Yen Press; $15.00

The Dowa Kingdom has been at peace for the last century, thanks to the stability of the ruling King combined with that of ACCA, a civilian governmental organization. Jean Otus is the second-in-command at ACCA’s Inspection Agency, where he regularly conducts random audits of the 13 different state branches in order to make sure things are running smoothly (and without corruption). However, ACCA’s five Chief Officers have their eyes on Jean, suspecting he may be involved in a coup d’état.

ACCA is one of those rare manga series that perfectly combines the Japanese manga style with more Western-style drama and writing; it has the feel of a 1960s spy thriller in a way that few other manga series have ever been able to capture. The art and writing, both by Natsume Ono, turn ACCA into a total page-turner. Despite there not being a ton of action, the narrative is so well-done that you can tell there’s a lot going on behind closed doors.

An anime series ran for 12 episodes earlier in 2017, and I definitely slept on it until reading the first volume of the manga – which then spurred me to marathon the whole series. ACCA is one of those good “manga for people who don’t like manga” kind of series and is absolutely not to be missed.

-Carrie Wood