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ojuzu asked me to list my top five shoujo manga.

Which, as with the top five Magical Girls question, is difficult because - while I've seen a fair amount of shoujo anime - I don't think I've actually read five shoujo series. You guys keep exposing my ignorance! I have been reading and loving lots more manga this year, but most of it has been shonen (FMA, Pumpkin Scissors), seinen (everything Urasawa and, weirdly, Emma and Yotsuba&!, both of which I thought might be shoujo but apparently not) or josei (Gokusen, apparently, which I would have thought was shonen or seinen. SHOWS WHAT I KNOW).

So you guys are going to get my top three shoujo series, which are also my only three shoujo series (discounting After School Nightmare, which I can't really judge yet on the basis of one volume).

1.

Still reading my way through the manga version of Ouran! STILL LOVING IT. For anyone who does not know, Ouran focuses on Haruhi Fujioki, a sort of accidental cross-dressing girl who also happens to be the only middle-class student in a super-elite high school. Through a series of wacky mishaps, she ends up posing as a guy and joining a group of extravagantly posturing bishonen as a member of their host club. HIJINKS ENSUE.

My favorite thing about Ouran is the way the series is constantly playing up, lampshading, and subverting ALL THE TROPES. All the characters except for Haruhi are thoroughly self-aware caricatures of their "type" who gradually get developed into three-dimensional people; meanwhile, Haruhi herself is one of the most amazingly unflappable and long-suffering heroines I have ever encountered. Also, it is so hyperactively enjoyable that even when it does something that would be annoying in any other manga, you just can't stay mad at it! (At least up through volume 10 or so, I can't speak for the rest yet.)

2.

Angel Sanctuary was actually the very first manga I read all the way through. THANKS SHATI. (

shati was also the reason that Utena was my very first anime. There may be a trend here.) On the bright side, everything after this seemed much easier to follow . . .

So Angel Sanctuary focuses on Setsuna, who is an Ordinary High School Boy, except actually he is a REBEL who is IN LOVE WITH HIS SISTER, except ACTUALLY he is the reincarnation of the rebel archangel Alexiel and everyone is really disappointed to find out he's a boy now, and then a whole bunch of angels and demons are after him to either kill him or make out with him OR BOTH, and then the world basically ends in Volume 3 and everyone spends the rest of the series making epic field trips to heaven and hell, and everyone is either a reincarnated angel or reincarnated sword or reincarnated Lucifer or ALL OF THE ABOVE, and some people turn into cannibalistic zombies and other people turn into tentacle monsters and still more people are killed by exploding cake and at some point there's a destructive rain of angry flying fetuses, and it's either amazing or terrifying OR BOTH. And I still have no idea what happened at the end. Maybe it's better that way.

3.

I enjoy Hana-Kimi, but it can't really compete with the joy that is Ouran or the glorious WTF that is Angel Sanctuary. It's still a lot of fun, though! Another cross-dressing manga, this one features Mizuki, a very determined girl who cross-dresses and goes undercover at an all-boy's boarding school in order to get closer to her idol, a basketball player who quit the game due to backstory angst. Cue the inevitable hijinks and gender and sexuality confusion!Hana-Kimi isn't anywhere near as subversive as Ouran, but it's clearly having so much fun with itself and its premise that you can't help but have fun with it too - at least as far as the first four volumes go, which are all I have read because

jothra has yet to live up to her promise to visit and bring me more.

SO, you know what is coming next: guys, rec me shoujo manga!

You probably have a pretty good idea of my tastes already, but for the record, some things I like: cross-dressing and more general gender-role subversion, awesome ladies who are recognized as awesome, cracktastic plots, general hilarity! Some things I do not like: jerktastic alpha male heroes, endless pointless love triangles, everyone dying in the end from cancer. (If everyone dies from a rain of flying angel fetuses I'm probably okay with that.)

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Shoujo Manga What You Should Read:

Natsume Yuujinchou/Natsume's Book of Friends. It is a series that is basically a bunch of awesome things -- spirits, slice-of-life, mysterious creepy-but-very-human villain dude, slowly growing friendships, and the main character learning how to actually get close to people. (He isn't a jerk at all, I swear. He's nice! Too nice, even!) And there is basically nothing unlikeable about it. It's possibly my favourite manga. ♥

Land of the Blindfolded! It looks at the beginning like it's going to be tiresome supernatural-ish melodrama, but it's actually about a bunch of high-schoolers just hanging out and being friends. (You may sense a bit of a theme amongst my recommendations.) Very sweet: you may have a sensation of phantom hugs while reading. Totally fluff, but quite good fluff.

Anata to Scandal. I started it on the promise of LESBIANS IN SHOUJO MANGA, YES YES YES, and while it has only kind of delivered on that (there are far too many scenes of the main character and her Childhood Friend Guy that are very stereotypical romance-y type scenes) it's a fun series. The later chapters actually start to go over things to do with their band and music, and Main Character Girl is going <3 <3 <3 at Princely Lead Singer Girl again. (Plus, only twelve chapters have been translated, so it's not too long.)

Teppen! is about a girl who goes to Japan to search for her brother. All she knows about him is that a) he's older than her, b) he has a great big burn scar, and c) he's in the Japanese entertainment business. Naturally, she ends up as part of a hot male idol duo with her new roommate, who just happens to have a Mysterious Burn Scar. Which she doesn't see until after they've already kissed. Fun melodrama.

