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REVIEW: Aoharu x Machinegun GNs 1-2




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Aura Ichadora



Joined: 25 Apr 2008
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 3:00 pm Reply with quote
Sounds like an interesting series... my husband and roommates (one male, one female) are really into airsoft and the team dynamic and descriptions used here definitely describes them. I'm going to have to take a look at this with my husband the next time we go to Barnes and Noble, and see if it's something he might be wanting to collect in the future.

I'll also have to see if the anime is available on a legal channel too... Maybe it's something he'd like to watch in case he doesn't want to collect the manga.
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sailorsweeper



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PostPosted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 3:42 pm Reply with quote
The anime was streamed on CR
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chaccide



Joined: 16 Aug 2016
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 7:35 pm Reply with quote
I liked the anime of this because the gaming scenes were so well done, but it had a lot of the same problems the manga does, and added a most unfortunate stopping place. It could have been much better had it been longer, and the manga seems like it's evening out some.
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Dfens



Joined: 08 Feb 2013
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PostPosted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 7:59 pm Reply with quote
This series actually was one I came to really like, but what held me back from buying it for the longest time it was up until recently it was a digital only release.

Now that they are selling it as a paperback as well I'll eventually start collecting it.
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Ashymo



Joined: 16 Sep 2016
Posts: 66
PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 5:54 am Reply with quote
You do realize that Gfantasy is a magazine for females as well, right?
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Princess_Irene
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 9:02 am Reply with quote
^I do. This particular series just has a much more classically shounen feel rather than a gender-neutral one.
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Ashymo



Joined: 16 Sep 2016
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 10:05 am Reply with quote
Princess_Irene wrote:
^I do. This particular series just has a much more classically shounen feel rather than a gender-neutral one.


What exactly is classically shounen feel? It looks to me like a typical shoujo/josei manga that usually runs under magazines such as Comic Zero-Sum, Comic Gene, Asuka, B's-LOG, Avarus, I could go on..

or mixed one such as: GFantasy, Comic Garden, Beat's, Eden, Blade.

It's has a lot of themes that typical for a shoujo/josei + action: Bishounen, bromance, no ecchi, gender-bender, tomboy-ish female lead, reverse harem-ish etc.
And fyi, while Aoharu was airing a lot of people compared it to Ouran High school when it comes to the story line(practically the same premise), comedy and the characters. It even has twins(Haruka, Haruhi) just like the twins(Kaoru, Hikaru) in Ouran.

I wish people would stop putting boundaries on shoujo and josei manga.
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
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PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 7:40 pm Reply with quote
Ashymo wrote:
Princess_Irene wrote:
^I do. This particular series just has a much more classically shounen feel rather than a gender-neutral one.


What exactly is classically shounen feel? It looks to me like a typical shoujo/josei manga that usually runs under magazines such as Comic Zero-Sum, Comic Gene, Asuka, B's-LOG, Avarus, I could go on..

or mixed one such as: GFantasy, Comic Garden, Beat's, Eden, Blade.

It's has a lot of themes that typical for a shoujo/josei + action: Bishounen, bromance, no ecchi, gender-bender, tomboy-ish female lead, reverse harem-ish etc.
And fyi, while Aoharu was airing a lot of people compared it to Ouran High school when it comes to the story line(practically the same premise), comedy and the characters. It even has twins(Haruka, Haruhi) just like the twins(Kaoru, Hikaru) in Ouran.

I wish people would stop putting boundaries on shoujo and josei manga.

All of this, with the addition that one, GFantasy is in fact a "unisex" mag that nevertheless seems to be targeting mainly young female readers.

I really wish people would just stop trying to stuff anime/manga into shounen/shoujo/seinen/josei boxes. Most of the time it's based on arbitrary ideas of what any of those mean, and that makes no sense. I've seen manga such as Nobunaga Concerto or Shoukoku no Altair being called "seinen" because... I guess they're not like your typical Jump manga? And yet they're both shounen manga, from Gessan and Spirits, respectively. Similarly I've seen Shimizu Reiko's Himitsu manga being referred to as josei and even seinen, even though it was serialized in Melody! I really wonder what they'd make of something like Kunisaki Izumo no Jijou which is about a pretty boy crossdressing and doing female roles in kabuki, and ending up having a romance with another male character... I'm sure many people would call it shoujo or even BL, even though it's a shounen manga, and was serialized in Weekly Shounen Sunday.

