Best Seinen Crime Manga, Ranked

Summary

• Some manga with criminal protagonists offer gritty, realistic, and brutal stories that elevate the stakes.
• Unique crime manga like “The Fable” and “Black Lagoon” explore the criminal underworld and the challenges faced by criminal protagonists.
• Naoki Urasawa’s “Monster” presents an epic morality tale where a doctor hunts a serial killer, reflecting on the value of life.

Some stories benefit from having some edge to them or a sense of danger, and following criminals — or those fighting crime — is a good way to add to that. Then, the reader gets pulled along on a journey where they see their protagonists try to survive the criminals or see how long they can avoid getting their just deserts.

There are plenty of popular shōnen classics that cover detectives foiling crimes (Case Closed) or criminals getting involved in weird situations (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Part 5: Vento Aureo). But, if readers want something grittier, more realistic, and more brutal, they can check out these seinen crime manga and see just how high the stakes can get.

10

Ushijima the Loan Shark

Loan Shark Goes to Any Lengths to Make His Clients Cough Up His Cash

• Creator: Shohei Manabe.
• 46 Volumes, 493 Chapters.
• Fan Translations only.

Ushijima the Loan Shark may not be the most familiar name outside Japan, yet it was popular enough within Japan to get four live-action movies and five spin-off manga, which is pretty good for a series about a loan shark who isn’t afraid to get violent. Though, despite being the title character, he isn’t the protagonist.

It’s essentially a series of one-off stories where its unlucky leads, left in absurd amounts of debts with no legal means of paying them off, end up borrowing from Ushijima. He’s brutal, unsympathetic, and will introduce his clients to a new world of pain if they can’t pay off their loans within 10 days, including his 50% interest rate. So, he’s more of a looming antagonist ready to punish the leads for their financial flaws.

9

Yakuza Fiancée: Raise wa Tanin ga Ii

Girl is Forced to Marry a Violent Gangster to Keep the Peace

• Creator: Asuka Konishi.
• 8+ Volumes, 38+ Chapters.
• Available in English via Seven Seas Entertainment.

There’s more to the criminal underworld than just crime. It can be a complicated world with political arrangements and complex agreements that its parties must adhere to, or they’ll cause a big mess. In the case of Yakuza Fiancée: Raise wa Tanin ga Ii (‘A Future Fit for Others’), Yoshino must go ahead with an arranged marriage to keep an alliance between Japan’s biggest yakuza syndicates together.

At first, things seem fine as Kirishima, her betrothed, is polite and popular (putting Yoshino at odds with his fan club). But, since he’s been raised from birth to inherit the family ‘business,’ he’s got a vicious side that makes the average yakuza grunt look like a teddy bear in comparison. With her life becoming anything but normal, Yoshino must do all she can to survive, even if it means going through a bad romance.

8

Ouroboros: Keisatsu wo Sabaku wa Ware ni Ari

Orphans Join the Cops and Yakuza to Solve Their Teacher’s Murder

• Creator: Yuya Kanzaki.
• 24 Volumes, 144 Chapters.
• Fan Translations only.

While some may gripe, it’s true that the police aren’t always the honest crime stoppers they paint themselves to be. They can be just as corrupt as the people they’re chasing after, if not more so, protecting the interests of those higher up society’s totem pole rather than protecting and serving the common people. Ryuzaki and Tatsuya learn this firsthand in Ouroboros: Keisatsu wo Sabaku wa Ware ni Ari (‘It’s Up to Us to Judge the Police’).

They were orphans who looked up to their teacher, Yuiko, until she was murdered one night. They witnessed it and reported it to the police, who covered up the case and told them to stay quiet instead. So, Ryuzaki grows up to investigate the force from within as a cop, while Tatsuya checks their criminal connections as a yakuza. This way, they’ll discover the truth and bring the culprit to justice.

7

Multiple Personality Disorder Psycho

Detective Discovers There’s More to His Dissociative Identities Than He Thinks

• Creators: Eiji Otsuka (story), Shou Tajima.
• 24 Volumes, 155 Chapters.
• Available in English via Dark Horse Comics.

If super-powered politics aren’t to one’s liking, Philip K. Dick-esque sci-fi cop dramas might be. Multiple Personality Disorder Psycho sees detective Yosuke develop dissociative identity disorder after a serial killer he was chasing killed his girlfriend. His cool-headed Kazuhiko persona found the murderer, while his sadistic Nishizono side killed him in revenge.

After serving time, he becomes a private investigator and ends up chasing a trail of killers who, like Yosuke, each have barcodes in their left eyes. As he looks into the case further, he learns his alternate personalities might’ve been a part of him for longer than he thought, and they might not have been natural parts of his psyche to begin with.

6

Ice Blade

Tough Cop Takes On a Tougher World

• Creator: Tsutomu Takahashi.
• 19 Volumes, 72 Chapters.
• Fan Translations only.

