Shoujo, also known as’shojo’,’shōjo’, or ‘少女’, is an anime or manga aimed at a teen female demographic. The term translates to ‘young woman’ in Japanese, and it is a demographic for young girls in their preteens or childhood. Shoujo manga is a popular choice for those aged between 13 and 20. During the mid-1960s, men outnumbered women in creating shojo manga.
Shoujo is a genre of Japanese comics targeting adolescent females and young adult women. It is often translated as ‘young girl’, but can more accurately be translated as ‘adolescent girl’. The O sound is held for a second longer in shōjo. The art style of shoujo can vary from artist to artist, but there are generally bright colors, sparkles, flowers, and cute designs.
Shoujo manga is a popular choice for gift-giving, with many fans referring to it as ‘heteronormative romance set in high school or urban fantasy.’ However, it is important to note that shoujo can also be a source of inspiration for other genres, such as seinen and josei. Overall, shoujo is a diverse and engaging genre that caters to a diverse range of female audiences.
📹 The History of Shoujo Manga
0:00 Intro Sketch 3:02 Opening 5:02 What is Shoujo Manga? 7:15 The History of Shoujo 9:42 Shoujo Shosetsu 10:30 Shoujo …
What is the difference between shoujo and otome?
Rivals and villainesses in modern otome games are rare, with few female characters and nameless NPCs. Rival and villainess-type characters are more common in shojo manga and anime. However, there are storylines where rival characters and nameless NPCs act hostile to the heroine, especially if the character is popular. The setting may involve death or major injury for both parties, but these characters are often not major players and do not affect the characters’ backstory.
Otome games have more variety in their settings, often featuring large academies for main characters to attend, with the use of magic varying depending on the writer. Many storylines open with the main character’s childhood, but the main story and original game’s main scenario usually take place in high school.
Does shojo mean virgin?
Shojo, the Japanese word for “female virgin”, is often romanized as shojo or shoujo. It is also associated with various mythological creatures, such as the sea spirit with red hair and alcohol addiction, or the orangutan. Shojo is also used in Japanese comics, targeting young girls. Notable figures in the shōjo community include Yuki Shoujou, a mixed martial artist, and Shōjo Comic, a manga magazine published by Shogakukan since 1968. Shōjō-ji is a Buddhist temple in Yugawa, Japan. Shōnen is the Japanese word for “young boy” or “minor”.
What does shoujo mean?
The genre of Shojo manga, which originated in Japan, is a form of manga intended for teenage and pre-teenage girls. It features romantic stories set in high school, as well as fantasy and action tales. The term “shoujo” is derived from the Japanese word “shoujo,” which means “girl manga.”
Is romantic killer shoujo?
Romantic Killer, a Shonen manga published by Shonen Jump, blurred the lines between shonen and shojo genres by presenting a mix of both. The protagonist, Anzu Hoshino, is a young girl who has no interest in romantic pursuits but is suddenly robbed of her interests by a magical creature. This fairy traps her in an existence where she must pursue love, despite the suitors being easy on the eyes. Romantic Killer was perfect as an entry point for those unfamiliar with either side of the divide, and with an anime adaptation coming to Netflix, it’s now the time to see how it bridges the shojo/shonen gap. The manga, which was published by Shueisha’s Shonen Jump+ from 2019 to 2020, tells the story of a girl who is forced to pursue love despite her love for video games, her cat, and delicious snacks.
What is a Joseimuke?
Joseimuke refers to media targeting a female audience, such as manga and drama CDs. However, many people are categorizing idol/card-raising mobage franchises like A3!, IDOLiSH7, and Ensemble Stars as otome games, which are not otome games. These titles would be more classified under the general category of Joseimuke or works that “target a female audience”. This confusion has become frustrating for both those who know about these categories and those who are new to the spectrum.
A blog post by Yukina on the Uguu Cage of Love blog explains the difference between otome games and joseimuke games, aiming to reduce confusion. However, further research is needed to understand the difference and help reduce frustration for those who are convinced games like Ensemble Stars are otome games. This helps to reduce the frustration of those who have to explain why these titles are joseimuke games and not otome games.
What is opposite of shoujo?
