Funniest manga with many chapters

We're headed straight for exam season and you'll be needing lots of laughs to get through it! Here are some of the funniest manga with lots and lots of chapters so you'll have enough laughs to dry the tears you'll surely be shedding as you get through the mountains of work that you neglected to handle during the term.

1) Futari Hatarakanai

A brother (Mamoru) and sister (Haruko) duo are unemployed and stay at home, leading a carefree life where they destroy their sleep cycles by watching TV and playing games late at night and sleeping after breakfast until lunchtime.

They are joined by Maruyama, Mamoru’s horny friend who’s the butt of their jokes, and Kuraki, a straight-laced OL who goes from stalker (she likes the siblings very much) to one of the gang, and spend their days wasting time and doing meaningless things while the siblings’ mum tries to get them to work.

Other cast members include Endou, Mamoru’s and Maruyama’s friend who’s an extreme normie but later displays a psychotic edge; Yuki, a well-built tomboy who’s one of Haruko’s few friends from her school days; and Tomoharu, an exceeding handsome man who’s Haruko’s former schoolmate who’s semi-secretly gay and develops a crush on the exceedingly unremarkable Maruyama, of all people.

The series comprises very short episodic chapters, mostly 1-2 pages long, each detailing a specific incident in the siblings’ everyday lives. Usually, it’s something small and meaningless like them discussing something they saw on TV or trying to cook something late at night or an activity they took part in with their friends e.g., a horror movie night, but sometimes it can be something cool like building a snow hut during Winter, or taking their recently-deceased game console to the beach before they throw it at the dump.

2) Waratte! Sotomura-san!

Sotomura is tall, wears a long skirt and has a scowl on her face. Hence, she’s become famous as the scary school delinquent who gets into fights and will kill you if you look at her wrong. However, it’s actually a big misunderstanding and she’s actually a nice but shy girl who gets mistaken because her vague communications with her brother are misinterpreted (e.g., grocery runs are mistaken as attacks on other gangs).

This is a 4-koma which is a pleasant slice-of-life featuring Sotomura and her good friend, who discovers her kind nature at the start of the series and resolves to rehabilitate her image by improving Sotomura’s social skills, to mixed and often hilarious results.

3) The Disastrous Life of Saiki K

Saiki is a powerful ESPer with all kinds of powers. However, he hates them because he just wants to lead a peaceful life with no troubles. Unfortunately, even if he doesn’t go looking for trouble, trouble usually finds him in the form of troublesome schoolmates like a delusional blonde and an obnoxious muscle-head who stick to him like glue, and the “school belle” who goes from mildly annoyed at his disinterest to overwhelming obsession.

For some reason, I feel like people have forgotten about this series although it only concluded about 2-3 years ago even though it was hugely popular at the time. The premise itself is amusing enough and the art is decent but the captions, which usually portray Saiki’s exasperated yet somehow resigned outlook at whatever his predicament happens to be, are the real kicker that sell the laughs. It’s almost the manga equivalent of Blackadder groaning at something Baldrick’s done.

4) The Lies of the Sheriff Evans

Sheriff Evans is a master gunfighter and a renowned lawman. Little does everybody know that his cool-guy persona is a front and he’s actually desperate for attention from the opposite sex! It’s really funny to see the lengths to which Evans goes to look cool to get the ladies, only to fail and get stuck in horrible situations because he has to maintain the façade.

Later on, we get a subplot about his old friend, the bounty hunter Annie Oakley, who actually has a crush on Evans but can’t admit it (and her feelings are actually reciprocated, not that they’ll ever tell each other). I think the tsundere chapters are the best and funniest, but the rest of the series is really good as well!

5) GTO

Onitsuka is a former gangster who manages to land his dream job of being a teacher at a prestigious school despite his dismal academic qualifications. It’s a fairly stereotypical “cool teacher touches the kids’ hearts” but it’s excused since it arguably helped create the stereotypes to begin with.

There’s a lot of fan service and lewd jokes, but I think it’s alright because the book was published as a shounen series so it never gets that bad. Onitsuka’s antics are quite epic and the facial expressions used to get me snorting through my nostrils quite forcefully!

6) Atsumare! Fushigi Kenkyu-bu

This is a slice of life following a high school’s mystery club, but they don’t solve mysteries. It’s actually just a guy (our MC) who ends up with these 3 girls who each specialize in some kind of strange thing: Suzu, who likes the paranormal and has a cursed doll with actual powers; Chiaki, who likes magic but has absolutely no skill and just uses her near-superhuman strength; and Kotone, who’s a master hypnotist. Other cast members include Reiko, the discipline committee member who keeps trying to bust the gang; and Asahi-sensei, a typical enthusiastic but airheaded teacher who becomes the club advisor.

There’s a lot of fanservice (not that I’m complaining) but the jokes stand on their own merit, although they usually involve a small lewd element. I will admit that this series has major waifu power because each of the girls is easily a top waifu! (I like Suzu and Chiaki, myself!)

7) Danshi Koukousei no Nichijou

This is literally about the everyday lives of high school boys. They do really silly things like pretend to be in a live-action RPG while walking home from school, or while they’re playing at one of their houses, etc. It’s good, clean, brainless fun!

This scene from the anime shows you what the series is like:

8) Zai x 10

Here’s another series from the same author, Yamauchi sensei. It’s about criminals, this time, and there’s a running theme throughout the seemingly episodic storylines but it’s especially subtle in some parts. It’s a bit divorced from reality, but the surreal comedy is what I like about this.

