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Shoujo woes

....not that you have to. There's nothing at all wrong with enjoying shojo. Especially many of the series you've listed in this post. When your friends start ranting about it, say things like "Hey, Godchild and Vampire Knight aren't 'shojo stories'....they're horror stories. And I like horror. What's wrong with that?" I mean, hell, by their logic, are The Ring and The Grudge "shojo" because they're Japanese stories with female protagonists?

I really don't like how the grand majority of people--mainly other guys--constantly degrade shoujo. I mean, I've got two friends who utterly hate the genre. In fact, any anime that has romance as a central theme is instantly 'shoujo' to them. That, or the series has a girl for a protagonist, which isn't in a bikini, or shooting people dead. And if that isn't the case, the series isn't violent enough. And, perhaps they don't mean it, but the way they use the term is as though it were a 'lower' form of anime in general.

Thus, by use of their 'logic', 'To Heart', 'Aoi House', 'Chobits', 'Oh My Goddess!' (which one likes), 'Lunar Legend Tsukihime', 'Saber Marionette J', and 'Ai Yori Aoshi', 'xxxHOLiC', 'Prince of Tennis', and 'Ran the Samurai Girl' would all be shoujo, which we know isn't the case.

The correct definition for shojo is that it is written by women and it's target audience are female readers.

Read a plot synopsis of Angel Sanctuary to them.

Quote:

The correct definition for shojo is that it is written by women and it's target audience are female readers.

Nope, there are plenty of examples of men writing shojo (Leiji Matsumoto got his start here).

Kagemusha wrote:

Quote: The correct definition for shojo is that it is written by women and it's target audience are female readers. Nope, there are plenty of examples of men writing shojo (Leiji Matsumoto got his start here).

See, now back when I first became aware of shojo manga thanks to a series of great articles by Matt Thorn in Animerica, he always used the term "shojo" for manga that was created by female creators for female readers. That's the definition that was the most prevalent in pretty much everything I've ever read until the last few years, where the definition has changed to define a specific style instead.

Those same articles would also always mention the early "girls comics" created by the likes of Osamu Tezuka and Leiji Matsumoto, and that pretty much all manga for girls were created by men until the rise of the Forty-Niners, and that from then on out all manga that's considered "shojo" was from female creators.

"You know what the funniest thing about Japan is?"
"What?"
"It's the little differences. I mean they got the same shit over there that they got here, but it's just - it's just there it's a little different."
"Examples?"
"Alright, well you can walk up to a vending machine and buy a beer. And, like, women's underwear. From a vending machine. And you know what they call shoujo manga in Japan?"
"They don't call it shoujo manga?"
"Nah, man, they speak Japanese, they don't need no froo-froo Japanese words to talk about Japanese comics in Japan."
"What do they call it?"
"They call it girls' comics."
"Girls' comics."
"That's right."

Personally, I am sick of people with that much of a closed mind.

I know I said that I said that it's the 'girliness' of stuff like Full Moon that keeps me from reading it--I just have a hard time swallowing an over-cute little girl sighing over a guy. Really, I can't. But at least I know a good shoujo when I see
it.