Seeing as there is a female lead topic in the shounen section, I decided to create a male lead topic

I get soo sick of the annoying, cliche heroines and I realized recently that I enjoy shoujo with male leads more. Any suggestions?

I'm already reading quite a few, but...hopefully someone will suggest a really good one that I have not yet come across

Please include links or a little info on it. Thanks!

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Here Is Greenwood is a fun one, can't think of any others at the moment. How about you post the list of ones you already know about, so they're not repeated & others can read them as well?

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Woohoo, I'm glad I'm not the only one who enjoys shoujo without the girls!

I pretty much only read my group's work, so here's a list of SiH male-lead shoujo (starred my favs):

Current:
*Natsume Yuujinchou
Gin no Yuusha
Yami ni Naku Oni
*Yumekui Kenbun borderline shoujo/shounen
Complete:
Kobatotei Ibun
*Shokugyou Tenshi
*Sorayume no Uta
Licensed:
*Hyakuman Tsubu no Namida

But yeah, definitely interested to hear of more male-lead shoujo from other groups. Ah! Everyone's totally got to check out Golden Days by ivyscan for an amazing male-lead shoujo ^^

Thanks, and sure!

I am reading/have read...
Tsubasa
DNAngel
Aishiteruze Baby
Aka-chan to Boku (Baby&Me)
X
Gohou Drug (kinda shoujo-y )

...And that's all I can think of for now. Less than I imagined ^_^'''

<---@Kalendel, Thanks! A few of them sound really interesting, so I'll check them out


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Yamada Taro

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Can you really have a shoujo without the girls?

I'll admit I can do without the sappy please-rescue-me-my-prince school girl every so often, but ah, I guess maybe it's a heavy exaggeration of how a Japanese girl would be if she wasn't bogged down with floods of exams.

And if it's a romance shoujo manga, a girl will probably be one of the main characters, otherwise I'd think that would be a different manga (well, at least usually).

But I'm looking through some of these titles listed by others and how can one tell that the manga is still shoujo when the main character is male and there's no romance going on? Yami ni Naku Oni looks like a shounen or at least a guy manga, plus the description makes it sound like it's a guy's manga. But when I looked for Publisher and Magazine it doesn't seem to "give away" that it's a manga considered shoujo because it's been accepted and published by that group.

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The general rule is to look at the magazine the manga was originally published in. If the magazine is shoujo, then no matter how shounen-ish the manga is, it's still considered shoujo, and so on. I don't know that much about the original Japanese magazines, but most of them are pretty distinctly shoujo, shounen, etc. There may be a few that are more ambiguous, in which case you have to look at what company/division publishes the tankoubon.

Of course, if you don't know where the manga was originally published then you're kind of stuck. :^/

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"[English] not only borrows words from other languages; it has on occasion chased other languages down dark alley-ways, clubbed them unconscious and rifled their pockets for new vocabulary."
-James Nicoll, can.general, March 21, 1992

A shoujo without girls is just a shoujo without a huge fixation on romance (and as I'm not a romance fan, it's what I like). Instead of girls, it has lots of cute guys to appeal to a female audience. I understand that it's hard to classify action shoujo (with a cast full of guys) as shoujo, but if you actually compare action shoujo to action shounen, you'll see some huge differences. Action shoujo won't have any ecchi women, and there will be much, much more insight into the characters' feelings (in general). The atmosphere will generally be softer.

Really, there's a gradient from action shoujo to action shounen, since lots of mangaka draw manga that appeals to both audiences, and strike a middle ground. It can be crazy difficult to categorize them, sometimes.

Of course, not all male-lead shoujo is action shoujo. Kachin*Ko is an example of a drama/comedy with a male-lead.

I know that when most people think "shoujo" they think shoujo romance with a female lead, but just because it's all guys and action doesn't mean it's shounen. At least, in my opinion, the atmosphere and focus on feelings (instead of "I have to be the strongest!") is what makes an action shoujo a shoujo manga.

The only one I have read is Pretty face, although the main character is a boy he has a face of a girl, so I don`t know if this counts. But that wasn`t that good too, the ending kinda was bad...

I think it's an interesting spice up when there's a male lead, but I prefer a female lead with majority male supporting cast.

after school nightmare may be shojou?

Only ones I can think of are Otomen and Aishiteruze Baby.

Besides the ones that were mention the only one that I can think about is Tokyo Babylon. But can you actually say that it's a shoujo...? I know it is but...

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Yeah you can accually say it is a shoujo. As TofuQueen said, no matter how shounen ai-ish a shoujo can be, it can still be considered shoujo. (Well if it is or was published in a shoujo magazine)

Last edited by Sari90 at 8:16 pm, Sep 4 2007

Oh yeah, I can't believe I forgot! And Subaru's one of my favoritest characters of all-time...*face-palms*
But yeah, I already read/own all of Tokyo Babylon; love that series~ ^o^


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