The term “shounen” is used in Japan to categorize manga series for boys. “Seinen” is used for manga series for adult men, “shoujo” for manga series for girls, and “jousei” for manga series for adult women.
What are the subgenres of shoujo?
From 1975 to 2009, shōjo manga evolved stylistically and into various subgenres, with Yukari Fujimoto highlighting the 1990s as a period of self-fulfillment. The genre featured characters fighting for community destiny, such as Red River, Basara, Magic Knight Rayearth, and Sailor Moon. The 1990s shōjo manga also highlighted emotional bonds between women, surpassing those between men and women. Major sub-genres include romance, science fiction, fantasy, magical girl, yaoi, and josei.
Shōjo manga refers to stories serialized in shōjo manga magazines, which can be published bi-weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly. Weekly shōjo magazines, common in the 1960s and 1970s, disappeared by the early 1980s. Some magazines outside Japan, like Shojo Beat and Smile, still feature shōjo manga. However, few shōjo magazines are published in English.
What is adult shojo called?
Josei manga is a genre of Japanese graphic novels aimed at adult women aged 18+, featuring themes such as romance, sex, and drama. These stories are often more mature and detailed than their shojo counterparts. Manga is an umbrella term for various comic books and graphic novels, typically published in black and white, unlike American comic books which are usually printed in full color. Japanese manga is read right-to-left, unlike English language publications, which are typically left-to-right. While it may take some practice to adjust to this format, it is a popular choice for those who enjoy reading English.
Is shoujo for boys?
Shōjo manga, or “girls’ comics”, is an editorial category of Japanese comics targeting adolescent females and young adult women. It is one of the primary editorial categories of manga, along with shōnen manga, seinen manga, and josei manga. Originating from Japanese girls’ culture at the turn of the twentieth century, shōjo manga began as a series of girls’ prose novels and lyrical paintings. It began to formalize as a distinct category in the 1950s, with the emergence of female artists in the 1960s and 1970s leading to significant creative innovation and the development of more graphically and thematically complex stories.
Since the 1980s, the category has developed stylistically while branching into different and overlapping subgenres. Shōjo manga does not refer to a specific style or genre but rather indicates a target demographic. While certain aesthetic, visual, and narrative conventions are associated with shōjo manga, these conventions have changed and evolved over time, and none are strictly exclusive to shōjo manga.
Nonetheless, several concepts and themes have come to be typically associated with shōjo manga, such as non-rigid panel layouts and highly detailed eyes, as well as characters that defy traditional roles and stereotypes surrounding gender and sexuality.
Is boys Love shojo?
Boys’ Love (BL), also known as bīeru, is a genre of fictional media originating in Japan that depicts homoerotic relationships between male characters. It is typically created by women for a female audience, distinguishing it from homoerotic media created by and for gay men. BL spans a wide range of media, including manga, anime, drama CDs, novels, video games, television series, films, and fan works.
Concepts associated with BL include androgynous men known as bishōnen, diminished female characters, narratives that emphasize homosociality and de-emphasize socio-cultural homophobia, and depictions of rape. A defining characteristic of BL is the practice of pairing characters in relationships according to the roles of seme, the sexual top or active pursuer, and uke, the sexual bottom or passive pursued.
BL has a robust global presence, having spread since the 1990s through international licensing and distribution, as well as through unlicensed circulation of works by BL fans online. BL works, culture, and fandom have been studied and discussed by scholars and journalists worldwide.
What is the difference between shoujo and josei?
Josei manga, also known as ladies’ comics or redikomi, is an editorial category of Japanese comics that emerged in the 1980s. It is marketed to adult women, contrasting with shōjo manga, which targets girls and young adult women. The distinction between these two categories is often tenuous, as many manga works exhibit narrative and stylistic traits associated with both. A third category, young ladies, emerged in the late 1980s as an intermediate category between shōjo and josei.
Josei manga is typically printed in dedicated manga magazines specializing in drama, romance, or pornography. Dramas are realist stories about ordinary women, romance is soap opera-influenced melodramas, and pornographic manga shares common traits with pornographic manga for a heterosexual male audience. The emergence of manga for adult female audiences in the 1980s was preceded by the rise of gekiga in the 1950s and 1960s, and the development of more narratively complex shōjo manga by artists associated with the Year 24 Group in the 1970s.
