05/04/2020: 6 Heart-Pounding Action Manga for the Stay-Home Season!

Here are 6 exciting action manga to keep you from getting bored during this stay-home period. We focused on completed series so you won't have to wait for new chapters. Obviously, this isn't going to be the only list of action manga because there're too many!

1) Holyland (Mori Kouji) (182 chapters)

This is probably one of the best-known street-fight manga around? It's about this nerdy, skinny guy who hangs out in town at night (which is usually a bad idea for a nerd) who becomes a formidable fighter who can defend himself against bullies. He starts off with one powerful technique, but later picks up many, many skills from various characters. I wouldn't know, but I think it's very realistic, or at least the author adds a lot of explanations and diagrams, which makes it very interesting. It's better than a lot of fighting manga where the characters are flashing across the page, but it's impossible to tell what they're doing.

2) Kanojo wo Mamoru 51 no Hou hou (Furuya Usamaru) (49 chapters)

A disaster-style manga - Tokyo is hit by a super-powerful earthquake and the main characters (a band groupie and a yuppie office worker) have to work together to survive. The survival scenes aren't too realistic, but they're VERY exciting. It's like a good disaster movie which is carried by a wide cast of diverse and interesting characters, some you like and root for and others you loathe and hope die horribly! The best-done part of the series are the two main characters, whose interactions are enjoyable to follow, especially when they start to fall in love (it's not cringe-worthy, I promise).

3) Rookies (Morita Masanori) (233 chapters)

Baseball manga. A new teacher who's enthusiastic and wants his students to follow their dreams gets the baseball club, which was previously suspended for fighting during a game, reinstated. However, the baseball club is full of delinquents so there's a lot of problems and fighting involved. It's a very feel-good manga from Morita Masanori, who's very good with the cliched "follow your dreams" thing. There's action in terms of hand-to-hand fighting, but a lot of the action comes from the baseball scenes as well, which is pretty cool.

4) Eden no Ori (Yamada Yoshinobu) (185 chapters)

It's a survival action manga against prehistoric animals on a deserted island. High school students get stranded on a mysterious island with dinosaurs and try to figure out how to get home. It's a shounen manga so the action is flashy and it'll keep your attention well. The mystery is pretty interesting, although some of my friends said they hated the ending (I thought it was fine, actually). One thing, which may be a plus or minus depending on your views, is that it's VERY fan-service-heavy. There's a lot of underwear shots and running in weird postures, but it doesn't show anything too offensive since it's still meant for boys. I'd be lying if I said I couldn't understand why you might like it, but I did find it a bit annoying and groan-worthy at times.

5) Kengan Ashura (Sandrovich Yabako) (236 chapters)

This is probably the biggest fighting manga of recent times? Forget Corporate Deals - the Kengan tournament is how big business disputes are settled! Companies hire fighters to battle it out in an arena to decide conflicts with other companies, and the Kengan tournament is the biggest such tournament. It's a bit like Holyland in that the author explains some of the martial arts, but it goes into Dragonball-Z-type outrageous moves that would normally kill people. It is quite exciting and the characters are all very fun to follow, even some very annoying and unlikable ones who turn out to have deeper secrets and motivations.

6) BioMeat: Nectar (Yui Fujisawa) (105 chapters)

To solve the pollution and food crises, a corporation invents "BioMeat" which eats trash and can be eaten as meat. However, things go wrong and the BioMeat grows out of control and starts eating people! We follow a kid and his friends as they struggle to survive against the BioMeat on different occasions (once as a kid and once as teenagers). The BioMeat is really gross-looking and they're quite frightening. Some characters die horribly, which is good when they're dastardly villains and heart-wrenching when they're beloved characters. The heroes are not that special, but they're fine and it's fun to see them try to survive against the creatures. I did think it was pretty stupid to create the creatures because they look so gross that nobody would willingly eat them...