The List

7 Manga for Monster Girl Lovers

Supernatural romantic comedies have a strong, dedicated fanbase among both male and female readers. Commentary on its quality aside, Twilight was immensely popular and shone a light on a new sub-section of young adult novels. Vampire stories, including romance, are hardly new. Fans are moving on to a new, stranger monsters. If you're tired of the horror staples like vampires, ghosts, and werewolves, or the fantasy cliches like elves, there's a whole new world of supernatural monster girls to check out.

7. Monster Collection Kasche Abradel is a skilled summoner on a quest to save the world. She's completely human, but is joined by Nastasha, a lamia she rescues on her journey, the human Cuervo, and a lizard warrior named Shin. The manga by Sei Itoh is actually based on a trading card game by the same name and was the same source material for Mon-Colle Knights. Other than Nastasha, Monster Collection is pretty low in its number of "monster girls" but the one it does have is pretty fun. Nastasha has a vampire-like appetite so she has to feed on Cuervo to survive. The manga opts out of being gruesome and the lamia instead leaves her victim covered in hickeys.

6. Jashin-chan Dropkick Yukiwo is the character designer for the light novel series My mental choices are completely interfering with my school romantic comedy. His cute character designs have returned for Jashin-chan Dropkick, a comedy manga about a lolita named Yurine who manages to successfully summon a half-snake demon girl named Jashin. Jashin really wants to go back to Hell, and it seems like the only way to ensure that is to kill Yurine. The series revolves around a lot of violent, cartoonish humor between the two leads. Tails get lopped off and hell beasts are drop-kicked. The manga is presented more like a 4-koma; each chapter is only about six pages long.

5. Nurse Hitomi's Monster Infirmary Shake-O's risque slice-of-life comedy follows busty cyclops nurse Hitomi as she tends to the needs of her monstrous students. Unlike A Centaur's Life and Monster Musume, the characters stick closer to horror-esque monsters than fantasy creatures. One of the students suffers from having a chameleon-like tongue that causes her considerable embarrassment while another is a stitched up zombie that's constantly falling apart at the seams. The art style definitely leans pervy, with Hitomi and the students usually sweaty or drooling for some reason or another.

4. 12 Beast OKAYADO's first of two entries this week, 12 Beast follows gamer and ninja-descendant Touga who is abducted by a harpy named Aero and enlisted as a general in her world. The manga eschews the slice-of-life approach a lot of the other entries have for fantasy-action and comedy. Instead of just living amongst beautiful girls, Touga is tasked with destroying Gigas, swarms of machines that are threatening the fantasy world of Live-Earth. He also can't return to his home world until the matter is settled. To help, he recruits all manner of monster girls to get in on the action, including a scantily-clad mummy and minotaur.

3. Shinkaigyo no Anko-san This manga deals a very specific monster subset: mermaids. These aren't the classic version of a girl with a generic fish tail though. INUINU's manga expands on the idea with each mermaid having a fin from a specific sea creature. The main character Anko is an Atlantic Footballfish, a rather hideous type of deep-sea angler. She begrudgingly befriends Otomi, a mermaid otaku of sorts. Together they encounter all sorts of other fishy people, like the overly aggressive Betta mermaid and Shiori, a dangerously fast Needle-Fish mermaid. The mermaid characters take special medication to maintain their human legs but still exhibit their fish qualities, like Anko's lure hanging from her head. It makes for a cute slice-of-life series if readers want less fanservice than what's currently on the market.

2. Monster Musume OKAYADO has second entry for ecchi monster girl lovers. Monster Musume is probably the series you think of when "Monster Girl manga" is mentioned. It's in the title. In this harem series, Kimihito Kurusu finds himself living with a bevy of monster girls after a new government bill passes allowing them to join human society. Most monster girls live with home stay parents, much like foreign exchange students. Kimihito is the harem lead, which means that all the girls joining him under one roof is, of course, accidental. He's joined by lamia (snake girl), a harpy, a centaur, a slime, a mermaid, a spider girl, and a headless horse woman with additional appearances by zombies, cyclops, ogres, shapeshifters, kobolds, dryads and more. There's really every monster under the sun represented in Monster Musume.

1. A Centaur's Life A Centaur's Life is a slice-of-life comedy following teenage centaur Himeno as she goes about her daily high school life with her friends Nozomi (a girl who sports dragon wings) and Kyoko (a girl with spiral horns). The manga is takes place in a contemporary setting where everything seems comparable to our world, only it's populated by fantastic beings. Kei Murayama takes considerable care to create a believable world and translate the mundane and political problems of humans. There's an entire sub-plot around the intelligent lizard inhabitants of Antarctica trying to subtly exert control over the other races, for instance.

The new poll: Which character from the Monogatari franchise is your favorite?

The old poll: Last week we asked which Japanese shonen magazine runs the best manga. Everyone seemed in agreement that Shonen Jump is the place to read the best series.

1. Shōnen Jump (Shueisha) 63.9%
2. Shōnen Sunday (Shogakukan) 11.9%
3. Shōnen Magazine (Kodansha) 10.3%
4. Shōnen Gangan (Square Enix) 8.2%
5. Dragon Age (Fujimi Shobo) 2.3%
6. Shōnen Sirius (Kodansha) 1.8%
7. Shōnen Champion (Akita Shoten) 0.5%
8. Comic Rex (Ichijinsha) 0.5%