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Forum - View topicDo We Still Need Shōnen/Shōjo Labels?
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tintor2
 Posts: 1847 |
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I remember that the 2000s had some series (was it the Answerman?) that were promoted for both genders: X and Rurouni Kenshin. Akira Amano said the same about Katekyo Hitman Reborn considering her influences on fans. Wouldn't Seinen like Bungo Stray Dogs be directly for the same gender? I also remember that Okamura was surprised with Hei's popularity from Darker than Black.
Still, if you read Bakuman there is a chapter the editorial says a Shonen Jump manga shouldn't change part of its content to please more fans or it would go through some sort of existencial crisis.l |
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IceLeaf
Posts: 146 |
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Why are we taking Caleb Cook as a credible source on how we should define manga? His recent translations are patchy and characters keep on having mood swings or saying things that are totally different from what they say in the Japanese. Half the time I have no idea who is speaking as character speech patterns that had been established for 200+ chapters are now gone and characters who spoke formally are now using slang.
We still need demographics. While sure you can break them down by genres there is a large difference between say a shojo mystery vs a shonen mystery vs a seinen mystery vs a josei mystery. The demographic let's you know more about what type of story it's going to be and anyway we style apply demographics to English language originating books so it would be odd to be like "nah these Japanese books don't have demographics". A large issue with anime fandoms currently is that people aren't paying attention to the demographics the series are aimed for and are complaining why doesn't this series have xyz. Sure it's good if a series gets to a wider audience than it was originally aimed at but not every series needs to cater to everyone |
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DavetheUsher
 Posts: 505 |
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My general rule has always been nothing should be dumbed down or simplified for the sake of non-fans. It always leads to media and fandoms collapsing in on themselves when they try to chase the casual audience.. The actions of companies like Viz and Netflix appropriating and diluting what 'shoujo' or 'anime' means should be ignored, not encouraged. I mean, anime and manga are already doing very well. Why fix what isn't broke and risk messing everything up? |
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ChomboTheMahjongSpider
Posts: 47 |
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According to Wikipedia, the best-selling shoujo manga of all time is Hana Yori Dango, and it comes in at 32nd place. Worse is that many of the shounen and seinen and series above it are still running, while you have to go down until 73rd place to find a still-running shoujo title, in Ouke no Monshou.
Eliminating the distinction between girls' and boys' comics will mean no longer segregating bestseller lists and awards by gendered demographic, which will drastically reduce the visibility of girls' comics, due to the boys' comics having consistently higher sales numbers. This wouldn't widen the audience of manga, it would narrow it. |
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Abraham Omosun
Posts: 158 |
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Huh could you give some concrete examples? I've been reading since chapter 250 or there about and I don't have any problems with the translation. |
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IceLeaf
Posts: 146 |
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250? World Trigger is only at chapter 211 |
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Abraham Omosun
Posts: 158 |
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Caleb Cook is also the translator of My Hero academia which I was referring to. Not sure which manga Iceleaf is talking about the. |
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Horsefellow
 Posts: 262 |
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Quite the opposite, actually.. If you look purely at sales numbers, then yes, it would be a disadvantage for them since the mainstream shounen stuff will always top the charts. But in terms of awards and critic praise it gives them far more freedom to put those titles elsewhere and get more exposure. A few years ago there was a huge push for two small manga called My Brother's Husband and My Lesbian Experience With Lonliness in America. They won a lot of American comic book awards over mainstream titles that were also nominated like My Hero Academia and Attack on Titan. Since it's a critic award and not a popularity contest, it doesn't matter how much they so or dont sell because things like award winners to Best Of lists are always up to a judge's discretion. If they specifically limited the categories by labels then they couldn't compete in the same category as those mainstream titles, which means when they win there's no marketing or PR value to brag about beating them and get more eyes on them. It's because certain demographics and labels aren't very popular that there's a desire to eliminate those labels and bring everything into some generalized manga category. |
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battle-arc-fan
Posts: 24 |
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We need to ask ourselves: who wants this and who benefits from it?
