Shueisha’s MANGA Plus site is a free service that offers English translations of of manga from Shueisha's various "Jump" magazines. Big names like One Piece and Naruto are there on the site, but if you wish to read something new, here are five underrated manga series we recommend.
Note that MANGA Plus does not include every chapter for all series, typically only listing both the first few chapters and the most recent ones. If you like what you see on MANGA Plus but wish to read more, most of these full series are available on the Shonen Jump subscription service.
Bakuman
From the creators of Death Note, writer Tsugumi Ohba and artist Takeshi Obata, comes an honest but loving series about following your dreams. Mashiro, a directionless illustrator, and Takagi, a driven but critical writer, decide to form a writer/artist duo to make a series that could be Shonen Jump’s new #1 manga.
What’s so fascinating about Bakuman is that it takes the shonen storytelling formula and applies to the process of making manga, which adds the meta layer to it a fun but observant way. Throughout the series,Mashihiro and Takagi try their hardest to improve in whatever aspects their last series failed in. Sometimes it’s understanding that they should work to their strengths, like settling on making more serious and engaging manga rather then gag-type manga, but other times it’s also knowing what works best for their key demographic. If you’re interested in a behind-the-scenes look into how the biggest manga magazine runs, this is the perfect series to check out.
Chainsaw Man
Created by Tatsuki Fujimoto, Chainsaw Man is a dark but heartfelt shonen series about a teenager becoming a devil hunter. Denji was forced to take up his father’s massive debt to the yakuza after he died, so to pay them, he’s been using his pet devil Pochita to hunt other devils for money. However, things go bad for Denji when he nearly dies, only surviving by making a contract and fusing with Pochita. Now, he’s part of the Public Safety Devil Hunter Organization, made to serve his female boss, Makima, to follow her orders and hunt devils.
Despite its crude name, Chainsaw Man is honestly one of the most mature and honest shonen manga out right now. Denji grew up with nothing to his name before he became a devil hunter, he was selling body parts to pay back his debt. Now, all he wants is to keep his comfortable life, his friends, and get a girlfriend, the type of thing, a teenager would normally take for granted.
Spy x Family
Take the action and suspense of a James Bond movie and mix it with the wholesomeness of a family comedy. Spy x Family, authored by Tatsuya Endo, is about a government spy named Loid Forger, or Agent Twilight. Given his next mission, Loid must enter the neighboring country to secure and assassinate a potential terrorist. Therefore to complete his mission, Loid must find a wife and adopt a child to attend the same school as the terrorist's son. However, Loid isn’t the only one keeping secrets: his adopted Anya is secretly a telepath, and his new wife Yor is an assassin for hire.
The best part about Spy x Family is its very charming and adorable family dynamic. Loid has no frame of reference for being a father or a husband, so seeing him slowly warm up to the idea over time with Anya and Yor makes for a perfectly pleasant read. His family is just as entertaining as him. Any scene with Anya is bound to have comedic potential as Endo seems to enjoy drawing her with the goofiest expressions . Yor, on the other hand, is pretty clueless when it comes to anything outside of murder, so seeing her apply that sort of intensity while trying to be good mother and wife does well to endear the audience to her.
Time Paradox GhostWriter
Time Paradox Ghostwriter is a newer series, written by Kenji Ichima and illustrated by Tsunehiro Date. Teppei Sasaki has had terrible luck as a manga artist. He's won some modest contest awards, but all of his one-shots have been turned down for serialization. His luck changes when his microwave begins sending him copies of Shonen Jump from the year 2030. Thinking he must have dreamt the experience, Sasaki recreates one of the manga he saw in the magazine, and turns it into the editorial department, getting greenlight for a serialized run almost immediately. However, upon realizing the manga from the future was real, Sasaki is overcome with guilt.
Sasaki’s incredible guilt for plagiarizing another author’s work is juxtaposed with how much of a positive effect the series has been having on people . You can feel sympathy with Sasaki in how he works so tirelessly to match the artistic quality of the future-manga he plagiarized. This series is in its very early days, but so far, it’s shaping up to be one of the freshest original series in Jump.
Claymore
Claymore is a dark fantasy manga created by Norihiro Yagi. In a medieval setting, shapeshifting demons called Yoma plague the land, infiltrating villages and then killing off the villagers. To combat this, a nameless organization creates Yoma-human hybrids, female warriors with enhanced abilities that carry massive greatswords, that travel across the land killing any Yoma they encounter. The people are distrusting of the women, or Claymores, as they call them, saying they just as bad as the Yoma themselves.
Unlike a lot of dark fantasy series, Claymore has a predominately female cast. There's intense action, but also somber quiet moments. The magic system is very unique. Claymores can feed into their Yoma side to gain more power, but it will come at a cost. The more they let their Yoma side to take over, the more they’ll start to crave flesh as well, becoming dangerous apathetic creatures known as Awakened Beings. If you’re a fan of Berserk, give Claymore a shot.