Can you guess what word is missing from each manga title?

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Let me preface this post by saying that I love reading manga and that it is a format that spans a variety of genres, tones, art styles and more. I also recognize that translation is a delicate art and sometimes humor or connotations get understandably lost in translation. That being said, there are some really weird manga, light novel, and anime titles out there.

The conventions for these titles seem very different from American comics. While it’s common to find American graphic novels with very short, broadly applicable titles (see: saga), many manga or light novel series are a whole sentence unto themselves, and some of them are quite surprising.

So I decided to make a little game out of it! I took a random selection of manga and light novel covers with some offbeat titles and redacted one word. Can you guess what’s missing?

Click on the links below each image to check your answer!

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