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Dec. 16th, 2010 10:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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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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Did someone say shoujo manga recs?
Date: 2010-12-16 05:41 pm (UTC)Well I will start by saying I second the rec for Skip Beat! It's one of the only series I buy regularly because it is AWESOME and there is nothing in the world more satisfying than reading about Kyoko terrifying the universe with her amazing powers of revenge and determination. Also charming most of the universe! Kyoko has never met an evil rival she did not win over within a volume. =D
For awesome ladies and crossdressing I recommend Basara! It’s set in a post-apocalyptic Japan where a pair of twins are born under a prophecy that one of them will be the Child of Destiny, leading their people out from oppression. Everyone figures this is the boy twin Tatara and are all about waiting for him to grow up and do his thing. Which makes it a bit unfortunate when the Red King (see oppressive monarchy needing liberation from) comes by their village to murder him! Luckily Sarasa is perfectly willing to go about crossdressing and leading the revolution in the name of great justice and excellent adventures.
It is my favourite manga of ALL TIME. Sarasa is awesome and she goes through so much growth in the course of the story. Plus there's an enormous ensemble cast full of characters who are all memorable and interesting if not always likeable (mostly likeable though!). It takes a few volumes to hit its stride but once it does it's excellent. I've heard some people say they couldn't get into it because of the art style but YMMV. I personally like the art quite alot, it's very distinctive. Plus the story is totally worth it even if you don't like the art style. I should know, I made it my life mission in high school to convert people into fans regardless of protest. =D I still feel one of the best things I did in twelfth grade was convince my librarian to buy the first five volumes for the library. A LEGACY THAT WILL LIVE ON BEYOND ME. 8DDDD
I'm also pretty fond of Never Give Up. It's a bit like Hana Kimi in terms of being a crossdressing story starring high schoolers except the crossdressing is actually convincing (Kiri makes a hot guy, I have never met anyone who disagreed with this assessment) and is set in the crazy world of manga-style modeling! Where moms head modeling agencies and blackmail their daughters into modeling their male line by recruiting their crush. 8D
Fruits Basket is excellent and is of the adorable characters who all have some sort of traumatic past school. Only better than most of them. I love the heroine Tohru, she's an utter sweetheart and ends up helping out pretty much every member of the Sohma family (see: traumatic past) just by being herself. She also gets her own character arc which shows signs of being planned from the very beginning! (I went back to reading the first volume and I was like wow, this mangaka actually knew what she was doing, she set up all her pieces from the very start! Natsuki Takaya, you are awesome. \o/) Also uhh the family she lives with are cursed to turn into various animals from the zodiac whenever they're hugged by someone of the opposite sex. So, y'know, you've got your cracktastic plot device there from the start. xD
Re: Did someone say shoujo manga recs?
Date: 2010-12-16 05:41 pm (UTC)I like Crimson Hero for being one of the few sports mangas centered on girls. It follows Nobara Sumiyoshi, a young lady determined to play volleyball no matter what! Her mother is utterly opposed, wanting her to follow in her footsteps as the hostess of their family inn? Fine, she will move out of the house and get work as a den mother in the school she's transfering to! The girls volleyball team at her school has been defunct for years? Not if Nobara has anything to say about it! She will recruit with the power of LOVE AND PASSION. Oh so she's got her team together but the school reserves all of their resources for their famous boys volleyball team? Well she challenges them to a match for shared gym time! It does, unfortunately suffer from a stupid romance plot (they can’t be together! Because they’re both sports players and role models and apparently people really disapprove of sports players having a personal life outside of their sports! Seriously I have no idea what's going on with it, I've been a bit peeved at the latest volumes for spending too much time on the romance when all I want is to watch Nobara and her girls band together to make it into the next volleyball tournament).
And now that this comment's gotten ridiculously long and I'll probably have to split it into two I think I shall stop. But I have tons more recs to give so if you're ever looking for more shoujo hit me up! I can ramble about shoujo manga for much longer than most people are willing to listen. xD
Re: Did someone say shoujo manga recs?
Date: 2010-12-16 06:17 pm (UTC)Okay, question: which of these are completed series, and which are still ongoing?
Re: Did someone say shoujo manga recs?
Date: 2010-12-16 06:25 pm (UTC)Re: Did someone say shoujo manga recs?
Date: 2010-12-16 06:36 pm (UTC)Re: Did someone say shoujo manga recs?
Date: 2010-12-16 08:01 pm (UTC)Re: Did someone say shoujo manga recs?
Date: 2010-12-16 10:55 pm (UTC)I will be stealing some of your recs as well! I've been meaning to catch up with Kaze Hikaru for awhile now (I used to follow it in Shojobeat but then they stopped publishing the magazine because the universe enjoys ending things I love).