Really, the shounen/shoujo/seinen/josei categories barely mean anything nowadays, other than vague target demographic signifiers, but even then individual magazines always do their own thing and that is what readers are aware of, not whether they're "shounen" or "josei".
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Ashymo



Joined: 16 Sep 2016
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 9:51 am Reply with quote
SHD wrote:
Ashymo wrote:
Princess_Irene wrote:
^I do. This particular series just has a much more classically shounen feel rather than a gender-neutral one.


What exactly is classically shounen feel? It looks to me like a typical shoujo/josei manga that usually runs under magazines such as Comic Zero-Sum, Comic Gene, Asuka, B's-LOG, Avarus, I could go on..

or mixed one such as: GFantasy, Comic Garden, Beat's, Eden, Blade.

It's has a lot of themes that typical for a shoujo/josei + action: Bishounen, bromance, no ecchi, gender-bender, tomboy-ish female lead, reverse harem-ish etc.
And fyi, while Aoharu was airing a lot of people compared it to Ouran High school when it comes to the story line(practically the same premise), comedy and the characters. It even has twins(Haruka, Haruhi) just like the twins(Kaoru, Hikaru) in Ouran.

I wish people would stop putting boundaries on shoujo and josei manga.

All of this, with the addition that one, GFantasy is in fact a "unisex" mag that nevertheless seems to be targeting mainly young female readers.

I really wish people would just stop trying to stuff anime/manga into shounen/shoujo/seinen/josei boxes. Most of the time it's based on arbitrary ideas of what any of those mean, and that makes no sense. I've seen manga such as Nobunaga Concerto or Shoukoku no Altair being called "seinen" because... I guess they're not like your typical Jump manga? And yet they're both shounen manga, from Gessan and Spirits, respectively. Similarly I've seen Shimizu Reiko's Himitsu manga being referred to as josei and even seinen, even though it was serialized in Melody! I really wonder what they'd make of something like Kunisaki Izumo no Jijou which is about a pretty boy crossdressing and doing female roles in kabuki, and ending up having a romance with another male character... I'm sure many people would call it shoujo or even BL, even though it's a shounen manga, and was serialized in Weekly Shounen Sunday.

Really, the shounen/shoujo/seinen/josei categories barely mean anything nowadays, other than vague target demographic signifiers, but even then individual magazines always do their own thing and that is what readers are aware of, not whether they're "shounen" or "josei".

Comic Zero-Sum, Comic Gene, Asuka, B's-LOG, Avarus are not "unisex" magazines. Their target audience are clear. They are for females. I brought up them up because they are known for having action as their maing genre. Aoharu x Machinegun could easily have been published under one of those and no one would bat an eye. That was the point I was trying to make. So when their user above me said "classically shounen feel" I got confused and thought to myself, "so if something has an action does that automatically make it a classic shounen"?

The other ones I already mentioned I said that they were mixed. Did you even read my post?
The point I was trying to prove is that if GFantasy, Comic Garden, Beat's, Eden, Blade are all unisex magazines why does every single manga database list Kuroshitsuji, Pandora Hearts, Peace Maker Kurogane, Horimiya, Mahoutsukai no Yome etc. as shounen if they are unisex mags? That is my main problem. And hence my first post:
That Aoharu x Kikanjuu could pass as a shoujo as well, and in fact has more similarity to a typical shoujo than to typical shounen.

I think a lot of people don't understand how demographics work. Most peeople, especially westerns think that demographic labels are genres. That a shoujo is typically a romance manga, while josei is mature form of romance, while shounen is action, and seinen has a bloodier action. That's narrow minded thinking, imo.

