Help me rekindle my relationship with manga

[goldenquagsire]

For CLAMP stuff, I liked Tokyo Babylon;

hell yes Tokyo Babylon

only thing is it's a bit on the romantic side. kinda sorta. gets confusing towards the end of the story arc. but eh.

 

[foreign contaminant]

i've heard that junji ito's horror manga is pretty good. he wrote both uzumaki and gyo; neither are very long at all. i thought the art looked really cool..

i've found this blog to be pretty reliable when it comes to manga. the author has hundreds of reviews on at least that many series.

off-topic, but i wish i could find monster in a bookstore around here. it sounds so cool.. but i guess nobody here wants to take a lot of risks by stocking it. oh well.

 

[Minish]

Definitely read Death Note. It's extremely intelligent and just... a really amazing series. And this is coming from someone who mainly reads romance shoujo. I really think you'd enjoy it.

I'm also seconding Claymore, though I didn't read much of it because I forgot where I got up to and haven't bothered to pick it up again.

Other than that, I can't think of anything else.
I totally agree with what everyone's said about Fruits Basket - much as I love it, it really did degenerate into so much drama I couldn't keep up with it. That and the style became sort of pretentious and empty to me, even though I appreciate the artist did improve a lot.

(Argh, I really want to recommend Hana Yori Dango, but hilarious and clever as it is, it's probably too much of a romance for you. DX)

 

[Zuu]

Death Note, of course, also Uzumaki: Spiral Into Horror or whatever its name is~ I forget the author, but it's awesome. that's probably also not how you spell that japanese word. whatever.

 

[ultraviolet]

As someone who isn't much of a manga fan I have read Death Note and Loveless and I enjoyed them both.

 

[Dewgong]

junji ito's work is really cool. especially the art.

hmm... i like clamp's stuff, but the art does bother me a little. the people are so tall...

 

[Erif]

Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni is pretty great, although I've heard it's quite different to the Anime. Only three volumes have been released outside of Japan so far, but it's worth checking out because it has an insane plot.

Very brutal and complex anime, if you're interested.

 

[fresh fruit for Adol]

Can't really recommend much, since I mostly read action type stuff... But Mushishi was really good; I'd recommend you take a look at that to see if it might catch your interest.

As for humor, I don't know if it suits your tastes, but try out Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei; it can be a bit more bizarre than Cro' High at times, but never as over the top. If you're not interested in it though, then you can just say that it's left you in despair.

It's a bit action-y, and has some romance, but I can't recommend any manga without recommending my personal favorite; Elemental Gelade. And I KNOW you're not that interested in the genre, but you could always give Buso Renkin a try.

You might also try the manga adaptation of Tsukihime, but that's about all I can recommend. It's kind of a shame you don't really like action stuff, because S-Cry-Ed is awesome.

 

[Kai Lucifer]

I'd go for Immortal rain. Not only is it a great series that I'm sure most would enjoy (although apparently nobody has read) but it has that fantasy/horror element to it and a little romance. As for the humor part, it isn't really as much intelligent as it is spazzy and slapstick, but it's still pretty good and you should at least give it a try.

In case you're unsure about the humor, some panels in my sig are from Immortal rain.

 

[Frosty~]

Very brutal and complex anime, if you're interested.

It was the other way around, I've watched the Anime and not read the Manga (At least at the time; I've got the first volume now and I'm getting the others when I get the money)