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Answerman - What Makes A Manga Shonen Or Shoujo?


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MetalEmolga



Joined: 12 Jan 2017
Posts: 14
PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 2:31 pm Reply with quote
rizuchan wrote:
I find the distinctions less useful for action shows, but more useful for romance... There's a pretty big difference between shoujo romance and dating sim spin-offs.

Not that splitting romance shows into "for girls" or "for boys" is perfect, by any means. I remember seeing tons of guys on reddit getting wrapped up in Kimi ni Todoke or My Love Story and going "Why is this so different from most anime romance??" (Because it's shoujo), and an equal number of girls amazed that Clannad was written for guys. And then you have seinen romance which could resemble any of the above.

But, those problems seem more like exceptions than when I go, "I want to check out a new sappy romance anime," try to browse Funimation or wherever, and 95% of the "romance" category is just issekai shows with a harem element or fanservice shows.


I always find it funny when guy's who have only watched shonen/seinen anime act shocked when they watch a shojo/josei series for the first time. Like when dudes were confused that Card Captors Clear Card, a show made for young girls, didn't have tons of sexualized fanserviece. And when ero-Josei anime shorts started being made. There were ton's of men who were totally confused as to whether these were supposed to be "ecchi" or "hentai". And didn't understand why these stories had so much romance in them despite featuring sex.
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partially



Joined: 14 Oct 2007
Posts: 702
Location: Oz
PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 3:51 pm Reply with quote
I think the real question is, if you are enjoying it, who cares? Laughing

It is exactly the same problem with a lot of western demographics and genres. Look at the incredibly blurry line between sci-fi and fantasy these days. Or indeed what is termed young adult/teen fiction and other fiction. Sometimes it is easy to tell, sometimes it is incredibly blurry.

In the end the only purpose of the things are to tell you roughly whether its aimed at you or not. And the likelihood you will enjoy it. Yet I have seen people get incredibly hung-up over demographics it's ridiculous. "Oh I would NEVER read teen fiction" etc. People don't like to do things that aren't labelled 'for them'. As if not following a category will make them sullied or something. And it is equally a problem of course for the Japanese demographics, except, the Japanese split their demographics audience up a lot more so the problem becomes worse.
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Compelled to Reply



Joined: 14 Jan 2017
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 4:00 pm Reply with quote
Jonny Mendes wrote:
The reason is that in Japan the notion of age group is also blurry. Unlike the west were there is a definitive separation of age moments in a person life (baby, child, adolescent, adult, old age) in Japan life is mostly viewed as a continuum from birth to dead.
Age can be defined in legal terms, like legal age of drink, marriage, drive, and in case of manga/anime there are restrictions on age of adult R-18 manga/anime but the separation of childhood, adolescence, adult etc is very blurry.

As if "age moments" aren't blurry in general? For years we've been bickering about arbitrary adjustments in age limits for adult activities, while Japan just sets most stuff at a safe twenty. Frankly, the notion of age group is more structured in Japan. There's even a "Coming of Age Day" the second Monday of every January for twenty year-olds transitioning into adults, although it's secularized from the "genpuku" ceremony which it's derived and overall attendance decreased below half the population in the past several years.


Last edited by Compelled to Reply on Mon Mar 12, 2018 4:20 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Chiibi



Joined: 19 Dec 2011
Posts: 4828
PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 4:10 pm Reply with quote
relyat08 wrote:
I certainly don't know why anyone would avoid a manga just because it is serialized in a demographic magazine they aren't part of, but I guess we're still not at a place socially where people feel at ease enjoying things that weren't targeted at their age group or gender.
When I watch something like Karakai Jouzu no Takagi-san, and see Takagi's crush be so embarrassed to be seen reading a shoujo romance manga that he lies pathetically about it, even though no one else cares, it's a little frustrating. Overall, I think it's getting better though.


Oh I totally get it.

