Shojo series remain some of the most popular and mainstream anime that can explore slice-of-life drama, tender romances, and heightened magical girl fantasies. Many of these celebrated stories are brought to life by some excellent female storytellers and creators.
Shojo series typically have female characters as their protagonists, but it’s not a hardened rule, and the genre can still reflect creative diversity. Some shojo anime fans aren’t aware that women have written their favorite series, like Sailor Moon,Ouran High School Host Club, and Fushigi Yuji.
10 Sailor Moon
Written By Naoko Takeuchi
A lot of shojo series have left permanent marks on the anime industry, yet Naoko Takeuchi’s Sailor Moon is essentially emblematic of the magical girl subgenre and shojo series. Many modern magical girl shows are indebted to the framework that Naoko Takeuchi establishes in Sailor Moon. The franchise continues to evolve in surprising ways, especially after Usagi Tsukino becomes more in touch with her celestial powers.
Whether getting lost in episodic monster-of-the-week mayhem, stressing over everyday teenage minutiae, or fighting for the safety of the universe, Sailor Moon always connects. It’s one of the most satisfying deconstructions of slice-of-life storytelling, albeit with the superhero heights of a magical girl series.
9 Fruits Basket
Written By Natsuki Takaya
Fruits Basket, written by Natsuki Takaya, is a heartfelt reverse-harem shojo romance with light supernatural elements that help amplify the series’ delicate emotions. Tohru Honda, an orphaned teenager, finds residence with the unconventional Sohma family. Tohru quickly learns that all the Sohma men suffer from a strange curse that turns them into animals from the Chinese Zodiac when they’re particularly stressed.
These animalistic transformations cause plenty of awkward misunderstandings, but they take a backseat to the larger love story that plays out between Tohru and Kyo Sohma. Tohru learns how to heal her emotional wounds, as well as how to be there for others.
8 Orange
Written By Ichigo Takano
Orange is a touching story about living life without regret, the importance of seizing the day, and why it’s better to communicate love instead of bottling up powerful emotions. Written by Ichigo Takano, Orange follows Naho Takamiya, a high school student who receives supernatural letters from her future self.
Future Naho’s letters prevent her from committing the same mistakes and righting a wrong that involves the new transfer student, Kakeru Naruse. Takano’s Orange tells a beautiful coming-of-age story that uses light fantasy elements to get to the nature of mankind.
7 Revolutionary Girl Utena
Written By Chiho Saito
Shojo series can embrace gender stereotypes or use the genre’s tropes to subvert expectations in innovative ways. Revolutionary Girl Utena adopts an atypical approach for a shojo magical girl series that hits even harder after learning that it’s written by Chiho Saito, a woman.
Utena consigns herself to a life of duels in the hopes of winning the hand of the Ohtori Academy’s Rose Bride. Rather than present the idea that a prince must rescue a damsel in distress, Revolutionary Girl Utena argues that women can be just as courageous and that men aren’t needed in such a story.
6 Yona Of The Dawn
Written By Mizuho Kusanagi
There’s the incorrect assumption that shojo series need to place female characters in magical girl roles rather than present them as battle-hardened warriors. Mizuho Kusanagi’s Yona of the Dawn effectively fights this stereotype with a heroic shojo lead who could shame many male shonen protagonists.
Princess Yona experiences a whirlwind of emotions after Soon-woo betrays her and exiles her from her home. As such, she must question everything that she previously held dear. Yona is determined to take back her kingdom and prove that she deserves this birthright, all while she courageously slays demons and hunts down four prolific dragons that are essential to her mission.
5 Magic Knight Rayearth
Written By CLAMP (Satsuki Igarashi, Ageha Ohkawa, Tsubaki Nekoi, & Mokona)
Clamp is a prolific all-female mangaka collective who are responsible for some of the most important shojo series of the generation. Magic Knight Rayearth is an early ’90s effort from Clamp that lovingly leans into shojo and magical girl staples, yet there’s also a heavy influence from mecha and isekai storytelling.
Three eighth-grade girls whisk away to a fantastical world where they’re in charge of the rescue of an important princess. In this new world, the three girls fight with magic and powerful mecha reinforcements, while also slowly eschewing typical shojo gender roles.
4 Ouran High School Host Club
Written By Bisco Hatori
Bisco Hatori is a pen name for Ouran High School Host Club’s mangaka. Hatori has left certain details of her life a secret, but she’s revealed that she’s female. Ouran’s Haruhi Fujioka is a female, but gender is so unimportant to her that she’s comfortable presenting herself as a boy at Ouran High School Host Club.
Haruhi winds up in this unusual situation after she breaks a vase and gets into debt, but this masquerade helps Haruhi come out of her shell. Ouran High School Host Club excels when it humbly examines honest relationships and what it means to be human and have friends, regardless of their gender.
3 The Rose Of Versailles
Written By Riyoko Ikeda
Some of the shojo genre’s most fascinating series are those that place female characters in traditionally ‘male’ roles to better challenge these social institutions. Riyoko Ikeda’s The Rose of Versailles specifically analyzes the idea of gender and legacy with a well-written and interesting story.
These tenets are put under the microscope when a member of the royal family’s female heir is raised as a male under the name Oscar François de Jarjayes so that she can become his successor. Set against the events of the French Revolution, The Rose of Versailles cleverly turns to real history to inform the complicated love story that blossoms in this French kingdom.
2 Fushigi Yuji
Written By Yuu Watase
Fushigi Yugi is a ’90s shojo series that doesn’t attempt to reinvent the wheel, but it still gets a lot of mileage out of its simple premise wherein reading a magical book sends two teen girls into a magical alternate version of ancient China. Once in this fantasy world, Miaka and Yui must find seven Celestial Warriors to summon the God, Suzaku, who can grant three wishes.
Fushigi Yugi emphasizes female empowerment. However, the jealousy and alternate paths that Miaka and Yui take result in some rewarding, surprising twists.
1 Cardcaptor Sakura
Written By CLAMP (Nanase Ohkawa, Tsubaki Nekoi, Satsuki Igarashi, & Mokona)
Clamp created Cardcaptor Sakura while they were beginning to wrap up their work on previous shojo genre titan, Magic Knight Rayearth. Clamp’s Nanase Ohkawa envisioned Cardcaptor Sakura as a more traditional magical girl series. Sakura Kinomoto is a prototypical plucky magical girl protagonist who’s eager, but naive, to the larger ways of the world.
Sakura finds herself on a fantastical journey after she accidentally releases a collection of magical cards onto the world, which will have dangerous consequences if they’re not all collected. Ohkawa’s structure gives Cardcaptor Sakura more of a shonen genre formula that focuses on serialized action through the lens of a powerful female character.
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