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INTEREST: Shueisha Says Female Jump Editors Need to 'Understand the Hearts of Boys'


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theilikepie



Joined: 30 Aug 2017
Posts: 60
PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 3:18 pm Reply with quote
Some of the best mangaka have been females. And there alot of good shojo with male authors. Demographics like shoujo or shonen dont even really matter anymore. Take act age for example. If it wasnt serialized in wsj I'd have thought it was shoujo. Its basically a more intense glass mask with less romance

They probably didn't have a clear excuse of why they didn't have female editors and panicked and said "they have to understand the heart of boys"? I'm not sure what that even means. Maybe in the past there used to be more guys who read shonen but nowadays its 50/50.

The appeal of shonen is action, cool fights and the power of friendship which is a universal appeal. If they like stuff like that and have the qualifications necessary they should he hired regardless of gender

And honestly alot of series could have benefited from a female editor or even female input. I liked Naruto but man kishimito did not know how to write women as he himself admited.
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Super_M



Joined: 08 May 2018
Posts: 201
PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 3:24 pm Reply with quote
I wonder if other shonen magazine from other companies have same politic. I think many girls like and read shonen, so they understand boy's heart. Some shonen have even majority girls audience.
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BinBouGami1234



Joined: 27 Sep 2012
Posts: 117
PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 3:28 pm Reply with quote
The notion that certain manga can only be enjoyed by a certain gender is such an outdated notion anyway, with sports manga especially are very popular among both gender. I feel like Shone Jump could reach a wider audience if it tried making manga that could appeal to both genders rather than trying to limit themselves to just one.
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Beatdigga



Joined: 26 Oct 2003
Posts: 4352
Location: New York
PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 3:29 pm Reply with quote
You know “We would welcome anyone who understands our primary demographic” says the same thing without sounding weird.
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ErikaD.D



Joined: 09 Jun 2019
Posts: 658
PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 3:32 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
When asked why Weekly Shonen Jump is different from shojo magazines, which frequently employ male editors despite a target audience of young girls

What a double standarts. It's almost 2020, yet sexism still exist in Japan and I feel that women in Japan are off limits like in China, India and muslim countries. This is Japan. Sad.
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Somer-_-



Joined: 14 May 2014
Posts: 984
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 3:34 pm Reply with quote
Does anyone have any specific examples of shonen manga with female editors? The article says there are some in other magazines but no titles.
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TotoroTheGreat



Joined: 20 Feb 2019
Posts: 5
PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 3:37 pm Reply with quote
This is funny because in 2012 Shueisha's own polls found that Jump has (a) almost an equal male to female reader base, with many series like Haikyuu having more female than male readers, (b) more readers above the age of 16 than below. So, Jump is no longer a magazine that only caters to young boys, it's something that caters to young and old boys and girls.
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MarthKoopa



Joined: 08 Apr 2012
Posts: 271
PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 4:04 pm Reply with quote
Not really complicated to understand

All shonen needs to succeed is boobs and shallow action
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Kuroi Ren



Joined: 09 Dec 2018
Posts: 143
PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 4:13 pm Reply with quote
It's SHOUNEN Jump. Don't get me wrong, there are great shounen mangaka who are female but the vast majority are male so...
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Scion Drake



Joined: 25 Nov 2017
Posts: 941
PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 4:15 pm Reply with quote
What’s there to understand, boys are simple. Then again kids in general are simple. Humans aren’t that distinct from each other.

It’s not really hard to gauge their interests. Sure it’s hard for executives, they have the innate inability to understand the basic interests of their audiences but for everyone else it should be simple enough.


Last edited by Scion Drake on Fri Nov 08, 2019 4:18 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Commander Cluck



Joined: 02 May 2019
Posts: 123
PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 4:18 pm Reply with quote
theilikepie wrote:
They probably didn't have a clear excuse of why they didn't have female editors and panicked and said "they have to understand the heart of boys"? I'm not sure what that even means.


This kind of mindset isn't really anything new. America has adopted this kind of approach to media in recent years as well. The whole idea of "only X people can write for X characters" is pretty common. Even here there's always pushes about how female characters should be written by women because "men don't know how to write women", so it shouldn't be controversial to say the opposite.
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Lord Geo



Joined: 18 Sep 2005
Posts: 2530
Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey
PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 4:23 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
When asked if he would hire female editors if he were editor in chief, he stated, "No, I'd make the department even more manly!"


To be fair, the way that panel from the manga is shown, it's meant to be taken as a bit of a joke. The main character is asking about female editors, with the first response being "Everyone in Jump has the heart of a woman", only for the main character to doubt that with "You don't get it". Then, when the "make it even more manly!" comes in, both the main character & the first responder poke fun at that answer with "What does that even mean?". Of course, seeing that there still has yet to be a female editor does color the joke poorly, but it's definitely not meant to be taken seriously.

Regardless, hopefully things will change one day over at Shonen Jump. I mean, if women can make manga for the magazine, & women can be editors over at its online sister site & even its seinen magazine sibling, then there's no reason why a woman can't be an editor for Shonen Jump.
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MikeNeko San



Joined: 02 Dec 2015
Posts: 51
PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 4:30 pm Reply with quote
There’s a missed opportunity for advocates for well-rounded female characters. That may translate to more profit for their competitors if there exists a market need for additional emotional resonance along with action and adventure sequences that they lack.

Also, that corporate line of thinking would never have taken a risk on Harry Potter.
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Lactobacillus yogurti



Joined: 17 Aug 2011
Posts: 839
Location: Latin America
PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 5:38 pm Reply with quote
I don't know why people are in a tizzy over this. Japan has always been chauvinistic as hell. Remember, they expect women to quit the jobs once they're married or pregnant. All they expect from them (well, us!) is being incubators. And later they wonder why women refuse to marry. It's fair to say that it's a "first-world country" with "third-world views" on equality. That's one of the reasons I'd never go there.
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maximilianjenus



Joined: 29 Apr 2013
Posts: 2858
PostPosted: Fri Nov 08, 2019 5:40 pm Reply with quote
MarthKoopa wrote:
Not really complicated to understand

All shonen needs to succeed is boobs and shallow action


Not really, those are the titles that won't even last a year; remember that shounen jump is very exigent so even titles that sell hundreds of thousands of copies like bleach , have to be cut to make place for titles that sell millions.

Somer-_- wrote:
Does anyone have any specific examples of shonen manga with female editors? The article says there are some in other magazines but no titles.


Yeah, that'd be nice to know; but at least that explains why they don't even exist in bakuman.

Beatdigga wrote:
You know “We would welcome anyone who understands our primary demographic” says the same thing without sounding weird.


Yeah, the way they phrased it does not help.
I was also very interested by the mangaka complaining bout not being able to become a shounen jump editor by working hard. I was talking with a guy who has worked in both china and japan and he said that in japan they promote you even if your work is bad as long as you work hard, while in china they don't care about how hard you work as long as you achieve your goals.
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