Here are 67 books that Dramacon fans have personally recommended if you like
Dramacon.
Shepherd is a community of 10,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
My name is Stephen McCranie and I'm currently working on Space Boy, a slow-burning high school romance that asks the question, "How do we bridge the gap between us?" I love working in this particular genre because high school is such a formative period for all of us. Also, when a romance burns slowly, the audience gets time to explore the world of the story, which can often be dynamic and lush with detail. And then, when our lovers find each other at long last, it is all the more sweet for having waited.
I love Mitsuru Adachi for his masterful storytelling and playful touch. Comics are all about choosing the right moments to string into sequences, and Adachi has a knack for choosing surprising moments without losing the clarity of the story. He's had a huge influence on my work. A story about two friends: an ace pitcher and an ace batter, and their rivalry for love and victory on the baseball field. Behind this epic baseball drama is a wonderful story about the couple that could never be.
Cross Game is a moving drama that is heartfelt and true, yet in the brilliant hands of manga artist Mitsuru Adachi, delightfully flows with a light and amusing touch. The series centers around a boy named Ko, the family of four sisters who live down the street and the game of baseball. This poignant coming-of-age story will change your perception of what shonen manga can be.
My name is Stephen McCranie and I'm currently working on Space Boy, a slow-burning high school romance that asks the question, "How do we bridge the gap between us?" I love working in this particular genre because high school is such a formative period for all of us. Also, when a romance burns slowly, the audience gets time to explore the world of the story, which can often be dynamic and lush with detail. And then, when our lovers find each other at long last, it is all the more sweet for having waited.
A girl gets a letter from her future self, telling her to do everything she can to save a suicidal classmate, even if that means falling in love with him. A sweet love story with a hint of time travel that helped me understand the sacrifice love demands. I would love to be able to write a romance like this someday.
Orange: The Complete Collection is a romantic comedy manga series by shoujo author and artist lchigo Takano. This critically-lauded manga series will tug at your heartstrings with its central plot device about time travel and communication with a future self. Seven Seas will release Orange: The Complete Collection in its entirety in two separate 384-page omnibus editions. Each omnibus collection will contain wrap-around covers, colour inserts, and captivating shoujo-style artwork. Everyone has regrets in life. So who wouldn't take the chance to change the past if given the opportunity? When sixteen-year-old Takamiya Naho receives a mysterious letter, claiming to be…
My name is Stephen McCranie and I'm currently working on Space Boy, a slow-burning high school romance that asks the question, "How do we bridge the gap between us?" I love working in this particular genre because high school is such a formative period for all of us. Also, when a romance burns slowly, the audience gets time to explore the world of the story, which can often be dynamic and lush with detail. And then, when our lovers find each other at long last, it is all the more sweet for having waited.
A story about two high school friends trying to make it in the manga industry. The twist: our hero can't be with the girl he loves until he makes his dreams as an artist come true. A series that helped me understand the inner workings of Japan's comic industry.
Average student Moritaka Mashiro enjoys drawing for fun. When his classmate and aspiring writer Akito Takagi discovers his talent, he begs Moritaka to team up with him as a manga-creating duo. But what exactly does it take to make it in the manga-publishing world? Moritaka is hesitant to seriously consider Akito's proposal because he knows how difficult reaching the professional level can be. Still, encouragement from persistent Akito and motivation from his crush push Moritaka to test his limits!
My name is Stephen McCranie and I'm currently working on Space Boy, a slow-burning high school romance that asks the question, "How do we bridge the gap between us?" I love working in this particular genre because high school is such a formative period for all of us. Also, when a romance burns slowly, the audience gets time to explore the world of the story, which can often be dynamic and lush with detail. And then, when our lovers find each other at long last, it is all the more sweet for having waited.
A homeless high school girl is taken in by a mysterious family, whose members are possessed by the 13 animals of the Zodiac. As she lives with the family, she slowly uncovers hidden wounds, which she heals with her generous spirit. Eventually, she falls in love with one of the two brothers her age, but which one will it be? Usually, with love triangles like this, I can figure out almost immediately who will end up together, but this one took me a while, which made the story all the more interesting.
