Some shojo manga titles, and their resulting anime adaptations, are known for subverting expectations about traditional gender roles and sexuality. Many of these characters pushed the envelope for their time in the canon of middle-grade and young-adult storytelling. Shojo demographic content features young female leads, friendship dynamics, and strong romantic plot lines.
A traditional shojo protagonist is cheerful, sweet, often naive, innocent, and non-confrontational. Revolutionary Girl Utena and The Rose of Versailles are a couple of early titles that both have girl main protagonists who fight like the men of their worlds. Lady Oscar is a royal guard who wears a man’s uniform in Versailles, France, and Utena dreams of being a prince.
10 The Wallflower
Sunako, the protagonist of The Wallflower detests anything girly when it comes to clothes and interests. She prefers to wear solemn colors, doesn’t take care of her hair, and is obsessed with anything surrounding death and the macabre. Her aunt wants to change Sunako, turning her from a Wednesday Addams to someone more fashionable and socially acceptable.
The fashion and social experts aren’t other women, but a group of boys around Sunako’s age. The Wallflower isn’t a full commentary on gender, but parts of what make Sunako such an engaging character to the audience are her quirks and divergences from traditional femininity.
9 No Doubt In Us
The royal couple in the manhua, No Doubt In Us struggle to understand each other. That changes when they both accidentally fall into a pool and switch bodies. Now, the empress’ mind lives in the body of the emperor, and vice versa.
Beyond the awkward series of debacles that ensue as they try to live as the other, the emperor and empress gain new insight into what the other struggles with and experiences at court. No Doubt In Us challenges gender as it literally reverses the protagonists’ roles as the couple learns to accept one another.
8 Snow White With The Red Hair
Shirayuki of Snow White with the Red Hair is an independent protagonist with a vocation of her own. She diverges from the traditional girl shojo protagonist in that she’s unafraid to make drastic moves when standing up for herself. For instance, when a local prince demands her as his concubine because he likes her red hair, Shirayuki bravely chops off her hair and leaves town.
When she meets Zen, the prince of the town she travels to, he also bucks the traditional hypermasculine male love interest go-to’s. Upon their first meeting, Zen needs Shirayuki’s help. She saves the prince, rather than the other way around, with her hard-won skill as an herbalist.
7 Princess 70zl6d8″ title=”mononoke”>Mononoke
Though not based directly on a shojo manga, Princess 70zl6d8″ title=”mononoke”>Mononoke does follow a young woman, which Hayao Miyazaki says he prioritizes in his storytelling. San doesn’t like humans, but she’s by no means shy of confronting them. She’s vicious and ready to defend her home, while Prince Ashitaka wants peace and leads with softness rather than a defiant will.
Ashitaka is incredibly strong and capable, his battle skills tempered with patience and careful consideration. He’s admired by nearly everyone he meets. Though he can act with great violence, he only does so in a controlled, measured way because he prefers quiet wisdom and communication.
6 Sailor Moon
The Sailor Moon manga was a trailblazer for many reasons, including Naoko Takeuchi’s gender-fluid characters. Some of the gender-fluid characters and LGBTQ+ relationships were censored in the ’90s anime American dub. However, the reboot Sailor Moon Crystal portrays characters like Sailor Uranus and Sailor Starfighter as truer to the source material.
The gender roles of the main couple, Usagi and Mamoru, are also more complex than stereotypical. Usagi is at times non-confrontational because she’s scared, but she always rises to the occasion like a fierce warrior. And Mamoru plays less the knight in shining armor, and more of an emotional support role. Mamoru is also incredibly nurturing; it’s important to show how men are capable of nurturing and emotional intelligence.
5 Arte
It’s never easy to defy one’s family and societal expectations. Arte takes place in 16th-century Florence, Italy when the only true vocations available to women were that of wife and mother. But Arte, similar to the real-life painter Artemisia Gentileschi, insists on making her own way in the world with her painting and skill rather than through marriage.
Arte doesn’t want her talent to go to waste, so she rebels and decides to take an artist apprenticeship. Her goal is complicated further when she develops romantic feelings for someone. Arte explores whether a woman of the 16th century can live a full life with art, meaningful work, and romantic love.
4 Requiem Of The Rose King
Requiem of the Rose King is one of the few anime that has an intersex character and Richard III is portrayed in a compassionate and complex light. He has a fractious relationship with his family, which is often the case with royal families, but it’s exacerbated by his feelings of alienation because of his identity.
Requiem is based on one of Shakespeare’s historical plays, Richard III, and Shakespeare was also known to push the bounds of gender perception and convention in his day. No doubt, the Bard would approve of such an interpretation of his work.
3 Princess Knight
Princess Knight is often cited as one of the first feminist-leaning shojo anime. It’s about Sapphire who was born with two hearts, the pink heart of a girl and the blue heart of a boy. She often wears masculine garb on her adventures and adopts the identity of a prince to keep an evil duke from her throne.
The idea behind Princess Knight’s creation was to make a series for a young female demographic that would also follow many shonen conventions. The 1953 series predates even The Rose of Versailles, which was written in the ‘70s.
2 Dance Dance Danseur
Though technically a seinen, Dance Dance Danseur has a strong shojo sensibility, aesthetic, and viewership. It follows Junpei who wants to be a danseur noble, the male version of a prima ballerina. Before he found his heart in the ballet studio, he tried to model himself after his stuntman father by participating in sports.
Junpei is incredibly sweet and at times naive, which is more in keeping with a stereotypical girl shojo protagonist than say, a shonen main character. Though he wants his family’s approval, he can’t do so at the cost of what he truly wants in life as a ballet dancer.
1 School Babysitters
When School Babysitters’ Ryuichi and his little brother lost their parents in a tragic accident, Ryuichi must step up as the man of the house. He finds a way to make ends meet by connecting with the Morinomiya Academy’s chairman and making a deal.
Ryuichi works for the school as a daycare babysitter, and he steps into that role with aplomb. School Babysitters takes an often-used plot opening, the older sibling having to provide for the family after their parents die, and shows a male main character who is both soft and nurturing, with leadership qualities.
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