Best Drama Manga of 2012

The Abyss, a hole of unprecedented depth—one young girl and a robot brave its dangers to find the truth. The town of Orth is a special one, as it is built around the edges of the massive Abyss, a wonder which has never been fully explored. Those who venture too far down never return, but those brave enough to traverse its territories are known as "Cave Raiders" and are heralded as legends. Within this town lives a young girl called Riko, the child of one of the most famous Cave Raiders of all time who disappeared on an expedition many years ago. One day, Riko's life changes when she meets a strange robot called Reg, who seems to appear from within the Abyss. Believing this to be a sign from her mother stuck at the bottom of the Abyss, Riko descends into its depths with Reg, ready to confront all the dangers within it.

Long ago, Earth was struck by six meteorites, creating six moons and leaving a lone island in their wake. Those who could not make it to the island sank to the bottom of the ocean, where, over time, they slowly turned to crystal. As countless millennia passed, 28 of these crystallized lifeforms, known as the Lustrous, rose from the depths and resided on the island. Led by the wise Kongou-sensei, they must defend themselves against the seemingly infinite number of Lunarians, inhabitants of the moons who seek to harvest their valuable bodies for crafting weapons and jewelry. Houseki no Kuni centers around Phosphophyllite, a young gem about to turn three hundred years old. Clumsy, extremely fragile, and having no visible talent, they are one of the weakest gems around, unable to help in the fight against the Lunarians in any meaningful way. But as the battle with the otherworldly invaders rages on, they soon learn that power comes at a cost that no one should have to pay.

One morning, Naho Takamiya receives a letter in the mail claiming to be from herself 10 years in the future. The letter reveals a series of events that are supposed to take place that day. At first, Naho thinks it's just a prank; but when the letter mentions a transfer student named Kakeru Naruse, who really ends up transferring into her class later that day, she is forced to believe in its contents. As Naho continues to read the letter, her future self mentions several regrets, urging Naho to take the right decisions now. Somehow these regrets all seem to be connected to Kakeru, and with the burden of the knowledge that the boy wouldn't be with her and her friends in the future, will Naho be able to make the perfect choices that will alter what seems to be fate?Also includes Haru-iro Astronaut (Spring-Colored Astronaut) series.

Having lost his parents, eight-year-old Yuuichirou Amane is taken in by the Hyakuya Orphanage, where he struggles to bond with his new "family." However, this soon becomes the least of his worries, when a major pandemic suddenly strikes, killing all above the age of 13. Taking advantage of the chaos, vampires—who previously laid dormant underground—rise up and enslave the surviving humans, using them as livestock to harvest blood. Four years later, Yuuichirou and his family have adjusted to life under vampire control, although Yuuichirou still aspires to kill all vampires and end their reign of terror. This often puts him at odds with fellow orphan Mikaela Hyakuya, who emphasizes using wit and ingenuity to survive. Having garnered favor among high-ranking vampires, Mikaela gains inside knowledge and uses this to plan a daring escape. But during the attempt, the group of orphans is intercepted by vampire officer Ferid Bathory, who proceeds to massacre them. Yuuichirou is the only member of the group to escape to the surface, where he is discovered by the Moon Demon Company, a military unit dedicated to hunting down vampires. Given an invitation to join, Yuuichirou swiftly accepts, finally being presented an opportunity to achieve his ambitions and avenge his family.

Following the graduation of every other member of the Koto Music Club, Takezou Kurata is left alone as the new club president. Now burdened with the arduous task of rebuilding membership, he struggles to recruit anyone due to a lack of interest. Just as Kurata has lost nearly all hope in keeping the club alive, the feared delinquent Chika Kudou appears, claiming he will join and become the club president himself. At first, Kurata refuses to admit such a troublesome person, aware of the dark rumors that have been circulating about Kudou. However, after discovering a more vulnerable side to Kudou and his mysterious connection to the club, Kurata rethinks his decision. The soon-to-be defunct club is saved with the help of koto prodigy Satowa Houzuki, who uses her charms to recruit Kudou's lively friends Saneyasu Adachi, Michitaka Sakai, and Kouta Mizuhara. With sufficient numbers to retain the club's status, Houzuki declares that they will aim to become the best koto players in the nation, much to Kurata's dismay. This ragtag bunch of young musicians have a road filled with challenges and adversities ahead of them, and by overcoming their fears and differences, their aspirations may very well come true.