The category became stigmatized in the late 1980s due to its association with pornographic manga, but gained greater artistic legitimacy in the 1990s as it shifted to social issue-focused stories. Josei manga has been regularly adapted into anime since the 2000s.
📹 My Anime GF is Too Demanding 😓💸 | Shoujo City 3D | Funny Gameplay
Shoujo City is an anime dating simulator game. There’s two modes in it. I played free mode, where i already have a girlfriend and i …
The most cynical interpretation of the argument to dissolve demographics sounds a lot like an excuse not to associate with things made for girls or women. I totally understand people’s negative associations with things marketed to girls, but less than a year out from the Barbie movie, you’d think people would be able to see the merit in a literary genre made by and for that same demo. Would shojo be more palatable to western fans if it wasn’t “for girls”? If the label really doesn’t matter then why care so much about removing it? Thanks so much for making this Colleen and for all your articles. I’m so glad there are folks like you who care as much about this side of the manga and anime world as the rest of the western internet cares about whatever’s happening in Jump.
Being a girl into anime and manga in the early 2000’s in Latin America was hell for me, you were not allowed to admit enjoying anything remotely percieved as shoujo otherwise boys would be INSUFERABLE towards you. I particularly remember being mocked for perusal/reading shoujo stories while they praised every shounen under the sun, but now that they have noticed a lot more girls are into shounen (possibly affected by less shoujo animes being produced and anime becoming more popular in general with shounen series being the more pushed by promotion) there’s this whole narrative doing its rounds that shounen is crap because girls watch it and boys of course only consume higher forms of entertainment, and they even went and changed their stances about those old shounens they used to praise! (sigh). At the end of the day it all always comes back to our society were boys and everything related to them are seing as superior, if girls are into boys stuff it can be seen as cool but boys always have to have desdain and at max just tolerance for girls stuff, which is just exausting and ridiculous.
44:09 I just think of how Ikumi Mia originally wanted to make a horror series, but Nakayoshi execs latched onto a catgirl side character, pushed her into the lead, said to add more kemonomimi, and then had it change from horror to magical girl. Tokyo Mew Mew is a beloved series and one of the classics of the 2000s, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world, but the fact that she wanted to make something very different and had to make something that would sell for the trends of the time anyway (and basically everything else she made was cancelled quickly) is still sad to know. No wonder she reportedly spent her 15-year hiatus drawing doujinshi for danseimuke properties instead.
From a girl’s perspective, i havent been able to enjoy romance mangas/animes because they seem to be very “male gazey” and sexualized (my last experience being dress up darling, komi san cant communicate…) and that kinda made me miss the shoujo romance genre where it was written for girls by girls. When i mentioned that to my guy friends (who really enjoyed the mentioned shows) they called me out on my “feminism” and how everyone can read everything. But then i really cant get past the oversexualization of the female love interest now everytime i read/watch a romance manga/anime. Its gotten to the point where its making me uncomfortable and i just went back to rereading old romance shoujos I used to read 10 years ago. And man do they make my 25 y.o heart feel alive again 🥲 is it really that bad for me to want to read a romance shoujo that focuses on the girls feelings on love and relationships rather than the guy’s pov and how turned on he is by the love interest? On a side note, I’m really enjoying the resurgence of good romance mangas like a sign of affection. I really hope we see more of those mangas (if anyone has any recs please give them to me)
i love shoujosei not just bc of it’s feminine portrayal of love and the cute flowery artstyles, but how this genre captures different aspects of life in such a tender and gentle way. while it usually has romance, there’s almost always an exploration of some other human relationship or emotion. from the pure determination of making your crush fall for you to navigating through broken relationships or the complicated friendship of youth or just figuring out want you want in life, growing up reading shoujo has made me look at the world and people with more compassion, understanding and kindness. i wish more people can learn to value love and happiness just as much as they love sad or action-packed stories. also i believe your website played a big part on the shoujo licenses we got recently. keep it up <3
I’ve never even recognised the paneling differences between shoujo manga and others, just pulled down a few copies of a few different genres off the shelf and it’s so obvious! It’s funny though growing up reading so much shoujo I have no difficulty reading them with all the floating panels, but I have often struggled with reading and understanding more recent JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure because of the density of the art contained in the more rigid boxes – possibly because I’m not as used to reading action-heavy manga.
