As I talked about Shonen last week, you might've guessed what this week's theme would be. That's right, shojo, or manga/anime aimed at girls. While Shonen usually focuses on fighting and lots of male characters, shojo tends to lean more towards relationships and female characters.
As with Shonen Jump, there is a magazine specifically for shojo, and it is called Shojo Beat. The North American magazine currently serializes Absolute Boyfriend, Crimson Hero, Haruka: Beyond the Stream of Time, Honey and Clover, Sand Chronicles, and Vampire Knight. All of the SB titles that aren't in the magazine can be found here. I don't read any of them, so I can't list them offhand like I could for shonen.
Other popular shojo titles not owned by SB are: Fruits Basket, and just about anything written by CLAMP and/or Yu Watase. CLAMP titles include Cardcaptor Sakura, Tsubasa, xxxHolic, x/1999, Chobits, Clover, Magic Knights Rayearth, Legal Drug, and I don't even know how many more. Now, not all consider CLAMP to be strictly shojo, but with the number of supposedly implied yaoi pairings like Domeki/Watanuki, those two guys from Legal Drug, Fai/Kurogane (none of which I agree with, especially that last one. Kurogane's in love with Tomoyo!) I find it easier to just consider them all shojos.
Fruits Basket is one of the best manga series I've ever read, let alone the best shojo. The description is so outrageous, I'm not going to bother writing it for fear that it would make you want to not read it, but it really is a great series.
Yu Watase is the author of such famous shojo titles as: Absolute Boyfriend, Alice 19th, and Fushigi Yugi. I read the first volume of Fushigi Yugi and one chapter of Absolute Boyfriend. They weren't really my taste, but they were good enough.
Characteristics of shojo manga are: Female main character; "bi-shonen" male characters (atractive men with a feminine look); the "Jane Austen" syndrome: two characters are obviously in love with each other and refuse to admit it and that is the only plot whatsoever; unnecessarily pretty/frilly/poofy costumes (Tokyo Mew Mew, Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, Kamichari Karin); yaoi; lack of backgrounds; and a number of other things that I won't go into. As you may be able to tell, I'm a bit biased against shojos. Probably because some of my friends force them onto me, and, me being the obsessed otaku that I am, I read them only to find that they're almost exactly alike. Example: Hana Kimi and Girl Got Game. Girl crossdresses so she can go to a boy's school. Example: Tokyo Mew Mew and Sailor Moon. Group of girls fight the forces of evil. (though I actually love both of those series ^_^; ) Example: Kare Kano, Nana, Imadoki, and about a billion others. Girl likes guy and/or guy likes girl but they go back and forth while juggling high school, sports, clubs, whatever eccentricities they have.
Now, this isn't to say that ALL shojo are like that. In fact, I could have said the same thing about some shonens, but I like shonen. ^_^;; In reality, all the series I mentioned are rather popular. It's just a matter of taste.
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