introduction
originally i was going to make this a list of manga for "madheads”, because i wanted to talk about being "crazy" as a critique of, or maybe more as a response, to (against) societal norms. but trying to define what i meant by "crazy" was getting too involved. i still am kind of framing it this way, just without trying to totally invent some kind of specific identity, which would be both unnecessary for and opposite of the purposes of this list. to be clear, what i mean by crazy isn't like the tenuously defined clinically insane sense. the craziness i'm trying to discuss is more about how the characters below do weird things that an “average” person would find “crazy”, and that particular intolerance for anything outside of the norm meaning you must be "crazy" becomes something a person can embody/a space they can inhabit in figuring out a life outside of what's normal. typically, when these characters are being "crazy" they are only just being unconventional, uncomfortable or irreverent, hedonistic, emotional, unfiltered, off-putting, selfish, and so on. things that make people feel uncertain, which people don't like, and then because they don't like it they pathologise it--hence calling it "crazy". when it's just that these things are all a part of being alive.
i know this is just a manga list so it's like what exactly does that have to do with anything? well i love manga and i find how people construct and consider their own lives and human relationships very interesting, and my political beliefs inform those things. but i guess most importantly as a 20-something (as of the time i'm making this list anyways) trying to figure out what the fuck i'm doing with my life, manga where characters struggle to figure out their own lives in conflict with what's normally expected of them really appeals to me. i read a lot of josei manga for that reason because a lot of it is soothing in its easy commentary on being a weird woman, which i am sometimes. i think josei is one of the best genres of manga for that reason, but most of the manga i'm recommending isn't oficially josei. i've just personally redefined josei to mean manga i find good where anyone is fumbling through life as they try to figure out how it is they want to live. because josei usually has that going on anyways and because i want to, so this was originally going to be a "josei manga list". of course you could make the argument that most media is about people fumbling through life, but i do have certain criteria. my own tastes, obviously, but also there must be zany behaviours, selfish desires, feelings of alienation, varied relationships, being/attempts at being unique, repeatedly failing over and over again but still trying because that's just life, advice that is simultaneously important and corny, making bad decisions, relishing in bad decisions, everything going wrong, it all being about love. josei is the best genre for this because while slice of life has the quirkiness and the mundanity it's not messy enough, shoujo is similarly too clean, and shounen has too much honour and bravado and formulaic story beats. a good josei is where it's all about making a life.