Best "don't judge a book by its cover" examples?

[Nightlilygirl-]

Any series which you thought had an unappealing cover and/or description, but turned out great... Or any with great-looking covers and premises that left you disappointed.
For me, the first example I can think of is a recent one: "Why are you doing this, my Duke?" seemed cheesy and clichéd, but it's actually hilarious and pretty clever.

 

[ununseti]

Here are some from my list!
- Spirit Circle: When I first stumbled across this one on kissmanga, the cover looked kind of lame and the description was super cheesy. But basically everyone in the comments were going like "do not be fooled by the cover this is actually amazing!" So I went to check it out, and wow, I am SO I glad that I did.
- High Score Girl: First impression: meh cover art. Reading it: Oh my god I love this story so much
- Franken Fran: All the volume covers for this manga are super ecchi (thankfully the cover displayed here on Mangadex isn't!) which would huge red flag nope for me. But there really isn't an ecchi focus in this series. I actually really enjoyed the macabre exploration of scientific concepts and the dark humour and the well-meaning but sorta out of touch mad scientist's shenanigans. Looots of body horror, though! Not for the faint of heart.
- ●Rec (Mizu Asato)
- Mahou Shoujo Nante Mou Ii desu kara: Ecchi cover, but very little ecchi focus in the manga. The manga's atmosphere just overall feels a lot more innocent and wholesome than the cover suggests.

 

[Nightlilygirl-]

@ununseti Ooh, right, Spirit Circle is another one of those series I definitely have to pick up again and read to the end one day, it looked really promising!
High Score Girl is really good as well, and Franken Fran is probably one of my favorite horrors! I was probably a bit skeptical as well due to the ecchi vibes at first haha, which reminds me of another little gem, Kine-san no 1-ri de Cinema: hilarious series, and even though it has the ecchi tag it's barely noticeable at all in the story.
Hadn't read Rec yet, but man, was that misleading hahaha.

 

[Raebit]

7 seeds!
The artstyle is sooo like old and josei
But the story, concept, character growth is very good!
Im glad I decide to read it!

 

[crazybars]

Made in Abyss? That manga is freakin scary how not like the cover it is.


Toaru Ossan no VRMMO Katsudouki has TERRIBLE covers, but if you like that sort of thing it's pretty good.



But by far, the manga with the worst covers compared to the actual quality of the manga has to be this one. It's actually NOWHERE near as bad as the covers.

https://mangadex.org/title/29296/mahou-sonna-koto-yori-kinniku-da

 

[Nightlilygirl-]

@Raebit yes!! 7 seeds is a great example, I remember being a bit taken aback at first by the artstyle as well, it looked outdated and a bit too cheesy, but both the story and the character development are soo good!

@crazybars I have Made in Abyss on my plan-to-read list even though I have no idea what to expect, but I agree, it doesn't look very scary on the covers haha.
I dunno about Toaru Ossan since it's not really my kind of stuff, but that last series sounds pretty fun, I'll check it out XD.

 

[Teddy]

Talentless Nana, last 5 pages of chapter 1 changes everything