Romance anime and manga are equally popular among young kids and adults. Stories depict their real life issues with some adult stuff to hook the audience.
Let us jump into the list of best romance manga which also include the most popular list of high school romance manga.
Kodocha
The idea of an ambitious young woman trying to better the lives of those around her is as familiar as Emma (the Jane Austen one, not the Kaoru Mori one) and it is definitely nothing new to the world of shoujo.
Kodocha can drift very randomly between heavy humour and heavy drama, but Sana tends to give it all some emphasis.
Any reader would have been hard-pressed not to appreciate Sana. She’s a maniac bundle of fire, but she’s endowed with just enough courage and intellect to save her from just becoming a brat. It’s a personality that fits perfectly for the lead, but it also makes Akito’s ideal comic film, who barely lifts his voice or shifts his speech.
Of course, Akito ends up sustaining the storey even more emotionally than intended. In true shoujo mode, his trouble-making is merely a symptom of his tragic backstory, where he has become more or less ostracised by his family for overly dramatic purposes.
I can see what Obana was trying to do here, but his backstory is only a bit too far away from ridicule to be genuinely tragic.
The charms of Sana and the wonderful sight gags tend to prevent Kodocha from slipping too deep into weirdness or melodrama. It’s easy to see that this is all remembered, even though it’s more about his animated version.
This series was published by Tokyopop. This series is complete in Japan with 10 available volumes. All 10 have been released and are currently out of print.
It comes under the category of best romance manga of 2021 and its enough to keep your interest till the very end.
Hana Yori Dango
Tsukushi Makino joins a prestigious private school that is partly financed by her middle class home. She chooses to spend her school-focused days avoiding trouble at all costs.
But there’s a situation where she ends up getting the attention of the F4, the most famous, wealthiest, and most beautiful guys in the school.
Like Itazura Na Kiss, this storey has become famous across Asia with a number of adaptations from different countries. It’s one of my favourite manga ever.
Manga is LONNG!
There are over 200 chapters out there! It becomes simple to digest the more I read it. I ended up reading it as if I was watching the drama: “Um… let’s just begin this next chapter and see what happened.” It was really sad. I’ve lost sleep for a couple of weeks.
Read Also: Best Shoujo Manga
Everyone’s Getting Married
Everyone’s Getting Married is tackling this all-too-family conundrum. The plot continues to have a lot in common with the usual manga romance. Girl keeps banging into a man, finds herself hooking up with him easily, and trials and tribulations are waiting.
Everyone’s Getting Married still has that bit of romantic imagination in the fact that Ryu is a famous and well-known broadcaster, one who also gets news headlines written about him. This may be a little frustrating if you’re hoping for a down-to-earth connection, like one between two daily office employees.
As several of the younger female characters, Asuka wishes to be a bride. And unlike many shoujo manga female characters, Asuka isn’t just playing around while waiting to step down the aisle. She is well regarded in her profession, performing with her clients to the best of her abilities.
A lot of manga protagonists wish to start a family with the one they love, but far too many seem to have no other desires or creativity.
There’s a big difference between having to be at home because this is what they want to do versus staying at home because it’s something they can do. However, both professional women and homemakers seem to deal with a lot of scrutiny, and this is also discussed in the novel.
I couldn’t resist but cheer for Asuka and Ryu at the beginning of Everyone’s Getting Married because they’re both too likeable.
The setup was coerced, but the configuration was practical. Even treating this as a Sleeping beauty romantic novel, the skips of time and the uninteresting conclusion left me dissatisfied to consider it as the best romance manga.
Takane and Hana
One of the most popular—and hated—setups of shoujo manga is the tale of a very dizzy pushover falling for a greedy, cocky, sometimes patronising asshole.
There is a trade-off and romance fails as a result. Not because Hana is misguided about her emotions, or because Takane isn’t involved in her as well, just because of the age difference. Takane is 26, making a difference over 10 years of age.
Takane is a member of the greater class and is set to follow his grandfather’s footsteps to head a large conglomerate. Hana is just a normal high school student, so this will be a multi-level scandal.
To make things more palatable for a larger audience, the two leaders insist they don’t formally have marriage in mind. They just love each other’s presence, and they can’t resist if their heart beats.
If you’re the one to look forward to physical expressions of affection this series isn’t going to be on that hand.
Takane and Hana Marriage
This storey has been told before where a virgin child, a rich/popular man, and a marriage of convenience takes place. But given the familiar setup, Enjoji has only given enough spins on this classic story to make this a fun journey.
In several ways, Chiwa is only an earlier version of a shoujo schoolgirl heroine. She has a debt-ridden dad, little men’s knowledge, little curiosity in the latest gossip, and a naive streak. In spite of her whimsical tendencies, Chiwa often stands up to Hokuto.
This is a series where I found in the middle of the series was the best, the first and last being the weakest ties. Volume 1 is early set up and reveals that they embrace marriage without too many tantrums or grievances.
Chiwa offers to marry Hokuto in order to save her grandma’s garden, but her motivation has never been applied in a way that I would have wanted.
Happy Marriage
It is rated M to be mature mainly due to various sex scenes. Most sites call this a smut series, but it’s still pretty mild for a smut series. Many smut manga dwell on sex, but luckily this series doesn’t.
The series is based on characters, but even more so is the craft. Backgrounds are minimal and most panels do not have anything other than a talking figure. Art itself is not terrible, but lack of variation will make chapters more dull and tedious than they need to be.
It is not an aggregation to say that Happy Marriage is definitely the best romance manga of 2022 due to its bold scenes and mesmerizing storyline.
