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I think the title speaks for itself. So let's talk about such manga. I hope "exceedingly obscure and weird" is self-explanatory, but stuff like Gantz, Berserk and Bobobo Bo-bo-bo fail on the obscurity part (and I hate to break it to you, Bobobo Bo-bo-bo is pretty much taking the piss out of bizarre manga).

So, to kick the thread off, here are a couple of descriptions that I found:

Saitama Chainsaw Shoujo
Kirisaki Fumio's just a highschool girl in love...

...but then she finds out that the guy she's fallen for happens to love someone else.

...so she decides to go out and get a chainsaw.

And take it to school.

And then many things happen.



Manga Sagawa-san
According to CrimeLibrary.com the book Cannibal Killers by Moira Martingale explains that Issei Sagawa was a brilliant student, obsessed with tall Western women and that while studying for an English literature degree at the University of Paris, he became attracted to a German woman teacher. He once said to British reporter Peter McGill that he wondered if he could eat her.

According to CrimeLibrary.com, at one time he entered her house while she was sleeping, but she woke up and her screaming frightened him enough that he left.
Issei Sagawa served time in a French jail for the murder of the Dutch Renée Hartevelt, a classmate at the Sorbonne Academy in Paris. In June 11, 1981, Sagawa was studying avant garde literature. He invited her to dinner under the pretense of literary conversation. Upon her arrival, he shot her in the neck, then began to carry out his plan of eating her. She was selected because of her health and beauty, those characteristics Sagawa believed he lacked. In interviews, Sagawa describes himself as a "weak, ugly and small man" and claims that he wanted to "absorb her energy."

He said he fainted after the shock of shooting her, but awoke with the realization that he must carry out his desire to eat her. He did so, beginning with her hips. In interviews, he noted his surprise at the "corn-colored" nature of human fat. For two days, Sagawa ate various parts of her body. He described the meat as "soft" and "odorless", like tuna. After two days, he dumped the mutilated body in a park, but was seen in the act. Five days later, he was arrested by the French police. However, the French psychologists found him legally insane and unfit to stand trial. Instead, he was deported back to Japan, where he was put in a mental institution. However, the deportation order did not specify how long Sagawa must remain in the institution. Fifteen months later, Sagawa checked himself out, and has been a free man ever since.
Sagawa now lives in Tokyo and is a minor celebrity in Japan. He is often invited as a guest speaker and commentator. He also writes restaurant reviews and in 1992 he appeared in Hisayasu Sato's film Sisenjiyou no Aria (The Bedroom) as a sadosexual voyeur. He admits to still having fantasies about cannibalism, but says he never wants to realize them again. He has even appeared in several 'pink movies', Japanese soft-core porn with an artistic slant. By all accounts, Sagawa is a friendly, cheerful fellow who is more than willing to discuss his crime, especially when it puts money in his pocket. Recently, he's even tried his hand at penning a manga re-telling of the murder, a self-illustrated volume entitled Manga Sagawa-san, published by Okura Shuppan. "My parents wouldn't let me read comics when I was young," Sagawa said in a recent article from Japan Today regarding the book. "To this day, I have never read the more famous ones. So a comic illustrator friend had to teach me everything, from which pens to use to how to segment the story into frames...Actually, you know, I have a lot of female fans. The ones who didn't follow the incident at the time it happened regard me as something of a fairy-tale prince."


The above one is so obscure there ain't even a scanlation.

Chintsubu
Toride has always loved his cute classmate, Ayase. Due to an accident, Toride's spirit went to Ayase's p***s, a weird couple then was made. They both have feelings for each other, but is it really a blissful thing for a relationship such as this? The accident not only changed Toride and Ayase's life, but also Iwabuchi- the emotionless, and Kamiya- the playboy? Unlike Toride and Ayase's situation, Iwabuchi and Kamiya have their p***s switched, and their p***s can talk?



To be honest, I'm preferring obscure to weird here, so don't be afraid if it's relatively normal if it's (1) really good and (2) nobody has heard of it. Though I think a good competition in this thread would be who can name-drop the most ******** manga.

And though I like disturbing s**t as much as the next guy, please, for God's sake, NO Uziga Waita, OK?

Phantom

Hmm, let's give it a shot:

Bradherley no Basha - I actually haven't read this one, but a friend told me all about it, and I think it fits the "weird" and "obscure" criteria. It involves a secret (and disturbing) ritual at a prison, and is told from different characters' points of view.

Burning Hell - involves a cannibalistic serial murderer and another serial murderer who turns his victims into works of "art" while they are still alive... and somehow, I find this manga rather hilarious despite its grittiness.

Crystal Dragon - I'm just mentioning this one because it seems pretty obscure, despite being a pretty awesome epic story that started publishing in the 80's (and is still, apparently, ongoing). Arianrhod and her childhood friend, Henruda, start on a long journey together after Balor Evil-Eye destroys their village and kills most members of their tribe.