100% we still need the demographic, since the male lense is so prevalent anyway, it’s considered “universal” (but its still a lense). And like you said, women and girls have no problem reading stuff made for boys but the reverse isn’t true. Thank you for this article and just for putting your thoughts out there! You convinced me to pick up again shojo, even though I loved them to bits, and you led me to discover josei too!🥺❤️
I’m glad I found your website and I kinda wish we have more Shoujo websites like your that is this well know and I 💯 agree when you said that nerd communities rather that be gaming, manga/anime, comics, and etc. feels like a boys club. More specifically a club for male cis gender able body straight white man. And if you’re not apart of that group due to being POC, Afab, Queer, disabled, and etc. you’ll just be treated an an outcast or an annoyance to get rid of. That’s why I wanna get into more Shoujo and more diverse media. Since despite what these animebros and anti woke website say. Representation matter. Keep up the amazing work and I can’t wait to see what else Shoujo manga you’ll recommend us. Edit: also does anyone know an website where I can read Shoujo manga that is translate into English for free?
I think people misunderstand what shoujo is doing for girls. People call these demographics “sexist,” when the truth is that shoujo is our best shot at equality. While gender is a construct, being one of the constructs is still a shared experience. And women/non-binary do not get to tell their stories as often, for one reason or the other. To get rid of demographics in manga is to get rid of these voices all together. As no doubts, shounen will prevail (let’s just look at the state of anime). But hey, another amazing article, Colleen! Couldn’t put it down. Talk about being seen. P.S.: I’m so invested in the website’s lore ^^
Aww poor game show host 😅 But sincerely, I think redoing an earlier article, esp one that’s meant to be more of an informative retrospective than a deep dive into a specific series, makes a ton of sense! Not only to cover newly learned info or more in-depth research on your part, but even events that have happened since then in the world of publishing (i.e. the Shogakukan manga awards doing away with demographic considerations). Keep up the great work!!
27:33 I think this and the next section are my favorite new things you added in this article! I remember you talking about art and paneling in the original article, but showing so many examples was so helpful, and your script was also so much more in depth! It made me realize how acclimated I am to this art style and paneling style in manga. Getting in to manga through shojo and growing up to read mostly josei and BL, I’m so used to reading these layouts, and it wouldn’t even occur to me that someone who’s not into the genre would notice it as odd! On the topic of digital, I’ve noticed from reading a lot of web comics aimed at women, there’s somewhat of an adaptation of the free-flowing paneling style through chapters that scroll endlessly, with panels falling down instead of to the left. It’s definitely different but feels like an adaptation of the same idea! This was such a great and in depth article and I can’t wait to send it to my friends who are new to shojo!
I think removing the shojo genre would be a terrible idea. As it is women and girls are not viewed as the main audience in article games and western comics (and in a lot of instances ignored and disregarded). Let us have our own genre and actually be catered to. I’m tired of having to make do in so many different forms of entertainment that don’t seem to care about female enjoyment. This was so informative and interesting thank you for all your hard work!!