9) Dasei 67 Percent

Four university art students find all kinds of ways to graduate while having as much as possible and doing as little work as possible. Relatable and somewhat lewd, since it’s based on the author’s real-life experiences (and she draws adult comics).

10) Hinamatsuri

A mediocre yakuza finds a strange podule containing an ESPer girl, Hina, and has to become a father to her, while balancing his yakuza duties. We mainly focus on Hina, who’s extremely lazy and sloppy and selfish, which is the main source of humor when she interacts with her classmates and even her father’s colleagues. We later meet Anzu, a blond ESPer from the future who starts off as a ruffian but ends up running a ramen stall, and Mao, a celebrity fitness trainer who gets tangled up with a fake shaolin temple cult. My favorite character is Hitomi, Hina’s classmate, who’s ridiculously competent at anything she does so she ends up getting really rich although she only wants to be a normal girl.

The main plot is pretty non-existent since it’s just funny shit happening, but there’s an overarching story about how the ESPer girls come from the future and have to do particular things to avert the dystopian future from eventuating.

11) Seitokai Yakuindomo

This 4-koma comedy is about a high school’s student council, which 1 guy and 3 girls. I can’t be certain but I think this is the progenitor for this particular set-up where it’s about 1 guy as the fish out of water and the 3 girls each have a particular quirk. (It’s a subset of the wider sub-genre of JK comedies, in my opinion.) Anyway, the club president is Shino Amakusa who is really smart and sporty and popular but extremely perverted; and the vice-president is Aria Shichijo who’s also pretty cool but she’s ridiculously rich (and has a maid, Dejima, follow her around) and she’s even more perverted. The treasurer, Suzu Hagimura, is short but super smart and sensitive about her height. Suzu and our sole male character, Takatoshi, are the only ones who aren’t morally corrupted. Other characters include the student council from a nearby girl’s school, a school magazine reporter who’s as good as a paparazzi, a mecha-obsessed girl who makes weird inventions, a morals committee member who’s deathly afraid of all males, and a hopelessly slovenly and perverted teacher.

Surprisingly, there’s almost no fan service and it’s all PG, and the only lewdness is that referred to in the jokes. In that sense, it’s usually the same set-up where one of the two perverts has a lewd thought and is retorted by the normal two. It’s been running for over 500 chapters so there’s some flexibility in terms of time (they’ve gone through four summers) and repetition, but it still feels fun and fresh because the group dynamic is really good. Each of the characters is a bit of a caricature in the sense that their trait is played up a lot, but they still feel like real people you want to know and have fun with in real life.

12) Dainana Joshikai Houkou

A very surreal sci-fi fantasy slice-of-life about schoolgirls in the future with all kinds of scientific inventions and strange happenings. For example, a classmate dies but remains in the cast because her consciousness was downloaded into a new database so there’s effectively no more death in this universe, which is kind of crazy but everybody just rolls with it. A bit mind-bending but kind of fun once you get used to it. There’s also a lot of smaller jokes like a girl who uses a special face mask for acne but it’s stuck on her face but somehow nobody even knows that she has a mask on because it’s special technology. It’s that kind of zany out-of-this-world fun.

13) Joshikousei no Muda Zukai

This is a not-so-blatant rip-off of Nichijou with an almost identical set-up for the main trio of high school girls: we have Baka who’s an imbecile with no social skills or intelligence or even any morals; her friend Wota who’s crazy about BL and otaku stuff and a terrible artist (she can’t draw knees); and Robo who’s frighteningly gifted and hyper-competent albeit like an evil genius. The difference from Nichijou is that it’s much less divorced from reality, so the absurdity is still implausible but well within the realm of human possibility, so you won’t get talking cats or deer fighting principals.

Another difference from Nichijou is that we’ve got a much better developed cast because each of the characters gets A LOT of chapters to shine in, like Loli (who’s a loli) who loves her grandma and is very innocent, Yamai (a chuni who aggravates the home room teacher), Majime (a tomboy-genius who is obsessed with Robo), Lily (a gorgeous exchange student who hates Baka to the point of breaking out in hives when they touch) and Majo (a creepy goth girl who likes the occult). There’s a fine tapestry of relationships woven into the 100+ chapters and lots of time to get to know this fine bunch of girls who get up to all kinds of nonsense.

There's a live action drama too!

14) Ane Log

Moyako is a super-competent and popular girl who seems to have it all together, but she has a secret – her younger brother has incestuous feelings for her! Well, that’s just what she thinks, anyway. He’s really an OK guy and it’s actually Moyako who has all sorts of delusions which she blames on her brother instead. A classic slice-of-life comedy centered on misunderstanding innocent statements.

15) Doushirou de Gozaru

This is the funniest manga on the list. A mother waits at the airport for her son to return after his father kidnapped him for ten years to Nevada. However, he comes back dressed as a samurai, having been raised in the ways of Japanese warriors among a Native American tribe. Yes, it’s that kind of story. Anyway, our “samurai” Doushirou meets a wimpy kid called Kensuke and ends up taking Kensuke as his master and they try to traverse their school life, battling gangsters, corrupt teachers, and even a wider yakuza conspiracy.

Although it’s Doushirou’s name on the cover, the main character is really Kousuke, which makes it really funny because he’s always trying to get out of trouble while Doushirou and their friends just land them into more trouble.

That said, there're a lot of fun characters like the delinquents at school, Majime/Saotome who's a "gorilla" who ends up hanging around the gang and Eri, a mysterious white-haired girl with a hidden past but always get tangled with their antics.

There’s a lot of misunderstandings and crazy expressions and this is seriously, seriously, seriously funny!

All the best for your exams! Hang in there!!!