And you have to take into account that the 4 demographics have all had different type of history and they all look different.
For instance Josei is a relative new comparated to the other 3 and before it existed, a lot of shoujo magazines used to be read my older woman as well. Hence why the older stuff used to have more mature stuff such horror, sex, rape etc. which is today quite rare in shoujo mags. That could explain Shimizu's shoujo and another popular example: Is Nana a shoujo or Josei?
-you have also take into account that shoujo and josei are almost 100% written by female authors and for females. I feel like females in general, especially the ones who read the romance types of stories don't like males telling them how romance works. Hence why we rarely see male authors in shoujo and josei nowadays.

While shoujo/josei are more a female-only type of a thing. Shounen and seinen are different. They have changed and went through so much evolution in terms of art style and storytelling. The demographic labels mean nothing here. A lot of seinen and shounen are nowadays read by female and written by females. Heck, we are even getting a lot of yaoi works getting moved to seinen magazines etc., a recent example being 10 Dance. Fumi Yoshinaga who is (along with Shion Miura(a novelist who is known for being a fujoshi, she and Fumi are known for popularizing the term, both of them were quite active(and still talk a lot about it) the yaoi ronso/yaoi debate in the 80-90s ) runs a BL cooking manga in seinen magazine.

What I'm trying to say is that seinen is not what it used to be like 10 years ago, nowadays a lot of type of audiences reads it as well. Women and younger boys reads them as well. It's more of a general audience type of a thing.

Shounen similarly tries to appeal to its younger female audience readers as well in the form of including bishounen cast with a lot of bromance moments. A lot of people assume that this trend started with Kuroko no Basket or Haikyuu but it goes way far back to the Captain Tsubasa days. The first yaoi doujinshi were based on characters from Captain Tsubasa. other popular ships used to be from the Gundam franchise(Garma x Char), Legend of the Galactic Heroes(Reinhard x Kircheis), Slam dunk(Rukawa x Sakuragi) Saint Seiya, Rurouni Kenshin, HunterxHunter, Prince of Tennis, and I could go on.

So yeah, the shounen/seinen labels barely means anything today, as it main consumers aren't only males anymore.

Ps: Sorry for the spelling and stuff, english is not my first, second or third language. I'm not sure if you understood what I wrote, but oh well.
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 11:01 am Reply with quote
Dude... Did you even read my post? I was agreeing with you.

Ashymo wrote:
Comic Zero-Sum, Comic Gene, Asuka, B's-LOG, Avarus are not "unisex" magazines.

And no-one said they are. This is what I said:
SHD wrote:
All of this, with the addition that one,[sic - that "one" wasn't supposed to be there] GFantasy is in fact a "unisex" mag that nevertheless seems to be targeting mainly young female readers.

Notice how I didn't mention Zero-Sum, Gene, etc. I was talking about GFantasy, and GFantasy only.

Ashymo wrote:
The point I was trying to prove is that if GFantasy, Comic Garden, Beat's, Eden, Blade are all unisex magazines why does every single manga database list Kuroshitsuji, Pandora Hearts, Peace Maker Kurogane, Horimiya, Mahoutsukai no Yome etc. as shounen if they are unisex mags? That is my main problem.

Because English language manga databases mostly operate on the same arbitrary "must categorize into one of four boxes" principle as most of the Western fandom. "Well this has fights therefore it's shounen", "well, this one has pretty boys therefore it's shoujo" etc. In reality today the boundaries that exist are more along the line of magazines and magazine families, but so many people can't let go of the "shounen/shoujo/seinen/josei" stereotypes and treat them as genres with instead of what they are: vague main target demographics descriptors that barely mean anything anymore. A manga being "shounen" simply means that it's being published in a shounen magazine that claims having teenage/young adult males as their main target demographics - that's all. But even so with shounen and seinen the boundaries are very blurry, since many girls and women buy shounen and seinen mags (I'd bet that female readers make up a greater percentage of Gessan's readership than male readers).

