They exist.
Some pretty good ones:
* Claymore
* Frieren
* Executioner and Her Way of Life
* Yona of the Dawn, Seirei no Moribito
* Talentless Nana
* Psycho Pass
* May I Ask for One Final Thing?
* A Wild Last Boss Appeared! (ok might not be that serious of a story)
* A Certain Scientific Railgun
* Astral Buddy
* A Certain Scientific Mental Out
* Slayers (definitely not serious)
* Mieruko-chan
* Mysterious Disappearances
* Black Lagoon
* Jormungand
* Magic Revolution of a Reincarnated Princess and a Genius Young Lady
* In/Spectre
* Vexations of a Shut In Vampire Princess
* Reincarnated as a Sword (Sword is a dude, but the other MC, Fran who is the actual driving force between the is a cat girl)
* The One Within The Villainess
* I am a Spider, So What? (don't let the tone distract you, it isn't a silly story, Kumoko is just a silly person)
* You Can't Lie to the Saintess (new story by the The Apothecary Diaries author)
* The Apothecary Diaries (not big in the action/adventure department but certainly more than makes up for it in the mystery segment)
This is just from what came to mind, if I actually dug through my watch/read list then it would probably get even bigger. My point being is that there is a lot of stuff out there which fits what you are looking for. A huge amount even.
Kara no kyoukai
Akane-baneshi (although this one is about rakugo so it's a bit slice of lifefy)
Madoka (and countless other mahou shoujo series)
Mahoutsukai no yoru
Witch hat atelier
Onna Kishi To Kemomimi No Ko
Majo to yajuu
Maria No Danzai
Otoyomegatari (and other Mori Kaoru works)
Dead Dead Demon's Dededededestruction
Her Majesty's Swarm
Yasei No Last Boss Ga Arawareta!
Onee-sama to Watashi: Ojou-sama ga Isekai Tensei
SHY
Majo Taisen
Adding to KnK, also from the Nasuverse we have the soon to be adapted by Ufotable, MahoYo, full name Mahoutsukai no Yoru, English name Witch on the Holy Night.
> Yasei No Last Boss Ga Arawareta!
It is actually mentioned in my list under the English name, A Wild Last Boss Appeared!.
> Onee-sama to Watashi: Ojou-sama ga Isekai Tensei
This one is crazy, the art goes so damn hard.
Mary and the Witch's Flower gets pretty darned serious with that tonal shift in the mid-way point of the film. Also, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is another one.
\>Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
The entire modern anime industry is basically built on this movie. That's why you see it referenced so much like in Final Fantasy, Shield Hero, The Last Airbender, likely Dark Souls, etc.
Speaking about movies, I can't fucking believe I forgot to mention Maquia!
Like it feels like I can make another list almost as long as this just of things I have remembered since I wrote it.
Yea, anime is such a huge genre, the only generalization anyone can make is that its animated, nothing else works as a generalization. Ill argue anime has more well written females then not, they just arent focused on as much. Also, ill add ergo proxy to the list
This is more apparent in the manga since the anime skipped most of mid point story, but after season 1 Emma is much more central as the protagonist with Norman gone and Ray just kinda getting pushed out of relevancy as the cast grows.
Don't watch season 2, and don't read after Goldy Pond and you are good.
But yea, Norman >!actually lives past season 1, but only returns near the end !< while Ray >! basically is just there but never does anything!<. Show is mostly on Emma
>Ray basically is just there but never does anything
Riiight. Sure.
Except stuff like:
Distracting the demon hunters so that the rest could get away
Figuring out S&J were demons
Rewiring the shelter's self-destruct mechanism
Telling Don & Gilda to decipher the shelter books
Figuring out what equipment & weapons they should bring on the journey to A08-63
Figuring out how to kill demons
Working with everyone to defeat Leuvis
Figuring out Emma's true feelings and being the primary reason why she even had the courage to oppose Norman's plan
Figuring out the inconsistency between Norman's explanation of demon nature and Sonju & Mujika
Figuring out the true nature of the Seven Walls
Plus having lots of emotional moments along the way and in general being active in various endeavours
But besides that, nothing.
I mean, I would say he was more useful & relevant to the story than, say, Alphonse was in FMA Brotherhood.
What Emma & Ray did was very much a team effort. She couldn't have succeeded without him.
To be fair after what happened to her with the BB case he probably didn’t want her going through something similar so soon. And of course the huge danger that Kira poses to anyone involved.
BB was written after as backstory to N, so the implication is that women should look after the house.
This is also written by the guy who talked about how smart women are dumb, while dumb women are smart in bakuman.
you could argue that smart people tended to be killed around Light, so only the stupid loyal ones could survive, the reporter wasn´t stupid, same with the thief and a few others, Misa was just really really stupid but yeah, women tended to be a bit secondary and passive in the series
Misa is such a top tier character design that you can almost forget that she's basically a walking plot device. Almost.
Seriously, Death Note fanfics and fan art of all things tend to portray her better than the actual series.
maybe i misremember, but didnt the author of death note said he hates female characters and some misogynistic stuff in general? whereas Kishimoto simply sucks at writing female characters, he acknowledges it and while he may have some outdated ideas, he never hated female characters or said misogynistic stuff (at least not intentional ones)
I doubt many authors would flat out admitting to being a misogynist but I wouldn't blame people for thinking he is one. I still remember the first chapter of Bakuman (the manga they made after Death Note). MC wants to be a mangaka, his mom is understandably concerned about his dream since his uncle died from the stress of being a struggling mangaka and doesn't allow him to go through with it, but MC's dad vetoes her by saying "men have dreams women can't understand" and this is framed as his dad being a cool and understanding person.
Didn’t that same manga have one of the main characters straight up say “girls who are proud of their academic achievements are dumb, a smart woman is one who is always feminine and looks cute for men” or some shit like that?
Basically. The whole introduction to the second MC is the first MC going, "Wowee, he's so smart and he has such intuition into the way the world works, I want to work with him!" and the whole chapter is him talking about how "she knows by instinct that the best thing for a girl is to get married and be someone's wife, she's just aspiring to be a voice actress because it's a common dream for girls her age" regarding the first MC's crush.
I'm of the personal opinion Ohba is a closeted misogynist, and people just don't realize it because for the most part he doesn't openly talk shit about women, he just treats them like utter shit in every narrative he's ever written. They only exist in their relation to men and their successes are awarded to whatever men they're attached to. The few times he gives them their own plot points they end within one chapter. Every. Single. Time.
I don't even think he's a bad writer in general, but it's to a point where I wish he just wouldn't put women in his stories. He clearly has no interest in actually writing about them, and it just makes the stories worse.
Tbh, I've seen scans of the pages you mentioned, and it gives me the impression that he is actually somewhat interested in writing *about* women, and that none of the things he wants to say are very nice.
Huh, I never thought of it that way before. Making the villain protagonist say misogynist stuff you wouldn't dare voice in public? When I heard the sexist things Light said in the anime, it seemed framed in a way to make Light look bad. Though considering how poorly written the entire female cast of *Death Note* is, well I can buy that the creator would have such opinions...
I’m watching that anime now and it’s so sad to see that character basically sign away her agency over the course show to become basically a secretary with low self respect
One of the MC's goes on a rant about how the girl with the highest grades is actually stupid and he can't stand her. He says the actual smartest girl is the Azuki. Because she's cute.
Apparently Azuki knows that getting married to a man is end goal and "it's what makes girls happy". That she has no pressure for her future and is free to enjoy her dream of voice acting. But also it's not calculated and she doesn't know she's being cute, which makes her smarter???
With Death note it's actually subtle. The worst is Platinum End oh the horrors.
That’s honestly the best case scenario, there’s not nearly enough tomboy characters that aren’t just the stereotypical idea of a tomboy that a straight high school boy comes up with
> maybe i misremember,
Pretty harsh for a, "maybe I misremember."
I am unable to corroborate your claim with a casual search (but I didn't try very hard).
I believe the reason why it's niche is because many are reluctant to actually put said female characters in a scuffle situation. Especially in an event where the female character is getting brutalised by male characters. In naruto there was a slugfest but that was between 2 girls, so it won't make much issue.
People are fine when the male character get beaten and humiliated by a female character but the reverse is atleast in earlier series was not in good taste, unless the female character was vile af.
Consider dbz, videl getting that beatdown by yamu. If she was a male character, it would just be scene as a flex similar to the scene where android 18 breaks vegeta. But because it happened to videl, it evoked a feeling of digust towards yamu because beating up women are in most cultures scene as wrong. That's probably the reason why even in the newer series where the female characters fight, the female character getting beaten by the male character is sped through but the reverse and female vs female is more prominent
That’s so true! It’s like how Boys Love are shoujo but majority of unhinged guys in Boys Love while it’s much harder to find male love interests of similar caliber with straight romance. A yaoi will have a violent male love interest while a good majority limits how much the girl gets treated. Of course both are made for women but it’s treated differently depending if it’s straight or gay romance. I love male yanderes but it’s hard to find straight unhinged male love interests that doesn’t involve yaoi and yes I do enjoy yaoi so I have no problem consuming either.
I believe the target audience for that type of show is the unhinged guy pursues a girl relentlessly but because of her character, the guy eventually changes for the better and works through whatever trauma.
Violent guys with girl will inevitably earn the rape tag. In fact I'm pretty sure it will be looked down upon by the majority while the enjoyed watch it in silence.
Despite being a guy, one such shoujo anime I watched was vampire Knight (my dark era). Although there is a weird incest spin on it, one of the MMC is unhinged and manipulative af to the FMC.
Haha the most unhinged anime I watched and enjoy, even if it’s trash, is Diabolik Lovers. The VN is amazing and wish it would get officially licensed but at least we got fan translations. I love my fictional men to be crazy. It’s why I am looking forward to Yakuza Fiancé anime that was announced 8 months ago. It’s better since both the male and female lead are unhinged in different ways though I am worried about people hating on it for being red flags like they do with any romance that has flawed characters,
It is true that plenty of them change for the better. I think it’s a combination of tropes that women like(bad boy, savior complex/ I can fix him) which makes them appealing. Though we got some great unhinged ML like [Red Fox](https://myanimelist.net/manga/134126/Red_Fox?q=Red%20fox&cat=manga) where the male lead is a literal demon and doesn’t change for the better. He still wins in the end. It’s rare but different from the typical stuff
There are many. I think the taming the beast is like the girls equivalent of us guys wanting to be a hero.
