Highlights
- Manga genres like omegaverse, anthropomorphic romance, and gender bender have niche followings, and their anime adaptations are rare but highly anticipated.
- Otome isekai focuses on protagonists being transported into otome game worlds, often with romantic and heroic goals. It's popular in manga and manwha.
- Reverse harem manga, featuring one female lead and multiple male suitors, is under-represented in anime adaptations compared to its male counterpart.
Manga is a complex art form that comes with many genres and subgenres. It is often split into different demographics like shonen, shojo, josei, and seinen, and within those demographics there are genres, subgenres, and themes. Many fans will recognize popular genres like romance, isekai, mecha, horror and magical girl, or mahou shojo, as well as subgenres like reverse isekai, romantic comedy, and realistic-robot mecha manga. Favourites from these genres and subgenres often get anime adaptations, which is especially obvious in the isekai and mecha categories.
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These Boys' Love manga are must-reads for fans of the genre and have English translations.
However, some genres and subgenres of manga are more niche, and naturally, have smaller followings. These peculiar genres rarely produce mangas that get anime adaptations, and when they do, it is a sight to behold for fans, even if the production value is lacking.
10 Omegaverse
The omegaverse subgenre is usually known for being a part of the BL, or yaoi, genre. It typically centers around an "alpha" and an "omega" but can be any mixture of the "secondary genders" unique to omegaverse content. These secondary genders consist of alpha, omega, and beta. The omegaverse is a universe in which male omegas can get pregnant, and female and male alphas can impregnate omegas. There is a lot of lore that goes along with the omegaverse, but each story is a little different depending on the mangakas own interpretation of it.
Some popular English-translated manga titles include Love Is An Illusion by Fargo and Megumi And Tsugumi by Si Mitsuru. The omegaverse is popular in fan fiction, manga and manhua, but has never been adapted to anime.
While the omegaverse is often fraught with racy themes, there exists some truly wholesome content within the universe, fans just have to look hard enough.
9 Anthropomorphic Romance
Anthropomorphic manga elicits stories about humanoid, or human-like animals. Although their animal instinct may play a role in their character, these animals behave like humans, sometimes more than others. Anthropomorphic manga has many subgenres, including romance, adventure, and action. While some anthropomorphic anime adaptations exist like BNA and Odd Taxi, the subgenre of anthropomorphic romance is slim in anime. This subgenre involves romantic relationships between anthropomorphic characters, or an anthropomorphic character and a human.
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With the popularity of the Beastars manga adaptation in 2019, the future is looking bright for anthropomorphic romance. Some popular manga titles include Monotone Blue by Fargo, and Beast Complex by Paru Itagaki, the same mangaka as Beastars.
8 Gender Bender
Although gender bender classics like Mulan (1998) and Some Like it Hot (1959) exist in popular media, this theme in manga is rarely adapted to anime, and when it is, it's frequently underwhelming. Aside from the few based on really popular shojo manga like Ouran High school Host Club, gender bender stories are under-made relative to how popular the manga genre is. This theme, or genre depending on who fans ask, depicts people doing drag, or cross-dressing, usually for the sake of keeping a secret, achieving a goal, or because of their own personal preference for dressing a certain way. While these stories are not necessarily about gender identity, they can be.
Some popular manga titles include Hana No Kishi by Mai Nishikata and Ranma 1/2 by Rumiko Takahashi. There is a large crossover between body-swap manga and gender bender, with some fans arguing that they often fall under the same umbrella.
7 Otome Isekai
Otome Isekai is a subgenre of isekai, or anime about being transported to or reborn in another world. However, in otome isekai, the protagonist is transported into or reincarnated into, an often historically set, otome game or otome game resembling world. This often looks like the protagonist being reborn as a maiden in a western historical fiction setting, with knights and royalty. Other times they are placed as a villainess, and must change their character's position in order to win the favor of the story's hero. Ultimately, there is some sort of goal, like any videogame, but in otome isekai they are usually romantic and heroic in nature.
While manga otome isekai is popular, it's really in manwha that the subgenre has taken off. Some popular manga titles include I'm The Villainess So I'm Taming The Final Boss by Sarasa Nagaski and Anko Yuzu, as well as My Next Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead To Doom by Nami Hidaka and Satoru Yamaguchi.
