Copied: Shoujo/josei with a male mc pov instead

[yelisei]

The only one that comes to mind is beloved Otomen. Good for him. Ah, but dex hasn't uploaded the English on here yet

 

[totallynotmike]

1) Care to elaborate what exactly do you mean? If only introspective romance stories centered around single minded pursuit of single girl, or one true couple, there's not many of those (that i know of):

Nijiiro days
Last Game
3D Kanojo
Baby, Kokoro no Mama ni!
Aishiteruze Baby
Sekine-kun no koi
Natsuyuki Rendez-vous
Kanojo ni Naru Hi
Tsukikage Baby
Sakamichi no Apollon
Taiyou no Ie (alternating pov's)
Itou-san (two stories)
Tsuru Tsuru to Zara Zara no Aida
Billionaire Girl
Horimiya (sometimes)
Studio Salty
Taisho Wotome Otogibanashi
Seishun Kouryakuhon
One Week Friends
Girl from class


2) If you're willing to let other people on stage, and-or add some other themes slash drama slash tragedy into the mix, then suddenly list becomes infinite (very loose assembly):

Machida-kun no Sekai (so, so dull, but oh boy, do people love it)
Koe no Katachi
Aozora Kirai no Usotsuki Semiko
Tensai Family Company
Nodame Cantabile
87 Clockers
Nana to Kaoru (yup)
Yasashii Sekai no Tsukurikata
Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso
Watashitachi no Tamura-kun
3gatsu no lion
Come spring
Falling in Love Immediately
Nanohana Boys (philia)
Please! Mr. Bear!

3) Far side of the moon routes:

Gaussian Blur
5 Centimeters Per Second (haha)
Yesterday wo utatte
By Chance, We... and...
Bokura no kiseki
Donten ni Warau

4) You're basically in space now, and there's no light passing by:

Honeymoon Salad
Colors of the Wind
Colorless Girl
Once Again
Kakumei no Hi (does it qualify, or does it not?)
Kimi no Suizou wo Tabetai
My Girl
IS - Otoko demo Onna demo Nai Sei (hmmm)


...and many, many more. Some are technically other genres.

If you're interested exclusively in comics matching criteria for the first list, you should probably check out MU database for "female audience with male lead".

 

[Grindstone]

@mikegnesium seems pretty knowledgeable about it, so I'm kinda surprised that there was no mention of Boku no Orion - https://mangadex.org/title/26054/boku-no-orion - one of the best Shoujo/Josei manga that I have seen lately with a male protagonist POV. And it doesn't have that many chapters released so far (unfortunately), so I think it's definitely worth checking.
Also there are some titles you mentioned that are certainly not Shoujo/Josei, like Billionaire Girl, Horimiya, Sangatsu no Lion, By Chance, We...And... , Gaussian Blur and 3D Kanojo is hardly a Shoujo imo (but this one is debatable since it's tagged as being a shoujo hahaha). That's just me being picky and pedantic about their category though! They are all good series!

 

[totallynotmike]

I was trying to go with series either completely translated or up to date with their translations (how many years that one Toume Kei's comic'd been worked on? Fourteen?). And yeah, some of them are technically targeting different demographics, but i don't necessarily buy that*. Besides, men can be women and women can be men, if only temperamentally (going by big five anyway).

More questionable choices were put further and further away from what i thought the original poster meant by "shoujo/josei with a male mc pov instead" (1).


*Horimiya is absolutely a shoujo title, so is Yagate Kimi ni Naru for that matter - both are tagged as "shounen" though, for whatever idiotic reason

edit: i also added this title to the list.

 

[Grindstone]

@mikegnesium I would argue Horimiya is neither a shounen or a shoujo. It's one of the very few (and by very few I mean probably only a handful) series where I seriously don't think it panders to one way or the other. Which I'm not trying to argue is neither a good or a bad thing. I just don't feel like it was made with the intent of targeting a specific demographic in mind.

