---
title: 'A Beginner''s Guide To Manga!'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=qQNqHE8XOZQ'
video_id: 'qQNqHE8XOZQ'
date: 2026-06-17
duration_sec: 0
---

# A Beginner's Guide To Manga!

> Source: [A Beginner's Guide To Manga!](https://youtube.com/watch?v=qQNqHE8XOZQ)

## Summary

Tazmyn May from TeaBooksAndTazmyn offers a beginner's guide to manga, categorizing recommendations into contemporary, light fantasy, and dark fantasy genres. She shares personal reviews and highlights LGBTQ+ inclusive titles, aiming to help newcomers navigate the vast world of manga.

### Key Points

- **Three Manga Categories** [0:31] — Tazmyn organizes her recommendations into three categories: contemporary, lighter fantasy, and dark/gory fantasy.
- **The Promised Neverland** [1:12] — A dark fantasy where children discover a horrifying secret about their orphanage. Tazmyn praises the realistic child characters and recommends the manga over the anime's second season.
- **Cardcaptor Sakura** [3:53] — A middle-grade fantasy about a girl capturing magical spirits. Tazmyn appreciates its well-developed characters and family relationships, noting it is better than 'Tokyo Mew Mew'.
- **Fruits Basket** [6:33] — A contemporary fantasy where a girl discovers a family that transforms into zodiac animals. Tazmyn is intrigued by the plot and cultural context about homelessness in East Asia.
- **LGBTQ+ Manga Recommendations** [8:50] — Tazmyn recommends 'A White Rose in Bloom' (female/female romance) and 'I Hear the Sunspot' (male/male romance), noting the availability of queer manga despite societal homophobia in East Asia.
- **Soul Eater** [11:57] — A dark fantasy set in a magic school where students collect souls. Tazmyn highlights its humor, quirky characters, and darker tone compared to 'My Hero Academia'.
- **Tokyo Ghoul** [13:01] — A horror series about a half-human, half-ghoul navigating two societies. Tazmyn warns it is very gory, comparable to 'Saw' films.
- **Death Note** [13:51] — A classic where a boy uses a notebook to kill people. Tazmyn praises the intelligent protagonist and warns against the Netflix adaptation.
- **Attack on Titan** [14:50] — An apocalyptic story where humanity fights giant Titans. Tazmyn loves the plot twists and emotional depth, calling it famous for a reason.

### Conclusion

Tazmyn provides a curated list of manga recommendations across genres, emphasizing the importance of starting with manageable series and exploring LGBTQ+ inclusive titles. She encourages viewers to check the description for more suggestions and to share their own.

