Somewhere, right now, in a dimly lit apartment in Tokyo, or São Paulo, or some backwater town where inspiration hits like a sledgehammer, an indie manga artist is grinding away at their masterpiece. They’re hunched over a tablet, wrestling with deadlines that don’t exist yet, pouring their soul into a world that might never see the light of day.
This is the gutter-level of the manga industry, the raw, unfiltered underground where the weird, the wild, and the genre-breaking live and thrive.
Forget the corporate factories churning out Naruto clones for the masses. We’re talking about the next wave, the artists who are redefining what manga can be. The ones who are pushing new styles, new ideas, and new insanity onto the page. The ones you need to watch in 2025.
1. Takeshi Morioka (Japan) – The Brutalist Poet of Manga
Morioka’s work looks like it was sketched on a napkin during a nervous breakdown, and I mean that in the best possible way. His debut series, Shatterpoint: Tokyo, is a hard-hitting noir thriller that takes the cyberpunk aesthetic and crushes it under the weight of psychological horror.
His use of harsh blacks, messy shading, and stark white space creates an oppressive, almost claustrophobic atmosphere. Imagine if Junji Ito and Katsuhiro Otomo had a punk rock love child, and you’re halfway there.
If you’re looking for something gritty, raw, and unapologetically Japanese, Morioka is your guy.
2. Elise Montoya (France) – The Queen of Surrealism
Montoya doesn’t make manga. She makes dreams trapped in ink. Her series L’Ombre et la Lumière (Shadow and Light) reads like a fever dream scribbled into a forgotten art book.
With influences ranging from classic European comics to Japanese avant-garde legends like Taiyo Matsumoto, Montoya’s work is fluid, loose, and hypnotic. The plot? Unclear. The emotions? Devastating.
She’s one of the few Western artists who effortlessly blends the French BD style with a deep, surrealist manga aesthetic—and it’s working. If 2025 is the year indie manga goes truly international, Montoya will be leading the charge.
3. Hugo Jin (South Korea) – The Architect of Chaos
Jin’s panels don’t sit still, they shake, they explode, they pull you in like a black hole. His ongoing Webtoon, Godfist, is a high-octane martial arts epic that feels like someone threw Dragon Ball, Berserk, and John Wick into a blender and hit max speed.
What sets him apart? Rhythm. His action sequences are pure, kinetic energy, with panels that feel like they’re physically moving. It’s a technique rarely seen outside of seasoned pros, and yet, Jin wields it like a veteran.
If you want to see the future of indie action manga, look no further.
4. Rei Nakamura (Japan) – The Master of Micro-Storytelling
Not every indie manga artist dreams of a 100-volume epic. Nakamura is here to remind us that brevity is an art form. Her short story collections, released exclusively online, are tiny, emotionally charged bombs that detonate in your brain long after you’ve finished reading.
She can tell an entire gut-wrenching romance in four pages. A complete existential crisis in six panels.
Her art? Simple. Elegant. Almost like a watercolor painting collapsed into manga form. Nakamura’s ability to compress deep themes into short narratives is going to inspire an entire wave of creators looking to do more with less.
5. Gabriel Cortes (Mexico) – The Future of Horror Manga
Cortes draws like he’s seen things he shouldn’t have. His horror manga, Ojos Vacíos (Empty Eyes), is pure nightmare fuel, blending Lovecraftian dread with the sharp, jagged surrealism of artists like Kazuo Umezu.
His signature style? Elongated figures with unsettlingly human expressions, panels that feel too empty, too quiet before something horrible happens.
The scariest part? He’s only 24. By the time 2025 hits, he might have already reshaped how horror works in manga.
The Indie Manga Takeover is Happening
These aren’t your cookie-cutter, mass-produced, jump-through-hoops-for-an-editor manga artists. These are the renegades, the ones taking risks, the ones burning the rulebook and making something new from the ashes.
The mainstream manga industry has always been slow to change, but indie creators? They’re already in 2025 while the rest of us are catching up.
So keep your eyes open, follow their work, and remember their names, because this next wave of indie manga artists isn’t coming… they’re already here.
(And if you’re looking for a home for bold, boundary-pushing indie storytelling, well, let’s just say STUDIO INTI. knows a thing or two about making that happen!)
– PALADIN aka P.AL.