Golden Days - another obscure one, Mitsuya ends up going back in time to 1921 where people mistake him for his grandfather, whom had wished to "save someone" from his past moments before Mitsuya ended up time traveling.

Holy Glory - a short manga about a child that is to become a Santa. Also, a humanoid Rudolph is involved. It's actually a lot more angsty than fluffy. And there's a related story by the same author, Noel la Neige.

Kimi no Knife - just 'cause I really like this story and again, I don't think many people have heard about it. Shiki is a teacher who ends up becoming a part-time hitman to save his sister's life, but it'll cost him more than he knows, not least is imagining his victims haunting and taunting him.

Kimi no Sei - another obscure one, but very cute (one of the few josei I like that is anything remotely like it - the other josei I like are things like +C: Sword and Cornett and Are You Alice? which are very different from this rather normal story). Takaya falls in love at first sight with a girl named Yurina. But the problem is she remembers him from childhood as the bully who tormented her. Takaya wants to earn her forgiveness, but Yurina is considering revenge.

Replica - and here I was trying to avoid mentioning things published in English because that automatically makes it less obscure, but I couldn't resist with this one - it's just too awesome to pass by. A bizarre telling of the Alice in Wonderland story, where a homicidal bodyguard joins a group known as "Cards" whose goal is to take down an organization known as "Alice" and the murderous "Toys" that Alice unleashes on the world.

Sensen Spike Hills - set in the early 90's (even though it was published recently), Nomura discovers he has a special ability which is most effective when used to pickpocket. He ends up getting roped into an elaborate plan with a couple other misfit students to get into the university of their dreams. But if they fail, it could cost them their lives. The 90's setting works really well, as it pre-dates a lot of the technological advances we've had since then, and that makes a big difference.

Sugar Dark - based on a light novel series, Muol is wrongfully convicted of a murder he didn't commit. Taken from death row, he is forced to work in the graveyard digging graves until he himself ends up in one. He ends up meeting a mysterious girl one night, and starts to discover the frightening world she belongs to - fighting immortal monsters called "the dark".


And... that's all I can think of at the moment.
PrettyKoala
Bradherley no Basha - I actually haven't read this one, but a friend told me all about it, and I think it fits the "weird" and "obscure" criteria. It involves a secret (and disturbing) ritual at a prison, and is told from different characters' points of view.


I've heard of that one. It's like Hiroaki Samura had like read some Marquis de Sade or something.

Quote:
Holy Glory - a short manga about a child that is to become a Santa. Also, a humanoid Rudolph is involved. It's actually a lot more angsty than fluffy. And there's a related story by the same author, Noel la Neige.


Is that the one the "Santa Claus is a shithead" image comes from?

Dapper Lunatic

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This seems like a fun topic. Let's see...

Anything by Kago Shintaro. His stuff is bizarre and kind of really disturbing.

Pom the Panda--about a short man who makes a living handing out balloons in a panda suit. I'm not saying anything else because that might spoil this oneshot.

Strobo--a gym full of people who are all dead, and must kill if they wish to live again.

Time Eliminator--an office offers the service of eliminating an event from the past.

Cuticle Detective Inaba--Well, there's a detective and it's pretty hilarious.

Coelacanth--I don't think I can describe this one.

Phase 20--this started out as a oneshot about a girl and the rest of the crew of a cruise liner being taken hostage by the mysterious 20 Faces.

Necromancer--A necromancer will bring anyone back to life, for a price.

Kyoushashou--a man obsessed with trains wants to ride every train in the world, including the train that only carries criminals sentenced to death to their final destination.

Kimi ni shika Kikoenai--a story about a girl who receives a call on her imaginary cell phone.
Darkly_Doomed
Coelacanth--I don't think I can describe this one.


Let's see....

Quote:
Ten years ago, there was an explosion at Hisano's apartment building. She would have been there, but she'd been hit by a bike ridden by a boy in blood-stained clothes. He dropped a fake gem when it happened, and she's been hanging on to it as a good-luck charm ever since. Now Hisano's in high school. One of her teachers was murdered, and the police are investigating. A young man suddenly appears carrying the toy the gem belonged to. And perhaps... can he also see the hallucinations Hisano has always been plagued with? Everything is connected as the pattern slowly rises to the surface.


That doesn't sound too bad, and it's only two volumes as well.

Quote:
Kimi ni shika Kikoenai--a story about a girl who receives a call on her imaginary cell phone.


There are actually TWO mangas with this title, thery're also about the same thing.

You're doing better than PrettyKoala, though to be honest none of these titles are really balls-out weird, except maybe the detective one.