I mean, yeah, in an ideal world, demographics wouldn’t and shouldn’t matter that much, but it’s pretty telling how making demographics more obvious have affected things when it’s relatively easy to actually name notable examples of super popular manga primarily aimed towards a female demographic (Fruits Basket, Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura), and I just can’t say the same for American comic series primarily aimed at women/girls, probably because the vast majority of super mainstream American comic book series are superhero-themed, and most of those are primarily aimed towards boys/men (even the mainstream comics that are not related to superheroes also tend to be primarily made for a male audience) Regardless of how demographics are handled, feminine media will often get shoved into an awkward “only for girls” corner anyway, so being more obvious with demographics can help with visibility
As a comparative layman in the field, one thing that I find really aesthetically appealing about a lot of shoujo manga artwork, particularly but not solely from the Year 24 Group and that ’70s/’80s boom period more generally, is the way that it really leans into abstraction and elides the traditional panel layout to different degrees while maintaining visual flow as an expression of characters’ emotional states or an overall tone being set within a scene. It’s kind of hypnotic to look at something like that spread from Candy Candy you used where the panels literally dissolve into a cascade of bubbles, for example. I also think of how the anime adaptations of Keiko Takemiya’s Song of Wind and Trees (albeit only the early chapters, alas) and A Door Into Summer, while created by entirely different teams so far as I am aware, both have the same dreamlike cadence to their narratives and visual direction which is clearly rooted in the source material. Edit: And of course I say this halfway through the article, and a substantial portion of what comes after is discussion exactly this at length! That notion of suspended time you talk about is especially resonant, as while there are shounen and seinen manga which also do this, sometimes very effectively, those tend to be by mangaka who I suspect have read a lot of shoujo and josei works themselves; for instance, the late great Kentaro Miura was very forthright about his love for the artistry and character depth of shoujo works and how they had made an impact on his work, and honestly, I see it.
Honestly, I agree woth the different gender categories. I wish there were more things aimed at women and girls that are unique. Like games for example i don’t think there are any RPGs for women. ” Women don’t play games, women don’t read comics women aren’t that into anime.” Yet, if we look at otome games we can make the conclusion that men don’t like romance graphic novels because a lot of the players are female right? But then what about love simulators/dating sims with a mostly male audience? If we look at romance shoujo anime and manga we can conclude that men don’t like romance because of the mainly female audience right? But what about romance shounen and seinen anime and manga? Women aren’t that into anime so that’s why live dramas are the better adaptation for them? What about shounen with large female audiences and popular shoujo anime with a mostly female audience? It sometimes annoys me that women and girls are hardly thought of in general or are seen as important in the entertaining industry. I am horrible at drawing and though i love create stories in my head writing even 20 pages is hard for me and I lack writing skills but i want to make games, comics and cartoons for women and girls. I want to learn blender.
I mean this sincerely, while acknowledging it sounds kind of cringey… but shoujo changed my life. like genuinely, I feel like I have been able to process a lot not only from my own teenage years, but my adult years too. I have found depth even in series that seem like nothing more than lovey dovey fluff (and no hate on fluff either, sometimes it’s also very needed!)
This article is stunning, iconic, informative, and so well done! Amazing! I loved it so much, I watched it in one sitting while I was waiting for my banana bread to bake and this article was the perfect length. At the end I was left with a perfectly baked loaf and valuable knowledge on the world of Shoujo! Thank you Colleen! 🙂
There is definitely a case to keep the demographics separate, no question about it. Not overly directly related but i feel it proves my point: a while back I tried to look for books by Spanish-language authors from the US. Plenty of Spanish speakers, a vibrant and practically all-present community throughout the nation. Well it was way more difficult than I thought. It’s about the same for every minority-majority situation, I guess. The systemic discrimination is invisible to us, so the defence of the minority seems like uncalled-for extra rights. There are many countries that use quotas setting how many women need to be in parliament, and shoujo manga is still firmly on the free market, not being paid for by the government or anything. Also I want to mention Sukeban Deka, that is just an over-the-top highschool delinquent manga but with girls for some reason!
OMG I…wow I always wondered why I couldn’t follow Action in shounen. even stuff like Haikyuu I’d skip the matches and just watch it when it got adapted cuz I couldn’t follow what happened….this explained so much. Thanks so much! This article meant so much to me, I always the thought the history of shojou started with Princess Knight…I had no idea there was more to it. And yeah while I enjoy the highschool romances, in the end it was AnS that got me into shojou back in 2015, I’ve been reading more fantasy these days, I hope we get more adapted into anime as well translated (COLD GAME PLSSS)! Thanks again 😀
Excellent article, it’s always really fun to learn more about shoujo history! I feel like the anime Sekaiichi Hatsukoi actually shows a pretty honest portrayal of the culture and attitudes found in shoujo manga editing. Most of the publishing department didn’t care about their shoujo magazine at all until it started selling incredibly well, and the main character is assigned to be a shoujo manga editor despite having no experience in the genre/demographic (and yes, his first task is literally to read a bunch of shoujo manga lol). It’s a pretty good watch as long as you can stomach some of the outdated dubcon/noncon nonsense in the show.
