The so-called month of love has began, everything turns red, hearts and flowers get spread everywhere and love is celebrated in all its shapes and shades. Romantic dinners, bouquets of flowers, chocolate boxes are what everyone runs to find to please their beloved ones and celebrate Valentine’s Day. However, beside all of this, there is another way to celebrate this month dedicated to love, what about reading a good romantic manga?
Here is a list of 10 sweet, romantic and beautiful manga to read in the month of love.
1. MARMALADE BOY
You can start a list ofromantic manga without mentioning one of the most famous manga of the genre shōjo where love is the central point not only in the story of the two main protagonists but in those of the other characters around them.
Miki’s life was pretty ordinary until the day her parents told her they were swapping spouses with another couple! Thanks to this unconventional arrangement, Miki now has two new stepparents and a hot new stepbrother, Yuu! Miki isn’t exactly thrilled with her new situation, and though Yuu is super cute, he’s also kind of a jerk. Can Miki sort out her complicated feelings for him and come to terms with her new family?
Published for the first time in 1992, Marmalade Boy will celebrate this year its 30th anniversary. It includes 7 volumes written and illustrated by Wataru Yoshizumi. It was adapted into an anime of 76 episodes in 1994, in a live-action series in Taiwan of 30 episodes in 2002 and in a live-action movie by Warner Bros. Picture in Japan in 2018.
2. KODOMO NO OMOCHA
This is another classic in shōjo genre, also called Child’s Toy, it is a manga series of 10 volumes written and illustrated by Miho Obana which resolves around the ups and downs in the life of a young exuberat pre-teen girl, her first loves, her first fights, her first experiences.
Sana Kurata is a cheerful, popular, and energetic eleven-year-old child actress who attends an elementary school that is plagued with chaos, led mainly by an aloof boy named Akito Hayama. At first, the two come in conflict with each other because of their opposing ideals, but as they get to know each other, they start supporting both each other and their classmates and peers.
Kodomo no omocha was published for the first time in 1994 and was adapted into an anime of 102 episodes in 1995. It’s a classic that has something special and let’s be honest, who didn’t have a crush on Akito? Everyone, that little troublemaker was fascinating.
3. MY LOVE MIX-UP
This is one of the sweetest and funniest story you could ever read. A misunderstanding makes Aoki‘s life more complicated than he has ever expected and leads him to a new misunderstandings, unbelievable situations and above all to new feelings towards his classmate Ida.
Aoki has a crush on Hashimoto, the girl in the seat next to him in class. But he despairs when he borrows her eraser and sees she’s written the name of another boy—Ida—on it. To make matters more confusing, Ida sees Aoki holding that very eraser and thinks Aoki has a crush on him!
My Love Mix-Up is a manga boyslove series written by Wataru Hinekure and illustrated by Aruko which includes 9 volumes published by Viz. It was adapted in a live-action tv series of 10 episodes in 2021 (avaiable on Viki), the main protagonists Aoki and Ida are played respectively by Ren Meguroand Shunsuke Michieda who did a really great job. The two young actors have really captured their characters’ personalities, Ida’s naivety in heart affairs and Aoki’s funny expressivity and over-reactions.
4. THE TWO LIONS
A symbolic story that revolves around two university students, Leo and Shishido, that have apparently only one thing in common, the meaning of their names and their feelings for each other that blossom slowly but strongly despite their past, differences and unsecurities.
Not long after he starts university, friendly, big-hearted Junpei runs into the very unfriendly Leo. As they speak, Junpei learns that they went to the same high school and that Leo was the “Demon Lion” feared back then as a secret gang leader. After those days spent as a lonely, misunderstood high schooler, Leo escaped to a faraway college to make new friends. Junpei becomes his first and vows to help Leo make more, but are his feelings for Leo stronger than friendship?
The Two Lions is a stand-alone boyslove manga published by Seven Seas Entertainment, written and illustrated by Nagisa Furuya, author of other delicate manga such My Ultramarine Sky and My Summer of You. Sweet and delicate stories about young boys and their feelings made with a unique stile.
How can you say “I love you” without speaking? How much is the communication important in a relationship? It is said that love language is made of gestures other than words, gestures are a form of communication and if it’s true that a gesture is worth a thousand words, you can only find the right way to show your love. In A Sign of Affection, communication is the main theme and it plays an important role in the story of the main protagonists, Yuki and Itsuomi, and their love.
