Wow… happy 2026 everyone! My final list is either a day late or precisely on time.
For the final list of my favourite manga reads of 2025, I’m writing about the manga series that made me feel the worst. Made me feel bad, freak out, have to pace around the room, etc. You know. Everything written following this is an endorsement, I promise!
X / CLAMP 1992-2003, 18 vol. Read (half) in March
Have tragically (or maybe for the better?) only read the first nine volumes of X thus far, but it deserves a spot on this list for how bad it made me feel. Man what the hell. When Subaru meets Seishirou for the first time in ten years, and the first thing he does is light his cigarette for him ?????????? [clutches at my hair in agony]. And the sudden inclusion of the tragic lesbian one-sided (?) romance/obsession that ends in a love propelled self-sacrifice? Whatever the hell is going on with Shirou Kamui???? Don’t let my suffering hold you back ladies, lay it all down, I wanted to feel like this! I can’t wait to find out how Subaru and Seishirou reconcile and work it out in the back half of X! Just kidding. I can’t wait to find out how they kill each other (???) and how terrible it will all feel, and how terrible it will feel when I get to the end and there’s like three chapters remaining forever. When I finish it next year it will surely show up on a list such as this once more. Thanks CLAMP!
Happy of the End / Ogerestu Tanaka 2020-23, 3 vol. Read in March, September, and! November
Made me feel bad. What else is there to say. I love when a character makes a choice that makes them (and the readers) feel bad but for storytelling purposes it’s the best choice. I never want to read another story where the characters make the boring choice. Don’t indulge me! Send your romantic lead to suffer for his actions dictated by his own negative self perception! Make him cry with longing and grief! Let him come back to his lover only when he can no longer stand to wallow in his self-hatred alone because he craves love even when he does not believe that he deserves it! Personally I like to crack open my long (long) awaited copy of the third volume of this just to read the part where Haoran goes to Chihiro’s photo exhibition to make himself feel bad, and then he sits on the stairs and cries. Awesome stuff. What the hell.
One Room Angel / Harada 2019, 1 Vol. Read in March
MADE ME FEEL SO BAD!!!!!!!!!!!!! LIKE WHAT DO YOU MEAN!!!!!!!!!! Sat in bed after finishing this and tried so so hard not to disturb my sleeping girlfriend as I clutched my chest and sobbed. Like, man. Whatever. Thanks Harada. When Kuma finally publishes the physical of this in english you know I will be there, even if it’s delayed 6 times, I will be there.
Onii-sama e… / Ikeda Riyoko 1974, 3 vol. Read in April
Wow……. my cool and beautiful tragic butches…. Thank you Ikeda Riyoko…….. Everyone should make sure that they read this because it’s awesome, first of all, and second of all—oh my god. Man. What the hell man. Guys, my—my beautiful and tragic butches….
The Heart of Thomas / Hagio Moto 1974, 3 vol. Read in April
Let’s get melodramatic at the German boarding school, stat! Let’s reject our own feelings due to trauma! Let’s allow guilt to govern us and force our hands to clench when there are open hands held our way! Let’s yearn! Let’s repress it! Let’s scream and cry and shout!
Kitanai Kimi Ga Ichiban Kawaii / Manio 2019-22, 5 vol. Read in October
Ouch, owie! Cutting and terrible and romantic. This is just oozing with that co-dependent desperation that made me want to claw at my hair. What if love and control felt the same? What if they were the same? If you give up control, does love replace all the empty places you’ve left inside you? Or is it something else? Juicy!!!!!!!
The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window / Yamashita Tomoko 2013-20, 10 vol. Read in November
Around the midway point of this story, actually at the precise moment that Mikado (reasonable adult character) tells Erika (burdened teenage girl character) “It’s not selfish to ask for help” I started crying and am not sure that I stopped doing so until the end. WOW!!!!!!! The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window, huh. The bl in this isn’t even what made me feel the worst it was seriously about Erika. Stop making teenage characters who take everything onto themselves and who then get overwhelmed when there are suddenly adults around them who are like “Please rely on us,” it makes me FREAK OUT!!!!
The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese / Mizushiro Setona 2004-06, 2 Vol. Read in December
Texted my friends a series of messages while reading this which ranged from “I LOVE YAOI” to “[rending my hair and gnawing on my wrist]” and “[IN SERIOUS MENTAL DISTRESS] DON'T READ THE CORNERENED [sic] MOUSE DREAMS OF CHEESE” and then “maybe the cornered mouse.... will receive cheese?” so that about details how I feel about it. What if you were earth’s most repressed man and you got manipulated by some annoying freak who desperately wants you and you fell in love with him… you think? No, no no, that isn’t what happened. You didn’t fall in love, it’s just that you’re easily manipulated because you’re afraid to take anything seriously, especially not an important feeling like love. And anyway, you’re not sexually attracted to men at all. Right? Wait a minute, but is that guy the only person you’ve ever wanted to keep coming back? But that’s just because he manipulated you, right? Love isn’t the same thing as desperation. But in the absence of any other feeling, is it wrong to think of it as love? Do you want it to be love? Does it feel better when you think of it as love? Or does it feel worse? Would you give up everything for it? You would? I see.
Wooowwza what can I say. What can I say about The Cornered Mouse Dreams of Cheese? Nothing, everything, I don’t know. Made me feel sick and bad and crazy. Don’t read this one. Please read it. What a mess. What a maddening and sublime interrogation into the psyches of two characters who are desperate for something that they refuse to articulate.
Sakura-Gari / Watase Yuu 2007-10, 3 Vol. Read in December
Oh boy. What, you want me to write my feelings out about Sakura-gari? I don’t want to do that. No, I don’t want to, I’m scared, I can’t do it! No, no! Truthfully, I am in fact having a hard time articulating anything at all about Sakura-gari. I’ll say that, after I completed it, I went on a mostly unsuccessful pursuit to find bl manga that made me feel the same way that Sakura-gari did. This knocked me to my knees, kicked me in the gut, and when I stifled a cry into my fist it said, “Well, what did you think was going to happen?” I think it’s brilliant and tragic and [looking you in the eyes] if you’ve never read it: this is not a recommendation, unless you want it to be.
A gutting exploration of how the cycle of abuse and violence stymies a person’s ability to understand their own desires and how to act on them, and doing it wrong. A torrent of wrongs! A hot, stinging wave of wrongs! Ack! Argh!
Blue Morning / Hidaka Shoko 2009-17, 8 Vol. Read in December
Haha, wow… to write about the meandering and sober melodrama of Blue Morning after failing to talk about Sakura-gari… But not to fear, I ended my year with this one, I'm happy to write about it. Just superb stuff happening here. Failing to come to an understanding over and over again despite continuously attempting to do right by each other, losing your sense of self after falling in love…. because it causes you to make decisions based on emotion (which scares you) rather than cool calculation (your default), running away but always coming back because being loved by another feels good despite the anxiety it brings you… AND you’re a THIRTY year old BUTLER and the person you’ve fallen in love with is a lovesick eighteen year old whom you raised for the last eight years who is your young master. Ugh, the agonies! Blue Morning has a lot of cogs spinning while all of that goes on, namely its Meiji Restoration noble system machinations, the set dressing for its agonies. Awesome. Made me clutch my hair and stomp my feet.
And with that, this completes my year in review of manga 2025!!! Thank you for reading. Anything at all that I've listed in any of my 3 lists IS! a recommendation. If you've ever read something by my recommendation (here or anywhere!) I would love to hear your thoughts. Even if it's about the dreaded cornered mouse dreams of cheese. Happy 2026! Let's read some manga this year and let's talk about it together.