## Transcript

- Hi, my name is Tazmyn May
from the channel TeaBooksAndTazmyn,
and welcome back to Penguin Platform.
I have recently been
really getting into manga.
And as I didn't know where
to start on my journey
into such a vast, vast style of art,
I thought I would do a little introduction
for you based off of my
introduction to manga
as to where to start, which
genres equals which mangas
and give you a few little baby reviews
about which ones I have loved so far
and some that are on my TBR.
There are three sort of categories.
There are going to be
the contemporary ones,
the lighter fantasy ones,
and then the dark, sort
of, more gory fantasy ones.
All the timestamps are gonna be down below
and I'm also gonna put
some more recommendations
and other ones on my
TBR that I unfortunately
will not have enough time to talk through
in this video today.
So make sure that you
check out the description
for even more books so you
can sink your teeth into.
The first genre that I
want to dive into today
is the fantasy books.
The first manga that I want
to recommend to you today
is one of my all time favorite
stories, just of all time,
regardless of any genre, any art form,
any way of consuming it.
This is just one of my favorites
and the manga is far better
than the anime I can confirm.
And that is "The Promised Neverland."
I read the first two volumes so far
and I've watched the first
season of the TV show,
but people that have watched
both seasons have said
that the second season
just isn't that great
and that you should just
read all the books instead,
so that's what I'm doing.
I couldn't find the first few
volumes anywhere, physically,
which is why I've got them on Kindle.
And I'm not mad about that
because when I finished one
at 3:00 AM in the bath,
I can just download
the next one instantly.
It's working really, really well for me,
not for my bank balance.
Volume one of "The Promise Neverland"
follows predominantly
three young kids who are 11
within the next six
months about to turn 12,
and they, and all of their
other siblings, siblings,
have been brought up in an orphanage
in a sort of care home,
and they just have the
best time god damn time
of their lives.
One by one,
they start to get fostered
by different families,
varying ages, but no one stays
longer than the age of 12.
And one day two of our main three discover
that there is a dark, dark secret,
and they are not happy about it.
I watched the first season of the anime
before I read the books,
and I have to say,
fucking, shitting, god,
I didn't see it coming.
I did not see it coming.
It's so lovely and fluffy and nice.
And everyone love, no.
Oh, I mean, I guess
look up trigger warnings
for all of these because
there's a lot of horrible stuff
that goes on in these books.
They don't know anything
outside this world of theirs
and suddenly it all comes shattering down.
And one of the things that I
love, love, love about this
is that the children are written so well.
Somebody that I hate about
poorly written young adult
is that a lot of the time,
it very much feels like adults writing
what they think teenagers
and young people should think about.
Like, oh, it's the end of the world.
Let me find my makeups
so I look nice for photos
for the end of the world selfies.
I know, and that's genuinely
something that I have read,
but this is excellent.
There are so many different reactions
from these different characters
as they uncover the truth.
They're not all stable,
but they all work and they work together
and they use their intelligence
and they try to outsmart
people and it feels so real.
I can almost imagine like
some adults reading the books
and being like,
that's ridiculous, children
aren't that intelligent,
children would just cry,
but children are capable of
so much more than the majority
of adults believe them capable of.
And I feel like this story
deals with it so, so well.
I'm so excited to keep on reading
and then I'll probably go
back, once I finish the books,
watch series two and be depressed
at how badly it was adapted.
The next manga that I
want to recommend is very,
very different from that one.
It's more of a, I'd say
middle grade fantasy,
and that is "Cardcaptor Sakura."
So I've heard about this
for a very long time.
The version, again that I got on Kindle,
is a kind of collectors bind up of,
I think the first three volumes.
Since then, that has been
like a sequel series called,
"Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card."
I don't know when that
happens chronologically,
but I'm just so glad that there is so much
that I can devourer.
Sakura is, I think, either eight or 10,
like she is a kid.
And she discovered one day a massive
old tome in her father's attic.
And it used to keep sort of
like these taro card like things
in which they contained spirits,
some of them good, some of them evil,
but they were escaped.
And Sakura is one of the only people
who can help capture them.
She's the card captor, Sakura.
Now this is the second
manga of this sort of,
I would say, specific genre
of sort of middle grade,
young girls saving the
world against these aliens
that's never quite
explained how they got there
in the first place.
And this one does it so much
better than the other one.
And the other one is "Tokyo Mew Mew,"
which is my entire childhood.
If anyone's coming from my channel,
you know how much I love "Tokyo Mew Mew."
But "Cardcaptor Sakura" is
just written so much better.
The characters are so
much more fleshed out.
The family relationships are existent.
Whereas in "Tokyo Mew Mew"
it's just like, ah, a fight.
Oh, another fight.
Oh, a crush.
Oh, another fight.
Whereas this actually makes sense.
There are arcs.
There are things going on at school
that impact her in her card capturing.
Of course, it's a bit ridiculous
when she has to get changed
and get all dressed up
for when she's gonna capture cards,
but even then in the translation,