The merciless approach in Ushijima the Loan Shark would find favor with other seinen crime manga protagonists, like Kyoya Ida from Ice Blade (aka Jiraishin). He’s a ruthless detective working for the National Police Agency in Shinjuku, where he isn’t afraid to use excessive force to solve his cases. After his partner, Tsuyoshi, is killed in action, he doesn’t have time to solve cases by the book.

Still, he isn’t some wanton killer with a badge. He uses wit with his force, breaking out the lethal force when all legal means are exhausted. These methods have earned him praise from some cops, and enmity from the higher-ranking members of the force. But, a hard and gritty world produces harsh and gritty people, and Ida is no exception.

5

Gangsta

Mercenaries Must Contend with Cops, Criminals, and Superhumans to Uncover a Conspiracy

• Creator: Kohske.
• 8+ Volumes, 56+ Chapters.
• Available in English via Viz Media’s Viz Signature imprint.

Just because a manga has a surreal premise doesn’t mean it can’t be gritty and realistic. Gangsta takes place in Ergastulum, a city/glorified internment camp for superhumans called ‘Twilights,’ who must regularly take a drug called Cerberet to survive, even though it’s slowly poisoning them over time.

It’s also a place where law and order depend on a gentle balance between the city’s most powerful factions, from the different criminal families to the authorities themselves. ‘Handymen’ Worick and Nicolas do odd jobs for both sides — until they choose to protect Alex, an amnesiac ex-prostitute, instead of killing her. By doing this, they end up involved in a wider conspiracy that seeks to turn the whole city upside down.

4

The Fable

Hitman is Forced to Give Up Killing for a Year

• Creator: Katsuhisa Minami.
• 22 Volumes, 240 Chapters.
• Available in English via Kodansha USA.

Even criminals need to take some time off, be it just to relax or to avoid heat from the feds or rival gangs, which is where The Fable comes in. In the criminal underworld, Fable is a legendary hitman who can complete any and every assignment a client gives him, so long as the money’s good. But, his notoriety is a double-edged sword as it’s begun to get the wrong kind of attention.

His boss orders him to lie low until the heat dies down, but he can’t just take a vacation for a few weeks. Instead, he must live under a civilian cover identity for a whole year with a ‘sister’ to keep an eye on him. No killing, no clients, no nothing, or he’ll suffer for it. It sounds simple enough, but after years of killing for cash, staying on the straight and narrow may be Fable’s biggest challenge yet.

3

Sanctuary

Survivors Try to Improve Their New Home

• Creators: Buronson (story), Ryoichi Ikegami (art).
• 12 Volumes, 108 Chapters.
• Originally available in English via Viz Media’s Viz Premiere Comics imprint.

If Ouroboros’ premise sounds familiar to some, it might be because it’s somewhat like the one in Sanctuary. Only instead of its two leads seeking to solve a covered-up crime, it’s about Akira and Chiaki, survivors of the Cambodian killing fields, seeking to make their new home nation of Japan a better place. A fitting sanctuary, so to speak.

But to do that, they must follow different paths. After a quick rock-paper-scissors game to settle the issue, Akira joins the yakuza to sort out their ranks from within, while Chiaki aims to join the Japanese Diet as a politician. That way, as they climb up the ladders in their respective positions, they can clean up Japan’s overworld and underworld. It’s a goal easier said than done, and it will cost them a lot to achieve.

2

Black Lagoon

Salaryman Must Learn How to Be a Pirate or Die Trying

• Creator: Rei Hiroe.
• 13+ Volumes, 119+ Chapters.
• Available in English via Viz Media’s Viz Signature imprint.

Today, Black Lagoon is perhaps more famous for its animated adaptations, but its premise and plots all came from the original manga, which is still being published to this day. It follows the titular pirate mercenaries as they run a variety of smuggling jobs across Southeast Asia, which usually end up resulting in a few violent gunfights.

This serves their brutal, gun-toting leader Revy just fine. Though their newest member/hostage Rokuro, an otherwise ordinary Japanese salaryman, has to follow along with the group’s plots and schemes to survive, learning the hard way how to deal with Triads, cartels, false churches, and other gangsters. If they don’t finish him off, his new colleagues might.

1

Monster

Doctor Tries to Hold Onto His Ideals as He Chases After a Killer

• Creator: Naoki Urasawa.
• 18 Volumes, 162 Chapters.
• Available in English via Viz Media’s Viz Signature imprint.

Quite a few of Naoki Urasawa’s top manga involve chasing a criminal’s trail, be it the political conspiracy at the heart of 20th Century Boys or the murder mysteries in Pluto. Still, when it comes to his best crime-focused manga, it’s hard to top his epic morality tale Monster, where a doctor’s hunt for a serial killer becomes a treatise on the value of life as well.

Early in his career, Doctor Tenma opted to save the life of a child over a high-ranking official, which earned him the ire of his colleagues, followed by their suspicion when his biggest critics wound up dead. Nearly a decade later, Doctor Tenma discovers his patient, Johan Liebert, has become a notorious killer. To right his old wrong, he must figure out how Johan could kill others so easily — and stop him from taking more lives, even if it might mean killing him in turn.