Which of course also lead to people stereotyping say, shoujo manga as "teen girl romances" when shoujo manga also has dark fantasy, horror, etc., or shounen manga as basically Shounen Jump fight manga, ignoring the fact that there are many shounen (shoujo, etc.) mags around with different profiles, to serve all sorts of reader interests regardless of age or gender.
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Princess_Irene
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 12:58 pm Reply with quote
Okay, clearly I should have explained myself a bit better here. Smile What I meant by "classically shounen" was not that it had any random ratio of male-to-female characters or didn't involve romance, but rather that it focused on action over character development. That's more where I draw a line between the two demographics, which also comes from my work with Western young adult and middle grade fiction - stories marketed "for boys" put more emphasis on action and events while those marketed "for girls" put more emphasis on emotions and character development.
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Ashymo



Joined: 16 Sep 2016
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:29 pm Reply with quote
Princess_Irene wrote:
Okay, clearly I should have explained myself a bit better here. Smile What I meant by "classically shounen" was not that it had any random ratio of male-to-female characters or didn't involve romance, but rather that it focused on action over character development. That's more where I draw a line between the two demographics, which also comes from my work with Western young adult and middle grade fiction - stories marketed "for boys" put more emphasis on action and events while those marketed "for girls" put more emphasis on emotions and character development.


Did we even read the same manga? Maybe you only watched the anime? Aoharu is a very character driven manga. The romance is just like a typical shoujo gender bender/comedy, very slow. Aoharu is more similar to HanaKimi, Oresama Teacher etc. than let's say Boku no Hero Academia.

Now, Sabagebu which is a shoujo airsoft manga is more similar to a shounen/seinen manga.

No idea what western fiction has got to with our discussion on Japanese comics and demographics. Well, I can't comment on that as I'm not a westerner. But I'll tell you this, a lot of japanese males avoid reading shoujo/josei titles because they are afraid to be judged. It's still kind of taboo for a guy to read a shoujo romance. BL (about the Fudanshi guy) anime from last year talked about this.
A lot of guys are interested in shoujo romance series, they are just too afraid to read them. That's why we have magazines like Comic Highwhich are marketed as shoujo for men. The thought line that men are only interested in action and women in romance is bullload. A lot of shounen actions anime wouldn't have gotten sequels if they weren't for the female audience.

Same for goes for the females a lot of magazines which used to be boys-only magazines are nowadays marketed as shoujo as well, because they know females are as much as males into manga that put more emphasis on action as you said.

As for SHD, we're practically saying the same things here.
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 23, 2017 6:59 pm Reply with quote
Princess_Irene wrote:
Okay, clearly I should have explained myself a bit better here. Smile What I meant by "classically shounen" was not that it had any random ratio of male-to-female characters or didn't involve romance, but rather that it focused on action over character development. That's more where I draw a line between the two demographics, which also comes from my work with Western young adult and middle grade fiction - stories marketed "for boys" put more emphasis on action and events while those marketed "for girls" put more emphasis on emotions and character development.

I'm not familiar with YA, but in manga that's not how it works, really. What you're doing is equating stereotypical Shounen Jump manga with "shounen" in general. There are so many character-driven shounen manga - even if we just look at what has been mentioned before: Nobunaga Concerto (it's been 14 volumes and I think I can count on one hand how many action scenes there were so far), Shoukoku no Altair (sure it has the occasional battle but it's more about politics and history than anything), Kunisaki Izumo no jijou (it's about a pretty boy kabuki actor and his friends! the most action we get is stylized kabuki fights). But for example there's Elegy of the Four Strings which is about violinists and composers.

But even among more famous manga (even Jump manga!) there's Rurouni Kenshin which sure, had great action but it was as character-driven as anything (just look at the entire second arc), there's Death Note (also in Jump), there's Touch (baseball!), Silver Spoon (agriculture and finding one's place in the world!), Aoi Honoo (coming of age again!), or stuff like Azumanga Daiou or Yotsuba to... These are all shounen manga.

