Libby has shared the top 10 most popular comic book checkouts across the more than 22,000 libraries they service, and 9/10 titles are historical fiction—more specifically, they are historical manga.
Since National Comic Book Day is September 25th, this feels like a perfect time for fans of historical fiction to branch out to comics if they haven’t already.
As a lover of historical graphic novels, let me just say that combining the genre and the medium is elite. Being able to see time-accurate attire and settings makes the story all the more immersive.
If you’re down for some historical manga, here are a few of Libby’s most popular comics checkouts:
Historical Manga from Libby’s Most Popular Comics Checkouts
Demon Slayer, Volume 1 by Koyoharu Gotouge
This actually made it to our list of the best adaptations of the century so far because of how much of a vice grip it has on the manga and anime market. In the Taisho Period (1912-1926 in Japan), a young coal seller’s family is brutally killed by a demon. He sets out to find a cure for his sister, who was turned into a demon during the massacre.
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Spy x Family, Volume 1 by Tatsuya Endo
Though the countries this manga takes place in are fictional, its overall setting gives Cold War-era Europe. In it, the spy Twilight tries to recruit a woman and child to play his family so he can infiltrate an elite private school. Thing is, the kid he finds is psychic, and the wife he recruits is one of the deadliest living assassins—all unbeknownst to him, of course. Naturally, hijinks ensue.
The Apothecary Diaries, Volume 1by Natsu Hyuuga
I suspect all of the manga I’ve mentioned here are popular because of their very popular anime, and The Apothecary Diaries anime is having quite the run. It’s set in a country very similar to 16th-century China, and in it, we follow a young woman who is kidnapped and made to work in the Emperor’s Rear Palace. Soon, her vast knowledge of medicines and plants has her solving palace mysteries.
The chokehold this anime/manga had me in, let me tell you.
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