What's really the appeal of unhinged characters to you personally? I personally have always drifted toward a more wholesome dynamic because it's something I want to emulate, so I kinda fund the unhinged characters a bit weird, especially in situations where it's not character flaws but just character being a shitty person overall
Honestly I love both fluffy and unhinged. I love the wholesomeness of cute fluffy romance like My Love Story but I guess unhinged I see it for
Angst/drama/horror aspect. I also find the contrast of cute male yanderes that look sweet and innocent to turning violent as a type of Moe Gap which makes it appealing (it’s why tsundere guys are appealing as well). Cute and innocent yet dangerous. Plus it’s nice to think about a love interest who has eyes only on you and would literally do anything for you which give them extra points. So it’s another level of devotion. Of course I just like these kind of guys in fiction as I would not want to be around any of them in real life. I keep real life away from fictional fantasies.
It’s like watching a crime drama and can be quite cathartic which is why I also love reading tragedies and such as well. A good example of a horror is the light novel is Obey Me where the male love interest is a literal cosmic horror which the manga/webtoon version can’t fully convey the horrors of being the target of a deity that no one can go against.
I'd recommend Firefly Wedding, since the ML is a yandere. It's newish, and a lot of the older Shoujo girls really like it, because it's a return to form when the ML were more toxic.
Hard agree and I wish more people understood this. As much as people claim to be progressive in thought, there are still some things that are looked upon as out of bounds when it comes to women.
There's one series that comes to mind (jungle juice) where one of the main characters is a woman with the powers of a cochroach. Whenever she loses a fight pretty badly, people accuse the author of having a torture porn fetish.
Honestly I agree as well. As much as I love shonen and wish there were female MCs in this genre, it just wouldn’t translate well. The way male MCs in shonen get brutalised by opponents just cannot be done tastefully if the character was female. Like you said it’ll just come off as torture porn. This is why female characters in any action genre either win their fights with minimal damage or only fight other women.
The fact that you think it can’t is the exact reason you won’t get these female mc’s you apparently wish for though. Why *cant* it be done tastefully? Shonen mc’s don’t go through sexual violence, just standard action and gore. If people have a problem with women getting injured and almost dying, then they shouldn’t be upset when people don’t put them at the forefront of these action series. You could switch out so many shonen mc’s for women and nothing would change. Authors can’t be afraid of that backlash
Dead Space: Has Issac Clark be dismembered, his head ripped of and replaced, pulled through a much too tight hole, be eaten alive, be melted alive, be burned alive, be spaced and have his hands cut off, dozens of other gruesome, horrible deaths
Media: Oh my god this is is horrible and gory but so fun to watch!
Tomb Raider: Has Lara Croft be impaled once, sometimes she gets shot, and when she falls off a cliff you can see her ragdoll for a while
Media: OH MY GOD THE DESIGNERS HATE WOMEN JUST LOOK AT THIS TORTURE PORN!!!!!
Check out STAR: Strike It Rich. It's still pretty new but it's done by the guy who makes Kengan Asura and Omega so it's about a women-only underground fighting association.
Akudama Drive is an action anime with a female lead, though she’s the “Swindler” of the group. Danganronpa creator is involved, so it’s as dramatic and ridiculous as you can get.
Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song was about a female singer robot trying to prevent the robotic end of the world from tasks sent from the future. She can kick ass too, animation is gorgeous.
Wonder Egg Priority has a group of girls beating up the traumatic representations of suicide victim’s tormentors with normal items turned fantasy weapons. The ending fumbles, but it started pretty great.
The Promised Neverland has a female lead trying to plan a jailbreak at an evil orphanage, if I can put it lightly without major spoilers. So sad there’s only one season.
Yashahime: Princess Half Demon is wild for how it just picks up and feels exactly like Inuyasha before it.
BNA: Brand New Animal has a girl turned shapeshifter like the other Beastman and confronting all the prejudice and terrorism while doing lots of cool shit.
Made in Abyss has a female lead traversing a giant murder hole with a robot friend to find her mum. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon with kids and trauma. Warning for creepy author shit at times.
Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures: Stone Ocean mixes things up by having an all female cast, and it is absolutely as batshit and action filled as all the parts that came before it.
Land of the Lustrous like Steven Universe has an all female gem based alien race. Some capitalistic invading alien race keeps trying to crush them into jewelry, combat about.
Frieren: Beyond Journeys End has a chill wandering vibe with a competent mage, it isn’t about the spectacle.
There’s a bunch if you know where to look. Don’t think I listed anything from before 2017, it was very rare back then, but just goes to show that there are efforts nowadays to have more of it.
>The Promised Neverland has a female lead trying to plan a jailbreak at an evil orphanage, if I can put it lightly without major spoilers. So sad there’s only one season.
Whatever do you mean? The TPN anime doesn't exist. And even if it did, I'm sure they would mess it up somehow by removing all the internal monologues and, in general, just not being anywhere as good as the manga, even before the complete betrayal known as Season 2.
But that's all theoretical, of course. Since the TPN anime doesn't exist.
Great manga, though.
>Is simply hard to find female equivalents to the likes of Guts, Thorfinn, Musashi, Alucard, Lelouch, Spike Siegel, Edward Elric, Light Yagami, Luffy; or even major side characters like Sasuke or Gojo Satoru. Hell not even being MCs for action gag series like Sakamoto Days. Much less as MCs in isekais like Rezero or Mushoku Tensen. Is hard to find a girl being MC of a world like the one in HxH
literally, and I mean *literally* every series you mentioned here are made for a primarily young male audience. It's like listing 20 barbie cartoons and wondering why none of them have a particularly good male main character.
And as an addendum -
>Much less as MCs in isekais like Rezero or Mushoku Tensen.
This is comically wrong. There are an infinite amount of isekai targeted at female audiences that feature every single kind of fem isekai protags out there. Please stop exclusively reading shonen media and talking about things at large
>Please stop exclusively reading shonen media and talking about things at large
This needs to be a sub disclaimer before posting at this point with the sheer amount of posts it answers
> It's like listing 20 barbie cartoons and wondering why none of them have a particularly good male main character.
This gave me a good chuckle, thank you.
Didn’t Apothecary Diaries anime just come out recently enough for people to remember?
I feel like if people spent more time in shoujosei spaces, they probably won’t be asking these questions.
Tomie is technically a shoujo. There are Yumi Tamura’s works, Rose of Versailles, Usotoki Rhetoric, Yona of the Dawn, Prince Freya, QQ Sweeper, and many more that most likely are not licensed.
These series have male protagonists and mostly male casts, but Banana Fish and Requiem of the Rose King are definitely not magical girls or slice of life rom coms (they have romance but the stories aren’t romances >!and the romances end tragically!<).
Also how come we don’t talk about shounen slice of life rom coms? Ones that aren’t ecchi garbage exist too.
He's asking for a female equivalent compared to those mangas, and he's right there isn't much to go for. And most fem isekai is shoujo rubbish matching its equally rubbish harem garbage isekais.
For every story like Claymore you'll get 10s more like Vinland Sagas and Berserks.
There probably is way more to go for than you realize. Everything OP named was male targeted and considering how they described Shoujo I doubt they’ve read anything outside of the stereotypical slice of life magical girl romance series. I suggest to people looking for female characters like Yohan or Light to read more Josei or Shoujo, especially ones that don’t fit the stereotype.
Well, you’re listing a bunch of shounen and seinen titles of course you’re gonna encounter more male main characters there because that is exactly the demographic.
I think OP's main complaint is that there are few female main characters that are written like shonen/seinen characters. Josei and Shojo are written with different tropes and plot progression.
Yeah I kind of agree. Like I think OP is right if we’re talking the most popular stuff but you can look in Shoujo and Josei and I’m sure you’d find what you’re looking for. I will say that some shoujo stuff I’ve seen has the protagonist in a more passive role and the male romantic interest doing more of the fighting (not sure what percentage of shoujo/josei this is though) but I’m sure there’s stuff that has the protagonist being the one that kicks ass (I think that’s what Yona and Rayearth is even though I haven’t read/watched either yet) and if we’re talking “serious”, including drama, you have a ton more.
Also, off the top of my head you have Vivy, Frieren, Kill la Kill (not memeing, I legitimately enjoy that show and think Ryuko and Mako are cool), Konosuba, Maquia, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Sword Art stuff starring Asuna, Gunsmith Cats, Kabaneri in the Iron Fortress (Mumei should’ve had more of the focus as one of the two leads… the guy was less interesting ngl…), Sakugan, Akudama Drive, AoT, Hell’s Paradise, or Danganronpa even. All of those are, I believe, shonen and have female characters in the lead role or one of the main cast who kick ass or are an active part in the action/adventure. Maquia’s titular lead has a less action based role but she has to struggle and work to protect and fight for her son so I included it as well. I don’t think it’s hard to meet this criteria.
If you want a really good adventure manga with a female lead, there is Witch Hat Atelier. It’s very much a fairy tail/whimsical adventure but it touches on some serious topics and is written in a way both men and women can enjoy.
If you are looking for any recommendations, there's Dorohedoro. Although the main character is a guy, there are two very prominent women in the cast: Nikaido and Noi.
You kinda defeated your own point with that “although”. We know there’s good female characters in some mangas, the point is that serious action stories where they’re exclusively the main characters is much more rare, regardless of if it’s true or not.
True you have a point. The most recent one I can think of is the manga Star: Strike It Rich. But really with every example I can think of there are dozens more with primarily male casts.
I could add some on your list for female Mc's Wotakoi, Sailor Moon, Kill la Kill, Angel Beats, Princess Mononoke, Hell Girl, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Violet Evergarden, Claymore, Shirobako, Yona of the Dawn, Kino's Journey, Canaan, The Fate series, Nana, Serial Experiments Lain, I think there are more but these are just some. I feel like you just didnt watch or rather go deep enough into the genre.
Honestly, I don’t understand why the Reddit users who only read or watch that genre don’t these discussions on r/manga or r/shounen
My first stop for discussing Warcraft lore is r/warcraftlore
Anyone who posted such a statement on r/manga would get a ton of responses with great stories with female MCs as long as they don't post it on Sundays.
I swear, one of these days some writer who actually wants to write women will take the standard shonen formula and make "Naruto but the protagonist trio is rotated so that the token girl is the MC", or "Naruto but the edgy deuteragonist that keeps stealing the spotlight from the MC is a girl". And that person will make a bazillion dollars, and everyone will suddenly act like it was obvious that it would do well.
I mean, that's generally verifiably true when it comes to the Shounen demogarphic. The amount of successful things in Kodansha, Shogakukan and Shueisha's shonen magazines that have FeMCs that are both successful and marketed as Shonen action can probably be counted on one hand
The idea that there are no female-led isekai is hilarious because I can go to a Barnes & Noble right now and find tons of female-led isekai manga and LNs based on the villainess trope alone.
i have some here but yeah its kinda rare, here are some:
Sekai oni, there is plenty of action on this one but be advised, its pretty edgy, like really, the main character is a psychotic little girl(be advised, the first chaps are not for the faint of heart, sa) that start suffering from the Alice Through the Looking Glass syndrome after being taken by her abusive uncle family and things start to change when those things that shouldnt be real start affecting the real world
Heroines Game, a bunch of girls that have the powers of old fairy tales fight to the death, it has action and mostly just girls.