About your confusion as to why Horimiya is tagged as shounen, it's for the same reason https://mangadex.org/title/17883/taishou-otome-otogibanashi (fantastic series btw - which for some reason doesn't have the chapters translated in English like it did in batoto) is also tagged as shounen even though it's most certainly not a shounen. It's because both of them are published in a shounen magazine. Which is why technically they are both tagged as shounen, but in practice doesn't mean they fall under that category. Kinda like how if they suddenly decided to publish some veeeeery shounen title like Rokudou no Onna-tachi in a shoujo magazine, doesn't mean it would suddenly become a shoujo manga.

The Girl From Class is also amazing. OP should definitely read it next or at least put it on a high priority list!

 

[ununseti]

Yah, demographics is defined principally by the magazine that a series published in. That's by definition.

I feel that for the most part, the demographic actually does accurately capture the "feel" of a series (whatever that means). Magazines have editorial oversight who decide which series are a good fit and which ones aren't for their publication, so I think demographic classifications are more or less consistent with what most people expect them to be. There are a few outliers that don't really fit their label, of course, but I don't think they're that common. And I guess the very clear-cut unambiguous definition of "the magazine it's published in" is a good thing because then people don't get into edit wars.

But then of course there are manga has been published in multiple magazines with different demographics, there are magazines out there that are neither shounen, seinen, shoujo, nor josei (e.g. yuri magazines, children's magazines), there are series that aren't even published in magazines (e.g. doujinshi, Pixiv/Twitter comics), and so on ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But anyway, back on topic, here are the ones with male MC POV that I know about!

Mint na Bokura: A middle school comedy romance shoujo manga, with some crossdressing shenanigans. I thought it was cute and fun to read. The POV focus here is Noel, and he really wants to go to the same school as his twin sister, but the school only had one vacancy in the girls' dormitory. So, Noel disguises himself as a girl to attend the school. (The headmaster is pretty easygoing, so she allowed it.)

Coda: A ballet-centric shoujo manga, also with some crossdressing shenanigans. The MC here is really good at ballet

Shounen Oujo: A josei manga. Political intrigue, twins and body double shenanigans, and more crossdressing. Also, dayyyyum, Theodore grows up so much after the timeskip >_<

Dadadadan: A slapstick comedy shoujo manga. Shiro is adorable <3

Ame Nochi Hare: A coming of age school life shoujo manga. It's about these 6 boys who enter high school and suddenly find themselves transforming into girls whenever it rains.

Kagerou Daze: This is either shoujo, josei, or shounen; not sure which (MU, MAL, and Wikipedia give conflicting information...) Based off of Jin's Vocaloid songs (the most famous of which happens to be called... Kagerou Daze). Involves time loops, children with red eyes, supernatural powers, August 15, AND LOTS OF DYING (plz Jin I just want these kids to be happy).

Tsuzuki wa Mata Ashita: A really cute slice of life josei manga about a boy, his younger sister, their father, and their new neighbours who just moved in.

Pika Ichi: A school life drama shoujo manga with one of the more unique premises that I've seen. A female-male protagonist duo: The super-plain Suzuki Hanako, and the super-plain Suzuki Tarou. Gosh, what a transformation, those two. They're great, I love them.

 

[Grindstone]

@ununseti These edit wars were much worse in batoto. Not just in trying to decide what's the correct demographic, but the genre tags as well. There were a lot of series like Koi Inu - https://mangadex.org/title/15434/koi-inu - that people were tagging as Mature/Ecchi/Smut (even though it doesn't have any of it) just to make new readers stray away from it, for some stupid reason. It also had the "Award Winning" tag which was being constantly removed because some people thought "it didn't deserve to have it" lol. The image currently being used as the cover is also a result of those edit wars. I was constantly changing it into one of these 3 covers - https://imgur.com/a/WiDei6C - but I wasn't the last one to make the edit before batoto died, so that's why the current cover got carried over to mangadex as well and never got fixed. Same thing was going on with My ID is Gangnam Beauty - https://mangadex.org/title/19258/my-id-is-gangnam-beauty - but I was the one to make the last edit for it.