One good trick is to look up a mangaka you're already familiar with and see what else they've done:

Quote:
Ï€

Pi is a constant that defines a circle. It is never ending and to Sawaki Yumeto, it is a majestic number that has a direct relationship to his other favorite thing, boobs. One day, he realizes that there is a mystic relationship between pi and the perfect breasts. He conducted research and did calculations to determine what the perfect breasts are but he needed more raw data. Yumeto used to be unpopular and ugly, but to further his quest, he shed blood, sweat and tears to change his appearance and style to that of a handsome young man.

When Tamura Jun, a classmate that has been absent for the majority of the school year, returns, Yumeto realizes that she might have the perfect boobs that he has been searching for. But getting to them is going to be harder than he could possibly imagine.

Artist(s) FURUYA Usamaru


Of course etchi-ness also helps, too.

Hunter

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Uhm, most of the stuff I'm caught reading is probably not obscure but I'll toss a few out.

Yongbi the Invincible: a skinny dude who's really strong, has a mysterious past, and a cannibalistic horse. As far as I can tell he's being manipulated by someone to do good in the world.

(Louie the) Rune Soldier: a good for nothing magician gets a chance to become the hero he's always wanted to be. It's a comedy.

PhD: Phantasy Degree: a girl with mysterious powers shows up at the demon academy one day looking for an artifact. It's a very fast moving story but so far I like it.
There's also Ruler of the Land but I think that's fairly well known...

Dapper Lunatic

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azulmagia
Darkly_Doomed
Coelacanth--I don't think I can describe this one.


Let's see....

Quote:
Ten years ago, there was an explosion at Hisano's apartment building. She would have been there, but she'd been hit by a bike ridden by a boy in blood-stained clothes. He dropped a fake gem when it happened, and she's been hanging on to it as a good-luck charm ever since. Now Hisano's in high school. One of her teachers was murdered, and the police are investigating. A young man suddenly appears carrying the toy the gem belonged to. And perhaps... can he also see the hallucinations Hisano has always been plagued with? Everything is connected as the pattern slowly rises to the surface.


That doesn't sound too bad, and it's only two volumes as well.

Quote:
Kimi ni shika Kikoenai--a story about a girl who receives a call on her imaginary cell phone.


There are actually TWO mangas with this title, thery're also about the same thing.

You're doing better than PrettyKoala, though to be honest none of these titles are really balls-out weird, except maybe the detective one.

One good trick is to look up a mangaka you're already familiar with and see what else they've done:

Quote:
Ï€

Pi is a constant that defines a circle. It is never ending and to Sawaki Yumeto, it is a majestic number that has a direct relationship to his other favorite thing, boobs. One day, he realizes that there is a mystic relationship between pi and the perfect breasts. He conducted research and did calculations to determine what the perfect breasts are but he needed more raw data. Yumeto used to be unpopular and ugly, but to further his quest, he shed blood, sweat and tears to change his appearance and style to that of a handsome young man.

When Tamura Jun, a classmate that has been absent for the majority of the school year, returns, Yumeto realizes that she might have the perfect boobs that he has been searching for. But getting to them is going to be harder than he could possibly imagine.

Artist(s) FURUYA Usamaru


Of course etchi-ness also helps, too.


Wow. Wow.
I was more aiming to go with the obscure part of the manga.
What was the name of that one series...Maid in Japan? It was bizarre.

Hunter

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Pom the Panda and Golden Days sound interesting, I think I'll check them out.

I believe I've read Holy Glory, a long time ago...
On Cracked.com, they listed a Spider-Man manga by Ryoichi Ikegami that's obscure (at least to us) and weird.

First, the normal synopsis:

Quote:
A high-school student named Yu Komori is bitten by a radioactive spider, which gave him spider-like powers. Yu faces Japanese versions of villains such as Electro, the Lizard and the Kangaroo. Yu also has an Aunt May (her name is "Mei" wink , and the publisher of the Joho newspaper is a counterpart to J. Jonah Jameson.

Only 7 out of the 13 Japanese stories in total were fully translated by Marvel, with heavy edits to remove the violent scenes. After that the title was cancelled, which was a likely decision by Marvel since the stories written by Hirai departed even further from the source material, and included scenes of sexual and gruesome imagery of a kind not seen in the original US Spider-Man comics.


And from Cracked (I'm feeling too lazy to link today):

Quote:
#1. The Psychotic/Masturbating Spider-Man (Japan)

Perhaps inspired by the success of Batman's wacky Japanese adventures, in the '70s, Marvel Comics licensed a Spider-Man manga by artist Ryoichi Ikegami. The result was, well, we feel this image sums it up pretty well:

You see, while the Batman series was made entirely out of random insanity, the Spider-Man one showed us the other side of Japanese comics -- you know, the deeply disturbing, bizarrely sexual one. Feast your eyes on this sequence, where "Peter Parker" is trying to study while his boobs-obsessed adolescent imagination tries to distract him:

What could the panel of his hand grabbing the pencil possibly repre- oh.

