For anyone interested in the history and background of Japanese manga, here are a few books that are highly recommended:
It’s pretty hard to deny that manga has become a firmly established pop-sub-culture, and not just recently – From One Piece, back to Dragonball, and even further back by decades with Speed Racer.
Anime: From Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle aims to be the “authoritative source on anime for an exploding market of viewers who want to know more.”
Although over 12-years-old, this book offers a glimpse at modern developments of manga through trends, artist profiles, and niche curiosities.
Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga explores the differences between Western comic books and Japanese manga to explain the full-blown popularity of manga in Japan, which accounts for 40% of publishing sales.
This book offers an account of the history of manga from 1945 to present.
Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics provides descriptions of sub-genres like violent samurai epics (バガボンド / Vagabond) and apocalyptic science fiction (アキラ / Akira).
Any one of these books will give you a pretty good idea of what manga series are out there.
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Nice collection there Alex. For anyone interested in following that with something on animation (the natural path from manga lol) I can also recommend Anime Explosion: The What? Why? & Wow! of Japanese Animation It gives some great little rundowns on many, many different anime and is a great one for anyone not yet an Otaku who wants an entry point into the world.