13
votes
Have you read any good one-shot manga?
My most recent favorite is "Goodbye, Eri". The story is about a high school boy being asked by his mother to film her final moments before death, which led to him meeting the girl in the title and... things happen (saying more would be spoiler lol).
What's most striking about this manga is the consistent paneling, making it looks like you're browsing through film strip. It also gives the story a sense of urgency as if the panels are the ticking of a clock. The plot has many twists and turns and 4th wall breaking, reading it feels as if you're watching an indie movie.
I don't come across oneshots very often and only knew about this one from r/manga. So I'm looking for more!
If you're into horror type manga, Junji Ito's "Enigma of Amigara Fault" is one of my favourites. It's a one shot, decent length but ultimately super satisfying and eerie.
His other work is also excellent, but they are definitely longer ones.
Came here to suggest that one lol.
Oh yeah that's a classic. Do you know any online places that have all of Junji Ito's works? I tried looking before but haven't found any that's comprehensive.
There was a manga reader I used years ago, I think it was called Mango Reader. Not sure if it is still available or if it's something that's more sailing the high seas for haha
Goodbye, Eri was part of a collection of oneshots that Fujimoto Tatsuki (author of Chainsaw Man) did between Chainsaw Man Part 1 and Chainsaw Man Part 2:
Fujimoto also has an anthology of oneshots from before Chainsaw Man, but I haven't had a chance to read them yet.
A couple other oneshots from other authors:
Spiritsetter's synopsis reminds me of Mushishi a bit, which I do like. What is Spiritsetter like?
Hanazawa, like Fujimoto, clearly has a deep appreciation of film. Many of their works feel more like the storyboard of a movie: there's a continuity of motion that feels more pronounced, and a lot of the character moments feel more like actual conversation than many manga I've read.
I don't want to say much more than Spiritsetter is Hanazawa executing on the premise you read in the style I (crudely) summarized above.
Someone just asked this in a group chat I'm in and I could use them too - but look up Dowman Sayman's work, he has a truckload of 4 to 16 page one-shot stories published in assorted anthology, doujin, and H magazines scattered around. They're absurd, poignant, hilarious, depressing, extremely raunchy or straight-up explicit, and are all bizarrely fleshed out for stories that are only a few pages long. He has a non-H collection of stories called Nickelodeon that I haven't read in a while but IIRC was a pretty good place to start. He also penned a few assorted running series and a few random fanfic doujin comics.
Ooh, surprised to see him mentioned! His manga is a wild rabbit hole to go down, it's so bizarre and weird but also surprisingly poignant at times. His art style is also pretty unique with how cartoonish and "sharp" it is, it offsets the content even when it's graphic or sexual. It fits well with the tone. I second Nickelodeon as a good starting point, because that was my starting point for his stuff.
A specific one-shot by him I'd recommend is Misarigi Elementary School War. It's short and punchy, but it's also just fun. It's the kind of concept I came up with in elementary school (literally, I had the idea of a "Hall Wars" as a kid and found it hilarious), so it's fun to actually see it even in such a short story.
Lmao that's fantastic, I love the turn on the kid talking about his crush. My favorite is Muse, it's so straightforward but he gets it to in four pages with such gravity and by nailing the bewilderment of the main character. Also love his Final Fantasy Tactics doujin Rabbit's Foot, it's like he asked "what if my party members were banging?" and worked backwards into a dark but lovely story filling in the blanks of unwritten characters.
I'd never seen Muse before! That one is short but good, really nails what I like about his style and writing. Not many people can jam so much meaning into such a small number of pages.
Any mangaka you're a fan of probably has a few oneshots from their debut and pre-success days unless they're the very rare case where they pitched something that wound up being an instant serial success. Good is subjective and depends on what you're into, but if you have a mangaka whose works you like, you can look up their work history and see what oneshots they wrote before they hit it big. Might be a bit hard to find them if they only had a couple of shorts before they became famous, 2 stories do not a tankoubon make.
Check out Rumiko Takahashi's Rumic Theater as an old-school example of a collection of oneshots.
Going back to current mangaka's early works makes sense, haven't thought of that haha.
I'll check out Rumic Theater collection then (and other collections others also mentioned). Do you have any particular story the collection that you want to highlight, what is it like?
It used to be more common to include an old oneshot or two in the backs of tankoubons to fill up the page count so readers would at least know such things existed and the stories could be archived out of the weekly/monthly magazines, but I increasingly get the sense that's no longer the case given how rarefied and specific audiences are these days.