Fuuta Okeya, a 14-year-old student, can see ghosts and wears a bandage on his left cheek to hide his striking birthmark. One day, a girl with a scar on her forehead named Kouko Ishigami, accompanied by a ghost of a tall and friendly man, transfers into his class. Fuuta quickly takes a liking to Kouko, wondering if it might be love at first sight. After waking up crying from a strange dream involving her, he feels a nostalgic connection to Kouko and becomes determined to befriend her. However, a chain of events forces Fuuta to reveal his birthmark to Kouko, to which she declares him to be the enemy of her life. A furious Kouko explains that the two are bound by reincarnation, and that Fuuta's birthmark is a curse she engraved on him in one of their past lives to recognize and eventually defeat him. Kouko brings out a circular object made of flames known as the "spirit circle" and attacks Fuuta, pushing him off a flight of stairs. As he falls, Fuuta is thrown back into the insight of one of his previous lives. Spirit Circle chronicles Fuuta's journey back and forth his several past lives as he gradually unravels the mysteries behind his apparent bad blood with Kouko.

The story covers 13 years and begins with a 19-year-old college student named Hana who encounters and falls in "fairy tale-like" love with a "wolf man." After marrying the wolf man, Hana gives birth and raises two wolf children—an older sister named Yuki who was born on a snowy day, and a younger brother named Ame who was born on a rainy day. The four quietly lived in a corner of a city to conceal the existence of the "wolf children," but when the wolf man suddenly dies, Hana decides to move to a rural town far removed from the city.

It's time once again for the annual family gathering on Rokkenjima! Ange Ushiromiya is just getting over a cold, but that won't dampen her excitement at seeing her cousins again! Granddad couldn't be more thrilled to see his beloved grandchildren and throws a special Halloween party where everyone gets lots of treats! By lunchtime on the first day, the aunts and uncles are chatting up a storm, and the cousins are eagerly planning the afternoon's fun. It's the very picture of a happy family-one that in no way resembles the bickering, bitter Ushiromiya clan! What is going on?!

The world of Kamiyama High School is full of colorful and mysterious events, but 15-year-old Houtarou Oreki cannot be bothered to pay much attention to it. Choosing to live his life by conserving energy whenever possible, he is content with acknowledging the bare minimum to get him through each day. However, he finds his lifestyle threatened by his sister's request for him to join the Classics Club. Wishing to avoid any repercussions, Houtarou reluctantly agrees and visits the club room, where he meets the ladylike yet passionate Eru Chitanda. Joined by cheerful longtime friend Satoshi Fukube and former classmate Mayaka Ibara, the four members of the illustrious Classics Club delve into the enigmas of ordinary life on an idyllic journey of exploration.

In stories of people who swap bodies, they always return to their rightful places. But what if that never happens? Unfortunately, this is the exact predicament Yui Ootsuka and Yuuta Kimura find themselves in. One day, after Yuuta comes crashing down on Yui from the treetops, both children find themselves in an unfamiliar body. But no matter how desperately they try, they are unable to revert things to how they originally were. In the end, they settle with going about each other's lives as if nothing had happened, determined to keep the incident a secret. Though merely classmates in the past, this inexplicable accident binds their fates tightly together. For years, Yui and Yuuta struggle through a life that is not their own. In this wearisome situation, the two of them discover what it truly means to walk in someone else's shoes.

