One Year Later, 2024’s Top and Most Controversial Manga Is Still Ongoing (With a Strong Narrative)

Even a year after its debut, last year’s most controversial manga, which reached the top spot on Shonen Jump’s Manga Plus due to its divisive plot, is still ongoing with no signs of stopping. Despite its premise growing increasingly controversial, many fans assumed the series would be cancelled early. Instead, it has drawn readers in with its narrative and has now accumulated a total of 40 chapters. As 2024 came to an end, the Manga Plus platform celebrated the year by revealing data on how various titles performed, highlighting several categories, including the highly anticipated Top New Manga.

The criteria for selecting the candidate in this category were based on the number of views a manga generated within the first seven days of its debut chapter. While fans expected Ichi the Witch, last year’s strongest shonen debut, to take the top spot, the results were surprising. Drama Queen, a manga by Kuraku Ichikawa that debuted on December 1st, 2024, claimed the position. It secured more than half a million views on its first chapter within a week, making it the clear frontrunner. Although its controversial plot initially led fans to assume it would face cancellation, the series remains strong and shows no signs of slowing down.

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Manga Plus’ Top Manga of 2024, Drama Queen, Is Still Going Strong

Within the first chapter of Drama Queen, the series establishes a narrative in which aliens have come to live alongside humans on Earth and are celebrated as saviours for destroying an asteroid that would have wiped out the planet. Because of this, every alien receives special treatment and widespread respect to the point where humans have no rights above them. Naturally, this has affected human lives, as even serious crimes committed by aliens, including murder, are overlooked and covered up. It is this impact on ordinary people that Drama Queen explores, with its two main characters, Nomamoto and Kitama, harbouring deep prejudice against the aliens.

Their hatred runs so deep that their primary goal becomes killing aliens and stopping their immigration by any means possible. Adding even more controversy to the plot is the disturbing twist that Nomamoto, the female lead, develops a habit of eating aliens because she finds them delicious. Thus, the central premise of Drama Queen is established early: Kitama kills the aliens, Nomamoto eats them, and together they pursue their shared mission of cleansing their city, if not the entire Earth, of alien presence.

As the story progresses, the series adds unexpected depth to its controversial foundation. Even side characters like Backbone, who accompanies the duo on their missions, have developed significant depth. However, Kitama, the male lead, has received the most attention. His motivations stem from revenge, as an accident caused by aliens led to the death of his entire family, and the aliens involved were initially revealed to have been pardoned. This is the very storyline the series is now exploring in detail, as Kitama finally finds Lily, the alien responsible for his family’s death, leading the narrative into an exciting turn and a surprising depth that fans did not anticipate.

Drama Queen‘s Plot Is Surprisingly Strong and Has an Uncanny Resemblance to Real Society

Kitami and Lily’s bond had grown over the series, and it was revealed that Lily’s twin brother, not Lily himself, was responsible for killing Kitami’s family. Even so, Kitami didn’t kill Lily, as he had developed a strange connection with the alien that stopped him from acting as ruthlessly as he normally would. With Lily even helping Kitami kill other aliens and saving him from death in a recent twist, the series began building intrigue around how Kitami would respond to this shift. Now, the story is exploring the events behind the car accident that killed Kitami’s family, delving into the past with Lily’s sibling Lally, the supposed killer.

This flashback, however, reveals that Lally is an innocent child alien who had a crush on Kitami’s sister and attended the same school as her. The prejudice Lally faced from students because he was an alien, especially Kitami’s sister, showing her unresolved hatred, adds an intriguing twist and mirrors real societal structures in which blind hatred perpetuates the cycle. So far, Lally has shown none of the superiority complex that many other aliens display, even expressing how unfair it is that aliens receive such privileged treatment.

This entire idea paints a familiar picture of real societal struggles and how individuals often adopt beliefs based solely on others’ biases. It reflects the notion that no one truly understands a situation without knowing the full truth. Drama Queen has been surprisingly effective in portraying such a deep narrative with a compelling perspective. In retrospect, the controversial elements that helped Drama Queen become the top manga of 2024 were actually a bold commentary on society’s unfair structures, something fans have come to appreciate, which is why the manga remains strong a year after its divisive debut.

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