / KODANSHA
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