6 Reverse Harem
Similar to regular harem manga, reverse harems involve one protagonist getting entangled in relationships with multiple potential partners. Reverse harem manga details the lives of one female lead, with multiple options for male suitors. While this is a slightly more popular genre for anime adaptations, it is largely under-represented compared to the male, with multiple female suitors, version of the genre. Reverse harem's are usually light-hearted, with the female leads taking on a more friendly role with the males in her harem. However, sometimes she picks one partner as endgame, and sometimes she picks all partners as endgame. It really depends on the story.
While there are some well known anime adaptations of manga and light novels like Fruits Baskets and Brothers Conflict, some lesser known mangas include Alice In The Country of Hearts by Soumei Hoshino and Quinrose, as well as Nadeshiko Club by Miku Sakamoto.
Boy's Love harems are also sometimes referred to as "reverse harems".
5 Absurdist
Absurdist manga is manga that explores absurdism. Absurism, or "the absurd" is a philosophical concept most closely associated with Albert Camus, who asserted that our human nature to seek out meaning in our life, and the truth of there being no meaning, creates a paradox called the absurd. In manga, absurdism can be presented as meaninglessness, silliness and comedy, thoughtless gore, and psychological storylines that leave the audience feeling a like life has no meaning, but that it's actually okay for that to be the case.
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Some popular absurdist manga titles include Nichijou by Keiichi Arawi, Pop Team Epic by Bkub Ookawa, and Flowers Of Evil by Shuuzou Oshimi.
4 Military Moe
Military Moe is a subgenre of Moe and Cute Girls Doing Cute things that depicts cute girls in the military or in a militaristic universe. It is closely related to the "girls with guns" theme, but in military moe the girls are all cute and generally small. In Manga and anime the term "moe" refers to cute, and oftentimes innocent, girls. Military moe puts these girls in difficult circumstances, usually forcing them to depend on each other and work together for a better world.
Military moe has seen some popularity in anime, but the Cute Girls Doing Cute Things genre is typically centered around slice of life pieces, school life and work life. A popular military moe manga title is Girls & Panzer by Ryouichi Saitaniya.
3 Magical Boyfriend
Magical boyfriend is the boyfriend counterpart to the somewhat popular genre, magical girlfriend. Magical girlfriend titles include a protagonist, usually non-magical but not always, and a girlfriend or target of affection that is magical and/or fantastical in some way. Magical boyfriend on the other hand, features a magical boyfriend, or male love interest with magic abilities or some supernatural, extraterrestrial, or even technological traits. Examples of magical boyfriend themes in popular media include Twilight (2008) and Edward Scissor Hands (1990). Another example would be Peter Pan.
Magical boyfriend mangas are essentially love stories about a protagonist and their, magical boy, love interest(s). Some options for fans of the genre include Absolute Boyfriend by Yuu Watase, and Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya.
2 Shonen Ai & Shojo Ai
Unlike their predecessors yaoi (BL) and yuri, shonen ai and shojo ai provide fans with same-gender relationships that don't focus heavily on sexual themes and subject matter. "Shonen ai" asserts more of a focus on romance and connection whereas "yaoi" assumes that there will be a focus on sex. The same goes for shojo ai, while "yuri" denotes sexual themes, "shojo ai" focuses on relationship building, and chemistry. Shonen ai and shojo ai often take place during high school, and are better options for fans wanting wholesome stories about the LGBTQ+ community. While these genres are not actually unusual, they are somewhat unpopular compared to yaoi and yuri, which are already niche genres as it is.
While shonen ai and shojo ai are gaining popularity in mainstream media with anime adaptations like Sasaki and Miyano, and Bloom Into You, the genres are still largely stuck unadapted. A popular shonen ai title is Koimonogatari by Tagura Tohru, and a popular shojo ai title is Sasemeki Koto by Ikeda Takashi.
1 Interspecies Relationship
As weird as this one sounds or doesn't sound, it's actually quite common in manga and other popular media. In many cases, interspecies relationship manga looks like relationships between humans and gods, vampires, werewolves, and robots, but in other cases it looks like relationships between different animal species, relationships between humans and anthropomorphic animals, or relationships between humans and aliens. It could be Beauty And The Beast style stories, or stories more like Beastars.
Some popular manga titles about interspecies relationships include The Ancient Magus' Bride by Kore Yamazaki, and Coyote by Ranmaru Zaria.