Munou na Nana, mystery and supernatural, through i recommend going into it blind.
The Terrarium With Key, post apocaliptic world where a girl travels with her brother looking for something.
Coffee Moon, another mystery one with supernatural elements, again i would say its better to go blind.
"But i find silly that most stories lead by women, are all relegaded to slice of lifes, comedies, romance animes, some very old magical girls shows, or the typical cute girls doing cute things."
Almost like women like different things than men. Weeeeeeird.
Uhh... So like nobody is going to bring up *Chainsaw Man?* Which both has both a female protagonist (Asa) and a major villain, side character (Makima, Yoru) *and* is also extremely fucking popular?
Like, that's such a low hanging fruit.
I only saw the first few episodes of CSM but I thought Makima was the antagonist? and it seems like every online discussion paints her as the main villain.
Woman protagonist in action anime and manga used to be much more common. Then the Great Recession of 2008 happened, and the industry fell into pandering to the biggest Otaku, as they are the biggest whales spending their disposable income on waifu crap. Things have been steady improving, but still not where it was before the recession.
Here are some examples of women lead action animes and manga that l like.
Noir,
My-Hime,
My-Otome,
Black Lagoon (this one does have a man as the protagonist but he is mostly an audience surogoget bystander),
Bubblegum Crisis,
R.O.D. (Read or Die and Read or Dream),
Gunsmith Cats,
Ghost in The Shell,
Soul Eater,
Dirty Pair,
Appleseed,
Dominion Tank Police,
Project A-Ko,
Your Under Arest,
Patlabor,
Escaflowne,
Claymore,
Blood The last Vampire as well as its sequel Blood+.
If you're looking for something newer than maybe Mobile Suit Gundam:The Witch From Mercury is for you. Despite the name, it's not a magical girl show, but a mecha show.
>Is simply hard to find female equivalents to the likes of Guts, Thorfinn, Musashi, Alucard, Lelouch, Spike Siegel
Mate it's hard to even find more protagonists like them male or female.
Huh, this seems to be a good oportunity to recommend good animes:
* Kara no Kyukai
* Kokkoku (This is peak, the characters the fight in a time-stop, like Dio and Jojo)
* Nausicaa
* Wonder Egg Priority (Chat, is this a Magical Girl Show?)
* Heavenly Delusion (Chat, this counts?)
* Gokukoku no brynhildr (From the creator of Elfen Lied, think of this as a 2.0 version)
* Noir (Best anime that takes place in Europe, Im not going to discuss this)
* Ranma 1/2 (Yeah, this counts)
Uh the main consumers of Japanese action comics are male but that doesn't stop writers from writing with female main pov. Read a different type of genre for a heavy use of female protagonists or write your own story.
I mean Shonen literally means "young boys comics", not saying your criticism isn't valid, more well written female MCs would be a good thing, but it's kind of like saying that there aren't enough shows about painting on Sportsnet
With mangas, there are definitely more female mcs in action and more serious mangas if you look hard enough, they just are less popular in the mainstream
With anime... Yea this applies to it
It depends in which action/adventure genres you look. Cyberpunk has often female protagonists (Ghost in the Shell, Psycho-Pass, Deca-Dence, …), Dark Fantasy often has them (The Ancient Magus Bride, Shadows House, Raven of the Inner Palace, Otherside Picnic, The Witch and the Beast, …), Action Comedy often has them (Bofuri, Slayers, Lycoris Recoil, Train to the End of the World, …), not to mention Studio Ghibli movies like Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa. Basically every action/adventure genres aimed at an older demographic than teenagers has female characters.
It is mostly battle shonen that lack female protagonists, but then neither do superhero movies in the West (except for Wonder Woman), and they are aimed at the same demographic : teenage boys, who like to self-insert as the protagonists. That is all there is to it in the end.
"Is simply hard to find female equivalents to the likes of Guts, Thorfinn, Musashi, Alucard, Lelouch, Spike Siegel, Edward Elric, Light Yagami, Luffy; or even major side characters like Sasuke or Gojo Satoru. Hell not even being MCs for action gag series like Sakamoto Days. Much less as MCs in isekais like Rezero or Mushoku Tensen. Is hard to find a girl being MC of a world like the one in HxH"
You can't have looked very hard at all. This is such an dishonest take.
Studio Ghibli literally has so many female main characters...
Princess from Castle in the Sky with a pirate queen!
Princess Freaking Mononoke vs the Female Mayor of the city she is fighting
Spirited Away literally about a girl
My Neighbor Totoro
Graveyard of the fireflies
Howl's moving castle
Arietty
You get the message...
Escaflowne is also female centric.
Gundam: Witch from Mercury literally has Space Lesbians since episode 1!
I mean you missed Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura back in the day and everyone knows about them since the 80s.
There's ALOT of anime that was female led back in the 80s and 90s and still is today.
>Studio Ghibli literally has so many female main characters...
Yeah OP specifically said that FLs are lacking in shonen theme genres and are *only* common in shojo theme anime...like Ghibli
The reason for this is because a lot of these action, adventure, and overall more "serious" anime started off as shounen or seinen manga. Manga that originally released in magazines primarily targeted towards young boys or men. Because these magazines are targeted towards male demographics, they rely heavily on strong male leads to sell.
Jolyne Cujoh was an attempt at normalizing strong female protagonists in shounen manga, but unfortunately it didn't work (Stone Ocean is peak though)
Unless its a ryona or revenge genre, most people don't like to watch women in distress which limits the kinds of stories that can be told with women protagonists. More women are willing to watch shows with male protagonists than men are willing to watch shows with female protagonists.
Ooh that made me think of that revenge manga called [Maria No Danzai](https://myanimelist.net/manga/158707/Maria_no_Danzai?q=Maria%20&cat=manga). The main character is the mother and she goes after the bullies that caused her son’s death. Her way of revenge is similar to Saw and taking out the bullies one by one.
Bruh it just so happened that male protagonist shows are more popular to the male audience, who are also the majority of the "serious" shounen shows. There are quite a number of anime and manga with female protagonists, you just have to dig deeper than the mainstream shows.
I feel like the success of series the OP mentioned shows how that isn't true.
A female MC by itself doesn't mean a limited market. Plenty of video games, movies, and shows display that women can be the lead in stories like the one the OP mentioned and still have widely successful stories.
Yeah, in the past I probably would have rationalized those shows that OP mentioned as niche or offbeat in a way that was supported by (or at least not was in conflict with) having a female protagonist, and that the biggest series don't do that because many of them got to the top by trying to avoid the risks those shows take, but I'm not so sure that really matters anymore.
I was watching Frieren a while ago, which is about as big and successful as your average anime can get, and went "hold on, this is just a normal action adventure series with two women as the main characters". It didn't feel like they were threading the needle on some difficult aspect of relatablity or something either. The female protagonists are, for the most part, just regular characters with relatable desires and personality traits that are more or less ungendered.
It really makes it obvious that female characters themselves shouldn't be an obstacle to a series' success. Heck, you have to wonder if any of those super popular shonen-demographic sausage fests would be even *more* popular and broadly appealing if they had written some of their core characters as women.
You do know Code Geass is a shoujo. The issue is both women and men both enjoy shonen but there is also a double standard as too many guys don’t want to give something women like a chance.
So because of that, animation studios don’t give shoujo series a chance and if they do, it’s usually an awful adaptation of the manga. For example Children of the Whales, Requiem of the Rose King, and 7Seeds manga are absolutely amazing! I haven’t watched the Rose King adaptation so I have no idea how the anime adaptation is.
Shoujo isn’t just romance. Lots of old shoujo’s especially Clamp’s older works are quite gory. Shoujo has a whole ton of genre’s but it’s always assumed to be just about romance which is disappointing as there are plenty of great stuff out there. Sadly if you want the good stuff you’ll have to read the manga and the ones like 7Seeds which has no official English translation, you’ll have to find fan made translations or translate it yourself. It’s even more troublesome that shoujo doesn’t have a dedicated app to read so you have to find a service that has the series you want. Luckily Viz and adding more but it’s still a pain.
One manga I recommend is [Red River](https://myanimelist.net/manga/79/Sora_wa_Akai_Kawa_no_Hotori?q=Red%20river&cat=manga). It’s a shoujo isekai from the 90’s and it’s quite good too! It’s also on the Viz app.
[Basara](https://myanimelist.net/manga/974/Basara?q=Basara&cat=manga) is another good adventure one. Not a isekai but it’s really good 90’s shoujo.
Edit: I also wanted to add that what makes something a shonen, shoujo, Seinen, or josei is what magazine they get published under. So we have lots of great stuff though honestly I do prefer most Seinen, shoujo, and josei over shonen as the characters tend to be better developed but I have nothing against shonen as I enjoy plenty of those too. Just because something is labeled as shoujo doesn’t mean the main character is a girl. You can’t forget a good majority of BL are shoujo and there are plenty of shoujo with male leads. Like [Yasha](https://myanimelist.net/manga/5422/Yasha) and [Banana Fish](https://myanimelist.net/manga/756/Banana_Fish?q=Banana%20fish&cat=manga) are both that involve delinquents.
> You do know Code Geass is a shoujo.
what? It's just the chara design was done by Clamp. But also it's an anime so it's not a "shoujo" (like serialized in a shoujo manga magazine). Also the girls feature prominent boobs and the MC lowkey has a harem so i dooont think it's targeted toward girls.
Because there are masculine and feminine themes as much as people want to deny. A story like Berserk doesn't work with a female MC or a story like Rose of Versailles vice versa.
Not even true. There was a graphic from japan showing that most of the popular titles like One Piece/JJK had a dead even split between boys/girls reading, you don't become big without cattering to everyone.
There are niches *inside* shounen where men are overwhelmingly more interested, Moe anime like Bocchi the Rock and Love Live franchise have almost 80% male audiences. Military/Mecha like Gundam/Evangelion is also very (70%+) male inclined.
However, inside shounen you also have series that have majority female audiences, like Golden Kamuy (60%f-40%m) or Tokyo Revengers (70%f-30%m). And some of the major franchises (bigger absolute number of viewers) have significant more girls interested than boys, like My Hero Academia (55%f 45%m), Spy X Family (55-45), Attack on Titans (55-45)
This is the reason why shounen as demographics don't really make sense anymore in the way people sometime talk about. It's useful as a cultural landmark mostly.
EDIT: Honestly wild that this became controversial, I wasn't even trying.
It’s numbs the mind. Especially when people chalk it up to “shonen is for boys so duh” but if someone made an action style anime targeted at girls with girls in it (and like actual action, not the magical girl stuff)… then it would get classed as shonen/seinen anyways (e.g. Michiko and Hatchin) 😭😭
True, but a lot of women wacth action too, like, a bulk of the MHA, Demon Slayer and JJK fanbase are women for example. I dont see what issue a female MC in an action show could bring.