You really knocked it out of the park on this one ❤Seriously, your articles are always brilliant, and this one had me almost in TEARS. You’re so right about the indescribable feeling that shojo manga gives you, and reading it for 20 years I’ve never heard someone describe it so deeply. Thank you for putting in SO much research and work and time putting this together, I’m really going to be showing this article to people as MUCH as possible. Awareness is the first step to garnering more love, support and real BUSINESS for shojo mangaka!!
Wow, what a good article, I really loved knowing how there were GL mangas even before Sakura Namiki. I’m sure it must have been a lot of work not only in the research but also in curating the sources. Keep up the good work and be nicer to Game show Collen she deserves to sleep on the couch or at least inside of it
Colleen’s opinion on the shoujo manga editors reminds me of Frank Zappa on the music industry. It is on YouTube named “Frank Zappa – Decline of the Music Industry”. Relying on the taste of conservative editors and current data collection to dictate the creation of the safest possible product will blind shoujo manga publishers from innovative ideas and inventive art styles.
the part about shoujo manga being criticized for just having a different style made me chuckle. the way that men do things are always seen as default or the “correct” way. to quote from the book “wordslut” (highly recommend): “speak with too much vocal fry, overuse the words like and literally, and apologize in excess. They brand judgments like these as pseudofeminist advice aimed at helping women talk with “more authority” so that they can be “taken more seriously.” What they don’t seem to realize is that they’re actually keeping women in a state of self-questioning—keeping them quiet—for no objectively logical reason other than that they don’t sound like middle-aged white men.”
I was a little surprised to hear that some non-shoujo readers struggle with the format shift in panel layout that is popular in some titles. I’ve always found the formatting of Japanese comics in general to be very clean and rarely read things out of order in any genre or demographic. Especially compared to some older American comics whose text can be very dense or experimental in its flow. For example I found it more difficult to parse the reading order of some pages of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing than any manga I’ve read. It makes me wonder if frequent shoujo readers would have an easier time adjusting to non-Japanese comic formats than exclusively shonen readers.
I’m very curious about the differences in editorial oversight between shoujo and shounen magazines. Is there a similar trend-chasing sentiment for the shounen artists, or are they granted greater creative freedom – and if so, to what extent? Being a westerner, the way I consume manga and the patterns I notice are not going to be indicative of the cultural climate in Japan. Hence, I really enjoyed your deep dives into the themes and art present in Shoujo, both in regards to the historical origins and the contemporary magazine culture!
I think you got close to approaching a topic that I think can make it difficult for some shoujo series to find a broader market: screentones don’t compress or scale well when represented digitally. There have been times when I’ve used a manga reader app and given up on reading something because, like you mentioned, the scale doesn’t really work for zooming in and out, and to preserve the quality of the screentones you need to start from really high quality scans, whether in a series that’s explicitly shoujo or takes a similar approach to its artstyle. If you twist it around, there’s a way for Shoujo publishers to upsell the value of physical manga volumes from the pre-webmanga era as merch – moreso than comics with more digital-friendly paneling, it really looks best on paper.
I’ve been following you from TikTok and since you first post your shoujo article “What is Shoujo” on YouTube and I’m so happy seeing your growth!! Your articles just gets better and better Colleen!! And wow!! You definitely put a lot of work into this one with the amount of resources and editing. This is by far my favorite article from you so far. It’s just *chef’s kiss*. I really hope you will gain more subscribers cuz honestly you’re the best animanga YouTuber I can find right now. No one.did it like you imo
Loved it. Great updated to a article I enjoyed in the first place! Commenting for the AI overlords. One thing that I found fascinating in an earlier article of yours that wasn’t covered here were the censorship rules that were created that specifically targeted media created for female demographics and how that had an effect on the kinds of stories being told. I’d be really interested in hearing more on that topic in the future.
