Shoujos

[Violet]

If you don't like romance and drama animes/mangas, then turn away. That is what shoujo is, and although it is mainly directed towards the female audience, some males can enjoy watching it as well.
EDIT: I also wanted to add in. Not all shoujos are Sailor Moon or Card Captors Sakura. If you're interested in romance/drama and like anime, you should give shoujos a chance.

List just one of your favorite shoujos for every post you make in this thread. Describe them and what you liked/didn't like about them.



Hana Yori Dango


Manga Chapters: 241
Anime Episodes: 51

I thought the relationship in this anime/manga was fairly strong and full of complications. Poor tough girl meets mean intimidating rich punk. It takes place in a prestigious high school that is run by the F4, a group of rich bullies that pick on those who defy their leadership. Poor girl doesn't give a damn and ends up kicking main dude in the face after being provoked.. and then everything starts from there. They start off immature and face all sorts of problems throughout the coarse of the story. I liked some of the characters, but my only problem was how long it was. 241 chapters.. I started losing interest at around chapter 160 I think. I remember skipping around a lot because things started getting repetitive and annoying. But it's a good shoujo classic overall. Note: Avoid the anime if you ever want to seek this one out and go to one of the manga sites to read it. Oh yeah, and it is full of cliches.. but perhaps the characters make up for it.


Personally, I can't stand half the shoujos out there. I'm tired of the ones that are the typical high school plot where the dumb girl falls in love with the narcissistic asshole of a guy who always ends up being "the most feared in the school" or "the head of the student counsel". As far as I know, they're all ripping off of Hana Yori Dango, which is hella old and the mother of shoujos with highschool settings(there are also 3 different live-action series.. Taiwanese, Korean, and Japanese..).

I like twists.. I like quirks.. and I sure as hell like smart female leading characters.

[Dodie16]

I'm usually not big on the whole romance thing, but there are some shoujos that I really do like! Mostly, it's the ones where the romance is more subtle and the humor is more apparent. One such example is:

Fruit's Basket!



Manga Chapters: 136 (inside of 26 volumes)
Episodes: 26

^ Seems like a there's a big difference in the amount of Manga chapters to what was actually put in the anime right? Well, unfortunately, the anime does leave a lot of information and story elements out that are found in the Manga, but it's still a really good show! ^^

Like I said, the draw of the show for me was how funny some of the episodes are, and also how lighthearted and caring the main heroine is. Tohru may not be the brightest crayon in the box, but she has a caring and loving personality, and even though she goes through some hard times herself, she never lets that get her down, and also manages to cheer everyone else up around her!

The Sohmas are fun too. I like Kyo's quick-to-anger persona, but you can tell that he puts up a front like that to mask his pain of living with the curse of the cat. Not only does he feel cast out of society, but even some of the Sohma family members don't like "the cat" and feel he's not a part of them. He changes for the better when Tohru comes and lives with the family, and you can tell that it makes him feel the happiness that he's always wanted, but never really felt.

What I don't like about the show sometimes, is that it doesn't get into a lot of detail about some of the things I would have liked to have known about the curse, and the life that the Sohmas had to live being affected with it. Yeah, it touches a little bit on it, but doesn't go into great depth as well as the Manga did. The Manga had a much darker tone than what the anime put out, and for those that watched the show before reading the Manga are in for quite the surprise. Also, some of the characters were altered from the Manga to anime (some didn't even make it to the anime), and kind of threw me through a loop when I found out about some of the stuff that wasn't explained to me in the anime.

[Bleachfangirl]

Does Emma count as a shoujo? It's not categorized as one, and I understand how it might not work for the "young girl" audience that shoujos are generally directed to, but it's about a girl and has romance, so yeah.

Manga Fox: Emma Manga Series

The story is quite sweet. It's not like the regular girl's-manga that forces through relationship development in the time span of three days. Emma takes a really slow pace that had my stomach in knots while I was reading through the first time (good knots...if those exist). And there's actually character development and background! The girl isn't just some shy wall-flower that can't do anything but cry. Emma's a smart, strong-willed, honorable person that you have to love by the end of the story.

Another great thing is that as the story goes on, it's not just about the single relationship of the girl and boy. It kind of branches out into different character's lives and does a lot of back-tracking/flash-backing to give you a good feel for all of them. You get to know each person intimately and understand their motives. There are just little things that are all over the place like quiet smiles, sentimental items, or blank looks that mean so much to the whole story. It's not like the simple girly mangas where random crap happens in one chapter and never gets remember again. There's actual MEANING to everything that you can care about! Deaths are more significant because you know exactly how important that person was to everyone else in the story.

There's not just slow, sweet stuff though. I chuckled plenty of times while reading, because some of the characters pulled some wacky (but believable) stunts that I've actually seen done in real life. That's probably why I thought it was funny. The recognition was cute.

Um...that's kind of an unintelligible rant on the manga, but I just think it's good. Really good. Go read it. Now. If there is an anime (which I doubt there is), I'd still say read the manga, because it's great on it's own. The art's neat too.

[Violet]

There's two anime seasons of Emma, actually. I bet the manga covers way more things, but the animes was pretty good. I think I'll give the manga a read so I can see what they left out. It's definitely got that shoujo feeling to it, I thought it was really good. I liked Hans .

I have some Fruits Basket Manga as well! That was my favorite series throughout highschool. When I saw the anime, I was a little disappointed cause it left out a lot of stuff, but I understand that they probably just had to cut it short. I remember liking Tohru x Yuki when I first got into it, but then I switched to Tohru x Kyo. Hatori was my favorite .