Of course, Peter puts those thoughts aside when an emergency arises and -- wait, no, he wanks. Yeah, that's not webbing on the ceiling, Aunt May.

The Spider-Manga began as a relatively faithful translation of the American comic: A high school student gets bitten by a radioactive spider, gains superpowers, and starts punching people in tights. The biggest difference, at this point, was that this Spider-Man was slightly more prone to fantasizing about ******** murdering everyone.

But then, in the third chapter, Spider-Man says "******** it," throws away his webbed costume, and barely puts it on again for the rest of the series. In fact, in most issues, the classic mask only appears on the cover illustrations, or when little Spider-Man faces appear in the air and haunt Peter (Japan's version of the Spidey-sense).

From this point on, Spider-Man pretty much stops fighting supervillains; his main antagonists are either gangs of rapists (he fights at least four different ones in unrelated stories) or fake Spider-Men who gain his same powers and start killing people, only to be accidentally killed by Peter at the end of the issue (and of course he feels terrible about it, which is the only thing he had in common with the real Spidey).

Oh, and while the most brutal thing we'd seen in the American comic at this point was someone's neck snapping, this version wasn't so squeamish:

Why couldn't Japan just give Spider-Man a giant robot called Leopardon and ... hold on, that exists, too? ******** this comic, we're watching that s**t again.


Ryoichi Ikagami's Offered is semi-obscure, but the synopsis reveals that the plot is weird in and of itself:

Quote:
Olympic track star. MIT whiz-kid. Adored by the beautiful co-ed's. Revered by classmates and teammates alike. Yu was sitting on top of the world.

That is, until the evil seductress Payetta, leader of an outlaw gang of boozers and brawlers, kidnaps Yu at knifepoint and steals him away to her hideout. He learns he's actually the son of Gilgamesh, the legendary founder and ruler of the ancient yet highly advanced civilization of Agartha.

The history lesson doesn't stop there, though. Payetta claims to be the granddaughter of Adolf Hitler and wants to share her maniacal dreams with Yu and the new dystopia she plans to create!


Another manga that is both weird and obscure is the Transformers Kiss Players manga by Oshima, from Dengeki Daioh in 2006. It takes the well-known toy line in a borderline lolicon direction. But that's all I know about that particular manga.

Shirtless Noob

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Kangoku Gakuen
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Darkly_Doomed
This seems like a fun topic. Let's see...

Anything by Kago Shintaro. His stuff is bizarre and kind of really disturbing.

Pom the Panda--about a short man who makes a living handing out balloons in a panda suit. I'm not saying anything else because that might spoil this oneshot.

Strobo--a gym full of people who are all dead, and must kill if they wish to live again.

Time Eliminator--an office offers the service of eliminating an event from the past.

Cuticle Detective Inaba--Well, there's a detective and it's pretty hilarious.

Coelacanth--I don't think I can describe this one.

Phase 20--this started out as a oneshot about a girl and the rest of the crew of a cruise liner being taken hostage by the mysterious 20 Faces.

Necromancer--A necromancer will bring anyone back to life, for a price.

Kyoushashou--a man obsessed with trains wants to ride every train in the world, including the train that only carries criminals sentenced to death to their final destination.

Kimi ni shika Kikoenai--a story about a girl who receives a call on her imaginary cell phone.


^ THIS and also Fourteen is really weird.

Interstellar Scrounger

Hmm, I got to check out the titles mentioned here.

Here's one that I hadn't heard of until recently: Saint Oniisan. Jesus Christ and Buddha reincarnate as young men on Earth. They're taking a vacation from Heaven. It's been centuries since they've walked the Earth, but they've seen things from Heaven so the transition isn't too difficult.

It's fairly episodic, but the short arc where Jesus is mistaken for the heir to a yakuza boss was hilarious (and oh-so-wrong).
Dicrel Seijin
Hmm, I got to check out the titles mentioned here.

Here's one that I hadn't heard of until recently: Saint Oniisan. Jesus Christ and Buddha reincarnate as young men on Earth. They're taking a vacation from Heaven. It's been centuries since they've walked the Earth, but they've seen things from Heaven so the transition isn't too difficult.

It's fairly episodic, but the short arc where Jesus is mistaken for the heir to a yakuza boss was hilarious (and oh-so-wrong).


That reminds me, I should have mentioned "Legend of Koizumi." That's still pretty obscure, I think.
Kubera because of the art and the way it's written. It's in color (and yes it is a manga and not a comic book) and you read it from left to right and the way the layout is not right to left but top to bottom. Even though it's really different from regular manga, the plot is amazing and very original.

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