it's done sort of tongue in
cheek where she's like, well,
obviously I've gotta
look amazing for this.
It feels a lot more self-aware.
I love Sakura.
I love her dad.
I love her brother.
She doesn't have a mom.
Her mom, I think she died when
she was really, really young.
And that sort of grief,
the emptiness of not
knowing one of your parents
or not remembering them very well
is also very, very well-written, mm.
Content warning for the fact
that her mom was a student
and her dad, I believe, was her professor,
and they got married, I think
as soon as she left school.
So that is not cool.
I like to think that we over
here at Penguin Platform
all know that it's not okay
for teachers to seduce their students.
That is actually capable of
being locking up in the prison
and times, so we don't like that.
I like everything else though.
The next contemporary fantasy
that I want to recommend
is actually my current read.
I've only read the first that much of it.
And that is "Fruits Basket."
Again, I've got the collector's
edition, volume one.
Like I mentioned, I'm only in
the beginning of this so far,
but I am really, really enjoying it.
It follows our main character, Tohru,
who after many, many family tragedies,
is now living in a tent.
Something that I think
is quite interesting
that a lot of Western people
reading manga may not know
is that in at least East Asia,
there isn't such thing as child services.
So in things like this,
if the kid is homeless,
they're homeless.
If they can't be taken
in by anybody, that's it,
they just live on the street.
Like in England, you'd be like,
yo, I think this 15 year
old kid doesn't have a home,
and the police would come
in and try and help them.
But in these situations, they can't.
So luckily for Tohru, her
tent was accidentally pitched
on the land belonging to the Sohru Clan,
and she goes to school
with a couple of the boys.
I was gonna say the thing that
happens might be a spoiler,
but it's in the literal bub,
so that's fine, I can say it.
The Sohru Clan can turn into the animals
of the lunar zodiac.
In this, they call it the Chinese Zodiac,
which is just generally
what that has been called
for a long, long time.
But to be more inclusive of, of course,
all East Asian cultures or Asian cultures
that celebrate the lunar calendar.
We now call it the lunar
cycle and the lunar animals.
But so, the ones that she
knows can be transformed
into a rat, a dog and a cat,
I think they're the ones.
And I'm assuming there are
gonna be all the others.
Like there's a dragon and a tiger.
I was born in the year of the tiger.
I'm very, very eager to
keep on reading this.
I just don't have a clue how on earth
this is going to progress.
If it's going to go down the route
of her being sort of sucked
into this fantasy world
and she then maybe has magical powers
and she has to help them
with something to do
with the animals
or if maybe the entire thing is set
in their sort of high school situation,
and they happen to have
these magical powers,
but it all still is about
her and her family troubles
and the high school drama
or something like that.
I don't know, and I'm so excited.
This is a very, very
highly acclaimed series.
I've been recommended
this by a family friend
for like the last seven years now.
Marina, thank you.
I'm now going to start with
the contemporary mangas,
and I'm very happy to say
that there are quite a
few LGBTQ plus ones here.
The first one I'm going to recommend
is a "A White Rose in Bloom,"
which I believe only has a
few volumes so far translated
into English.
So if like me, you're massively
daunted by the manga series
that have 30 plus volumes in,
this'll be a good one to jump on now
because you can read as
the series gets translated.
This follows two young
girls in a boarding school
who are the only two students
in this boarding school
that have to stay during
the Christmas holidays,
and they gradually start
developing feelings for each other.
One of them is of course,
very, very aloof and mysterious
and was all like, no, don't talk to me.
Go away.
And the other one is like me, and is like,
hi, I wanna know everything.
This left on a massive
cliffhanger, as I'm sure,
actually all volumes of manga
does, which is infuriating
because I need the rest of
them immediately, and I can't.
But I'm very, very excited for this.
And actually there are quite
a lot of queer mangas available,
which I wasn't expecting as homophobia
is still quite big in
East Asia, but there is.
So I will leave a big list down below
because I've made a list for
myself to read in the future.
The next one that I'm going to recommend
is one that I actually haven't yet read,
so can I recommend it?
I'm not sure.
One of my best internet friends, Holly,
AKA Spoopy Hall, bought this for me.
And it is, "I Hear the
Sunspot," volume one.
Now this is a male, male romance.
This is one of Spoop's
favorite series of all time.
And she got it for me because she knew
that I'm big into queer stuff
and I was just getting into manga.
As that was one very, very
well thought out recommendation
to me from a friend,
I thought I would recommend it to you now
who are also my friends.
This next one is one
that I haven't yet read,
but I'm very, very eager to,
and this was the collector's
edition of "Orange,"
which on the back is
described as a syfy romance.
It says that the main
character receives a letter
from herself 10 years in the future.
And at first, she's like,
nah, it's a prank, whatever,
but things that the letter
says start coming true.
And the letter tells her
to watch over a new transfer student.
Their destinies become intertwined.
And apparently it's, heart-wrenching.
Like when I had this in
my little pile of books
that I was gonna buy in for
Better Planet in London,
someone else saw that
I had this in my stack
and they were like, you
are gonna need tissues.
And I was like, yep, I've heard that.
So I'm gonna stock up and
then give this bad boy a go.
