There is plenty of clever manga. Manga that have wisdom however, there is considerably less of these. But I would count Investor Z among those. It is clever, sure, it wouldn’t work without it, but one of its charms is how it’s applicable to real life. One could think of Investor Z as a self-help book about success that has a story, though that would be a bit disservice to Investor Z considering the average quality of those self-help books. The story is woven quite naturally and is grounded in reality – it doesn’t require much belief suspending. One of the most important parts ofthese “battle of wits” kind of manga are the stakes. You could either have the protagonist wager their lives or bodies, or you could have them already starting with huge fund they are going to risk. But if you want to have a protagonist that is young, and the battles being realistic (so no death games), how would you go about that? Investor Z has a nice solution – talented younglings are picked out and handed out money to manage by wealthy geezers, who have already build their fortune and this is something of a pet project for them. Curious but functional setting right from the start.

What is also curious is how the story does not get boring. You would think that 21 volumes would be too much, but honestly the moment I finished the manga I wished for more. Every arc has some meaning, value, message. The story stays on theme but doesn’t get stale, with multiple views and areas being shown to the reader. Well, technically I can’t factcheck how accurate it is, but given how much the manga goes in depth regarding the matter, it’s either well researched or the author does great work at making shit up and making it sound believable. Considering there are various real world people shown throughout the manga, from western personalities like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk or Warren Buffett to for us less known personalities of the Japanese side, I’d wager the info presented is reliable.

It’s not just those celebrity appearances that make the second cast interesting though, as rarely a character will be just one use and then discarded. More often the characters will get their own mini arc that show their tales. This is how the manga introduces the additional point of view into the matters and how it keeps from being stale. These are of course not fillers, as the writing quality does not drop even if it’s not the protagonist that the story currently follows.

Of course, this manga won’t appeal that much to you if the economics and investing totally bore to you, but even if you’re not directly interested into these, consider giving Investor Z a try anyway if you enjoy manga with intellectual cast.

I’ve said this manga is not only clever but also has wisdom, right? This doesn’t mean you’re ready to go make your own investing just by reading Investor Z, unsurprisingly, but it means you will read about some interesting viewpoints at life and money, not to mention actual knowledge at how things work in business.

The art might seem simple with the character design somewhat atypical, but that’s just the author’s style. It might take a moment to get used to, like with for example Fukumoto’s drawings, yet it definitely works for the purposed of this kind of manga, where dialogue is the majority of content and you might encounter pages that are more text than illustrations anyway. Which isn’t to say the art is bad of course, it has its own charm.

Investor Z is the epitome of hidden gem, both underground and underrated, so I wholeheartedly recommend picking this up if it seems even slightly interesting to you.