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Look Back (2022)
Published
Tatsuki Fujimoto's one-shot follows Fujino, a fourth grader convinced she is the best artist around, and Kyomoto, a classmate too anxious to attend school, as drawing manga binds them together. Fujimoto, the creator of Chainsaw Man, first released the complete story free online in 2021, and it fits in one slim book you can finish in a single sitting.
Its second half is where the craft shows, with pages that quietly rethink everything before them. If you only try one entry here, make it this one: it proves how much a single manga story can carry.
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Goodbye, Eri (2023)
Published
Arriving about a year after Look Back, Fujimoto's 200-page one-shot starts with a young filmmaker, Yuta, contemplating suicide after his mother's death, until a chance meeting with a mysterious girl changes his life. Most pages run just four stretched-out panels, like frames of film, so the book reads fast and gives its jokes and its grief the same deadpan timing.
It is less immediately moving than Look Back and more playful about what is real and what was staged for the camera, so read it second, once you know how Fujimoto works.
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A Drunken Dream and Other Stories (2010)
Published
The best way into the literary side of shojo manga. Fantagraphics gathered ten of Moto Hagio's stories, from "Bianca" in 1971 to "The Willow Tree" in 2007, so one hardcover shows how her storytelling changed over more than three decades.
Read "Iguana Girl" first: Rika is an ordinary girl whose mother believes she is a monster, and the story works as a fable without ever explaining itself. "Hanshin: Half-God" is darker, a disturbing study of family pressure. The book also carries a long interview with Hagio and a historical essay by her translator, useful if you want context as well as the stories.
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The Push Man and Other Stories (2005)
Published
Yoshihiro Tatsumi coined the word gekiga for manga with grown-up subjects, and these stories from 1969 show why it needed a name. Each is a short, bleak snapshot of working-class Japan, built around companionship, self-worth and family, and the small magazine that ran them gave him only eight pages an issue.
That compression works like good short fiction: stories end on an image rather than an explanation. Read a few at a time, though. The characters and situations repeat, and back to back the gloom can turn monotonous. Adrian Tomine edited and introduced this Drawn & Quarterly edition.
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Shiver: Junji Ito Selected Stories (2017)
Published
The horror collection for readers who care how a short story is built. Junji Ito chose these nine stories himself, eight from across his career and one new, and each older story comes with his own short commentary plus his preparatory notes and sketches.
The stories get better as the book goes on, building to "Greased," the most grotesque spectacle here, and "Hanging Balloons," with faces drifting in the sky, has one of Ito's most unsettling premises. "Fashion Model" is the weak link. Expect body horror at full strength; this is not one for the squeamish.
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Tesoro (2011)
Published
Natsume Ono's fourteen short stories, drawn between 1998 and 2008, are quiet pieces about family, friends, couples and unexpected bonds, and they make the best case for her as a miniaturist. "Three Short Stories About Bento," including a single dad trying to make the perfect boxed lunch, is the highlight, and "Eva's Memory," about a Venetian orphan who calls famous men "Dad," shows a wider range.
The sepia-toned early art takes getting used to, and several family stories share one gentle tone. It suits readers who already like Ono, or anyone who values small moments over twists.
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What a Wonderful World! (2009)
Published
Volumes 1 and 2 of Viz's English edition
Inio Asano's intersecting vignettes begin with a college dropout bored of her mediocre routine and widen into a web of young adults in modern Japan whose lives brush past one another. Each chapter is a complete story, so the two slim books read like a linked story collection rather than a series to keep up with.
It is gentler than Asano's later work: realist, but with a lift at the end of most stories. It is also the one entry here that takes two books, sold separately.
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Blue Spring (2004)
Published
Taiyo Matsumoto's seven stories about the delinquents of one rundown high school are the bleakest youth stories here, and the most inventive on the page. Boys skip class, fight and play a dangerous game on the school roof, and Matsumoto's jump cuts, daydreams and split-screen panels make their boredom feel urgent; one sequence cuts between a baseball game and a mahjong game until the two share a single rhythm.
The scratchy black-and-white art is deliberately ugly and will not suit everyone. Read it alongside What a Wonderful World! for two very different takes on young people drifting.