It's the same reason an adult man caught looking at My Little Pony figures would lie pathetically about it. Anime hyper

People WILL make fun of guys for loving girl things. We girls don't have to worry because if we're caught loving guy things, we are perceived as "cool". Cool
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Jose Cruz



Joined: 20 Nov 2012
Posts: 1767
Location: South America
PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:02 pm Reply with quote
Justin wrote:
As years go by and manga magazines' readership goes down and down, perhaps this may be less of an issue. Manga will certainly live on, but in new, less demographically categorized ways.


I am sorry but that's incorrect. It's not true at all that readership is collapsing and that the demographic classification system is regarded as obsolete.

The editor of Shounen Jump has said that now more people than ever are reading manga but fewer people are buyer physical copies. Thing is that today people read mainly digital manga and don't buy the paper: in 2017 sales of digital manga surpassed physical sales of books and magazines in Japan (which implies most of the profits are in digital manga since physical manga has printing costs which are zero in digital manga). Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/08/02/business/manga-goes-digital-via-smartphone-apps-paper-comics-still-place/#.WqcGa-jwaUk

Now, the demographic classification system is obviously never going to be obsolete. That's because demographic groups are always going to exist.

Also I should add that "seinen" doesn't actually mean that it is aimed at an adult male audience. It means it is aimed at a general adult audience.


Last edited by Jose Cruz on Mon Mar 12, 2018 6:11 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Jose Cruz



Joined: 20 Nov 2012
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:07 pm Reply with quote
kawaiibunny3 wrote:
The weirder thing to me is when a series is published in a younger demographic's magazine - but then the anime goes on to cater to adults.

Like the last time I flipped through a Nakayoshi magazine (typically for 8-12 year old girls) the original Sabagebu manga was being published. I thought it was an odd fit but saw how it could appeal to that demographic, then the anime got made and it was put on late at night and next to no merchandise was made for little girls, it was just the typical things that adult otaku buy.
Maybe that's just a more extreme case, but I definitely think that there's a rise in publishers mixing genres & demographics just to make anything that sticks.


Why would it be surprising that shoujo and shounen manga are adapted into late night shows? Late night shows are mainly watched by teenagers and college students who can afford to stay up late at night and who are also called "shounen" and "shoujo" in Japan.
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Chrono1000





PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:09 pm Reply with quote
Compelled to Reply wrote:
If you ask a teenager whether a series is shonen or seinen, they're more discerning from reasons like psychology, age, and development stage, compared to old and dulled otaku like us.
I think familiarity with manga is most important in discerning the intended demographic of a manga but I don't see why a teenage boy would have a problem reading seinen manga if he is already a fan of shonen manga. If anything it is more of a challenge to stop that from happening.

Compelled to Reply wrote:
As if "age moments" aren't blurry in general? For years we've been bickering about arbitrary adjustments in age limits for adult activities, while Japan just sets most stuff at a safe twenty. Frankly, the notion of age group is more structured in Japan.
There is a separation of age categories in Japan but there is no western puritanical movement so there are some major differences in what is considered acceptable in entertainment.
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kawaiibunny3



Joined: 10 Aug 2008
Posts: 534
Location: Houston, Texas
PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:26 pm Reply with quote
Jose Cruz wrote:
kawaiibunny3 wrote:
The weirder thing to me is when a series is published in a younger demographic's magazine - but then the anime goes on to cater to adults.

Like the last time I flipped through a Nakayoshi magazine (typically for 8-12 year old girls) the original Sabagebu manga was being published. I thought it was an odd fit but saw how it could appeal to that demographic, then the anime got made and it was put on late at night and next to no merchandise was made for little girls, it was just the typical things that adult otaku buy.
Maybe that's just a more extreme case, but I definitely think that there's a rise in publishers mixing genres & demographics just to make anything that sticks.


Why would it be surprising that shoujo and shounen manga are adapted into late night shows? Late night shows are mainly watched by teenagers and college students who can afford to stay up late at night and who are also called "shounen" and "shoujo" in Japan.