After a family tragedy turns her life upside down, plucky high schooler Tohru Honda takes matters into her own hands and moves out...into a tent! Unfortunately for her, she pitches her new home on private land belonging to the mysterious Sohma clan, and it isn't long before the owners discover her secret. But, as Tohru quickly finds out when the family offers to take her in, the Sohmas have a secret of their own--when touched by the opposite sex, they turn into the animals of the Chinese Zodiac!A perennial favorite of fans and librarians alike, Natsuki Takaya's beloved bestselling Fruits…
I have lived in Japan for the last 30 years but my love for manga, anime, and games is much older and dates back to when UFO Robot Grendizer was first shown on Italian TV a fateful summer evening in 1978. Many years later, I was able to turn my passion for all things Japanese into a job and now I regularly write about politics, society, sports, travel, and culture in all its forms. However, I often go back to my first love and combine walking, urban exploration, and my otaku cravings into looking for new stores and visiting manga and anime locations in and around Tokyo.
The mother of all otaku guides was published by currentOtaku USA magazine’s honcho Macias and famous otaku writer Machiyama and reflects their tastes and idiosyncratic approach to the subject. Admittedly, you can find better, more complete, and updated otaku travel guides now (e.g. my book… wink wink) but this colorful book has a funky turn-of-the-century design and features things that you will hardly find elsewhere, like interviews with Mandarake owner Masuzo Furukawa, magazine editor Hisanori Nukata (about action figures), past cosplay queen Jan Kurotaki and Japan’s most notorious plastic model kit collector Chimatsuri. It’s a wonderful blast from the past.
If you're into anime (and manga), there's no place like Neo Tokyo. Here otaku dress-up cos-play style for real, 100,000+ fans attend cons to buy and trade, and anime soundtracks are performed in concert halls. Neo Tokyo is where anime has become both urban fashion and cultural zeitgeist, and this is its first street-smart guide in English. Featuring interviews with tastemakers, it covers studios, toys, museums, games, film "locations," music, plus where to hang and how to cruise. Four-color, with maps and index.
Patrick Macias, a specialist in Asian film and Japanese pop culture, is the author of TokyoScope.
Fantasy has always been a passion and an escape for me. It started with copious amounts of reading, then I found anime when I was only a child as Cardcaptors began to air on TV. I’ve watched hundreds of anime shows since then and continued my penchant for reading and writing almost exclusively in the fantasy genre. In college, I obtained a BA in English with an emphasis on Creative Writing, so I have a good grasp on literature analysis and many works. In addition, I studied Japanese for two years, lived in Japan for six months, and held a position at the anime club while I was in college.
Evermore has an anime-level mystical other world with copious drama and shenanigans afoot. There are strained friendships, romance, death-defying endeavors, and more. Who doesn’t love a good immortal chasing after his love through different lifetimes? I appreciate that the MC isn’t a damsel in distress even with the romance-heavy lean of the book. There’s plenty of mystery and action with the MC’s ability to see spirits and auras as she tries to discern the strange things happening around her. I have so much love for themes of life and death. I can see parallels between this book and the anime The Ancient Magus Bride. Both involve not-so-distant other worlds and a protagonist who has shut herself away for her gifts falling in love with an immortal.
Don't miss Evermore, the first book in Alyson Noël's #1 New York Times bestselling The Immortals series. Enter an enchanting new world where true love never dies. . .
After a horrible accident claimed the lives of her family, sixteen-year-old Ever Bloom can see people's auras, hear their thoughts, and know someone's entire life story by touching them. Going out of her way to avoid human contact and suppress her abilities, she has been branded a freak at her new high school—but everything changes when she meets Damen Auguste.
Damen is gorgeous, exotic and wealthy. He's the only one who…
My name is Art Roche and I've been drawing cartoons and comic strips for over twenty-five years. I wish everyone drew comics! Comic strips are an amazing art form that has been around for thousands of years. With a simple pencil, pen, and paper the artist can tell thrilling stories, make hilarious jokes, or illustrate their own diaries. Once you learn the basic mechanics of how comics are designed and built, anyone can begin drawing them regardless of talent level or experience.
