Recommendations?

I'm a bit of an eclectic newbie, and would like some recommendations for where to venture next.

I love Megatokyo and Oh My Goddess! and I really liked Ceres. I got kind of bored by Boys Over Flowers, and I found I Love Halloween to be interesting, but repetitive by the third volume.

What would you suggest for a next read?

I haven't read any of the series you've mentioned although I have an idea of what each is about. Based on that I'd suggest:

Her Majesty's Dog (my favorite!) which is a little paranormal, a little horror and a little romance. Great manga, ongoing series.

Wish by Clamp which is a short four volume complete series about an angel who is on a quest and gets stuck in the tree of a doctor. Clamp has written tons of manga and I've never been disappointed by any I've read so far.

Ouran High School Host Club is a very cute ongoing series about an eclectic bunch of students who form a host club.

Hope those help!

If you like Oh My Goddess for the awkward relationship between the main characters, you might enjoy Pastel, which is not quite as good, but still very charming.

You might also enjoy Video Girl Ai, which is the same thing, but a lot better than Pastel. Video Girl Ai has some action-y stuff like Oh My Goddess, but also has a lot more drama.

If you liked Ceres, you might try other things by that author. I don't really care for her, but all her series are pretty well-received. Fushigi Yugi is probably her best-known series, but I've heard Alice 19th is also very good. Most of her series are available in English. I've read FY, which has a really good plot, but I didn't really care for the characters.

For a good mystery-horror title with romance, you might try After School Nightmare, which is excellent. I also really like Paradise Kiss for pure romance (and only 5 volumes long).

Yeah Alice 19th is a great series to read if you like Ceres. I would also recommend that you try Juvenile Orion, Wall Flower, DNAngel. Those were some of the first series that I ever started off with and they are still some of my favorites.

After doing a quick scan of your library (mostly on the works we share), I think you might enjoy From Far Away by Kyoko Hikawa. It's a fourteen-volume fantasy series, and I find it to be one of the best and most believable "girl to another world" stories I've read.

I also agree that you may enjoy Ouran High School Host Club, which has a similar premise to Boys Over Flowers (poor girl attending a school full of rich kids), but is less of a drama and more of a comedy that pokes gentle (and occasionally not-so-gentle) fun at the tropes and themes of the shojo demographic in general. Basically it doesn't take itself too seriously. It's also significantly shorter than Boys Over Flowers, which may or may not be a plus in your book.

A number of Yu Watase's series have been published in America, and since you really liked Ceres you might want to look at some of the other series available. Alice 19th is probably closer in tone to Ceres than her other works, but I honestly can't be certain.

Are you looking for anything in particular with regards to story or series length? Do you have particular tastes with regard to art style(s) used? Do you care about the level of popularity the series has? These can all be factors in finding a series that you will enjoy. Because so many series have been released it can be daunting to find something, and equally challenging to make good, solid recommendations. The more information we have available the more likely finding a good fit will be.

I'll second the recommendation for Wish -- short (four volumes) romantic series, nice comedic touch, very sweet. It's the series that got me hooked on CLAMP.

As others have said, if you like Ceres, then you'll probably also enjoy Yuu Watase's Fushigi Yugi. I think Viz has started (or are about to start) re-releasing FY as part of their Viz BIG omnibus series that compiles a couple of the old volumes into one big book.

If you liked Oh My Goddess, you might want to give some of the other harem comedy series a shot like Mamotte Shugogetten or Love Hina. I'll also second the recommendation for Video Girl Ai (Both Love Hina and Video Girl Ai are a bit raunchier than Oh My Goddess, if that's a factor for you).

You may also want to try Honey and Clover, a romantic comedy set in an art college. Entertaining characters make this one worth a shot.

I know what you mean about Boys Over Flowers – will it EVER end??? – but I think it is because it doesn't have much of a fantastic element to it and I have a hard time believing the melodrama.

I second the recommendation for From Far Away. I believe it is one of the best fantasy manga series out there, and I'm fond of the "person from this universe transported to another universe" plot. Another good series in this subgenre is Red River by Chie Shinohara – a young girl is transported to the Hittite empire in the past, with minimal fantasy elements. Magic Knight Rayearth by CLAMP, MÄR by Nobuyuki Anzai and Fushigi Yugi by Yu Watase are all good stories.

For more straight fantasy there's Basara by Yumi Tamura and the lighter Vampire Game by Judal, Magical x Miracle by Yuzu Mizutani and Demon Diary. Elfquest by Wendy and Richard Pini is a good Japanese-influenced American comic.

With mild horror elements Pet Shop of Horrors by Matsuri Akino and xxxHolic by CLAMP are good; also New Vampire Miyu by Narumi Kakinouchi which is out of print (I love her artwork).

For fun real-world-magic stories Cardcaptor Sakura by CLAMP, DN Angel by Yukiru Sugisaki, Kamikaze Kaito Jeanne and Full Moon O Sagashite by Arina Tanemura, Fruits Basket by Takaya, Negima by Ken Akamatsu and Bleach by Kubo Tito.