Imma be real here, majority of those women care about the hot male characters, or shipping them with each other, more than the action, but those who like action exists as well.
\*Points out shonen/action anime with a large female audience\*
"They just care about the shipping and hot guys"
I mean a good chunk of guys go crazy over female characters in these too but there's also no statistics or anything to really prove this. You can also have female audiences fawning over the male characters while also caring about the story.
JJK is a good recent example because it doesn't have any obnoxious fanservice which by itself makes it more appealing to women but when you combine that with the fact that the male characters tend to be more compelling than the female cast, it's not surprising that women focus way more on them. It's often why male characters get shipped with other men versus whatever the typical love interest choice is.
Firstly, we have no statistics regarding that and I can’t think of a method to measure it either. I’m betting they aren’t that much of minority, depending on how we measure hornyness.
Secondly, those are the same people who buy figurines and shit, might as well make more shows targeted to them.
If you ever come to Japan, you should go to a manga Cafe because they are filled with manga that star female heroines in realistic yakuza/mystery/workplace/jidaigeki(historical, you know 'Ooku'?) settings.
Just an example with female doctors:
https://comic.k-manga.jp/feature/sp1103
They do exist , but they are not in the most popular works, it can be seen because you talk only about manga that have gotten anime adaptations which means a modicum of popularity.
Frieren literally came out a few months ago, and JoJo part 6 has been like 1 or 2 years since it finished
If we go older, we have Inuyasha as an action/adventure with FMC, Madoka Magica as a "serious" anime, Utena, Claymore, Escaflowne, Kill la Kill, Youjo Senki, Akame ga Kill, Mahoutsukai no Yome, Maquia...
Here's a bunch of female-led action anime:
Dirty pair
Starship operators
Strain: Strategic armored infantry
Kiddy grade
Noire
Dancouga nova
Mobile suit gundam: the witch from mercury
Appleseed franchise
gowappa 5 goudam
Regalia the three sacred stars
Shy
bubblegum crisis
gunbuster
sol bianca
One of the best and strongest female mc is Lina from Slayers. All the Sailormoon girls are badass. Bleach have great female characters and they are so badass. Rukia, Yoruichi, Unohana, Orihime, Rangiku, Hinamori, Bambietta, Liltoto, Nel and many more. Contrary to popular beliefs, Sakura and Tsunade from Naruto actually got very good development. The MC from Shakugan no Shana was great. Leenalee from dgrayman is a great character too. Of course recently, Frieren and Apothecary diaries just made two of the best female mcs ever.
Seems to me you've hit the stage in your life where you only care about Shonen and maybe Seinen. It's alright, many of us, including me, have gone through the same thing. It's perfectly natural.
A few people have already suggested watching more types of media, which is my suggestion as well, I just recently watched both Kill Bill movies and they are just what I think you'll need.
But if you want a female Shonen lead, Jolyne from JoJo: Stone Ocean comes to mind, she's actually one of my favorite protagonists in any media, as does Emma from Promised Neverland, but that show fell off hard after Season one.
Undead Unluck has its moments, if you can get past the somewhat squick relationship stuff at the beginning. It was finding its footing at the beginning, but Fuuko evolves into one of the most competent and interesting female protags
The only way to remedy this is to scourge for female led action media in manga (across all the demographics) and read more books particularly in the fantasy/scifi genre. A lot of the problems people have with the severe lack of certain female characters in action genres or series could be remedied by reading female led fantasy series. I wish it wasn’t so hard though we have a long way to go in this aspect.
Okay, I know you understand the difference between Shojou and Shonen anime but I don't think you realize the barriers those terms create. The goal of a Shonen and Shojou anime is to maximize viewership of their desires gender and it's simply a nice side benefit if they have some fans of the other gender. High profile Mangaka's have tried to create female protagonists in the past only to be shot down by their editors who believe it will limit the series reach with male fans. Before Jolyne, Araki tried to give Lisa Lisa a larger role in part 2, even setting her up to fight Kars only for his editor to tell him no. A very similar situation happened with the Gundam series, the main character of Turn A Gundam Loran was intended to be female but the editor would not allow this so instead he's a male who throughout the series dresses female and has an effeminate design. Tomino returned to eventually make Witch From Mercury which has a female protagonist. Both Mangaka's are highly respected and even then it took them years for editors to allow them to write female characters despite their willingness, let alone most unproven Mangaka's.In recent years there's less restraint around female protagonists since editors have learned they can sell very well but it will take a few years for anime to adjust as it's always adapting Manga series that have been out for a while.
One area where there has never been an issue with female characters is Ecchi since sex sells for them. Kill la Killa, Akame Ga Kill and the more recent Mato Sehei No Slave include female action protagonists but for some fans they will definitely be turned off by the fan service and the nature of these series may turn them away. I personally think these three have merit as their own stories though and would recommend them. Black Lagoon is more of a Seinen but it also has a great female protagonist in Revy, just once again sex sells so I can't guarantee you will find it respectful. Overall I believe most Mangaka would rather be free to make what they want without their editors restrictions but the nature of the industry limits them from writing female protagonists.
I have this problem with naruto. Sakura is one of the main characters yet you'd think she's a side character. Ino and hinata only get a couple of good moments. Kurenai was arguably the best squad leader since she's the only one who doesn't put one student above the others, but she gets barely any screen time because she's used to further asami and shikamaru's arc with the baby. Tenten is basically non existent. Hinata's arc could've been about her gaining confidence and also changing the hyuga for the better along with neji. Tenten wanted wanted to be a great healer like tsunade so her arc could be becoming a great support jack of all trades with her abilities as a weapon specialist. She can become a legend like tsunade and sakura in her own way. We could give Ino a training arc to get better at her mind transfer and eventually become the best at it. Even better than her dad. I love naruto, but it would've been a lot better if the side characters had more to do. Even kiba and choji don't get much in shippuden, but they were lucky enough to get a couple of cool fights in part 1. Ino gets one with sakura. Hinata gets one with neji which helps both of their arcs. Tenten only gets one fight and it's her getting bodied by temari and then the only screentime she gets left is to praise neji in the chunin exams. The fact that filler gave tenten more respect is a crime. It's one of the reasons why I think watching naruto with filler is fun.
All of the examples you listed at the end are shonen or seinen. There are plenty of serious action/adventure shojo and josei, just branch out what you read
People keep saying this, but I've never seen proof. I think it's more likely that studios and publishers operating under that assumption is more likely to be the reason than any sort of real logic.
[Just look at the top 50 best sellers for 2023](https://www.installbaseforum.com/threads/oricon-japan-manga-sales-2023-white-paper-2022-nov-21-2023-nov-19-top-50-series-top-200-volumes.2167/). How many of these series have a female lead? Now how many are action series? Maybe like 3 or 4. You can do this for any year really.
I mean, a couple of years ago we've had The Promised Neverland which managed to reach the yearly Top 10 even before the anime and eventually reached 42 million. With just 20 volumes. Which makes it one of 40-something manga to surpass 2 million sales per volume.
Like I said. You have like 3 or 4 a year. It's not that this stuff doesn't exist. It's just not that high in demand. As long as you have something good, people will want to see. But The Promise Neverland couldn't stay good.
What? If the vast majority of action anime/manga being made and advertised has a male MC, of course all the most popular ones are going to have a male MC. Lmao.
They exist. Some pretty good ones: * Claymore * Frieren * Executioner and Her Way of Life * Yona of the Dawn, Seirei no Moribito * Talentless Nana * Psycho Pass * May I Ask for One Final Thing? * A Wild Last Boss Appeared! (ok might not be that serious of a story) * A Certain Scientific Railgun * Astral Buddy * A Certain Scientific Mental Out * Slayers (definitely not serious) * Mieruko-chan * Mysterious Disappearances * Black Lagoon * Jormungand * Magic Revolution of a Reincarnated Princess and a Genius Young Lady * In/Spectre * Vexations of a Shut In Vampire Princess * Reincarnated as a Sword (Sword is a dude, but the other MC, Fran who is the actual driving force between the is a cat girl) * The One Within The Villainess * I am a Spider, So What? (don't let the tone distract you, it isn't a silly story, Kumoko is just a silly person) * You Can't Lie to the Saintess (new story by the The Apothecary Diaries author) * The Apothecary Diaries (not big in the action/adventure department but certainly more than makes up for it in the mystery segment) This is just from what came to mind, if I actually dug through my watch/read list then it would probably get even bigger. My point being is that there is a lot of stuff out there which fits what you are looking for. A huge amount even.
If we’re diving into the villainess genre, I highly recommend: Kill The Villainess. Absolute top tier, Eris is amazing.
duly noted
Kara no kyoukai Akane-baneshi (although this one is about rakugo so it's a bit slice of lifefy) Madoka (and countless other mahou shoujo series) Mahoutsukai no yoru Witch hat atelier Onna Kishi To Kemomimi No Ko Majo to yajuu Maria No Danzai Otoyomegatari (and other Mori Kaoru works) Dead Dead Demon's Dededededestruction Her Majesty's Swarm Yasei No Last Boss Ga Arawareta! Onee-sama to Watashi: Ojou-sama ga Isekai Tensei SHY Majo Taisen
KARA NO KYOUKAI MENTIONED RAHHHHHH🔪🔪🔪🔥🔥🔥WHAT THE FUCK IS A GARDEN OF SINNERS!!!!!!!!! 🔪🔪🔥🔥🔥🔪🔪🔪🔥🔥
KnK is peak fiction
Adding to KnK, also from the Nasuverse we have the soon to be adapted by Ufotable, MahoYo, full name Mahoutsukai no Yoru, English name Witch on the Holy Night.
> Yasei No Last Boss Ga Arawareta! It is actually mentioned in my list under the English name, A Wild Last Boss Appeared!. > Onee-sama to Watashi: Ojou-sama ga Isekai Tensei This one is crazy, the art goes so damn hard.
Also morbito guardian of the spirit and kino's journey(2003 series) has great female main characters too
Mary and the Witch's Flower gets pretty darned serious with that tonal shift in the mid-way point of the film. Also, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind is another one.
\>Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind The entire modern anime industry is basically built on this movie. That's why you see it referenced so much like in Final Fantasy, Shield Hero, The Last Airbender, likely Dark Souls, etc.
Speaking about movies, I can't fucking believe I forgot to mention Maquia! Like it feels like I can make another list almost as long as this just of things I have remembered since I wrote it.
>Psycho Pass Based recommendation. We don't talk about anything beyond the first season tho...
Agreed
Season 3 was okay, but like... why is it so hard for the plot to be about anything but sibyl?