Ninth-grader Mami Tomoe is not your average middle schooler. While she regularly attends Mitakihara Middle School, she also works as a magical girl—one who has made a wish in exchange for magical powers and a new duty to seek out and destroy otherworldly beings known as witches. But Mami is also a special case among magical girls—while most fight for their own sake, Mami prefers to work with others, becoming a guardian of justice who destroys any evil creatures she can find, whether it be a witch or a mere familiar. It is this selfless lack of self-interest that often distances her from other magical girls, and as a result, Mami is often lonely. During one of her usual witch hunts, she finds a novice magical girl struggling against a particularly strong witch. After Mami lends her help, the magical girl introduces herself as Kyouko Sakura from the city of Kazamino. Impressed by Mami's skill and hospitality, Kyouko quickly requests to team up with her and become her apprentice. Beginning as an adaptation of one of the hit anime's drama CDs, Mahou Shoujo Madoka★Magica: The Different Story is a tale of the relationship between two magical girls shown from an alternate perspective.

Jinta Yadomi spends most of his days at home, indifferent to his school and social life after a tragic accident tore his childhood friendship group apart. Years later, Jinta is confronted by his past in the form of a ghost—Meiko "Menma" Honma—which forces him to face the guilt he has been shouldering since her death. Menma reveals that she has a wish that may help her move on; however, she has forgotten what it was and insists that she needs the whole group back together to remember. Will Jinta be able to reunite his estranged friends and convince them that what he is saying is true?

In futuristic Japan, the human soul is analyzed and digitized. A flawless structure called the Sibyl System assesses this data and creates a perfect life for each citizen while also evaluating their potential for crime—otherwise known as one's "Psycho-Pass." Even so, incidents still occur, requiring the existence of the Ministry of Welfare's Public Safety Bureau (MWPSB). Short on personnel, MWPSB employs latent criminals as Enforcers—morally corrupt individuals whose Psycho-Pass surpasses the allowed threshold—in service of the capable Inspectors. They make use of Dominators, special guns designed to read one's Psycho-Pass, and work together to apprehend wrongdoers. Being one of the few people the System considers adequate for MWPSB, Akane Tsunemori is assigned as Criminal Investigation Division's new Inspector of Division 01. Secured by her strong sense of justice, Tsunemori's Psycho-Pass is unwavering in the face of incurable fugitives on both the just and rotten sides of the system. But early into her career, Tsunemori encounters a person thought impossible: a criminal with the Psycho-Pass of a righteous man.

From an outsider's perspective, what they are seeing is a normal meetup between three girls. However, these "girls" are meeting for the first time because of one commonality: they were born as males, but crossdress for various reasons. Ryousuke "Yui" Kijima pretends to be his deceased older sister to keep her memory alive, Osamu "Parou" Tamura dresses as a girl to attract his straight senior in school, and Yuuta "Marika" Aoki is a transgender female. Despite their similarities, Yui hates how the other two are satisfied with their habits, and leaves quickly. Then alone, Parou expresses his support for Marika, causing her to fall in love with him. Though their meeting was cut short, the lives of these three people begin to cross. As they grapple with their genders and identities, romantic feelings begin to foster, sharpening the divide between them, yet bring them closer at the same time.

Volume 1: Dear Mr. Rain Kutsuna Satoru, a hat maker, picks up a man collapsed on the side of the road named Kashiba Ryou, who came to Japan to die. Volumes 2-3: Dear Hatter Volumes 4-7: The Speaker

Die-hard otaku Tomoya Aki never imagined himself falling for a girl in real life until one of his spring breaks, when he experienced a picturesque encounter with a mysterious beauty. Reminiscing about the brief yet enchanting event, he decides to produce a bishoujo game—a game focused on attractive girls—with the sole purpose of capturing the allure of that idyllic scene. Days fly by, and Tomoya enters his second year of high school having made no progress on his game. On top of that, he is shocked to discover that the girl he met is his unremarkable classmate, Megumi Katou. Determined to make his game a reality, Tomoya ropes Megumi into the project and sets out to convince his childhood friend Eriri Spencer Sawamura and upperclassman Utaha Kasumigaoka to help with its development. Tomoya soon finds out, however, that working with friends on such an ambitious project is much more difficult than he initially thought.

