Forum - View topicINTEREST: Shōjo Manga Expert Uses Statistics to Reveal 'What Girls Truly Want'
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Tsuruhami
Posts: 30 |
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Yeah, but in reverse harem, most male character too busy wooing the heroine instead "touching" each other  What I mean is... I like BL because I love to see two guy show their "affection" to each other. I love shojo/josei where it's only one or three guy that have a crush to the heroine. But five, six, and all of them? Nope. I also want to see male-female friendship. Maybe that's why I like Oresama Teacher. So many male character but not all of them have a crush to the heroine.
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Lord Oink
Posts: 876 |
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Did he really need to do research to come to the conclusion that women are attracted to successful men?
No? Shounen love interests are usually unremarkable girls while the hero is the strongest fighter or chosen one. Hinata is timid, Chi Chi is a nag, Keiko's a normal school girl, Kaoru is nowhere near Kenshin's level, Anzu barely plays Duel Monsters, Ran can punch people and Kagome has miko powers I guess, but shounen love interests are rarely close to the hero's level |
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CheezcakeMe
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Not really shocking information. Most shoujo is geared towards teenage girls that are gawky and awkward, (since the cool confident ones are in theory out doing cool teen sh*t instead of reading) so it makes it easier for the reader to self-insert if the heroine is also a gawky awkward teen and play into the fantasy that they can win a hot guy too! It's just playing to the market.
Source: was once gawdy awkward teen who consumed shoujo by the truckload. |
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Agent355
 Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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So when is this guy going to put his analysis towards shonen and seinen manga? "Nerdy guys want to escape the pressures of being weak, imagine selves as "chosen one" protagonists, or obtaining a harem, or, in the case of yuri manga, imagine a world without any men at all." Making wholesale assumptions about an entire gender based on the fiction marketed toward them is silly. It reminds me of think pieces about Twilight and 50 Shades of Gray and what they say about the teenage girls and adult women reading them.
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Brutannica
Posts: 257 |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2404 |
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In general, I think you're right, but there are exceptions. Ran is definitely an amazing, attractive girl. Is she amazing at the same thing as the protagonist? No. However, it is constantly pointed out that she is pretty remarkable. I think Kagome falls in this group too. Her powers aren't on the same level for straight up fighting, but they're very strong. I don't think it has to be in the same way as the MC to count as remarkable/amazing. In Kagome's case she is very powerful but in a more stereotypical girly way rather than just being one of the guys. I think shounen is a bit more varied when it comes to the specs of the love interest. |
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katscradle
Posts: 469 |
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He’s not really saying anything new; it just drawn from some recent statistics which is interesting.
As for the BL comics, there has been debate on the question of what attraction it serves for women since at least the 90s. It’s always amused me how much fascination academics have with certain romance fiction. I’ve liked some of Yukari Fujimoto’s thinking about it. She took a page from Fumi Yoshinaga in talking about different pressure points for women varying, so that ideal couples and stories naturally would also. Different strokes for different folks.
In a lot of girls’ comics I grew up with characters did had sex, more so in women’s comics. Then there are the ladies comics that are just as pornographic and assorted in fantasies as the BL genre. It isn’t like BL doesn’t have its own sometimes rigid aesthetics, patterns and tropes.There is even overlap like the kabe-don mentioned in the article. Now I don't think every fujoshi is escaping some sort of gender oppression through fiction. But, I do feel there is a bit more going on then some deficit in one genre over the other. |
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Agent355
Posts: 5113 Location: Crackberry in hand, thumbs at the ready... |
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Ero & hentai manga aren't akin to the general audience stuff he analyzed for this book. Standard shonen & seinen romance manga would be. |
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chaccide
Posts: 295 |
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I'm so glad there's a guy around to explain what we want. That way a) we won't have to trouble our pretty little heads thinking about it and b) men won't ever need to ask us.
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noblesse oblige
 Posts: 280 Location: Florida |
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I find it amusing and at the same time worrisome that people are getting so offended by this article. The guy is compiling STATISTICS and analyzing TRENDS, not erecting some magical barrier that prevents the individual from having tastes outside those trends. Though I'm not sure how necessary his research is to figure out that people who turn to a passive activity like reading for their romance are liable to want a passive protaganist as their placeholder in those stories. I found it interesting that the BL characters and relationships in the manga he researched were more diverse than hetero romances.
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Galap
Moderator
 Posts: 2354 |
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To be honest, the numbers for the male side of things he gives aren't really all that different. Which kind of makes sense to me. When you start talking about what people want in aggregate, things tend to centralize and become more similar.
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BodaciousSpacePirate
 Subscriber Posts: 3018 |
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You'd rather we segregate researchers by gender, race, etc. and force them to stick to conducting research studies about "their own kind"?  'Cause yikes.
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Chiibi
 Posts: 4829 |
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As long as guys are aware that the "fantasy wants" and the "reality wants" are different, I'm okay with that. A fantasy-want might be a story between a guy and girl who have to overcome huge obstacles like the guy's emotional baggage until they figure out they love each other and can make a relationship work. It promises character development. It promises drama. It makes for a juicy story. In real life, most of us girls DON'T want a relationship of going through a story like that.....because it sounds like a freaking pain in the ass.  I sure as hell can't be a guy's mother, therapist, AND girlfriend at the same time. Nope nope nope nope.
Shoujo heroines have outstanding capacity to handle situations like that. They're practically angels with the patience of saints.
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musouka
Posts: 710 |
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I have no issue with a man compiling data. Data is data.
The problem comes when said man assumes correlation equals causation. |
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Brutannica
Posts: 257 |
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O.K., that's true. |
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