Medaka Box is a wonderful aversion to the "strong male protagonist"/"side female deuteragonist" trope in shonen manga. While the story starts off with Zenkichi, we see pretty quickly that it is his childhood friend Medaka who gets s**t done. Being the youngest high school student president in the history of the school, an accomplished master-of-all-trades, and essentially printing "professional badass" on all her future business cards, it's clear that Medaka is a shining exception in the world of shonen manga. While both the manga and she make her...assets...clear, her gender is rarely touched upon when it comes to her fighting ability or intelligence. She is a strong character and is interesting to see grow and develop in that regard.

While the story follows the typical shonen "story of the week" manga at first, it soon divulges into a plot with solid enemies and story flow. The character growth is phenomenal when it comes to the two protagonists Medaka and Zenkichi. But rest assured those who don't like romance in their action, action is definitely the key part of this story.

This manga is funny in all the right places, wonderful twists to keep you interested, and is not overly dramatic or over anything really. It's also surprisingly deep at times, but nothing that goes over or under the reader's head. There are parts where it even parodies its own genre! This manga definitely makes the classics list for me.