[Dodie16]

^ I was a big fan of Hatsuharu and Kyo. And yes. Tohru x Kyo FOREVER!!!!

Got another one for the thread. ^^ I think this is my last one I'll mention, because I really can't think of any other Shoujo that I was a big fan of that broke away from the mold. Not saying that the next one I mention really does that, but it's still pretty delightful for me.

Peach Girl



Manga Chapters: I only own 2, but it's listed as having 18. There's also a sequel manga adaptation and alternate story, but I haven't read up on those.
Anime: 25 episodes

Yeah, it does fall into the whole "People are mean to the main character, so you feel sorry for her" catergory, but Momo does fight back. She also does have some self-esteem issues because she wants to be with a guy who she thinks that she isn't good enough for, but later realizes that it's silly to think that way, especially when she discovers that what she thought she wanted really wasn't what she wanted.

Miwa Ueda's has beautiful artistic style in the Manga. The characters are drawn so well, and it inspired me to work to achieve the same fluid style.

What I like about Peach girl is Sae, the antagonist. She is sooo cruel and manipulative that she can put other villains to shame. If she finds a weakness, she exploits it for all it's worth. It seems weird that Sae would focus all her attention on just making Momo's life miserable, but who am I to question the motive of a catty high school student.

What I dislike about Peach Girl is Sae, the antagonist. She is soooo cruel and manipulative that it's almost to the point of being ridiculous. She tries so hard to best Momo that she really is just making herself look bad. She garners no sympathy from the reader and comes off as just another catty high school student.

Sae Kashiwagi: The villain you love to hate and hate to love. =P She really does make the series though, because if she wasn't there, it would be just another typical shoujo.

[Violet]

I remember Peach Girl, I only watched the anime. I HATED that Sae girl, even towards the end. Every time you thought things were going to be alright for them, that girl popped into the picture, lol. I thought the whole "I love the nurse more than anyone" part was annoying, too.. I wanted to smack him. I liked the first guy she crushed on more, I think. His only downfall was being gullible.


Perfect Girl Evolution(aka: The Wallflower)


Manga Chapters: 98 currently. It's still ongoing.
Anime Episodes: 25(I'm not sure if they're going to make more or not)


This shoujo is a treat. The main girl is not your typical beautiful female who is defenseless. I'm thinking she leans more towards Goth, as she prefers sitting alone in her creepy dark room, watching horror movies and talking to her creepy dolls.
Here's the premise of the story: A group of four guys live in this mansion. They are paying the mistress the fees to live there. One day, she gathers them in a room, and tells them she wants a favor. Her niece is a very improper girl, and needs to be taught how to become a beautiful well-mannered lady. If they do not succeed before the next ball, she'll raise their living fees.

So, she leaves them by themselves and disappears on a helicopter to 'explore the world'. The group of guys meet the niece, who is extremely creepy and out of their control. This anime is more of a parody of other shoujo, if anything. It's very entertaining and funny. If Sunako ever became a proper lady, I'd be sad since I like her the way she is now. Oh yeah, and she often takes on this chibi form throughout the anime: http://cdn.buzznet.com/assets/users1...2589903574.jpg but then, she is also 'pretty' at times: http://i4.ytimg.com/vi/g-Zdtk6ciuw/hqdefault.jpg Which confuses me, but oh well.. it's a comedy/shoujo.

Again, I recommend reading the manga since it has more and continues after where the anime left off. They're both equally enoyable.

[Andromeda]

I've seen a little bit of each mentioned and have a special place for Fruits Basket, which I have the anime and slowly collecting the manga for as well. Found out that Neon Genesis Evangelion: Angelic Days is actually shoujo as well.

But the one that I have always liked, but was never positive if it was Shoujo or not was X:1999. It is done by CLAMP, which is a group of woman mangaka who do typically do shoujo manga, though some of their work tends to transcend shoujo/shounen borders and is enjoying broadly by both audiences. Which I think is where X:1999 falls, since the act style is very distinctly shoujo, but the subject and contain is pretty action oriented at times and dark along with being mature, which the Wikipedia says that it borders on being Seinen. Which I can see that doing.

I haven't gotten my hands on the manga. So I've only seen X the Movie and X TV. The TV series does a far better job of telling the story and characters than the movie could. But when you have a main cast of nearly 20 characters, it is a little hard to introduce that many characters and fully flesh them out in a 90 minute movie.

Spoiler: Before the vast majority all dies tragic deaths

The TV series though really hooked me into the work with the effort on showing all sides of the characters and the conflict. It was easy to see good and evil sides in the movie, but the series helped to really blur that line. So you felt that most of the people involved on both sides were fairly nice and good people drawn in by accident to this apocalyptic event of you much kill or be killed and the middle ground did not exist.

There was a lot of destiny and fate stuff going on. And even though you knew certain things were going to happen, when they did manage to happen it still was so emotional to watch. I've watched the series several times and I still cry during the last few episodes.

The only draw back is the X:1999 the manga is on hiatus. Both the movie and TV series have different endings that they had to make up. Since CLAMP has yet to determine a way to end the manga. The manga itself has not been without its problems though being removed from magazines due to its content getting to graphic and bloody. So it is really annoying to know that X:1999 does not have an official ending yet. I know almost every fan of X:1999 is waiting eagerly on CLAMP to finish out the series.