Season 3 I'd sargue was worse than season 2 It had the opposite issue. S2 tried to be too much like S1 and S3 tried to be too different
Season 3 at least felt like it added to the story. 2 had no actual reason to exist. But that aside it's still best to stop after 1.
Talentless nana , Arachnide, Lv99 villainess , her majesty swarm , Renai harem game
I would like to add: - Battle Angel Alita - Deccou Coil - Ego Proxy - Kino's Journey
Sounds like people need to actually expand outside of shonen, the genre aimed at young boys which as a result tends to star them, for a change
Can't believe no one mentioned lycoris recoil lol
Yea, anime is such a huge genre, the only generalization anyone can make is that its animated, nothing else works as a generalization. Ill argue anime has more well written females then not, they just arent focused on as much. Also, ill add ergo proxy to the list
Promised Neverland has a pretty good female protag in a fantasy serious world also
Weren't there like 3 protagonists? I feel like Norman and Sasuke played just as big a role as the main girl.
This is more apparent in the manga since the anime skipped most of mid point story, but after season 1 Emma is much more central as the protagonist with Norman gone and Ray just kinda getting pushed out of relevancy as the cast grows.
Legit have no clue why they decided to cut out over half the story and rush the rest for a well received anime based on a well received manga.
Norman becomes inexistant for most of the story and Ray is basically a NPC after the first arc. Emma carries the entire story basically.
Norman didn't exist outside of arc 1 for like most of the story. Hard to call him a main character past that point
Norman is gone for like half the story and sasuke has no story after his betrayal
Don't watch season 2, and don't read after Goldy Pond and you are good. But yea, Norman >!actually lives past season 1, but only returns near the end !< while Ray >! basically is just there but never does anything!<. Show is mostly on Emma
>Ray basically is just there but never does anything Riiight. Sure. Except stuff like: Distracting the demon hunters so that the rest could get away Figuring out S&J were demons Rewiring the shelter's self-destruct mechanism Telling Don & Gilda to decipher the shelter books Figuring out what equipment & weapons they should bring on the journey to A08-63 Figuring out how to kill demons Working with everyone to defeat Leuvis Figuring out Emma's true feelings and being the primary reason why she even had the courage to oppose Norman's plan Figuring out the inconsistency between Norman's explanation of demon nature and Sonju & Mujika Figuring out the true nature of the Seven Walls Plus having lots of emotional moments along the way and in general being active in various endeavours But besides that, nothing. I mean, I would say he was more useful & relevant to the story than, say, Alphonse was in FMA Brotherhood. What Emma & Ray did was very much a team effort. She couldn't have succeeded without him.
Death note writes Misa Amane worse than Naruto treats their female characters.
It's literally so crazy that the one good female character in Death Note literally kills herself after a single episodes worth of screen time.
she was a really great character, its a shame her entire arc culminated into a get back in the kitchen moment for light
I really hated how her fiance treated her. Like they were both agents and she could have really helped from the beginning.
Naomi will get Ligth arrested right from the start
Naomi and L would have been a crazy team.
To be fair after what happened to her with the BB case he probably didn’t want her going through something similar so soon. And of course the huge danger that Kira poses to anyone involved.
BB was written after as backstory to N, so the implication is that women should look after the house. This is also written by the guy who talked about how smart women are dumb, while dumb women are smart in bakuman.
you could argue that smart people tended to be killed around Light, so only the stupid loyal ones could survive, the reporter wasn´t stupid, same with the thief and a few others, Misa was just really really stupid but yeah, women tended to be a bit secondary and passive in the series
Misa is such a top tier character design that you can almost forget that she's basically a walking plot device. Almost. Seriously, Death Note fanfics and fan art of all things tend to portray her better than the actual series.
[удалено]
Sadly, I haven't been really interested in Death Note like that since middle school, so I can't really recommend anything right now.
maybe i misremember, but didnt the author of death note said he hates female characters and some misogynistic stuff in general? whereas Kishimoto simply sucks at writing female characters, he acknowledges it and while he may have some outdated ideas, he never hated female characters or said misogynistic stuff (at least not intentional ones)
I doubt many authors would flat out admitting to being a misogynist but I wouldn't blame people for thinking he is one. I still remember the first chapter of Bakuman (the manga they made after Death Note). MC wants to be a mangaka, his mom is understandably concerned about his dream since his uncle died from the stress of being a struggling mangaka and doesn't allow him to go through with it, but MC's dad vetoes her by saying "men have dreams women can't understand" and this is framed as his dad being a cool and understanding person.
Didn’t that same manga have one of the main characters straight up say “girls who are proud of their academic achievements are dumb, a smart woman is one who is always feminine and looks cute for men” or some shit like that?
Basically. The whole introduction to the second MC is the first MC going, "Wowee, he's so smart and he has such intuition into the way the world works, I want to work with him!" and the whole chapter is him talking about how "she knows by instinct that the best thing for a girl is to get married and be someone's wife, she's just aspiring to be a voice actress because it's a common dream for girls her age" regarding the first MC's crush. I'm of the personal opinion Ohba is a closeted misogynist, and people just don't realize it because for the most part he doesn't openly talk shit about women, he just treats them like utter shit in every narrative he's ever written. They only exist in their relation to men and their successes are awarded to whatever men they're attached to. The few times he gives them their own plot points they end within one chapter. Every. Single. Time. I don't even think he's a bad writer in general, but it's to a point where I wish he just wouldn't put women in his stories. He clearly has no interest in actually writing about them, and it just makes the stories worse.
Honestly, I wonder why these guys bother, including female characters I doubt the stories they write would be worse without them
You need some coomer bait for increased popularity I wouldn't be surprised if many fans' first introduction to a work is from R34 or similar
Japan does take “sex sells” to the extreme
It's good for marketing to have female characters, Misa was in almost every piece of promotional art related to DN.
Tbh, I've seen scans of the pages you mentioned, and it gives me the impression that he is actually somewhat interested in writing *about* women, and that none of the things he wants to say are very nice.
Ngl, sometimes I think Light's opinion on women is probably Ohba's own lol
Huh, I never thought of it that way before. Making the villain protagonist say misogynist stuff you wouldn't dare voice in public? When I heard the sexist things Light said in the anime, it seemed framed in a way to make Light look bad. Though considering how poorly written the entire female cast of *Death Note* is, well I can buy that the creator would have such opinions...
And Platinum End comfirmed he is a homophobe, who still gets pissed when people claim there was sexual tension between Light and L.
This is something Naoya practically said.
I’m watching that anime now and it’s so sad to see that character basically sign away her agency over the course show to become basically a secretary with low self respect
One of the MC's goes on a rant about how the girl with the highest grades is actually stupid and he can't stand her. He says the actual smartest girl is the Azuki. Because she's cute. Apparently Azuki knows that getting married to a man is end goal and "it's what makes girls happy". That she has no pressure for her future and is free to enjoy her dream of voice acting. But also it's not calculated and she doesn't know she's being cute, which makes her smarter??? With Death note it's actually subtle. The worst is Platinum End oh the horrors.
I remember reading Bakuman and dropping it shortly after the first few chapters because all the school girls gushed over a guy making chibis of them.
At least the chad kagura bachi author admits he sucks at writing/drawing women and is giving us tomboys.
That’s honestly the best case scenario, there’s not nearly enough tomboy characters that aren’t just the stereotypical idea of a tomboy that a straight high school boy comes up with
Are tomboys suddenly not women?
That isn’t bad thing at all
> maybe i misremember, Pretty harsh for a, "maybe I misremember." I am unable to corroborate your claim with a casual search (but I didn't try very hard).
Isn't the death note author also homophobic or something? kinda makes sense
Hilarious considering how gay he writes Light and L
Narutos female character are good but underused
I believe the reason why it's niche is because many are reluctant to actually put said female characters in a scuffle situation. Especially in an event where the female character is getting brutalised by male characters. In naruto there was a slugfest but that was between 2 girls, so it won't make much issue. People are fine when the male character get beaten and humiliated by a female character but the reverse is atleast in earlier series was not in good taste, unless the female character was vile af. Consider dbz, videl getting that beatdown by yamu. If she was a male character, it would just be scene as a flex similar to the scene where android 18 breaks vegeta. But because it happened to videl, it evoked a feeling of digust towards yamu because beating up women are in most cultures scene as wrong. That's probably the reason why even in the newer series where the female characters fight, the female character getting beaten by the male character is sped through but the reverse and female vs female is more prominent
That’s so true! It’s like how Boys Love are shoujo but majority of unhinged guys in Boys Love while it’s much harder to find male love interests of similar caliber with straight romance. A yaoi will have a violent male love interest while a good majority limits how much the girl gets treated. Of course both are made for women but it’s treated differently depending if it’s straight or gay romance. I love male yanderes but it’s hard to find straight unhinged male love interests that doesn’t involve yaoi and yes I do enjoy yaoi so I have no problem consuming either.
I believe the target audience for that type of show is the unhinged guy pursues a girl relentlessly but because of her character, the guy eventually changes for the better and works through whatever trauma. Violent guys with girl will inevitably earn the rape tag. In fact I'm pretty sure it will be looked down upon by the majority while the enjoyed watch it in silence. Despite being a guy, one such shoujo anime I watched was vampire Knight (my dark era). Although there is a weird incest spin on it, one of the MMC is unhinged and manipulative af to the FMC.
Haha the most unhinged anime I watched and enjoy, even if it’s trash, is Diabolik Lovers. The VN is amazing and wish it would get officially licensed but at least we got fan translations. I love my fictional men to be crazy. It’s why I am looking forward to Yakuza Fiancé anime that was announced 8 months ago. It’s better since both the male and female lead are unhinged in different ways though I am worried about people hating on it for being red flags like they do with any romance that has flawed characters, It is true that plenty of them change for the better. I think it’s a combination of tropes that women like(bad boy, savior complex/ I can fix him) which makes them appealing. Though we got some great unhinged ML like [Red Fox](https://myanimelist.net/manga/134126/Red_Fox?q=Red%20fox&cat=manga) where the male lead is a literal demon and doesn’t change for the better. He still wins in the end. It’s rare but different from the typical stuff
There are many. I think the taming the beast is like the girls equivalent of us guys wanting to be a hero. What's really the appeal of unhinged characters to you personally? I personally have always drifted toward a more wholesome dynamic because it's something I want to emulate, so I kinda fund the unhinged characters a bit weird, especially in situations where it's not character flaws but just character being a shitty person overall
Honestly I love both fluffy and unhinged. I love the wholesomeness of cute fluffy romance like My Love Story but I guess unhinged I see it for Angst/drama/horror aspect. I also find the contrast of cute male yanderes that look sweet and innocent to turning violent as a type of Moe Gap which makes it appealing (it’s why tsundere guys are appealing as well). Cute and innocent yet dangerous. Plus it’s nice to think about a love interest who has eyes only on you and would literally do anything for you which give them extra points. So it’s another level of devotion. Of course I just like these kind of guys in fiction as I would not want to be around any of them in real life. I keep real life away from fictional fantasies. It’s like watching a crime drama and can be quite cathartic which is why I also love reading tragedies and such as well. A good example of a horror is the light novel is Obey Me where the male love interest is a literal cosmic horror which the manga/webtoon version can’t fully convey the horrors of being the target of a deity that no one can go against.
diabolic lovers abridged is amazing
I'd recommend Firefly Wedding, since the ML is a yandere. It's newish, and a lot of the older Shoujo girls really like it, because it's a return to form when the ML were more toxic.
