first manga

[Nexus Lord]

ive decided to buy a manga to help with my studies,
so whats a good first one

[jinksys]

Id stay away from anything that has to do with the future or outerspace. Those kind of manga could include alot of made-up words. Inuyasha could be a good choice, there are some odd words but they are repeated ALOT, so youll get familiar with them very quickly. Detective Conan is a good choice, youll learn alot of detective vocab

[Dani]

I also recommend staying away from future and sci-fi magna. They often include giant organization names entirely in Kanji and it can be hard to keep up unless you look them up heh.

[dballred]

Try Sazae-san. It's a bilingual manga that contains ordinary conversational Japanese.

[Daisuke]

Dani wrote:
I also recommend staying away from future and sci-fi magna. They often include giant organization names entirely in Kanji and it can be hard to keep up unless you look them up heh.

It's always good to keep a dictionary close. :p

[hiei]

Try one that takes place in modern times. There are a lot of them out there so it will be easy to find.

[Harisenbon]

Hmm...

If you're mid level, I'd suggest Conan. It has a bunch of words that are useful for listening to the news, and it has a plethora of intricate explanations, which make it really good for learning how sentences go together to explain something.

If you're a bit lower, I'd suggest anything by Takahashi Rumiko. Ranma, Inuyasha, etc. Inuyasha is good, but the words in it are very geared towards sengoku era Japanese, so if you're looking for words to use in everyday life, I wouldn't recommend it.

I'd stay away from clamp because their explanations are often pretty deep and hard to understand. I have problem with the English versions sometimes. That being said, their new series: Tsubasa Resivoir Chronicles is really good and the language is very simple.

My first real manga was One Piece, and although I got bored of it realyl quick, it's a good starter manga if you're low-mid level.

If you can put up with the childish stories Doraemon is really good for low level study. And the most popular kids comic in Japan right now is probably BlackJack. Either of those might be good.