Hajime no Ippo

Hajime no Ippo is sport shounen manga. Like Berserk Hajime no Ippo started 1990 but is already at 957 chapters because it gets released on a regular schedule. It is the longest manga i know so far and it takes some time to read the whole story.

Makunouchi Ippo is a shy high school student who barely has any friends because he is always busy helping out his single mother with her family fishing charter business. Since he is such shy pushover he gets bullied by a group of students. One day he gets a especially rough beating, luckily for him he gets saved by the pro boxer Takamura who scares the bullies away.  Takamura brings the passed out Ippo to his boxing gym to tend to his wounds. When Ippo wakes up he sees the world of boxing for the first time and decides to change his life, and aspire a career as a pro-boxer.
The story follows the hardships and joys of Ippo and his friends in the world of pro-boxing.

Hajime no Ippo explains the world of boxing in every detail. You learn a lot about boxing, from basic knowledge, various techniques to all the short and long term dangers in the ring. The manga doesn't only show the matches in every detail but especially the training and preparations before the match. From all the trainings to build up their muscles and stamina to the unimaginable pains of weight-management.
Compared to other sport manga Hajime no Ippo is almost exclusively about the sport, there is a love story and some other developments included in the story but they can merely be regarded as fillers and barely contribute to it.
The humor of this manga is very crude, meaning penis and poop jokes are a essential part of it. Witch could be easily explained by the fact that almost all characters are male.

The artwork is difficult to judge. Firstly it is very old school and that doesn't fit everyones taste. The fighting scenes are portrait very well and drawn in detail, on the other hand the way people are drawn takes getting used to (especially the faces). But it doesn't disturb the reading experience since you get so into it, you will barely realize that over the 950 chapters the author changes his drawing style regularly.

Naruto

Naruto is a action adventure shonen manga. It is a very popular WSJ and targets a young fan-base. This is a manga I'd rather avoid to review, since I have split opinion about this manga this is going to be difficult to review.

Naruto is a young rascal growing up in the hidden village of the leave. Like all the kids in this village Naruto is trained to become a shinobi (ninja). Unknown to him a epic beast was sealed inside of him when he was a baby, making people avoid him out of fear the beast might escape and destroy the village. Out of search for attention he pulls pranks and screws around making him more and more unpopular. Until one day he decides to become the next Hokage (strongest Ninja/leader of the village) so people are forced to acknowledge him. The story shows the adventures and changes this young hero goes through driven by his ambition to become Hokage.

This manga is entertaining to read and has a lot of funny elements. This is no martial arts manga in my opinion because the ninjas fight mainly with their magic like abilities. Thanks to these abilities there are very flashy and diversified battles, witch is one of the main strengths of the manga.
Unfortunately a lot off these battles have the same conclusions. Willpower is the most important in a fight and beats superior strength and technique. It also preaches about forgiveness being superior to revenge, because wars lead to hatred, revenge and more wars. Even though its good the author tries to give his young viewers some moral values, it can get boring having most of the fights end similarly.
The main character and the antagonist are very well developed characters. But the other characters often lack depth.
The artwork is not that good at the beginning but it gets better with time.

Even though i read it, find it entertaining and understand its extreme popularity, I think of it as nothing special and a little shallow. It would best be compared with a good action movie. Its flashy, its entertaining but it lacks certain elements to make it a really good movie or epic or  legendary or whatever you wan't to call it.
I might have been a little too strict with this manga because its popularity exceeds its quality. But it's nevertheless a good manga and entertaining too read.

Berserk

Berserk is a fantasy horror seinen. It contains a lot of gore and explicit sexuality and even rape. This manga isn't suited for minors. Also this manga is rarely released. You can count with 4-6 chapters a year, so if you aren't a patient person you might consider missing this one out.

Berserk takes place in medieval times. It is the story of Guts traveling the world hunting for gruesome monsters on his quest for vengeance. Searching for the man who branded him, fighting against his cruel destiny.

Firstly I'm sorry for the short plot description but I wanted to avoid spoiling. It would be impossible to reveal the true story without telling about certain events, witch would damage the reading experience.
Guts starts out as a very unlikable character but once his tragic life is revealed his actions start to be painfully reasonable.
Berserk is the best fantasy story I've ever read, except maybe for Lord of the Rings. The author portrays strong feelings like friendship, love, admiration, desperation etc... extremely well.
The characters have a lot of depth and are well made. You'll learn to love some characters so much it will be painful to see them gone.

The artwork is the best i ever saw in any graphic novel. At the beginning it's not that impressive but it gains a lot of quality over time. Especially impressive is that the author doesn't have any assistants and draws everything by himself. These two facts are most likely responsible for the slow release pace of this manga, it's very well imaginable the author spends a whole week on certain panels.

The first appearance of berserk was 1990 and the manga is currently at 317 chapters and ongoing. This is going to be the lifework and legacy of the author Miura Kentaro. If you are not disturbed by its slow release and brutality, I give this manga a very high recommendation.

