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If you are talking about Kunisaki Izumo no Jijou, then firstly, otokonoko works are common for men's magazines,

and secondly, its publication in shonen magazine was considered a unique phenomenon, and her fans were mostly girls.

But if you want to say that the male homosexuality is a “female theme”, then seinen is not afraid to use it, especially when it comes to the already mentioned otokonoko or serious LGBT works like Bokura no Hentai or Shimanami Tasogare.

In any case, such division help very well to understand what, at least, to expect from the work ahead.

Absolutely not. Having preconceptions of shoujo/shounen/etc. as genres is I think pretty misleading and can be pretty harmful. For example, many people have this idea that "shoujo" is crappy pink romances and/or it's for girls and thus it's inferior by default). If I told you that I have a great, exciting shoujo manga, what would you expect? Not Himitsu that's for sure. Similarly, If I told you that I have this great seinen manga called Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori or Poco's Udon World, and you built your expectations for it based on the traits that people commonly associate with "seinen" you'd end up very confused. And there are all those great shoujo sci-fi manga that a lot of people can't even imagine existing because "how could shoujo be sci-fi?" and "but it's not frilly pink romance, this must be josei or seinen" etc.

People should finally accept that shoujo/shounen/etc. are target demographics not genres, and just because something is say "shounen" or "shoujo" or "seinen" it doesn't really mean anything by default. The actual genres are what people should be looking at - once you have a grasp of that then yes, it might be helpful to know what the work's main target audience is. But when you know nothing about the work yet and you already try categorizing it...

#HayamiLover wrote:

If you are talking about Kunisaki Izumo no Jijou, then firstly, otokonoko works are common for men's magazines,

Except, Kunisaki Izumo is not an otokonoko manga. Like, at all. (Let's just say I've read enough of those to know.) There's some jokes with that overtone, but they're not prevalent.

That wasn't what I was saying, though... I was making the point that a lot of manga that people here would consider "shoujo" or "josei" or "seinen" are actually something completely different, and so trying to stuff things into boxes based on arbitrarily decided values that the manga industry has, by and large, moved on from by now - is pointless.

Absolutely not. Having preconceptions of shoujo/shounen/etc. as genres is I think pretty misleading and can be pretty harmful. For example, many people have this idea that "shoujo" is crappy pink romances and/or it's for girls and thus it's inferior by default). If I told you that I have a great, exciting shoujo manga, what would you expect? Not Himitsu that's for sure. Similarly, If I told you that I have this great seinen manga called Rokuhoudou Yotsuiro Biyori or Poco's Udon World, and you built your expectations for it based on the traits that people commonly associate with "seinen" you'd end up very confused. And there are all those great shoujo sci-fi manga that a lot of people can't even imagine existing because "how could shoujo be sci-fi?" and "but it's not frilly pink romance, this must be josei or seinen" etc.

People should finally accept that shoujo/shounen/etc. are target demographics not genres, and just because something is say "shounen" or "shoujo" or "seinen" it doesn't really mean anything by default. The actual genres are what people should be looking at - once you have a grasp of that then yes, it might be helpful to know what the work's main target audience is. But when you know nothing about the work yet and you already try categorizing it...

Any sources by what you refer to as "considered"? Also, duh, obviously it was mostly read by girls (although if you read the 2ch/etc. conversations while it was running, there were many guys as well, also a lot of people were expecting Izumo to turn out to have been a girl all along) - but for that matter it fit very well into Sunday's profile and wasn't out of place among all the other manga in the magazine. Anyway, the point I was making is that a shounen magazine was running a manga with themes that a lot of people would immediately associate with "shoujo" and actually, it wasn't all that much of a big deal. And while Kunisaki Izumo is kind of an extreme example, shounen and seinen magazines diversifying and trying to target and include female readers is not rare at all. Most ostensibly shounen magazines can be pretty much considered unisex at this point, and many ostensibly shounen manga take great pains to be appealing for female readers.

There was a point in time when Rurouni Kenshin was jokingly called "Shounen Jump's shoujo manga." Today nobody would understand this joke, attitudes have changed so much. So many manga that are just pretty much unisex by default, and there's no more editorial pressure to include Trope X or Character Type Y that appeal to specifically male readers. (I think it was WSJ perhaps? or Shounen Magazine? that had a short period where it tried to go "back to its roots" and publish Manga For Boys Only, We Want No Icky Girls Reading This Thankyouverymuch. Whichever magazine it was, they abandoned the idea shortly.)

My opponent has a rather peculiar concept of genres. For example, as you see, he believes that it is unusual for a shoujo to have a male protagonist. Probably Natsume's note is also some kind of wrong shoujo.

SHD wrote:

Except, Kunisaki Izumo is not an otokonoko manga. Like, at all. (Let's just say I've read enough of those to know.) There's some jokes with that overtone, but they're not prevalent.

"definitely not yaoi" story in a men's magazine that talks about the relationship between a shounen boy and a very feminine boy-crossdresser. Yep, never otokonoko, lol.

SHD wrote:

The fact that seinen is not afraid of those themes that you associate with a female audience does not mean that these definitions are meaningless. It only means that your notions about genres are very stereotypical and you get confused when the tags of the work do not correspond to your prejudices.

Secondly, I will have to repeat again - what you mentioned is Shonen Jump bishonen syndrome. It has nothing to do with writing gender-neutral stories or trying to make a magazine gender-neutral. This is just a tendency to add attractive elements for girls in initially shonen work.

With this, I’ll end our conversation, because I don’t have much time to explain obvious things in response to strange logical conclusions like "if a men's magazine has a noticeable female fanbase, then its works is gender-neutral".

But hey, if you're not willing to actually listen to what I'm saying there's no point in having a discussion.

SHD wrote:

But hey, if you're not willing to actually listen to what I'm saying there's no point in having a discussion.

If by “you don’t want to listen,” you understand that I’m already tired of your walls of text, twisted logic, arrogant communication style and as if deliberately absurd distortion of what I am telling you, then yes, I don’t want to listen to you. So, I'd rather prefer to finish the discussion than spend a lot of time on a detailed analysis of each of your phrases.