Ame Nochi Hare/Clear Up After Rain may or may not be shoujo, but I'm recommending it because of the excellent way the gender issues are dealt with. A bunch of high-school guys mysteriously begin to turn into girls whenever it rains, and although all their prejudices and such are still intact they deal with their own sudden genital-changes in a pretty natural way -- no loud screams, no passing out, no 'omg must grope self' (although one of them does not object to taking a nice long bath that evening). Their chief thoughts are "mustn't get caught on the boys' side of the school right now" and "I hope this isn't permanent." It's kind of a quiet manga, and very nice.

Seconding Clear Up After Rain, which I'm really enjoying so far. Very interesting to see how it deals with gender and friendships between boys and girls and between girls.

ALSO ALSO ALSO I HAVE SOME JOSEI YOU SHOULD READ.

Ashita no Ousama -- possibly my favourite manga ever! It is about this college student who falls in love with the stage, has no acting ability, and goes on to become an amazing director. Lots and lots of interesting stuff about plays and acting and writing. And before Gokusen, this was the only manga where I really really liked the main romance. They have a relationship based on understanding and mutual interests! She promises him early on to write a monodrama -- a play with only one actor, just for him. Early on, when someone he doesn't want to see is laying in wait for him at his apartment, he crashes at her place and they have a heart-to-heart about their families! fdas;jkak And the love-triangle dude who shows up later is also really cool. And her mentor guy (a very famous director who has interesting facial expressions and smokes all the time) is absolutely fantastic. I didn't really say much about the heroine, but she is lovely lovely lovely and she has writer's block and gets angry and is absolutely brilliant READ THISSSSS PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE.

Oishii Kankei/A Delicious Relationship is also very good, especially if you like to read about people cooking. It's about a girl from a high-class family who finds herself without money, and her only real skill lies in her vast experience of eating expensive food. So she ends up badgering a local chef -- who could have had his own restaurant or been super-famous but instead is working at a local diner and being the French food world's version of Snape -- until he lets her apprentice to him. And from then on it just gets wider in scope and better in plot. I've fallen behind on it, but it's really a very amazing series. People's relationships with food and with each other are very complex and believable. Momoe starts out surrounded by dudes, but later on this series passes the Bechdel test by a mile. Love love love, even if it leaves my mouth watering for things I would never eat. (hello, complex dishes of meat and fish with long names!)

Loveless is also technically josei. It has some Issues, but I will always be fond of the core message that it's okay to love evil people, but loving them does not excuse what they've done. (Also, in an angst-fest BL series, the lesbian couple gets a happy ending! WHAT IS THIS.)

Usagi Drop/Bunny Drop is about a salaryman who suddenly finds himself raising his dead grandfather's six-year-old daughter. Very, very charming -- kind of like Yotsuba if Yotsuba were a serious girl rather than an exuberant one.

And I will no doubt think of many more shoujo & josei, but I am leaving for the Land of No Internet for a week very soon and should probably pack before then.

Based on my one (fantastic) josei experience so far, I totally should check out more josei as well! (Among other things I should check out: MORE FOOD MANGA. I hear amazing things!)

- but wait, is Loveless the one where one of the dudes is like twelve? Or am I thinking of a different one? Because alas, that would be an instant dealbreaker for me.

(GOOD LUCK PACKING!)

I would probably never have gone near Loveless had I not watched the anime when I was the same age as Ritsuka. :/ But I came across a copy of the manga this year and went "oh, nostalgia" and read it expecting lots and lots of creepy problematic stuff, and there really kind of wasn't! The characters do problematic stuff (oh so much problematic stuff, esp. Ritsuka's older brother) but it's dealt with pretty well.

I think I am able to put up with Ritsuka being twelve because he suffers the crippling hardship of being the only emotionally mature character in the whole thing (with possible exceptions of Soubi's roommate and the two lesbians).

OH OH OH AND ALSO

You should read Sexy Voice & Robo. It's amazing.

Oooh, I don't think I have even heard of ANY of these. AWESOME. After Yotsuba&! I have discovered a great love for slice-of-life manga that I never expected I would have, so recommendations for that kind of thing are excellent. Thank you!

Other slice-of-life manga you should read but I am too tired to write out recommendations for: Solanin, What a Wonderful World! (bunch of short stories, very very very good, same guy who did Solanin), House of Five Leaves (I love this about as much as I love Utena, anime and manga both), Hikaru no Go(though it does not contain nearly enough ladies! but there is a ghost from the Heian era), and Hourou Musuko (adorable trans kids, yessss).

Other things you should read: Detective Conan, if you like mysteries and don't mind episodic series that go on for-ev-er. The Scarlet Chair, by the same lady who did Natsume Yuujinchou -- has a badass girl who is searching the country for someone, political intrigue, and despite the other major players being guys passes the Bechdel test by a mile. 1/2 Prince, about a girl in a VR game who gets the admins to give her a male character because the female ones have 'advantages'. Penguin Revolution, a crossdressing entertainment-world shoujo thing by the same author as Land of the Blindfolded.

And now I have to go to bed & get up early so I can wash before my flight in the morning. I hope you're finding lots of nice things to read. :D