Because Nakayoshi is primarily published for elementary school aged children? Like the Precure manga runs in it too.
I'm not surprised that Sabagebu was put on late at night, I'm more surprised it was published in Nakayoshi at all to be honest. It's a gag manga about high school girls with guns. Reading it felt more like reading K-On than something like Yumeiro Patissiere, which makes me think that a more young adult-oriented series was published in there to grab that demographic in the first place.

That was my point and why I think paying such close attention to the "shoujo" or "seinen" label on certain franchises can get silly.
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Compelled to Reply



Joined: 14 Jan 2017
Posts: 358
PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:29 pm Reply with quote
Chiibi wrote:
It's the same reason an adult man caught looking at My Little Pony figures would lie pathetically about it. Anime hyper

Except one is a fictional and innocent middle schooler who's teased by a girl who likes him for it, and the other is usually a morbidly obese and smelly manchild who doesn't even hide the fact and deserves to be shamed for his and society's sake.

Quote:
People WILL make fun of guys for loving girl things. We girls don't have to worry because if we're caught loving guy things, we are perceived as "cool". Cool

Ever heard of Gamergate?

Chrono1000 wrote:
I think familiarity with manga is most important in discerning the intended demographic of a manga but I don't see why a teenage boy would have a problem reading seinen manga if he is already a fan of shonen manga. If anything it is more of a challenge to stop that from happening.

Yes, but there might be more complex themes he wouldn't understand and/or unknowingly brushes over.

Quote:
There is a separation of age categories in Japan but there is no western puritanical movement so there are some major differences in what is considered acceptable in entertainment.

By no "western puritanical movement," are you implying none or fewer? Neither are the case and you still get parents groups who for example, come out of the shadows when something considered obscene airs on television too early, or instances where something isn't flat-out aired. Of course there are some major differences in what is considered acceptable in entertainment when talking about animation, but you talk as if hentai is aired on Japanese national TV at lunchtime.


Last edited by Compelled to Reply on Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:50 pm; edited 3 times in total
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bigivel



Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Posts: 536
PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:36 pm Reply with quote
People love to misanderstand concepts. This is one of the most popular ones, mainly because it is concepts made with foreign words. In fact the Western also has this same concepts to books and people also love to confuse them.
Also the people that don't understand the concept and so not its reason to exist and call it obsolete are funny, but really sad.

You have this different things "Classification", "Genre", "Target Audience", "Hit Audience".

Classification: Is the division of related entities by an identifier(normally a name) with the objective to distinguish them. All the following concepts are Classifications.

Genre: Is the classification(division of related entities by an identifier) taking in consideration the similar content in each of the entities.

Target Audience: Is the classification taking in consideration the "creators" of the entities audience of choice.(Note: it has nothing, but really nothing, to do with the content of the entity. If I want to buy a present to my wife, just that information is highly relevant, informative and important, even though you don't know what present I really will buy9

Hit Audience: Is the classification taking in consideration the audience that is most attracted to the entity. (Note: Think of it like my mother made a cake to me, but my brothers loved it while I didn't. The Cake Target Audience is ME, the Cake Hit Audience his my brothers).

Now, knowing this. Demographic is a Target Audience. Not a Genre, not a Hit Audience. just a Target Audience. This means that how the series is made and its quirks don't matter. Attack on Titan is Shounen, not because of the content, but because it was made with the intention to attract Shounen people. Also this means that the audience that ended up loving the series more doesn't make it a Target Audience, basically the fact that Prince of Tennis is loved by so many girls doesn't mean it was created for girls, Prince of Tennis, like all Shounen Sport Series was made for Boys. Do you know what other sport series is made for boys and is loved by girls? Slam Dunk, more than even Prince of Tennis, the only difference is that around the same number of Boys also like Slam Dunk, this doesn't make the series multisex Targeted. Kuroko no Basket and Haikyuu are also all targeted to Boys not girls. It really doesn't matter the number of girls that like it. Also note that targeting something doesn't mean repelling the inverse demographic(Girls). Prince of Tennis being targeted to Boys doesn't mean it tries or has to repel Girls. The same for age.