Class 3-2 of Sungdong High School was just like any other class: a mismatched group of individuals preoccupied with their crushes, upcoming university exams, and other ordinary day-to-day worries. Yet, when strange purple orbs rain down from the sky one day, the students find their lives changing beyond the limits of imagination. Capable of sporadic and sudden destruction, these spheres quickly send the world into a panic. With the South Korean military forces stretched thin, the government hastily enlists those in secondary education and above into the army. Now drafted into military training, Class 3-2 must abruptly set down their pens and pick up rifles instead. Promised that they will encounter little danger—and that bonus university points await them post-service—the reluctant students are coaxed into accepting their new duty. Marching onward with an apathetic and easygoing attitude, the class begins their military service, unaware of the grim reality that will soon erode their innocent, carefree spirits.

A land without magic, dou-qi or martial arts, but having essence spirits. This is the combat continent 10 000 years after the formation of Tang Sect. A new hero and his friends walk the land. There are new "Seven Monsters of Shrek." Will the Tang Sect be able to struggle through? Or will it crumble due to a new essence system?

Once again, we join Sentarou, Kaoru and their friends in a short jam session of friendship, music and love. 1. Junichi and Yurika, after Junichi's move to Tokyo 2. A short story about Kouta, Ritsuko and the guy who answered the phone when Kaoru called Ritsuko 3. Tsutomu Murae (Ritsuko's dad) and how he finds his way into Jazz 4. Sentarou Kawabuchi and how he discovers his new resolve 5. After story...

After Kang Hu's death from bullying, the family was torn into pieces. His younger brother suppresses his resentment and heads back to school. The story begins exactly one year after Kang Hu's death when his brother seeks to destroy the delinquent circle...

This time, subsequent to the story that wrapped up in Volume 9, is the release of a wondrous "side story"! In response to the many sorrowed voices, the author Asano Atsuko proclaimed, "Then I'll write a supplementary story!" The author herself, recalling her love for the characters, is blazing with ambition at being able to give further life to Shion and Nezumi, who hold such complexity and unfathomable fascination. Cutting out moments from the lives of Nezumi and Shion that she hadn't been able to touch on before, she starts to unravel their secrets...

This is the story of a girl who was forced to become a piano prodigy with the pressure starting from the moment she was born. Her family has had distinguished musicians in their past. She is constantly forced by her father to practice (up to 12 hours a day, 10 if he's being nice), wear gloves whenever she's not playing, no friends, makeup, etc.

In the Universal Century year 0079, the space colony known as Side 3 proclaims independence as the Principality of Zeon and declares war on the Earth Federation. One year later, they are locked in a fierce battle for the Thunderbolt Sector, an area of space scarred by the wreckage of destroyed colonies. Into this maelstrom of destruction go two veteran Mobile Suit pilots: the deadly Zeon sniper Daryl Lorenz, and Federation ace Io Fleming. It's the beginning of a rivalry that can end only when one of them is destroyed. The lightning-streaked debris fields are about to become the stage for an epic duel where death is the only true winner.

The story takes place in the same Meisei Gakuen high school as Touch, only it is set 26 years later. Like Touch, Mix revolves around brothers and baseball as a main theme.

Makoto Katagiri is 18 and works at a factory. He wants to get back at everyone who laughs at him for not having gone to high school, so he enrolls in a melting pot of a correspondence school with his little sister, Maaya, who failed her high school entrance exams. On the day of the entrance ceremony, he meets Rio Aizawa, a beautiful lady, in a dramatic fashion...

A gangster goes to a rural school to teach a class of five unique children.

The story takes place in approximately the year 3000, when humankind arrived at the peak of its civilization, but is loosing it's will to keep living. It follows a girl, called "princess" by those around her, living on a small island with a fifty person colony and a shinning coral reef. She is descendant of Moon people, and it focuses upon how her ancestors supposedly came to Earth.