This is an excellent, well-designed book for anyone wanting to improve their Anime style of drawing. Many of the young artists I talk to have an intense interest in drawing in this particular style, sometimes referred to as the “Anime” style. This cartoon-style features sharp lines and shapes with stark, colorful graphics. Although this book doesn’t get into much instruction on how to create comics, it does provide the artist with a starting place for drawing in the anime style. From there, the artists can take this knowledge and apply it to the comics that they create. The drawings in the lessons are very well done, and the content covers all the topics that make anime a unique drawing style. I highly recommend this book.
Let’s spark your creative ability and let your passion run wild with this amazing How To Draw Anime book from Sophia Elizabeth!
This book will teach you how to draw anime step by step, with the easiest approach possible through simple shapes. Inside this wonderful drawing book, you can learn everything you need to know on how to create a perfect original anime character. This includes head, facial details, body proportions, facial emotions, clothing and even basic character models for you to try out. In other words, this book is a perfect head start for any anime-drawing enthusiast.
Anime and manga have always been the biggest influences on my own writing, from the drastic tonal shifts and bizarre scenarios to the frenetic pacing and strange characters. Underdogs fighting tooth and nail against increasingly overwhelming foes in a perpetual struggle to take the slightest step forward—those are the characters I relate to, the stories I want to tell.
Through a masterfully balanced blend of straightforward and poetic prose, the late counter-cultural figure Izumi Suzuki depicts raw humanity against proto-cyberpunk landscapes.
People are transplanted into others’ dreams, interstellar border politics are navigated by junkies, and aliens roleplay as human in a world left to ruin. The mix of high emotion and high weirdness that makes the best anime is present in every story of this book.
On a planet where men are contained in ghettoised isolation, women enjoy the fruits of a queer matriarchal utopia -- until a boy escapes and a young woman's perception of the world is violently interupted. Two old friends enjoy cocktails on a holiday resort planet where all is not as it seems. A bickering couple emigrate to a world that has worked out an innovative way to side-step the need for war, only to bring their quarrels (and something far more destructive) with them. And in the title story, Suzuki offers readers a tragic and warped mirroring of her own…
Anime and manga have always been the biggest influences on my own writing, from the drastic tonal shifts and bizarre scenarios to the frenetic pacing and strange characters. Underdogs fighting tooth and nail against increasingly overwhelming foes in a perpetual struggle to take the slightest step forward—those are the characters I relate to, the stories I want to tell.
There’s a point in countless anime fight scenes where characters engaged in combat are moving so fast, the background becomes nothing but harsh pencil strokes drawn from one corner of the frame to the other. Black Gypsies contains many scenes with this level of frenetic energy. A fast, pulpy thrill ride that is equal parts colorful, gritty, and sexy.
Marcus is a certified Jackboy on the streets of Chicago, stealing car parts with his best friend Gordo to sell at the local junkyard. It's all another day in the life, with his mom on his ass and a bad bitch on his mind being the most of his troubles. That is, until the Jackboys hit a lick on the wrong gangster, trapping themselves in a debt that can only be bought out in blood.
Love, poetry, lean…and a whole lotta gang shit...
“BLACK GYPSIES is a fresh slice of classic underground crime fiction, gritty and grimy,…
Anime and manga have always been the biggest influences on my own writing, from the drastic tonal shifts and bizarre scenarios to the frenetic pacing and strange characters. Underdogs fighting tooth and nail against increasingly overwhelming foes in a perpetual struggle to take the slightest step forward—those are the characters I relate to, the stories I want to tell.
The world in this book feels of a time both ancient and unfathomably far into the future.
This, along with the marriage of supernatural elements and science fiction—not to mention oddball characters, hypersexuality, and intense swordfights—make Howl a definitive title of “anime literature.”
Lady Agova, the glass-jawed mystic giantess who guides our protagonists through the dangerous cybergoth landscape, is as iconic as Goku or Naruto and belongs on just as many bedroom wall posters.
10,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
anime,
webcomi,
and
Japan.