One Piece

One Piece
It was clear that One Piece is going to be the first WSJ i was going to review. One piece is extremely popular manga. It gained multiple awards and broke a lot of selling records with 250 million volumes sold by 2011. It is currently ranked as the best-selling series of all time in manga history.
One Piece is a shonen fantasy adventure manga. With a great balance between serious elements and ridiculous and childish humor OP is suitable for young and old.

The story takes place in a fantasy world very different from ours. Once there was a exceptional adventurer, the pirate king Gold Roger. At his execution he challenged the world to find his greatest treasure, the One Piece. This started the age of pirates who search the world for One Piece.
The story evolves around the main character Monkey D Luffy who's goal is to find One Piece and become the next Pirate King. He goes through numerous adventures slowly assembling his crew and revealing the mysteries of his world. Growing stronger and stronger through the obstacles they take on.

The story is very thought through. Even though it is very entertaining to see Luffy and his crew go through one adventure after the other, the true quality of this manga lies in all the hints and connections the author makes between all the stories. Slowly creating a big picture of this world and it's history. When i was reading the manga for the second time i was amazed by all the hints the author gave for later developments in the story.
The characters in this manga are very well developed. The author often uses the past of his characters to show their traumas and motivations and explain why they act the way they do.

The artwork has a very unique style, it is kind of sketchy but still has a good quality. The art might be the weak point of the manga but since it is weekly released the author doesn't have a endless amount of time for his drawings.

Gantz

The first manga is Gantz.
Gantz is a seinen, sci-fi, action, psycho-thriller. This story is very violent to the point of gore. And holds explicit sexuality and is not suited for minors. If you dislike brutality and explicit sexuality i would advise you not to read this manga.

The story is about the regular high school student kei kurono. At the beginning of the story kurono and his friend miraculously survive a accident only to find themselves to be sent on gruesome missions. They get forced to take part in a brutal survival game, where they get advanced technological weapons and have to battle for their survival.

Even if the setting might seem simple and shallow. The scenario allows the writer to show certain aspects of human psychology in extreme situations. He often manages to give characters a lot of depth in a short time even if some of them die shortly after. The battles are amazing and you often find yourself stunned and shocked by the twists and plot of this manga.

The artwork is very good. The author uses a combination of classical hand drawing and computer graphics. Unfortunately he sometimes overuses CG in his later chapters.
The manga is still running currently at 352 chapters and released regularly.

I give this manga a high recommendation. Great story, great battles, great characters and their development and great artwork.

last clarifications

Almost time to review some manga just some clarifications:

After long thinking i chose to take a mangalist start by the most popular ones and cover those I've read. I will not start with my personal favorite ones because it would cover mostly the same genres and be one sided.
On the downside most people will already know the works I'm talking about and I will have to cover most of the mainstream stuff right at the beginning.
Also since I start with the popular ones, most of them will have certain level of quality and end in a good review witch doesn't mean I won't be harsh on works I dislike.

If someone would like a review over a certain manga feel free to ask me. I will write one right away or after reading it. If I have time!

There are a few terms I'd like to declare before i start. People that are active in a forum often use these and I might use them without realizing.

Shonen: 

Manga written for male readers at the age of 10 to 18.

WSJ: 

Is the shortcut for Weekly Shonen Jump. Shonen Jump is the most popular publisher in Japan and WSJ is their weekly issue. Most of it is famous and mainstream.

Mecha:

Manga including robots as enormous vehicles or weapons.

Ecchi / Fan service:

A term for the borderline to nudity. There won't be any over the edge nudity but there will definitely bi skirts flipped by the wind etc... 

One shot:

mangas containing just one chapter.

Seinen:

Manga written for male readers at the age of 18 to 30. They contain violence, crude humor and explicit sexuality. These works often are very dark and serious.

Manhwa:

Manga from Korea

Where to read manga

I assume people who find my shabby little blog are most likely already very well informed about this subject. Nonetheless I would like to say something about it.

Since in my country a lot of the manga i read isn't available and i would have read my self into bankruptcy if i would have bought every single volume, I read most of it online.

To find a online manga reader is very easy nowadays. You just need to google it. I personally am not a big fan of those, based of following reasoning:

When you read manga online you read "scanlations". Those are created by "scanlation groups" witch scan the original manga, clean it, translate it and edit it together. Because of copyright issues those groups exist in a grey area of the law and get sometimes into trouble. I would advise people read a little about these groups  to better understand and respect their work. 

Here is a link i found very helpful: http://www.insidescanlation.com/history/index.html

Online manga reader sites collect the work of those groups, often ignoring their wishes, and present it very user friendly on their page. While scanlation groups barely get enough donations to pay their servers, online reader sites gain profit through advertising and donations.

Getting profit out of copyrighted work is kind of illegal and this gets the scanlation groups into trouble, since they created the scanlations.

I would advise people to get their manga directly from the scanlation groups and regard their wishes, or else this "free manga online reading" bubble might burst.