The 2022 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Manga Series

2022 has been a very good year for manga releases. While anime adaptations might be taking up most of the attention from fans over the past year, it's like the entire medium embraced the challenges to one another and raised their respective game as a result. It's common to see a few manga hits break out with fans in any given year, but this time around it's felt like there were even more of these than ever before. More original manga stories were making their mark than in previous years, and some of these came from the wildest of sources. 

With such a competitive scene for the manga releases in 2022, it was easier than ever to check out a great series. Whether it was a brand new series that really got fans' attention over the course of the year, an older series kicking off its final arc, a more recent hit hitting its stride with some cool arcs, and a one-shot that came out of nowhere with one of the most gripping stories of the year, there was a manga hit for pretty much every fan to enjoy. But only one winner. 

And the winner of the 2022 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Manga is...

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Goodbye, Eri! 

When Chainsaw Man brought its first part to an end back in 2021, fans were left waiting for when the series would come back for its second half. It might have been a tough wait, but during that time series creator Tatsuki Fujimoto instead used the break to experiment with a few smaller stories. Each of these one-shot stories was remarkably different from one another in terms of tone, but the one that really made a mark was the longest of these experimental stories. 

Goodbye, Eri was the most emotional manga story that Fujimoto has ever presented. A young boy is first tasked with recording his dying mother's final moments for a short film, and when this goes awry, he soon meets a mysterious girl that offers him a new kind of feature film project. Through this the boy forms a new connection and new understanding of himself as a result. And this is still full of all of the little kooky quirks that Fujimoto fans have loved the creator for. 

But more importantly, it manages to make its impact in one swoop. It's something the other manga nominees couldn't do since they're all dramatically diffferent than a single one-shot, but that's also the edge that led to this one nabbing the win at the end of the day. 

Congrats to Goodbye, Eri on its 2022 Golden Issues win! 

The nominees for Best Manga Series are: 

  • Goodbye, Eri – WINNER
  • Akane-banashi
  • Dandandan
  • Mashle: Magic and Muscles
  • Sakamoto Days
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