Wahoo! I read a lot this year and I want to talk about a lot too! So in honour of my blog being a real place where I can say as much as I want, I'm splitting my favourites of the year into categories so I can talk about as much as possible lol.
First up: my favourites of 2025 to look at 👁️👁️. What struck me visually, affected me because I liked to look at it so much, and made me go "wow!" or "WOW!!!!!!!!" etc.
CLOVER / CLAMP
1997-99, 4 vol. Read in January
Striking page layouts, sharp thin lines that easily draw focus to them. Some pages of this are a single panel, some are a collection of panels straight down the middle, occasionally a lavish and bizarre background surrounds a bizarre looking character rendered with a delicacy that CLAMP excelled in here. A lot of white space, but used in a way that I found affecting. I think this is one of the most beautiful looking things that CLAMP has ever made, and I wish they'd made more of it.
Touch Within the Abyss / Mori Moyori
2021, 1 vol. Read in February
Gorgeous, heavily detailed art, which I enjoyed so much that it bolstered my opinion of this story quite strongly. The pov character looked like he woke up and did his thick eyeliner daily with the intent to make himself look more exhausted and hard-done-by than he already seemed to naturally look. Sexy! I think this was able to strike the balance between delicacy and impact and it really worked for me.
10 Dance / Inoue Satou
2011-, 8 vol. Read in April
Okay, the thing about 10dance is that personally, I think the art style is like, well. I think it’s ugly. Have described it to friends as “balls to the walls ugly” and “amazingly unpleasant to look at”. But I also think that the way that Inoue illustrates movement, specifically, of course, the movement of dance, is completely captivating. The action in this is executed masterfully; the dancing scenes were exciting and visually strong and momentous, the expressions were great, the lines of action were done with full intent and follow-through. Particularly, the dance scenes in the park were genuinely beautifully rendered and expressed and made me quite emotional.
An Invitation From A Crab / panpanya
2014, 1 vol. Read in September
Heh. This one is awesome. If you’re reading this list, you’ve gotta get your hands on An Invitation From A Crab. The juxtaposition between the incredibly detailed, scratchy backgrounds and the simple, cute pov character is just a blast to see. This is a real treat to look at. I think this is masterful and I don’t have much complex to say about it but I’ll give it two visual comparisons and say that I enjoyed reading Invitation more than either thing I’m going to compare it to: Igarashi Daisuke’s Witches (which I enjoyed visually but not much on any other level) and Taiyo Matsumoto’s Tekkonkinkreet (which I have not read in many years and have little to say about at the moment).
Double / Noda Ayako
2019-, 5 vol. Read in October
Double has a lot of impressive things going for it, but I find the core of its strength to me lies in its depiction of human physicality, and for that reason I’m putting it in this list. The way that the characters grip each other, the way that hands manipulate skin, bodies twist against each other, flesh bending and molding to pressure… yum!!!!! And the expressions! Maybe you’d like to read Double for the codependent actors rewiring their lives without each other and then desperately pawing at ways to pull back together, or maybe you’d like to see what I’m talking about, visually, but either way, whew! This one is special.
Firefly Wedding / Tachibana Oreco
2023-, 10 vol. Read in October
Like with Double, there’s a lot that I enjoy about Firefly Wedding. Visually, part of this is because Tachibana is a beautiful illustrator who clearly endeavours to place every fold of every robe in precise accurate detail, and enjoys doing so, and because she draws an awesome crying weeping sobbing face, (thank you Satoko for being a crybaby!) but what compelled me into reading 60 chapters of it in one night (until 4am??????) is, sorry to admit, Shinpei. He is like a weird little bug in a jar to me that I cannot look away from. Sure, sure, an aspect of this is that he makes me go “kyaa!!!” when he’s being particularly unpleasant and annoying or terrible, and his cat-like expressions charm and endear me, but he’s also just so cute. He’s cute! Like if a bug was a cat was a tortured weird man with a charming predilection for violence and killing. You know what I mean!
^ bug
That's all today! I have two(!) more lists that I'm excited to write up, and lots more different manga to talk about :)
