How Come, what makes it better?
it might be because
1 almost every non-seinen manga has at least one overcute totally idiot character... in real life noone acts like misa-misa or hinata... (ok maybe in japan but ,well, I don't live there so these chars just make it even harder for me to take manga/anime seriously..
2 I also don't like the fact that in these series 95% of the chars (both males and females) are excessively hot/cute (designwise) I mean their eyes and facial structures.. just lol.. especially in "school life" series.. in american comics there are many ugly and average looking characters which just makes them more realictic .. not to mention there's no need of extraordinary hairstyles for the characters to be easy to memorize/recognize
ofc what I said doesn't apply to every manga.. for example monster is pretty good (though I haven't finished it yet)