It's been a long while since I've read Rumic Theater, I should give them another read. IIRC they tend to veer more toward slice of life, as much of her early work was very much grounded in the foibles of daily life, but she also played with supernatural and sci fi elements (Firetripper is one I distinctly remember. It may suffer from Seinfeld syndrome, though.)
If you want something darker, shoujo mangakas Yuu Watase (of Fushigi Yuugi fame) and Chie Shinohara (of Red River fame) both had some twisted stuff in their oneshots, along with the usual shoujo fluff.
In older series especially, you can tell when something was a self-contained oneshot that got expanded to a full series because the reader response was crazy positive and the pubs told the mangaka to continue beyond the oneshot/first chapter Or Else.
You might also have luck looking for themed anthologies to explore different mangaka's oneshots, though those are easier to find in hentai, shoujo, and BL I think. But really the best bet is to find the back catalogs of mangaka you already like and know, where possible.
Apologies, I'm more a shoujo and BL expert and while there's a lot of fantastic shorts out there, they're very fluffy or romance/smut heavy, and not necessarily pinnacle storytelling the way you're seeking. It's hard to craft a oneshot that hooks you and leaves a lingering impression, but there's a lot of enjoyable stuff if you just look for it.
Thank you for the recs. You've just reminded me that shoujo is a category that I have forgotten about. Also seems like it has more variety than just romance too. I'll check out these mangakas.
The horror side of shoujo is chef's kiss a delight.
I've read a lot, but it really comes down to what you're looking for. As another poster pointed out, Fujimoto (who did Eri), actually has a whole lot of one shots that you may enjoy (aside from the ones they listed, a number of his one shots have actually been recently published in collected volumes as well--some are proto chainsaw man, and some are more like Eri).
Ultimately, one shots are often (but not always) pitches to get serialized. Sometimes, I also kinda wish they'd stayed one-shots once seeing them get serialized (for example Hokkaido Gals which went from a cute one shot to a drama love triangle serial).
That said, if you are on /r/manga as you mentioned, there's one shots posted daily of varying quality. As it's a low investment to check out, I suggest just checking a few each day. A lot will be mediocre at best, but considering the lack of time required, it's fun and can yield the occasional memorable chapter.
The varying quality together with high posting frequency makes it harder to find the better ones. Also their lengths can vary a lot even though they're all oneshots, from a few pages to hundreds of pages like this one. The significantly longer page count give the story greater scope and the shorter ones can pack a punch, but the reading experiences are different. I feel we could use a few more subcategories in there, something like short stories vs. novellas (but for manga), to help with discoverability.
Sorry for the tangent, just want to dump some of my stray thoughts somewhere.
I totally agree with you there. Especially since there's been an influx of 1-4 pagers in the last year or so.
I remember one about a girl suffering eternity as a shinigami gaining redemption and reincarnation into Japanese feudal (? maybe? Or Heian?) nobility through the power of Selfless Love As Recognized By The Kami as the oneshot/chapter one, and the rest of it was her trials and tribulations dealing with court politics and romantic entanglements. I got to maybe volume 5 before I accepted that the shinigami/supernatural aspect had completely vanished from the narrative.
This was decades ago at this point and my memory is fuzzy on the details, but the disappointment that there would be no more kami intervention or karmic tests or underworld shenanigans has never left me lol.
My favorite one shot is The Fourth Heroine by Acchi Ai, in the This Irreplaceable Hell anthology. It's a take on a dime a dozen harem anime that's a lot like Toy Story where all of the girls know they're in a manga, their goals are to help the manga continue, and so on. The newest girl in the group was supposed to have been written into a war survival manga, and her presence starts to mesh against the tropes of the world while characters start to wonder what they really want.
Just read The forth heroine, that was hilarious! The tropes were subverted but then still ended up being embraced. I'll check out the rest.
The other entries were just scanlated relatively recently, I can see why this one stood out though.
https://tild.es/ljt
This was the old discussion thread on the Death Note one shot that was released in 2020. I think it's gone behind the paywall at this point, but it's still an interesting take on what contemporary Death Note would look like.
Not Simple.
I picked up this based on the artwork alone, went into the story completely blind and it broke me. It’s one of the greatest emotional rollercoasters I’ve ever been through. Harrowing story and one I recommend everyone, whether they like manga/graphics or not.
Pick it up. It won’t let you down.