And as mentioned above, "Aoharu" is in fact a very much character-driven story, I think that should be obvious even from the anime.
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Ashymo



Joined: 16 Sep 2016
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 11:21 am Reply with quote
SHD wrote:

I'm not familiar with YA, but in manga that's not how it works, really. What you're doing is equating stereotypical Shounen Jump manga with "shounen" in general. There are so many character-driven shounen manga - even if we just look at what has been mentioned before: Nobunaga Concerto (it's been 14 volumes and I think I can count on one hand how many action scenes there were so far), Shoukoku no Altair (sure it has the occasional battle but it's more about politics and history than anything), Kunisaki Izumo no jijou (it's about a pretty boy kabuki actor and his friends! the most action we get is stylized kabuki fights). But for example there's Elegy of the Four Strings which is about violinists and composers.

But even among more famous manga (even Jump manga!) there's Rurouni Kenshin which sure, had great action but it was as character-driven as anything (just look at the entire second arc), there's Death Note (also in Jump), there's Touch (baseball!), Silver Spoon (agriculture and finding one's place in the world!), Aoi Honoo (coming of age again!), or stuff like Azumanga Daiou or Yotsuba to... These are all shounen manga.

And as mentioned above, "Aoharu" is in fact a very much character-driven story, I think that should be obvious even from the anime.


Nobunaga Concerto, Shoukoku no Altair, Kunisaki Izumo no jijou, Silver Spoon all have female authors, so of course they are going be more character driven. It's probably me, but for some reason all the shounen and seinen I've been drawn to and read, whether they the manga have been romance, action or slife of life have always been written females. In general ,I rarely find tropes I dislike such as ecchi, mindless action etc.in manga written by female authors.

Elegy of the Four Strings while it's published in a magazine that markets as a shounen but it in fact it markets all types of age groups besides junior high and high school kids. It even says that in their official site.

I agree with Touch. It's a sports so no surprise there, sports manga and anime are generally character driven.Check the Shonen Jump's next 'Poster Manga' discussion thread. Unfortunately, it sucks that people associate Shounen Jump with action. What makes Haikyuu less WSJ than say Boku no Hero Academy?

Aoi Honoo, Azumanga Daioh and Yotsuba are all seinen as well.
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 2:56 pm Reply with quote
Rurouni Kenshin and Death Note weren't by female authors, though, and they were very character-driven (also they're some of the most famous WSJ manga). In Rurouni Kenshin's second arc in particular the action became almost perfunctory and more like a backdrop to character drama.

Ashymo wrote:
Elegy of the Four Strings while it's published in a magazine that markets as a shounen but it in fact it markets all types of age groups besides junior high and high school kids. It even says that in their official site.

Well, it's published in Gessan (Monthly Shounen Sunday), along with NobuCon, Aoi Honoo, and a bunch of others. And while Gessan has a somewhat "particular" profile nowadays (being open to manga which may be considered a bit "off-beat"), it's not rare that shounen mags are open to demographics other than actual teen boys. In fact, I can't think of one that specifically targets teen boys and teen boys only.

Ashymo wrote:
Aoi Honoo, Azumanga Daioh and Yotsuba are all seinen as well.

Aoi Honoo is currently being published in the aforementioned Gessan, but I guess coming from seinen mags make its lineage a bit muddy in that aspet. Azumanga and Yotsuba to are from Dengeki Daiou which is again, technically a shounen mag, and last time I looked it's being handled as a shounen mag by bookstores/etc. It just has a wider age appeal (more sexy content, etc.), although it's still a very "male" magazine.

Actually, I think Gessan and Dengeki Daiou are pretty good examples of how demographics ("shounen"/"shoujo"/etc.) don't matter all that much, and magazine/magazine family profiles are more important. "Technically" they're both shounen, but in practice Gessan is pretty much targeting people of all ages and genders who enjoy the kind of manga it offers (I sort of wish it had been the magazine for the new LoGH manga, but of course Gessan is a smaller name mag than WYJ), while Dengeki Daiou is focusing on male otaku of all ages.
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