Target Audience is probably the most important classification for producers and for audience. People that say that it is obsolete is because they never made anything, or when making it they really never thought what they were making and just made it.
When you create something that thing needs to have a well defined focus, this is the most essential thing. If it doesn't, then it will not attract anybody. Even if the author totally fails the Target and Hits some other audience, the fact that he had a well defined focus was the reason why it was able to hit anything. It seems a paradox, but in order to hit everything you need to try to just hit one thing.
Examples of this done sucessfully in manga are:

Attack on Titan: (Target)Boys, (Hit)All
One Piece: (Target)Boys, (Hit)All
Nana: (Target)Girls, (Hit)All
One Punch Man: (Target)Young Adult Boys, (Hit)All
...

And so on.

Also note that "Shonen Action" isn't a genre. It is a Double Classification of "Target Audience"-"Genre". Just like the (x,y) is not a coordinate, but a coordinate 2-tuple, that can also be called a Vector.
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Yuvelir



Joined: 06 Jan 2015
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:39 pm Reply with quote
Using those demographic monickers makes sense when all you read are "battle shounen", "romance shoujo" and/or "thriller seinen". Once you move beyond those three genres, using "shounen" and the like as content-defining genres quickly becomes futile and devoid of any sense. Demographic labels just provide no useful information, they're only silly deterrents.

Of course there are people who will cling to these like their lives depended of it, but it's funny to tease those types. Just watch a "seinen fan" bragging about how mature their tastes are, only to lose their shit when you show them that all those moemoe Kirara shows are seinen too.

Chiibi wrote:
It's the same reason an adult man caught looking at My Little Pony figures would lie pathetically about it. Anime hyper

There's a... different kind of stigma attached to that one. Quite different from just "man that likes girly stuff".

bigivel wrote:
Also note that "Shonen Action" isn't a genre. It is a Double Classification of "Target Audience"-"Genre". Just like the (x,y) is not a coordinate, but a coordinate 2-tuple, that can also be called a Vector.

*pushes up glasses*
Acsssshually that's just a point. For a vector you will need (x1,y1) plus (x2,y2). And even that will only give you the magnitude, you will need to express its orientation too.
spoiler[Now's when my high school knowledge gets owned.]

As for the target argument... are we sure One Punch Man had that specific target? It was a webcomic afterall and I don't know whether One ever came out to state what his target was.
Anyway, as a whole I do agree that to make an engaging work you do need a clear target. I just disagree that this target HAS to be a combination of age and sex. A successful target can be something as diffuse yet specific as "people who like weird comedy" or "people who want to feel relaxed".


Last edited by Yuvelir on Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:52 pm; edited 2 times in total
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John Thacker



Joined: 28 Oct 2013
Posts: 1006
PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:47 pm Reply with quote
Compelled to Reply wrote:
Jonny Mendes wrote:
The reason is that in Japan the notion of age group is also blurry. Unlike the west were there is a definitive separation of age moments in a person life (baby, child, adolescent, adult, old age) in Japan life is mostly viewed as a continuum from birth to dead.
Age can be defined in legal terms, like legal age of drink, marriage, drive, and in case of manga/anime there are restrictions on age of adult R-18 manga/anime but the separation of childhood, adolescence, adult etc is very blurry.

As if "age moments" aren't blurry in general? For years we've been bickering about arbitrary adjustments in age limits for adult activities, while Japan just sets most stuff at a safe twenty. Frankly, the notion of age group is more structured in Japan. There's even a "Coming of Age Day" the second Monday of every January for twenty year-olds transitioning into adults, although it's secularized from the "genpuku" ceremony which it's derived and overall attendance decreased below half the population in the past several years.