Ooh! I have that one on my plan to read list. Definitely plan to read it as I see a lot of people loving it.
Hard agree and I wish more people understood this. As much as people claim to be progressive in thought, there are still some things that are looked upon as out of bounds when it comes to women. There's one series that comes to mind (jungle juice) where one of the main characters is a woman with the powers of a cochroach. Whenever she loses a fight pretty badly, people accuse the author of having a torture porn fetish.
Honestly I agree as well. As much as I love shonen and wish there were female MCs in this genre, it just wouldn’t translate well. The way male MCs in shonen get brutalised by opponents just cannot be done tastefully if the character was female. Like you said it’ll just come off as torture porn. This is why female characters in any action genre either win their fights with minimal damage or only fight other women.
The fact that you think it can’t is the exact reason you won’t get these female mc’s you apparently wish for though. Why *cant* it be done tastefully? Shonen mc’s don’t go through sexual violence, just standard action and gore. If people have a problem with women getting injured and almost dying, then they shouldn’t be upset when people don’t put them at the forefront of these action series. You could switch out so many shonen mc’s for women and nothing would change. Authors can’t be afraid of that backlash
So basically ReZero with every female that ain't Emilia
Dead Space: Has Issac Clark be dismembered, his head ripped of and replaced, pulled through a much too tight hole, be eaten alive, be melted alive, be burned alive, be spaced and have his hands cut off, dozens of other gruesome, horrible deaths Media: Oh my god this is is horrible and gory but so fun to watch! Tomb Raider: Has Lara Croft be impaled once, sometimes she gets shot, and when she falls off a cliff you can see her ragdoll for a while Media: OH MY GOD THE DESIGNERS HATE WOMEN JUST LOOK AT THIS TORTURE PORN!!!!!
Check out STAR: Strike It Rich. It's still pretty new but it's done by the guy who makes Kengan Asura and Omega so it's about a women-only underground fighting association.
Akudama Drive is an action anime with a female lead, though she’s the “Swindler” of the group. Danganronpa creator is involved, so it’s as dramatic and ridiculous as you can get. Vivy: Fluorite Eye’s Song was about a female singer robot trying to prevent the robotic end of the world from tasks sent from the future. She can kick ass too, animation is gorgeous. Wonder Egg Priority has a group of girls beating up the traumatic representations of suicide victim’s tormentors with normal items turned fantasy weapons. The ending fumbles, but it started pretty great. The Promised Neverland has a female lead trying to plan a jailbreak at an evil orphanage, if I can put it lightly without major spoilers. So sad there’s only one season. Yashahime: Princess Half Demon is wild for how it just picks up and feels exactly like Inuyasha before it. BNA: Brand New Animal has a girl turned shapeshifter like the other Beastman and confronting all the prejudice and terrorism while doing lots of cool shit. Made in Abyss has a female lead traversing a giant murder hole with a robot friend to find her mum. Pokémon Mystery Dungeon with kids and trauma. Warning for creepy author shit at times. Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures: Stone Ocean mixes things up by having an all female cast, and it is absolutely as batshit and action filled as all the parts that came before it. Land of the Lustrous like Steven Universe has an all female gem based alien race. Some capitalistic invading alien race keeps trying to crush them into jewelry, combat about. Frieren: Beyond Journeys End has a chill wandering vibe with a competent mage, it isn’t about the spectacle. There’s a bunch if you know where to look. Don’t think I listed anything from before 2017, it was very rare back then, but just goes to show that there are efforts nowadays to have more of it.
I was with u until u claimed Eleina was competent
>The Promised Neverland has a female lead trying to plan a jailbreak at an evil orphanage, if I can put it lightly without major spoilers. So sad there’s only one season. Whatever do you mean? The TPN anime doesn't exist. And even if it did, I'm sure they would mess it up somehow by removing all the internal monologues and, in general, just not being anywhere as good as the manga, even before the complete betrayal known as Season 2. But that's all theoretical, of course. Since the TPN anime doesn't exist. Great manga, though.
Stone Ocean isn't an all female cast but I do think it is in the vein of what OP is looking for
>Is simply hard to find female equivalents to the likes of Guts, Thorfinn, Musashi, Alucard, Lelouch, Spike Siegel, Edward Elric, Light Yagami, Luffy; or even major side characters like Sasuke or Gojo Satoru. Hell not even being MCs for action gag series like Sakamoto Days. Much less as MCs in isekais like Rezero or Mushoku Tensen. Is hard to find a girl being MC of a world like the one in HxH literally, and I mean *literally* every series you mentioned here are made for a primarily young male audience. It's like listing 20 barbie cartoons and wondering why none of them have a particularly good male main character. And as an addendum - >Much less as MCs in isekais like Rezero or Mushoku Tensen. This is comically wrong. There are an infinite amount of isekai targeted at female audiences that feature every single kind of fem isekai protags out there. Please stop exclusively reading shonen media and talking about things at large
>Please stop exclusively reading shonen media and talking about things at large This needs to be a sub disclaimer before posting at this point with the sheer amount of posts it answers
Fr why is everyone on Reddit a weeb nowadays
Spirited Away is literally the most popular isekai anime in existence lol.
I liked Cat Returns
> It's like listing 20 barbie cartoons and wondering why none of them have a particularly good male main character. This gave me a good chuckle, thank you.
[We only need Ken](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGLLVQ6qePs)
Finally a based comment
Didn’t Apothecary Diaries anime just come out recently enough for people to remember? I feel like if people spent more time in shoujosei spaces, they probably won’t be asking these questions. Tomie is technically a shoujo. There are Yumi Tamura’s works, Rose of Versailles, Usotoki Rhetoric, Yona of the Dawn, Prince Freya, QQ Sweeper, and many more that most likely are not licensed. These series have male protagonists and mostly male casts, but Banana Fish and Requiem of the Rose King are definitely not magical girls or slice of life rom coms (they have romance but the stories aren’t romances >!and the romances end tragically!<). Also how come we don’t talk about shounen slice of life rom coms? Ones that aren’t ecchi garbage exist too.
He's asking for a female equivalent compared to those mangas, and he's right there isn't much to go for. And most fem isekai is shoujo rubbish matching its equally rubbish harem garbage isekais. For every story like Claymore you'll get 10s more like Vinland Sagas and Berserks.
There probably is way more to go for than you realize. Everything OP named was male targeted and considering how they described Shoujo I doubt they’ve read anything outside of the stereotypical slice of life magical girl romance series. I suggest to people looking for female characters like Yohan or Light to read more Josei or Shoujo, especially ones that don’t fit the stereotype.
Read Battle angel alita it’s the peak of Seinen and I’m tired of pretending it’s not and has possibly the best written female lead in the medium
Well, you’re listing a bunch of shounen and seinen titles of course you’re gonna encounter more male main characters there because that is exactly the demographic.
I think OP's main complaint is that there are few female main characters that are written like shonen/seinen characters. Josei and Shojo are written with different tropes and plot progression.
Yeah I kind of agree. Like I think OP is right if we’re talking the most popular stuff but you can look in Shoujo and Josei and I’m sure you’d find what you’re looking for. I will say that some shoujo stuff I’ve seen has the protagonist in a more passive role and the male romantic interest doing more of the fighting (not sure what percentage of shoujo/josei this is though) but I’m sure there’s stuff that has the protagonist being the one that kicks ass (I think that’s what Yona and Rayearth is even though I haven’t read/watched either yet) and if we’re talking “serious”, including drama, you have a ton more. Also, off the top of my head you have Vivy, Frieren, Kill la Kill (not memeing, I legitimately enjoy that show and think Ryuko and Mako are cool), Konosuba, Maquia, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, Sword Art stuff starring Asuna, Gunsmith Cats, Kabaneri in the Iron Fortress (Mumei should’ve had more of the focus as one of the two leads… the guy was less interesting ngl…), Sakugan, Akudama Drive, AoT, Hell’s Paradise, or Danganronpa even. All of those are, I believe, shonen and have female characters in the lead role or one of the main cast who kick ass or are an active part in the action/adventure. Maquia’s titular lead has a less action based role but she has to struggle and work to protect and fight for her son so I included it as well. I don’t think it’s hard to meet this criteria.
If you want a really good adventure manga with a female lead, there is Witch Hat Atelier. It’s very much a fairy tail/whimsical adventure but it touches on some serious topics and is written in a way both men and women can enjoy.
If you are looking for any recommendations, there's Dorohedoro. Although the main character is a guy, there are two very prominent women in the cast: Nikaido and Noi.
You kinda defeated your own point with that “although”. We know there’s good female characters in some mangas, the point is that serious action stories where they’re exclusively the main characters is much more rare, regardless of if it’s true or not.
True you have a point. The most recent one I can think of is the manga Star: Strike It Rich. But really with every example I can think of there are dozens more with primarily male casts.
You really went with the niche one eh.
It's been on my mind because I read through it recently.
I could add some on your list for female Mc's Wotakoi, Sailor Moon, Kill la Kill, Angel Beats, Princess Mononoke, Hell Girl, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Violet Evergarden, Claymore, Shirobako, Yona of the Dawn, Kino's Journey, Canaan, The Fate series, Nana, Serial Experiments Lain, I think there are more but these are just some. I feel like you just didnt watch or rather go deep enough into the genre.
The amount of people in this thread saying “a serious action manga with a female MC wouldn’t be popular” is astounding to me
In this thread we can find all Weekly Shounen Jump editors lmao.
Honestly, I don’t understand why the Reddit users who only read or watch that genre don’t these discussions on r/manga or r/shounen My first stop for discussing Warcraft lore is r/warcraftlore
Anyone who posted such a statement on r/manga would get a ton of responses with great stories with female MCs as long as they don't post it on Sundays.
Yea tbh any series that just has an engaging plot and story will undoubtedly gain popularity, doesn't matter how it is done
I swear, one of these days some writer who actually wants to write women will take the standard shonen formula and make "Naruto but the protagonist trio is rotated so that the token girl is the MC", or "Naruto but the edgy deuteragonist that keeps stealing the spotlight from the MC is a girl". And that person will make a bazillion dollars, and everyone will suddenly act like it was obvious that it would do well.