This collector's bind up
has the first three volumes
in the series.
It's like a American sitcom.
They all have 24 episodes in the series
and they're all quite short
and quick to get through
and you just devour them and
devour them and devour them
and then you find out
that 10 years have passed
and suddenly you're sad
that there's no more.
That's what these were
all doing to me so far.
Now the final few are
ones that I don't know
if I can entirely say I recommend myself
because I have watched the
anime of a few of these mangas
and I really, really enjoyed them.
And then in some instances
I stopped watching the anime
because I wanted to read the manga.
So I'm recommending them based on the fact
that they're incredibly famous
and I enjoyed the adaptation.
But on the whole, what I've
heard is that the originals,
the manga of course, are better.
The book is always better.
I'm going to start with the one
that I have not heard about on BookTube.
The others, I think
generally people are aware
of their existence.
The one that I love, but I
haven't heard very much about
is "Soul Eater."
Now this is so funny and
dark at the same time.
If you know anything
about "My Hero Academia,"
I would recommend this
and it has a sort of
magical school setting,
but it's darker.
And I believe it's a bit more explicit.
I remember there being boobies.
So soul eaters are essentially sites
who have to collect the souls
of people that are alive.
And I believe we start off this series
by having a few young soul eaters
who need to collect something
like a hundred souls
in order to progress to
the next level of training.
I remember the characters
being really quirky and funny.
There are soul eaters.
There are witches, as you
can tell from this outfit.
Of course she's a witch.
There are many other
supernatural characters as well.
It's so high-key adventure
with a massive, massive cast
of characters.
They all have very, very
unique personalities.
And of course, who doesn't
love a magic school setting?
Ticking all of the boxes.
The next one I'm going to recommend
is one that I actually know
very, very little about.
I know that my lovely friend,
Jody from Vanilla Moon
is currently reading the series.
And that is "Tokyo Ghoul."
Now, once again,
this is a massive series
that has spinoffs as well.
And I'm so excited to be
able to get through to these,
but this is in a world
where humans and ghouls,
which are essentially,
I believe vampire, zombie,
kind of hybrids live.
And they're not friends,
until one day main
character somehow ends up
becoming half human, half ghoul.
And then he has to try and
find his place in the world
and goes on adventures and has
to learn about ghoul society
versus human society
and he has to learn how
to master his powers.
I believe it's very gory though.
It's like horror.
Comparing it to a horror film,
I believe this is kind of,
(Tazmyn gagging)
yeah, that's like "Saw" film level.
I just saw something that
I really didn't like.
The penultimate one that
I'm going to be recommending
in this video is, of course, "Death Note."
Now this was the first manga
slash anime I ever got into.
This is another story
where the main characters
who are young are highly intelligent
and it feels believable.
It feels genuinely like a teenager
is figuring out this new world
that they've been thrust into.
So Light, our main character,
suddenly one day it discovers
something called a death note
and he discovers that if you
write names in it, they die.
And if you specify how
you want them to die,
that is how they will die.
This notebook was accidentally
dropped by a death god,
a shinigami God.
And they sort of build a rapport.
I wouldn't call them friends.
They become best friends,
sort of like a zero fellow
croley like bromance
or they know they shouldn't be friends,
but they ended up really,
really caring for each other.
Oh, I know what else I can say.
Don't watch the whitewashed
version of the film
that Netflix made.
Read the manga and watch the anime.
Don't watch the one with white people in.
And the final one I'm gonna
be talking to you about today
is, of course, "Attack on Titan."
Oh my god, I love this so much.
So this first series, which is
just called "Attack on Titan"
follows what remains of humanity
when these things called Titans,
that you can see a person
there and there's a Titan
and they're not very friendly.
In fact, they like to eat us humans.
And we don't know where they came from
or at least at this point,
we don't know where that came from.
There is a prequel series
called like "Before The War"
"Before The Rise."
Before something.
I have the book cover here.
And that is a prequel
to this original series.
This is absolutely fantastic.
It's like an apocalyptic story.
It looks at people who have
lost absolutely everything.
And how on earth can they
find any reason to keep going?
How on earth after they've seen
their family, but massacred,
can they still want to live?
You follow characters who
were young when it was--
oh, "Before The Fall."
I think it was called "Before The Fall."
Our main characters were
children when the fall happened
and it follows them
through all of the trauma
and heartbreak of losing your family,
losing your loved ones.
And they joined the, essentially, an army
to try and find a way to kill the Titans.
And bro, brosky, bro-gan.
So many plot twists.
So good, so good.
Like it's famous for a reason.
This is famous for a god damn reason.
It's so good.
It's so good.
I mean all of them that I
recommended to you today
are so good.
And that's it.
That's all of them.
Remember, I've got loads,
more recommendations down below.
And by recommendations,
I mean, books that I
have heard of that exist.
I can't recommend them myself
because I haven't yet read them.
Thank you so much for watching.
If you have any
recommendations of your own,
please leave them down below.
See you soon.
Take care.
(lips smacking)
Goodbye.