If you enjoy manga with gender bender/cross-dressing in general (judging by how most of your recommendations share that trait), I'd really recommend you read Reversible - https://mangadex.org/manga/23/reversible - if you haven't read it already. I would say its almost a classic, despite the art style, it's older than it looks.
I haven't found someone else that knows about Shounen Oujo in so long! Too bad it takes forever for it to get any updates since the author only releases things in full volumes that usually take 8 months or longer to finish *sigh*.

And Ame Nochi Hare is amazing!! Whoever hasn't seen it before should absolutely give it a try. One of the best romances I've ever seen!

I haven't read Kagerou Daze in a while, so my memory might be failing me, but as far as I remember it didn't feel like a shoujo series at all. Even though it has the tag for it XD.

 

[ununseti]

@Grindstone Ah yes, I have read Reversible! I really like that one as well. I thought it was surprisingly nuanced given its premise, and the ecchi really kind of died down after the first several chapters, which I appreciated.

With KagePro, I thought that it felt like a mix. I think the art style leans a bit towards the shoujo side, and the HaruTaka flashback chapters in particular felt rather shoujo-ish to me. But the whole supernatural powers thing feels kind of shounen? I guess one source of ambiguity here is that Kagerou Daze is published in Comic Gene, a magazine "intended to blur the line between shoujo and shounen manga", and one that markets itself as a "shounen manga magazine for female readers". ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

For Shounen Oujo: Yeah, updates seem stalled The manga itself is published in a monthly magazine though, so there are magazine chapters out there; it's just that I think that the scanlators in this case prefer volume releases. For example, compare Swap Swap: the scanlators for this manga were initially releasing volume scans, so there would always be a delay of about a year between volumes; but it seems that starting after volume 3, they started releasing magazine scans, so updates for Swap Swap are more regular now.

However, the problem with Shouen Oujo right now is that the manga is on hiatus (again), so there won't be enough chapters to fill up a volume 6 until more chapters come out. Hachimitsu Scans mentioned this on June 9, 2018:

And this month also marks the 1-year mark for Shounen Oujo's most recent ongoing hiatus. Considering Utako Yukihiro recently started a new series last March, it may still be a while before she gets back to Shounen Oujo, so all we can say is, the wait continues.

 

[totallynotmike]

About demographics - yeah, i was aware that it's arbitrarily assigned according to publishing magazine. It was more me being sour about selective policing here, that happens without savviness (that a word? well, it is now). If i read something and set up a page for it accordingly, don't change it like an idiot because MU says something.

Other things - thanks for recommendations. For example, i never would've looked at a series based on a song(s) (because why).

-

...also, Uramichi Oniisan technically. Latter "Orange" (by Takano Ichigo) have some pov shifts, but they are scarce if i remember correctly.

 

[Teasday]

_{@mikegnesium posted:}

About demographics - yeah, i was aware that it's arbitrarily assigned according to publishing magazine.

Target demographics aren't genres, and even if there was a good argument to treat them as if they were, we're not in a position to define what belongs to those genres and what doesn't. Doing so would the height of arbitrariness. The only objective measure is to go by the magazine's generally understood demographic.

 

[totallynotmike]

@Teasday

Okay, but it is inconsistent - just like the porn / smut situation ("i know it when i see it"). At the end of the day it still basically comes down whatever the editing sheriff's feelz about the series are (mentioned, Rokudou no Onna-tachi) - if he / she even has any (because more often than not, it's just blind copying whatever MU says).

And let's say it was perfectly realized - how does "procedure" is an excuse for stupid result then? Especially for something that wasn't imported from old Batoto database?

 

[Teasday]

_{@mikegnesium posted:}

Okay, but it is inconsistent - just like the porn / smut situation ("i know it when i see it"). At the end of the day it still basically comes down whatever the editing sheriff's feelz about the series are

Not really, magazine demographics are essentially self-reported. It's not up to whoever decides to input the demographic, it's independently verifiable.