I'm looking for manga with female main character(s).

I don't mean as a co-lead to a male, or as the main love interest to a man. In fact, I'm not interested in manga where the main point is romance. So while there's a lot of good shoujo manga where romance is a big part of it but still only an aspect (ex: Kimi no Todoke) I would prefer to shy away from the genre. There's only so many ways you can tell the story of a love-stricken high school girl. As well, those manga tend to lack the qualities I am looking for in a main character. It's difficult to enjoy a story with a weak lead.

I've already gone through the popular manga that has amazing female leads (ex: Saver, Cat Street, Superior, etc.). I will thoroughly appreciate any suggestions that are not a generic shoujo story, or a manga that's actually directed towards teenage boys. I have zero interest in reading about how a cyclops apparently has an older brother complex, if you know what I mean.

Or, if anything at all, I would be delighted for suggestions in tags I could apply when using the search feature on this site. Things like "smart female lead" doesn't seem to help much when it typically means the love interest is smart.

Thank you so much for your time!

Here are some non-shoujo (they are seinen and josei) with female leads and little or no romance. I can't think of any shounen that have female mains and no romance.

Suiiki - The main character is a young girl but I liked her. It's really good and unusual.

Kaijuu no Kodomo - Another seinen with a young girl main, though there are some side characters that have a lot of focus too. Kind of similar to Suiiki in that they are both kind of water based.

Ran to Haiiro no Sekai - The main character is a young girl with magical powers. This one has a little romance at the end, but it's mostly about the magical powers. It's a great manga, in my opinion.

Umi no Cradle - This one just started scanlating but I'm really enjoying it. I haven't seen any romance yet, it's mostly about the female main (a teenage girl) taking care of a child while going on a seafaring adventure.

Kakukaku Shikajika - This one is a josei (the others are seinen). It's really unusual in that it's an autobiography, but it's still a great story as well. It's mostly about her non-romantic relationship with her art teacher. She has a boyfriend but it's barely mentioned.

I've posted in a similar thread about this before. Oh, this thread kind of fits too. And this one!

So, uh, as you can see, there's actually quite a lot of manga that fall under the criteria of "female main character who's not secondary to/defined by a male." So is there any particular genres (action, slice-of-life, supernatural, etc.) you're interested in?

edit: meredithbecca's recommendations are really good! I basically second all of them except Kaijuu no Kodomo, which I haven't read yet.

I made a similar thread last year and got a lot of good recs. You might find something of interest there.

And, as Suxinn mentioned, you'll get better recommendations if you specify the genre you like.

To be quite honest at that point yesterday I was so fed up that I didn't even care about the genre anymore. I was at the point where I felt like "it doesn't even matter what the story is as long as I can like the main character!!"

But you're both right, I should hone in more on what I want. And thank you so much for those links!

@calstine
You're right in that I should have put more definition in what I'm looking for genre-wise. I was exasperated when I made the post, for sure. I was at the point where I was thinking "I don't care at ALL what people show me as long as it fits that criteria!"

Thank you very much for the links!

@meredithbecca
Thank you very much for all of the suggestions!

I'm going to go through all of these and the other posts. I think I'll have a lot of new reading material with all of this.

I'm not really thinking of a particular theme I care to focus on now unfortunately. I suppose if anything it would be one where the girl is athletic.

Last edited by lambchopsil at 9:30 pm, Jun 6 2016