Shorter Rumiko Takahashi stories are good: Mermaid's Scar series, Rumic Theater and Rumic World Trilogy.

You may want to read a few CLAMP series before trying Tsubasa - Reservoir Chronicle since they jump from universe to universe visiting alternate reality versions of characters from their previous books, but it is still a good story on its own merits.

In the teen idols romance genre there are Backstage Prince (a really nice 2 book series) by Kanoko Sakurakoji, Kodocha by Miho Obana, Penguin Revolution by Sakura Tsukuba, Skip Beat by Yoshiko Nakamura and Tenshi Ja Nai! by Takako Shigematsu.

Psychic Academy by Aki Katsu, Angelic Layer by CLAMP, and Train+Train by Hideyuki Kurata are good light science fiction stories.

Random entertainment: Cheeky Angel by Hiroyuki Nishimori, Marmalade Boy by Wataru Yoshizumi, Wallflower by Tomoko Hayakawa, and Musashi #9 by Miyuki Takahashi.

There are other good stories out there but I'll stop here.

Thanks everyone! These are great recommendations. I just finished Ouran Host Club - it definitely grew on me as the quirky personalities were revealed. I'm in the middle of Her Majesty's Dog, and like the fantasy elements. Wish is next up in my queue.

I'll get started on the rest of these suggestions - it's great to have some advice, there's so much out there!

the author of Ceres wrote another series called Fushigi Yugi and its pretty good. You may like it.

here are some other good titles (the ones with the stas are the ones I recommend the most)
Dramacon
*Tail of the moon
Fusigi Yugi
*Mars
Psychic Academy
*Paradise Kiss
Forbidden dance
Cardcaptor Sakura
Girl got game
Angelic layer
Land of the Blindfolded
Princess Ai
Millennium snow
*Fruits basket
D.N.Angel
*Emma
Platnum Garden
*Kenshin
*Crimson Hero
Crescent moon
Steady beat
Cardcaptor Sakura: master of the clow
*The tarot café
*Demon diary
Whistle
Angel Cup
*Ghost Hunt
Battle Royal
The queen's knight
Basilisk
Nana

If you like Ouran, I hear that Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya is a good one to read next. I loved it, though I haven't read Ouran Host Club, so I can't comment on the similarity. Fruits Basket focuses on Honda Tohru a young girl who's temporarily living in the woods because her aunt and uncle's house is being renovated and she doesn't want to be a bother. On her way to school, she accidentally comes into contact with the Sohma family who harbor a secret... any time they're hugged by a member of the opposite sex, they turn into a animal from the zodiac. The premise sounds a little cheesy, I grant, but it's a very heart-warming, humorous, and entertaining manga.

My current shojo obsession is Skip Beat. Kyoko follows childhood friend and crush Sho Fuwa as he rises in stardom in Tokyo. When she finds out he regards her as little more than an annoying housekeeper, she vows to get revenge on him at his own game--show biz!

Cat Street by Youko Kamio is another show biz story that I enjoyed.

On the shonen side, I really enjoy Bleach (teenager who can see ghosts and has to learn to fight undead monsters) and Naruto (ninja coming of age story). Don't forget Samurai Champloo either--highly entertaining and thought-provoking.

>10 waiting4morning:
I agree Fruits Basket is really good. It is also the #1 selling shojo in America.

Has Skip Beat been entirely published?

>11 novelandmangacrazy::

No, Skip Beat is still ongoing. But it is being published in the U.S. by Viz. (Personally, I've been keeping track of it online. ^^)

I just don't like having to wait for the series. I like being able to read the volume one after another. So maybe I'll read it once the entire series has been published.

If there's enough out you could still start reading it and be able to do that. For example, I'm reading Naruto, and I'm so far behind the published material that if I were to catch up anytime soon, I'd know I was slacking on my studies.

>14 DeusExLibrus:
I'd actually love to catch up on Naruto, but I think I'd almost rather watch the anime rather then read the manga. How many volumes are out already?

>15 novelandmangacrazy:

Viz lists 46 volumes of Naruto so far, and since they're slightly behind Japanese publication, I would guess that there are maybe 47 or 48 out.

Definitely read the manga. The anime is nice on the side, but there are some changes, the worst of which is the many, many filler episodes. Not all the fillers are bad (the one about the team trying to see under Kakashi's mask is my favorite) but they don't advance the plot in any way. Also, there is some censorship in the anime as well. Without spoiling names, one of the teens in the series takes up smoking for a couple of chapters. In the anime, they don't show this at all, which is too bad because it's a highly symbolic gesture on behalf of this character. There's also some injury and blood censorship in the anime.

>16 waiting4morning:
All manga with an anime series (or vis versa) is different.

My local library seems to have up to volume 43, so if I remember I'll start putting them on hold and maybe I can read some during my Christmas break.