Forum - View topic

Answerman - What Makes A Manga Shonen Or Shoujo?

The "demonization of male sexual desire" is a pretty new thing created out of nothing by feminazis here in the West, also called "toxic masculinity." Everything is labeled as such by them anyway.

If To Love-Ru was released a decade ago, that wouldn't be the issue, rather the general sexual content which was controversial in Japan, too.

Some people feel embarrassed for liking something that is not aim to their age group. In Japan, they view Shonen stuff no different how most Americans view stuff like Transformers, Power Rangers, GI Joe, Adventure Time, etc. Stuff for kids and nothing else. Sunday anime to Japan is what Saturday morning cartoons are to the US.

I mean yes there a few works that blur the line, but in general 90 percent of stuff can be categorized into its respective category following those two simple rules (assuming its one of those 4 or 6 categories).

step 1 - gender of the protagonist.
If male its Shonen or Seinen. Or if you want to take it all the way Shonen Ai, Yaoi.
If female its Shoujo or Josei or Shoujo Ai or Yuri.

step 2 - theme or tone of the work
if serious, dark, or mature you have josei or seninen.
if its light, fun, or more naive/cartoony (and this is refering more to the action in the work) its shonen or shoujo.

Pidgeot18 wrote:

Well, since you're trying to be pedantic, I'll have to point out that you are in fact wrong in multiple places.

Thank you, I was fishing for something this long-winded. And served as a refresher for some concepts.
Although in the original post the concept that "(x,y) isn't a coordinate" grated me.

I honestly dont know why you would make the argument that categories or genre are a bad thing. They are just a way to classify similar themed works.

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.

Hello everyone. Are you a reader of physical paper books? Or are do you read electronic ones? I’m sure that you have all heard that the paper book industry is currently on the decline, but exactly how long has the shift from paper to digital media been going on?

step 1 - gender of the protagonist.

If male its Shonen or Seninen. Or if you want to take it all the way Shonen Ai, Yaoi.

If female its Shoujo or Josei or Shoujo Ai or Yuri.

step 2 - theme or tone of the work

if serious, dark, or mature you have josei or seninen.

if its light, fun, or more naive/cartoony (and this is refering more to the action in the work) its shonen or shoujo.

I mean yes there a few works that blur the line, but in general 90 percent of stuff can be categorized into its respective category following those two simple rules (assuming its one of those 4 or 6 categories).

Well, I've been scolded for having opinions on works that "are not for me anyway, so shoo". Since I read manga for all target audiences alike, this can be a problem.

Spawn29 wrote:

Some people feel embarrassed for liking something that is not aim to their age group. In Japan, they view Shonen stuff no different how most Americans view stuff like Transformers, Power Rangers, GI Joe, Adventure Time, etc. Stuff for kids and nothing else. Sunday anime to Japan is what Saturday morning cartoons are to the US.

That's not true at all. There are a lot of shonen series with huge followings of adults and kids alike. There's no real modern American version of it, but the closest would be the Simpsons back in the late 80s and early 90s. A prime time show both kids and adults enjoyed. Labeling stuff like One Piece or Dragonball as no different than Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon stuff does them a disservice, the mainstream difference is pretty big.

That's not true at all. There are a lot of shonen series with huge followings of adults and kids alike. There's no real modern American version of it, but the closest would be the Simpsons back in the late 80s and early 90s. A prime time show both kids and adults enjoyed. Labeling stuff like One Piece or Dragonball as no different than Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon stuff does them a disservice, the mainstream difference is pretty big.

There is no comic/animation Western equivalent to manga. In fact it's closest western equivalent would be Hollywood live action movies since these media products are consumed by wide ranges of demographics.

Jose Cruz wrote:

There is no comic/animation Western equivalent to manga. In fact it's closest western equivalent would be Hollywood live action movies since these media products are consumed by wide ranges of demographics.

I think this is something important to emphasize - it's hard for us, here in the West, to grasp the way manga works in Japan for two reasons: First, as Jose correctly points out, we have nothing even remotely like it in the West. Second, even if we did, we split our demographics up differently anyhow.

Jose Cruz wrote:

Indeed. To Love-Ru is something that would be completely radical for a westerner adult comic much less a teenager comic.

The "demonization of male sexual desire" is a pretty new thing created out of nothing by feminazis here in the West, also called "toxic masculinity." Everything is labeled as such by them anyway.

If To Love-Ru was released a decade ago, that wouldn't be the issue, rather the general sexual content which was controversial in Japan, too.

Wow, that's some nasty stereotyping/fandom-shaming, doncha think?

not cool.....Shaming a person for their taste in media (no matter how much you don't understand it, is. not. a. mature. thing. to. do.

In fact, shame on you. >:/

But you're missing the point entirely. Of COURSE Nishikata wouldn't want his not-girlfriend to find out he likes something so cheesey that would make even a hardcore shoujo-lover cringe in the corner.

I haven't.

It's true that Japan has a very different way of dealing with sexuality than the West. I don't think it has anything to do with feminism, in fact, if you watch Hollywood movies from the 1940's and 1950's way before modern feminism, they were mostly extremely puritanical. The roots for this puritanical attitude are from Christianity/Judaism: the entire Christian/Jewish moral culture, which is the moral culture of all countries of Europe, North America, South America, Israel and Australia/New Zealand, thinks sexuality is a taboo. It's true it has gotten more liberal in recent decades but we still don't have anything like Japan's hypersexualized visual culture in any Western country. I would think that Brazil's culture might be the most sexually liberal regarding heterosexual male desire among western countries but we also don't have anything like hentai here.

In addition there is another factor beside Jewish/Christian moral values that prevents sexualized comics and animation from becoming popular in the western world. It is the Western aesthetic standards. The Western aesthetic standards have been heavily influenced by Ancient Greek philosophy and as Plato stated, art has to adhere to physical reality. Since comics and animation by nature are more abstract/stylized than live action film or literature they have been relegated to a marginalized position in the artistic "food chain" and hence it is not socially acceptable to be into hentai in the western world and most comics and animation have been restricted to non-serious low brown comedy like South Park and if drawings have erotic content they usually try to be very realistic.

For example this heavy metal album cover from a band from Germany is handrawn and is aimed at a "seinen audience", it has some erotic elements but it's style is quite realistic:



While stuff like To Love Ru is much more stylized.

Okay, sorry for my opinion that it's not healthy for a grown man to be obsessed with something like MLP?