Shojo manga is frequently all about romance, but seldom about the kinkier side of it. Is it still possible to make the audience's hearts pound when it's less about holding hands and first dates and more about whips and restraints?
PORTRAIT OF M & N (M to N no Shozo), by Tachibana Higuichi. First published in 2000 and first published in North America in 2010.
PLOT:
Mitsuru is a stunning beauty from an accomplished family who is seemingly perfect and demure...at least, until she gets hurt. A lifetime of parental abuse has given her a masochistic streak, and the slightest injury leaves her in a daze begging for more. Her secret is discovered by her classmate Natsuhiko, who then confesses his own kink: he's a narcissist who has to wear coke-bottle glasses to keep himself from obsessing over his image in any mirrored surface. The two soon bond over their kinky lifestyles, but their tenuous relationship is threatened when a popular boy also discovers Mitsuru's kinky little secret.