One-shot Mangas

Various people have suggested mangas to me over the years, and I have found a proportion of them to be one-shot mangas, which I have found to be quite interesting.

So, a discussion on one-shots. Do you like them? If so, why? If not, why? Discuss people!

One-shots in this instance are by my classification are usually a chapter long but I will allow inclusion of a manga no longer than a standard manga volume, so 6 chapters.

If you like one-shot mangas, then do you have any recommendations? If you do then include a brief description of the plot under the title and say why you like it. We could then maybe read it and have a discussion on this and see if we disagree with you viewpoint or not.

When putting forth your viewpoint on a certain manga series please make sure not to be rude about someone elses tastes in manga. You may not like their manga tastes and you can express this but if you cannot have a debate without insulting someone then your opinion is not wanted and you should not even bother posting, it suggests immaturity.

A friendly debate is always healthy and this will help us find out more about each others tastes in manga styles and will also get us into reading more manga.

Your Anime Overlord,
Fierla

I've read a pretty large amount of one-shot mangas (more than actual series, for that matter). Admittedly a whole bunch of them were releases by one certain Shintaro Kago, which... well, it's not something everyone can enjoy. I'd definately recommend reading Genesis and Abstraction by him though, both of them are relatively tame in regards to messy stuff and are of higher quality than most of his works.

Genesis - Pretty much what it says in the title. It's about the creation of the world, but different.
Genres: Comedy, Dementia

Abstraction - Pretty much just exists to break the habitual nature of comics and be different. Ignore the story, read it for the style and presentation.
Genres: Dementia, Horror

Whilst anyone who's been to manga on Tuesdays will have probably read Hotel, Personant and Island, all three are interesting and definitely worth a read.

Hotel - A computer exists far beyond the extinction of all life and recounts it's journey from creation to current times.
Genres: Drama, Sci-fi

Personant - A system has been introduced where everyone wears special masks, nullifying discrimination. However, someone refuses to use the system and attempts to take down the system.
Genres: Action, Adventure, Comedy, Shounen

Island - Focusses around a couple of young people living within a city surrounded by walls, beyond which there is apparently nothing. However, as one of the characters turns 14, she will find out the truth.
Genres: Adventure, Mystery

I'd also recommend checking out the following single-chapter shorts:

White Rain - A psychological manga written by Yoshitoshi Abe (one of my favourite mangakas) and features a pair of twins who wake up with no knowledge of who they are who wake up in an unknown place. Upon looking around, they find the only way to get food is to take a raft which only one of them can board.
Genres: Dementia, Mystery, Drama, Fantasy, Horror, Psychological

Look Me in the Eyes When You Talk - A short horror written by the guy behind Parasyte and features a guy who, after being hospitalised, sees everyone around him without their eyes.
Genres: Dementia, Horror, Psychological, Seinen

Loop - A story about a murder occurring in a mansion stuck on an infinite loop of repetition and what happens when one of the people tries to break the chain.
Genres: Action, Horror, Shounen, Supernatural

Fuyu no Hana - About a boy who, as part of his family hereditary, has an unknown flower within his body which, upon blooming, will cause his death but allow the prolonging of another's life.
Genres: Drama, Romance, Shoujo

Emerald - A classic Old Western style manga written and drawn by the guy who made Blade of the Immortal. Considering the wild west is rarely touched upon in anime and manga, this is a great example of how the setting can work well.
Genres: Action, Drama, Romance

Semi-Eternal Happy End - A manga about a young girl who isn't having a particularly enjoyable life but gets confronted by a mystical source via a teddy bear, offering her three 'wishes' each of which there are two options to choose from. Both will grant her something at the loss of another thing. Kinda Faust-y if you ask me, but pretty decent.
Genres: Drama, Fantasy, Seinen

Fetish - A collection of short stories involving various themes. Actually doesn't have all that much to do with fetishes.
Genres: Drama, Horror, Psychological, Josei

Digimortal - A one-shot by Tsutumo Nihei, another of my favourite mangakas. Pretty much just about a mercenary sent on a job to kill someone, but the artwork is what it's really worth reading for.
Genres: Action, Drama, Sci-fi, Seinen

And a few multi-chapter but single volume manga:

NOiSE - An 8-chapter story by Tsutumo Nihei, designed as a precursor to his first long running series BLAME!. Shows what the world was like before the events of BLAME! and the events leading up to the series. Entirely readable by itself though, plus once again the artwork is delicious.
Genres: Action, Sci-fi

Goth - Focusses around a couple of characters who have a strange fascination with death and murder and can often solve puzzles which the police cannot. It's really rather dark but a great story.
Genres: Mystery, Horror, Psychological

And for those who just want to read something which has become pretty much infamous:

Mai-Chan's Daily Life - It's massively fucked up and many people seem to think it's the sickest thing ever created, but really it's designed as an extremely dark comedy. It'll get messy and I'd warn against reading it unless you're sure you can handle it, because it crosses the borders a couple of times.
Genres: Hentai, Horror

I've not been able to find quite a lot of the one-shots you recommended on Mangafox. Is there another site which you use?

Since onemanga shut down i've had trouble finding a site with decent translations where I can find a range of mangas. I don't really read a lot of manga so MangaFox is usually fine for me but do you have a site you would recommend?

Where did you find the 'Look Me in the Eyes When You Talk' manga? That in particular looks awesome.

Unfortunately I can't really help you on that. I had a page on my favorites originally which contained a bunch of the ones I mentioned but I no longer have any of my favorites after my PC died on me and I can't even remember what the place was called. Another bunch of them were available as weekly downloads from the MyAnimeList.net One-shot manga club, but they no longer put stuff up for download and don't have an archive now so that doesn't help either. I suspect if you google them you'll be able to find a source, but I can't give you any safe places unfortunately.