Yamai Zenjirou is your everyday office worker in modern Japan. One morning, he suddenly finds himself summoned to a tropical world where dinosaurs roam the land. He is told that this is the kingdom of Capua and the person who summoned him - its monarch, Queen Aura - wants him to marry her and leave his old life behind for a life of carefree extravagance as her prince consort. The reasons for her offer are many and varied, but she needs an heir, and she wants him to be the one to provide it! If he accepts, he'll never have to work again, lazing around in luxury with no worries other than securing the kingdom its next monarch. Certainly, sleeping with the buxom beauty is far from a hardship, but is everything really as it seems? He'll also need to give up everything he knows on Earth. Is he ready to drop it all at a moment's notice for her sake? And how well will he be able to navigate the politics, people and culture of this new world if he does?

A tale from Rain's younger days when he was searching for a master in the mysterious Country of the Mist.

A group of young girls possess a mysterious power known as “Alice’s Dream,” which gives them the ability to turn their thoughts into reality. Detained and experimented upon, these youths are locked away in secret until one of them manages to escape. Her name is Sana—a girl with the power to ignore the very laws of physics. When this willful powerhouse crosses paths with a stubborn old man named Zoroku, his carefully-ordered life will never be the same again!

This is a story of what happened to a certain Okabe in the Beta Attractor Field. It offers an interesting look at Attractor Field Beta and introduces a couple of new characters, one of which is Kurisu's senior lab partner.

Life can be so wonderful, yet terrible. The young Umeno, bullied since she started high school, decides to put an end to her life, but her suicide attempt fails and she survives. In the hospital, fate seems to provide her a new beginning. She meets people who show her a different meaning of life, above all a boy her own age who has a terminal illness...Can hope germinate even in the coldest of winters?

The year is 2199. The once blue and green planet Earth has been reduced to a radioactive desert wasteland by constant attacks by the hostile aliens from the planet Gamilus which force the remaining population underground. However, a friendly alien race from the planet Iscandar contacts the humans and gives them the blueprints to build a powerful space battleship capable of retrieving a device to clean the planet before humanity disappears. The United Nations Cosmo Navy - whose space fleets have been decimated by Gamilas forces - resurrects the long-sunken battleship Yamato and applies the alien technology to its interior, transforming it into the vessel for which the series is named: Space Battleship Yamato.

There's been a string of mysterious deaths, where the victims are torn up for no discernible reason. One day, the situation escalates and Homura Kei's computer class of 36 people is slaughtered. Due to Kei's delinquent behavior in skipping class, she ends up as the sole survivor of the massacre. When she goes home that night, a hacker called Yuon comes to her door. He claims to have also lost someone to the mysterious murderer, and he has information that Kei does not. Apparently, someone has created a program that can affect humans through the image of a blue butterfly on a computer screen, and that someone is using the program to murder people. Kei and Yuon will have to track down the murderer, before whoever it is decides to finish them off!

Everyone in the world is born with two things: the ability to collect "Life's Light" and a "Light Vessel" in which to hold the collected "Life's Light". Most people use their vessels to assist them in doing various tasks but occasionally someone is born with a vessel that allows them to do battle with. The protagonist, Ruyu, stumbles upon the end of a battle only to find one survivor. Could the young boy she saved be connected to the king's men who entered the town with the intent of killing everyone?

Jo is your average manga artist slash divorcee, a dime a dozen in Japan. At least that's what he'd like the outside world to believe. But his editor Nichika knows his terrible secret, a secret which she threatens to expose unless he puts a ring on her finger. What is Jo to do when he is still deeply traumatized by a past divorce? Why, marry her of course! After all, don't people say to "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer?"

Manga adaption retelling the events of the anime adding more information and characters backgrounds and past.

At a place in this world...there is a country where only dogs are authorized. All the dogs know how to go there and stay there regularly. This is here that the deceased dogs can live happily too. And those ones are allowed to send a single letter to a human of their choice.

Eight Inutsuka's descendant, Shinno Inuzuka, was born with a curse that couldn't live unless he had a chance to interact with a man. Also encounters Sosuke who is fateless by the curse and goes on a journey to search for friends !? Dirty and cruel Sengoku Romance series!