Living Room Matsunaga
Miko Sonoda transfers into her uncle’s boarding house with her sick grandma being taken good care of by her parents. It’s an odd spot for a high school student, because they’re all older, and they’ve already seen one of them.
Matsunaga, who hit a wall of rage while on the phone outside the building. Needless to say, the first impressions are important, and when she heard that he was living there (after spraying pepper spray on him when he walked her way), she certainly didn’t think he’s going to get along with him!
From the beginning, however, it doesn’t seem like something you’ve never seen before—appearing grumpy and handsome, he’s showing enough kind moments to make the heroine finally fall for him.
Miko needs to negotiate her new life while knowing who Matsunaga truly is, and find out why, in a blended boarding house, she’s prancing around every morning without shirts.
What makes this manga a pleasure to learn is her interactions with him and the majority of the inhabitants of the boarding house who either are adolescents or in college. She discovers easily how different life is for high school students and adults.
Living-Room Matsunaga-san also has to manage the romance angle properly. For volume 1, it’s not obvious how old all the protagonists are, so those who aren’t a fan of maturity level works might want to be careful.
Stupid Love Comedy
Stupid Love Comedy fits Osamu Hasegawa, who is a manga editor without any attitude and a little bit of temper. After a disagreement with his employer at his manga magazine that he was working on, he moved to Daisy’s shojo manga journal to become the publisher of a new mangaka.
That’s when he encounters Suzu Sakura, a genius but slow and clumsy mangaka, and he’s hated from his hand at first sight. Osamu is a talented girl and ready to accept the challenge of working with him as long as he can assist her in changing her ways.
A high point is the humour component of Stupid Love Comedy. At times it seems like there are so many gags on top of one another, when the jokes are used to suit the scene, they perform well.
I ended up laughing a little in the second quarter of the volume, where the protagonists’ personalities could shine better.
There were too few moments between the central protagonists to help me believe the relationship, and I wished more energy had been spent carving out the characters.
At the end of the day, Stupid Love Comedy was low on my list of fun romantic manga, but I enjoyed its realistic elements.
The Fruits Basket
Fruits Basket is a heart-warming, intense, and often amusing tale. It strikes you right in your mind by showing you the challenges of a family from the viewpoint of a young girl who feels like she has none.
It’s an amusing tale of relationships, of how both good and bad will affect how you’re an individual. It’s a series about how someone can transform your life with patience and kindness as long as you choose them to.
Tohru Honda’s parents died one after the other, her father when she was a kid and her mom in the last year. Her mother’s family does not take responsibility for her, and so single Tohru finds herself staying in a tent on a piece of land belonging to the Sohma family.
When the young Yuki Sohma, a reserved young man who is very masculine in nature, sees Toru on the property of his uncle and guardians Shigure Sohma, he welcomes her to come and live with them.
I definitely recommend Fruits Basket, with a plot that starts out like a reverse harem and with a main protagonist that may seem a little soft and sort of like a Mary Sue.
It really has a compelling story and a beautiful overall message. In my experience, and it’s certainly not going to cater to everyone, but in the end I found it to be very rewarding and definitely worth rereading someday. It’s hard to imagine that I’ve had a hard time beginning this tale and imagining that if things were different, I would not have completed it yet.
Meteor Prince
I wouldn’t judge anyone for getting a little spooked out by the beginning of Meteor Prince, given that it begins with a weird boy demanding sex from a hapless girl. Surprisingly, it tried to make things around and become an amazingly naive and oddly adorable film.
Lo is responsible for much of Meteor Prince’s allure. He’s just a young man’s big puppy dog.
He’s always willing to learn, eager for approval, and faithful to the fault of those he loves.
That makes it all the more surprising that Lo reveals that he can turn his body into all kinds of sharp, pointed objects and use them at will against someone who dares to challenge Hana.
In that way, Io is a twist on the dream fantasy boyfriend-completely unthreatening and sweetheart around you, but ready to cut off anybody who looks at you funny.
That isn’t to suggest Hana isn’t endowed with a strong personality. She may be more reserved than Io, but she tempers the stereotypical kindness that comes with being a shoujo heroine with a hint of disappointment and remorse. It’s never specifically acknowledged, but it’s obvious from her actions that she’s had to adjust her life to lessen the harm of her misfortune.
She also feels guilt for the interactions that her misfortune has caused her. As a result, it’s easy to see that someone like her would open up to a giddy kid like Io. Without any thought about her luck, he reaches out to her, opens up to her, and wants to comfort her and cheer her up.
Lovely Complex
I was rightly suspicious of reading this one, given that it appeared to be a friendship built on belligerent sexual tension. It’s a trope that’s normal as hell, but there are just a couple mangakas that can really pull it off.
Many people forget that the pair needs to have something in common other than disagreements in order to form some kind of bond, or that the two need to have some kind of good qualities in order to endear themselves to the viewer.
They should not leave viewers wondering whether the two could eventually destroy each other. So, you can only imagine my satisfaction that Nakahara manages to escape that pitfall and produces a couple who are bickers but still actually have some sort of romantic friction between them!
Risa and Otani can make each other insane with height jokes, and neither is afraid to pummelled the other when one wants a wake-up call, but everyone else knows the two have a lot in common.
They’re both blunt and cynical, they share some geeky passions in common, and they’re both very conscious of their heights.
Their relationship is delicate, even hesitant, but there is a strong and tangible sexual friction between the two, and Nakahara puts it in just the right number. Their partnership is never too hasty, so it never drags on indefinitely.
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Conclusion
Only a few mangas in romance diaries are able to engage readers and romance lovers. The above list consists of the best romance manga according to the recommendation of manga fans and critical views. Let’s see which manga series becomes your favourite in the romance genre.