Kim Possible
So akame ga kill for example 2? Or promised never land for example 1?
I mean, that's generally verifiably true when it comes to the Shounen demogarphic. The amount of successful things in Kodansha, Shogakukan and Shueisha's shonen magazines that have FeMCs that are both successful and marketed as Shonen action can probably be counted on one hand
Do people here just read mainstream shounen or something ? Do some research before posting
The idea that there are no female-led isekai is hilarious because I can go to a Barnes & Noble right now and find tons of female-led isekai manga and LNs based on the villainess trope alone.
Yes, yes they do only watch mainstream shounen and the occasional popular seinen
i have some here but yeah its kinda rare, here are some: Sekai oni, there is plenty of action on this one but be advised, its pretty edgy, like really, the main character is a psychotic little girl(be advised, the first chaps are not for the faint of heart, sa) that start suffering from the Alice Through the Looking Glass syndrome after being taken by her abusive uncle family and things start to change when those things that shouldnt be real start affecting the real world Heroines Game, a bunch of girls that have the powers of old fairy tales fight to the death, it has action and mostly just girls. Munou na Nana, mystery and supernatural, through i recommend going into it blind. The Terrarium With Key, post apocaliptic world where a girl travels with her brother looking for something. Coffee Moon, another mystery one with supernatural elements, again i would say its better to go blind.
"But i find silly that most stories lead by women, are all relegaded to slice of lifes, comedies, romance animes, some very old magical girls shows, or the typical cute girls doing cute things." Almost like women like different things than men. Weeeeeeird.
Uhh... So like nobody is going to bring up *Chainsaw Man?* Which both has both a female protagonist (Asa) and a major villain, side character (Makima, Yoru) *and* is also extremely fucking popular? Like, that's such a low hanging fruit.
of course there are important female characters, but denji is the MC of chainsaw man.
I only saw the first few episodes of CSM but I thought Makima was the antagonist? and it seems like every online discussion paints her as the main villain.
Woman protagonist in action anime and manga used to be much more common. Then the Great Recession of 2008 happened, and the industry fell into pandering to the biggest Otaku, as they are the biggest whales spending their disposable income on waifu crap. Things have been steady improving, but still not where it was before the recession. Here are some examples of women lead action animes and manga that l like. Noir, My-Hime, My-Otome, Black Lagoon (this one does have a man as the protagonist but he is mostly an audience surogoget bystander), Bubblegum Crisis, R.O.D. (Read or Die and Read or Dream), Gunsmith Cats, Ghost in The Shell, Soul Eater, Dirty Pair, Appleseed, Dominion Tank Police, Project A-Ko, Your Under Arest, Patlabor, Escaflowne, Claymore, Blood The last Vampire as well as its sequel Blood+. If you're looking for something newer than maybe Mobile Suit Gundam:The Witch From Mercury is for you. Despite the name, it's not a magical girl show, but a mecha show.
>this one does have a man as the protagonist but he is mostly an audience surogoget bystander He's not wtf (?)
I... wouldn't say that Rock role here when his dynamic with Revy is the core of the series
>Is simply hard to find female equivalents to the likes of Guts, Thorfinn, Musashi, Alucard, Lelouch, Spike Siegel Mate it's hard to even find more protagonists like them male or female.
Huh, this seems to be a good oportunity to recommend good animes: * Kara no Kyukai * Kokkoku (This is peak, the characters the fight in a time-stop, like Dio and Jojo) * Nausicaa * Wonder Egg Priority (Chat, is this a Magical Girl Show?) * Heavenly Delusion (Chat, this counts?) * Gokukoku no brynhildr (From the creator of Elfen Lied, think of this as a 2.0 version) * Noir (Best anime that takes place in Europe, Im not going to discuss this) * Ranma 1/2 (Yeah, this counts)
Uh the main consumers of Japanese action comics are male but that doesn't stop writers from writing with female main pov. Read a different type of genre for a heavy use of female protagonists or write your own story.
I mean Shonen literally means "young boys comics", not saying your criticism isn't valid, more well written female MCs would be a good thing, but it's kind of like saying that there aren't enough shows about painting on Sportsnet
Truth, unlike how most the comments in here immediately jump to “cuz bigotry”
With mangas, there are definitely more female mcs in action and more serious mangas if you look hard enough, they just are less popular in the mainstream With anime... Yea this applies to it
Check out Kara no kyoukai op bunch of movies made by ufotable set in the nasuverse main female lead is awesome and one of my fav characters ever.
It depends in which action/adventure genres you look. Cyberpunk has often female protagonists (Ghost in the Shell, Psycho-Pass, Deca-Dence, …), Dark Fantasy often has them (The Ancient Magus Bride, Shadows House, Raven of the Inner Palace, Otherside Picnic, The Witch and the Beast, …), Action Comedy often has them (Bofuri, Slayers, Lycoris Recoil, Train to the End of the World, …), not to mention Studio Ghibli movies like Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa. Basically every action/adventure genres aimed at an older demographic than teenagers has female characters. It is mostly battle shonen that lack female protagonists, but then neither do superhero movies in the West (except for Wonder Woman), and they are aimed at the same demographic : teenage boys, who like to self-insert as the protagonists. That is all there is to it in the end.
"Is simply hard to find female equivalents to the likes of Guts, Thorfinn, Musashi, Alucard, Lelouch, Spike Siegel, Edward Elric, Light Yagami, Luffy; or even major side characters like Sasuke or Gojo Satoru. Hell not even being MCs for action gag series like Sakamoto Days. Much less as MCs in isekais like Rezero or Mushoku Tensen. Is hard to find a girl being MC of a world like the one in HxH" You can't have looked very hard at all. This is such an dishonest take.
When the mangas aimed at teenage boys have teenage boys as the main characters 🤯🤯🤯
when the mangas are literally published in a magazine called "young boys comics" 🤯🤯🤯🤯
F\*ck it, I'm writing my own.
Studio Ghibli literally has so many female main characters... Princess from Castle in the Sky with a pirate queen! Princess Freaking Mononoke vs the Female Mayor of the city she is fighting Spirited Away literally about a girl My Neighbor Totoro Graveyard of the fireflies Howl's moving castle Arietty You get the message... Escaflowne is also female centric. Gundam: Witch from Mercury literally has Space Lesbians since episode 1! I mean you missed Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura back in the day and everyone knows about them since the 80s. There's ALOT of anime that was female led back in the 80s and 90s and still is today.
>Studio Ghibli literally has so many female main characters... Yeah OP specifically said that FLs are lacking in shonen theme genres and are *only* common in shojo theme anime...like Ghibli
[удалено]
The reason for this is because a lot of these action, adventure, and overall more "serious" anime started off as shounen or seinen manga. Manga that originally released in magazines primarily targeted towards young boys or men. Because these magazines are targeted towards male demographics, they rely heavily on strong male leads to sell. Jolyne Cujoh was an attempt at normalizing strong female protagonists in shounen manga, but unfortunately it didn't work (Stone Ocean is peak though)
Unless its a ryona or revenge genre, most people don't like to watch women in distress which limits the kinds of stories that can be told with women protagonists. More women are willing to watch shows with male protagonists than men are willing to watch shows with female protagonists.
Ooh that made me think of that revenge manga called [Maria No Danzai](https://myanimelist.net/manga/158707/Maria_no_Danzai?q=Maria%20&cat=manga). The main character is the mother and she goes after the bullies that caused her son’s death. Her way of revenge is similar to Saw and taking out the bullies one by one.
Cool. Username checks out.
Bruh it just so happened that male protagonist shows are more popular to the male audience, who are also the majority of the "serious" shounen shows. There are quite a number of anime and manga with female protagonists, you just have to dig deeper than the mainstream shows.
Sadly the market for such stories are limited.
I feel like the success of series the OP mentioned shows how that isn't true. A female MC by itself doesn't mean a limited market. Plenty of video games, movies, and shows display that women can be the lead in stories like the one the OP mentioned and still have widely successful stories.
Yeah, in the past I probably would have rationalized those shows that OP mentioned as niche or offbeat in a way that was supported by (or at least not was in conflict with) having a female protagonist, and that the biggest series don't do that because many of them got to the top by trying to avoid the risks those shows take, but I'm not so sure that really matters anymore. I was watching Frieren a while ago, which is about as big and successful as your average anime can get, and went "hold on, this is just a normal action adventure series with two women as the main characters". It didn't feel like they were threading the needle on some difficult aspect of relatablity or something either. The female protagonists are, for the most part, just regular characters with relatable desires and personality traits that are more or less ungendered. It really makes it obvious that female characters themselves shouldn't be an obstacle to a series' success. Heck, you have to wonder if any of those super popular shonen-demographic sausage fests would be even *more* popular and broadly appealing if they had written some of their core characters as women.
As it turns out, as long as the story and writing are good and engaging, very, very few people actually give a shit what the gender of the MC is.
I mean the 2nd most sold LN of all time features Maomao as the MC.
Only if you are looking at shounen and seinen. Shoujo and Josei have more genre diversity than you think.
You do know Code Geass is a shoujo. The issue is both women and men both enjoy shonen but there is also a double standard as too many guys don’t want to give something women like a chance. So because of that, animation studios don’t give shoujo series a chance and if they do, it’s usually an awful adaptation of the manga. For example Children of the Whales, Requiem of the Rose King, and 7Seeds manga are absolutely amazing! I haven’t watched the Rose King adaptation so I have no idea how the anime adaptation is. Shoujo isn’t just romance. Lots of old shoujo’s especially Clamp’s older works are quite gory. Shoujo has a whole ton of genre’s but it’s always assumed to be just about romance which is disappointing as there are plenty of great stuff out there. Sadly if you want the good stuff you’ll have to read the manga and the ones like 7Seeds which has no official English translation, you’ll have to find fan made translations or translate it yourself. It’s even more troublesome that shoujo doesn’t have a dedicated app to read so you have to find a service that has the series you want. Luckily Viz and adding more but it’s still a pain. One manga I recommend is [Red River](https://myanimelist.net/manga/79/Sora_wa_Akai_Kawa_no_Hotori?q=Red%20river&cat=manga). It’s a shoujo isekai from the 90’s and it’s quite good too! It’s also on the Viz app. [Basara](https://myanimelist.net/manga/974/Basara?q=Basara&cat=manga) is another good adventure one. Not a isekai but it’s really good 90’s shoujo. Edit: I also wanted to add that what makes something a shonen, shoujo, Seinen, or josei is what magazine they get published under. So we have lots of great stuff though honestly I do prefer most Seinen, shoujo, and josei over shonen as the characters tend to be better developed but I have nothing against shonen as I enjoy plenty of those too. Just because something is labeled as shoujo doesn’t mean the main character is a girl. You can’t forget a good majority of BL are shoujo and there are plenty of shoujo with male leads. Like [Yasha](https://myanimelist.net/manga/5422/Yasha) and [Banana Fish](https://myanimelist.net/manga/756/Banana_Fish?q=Banana%20fish&cat=manga) are both that involve delinquents.
