So I'm looking for a shoujo heroine who frankly doesn't care about looks at all - her own looks or the looks of other people. If she falls in love, it's not because the guy is so 'handsome' or 'cool-looking' or 'beautiful' or 'has a cute face' - it's okay if she finds a guy handsome/cool/gorgeous/cute after falling in love with him, because of the affection she already feels for him, but his looks aren't really the point and have nothing whatsoever to do with why she fell in love with him.
Requirements:
1) Must be a shoujo manga with a female protagonist (i.e. should not be from a guy's perspective, as some shoujo stories are). Josei is also okay.
2) At NO POINT in the manga should the protagonist be preoccupied by beauty or think/daydream/worry about her own looks or the looks of her love interest (if there is one).
3) The manga itself should not have too many characters concerned with looks/fashion, unless it is to poke fun at these characters.
So please don't recommend any manga where there are, like, 1 million screaming fangirls obsessed with how 'princely' the male lead looks, even if the female lead herself couldn't care less.4) The general atmosphere of the manga should have nothing to do with people's physical appearances or fashionable tastes. So Beauty Pop doesn't count, for example, because even if the heroine doesn't care about her own looks or her love interest's, the manga itself is about makeovers and 'looking good'.
5) The cast of main characters should not all be uniformly, unrealistically gorgeous. There should be at least some major characters that are plain or less-than-plain. So don't recommend something like Saver, which has such a uniformly beautiful cast that, even though it has a non-beauty-obsessed heroine, obviously still has a beauty-obsessed manhwaga. (Who is also a brilliant storyteller that I absolutely adore, but anything over-emphasizing looks is not what I'm looking for in this request.)
Examples:
Dengeki Daisy - the heroine definitely doesn't fall for looks, and as far as I know, doesn't really care about her own. She falls in love with a guy she hasn't even seen, until of course she figures out that he's a guy she has seen, so. Looks aren't even part of the reason why she starts loving him.
Warau Kanoko-sama - the heroine is totally immune to most socially-acceptable modes of behavior, including primping or prettying herself up, and she doesn't seem to notice guys at all, let alone the handsome ones. Occasionally, social attitudes about superficial things like looks are lampooned/criticized in this manga, but any looks-obsessed characters definitely aren't portrayed in a positive light. I LOVE IT.
Sensei! - the heroine is extremely plain, and her love interest is an older man who, if decent-looking, is quietly and nondescriptly attractive (as in, he wouldn't normally catch people's attention and isn't super-popular or anything). I don't think she ever really thinks about her looks or about the guy's, but she's so smitten with him that everything about him is wonderful to her. She just never specifically thinks about his looks.
Shiawase Kissa Sanchoume - while two of the male leads are handsome, not ALL of them are, and some are even very plain-looking. The female lead herself is plain-looking, and the females in the manga are similarly distributed more-or-less evenly between 'beautiful' and 'normal', so there's definitely no particular emphasis on looks. The leading girl doesn't think about her own looks, and if she ever thinks about other people's looks, it's so briefly and so much in passing that it's no different from noticing a funny-looking mailbox.
I mean, it's obvious that looks REALLY don't matter to her.Aniki wa Tsunayoshi! - an extremely unusual and (I felt) realistic manga in which neither the male nor the female leads are stunning. The female lead is ordinary and kind of brash, and the male lead is - okay, I guess? - but not someone you'd normally call a 'bishie'. (Thank god! I'd rather have a real guy, any day!) Be warned that this is incest, though. Um. And one of the most realistic takes on it you're likely to see, so don't expect it to be glamorized or glossed over!
Gokusen - but everyone knows about this one already! Looks aren't exactly the most sought-after capital in this manga - badassery is.
More manga like these, please! Thanks in advance!
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