This was an incredible article to watch! Thank you for sharing all your time, research, and thoughts because I had no idea about this kind of history shoujo had! It would be heartbreaking to “erase” demographics just simply for the fact the history there and like you said, what those women did so we could have the shoujo we do today! Definitely my favorite part of this article though was shoujo being a visual language. I think it was so perfectly said because when I think on the stories I’ve read, it feels exactly that! Very much enjoyed perusal this!!
This was very informative and definitely progress from the original intro to shojosei article, excellent work. There’s so much context and history I didn’t know about. Thank you for continuing to make articles about shojo and josei, I hope people are being nice. Your comments section seems very positive.
I really appreciate how well constructed this article was. I learned so much history and how it applies to the now! I do see genre’s blending more and I love to see it that. I can also see how easily it is for other style ls and genres to be erased for one cookie cutter style (which would be shounen) that erasure of creativity and individuality would be my issue
The panelling topic got me excited, since it made me realize the commonplace that the right-to-left expectation of reading is the opposite of how kanji are written (yet manhua manhwa etc. tend to be left-to-right). This perhaps reflects the columnar writing that would be expected in novels etc. where one starts at the top right, goes down, and then moves one column to the left to continue reading. That kind of presentation of narrative is preserved more completely in the 4-koma style of panelling (a 4-koma presentation works better on smartphones too, and favours lighter stories with less detailed or dramatic artwork). The gender disparity between editors and mangaka makes me think of the parallels of headmasters/teachers, doctors/nurses etc. Keep up the good work!
☘ The motherland awaits! ☘Thanks for teaching me more about shoujo! We mostly call the indigenous language usually referred to as Gaelic by Americans just Irish which I offer as context to say people really do go around the few pockets of Irish language left calling people cailín (colleen)! Maith an cailín!
To support the point of keeping the gender demographics: when I first started dabbling in anime in the late 2000s and early 2010, I didn’t really pay attention to demographics or anything like that. I just looked at the genre and art style and went with that. So I watched stuff like Peach Girl, Tokyo Mew Mew, Medabots, Gakuen Alice, some Yu-Gi-Oh. When I tried perusal anime later in the late 2010s, I found myself put off at just how much fan service there was, and how much the stories just didn’t appeal to me. I felt very out of place because all the anime viewers around me loved My Hero Academia and Demon Slayer and One Piece. It wasn’t until I actually had a look at what the demographics were that it clicked: they stopped making things for my gender. So even though I believed I didn’t care about gender demographics, I realised something was wrong when anime effectively became for ‘everyone’, AKA, for guys.
I’m a guy, but some of my all-time favourite manga are shoujo series (Yuu Watase’s Alice 19th and Fushigi Yûgi, the majority of CLAMP’s work). I’ve been reading Ai Yazawa’s Paradise Kiss and also want to read classic shoujo series like Nana, Fruits Basket, Marmalade Boy and Rose of Versailles . Shoujo manga is so much more than just “girly” or romantic stories. Also, I’ve always felt that female mangaka put so much more love into their art, and unlike many shounen/seinen manga, they’ve written about sex without objectifying women. I was also suprised to discover that shoujo manga has had a long history of gay and queer presentation (much longer than mainstream Western media).
The first manga I ever read were Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura, and most of the manga I’ve read since then has been Shoujo. I love Shoujo manga, for the beautiful art, attention to detail, and how emotions are expressed. I especially love how Clamp uses screentone to express different emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, confusion, anger, etc. By today’s standards, a lot of scenes in Ikeda’s manga are melodramatic, but I really like the style. A lot of her characters are teenagers, so of course emotional moments hit them harder and she’s great at expressing that through her art.
When we’re talking about dreamy-styled shoujo, I see the major difference in presentation between it and your typical shonen being subjectivity vs objectivity, interiority vs external action. Of course the former is coded feminine and therefore inferior. In a US context, the trash stories like Love and Heart are decadent, sinful, pathologized. Aggressive hypersexualization of women’s and girls’ bodies is a-okay, though! I hadn’t considered the diminution of shoujo dreaminess with the advent of computer tablets and phones. That’s a shame. I enjoyed Ima Koi’s story, for example, but the art does feel tablet-drawn and rather unsatisfying. It’s a good thing we have so many titles from the ’00s and earlier that we can turn to when the current market is getting us down. 🙂
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