The shojo genre has quite a history in Japan, with the first shojo magazine dating back to the early 1900s. Shojo manga was born from short comic strips in these magazines and the genre has proliferated in popular media ever since. The Japanese term "shojo” specifically refers to girls aged between 7 to 18, so there’s a wide variety of shojo stories out there.
The most popular types tend to be ones with romantic themes, but there are several shojo series out there that aren’t related to romance at all. Fruits Basket certainly has romantic themes in it, but its heavier emotional themes might not be to everyone’s tastes. And even if they are, there’s still a whole world of shojo manga out there to explore that may (or may not) be like Fruits Basket.
10 Kimi Ni Todoke: Join Sawako On Her Journey To Find Love & Belonging
Kimi ni Todoke is a top seller in shojo manga with over 20 million copies in print. It’s a slow-burn slice-of-life romance involving Sawako Kuronuma, teasingly called “Sadako” for her resemblance to the character from the Ring, and Shota Kazehaya, the most popular boy in school. Sawako’s closed world of avoidance and misunderstandings slowly begins to widen when Kazehaya helps her make friends. The two fall in love along the way and eventually become a couple. Mangaka Karuho Shiina takes us down the scenic route in this touching love story.
9 Kamisama Kiss: A Supernatural Romance Featuring Gods & Yokai
Mangaka Julietta Suzuki has created a tale that takes a little bit of InuYasha and a little bit of Fruits Basket and mashes them into one. High schooler Nanami Momozono finds herself homeless and alone after her father racks up a huge gambling debt under her name. Soon after, she helps Mikage, a local Earth Deity, and he offers her a place to stay... if she takes his place as a god at his shrine.
Mikage’s fox yokai familiar, Tomoe, has been abandoned by his master for years and isn’t too happy that his master has been replaced by a human girl. The two eventually learn to get along and fall in love along the way.
8 Gentlemen's Alliance Cross: For Fans Of Love Triangles
Arina Tanemura is famous for her many shojo manga stories and Gentlemen’s Alliance Cross is a great addition to her works. It follows spunky-yet-disillusioned Haine Otomiya, a girl who was born under the name “Kamiya” but was sold to the Otomiya family for 50 million yen.
Elite student Shizumasa Togu served as a beacon of hope and strength for Haine, so she enters the same prestigious school as him in hopes of becoming closer. Little does Haine know that Shizumasa isn’t Shizumasa at all but his twin brother Takanari instead, and they’re both fighting for Haine’s heart. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have an anime release.
7 Skip Beat!: A Star-Studded Romance Running For The Past 19 Years
Skip Beat! has been serialized since 2002 with no signs of stopping. It’s currently at 46 volumes in Japan and 44 have been translated into English, so there’s plenty to read. It follows Kyoko Mogami, a sixteen-year-old girl who was taken advantage of by her childhood friend and love, Sho.
Sho only intended to use Kyoko as a maid and source of money while he pursued his dream of becoming a top pop idol in Tokyo. Hurt and infuriated by Sho’s true feelings, Kyoko decides to beat him at the celebrity game and reaches out to his rival for help.
6 Cardcaptor Sakura: Join Sakura On Her Quest To Collect The Clow Cards
Cardcaptor Sakura is a classic of the shojo genre with over 17 million copies in print. Romance takes a bit of a backseat in this series, as the central goal of the main characters is to get a lid on Clow Reed’s magic before it hurts anyone.
But once the danger is past and young Sakura is a full-fledged sorcerer in her own right, CLAMP turns up the heat on the slow-burn romance between Sakura and Syaoran. Cardcaptor Sakura actually explores several different types of love over the course of the series, including sibling love, childhood crushes, unrequited love, and true love.
5 Full Moon o Sagashite: Two Shinigami Help A Sickly Girl Pursue Her Dream
This is yet another entry in Arina Tanemura’s career. Full Moon follows 12-year-old Mitsuki Koyama who wants to become a pop idol but suffers from sarcoma on her vocal cords. Unable to sing and slowly dying, Mitsuki learns from the shinigami Takuto and Meroko that she only has one year left to live. Takuto takes pity on Mitsuki’s unfulfilled dreams and allows her to temporarily transform into a 16-year-old, cancer-free girl so she can pursue her dream during the time she has left.
4 Lovely Complex: A Well-Done, Modern Romantic Comedy
Lovely Complex, or LoveCom for short, revolves around the unusually tall Risa Koizumi and woefully short Atsushi Otani. At 172 centimeters high, Risa is much taller than most of her male classmates. And Atsushi is 156 centimeters tall, making him even shorter than the average Japanese girl.
Their height difference is a source of amusement for their teachers and classmates, and they’re frequently treated like a comedy duo. Risa and Atsushi put their differences aside to help each other win over their respective crushes, but a romance between the two of them blossoms instead.
3 Sailor Moon: A Must-Read To Get The Full Experience Of The Series
For many Western fans, Sailor Moon was their first foray into the world of anime. Unfortunately, English dubbing practices for anime in the 1990s changed a lot of the original content. Sailor Moon is like the Dragon Ball Z for shojo: a staple of the genre that almost everyone knows about in some regard, whether they like the series or not. Sailor Moon is a magical girl drama with some romance sprinkled in, and it covers more serious themes than the ‘90s dub barely hints at.
2 Ouran High School Host Club: A Less-Conventional Shojo Series
Ouran High School Host Club is an atypical shojo in the fact that it satirizes the shojo romance genre itself. Haruhi Fujioka couldn’t care less about dating or pretty boys and spends all her time studying instead. One day, she accidentally breaks an expensive vase belonging to the Host Club, a group of good-looking guys who spends their time entertaining women, fulfilling their romantic desires to chat with handsome men. The Host Club tells Haruhi she must work off her debt as their errand boy, but she ends up joining the Host Club instead... as a host!
1 Kodomo no Omocha: A Touching Drama That Explores Mature Themes
Also called Kodocha for short, this manga is an emotional ride through the lives of 11-year-old Sana Kurata and her classmate Akito Hayama. Sana is a child star who likes to think of herself as more mature than others her age, even if she does star in a goofy comedy skit show on TV. Kodocha follows Sana as she becomes unapologetically involved with her troubled rival, Akito. She softens his heart, and they help each other heal through some serious emotional trauma. But don’t worry, there’s still plenty of humor to be found in this series.