What this genre is
Rumiko Takahashi's Urusei Yatsura and Mitsuru Adachi's Touch. They carried shojo manga's way of drawing romance into boys' magazines and built Shonen Sunday's golden decade in the 1980s.
Shonen — about this band: What the weekly boys' magazines built: effort, friendship, victory — and the dark fantasy that came after.
Connections
Three kinds of line: direct evolution, influence, and born in reaction against.
↓ Flowed into this
Key works
A screwball romantic comedy between the alien Lum and the incorrigible Ataru. Takahashi's method of blending science fiction, gags and romance shaped everything after it.
The maddeningly slow romance between Kyoko, who manages an old apartment building, and Godai, a student retaking his exams. The cornerstone of seinen romantic comedy.
Twin brothers and the girl next door, Minami. It swapped the heat of sports-and-guts for monologue and empty space — the emblem of Shonen Sunday in the 1980s.
A martial-arts romantic comedy around Ranma, a boy who becomes a girl when splashed with water. Takahashi's signature work, with an enormous following at home and abroad.
Baseball and a four-way tangle between childhood friends. Adachi's summing-up of the youth-baseball romance.
Kagome, a modern girl who slips into the Warring States period, and the half-demon Inuyasha. A long work fusing yokai with romance, and a landmark of the 1990s and 2000s.
The awkward adult romance of two otaku. A Reiwa romantic comedy that started on pixiv, went round on social media and was then published.
The student council president and vice-president, both brilliant, wage a war of wits in which confessing first means losing. The defining romantic comedy of the Reiwa years.
A boy tutoring quintuplets, and where his love ends up. Readers were gripped by the question of which one he chooses.
Shonen — walk the band
Genres in the same band, in order of year. You are at the highlighted one.
- 1950 Monthly Boys' Magazines↓
- 1959 Weekly Shonen Magazines↓
- 1965 Yokai & Horror↓
- 1966 Sports & Guts↓
- 1978 Shonen Rom-Com（you are here）↓
- 1984 Jump Golden Age↓
- 2003 Mind Games↓
- 2009 Dark Fantasy↓
- 2012 Isekai
All genres
About this entry
Genre boundaries are drawn where the network of manga happens to concentrate, not by decree. Years are approximate. Where opinions differ, this page says so rather than picking a winner.