What this genre is
The Rose of Versailles, Aim for the Ace!, Glass Mask. Sweeping dramas of fate and passion set against history, sport and the stage became the flagship of girls' magazines.
Shojo & Josei — about this band: The expressive revolution of the Year 24 Group: interiority, romance, BL, josei.
Connections
Three kinds of line: direct evolution, influence, and born in reaction against.
↓ Flowed into this
↑ Grew out of this
Key works
The life of Oscar, a woman living as a man, set against the French Revolution. It became a social phenomenon and one of the Takarazuka Revue's signature works.
The ordinary girl Hiromi Oka throws herself into tennis under a hard coach. It fused sports-and-guts with shojo manga and shaped much of what followed.
A sweeping romance following the eventful life of Candy, an orphan girl. One of the defining shojo manga of the 1970s, and enormously popular.
The cornerstone of theatre manga, following the growth of the prodigy actress Maya Kitajima. A long-running series that produced one legend after another.
In a Japan after civilisation has fallen, Sarasa plays the child of destiny in place of her twin brother, and leads a revolution. An epic that brought sturdy war chronicle and nation-building into shojo manga.
A love story between the working-class Tsukushi and F4, a group of rich heirs. One of the best-selling shojo manga of all time.
The story of Sakura Kinomoto, a magical girl collecting cards. Sweetness and a wardrobe of costumes made it a new classic of the magical-girl form.
The Soma family, under the curse of the zodiac, and the girl Tohru. A careful account of hurt hearts recovering, and one of shojo manga's biggest sellers.
Love, dreams and friendship between two women who share the name Nana. A landmark of josei manga, with a charismatic following built on music and life-sized youth.
Young people wake in a Japan after a meteor strike, and have to survive. Sixteen years and 35 volumes of apocalyptic science fiction inside the shojo form, and a Shogakukan Manga Award.
Haruhi, a girl caught up in the host club of an elite school. The standard-bearer of the reverse-harem comedy.
The first love and friendships of Sawako, a girl everyone misreads. Its purity of feeling made it a defining shojo manga of the 2000s.
Chihaya and her friends staking their youth on competitive karuta. Shojo manga fused with sports-and-guts, and the cause of a karuta boom.
The growth and adventures of Princess Yona, driven from her country. A fantasy epic that widened what shojo manga could hold.
The love life and self-acceptance of a girl who becomes a goddess through makeup. A representative hit of the vertical-scroll shojo manga.
Shojo & Josei — walk the band
Genres in the same band, in order of year. You are at the highlighted one.
- 1953 Early Shojo↓
- 1958 1960s Shojo↓
- 1972 Year 24 Group↓
- 1972 Epic Shojo Romance（you are here）↓
- 1978 Boys' Love↓
- 1980 Ladies' Comics↓
- 1986 Shojo Horror↓
- 1992 Magical Girl Warriors
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.