Sakuran
It's a difficult thing to write a story about sex workers. A big reason for that is that regardless of place or time period, prostitution is a distinctly unglamorous thing. The women who perform it often come from impoverished, abusive backgrounds. Their lives are often equally impoverished and abusive, not to mention short and tragic. In fiction, such women may be used to drive home some moral point, a demonstration of what happens to those women who stray from conventional morality. They may be the focus of some tragedy, showing the downfall of some poor noble creature who is either saved from her wretchedness by an outside force or by killing herself to escape her life with some sense of honor or dignity. More often than not, they're nothing but sexy, trashy window dressing for the real story. That's what makes a manga like Sakuran all the more unusual. It's not just about how the main character became a prostitute, but also how she rega...