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The Complete Mature Works of Yoshiharu Tsuge (2020)
Published
Volume 3: Nejishiki
Yoshiharu Tsuge's "Nejishiki," also known as "Screw Style," first appeared in the alternative magazine Garo in 1968 and still reads like a walk through a dream. This volume of Drawn & Quarterly's complete Tsuge sets it among seven short stories, including "Master of the Gensenkan Inn" and "A Summer Memory," in Ryan Holmberg's translation with his essay.
If you value literary short fiction, this is the volume that shows how far manga had already gone by the late 1960s. It contains explicit material, so it is not for readers with little tolerance for that.
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Rohan at the Louvre (2012)
Published
Hirohiko Araki was invited by the Louvre to make a comic about the museum, and the result is a full-color ghost story starring Rohan Kishibe, the manga artist from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. It opens with a young Rohan living at his grandmother's boarding house, then jumps about ten years as he follows a long-held mystery to Paris.
At 128 pages it is the closest thing here to a novella, and it packs a lot of time into a short space. NBM's English edition keeps the original right-to-left reading order. It is a fun book that grows on you, best for readers who enjoy their ghost stories elegant rather than frightening.
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Akira Toriyama’s Manga Theater (2021)
Published
Akira Toriyama's short works, which filled three Japanese volumes published between 1983 and 1997, arrive here as one 626-page hardcover. It runs from "Wonder Island," his first published work, through "Pola & Roid," a space-taxi caper, to "Dragon Boy" and "The Adventure of Tongpoo," the 1983 stories that served as direct prototypes for Dragon Ball.
Most are slapstick gag comics rather than literary short fiction, and the earliest are rough. The appeal is watching his comic timing and design sharpen across a single book, which makes it a strong pick for readers who like comedy that lands in a few pages.
More about Akira Toriyama’s Manga Theater12
Dream Fossil: The Complete Stories of Satoshi Kon (2015)
Published
Every short story Satoshi Kon drew before his first long manga, fifteen of them made between 1984 and 1989, in one Vertical volume. Fans of Perfect Blue and Paprika will see his blurring of reality and illusion arrive early: bluntly in dystopian pieces such as "Toriko: Prisoner," his two-part debut, and more gently in "Beyond the Sun" and "Joyful Bell," where city dwellers briefly escape their routines. "Guests" is a cautionary real estate tale that mixes comedy and horror.
This is early work and it shows. Faces are stiff, some transitions are awkward, the Katsuhiro Otomo influence is obvious, and two stories had to be translated from magazine printings because the originals were lost. Read it once you know his films.
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Tatsuki Fujimoto Before Chainsaw Man: 22–26 (2023)
Published
The stronger of Tatsuki Fujimoto's two early anthologies, collecting four stories from between the ages of 22 and 26. "Nayuta of the Prophecy," about a young man looking after his demon sister whom the world hates, is the standout, and Chainsaw Man readers will recognize where one of its characters began. "Sisters," the closing story, is the other reason to buy it.
The opening pair are weaker. "Mermaid Rhapsody" is a simple love story between a mermaid and a human, and "Woke-Up-as-a-Girl-Syndrome" is loud and, at its worst, tone-deaf. Treat it as two excellent stories with two extras.
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Tatsuki Fujimoto Before Chainsaw Man: 17–21 (2023)
Published
Four stories Fujimoto drew between 17 and 21, and the most uneven book on this list. "Love Is Blind" is the best-written of them and the reason to pick it up, while "Shikaku," the closing story, is the most fun to look at even if its romantic twist leaves an odd taste.
"Sasaki Stopped a Bullet," about a schoolboy with a crush on his teacher, rests on a premise many readers will find uncomfortable. Read it after Look Back and the 22-26 volume, as a look at where his ideas started rather than as a first taste of his work.
More about Tatsuki Fujimoto Before Chainsaw Man: 17–2115
The Dragon School Is Atop the Mountain (2026)
Published
Ryoko Kui, creator of Delicious in Dungeon, wrote these early short stories in a world where the extraordinary is just part of daily life. A hero returns to his home village, a middle-school angel is stressed about starting high school, and centaurs become the workhorses that keep the economy running.
If you enjoyed how Delicious in Dungeon treats fantasy with practical, everyday logic, this applies the same imagination to self-contained stories. Yen Press published it in English on October 27, 2026, so it is too new for a settled verdict; treat it as a pick for Kui fans first.
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