I wrote a long rant on the Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid review thread - which may or may not have been approved by the moderators - about that review's misgivings over fanservice to point out that it was hypocritical to embrace the manga/anime industry (and the larger Japanese culture of which it is a subset) being willing to accept homosexuality while rejecting their acceptance of what is now referred to as objectification merely because western critics promote the former and oppose the latter when it is obvious that this work's being able to flourish as a major hit relies on both. (Make Kobayashi and Riko male and it is just another moe fanservice romcom for older shounen types who would actually be disappointed that it wasn't more ecchi. Remove the fanservice and all you get is a VERY niche seinen otaku segment.) The same applies here more broadly. Shounen dominates, shojo and josei gets overshadowed, and people want shojo/josei works - and more specifically the themes that they deal in - promoted more. (And certain shounen themes i.e. fighting, competition, fanservice and other masculine stuff promoted less.) While doing this MAY serve the interests of western critics it is 100% counter to the interests of the Japanese creators, producers and consumers of anime and manga. Look, Shonen Jump will be fine. (Maybe.) But there are A LOT of second and third tier manga and light novel publishers out there and most of that content is never (legally) translated and distributed outside Asia. If a 12 year old Japan consumer buys those and finds them filled with content that she or he isn't interested in they will stop buying them and they will go out of business. That isn't speculation mind you. That is what will actually happen. Denying it is akin to claiming that - on a general scale necessary for macroeconomics and not doing your level best to make the exception the governing principle - 25 year old women and 12 year old boys are necessarily going to have different interests. The solution to this is to have shojo and josei writers do a better job of dealing with universal themes that attract large audiences. Shounen cracked that code ages ago. Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Gundam, My Hero Academia etc. aren't just watched and read by the shounen demographic. EVERYBODY reads and watches shounen hits. Shojo and josei needs to do a better job of producing works with broad appeal too. So far the best at doing this is CLAMP, and that is precisely because they refuse to be constrained by - and often actively subvert - shoujo and josei tropes. Were shojo and josei writers to emulate the CLAMP example but tone down some of the dense weirdness, they too could produce wide demographic hits. |
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ChomboTheMahjongSpider
Posts: 47 |
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That's not how awards work. Winning Best Shoujo Manga wouldn't disqualify something from winning Best Manga. |
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Desa
 Posts: 285 |
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"Need"? No. The labels never existed because of necessity, they existed because they were, and still are, useful. I generally avoid the shoujo and josei categories because 99.5% of the time the stories and characters don't interest me at all. And I find the "shoujo art aesthetic" very unappealing most of the time due to all the lanky figures and pretty boy caricatures everywhere.
A recent trend that has kind of been emerging as of late is a growing number of works with the word "Villainess" in the title. I must have given about 10 such series a decent shot before finally arriving at the conclusion that these series are simply meant for a specific audience, of which I am not. I can't remember them off the top of my head, but I do recall liking a few shoujo series in the late 90s / early 00s. It might be the nostalgia goggles but I think shoujo back then was just "written different" to shoujo today. I think the last shoujo series I actually finished was "Vampire Knight". The beginning was pretty good and I liked a lot of the characters including the female lead 'Yuuki'. But then halfway through she awakened her vampire memories and her personality did a 180 and it was all downhill from there. That ending was utter garbage. I probably haven't touched another shoujo work since then. To be clear, it wasn't Vampire Knight that turned me off shoujo. Times change and stories change with them. I think the current era pumps out shoujo geared towards the generation that came after mine. Who can say? Maybe simpler times allow for better romance stories. |
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AmpersandsUnited
Posts: 633 |
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Do bestsellers lists even do that? BookScan reports comic book sales based on things like 'superheroes' 'manga', 'author' and other very broad categories. The closest they come to listing actual demographics is 'for adults" and "for kids" which is usually wrong since they put WSJ titles in the "adult" section.. In this day and age, trying to label something "for girls" or "for boys" in America is probably super taboo, especially something like nerd hobbies where you'd get accused of gatekeeping. Overall, I think the labels are important for the sake of classification and information. It's just a lot of people misuse them or flat out get them wrong, like anytime you see Katekyo Hitman Reborn or K-On! pop up on a "best shoujo manga" list. |
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a1anne
Posts: 13 |
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Haven't read but will do later, but if i just answer to the title of the article, for me it's a big YES.
Simple, it's been 15 years that i have been watching over 800+ anime and less than 15% of it were shojo labelled. I'm just not interested at all. As a girl. A girl who love shonens. So yes, that might be contradictory, but it's not, because if it's not shonen vs shojo how would you call the difference of atmosphere between the two kinds ? Certainly not action vs romance, we all know it's not true. Take Golden time and Your Lie in april, two beautiful romance story, both are Shonen. (also Nisekoi which is not a beautiful romance story but one of the worst i've ever seen). And you have stuff like Natsume, donten ni warau, action anime that are shojo. But that doesn't have as much guts as a shonen would. And don't worry, i'm not against a good sentimental action once in a while. But Josei's anime fits way more in that need for that, like 07 ghost or Saiyuuki |
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cutslo
Posts: 63 |
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If you feel the need to explain the terms "shounen" and "shoujo" to a newcomer, that just shows you that they are extremely handy in describing what to expect, making this example a major argument in favor of their existence. If anything is the problem here, it's the content that these words describe (because it's so formulaic that there really isn't any other way to describe them succinctly), not the terms themselves. If you don't feel the need, there's nothing stopping you from just not using them and there never was. So maybe the problem is just you.
In fact, you already failed it at the premise because "anime" and "manga" is just Japanese cartoons and comics, no reason to bring your weird jargon into it. Also, I'd like you to describe the anime landscape 2021 to anyone without first introducing the term "isekai". |
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Blanchimont
 Posts: 3453 Location: Finland |
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I don't want to wade through a clutter of your typical shoujo to find the rare Toradora! or Are You Okay With a Slightly Older Girlfriend?, or other rom-coms not perceived as shoujo, so yes they are needed.
If those labels were taken out something else would have to be invented as descriptors and that would defeat the entire purpose. Yes, the labels are subjective and certain works may well be ambiguous on how to describe them, but what's the alternative?... |
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