Best Romance Manga of 2000

Nana Komatsu is a naive, unmotivated girl who spends her high school days chasing one crush after the other. Despite continually facing failure in her quest for love, her spirits have never dampened. At the age of 20, she finds herself on a train to Tokyo with hopes of reuniting with her current boyfriend. Nana Osaki, on the other hand, is feisty and prideful. After joining a local band during her high school days, she falls in love with music and one of the band members. However, when faced with the choice between her relationship and her musical career, she chooses the latter and separates from her boyfriend. On her 20th birthday, she boards the same train to Tokyo, like her namesake, where she aims to become a top vocalist. The two girls with the same name but very different aspirations find themselves sitting together on their journey to the city, and, as fate would have it, eventually share the same apartment. A deep and unique bond is then forged, where they will support each other in this saga of love, music, friendship, and heartbreak.

Yukio "Koyuki" Tanaka wasted away his middle school days listening to Japanese pop music and apathetically trudging through life—until a casual run-in with the enigmatic guitarist Ryuusuke "Ray" Minami. Through this encounter, Koyuki realizes what he has been missing all this time as Ray introduces him to western rock music and jumpstarts his desire to play guitar. Although various struggles plague his path to rock fame, Koyuki refuses to abandon the passion that gave his life purpose, balancing it together with school, work, and friends. Beck tells the story of the love and trial that accompanies pursuing a professional career in music as Koyuki and Ray work toward realizing the guitarist's dream of the ultimate band.

After enduring four years of high school, Hideki Motosuwa strives to get into the university of his choice by attending cram school in Tokyo. Concurrently, he works daily shifts at a bar to make ends meet, thus missing out on the world's latest invention—human-like computers called Persocoms. Longing for a persocom of his own, Hideki is met with a stroke of luck when he stumbles upon a cute abandoned persocom in a garbage pile. Upon finding the power button, Hideki finds his newfound robot to be faulty and only capable of uttering the word "Chii"—which Hideki decides to name her after. Chii, however, is no ordinary persocom: capable of thinking and learning on her own, she is a legendary type of robot known as a Chobit. Now, it is up to Hideki to teach Chii how to live an ordinary life and to uncover the truth behind the elusive chobits series.

It's a gorgeous, spacious mansion, and four handsome, fifteen-year-old friends are allowed to live in it for free! There's only one condition—that within three years the guys must transform the owner's wallflower niece into a lady befitting the palace in which they all live! How hard can it be? Enter Sunako Nakahara, the agoraphobic, horror-movie-loving, pockmark-faced, frizzy-haired, fashion-illiterate recluse who tends to break into explosive nosebleeds whenever she sees anyone attractive. This project is going to take more than our four heroes ever expected: it needs a miracle!

Takemoto lives in a run down student apartment, where his greatest worry is when he'll next be able to afford to eat meat and whether he'll get to class on time. Although he's away from home and living on his own, Takemoto is far from finished growing up. Along with his crazy cast of friends, Morita, Mayama, Yamada, and Hagumi, Takemoto sets out to discover life and his true self.Included one-shots: Volume 10: Sora no Kotori, Hoshi no Opera

Fed-up with a life of being under-appreciated and disrespected, Sumire Iwaya decides to change things when she picks up a young boy off the street and brings him into her house. Despite being total opposites, the two seem to complement one another as they try to carve out an ordinary life for themselves.

Chiyuki Matsuoka's given name literally means "thousand snow," and it embodies her parents' wish for her to witness the first snowfall of the year perennially. This wish is exceedingly optimistic due to Chiyuki's heart condition, which increases the risk of seizures and decreases her life expectancy. The doctor who presided over her birth said she would be lucky to live 15 years. Chiyuki is 17 years old when she meets the unlikely vampire Touya Kanou. He claims to hate blood, and he refuses to find a human partner with whom to share the rest of his life. Touya is 18 now, but if he took blood continually from a partner, then they both might live to be a thousand years old. Chiyuki immediately volunteers to be Touya's partner, but he shoves her away in disgust, inadvertently learning of her poor health when she starts to spasm. Touya treats Chiyuki more kindly after that, but still refuses to drink her blood. She begins to suspect that there is a different reason why he keeps turning her down, but will she live long enough to discover the truth?Included one-shot: Volume 1: Isshunkan no Romance (A Romance of One Moment)

In a land where magicians cast spells on bullets in order to perform magic, like summoning powerful monsters. There was once a witch so powerful that she challenged the gods and was cursed for it. 10 years before the current time of the story, that witch challenged and defeated another magician, and in doing so saved a small boy, who instantly fell in love with her and was inspired to use guns as his "Sword of Justice". That boy was called Zero. When he was ready, he set out on a quest and found that woman who saved his life... or did he? She is not the same person that he idealized; she is selfish, rude, arrogant... and quite a bit shorter. But at the times when she feels Zero's love and self sacrifice for her, she can bring forth incredible power. So the two set out together to find a cure and the reason why the gods only bothered to curse her.

Confidential Confessions is a shocking new manga series that deals with many of the hard-hitting issues that teens face today. Using emotionally moving story lines and multi-dimensional characters, each groundbreaking volume tackles such topics as teen prostitution, rape, HIV, stalkers, suicide, and sexual harassment.

In today's world of computers and cell phones, few people have time for superstition and ghost stories—but that doesn't mean that they aren't real! Amane Kamori is a powerful medium from a remote village in rural Japan. Her guardian is Hyoue Inugami, a demon dog whose powers are literally fueled by her kiss! Together they protect humans from vengeful spirits and bring peace to the dead. But when Amane's family moves to the big city of Tokyo, all the magical power in the world can't help her survive high school! Her chilly demeanor and lack of social graces make her a campus misfit. Popularity comes much easier to Hyoue, whose sexy good looks (in his human form) bring him lots of female fans. But Hyoue's lapdog loyalty to Amane only leads to more woe, as jealous classmates can't understand what he sees in her. If only they knew...