Oh man. Manga has been honed over decades to be artfully escapist. The Japanese have this stuff down as an engineered art form and they divided it by gender too.

As a dude I recommend stuff like, great teacher onizuka or Naruto or attack on titan or full metal alchemist... but that's stuff engineered for men.

For girls you'll have to Google but it's definitely a targeted genre as well with tons of long running mangas.