Aimed at young girls, shoujo is often the most popular genre for young readers in Japan. Sailor Moon, Fruits Basket and Searching for a Full Moon are a few examples of some of the most beloved series in this genre. It's often dramatic or romantic, but that isn't to say every shoujo manga is alike.

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Shojou can be just as complicated or even deeper than other manga genres. In this list, we're looking back at the greatest shoujo manga of the 2010s, according to Goodreads.

10 ANONYMOUS NOISE (2013 - 2019)

15-year-old Nino Arisugawa was gifted with an extremely resonant voice and loves to sing. When she was young, she had a childhood friend who moved away suddenly. Now she sings with the hope her voice will reach him.

Nino meets Kanade Yuzuriha and through a string of events she becomes their vocalist, Alice, for their band, "In No Hurry to Shout." The series is filled with music, drama, and of course, romance as the arrival of Nino's childhood friend Momo Sakai creates a love triangle that spans the course of the series.

9 AOBA-KUN'S CONFESSIONS (2017 - 2019)

Aoba-kun's Confessions was the newest work of acclaimed author Ema Touyama, the woman behind Missions of Love. However, unlike its predecessor, Aoba-kun's Confessions is full of fluff with only a pinch of drama. Mayo is a shy high school girl who isn't good at communicating, so she decides to work as a Listening House Girl for her aunt where she listens to people's problems. However, her first client Aoba-kun is one of the most popular boys in school and star of the basketball team.

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Throughout the manga, Mayo tries to make him tell her his secret that has been eating away at him. In the process, she falls in love with him. Can a shy girl like Mayo truly win over his heart?

8 WOLF GIRL AND BLACK PRINCE (2011 - 2016)

Erika Shinohara wants to be popular, so in order to impress her gyaru friends who all have boyfriends, she lies to them about having one of her own by snapping a picture of the first boy she sees. The first problem? That boy is the most popular boy at her school. The second? Kyoya Sata is a total sadist who hides behind a princely facade.

When Erika asks Kyoya to pretend to be her boyfriend he agrees under one condition: she must become his "Wolf Girl" or he'll tell everyone she's a liar. Despite his cruel and horrid personality, Erika soon finds herself falling in love with him. It's considered a guilty pleasure amongst many others who have read it.

7 KIRA-KUN TODAY (2011 - 2014)

Ninon Okamura is an introvert with a country accented speaking parrot, Sensei, as her only friend. Due to the trauma of being bullied in elementary school, she can only speak to her parents or Sensei without breaking down. However, she slowly begins to open up when she's tasked with keeping an eye on Yuiji Kira, a boy with heart disease.

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The more Ninon and Yuiji interact, the closer they grow until they fall in love with each other. Although somber at times, Kira-kun Today is a manga that isn't afraid of avoiding topics such as bullying, healing hearts over sweet moments, or wacky comedy revolving around a foul-mouthed parrot.

6 KISS HIM, NOT ME! (2013 - 2018)

Kae Serinuma is a fujoshi, a manga and anime geek who enjoys reading boys love fiction, and loves to image it, whether in fiction or real life. But when Shion, her favorite character in her favorite anime, Mirage Saga, is killed off she locks herself in her room for a week.

Afterward, she finds herself lighter than she was before and realizes she has lost a large amount of weight. Because of this, she also happens to attract the attention of a group of boys who all fall in love with her. Throughout the manga, she has to figure out how to deal with this newfound attention while continuing her hobbies.

5 GHOST HUNT (2012 - 2016)

Although surprising to many, Ghost Hunt is a shoujo manga, albeit one on the darker side. First written as a light novel in 1989 by Fuyumi Ono, it was a part of the Evil Spirit Series of novels before being adapted into a manga written by Shiho Inada under the name The House Where Evil Lies: Ghost Hunt. 

Ghost Hunt follows Mai Taniyama as she becomes a part of the Shibuya Psychic Research after she breaks a video camera they were using while investigating a case in her school. There, she meets Kazuya Shibuya, who tries her to fill in for his assistant. When it's revealed she has post-cognitive dreams and clairvoyance, the story only becomes more twisted. Throw in a tragic love story plot and Ghost Stories is one of the more mature shoujo stories.

4 LAST GAME (2011 - 2016)

Naoto Yanagi is a rich and spoiled child who has always gotten what he desires. That's until Mikoto Kujou becomes the top student in class after scoring higher than him. Naoto and Mikoto are polar opposites, down to her being poor because she must solely depend on her mother's income after her father died.

Last Game is unique because it spans from elementary school to their second year of college. It's also one of the few shoujo mangas to have a male's perspective for the first half of the series, looking at Mikoto's for the second half. Last Game reads more like a book with multiple POVs than a manga, which will be refreshing for those who want more narrative in their manga.

3 BLUE SPRING RIDE (2011 - 2015)

Blue Spring Ride is arguably one of the greatest shoujo manga of all time. It has all the qualities of an excellent shoujo manga shoved into one series and does it perfectly, even executing familiar clichés beautifully.

Despite that, Blue Spring Ride flips many of the clichés over by making characters act in unexpected ways. Io Sakisaka, the author and creator of the well-known manga Strobe Edge, is beloved for creating fresh characters in a genre saturated by meek female leads. Blue Spring Ride is the perfect manga to read if you enjoy some bitterness in your love stories.

2 HORIMIYA (2011 - PRESENT)

Polar opposites really do attract. Short for Hori and Miyamura, this was a 4-panel web series published by HERO before it was rebranded as Horimiya. Although it was mainly a comedy at first, it evolved into something more including drama, and of course, romance.

While Hori may be bright and popular, Miyamura is gloomy and nerdy to most. Unbeknownst to their classmates, Hori dresses down to take care of her household and rather stay inside to take care of her younger brother, and Miyamura smokes and has tattoos. When they discover each other's secrets, they become closer, become friends, and eventually fall in love.

1 ORANGE (2012 - 2017)

Lastly, the undefeated champion of recent shoujo mangas is Orange. The odd name and bittersweet story have drawn many into its world again and again -- enough so they adapted the entire series into a 13 episodes anime series and a movie. Orange follows Naho Takamiya, a high school girl who receives a letter from herself 10 years in the future. Using this information, she attempts to stop the transfer student, Kakeru Naruse, from dying.

If you're thinking that sounds dark for a shoujo series, then you're right. Orange is also listed as a seinen (a mature genre) because of the sensitive themes surrounding it. Orange is one of the most thoughtful shoujo manga written in recent years -- and Goodreads agrees.

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