Probably the easiest way for us to explain what we mean by Common Manga Story Themes is to explain one of the most used concepts and that is school rom coms or romance with school as a factor. These stories usually have a young couple falling in love—or in the process of falling in love—all while dealing with their growing adolescence and various environmental issues. These themes can usually be seen in genres such as romance comedies—rom coms—and or anything romance that isn’t with adults. The reason you will often see more teenager romance stories though is because you need to realize that the majority of manga readers aren’t adults but are teens.

Gundam, mecha and aliens are another genre you will see in the manga world. Neon Genesis Evangelion, Psycho-Pass and Legend of the Galactic Heroes are some perfect examples of manga that you can see their themes in other works or similar material. Sci-fi always has advanced technology that humanity has created—or discovered—while mech-based manga has giant robots fighting robots and aliens. As probably any mangaka will admit, you can’t go wrong with robots beating down other robots.

Need some fanservice? Yes, yes you do. That’s why you need an ecchi manga! We could name a dozen manga that are ecchi themed and it’s because it’s one of the most overused—but needed—manga themes. But that’s okay with us here at Honey’s Anime. At least we get to see oppai for days in manga form and that’s never a bad thing.

There are some lesser used themes in the manga world but even these concepts are found if you look hard enough. 4-Koma is a good example of a unique manga theme that, while it once was rare, it’s seen more than it was a decade ago. New Game!—which is a hilarious 4-Koma—goes for a rather unused perspective of seeing girls create games and dealing with rather silly incidents at work. This might seem like a contradiction to say uniqueness in manga is a common theme, but there are plenty of manga themes that are rather strange and different being used in a multitude of works.