Series that run in the Shonen Jump weekly or monthly magazines seem to make a particular mark in the manga world, and almost all series that are published there are made into long-running anime as well, with notable examples being Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach.
While most shonen manga do make their way to anime adaptations, there are a lot of well-regarded manga that have never been adapted into an animated format, a surprising circumstance considering the fact that many of the most popular anime are based on shonen manga.
10 Komi Can’t Communicate
Komi Can’t Communicate is a fairly new slice of life romantic comedy manga, which has been serialized in Weekly Shonen Sunday since 2016 and is still going strong. It’s a popular manga and was actually ranked by AnimeJapan as the Most Wanted Anime Adaptation in a poll of its readers. The plot follows a high school girl who is well-regarded by her classmates for being beautiful and elegant, but she is actually awkward and has difficulty communicating with her classmates despite this.
9 Act-Age
Act-Age similarly ranks in the top 10 of of AnimeJapan’s Most Wanted Anime Adaptation series. The series has a slightly darker premise than Komi Can’t Communicate, following a young woman who is responsible for two younger siblings now that her father has left the family and her mother has died. She wants to be an actress and takes method acting to an unhealthy level, but thanks to the belief of an acclaimed director, she still seeks to achieve this dream.
8 The Record Of A Fallen Vampire
The Record of a Fallen Vampire is a fantasy and science fiction manga that ran for four years in the mid-2000s. As can be gleaned from the title, the story is about a vampire who is traveling around looking for the place where his queen is sealed away and trying to avoid creatures who are trying to kill him. In a bizarre twist, the story takes a turn toward sci-fi when it turns out the magical creatures must band together to stave off an alien invasion.
7 MxO
MxO is a series about a young man who stumbles upon a magical high school. Despite having passed a written test, they initially reject him because he has no magical experience, but when he finds out the secret of this magic, they decide to accept him in order to get him to keep the secret.
The series deals with classic shonen tropes of people having to work hard to make up for not necessarily having natural talent at something in order to succeed.
6 Gambling Emperor Legend Zero
Gambling Emperor Legend Zero takes the Robin Hood character archetype to new levels. Zero is a boy who has been trying to return money to those who were involved in a bank transfer scam. He is invited with his friends to participate in a large gambling game in a place called Dream Kingdom, with the prize being 100 billion yen, which is almost a billion US dollars. He decides to try to win the game in order to return the money to all those who lost theirs in the scam.
5 Sumire 16 Sai!!
Like a few manga on this list, Sumire 16 Sai!! has been adapted into a television drama but not into an anime. The series follows Sumire who is a vivacious 16 year old high school girl. The only thing that is odd about her is the fact that she’s not an actual human girl at all; she’s a ventriloquist’s dummy.
Her puppeteer can even be seen in the panels. It’s a strange premise that would certainly be very amusing to see adapted into an animated series.
4 Psyren
Psyren is an early entry in what some might call the death game isekai genre. In the series, a young man who is constantly fighting off bullies and getting in trouble finds a calling card for a mysterious place called Psyren. When he calls it, he is drawn into another world, where he has to win games in order to get back home. Unlike other death game series, he can return home between games, though he has to return to finish playing all the games to win overall.
3 Rookies
Rookies has been adapted into a live-action television drama and a live-action film, but for some reason, it has not been adapted as an anime. The manga follows the classic story format of a group of misfits coming together in a sport (namely baseball in this case) to work together to try to get to the finals and win the day.
2 Akumetsu
Akumetsu is an incredibly dark series compared to some of the others on this list. In a near-future Japan, the rich have gotten richer, and the poor are suffering under an economic recession. A group of terrorists called Akumetsu stage assassinations of the rich in an effort to hold them responsible for the economic crisis they’ve caused.
1 Yugami Doesn’t Have Any Friends
Yugami Doesn’t Have Any Friends has a premise that a lot of slice of life manga have been dealing with in recent years, particularly the idea of awkward or strange people who are trying to make friends and live normal lives with varying degrees of success. Yugami is awkward and slightly weird, but a new student tries to be kind to him anyway, despite what she’s heard about him.