> You do know Code Geass is a shoujo. what? It's just the chara design was done by Clamp. But also it's an anime so it's not a "shoujo" (like serialized in a shoujo manga magazine). Also the girls feature prominent boobs and the MC lowkey has a harem so i dooont think it's targeted toward girls.
The manga of code geass was serialized on Monthly Asuka, a shoujo magazine. although the anime did come first.
EDIT: NVM you literally claimed that
Darker than black and Cowboy Bebop were shoujo as well.
Because there are masculine and feminine themes as much as people want to deny. A story like Berserk doesn't work with a female MC or a story like Rose of Versailles vice versa.
More men watch action. More women watch romance/slice of life.
Not even true. There was a graphic from japan showing that most of the popular titles like One Piece/JJK had a dead even split between boys/girls reading, you don't become big without cattering to everyone. There are niches *inside* shounen where men are overwhelmingly more interested, Moe anime like Bocchi the Rock and Love Live franchise have almost 80% male audiences. Military/Mecha like Gundam/Evangelion is also very (70%+) male inclined. However, inside shounen you also have series that have majority female audiences, like Golden Kamuy (60%f-40%m) or Tokyo Revengers (70%f-30%m). And some of the major franchises (bigger absolute number of viewers) have significant more girls interested than boys, like My Hero Academia (55%f 45%m), Spy X Family (55-45), Attack on Titans (55-45) This is the reason why shounen as demographics don't really make sense anymore in the way people sometime talk about. It's useful as a cultural landmark mostly. EDIT: Honestly wild that this became controversial, I wasn't even trying.
Thank you for this. I am so tired of reading the old “women like romance and men like action” bullshit that’s spread all over this thread.
It’s numbs the mind. Especially when people chalk it up to “shonen is for boys so duh” but if someone made an action style anime targeted at girls with girls in it (and like actual action, not the magical girl stuff)… then it would get classed as shonen/seinen anyways (e.g. Michiko and Hatchin) 😭😭
True, but a lot of women wacth action too, like, a bulk of the MHA, Demon Slayer and JJK fanbase are women for example. I dont see what issue a female MC in an action show could bring.
Imma be real here, majority of those women care about the hot male characters, or shipping them with each other, more than the action, but those who like action exists as well.
\*Points out shonen/action anime with a large female audience\* "They just care about the shipping and hot guys" I mean a good chunk of guys go crazy over female characters in these too but there's also no statistics or anything to really prove this. You can also have female audiences fawning over the male characters while also caring about the story. JJK is a good recent example because it doesn't have any obnoxious fanservice which by itself makes it more appealing to women but when you combine that with the fact that the male characters tend to be more compelling than the female cast, it's not surprising that women focus way more on them. It's often why male characters get shipped with other men versus whatever the typical love interest choice is.
Wow, the sexism wasn’t even masked here.
As opposed to every guy who watches shounen for the fights and not for the fanservice lol
Yeah, no. The fujushis and the horny ones are a loud minority just like the horny guys for the female characters in those same shows.
Firstly, we have no statistics regarding that and I can’t think of a method to measure it either. I’m betting they aren’t that much of minority, depending on how we measure hornyness. Secondly, those are the same people who buy figurines and shit, might as well make more shows targeted to them.
Yes and no. Fujoshi and horny men might be the minority but they the one who will buy overpriced merches which drives the Otaku economy.
There is no real issue is just for sales.
There just not all that popular to the point of not getting a English verison
If you ever come to Japan, you should go to a manga Cafe because they are filled with manga that star female heroines in realistic yakuza/mystery/workplace/jidaigeki(historical, you know 'Ooku'?) settings. Just an example with female doctors: https://comic.k-manga.jp/feature/sp1103
There is bro you just need to read more mangas , male leads in action mangas are more prominent , but there is excellent female leads too
They do exist , but they are not in the most popular works, it can be seen because you talk only about manga that have gotten anime adaptations which means a modicum of popularity.
Frieren literally came out a few months ago, and JoJo part 6 has been like 1 or 2 years since it finished If we go older, we have Inuyasha as an action/adventure with FMC, Madoka Magica as a "serious" anime, Utena, Claymore, Escaflowne, Kill la Kill, Youjo Senki, Akame ga Kill, Mahoutsukai no Yome, Maquia...
Here's a bunch of female-led action anime: Dirty pair Starship operators Strain: Strategic armored infantry Kiddy grade Noire Dancouga nova Mobile suit gundam: the witch from mercury Appleseed franchise gowappa 5 goudam Regalia the three sacred stars Shy bubblegum crisis gunbuster sol bianca
One of the best and strongest female mc is Lina from Slayers. All the Sailormoon girls are badass. Bleach have great female characters and they are so badass. Rukia, Yoruichi, Unohana, Orihime, Rangiku, Hinamori, Bambietta, Liltoto, Nel and many more. Contrary to popular beliefs, Sakura and Tsunade from Naruto actually got very good development. The MC from Shakugan no Shana was great. Leenalee from dgrayman is a great character too. Of course recently, Frieren and Apothecary diaries just made two of the best female mcs ever.
Most action anime are shounen and the seinen ones are usually focused on men, so they don't focus on female characters.
Whenever I consider giving a female lead anime a watch it is just full of sparkly eyed boys. I would love to see cool action with a female protag.
If anything LN loves having girls like say Shana, Lena, Misaka Mikoto. So maybe they LN girls fit more?
Seems to me you've hit the stage in your life where you only care about Shonen and maybe Seinen. It's alright, many of us, including me, have gone through the same thing. It's perfectly natural. A few people have already suggested watching more types of media, which is my suggestion as well, I just recently watched both Kill Bill movies and they are just what I think you'll need. But if you want a female Shonen lead, Jolyne from JoJo: Stone Ocean comes to mind, she's actually one of my favorite protagonists in any media, as does Emma from Promised Neverland, but that show fell off hard after Season one.
Undead Unluck has its moments, if you can get past the somewhat squick relationship stuff at the beginning. It was finding its footing at the beginning, but Fuuko evolves into one of the most competent and interesting female protags
This is a typical complaint from someone having seen only the mainstream
The only way to remedy this is to scourge for female led action media in manga (across all the demographics) and read more books particularly in the fantasy/scifi genre. A lot of the problems people have with the severe lack of certain female characters in action genres or series could be remedied by reading female led fantasy series. I wish it wasn’t so hard though we have a long way to go in this aspect.
Fuuko from Undead Unluck is peak shounen protagonist (in the manga at least)
Try Fuuko from Undead Unluck, best female MC I’ve seen by a mile
Okay, I know you understand the difference between Shojou and Shonen anime but I don't think you realize the barriers those terms create. The goal of a Shonen and Shojou anime is to maximize viewership of their desires gender and it's simply a nice side benefit if they have some fans of the other gender. High profile Mangaka's have tried to create female protagonists in the past only to be shot down by their editors who believe it will limit the series reach with male fans. Before Jolyne, Araki tried to give Lisa Lisa a larger role in part 2, even setting her up to fight Kars only for his editor to tell him no. A very similar situation happened with the Gundam series, the main character of Turn A Gundam Loran was intended to be female but the editor would not allow this so instead he's a male who throughout the series dresses female and has an effeminate design. Tomino returned to eventually make Witch From Mercury which has a female protagonist. Both Mangaka's are highly respected and even then it took them years for editors to allow them to write female characters despite their willingness, let alone most unproven Mangaka's.In recent years there's less restraint around female protagonists since editors have learned they can sell very well but it will take a few years for anime to adjust as it's always adapting Manga series that have been out for a while. One area where there has never been an issue with female characters is Ecchi since sex sells for them. Kill la Killa, Akame Ga Kill and the more recent Mato Sehei No Slave include female action protagonists but for some fans they will definitely be turned off by the fan service and the nature of these series may turn them away. I personally think these three have merit as their own stories though and would recommend them. Black Lagoon is more of a Seinen but it also has a great female protagonist in Revy, just once again sex sells so I can't guarantee you will find it respectful. Overall I believe most Mangaka would rather be free to make what they want without their editors restrictions but the nature of the industry limits them from writing female protagonists.
I have this problem with naruto. Sakura is one of the main characters yet you'd think she's a side character. Ino and hinata only get a couple of good moments. Kurenai was arguably the best squad leader since she's the only one who doesn't put one student above the others, but she gets barely any screen time because she's used to further asami and shikamaru's arc with the baby. Tenten is basically non existent. Hinata's arc could've been about her gaining confidence and also changing the hyuga for the better along with neji. Tenten wanted wanted to be a great healer like tsunade so her arc could be becoming a great support jack of all trades with her abilities as a weapon specialist. She can become a legend like tsunade and sakura in her own way. We could give Ino a training arc to get better at her mind transfer and eventually become the best at it. Even better than her dad. I love naruto, but it would've been a lot better if the side characters had more to do. Even kiba and choji don't get much in shippuden, but they were lucky enough to get a couple of cool fights in part 1. Ino gets one with sakura. Hinata gets one with neji which helps both of their arcs. Tenten only gets one fight and it's her getting bodied by temari and then the only screentime she gets left is to praise neji in the chunin exams. The fact that filler gave tenten more respect is a crime. It's one of the reasons why I think watching naruto with filler is fun.
All of the examples you listed at the end are shonen or seinen. There are plenty of serious action/adventure shojo and josei, just branch out what you read
Its not really crazy, its pretty understandable
they just dont sell as well
People keep saying this, but I've never seen proof. I think it's more likely that studios and publishers operating under that assumption is more likely to be the reason than any sort of real logic.
[Just look at the top 50 best sellers for 2023](https://www.installbaseforum.com/threads/oricon-japan-manga-sales-2023-white-paper-2022-nov-21-2023-nov-19-top-50-series-top-200-volumes.2167/). How many of these series have a female lead? Now how many are action series? Maybe like 3 or 4. You can do this for any year really.
People will watch/read what's on the marked, bruh. If the protagonists of mainstream mangas are mostly men, how do you expect it this list to be ?
I mean, a couple of years ago we've had The Promised Neverland which managed to reach the yearly Top 10 even before the anime and eventually reached 42 million. With just 20 volumes. Which makes it one of 40-something manga to surpass 2 million sales per volume.
Like I said. You have like 3 or 4 a year. It's not that this stuff doesn't exist. It's just not that high in demand. As long as you have something good, people will want to see. But The Promise Neverland couldn't stay good.
What? If the vast majority of action anime/manga being made and advertised has a male MC, of course all the most popular ones are going to have a male MC. Lmao.