I Spent a WEEK Reading SHOUJO MANGA...

Skip and Loafer is a seinen series and Horimiya is a shonen. If you're looking to branch out a bit within the shojo/josei demographic, I highly recommend the YouTube channel Colleen's Manga Recs. They talk about a lot of great shojo/josei series with a wide variety of genres (horror, drama, coming-of-age, romance, comedy, adventure, etc.). Just like shonen/seinen, there are a lot of great shojo/josei series out there!!

Also I would recommend Colleen's Manga Recs channel as she explains profoundly the difference between shounen and shoujo, their history and current state. Also talks about new and old series.

I am proud of you. Shoujo manga has so good titles

Skip Beat! An incredible hero's journey and a protagonist you'd really admire. Still one of my favorites after all these years.

A good story is a good story. Who cares about genre labels. I’m definitely going to check out Yona after this video!

Snow White With The Red Hair is my favorite romance ever period. A major part why is based on how well the couple communicates with each other. They have such a strong since of trust and respect and it's so rare to see couples in fiction so eager and willing to talk to each other. They become such a breath of fresh air when almost every other love story goes out of their way to create and stretch out misunderstandings. I wanted to throw a parade and light fireworks when I saw how these two bend over backward to do the opposite by ACTULLY TALKING TO EACH OTHER. There's such genuine effort made to clearly express how they feel, explain anything concerning, work through issues/flaws that are concerning, reassure their mutual support/affection/respect, and never drag things out just for the sake of it. I'm brought to tears because they feel like a genuine healthy couple that always remembers they can talk to each other as both equals and individuals in a relationship that aren't defined solely by their relationship alone.

YES!!!!! Yona is #1!! It’s my all time fav shojo series!! Loved this video!! You should do another one in the future!

Also it is easy to differentiate between shounen/seinen and shoujo/josei. Shoujosei often doesn't have frames, has atmospheric ambient backgrounds. Also shoujosei lightens up character feelings, their emotions and points more at inner thoughts than action. But shoujo has a lot of good sci-fi and fantasy titles. Do not say Mystery is a great mystery manga. And basically any genre you would like

Hey man. Love your stuff! I’m sure someone will get on your case, so I’ll just let you know 😅 Skip and Loafer is a Seinen. Horimiya is a Shounen. Highly recommend Rei Toma’s stuff and My Love Story/High School Debut.

I really loved this vid! For some reason alot of guys really refuse to read shojo and honestly its really annoying so its nice to see someone actually come at it which such a positive angle! (quick nitpick though shojo is a demographic not a genre since shojo just means for girls), A recommendation would be Skip Beat! its still ongoing after 20 years and its everything that makes shojo great in my oppion. (also side note i recommend the channel Colleen,s manga Recs who talks more about the impacts and history of shojo if you wana know more about it!)

Nana and Yona slap hard. I personally love card captor sakura but wouldn't recommend it to adults. Depending on how strict people are with genre's I'd put Banana Fish and Berserk up there with top shojo too even if truly they lean more into the seinen/josei trappings but hey, we were all reading them as children anyway. Shojo got a bad wrap because guys (not you) seemingly have no issue watching fiction designed for little boys but it's embarassing to read something written for young girls. Everytime Shonen takes something from Shojo it's hyped as one of the best/defining features of the shonen for years to come (Berskers love triangle, Bleach's aesthetics and CONSTANT fashion switchups) Hell, even shows like Saint Seya and Yu Yu Hakusho got shit for making their characters look more like beautiful boys of the 50s and 60s Year 24 mangaka's and less like big burly Goku and Fist of the North Star type muscle on muscle bodies, but its easy to forget that to history and just think soft weak boys are cool now, Itachi, Ichigo, Naruto, the entire cast of Attack on Titan etc are all closer to beautiful boy aesthetics than they are to SSJ4 Goku.

I love guys who read shojo/josei!! It tells me your open minded and willing to try new things. Masculine/Feminine are concepts and fluid. Stories easily flow in several directions regardless of genre. Masculine/Feminine are just guidelines. I hope you continue to read more. Maybe a part 2 once you’re more caught up with Yona/Nana/Skip and Loafer would be a great follow up. Also consider reading 6 more series in the future: Suggestions: Fruits Basket, A Sign of Affection, Fushigi Yugi, Mars, Princess Jellyfish, and Kimi ni Todoke

My first ever manga that I read was a josei manga. Pet Shop of Horrors. And I highly recommend it.

Great video and great picks. At this point I’m half Shonen and half Shojo in my ongoing reading. Yona and Snow White are fantastic series. I would also recommend The Ancient Magus Bride. In my mind I consider these three the ‘red hair heroin trifectas of Shojo.

Shoujo, Shonen, Josei and Seinen are demographics and within those there are a plethora of different genres. Just like you can have slice of life like Skip and Loafer and action series like Vinland Saga both under theseinen demographic umbrella, you can have lots of different genres in the shoujo demographic. It's true that, for example, shounen tends more towards action and shoujo more towards romance genres, but a lot of that has to do with marketing, which has to do with gender roles and expectations, which has to do with how we are raised as kids, which has to do with sexism, which has to do with why shoujo and josei manga are seen as both less profitable and less valuable in a storytelling sense. There are a lot of creators who have said this better than me - Colleen's Manga Recs, for one, who has been recommended to you in other comments, so I'm not gonna repeat what others have said. Always glad to see people branching out, especially into shojosei manga!

LESSS GOOO

I know you already know, so this isn't a dig at the Shounen/Seinen titles being included. I'd have subbed them out for Fruits Basket (one of the best selling shojo titles) and Chihayafuru (for some genre diversity. It's a shojo sports manga with a stellar anime adaptation. Unfortunately the English manga is only officially available through digital release rn)

I'd like to also recommend the channel The Anime Tea. She does video essays on manga, to include shoujo

Kageki Shoujo is a great one! It's based off a famous Japanese theatre Troupe and school, and the first volume was published in a seinen magazine. But when that magazine got cancelled, the manga was picked up by a shoujo magazine. Long story short, theatre girls, slice of life, and drama. Our two heroes include a girl with her head in the clouds being brought down to earth, and a girl who walled herself off from everyone starting to reach out to someone.

Totally understand not liking the way dialogue is done in Ao Haru Ride and reading more of it probably wouldn't change that, but for me it is definitely one of those stories that take a bit longer to connect to the charactes, but for me it paid off and I really enjoyed the story. I think especially Kou is meant to come across as more distant and kinda like a douche in the beginning so it takes some time to come to care more about the characters. And I understand that for some people that's a big minus, but as someone who watched the anime and read the manga at the ripe age of high school I really enjoyed the lowkey emotional angst and the time the story took to tell about the charactes. The romance is quite slow and even the anime barely gets to the meat of it, so if you don't vibe with the way the story is told or the characters I understand dropping it or not liking it. I also get how not all understand why Futaba still likes Kou even when he acts the way he acts, but as someone who is a sucker for fiction where sometimes the love interest is a little bit a douche, I totally ate this up when I read this and it still has a soft spot for me.