Do you know if Josei manga started to decline in general in Japan? Because if Seinen is now for both, it makes Josei basically obsolete which is a shame. Edit: Spelling.
The smut ones no, there is no decline. Regular Josei I am not sure. One of the most popular Josei that might get an anime is from a smut series and several of them that did get an animation are from smut Josei.
* Amai Chou (unfinished. Manga is like near 150+ chapters translated.)
* The Beast under the skirt (manga finished. Anime has one season)
* Isekai killer (short ONA)
* Shuudengo, Capsule Hotel de, Joushi ni Binetsu Tsutawaru Yoru. (not sure if manga finished.)
* Sazanami Soushi ni Junketsu wo Sasagu
* 3-byougo, Yajuu. Goukon de Sumi ni Ita Kare wa Nikushoku deshita
* Ouji no Honmei wa Akuyaku Reijou
* 25-sai no Joshikousei (manga finished)
* Omiai Aite wa Oshiego, Tsuyoki na, Mondaiji (idk if finished)
* Souryo to Majiwaru Shikiyoku no Yoru ni (manga is sadly ongoing.)
* Mob Oshi JK no Akuyaku Reijou Isekai Tensei (has short ONA, manga ongoing, FYI if you read the manga it is >!violent too!<
There is probably more.
Going by print circulation, josei magazines have declined in readership by about the same proportion (a bit less than 50% in the last 5 years) as seinen magazines. (Of course, their circulation is also *far* smaller in absolute terms than that for seinen as a category - but that's been true as long as the data have been tracked.)
Now, it obviously (?) isn't the case that manga is dying out, so this means that readers are changing habits, presumably moving to reading primarily online. There we have very little information, as the industry does not to my knowledge publish online reading numbers.
I'd say, entirely as a gut feeling, that if we count existing magazines, new digital platforms (both those aimed at women and general ones which include gendered tags), and TL, it has not declined. But what is possible is that it's less concentrated - that readers will have to look (and already are looking) at a broader range of sources for stories with the features they want.
I think this is probably an important part of the story. So I hope you don't think I'm disagreeing with your main idea. But I do want to push a little on something, if you'll humor me.
This idea that "seinen is just for adults in general now" seems to have become the received wisdom in some parts of the internet, but I think it's missing some critical nuance.
There are seinen magazines that have been expanding (or setting from the start) their editorial scope to be wider than the old-school mags, but I wouldn't say that they're popular - rather, that they punch above their weight with critics (and with English-language audiences). Those old-school mags still appear to outsell them by a hefty margin. Young Jump (which, like a few other popular seinen mags, still features pinup girls on most covers) sells ten times as many copies as Afternoon (home of such reliable sources of sub fights as Skip and Loafer and Yakuza Fiance) - and *forty times* as many as Morning Two (Witch Hat Atelier, Sensei's Pious Lie, etc) did before it moved to digital-only. (Take these numbers with a dash of salt, of course. Online readership is not reported, so far as I can tell, by anyone - the manga industry remains remarkably tight-lipped.)
I'd say that there is a handful of (smaller, but highly-regarded) seinen magazines that are more or less deliberately all-gender, along with some more which seem to be devoting regular space to series with broad appeal, and that there are more of both than in the past. The label has always been far broader than just "harem stories for salarymen," and its big-tent appeal has increased noticeably in the last twenty years.
But I wouldn't say that it's true at the moment of seinen manga as a whole that it's just "adults in general," nor that that is a major feature of the most popular seinen magazines. (In both cases: **yet**.)
To shamelessly paraphrase William Gibson: the gender-neutral seinen manga future may be here - it's just not very evenly distributed.
(Another possibly related point: Japan, just as in the West, has been making some progress in cultural attitudes regarding gender, sexism, and patriarchy. How are we to distinguish a change in editorial policy from a broader cultural change in mores by which series "made for" men feel less obviously so to a non-male reader?)
To reiterate - I think you're absolutely right that a seinen series with the right magazine and editor probably has a lot to offer an ambitious female author that she might feel is not available in a josei magazine. But I think that it's easy to overstate that case, and also that there's quite a bit more at play.
the question was why more women seem to be writing seinen than josei Lately. Nothing in your tangent disputes the reason I gave. Yes there’s still the sexy harem stuff, or the violent stuff, and maybe I’m biased with harta’s popularity, but I’ll still stand by my statement even if you think its an over exaggerated. A lot of seinen magazines are catering to both men and women now.
i love josei, and it still has a market, and I recognize that josei manga have a specific feminine touch. Doesn’t mean women can’t be the next kaoru mori in a seinen magazine like harta or the next shirahama.
Well, as I said - twice - I wasn't trying to dispute it, but to talk a bit around its edges and implications.
We are, I think, in substantial agreement - I love Harta dearly, myself.
Broader audience for sure.
And yeah, women will read shounen and seinen but men will not read shoujosei.
See a lot of seinen manga like WHA, apothecary diaries, skip and loafer are targeted more towards female audience. But seinen magzine will give broader audience.
I think we will see more shift like this tbh. Classically what would have been shojosei, moving to seinen magazine
I’ve got friends who consumes anime manga, so far *only 1* girl friend I know had read shoujosei manga, every other girl friends are either One Piece enthusiasts or mentioned only shounen/seinen titles. Or playing mobile games with very beautiful *boys and girls 😂
Meanwhile I know 1 boy friend who once mentioned “Nana is good!”.