Yuki is a typical college student, whose world revolves around her friends, social media, and the latest sales. But when a chance encounter on a train leads to her meeting friend-of-a-friend and fellow student Itsuomi-san, her world starts to widen. But even though Itsuomi-kun can speak three languages, sign language isn’t one of them. Can the two learn to communicate the budding feelings between them?
Published by Kodansha, A Sign of Affection is a manga series of 10 volumes written and illustrated by Suu Morishita. It has been adapted into an anime series that started being aired on January 6th 2024.
6. HOW I MET MY SOULMATE
It is said the we all have a soulmate in the world who is linked to us through a red thread. We have to search for our soulmate, sometimes following the red thread is easy, sometimes is hard. The protagonist of How I met my soulmate is sure she wants to find her soulmate who is not exactly like her thought. Apparences and first impressions are really important?
Yuuki is a 20-year-old college sophomore who has wished for one thing since moving to Tokyo: to find her soulmate. Growing a bit desperate after a long drought, she goes along with a friend to a club for the first time. Her friend thrives, but it’s chaotic and loud…just not Yuuki’s scene. Just when Yuuki begins to despair that she’ll ever find a real, adult relationship, she meets Iori, a man with bleached hair and a slightly scary demeanor…but first impressions don’t always tell the whole story. Could destiny still have more cards to play?
How I met my soulmate is manga series published by Kodansha, written and illustrated by Anashin, author of also Waiting for Spring .
7. BREATHLESS MOMENTUM
Heart plays its own music and love for music is what Jun Shizuki and Yukiji Yano have in common. They are apperently different like the sun and the moon but music can turn their common love for this art into a kind of different love.
Jun Shizuki and Yukiji Yano are both in the same woodwind choir. Shizuki is a bartender who plays the sax and hits on anything that moves. Yano is a gifted flute player who is incredibly nice and is well-regarded within the choir. No one would ever suspect that these guys would have anything in common, but could these two polar opposites actually be in a relationship?!
Breathless Momentum is a boyslove manga series published by Animate International Co., Ltd written by Zeniko Sumiya, also author of 5 Seconds Before a Witch Falls in Love.
8. LIFE – US FROM THE LINE
We can’t know who will meet walking on the white line of life, new faces, old friends. Life- Us from the line is a boyslove stand-alone volume written by Miya Tokokura.
The serious Ito and the child-like Nishi meet by chance during a single player game of “White Line Game” on the way home from school. Falling in-love, Ito gets frustrated over the fact that they only get to rendezvous on the white line and suddenly kisses Nishi. From high school, college and then to adulthood, a deeply moving work depicting the lives of two men who are madly in love with unchanging feelings within changing realities.
9. FRUITS BASKET
Published by Yen Press, Fruits Basket is a manga series of 23 volumes that put together love and magic. Yuki offers Tohru to come living with him at his house where there is a sort of curse, can love blossom when you turn into a zodiac sign everytime someone of the opposite sex touches you? Everything will be turned upside down for Tohru and whoever accompanies her in this adveture, readers included.
After a family tragedy turns her life upside down, plucky high schooler Tohru Honda takes matters into her own hands and moves out…into a tent! Unfortunately for her, she pitches her new home on private land belonging to the mysterious Sohma clan, and it isn’t long before the owners discover her secret. But as Tohru quickly finds out when the family offers to take her in, the Sohmas have a secret of their own-when touched by the opposite sex, the Sohmas turn into the animals of the Chinese Zodiac!
10. ORANGE
Orange is a manga series written and illustrated by Ichigo Takano and published by Seven Seas Entertainment. It is considered a romance manga but actually it deals with more profound and heavy themes like mental illness and suicide. What if you could have prevented someone from committing suicide just by talking with them? Getting to know them? It’s what happens to the protagonist that you can see in two different alternative realities, past and present, what happened and what could have happened.
Its a beutiful story that talks about love but also friendship, responsability, mental health. You need to have a strong heart to read this story but once you did, it will stay there forever.
On the day that Naho begins 11th grade, she recieves a letter from herself ten years in the future. At first, she writes it off as a prank, but as the letter’s predictions come true one by one Naho realizes that the letter might be the real deal. Her future self tells Naho that a new transfer student, a boy named Kakeru, will soon join her class. The letter begs Naho to watch over him, saying that only Naho can save Kakeru from a terrible future.
Orange was adapted in a well done live-action movie with the same name in 2015 with Yamazaki Kento as Kakeru and Tao Tsuchiya as Naho.