They are considering changing the age of majority to 18 (it's always a couple of years away, following some study recommendation), but yeah, it's a lot more structured and consistent in Japan than in many places. The previous post is an odd statement, I'm not sure where that opinion came from. (The USA in particular has a lot of differences by state.)
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John Thacker



Joined: 28 Oct 2013
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PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:54 pm Reply with quote
Yuvelir wrote:
Using those demographic monickers makes sense when all you read are "battle shounen", "romance shoujo" and/or "thriller seinen". Once you move beyond those three genres, using "shounen" and the like as content-defining genres quickly becomes futile and devoid of any sense. Demographic labels just provide no useful information, they're only silly deterrents.


I think you're conflating two statements, one correct and one incorrect.

It's true that a simple list of demographic target audience alone is wildly insufficient, and seeing people use "shounen" and "shoujo" as nouns meaning some kind of genre is incredibly grating to my ears. ("A shounen" to me sounds horrible, unless you're attempting to actually talk about a boy, not talk about a boy-aimed piece of media.)

However, demographic labels do provide useful information, especially when combined with genres. Shounen romances, shoujo romances, seinen romances, and josei romances are all different, and having the demographic label gives you some sort of idea about what sort of tropes will be present, along with the emotional maturity, which characters are likely to get focus or be normative characters, the reading level, the art style, and so on. That's true of all sorts of genres. It's true that they often do deter people from reading (which I view as a mistake, as I've never let that sort of thing stop me whether as a child or now from reading material in English or Japanese), but they do provide information. Some people know what they like, and want to know whether something is within their comfort zone, with character with whom they closely and easily identify, or whether something is likely to contain characters whose thoughts and feelings are alien to them, even if it's because they want to learn something new from that.
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Compelled to Reply



Joined: 14 Jan 2017
Posts: 358
PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 5:55 pm Reply with quote
John Thacker wrote:
They are considering changing the age of majority to 18 (it's always a couple of years away, following some study recommendation), but yeah, it's a lot more structured and consistent in Japan than in many places. The previous post is an odd statement, I'm not sure where that opinion came from. (The USA in particular has a lot of differences by state.)

Yep, the Japanese voting age was lowered to eighteen a couple years ago to combat the abyssal voter turnout (if you think "only old people vote," Japan takes it to another level), but to no avail.
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bigivel



Joined: 05 Nov 2007
Posts: 536
PostPosted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 6:04 pm Reply with quote
Yuvelir wrote:

bigivel wrote:
Also note that "Shonen Action" isn't a genre. It is a Double Classification of "Target Audience"-"Genre". Just like the (x,y) is not a coordinate, but a coordinate 2-tuple, that can also be called a Vector.

*pushes up glasses*
Acsssshually that's just a point. For a vector you will need (x1,y1) plus (x2,y2). And even that will only give you the magnitude, you will need to express its orientation too.
spoiler[Now's when my high school knowledge gets owned.]

As for the target argument... are we sure One Punch Man had that specific target? It was a webcomic afterall and I don't know whether One ever came out to state what his target was.
Anyway, as a whole I do agree that to make an engaging work you do need a clear target. I just disagree that this target HAS to be a combination of age and sex. A successful target can be something as diffuse yet specific as "people who like weird comedy" or "people who want to feel relaxed".


A vector, magnitude and direction, in its most basic form is defined by the coordinate (x, y), where it goes from the base coordinate (0,0) to the point also defined by (x, y). You don't need anything else to define a vector.

A Vector defined by two points, is basically a vector displaced from the base coordinate. Calculating is magnitude is basically calculating the difference of magnitudes of the vectors defined by each of those points, and the direction is also the substraction of those 2 vectors directions.

One Punch Man isn't just a webcomic, it was published in a Web Magazine, a Seinen one. So yes, One Punch Man is a Seinen.
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