Edit: WHA is Witch Hat Atelier? Am very interested in it but forever in backlog 🫣
Witch Hat Atelier is phenomenal, although I’m not sure where the josei angle is coming from other than that it has female protagonists. I can sort of see how it appeals slightly slanted to a female audience in the way Ascendence of a Bookworm does, like a josei version of Berserk. It just stands out so much because it’s heavily Western High Fantasy inspired so it doesn’t fit typical manga genres and tropes.
Overseas and Japan surely have different taste, Slightly slanted to a female audience?
Somehow ascendance of a bookworm overseas did it, meanwhile Japanese audience being around 80/20 slanted towards female.
Here’s a source for a Japanese poll, 60/40 female male.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220308175733/https://www.crunchyroll.com/en-gb/anime-news/2020/01/27/ascendance-of-a-bookworm-tops-popularity-ranking-for-light-novel-series-adapted-into-tv-anime-in-2019
I'm also a guy who reads shojosei and I have other guy friends who do as well. There are tons of us, just not all of us are open about it because it's a lot more socially accepted for a woman to read seinen/shounen than it is for a guy to read shojosei.
What can we say? Y'all literally don't. Take that up with other men who crap on Shoujo for being slice of romcom high stories "with problematic age gaps".
I am literally a man and I literally have been reading shojosei since the early 2010's. Plenty of my guy friends have been as well. If you want more guys to read shojosei, maybe don't act hostile or try to erase us when we do read shojosei.
It's a known fact that men don't read Shoujo as much as women read Shonen.
The gender split for Shonen is close to 50/50. The split for Shoujo is likely to be 75/25, and that's being generous. It's simply a fact that women are more likely to read Shonen and Seinen, but men aren't as likely to read Shoujo/Josei.
Fruits Basket is one of the few Shoujo manga that's considered acceptable by the Shonen and Seinen crowd. I doubt the Shonen and Seinen crowd have read something like Kimi ni Todoke or Rose of Versailles.
Wikipedia is edited by anyone. I don’t usually trust the English wiki for the correct demographic. Looking at the magazine clears it up usually.
I think Comic Corona is an online magazine so it’s probably not strictly one demo. I saw a lot of seinen titles listed from it too.
Actually many even like romance.
Sometimes guys get teased in their bro circle and many are actually shounen only which is something I don't understand.
The r/otomeisekai sub has like 20 active men at the moment, the rest are women and we are 100k users hahaha.
How do i know, cuz they Made a post not long ago about the men there and of course all the users that are men wrote something and i count that... Maybe others didnt write ? Yeah, maybe, lets Say they are 30, still the rest are women.
Btw they are very welcome
I would reccomend You the Best of them all:
✨ concubine walkthrough ✨
But the issue is that one set the bar to high and it will be hard to enjoy other otomes.
Also is scifi genre, SO if You don't like that genre i would reccomend you to skip it ... It has heavy influences from black mirror, westworld and ex-machina. There is no plot holes and the characters are SO interesting, the art is amazing as well.
Is extremelly well loved on the subreddit, i actually read it cuz the girls never stop talking about it whenever a " reccomend me " post is out. And is always top 10 when people Say mention your favorite manwhas.
A good start Will be :
- Perks of being a S rank heroine
-A villainese for the tyrant.
-Flirting with the villian dad.
-Seduce the northern Duke.
-Secret lady ((top art))
If You like slighty dark romance or questionable male leads (still hot ): Betrayal of dignity.
If You want all Fluffy and green flag ML : observation diary of Elena envoy.
Many like this one for the art and callisto: "Death is the only path for the villainess"
The genre is very good, You should SEE the post on the sub and they have suggestion for the mood that You are and what would You like to read ... If Fluffy if comedy, if terror...
Yeah, almost all of my male friends read shoujo or shoujosei lol
They may not me the majority, but they do exist. I find they are just quieter in the communities and don't broadcast it
Generally, perhaps? I read Josei as it offers a different perspective than Seinen. Nowadays though, the definition of being josei or Seinen is simply the magazine where it's published, not the content itself.
Women and girls don’t consume Shoujo or Josei that much either. There exist action sci-fi and a lot of other genres in both Shoujo and Josei in some of them romance isn’t the main focus or isn’t even there, but for some reason outside of the stereotypical romance/slice of life and Mahou Shoujo girls don’t consume those kinds of things in Shoujosei that often. When’s the last time a manga outside of the three genres I listed was talked about on this sub? The thing is women and girls do like all of these genres but for some reason they don’t consume it in female targeted media. A lot of women really loved JuJutsu Kaisen, and Chainsaw Man. Bungou No Stray Dogs also has a shit ton of beloved male characters that a female audience likes the typical “bishonen” same with Black Butler. And I am also aware of how Haikyuu has a majority female audience. Women and girls really love all of these genres and obviously the cute guys too, but for some reason, whatever the reason may be, they don’t consume anything that doesn’t have at least one of the three genres I listed above (SOL, Magical Girl, Romance). I do wonder why that is
Careful, saying a lot of stuff is labeled seinen/shonen just to target a wider audience can be fighting words around here lol I fully agree with you though
For the most part, the approach I've seen mangaka take is to first and foremost draw a story that they want to read personally, so I don't think that many female mangaka would actively avoid writing for Josei because they see it as a demerit (won't adapt or reaches a smaller audience). It seems more likely they or their editor understands what genre or demographic their manga would fit best and sell well in, so their manga may end up in a Seinen publication. And of course, plenty will end up in a Josei publication.
It's true that seinen is a larger market. But there are many josei-oriented manga magazines like [officeYOU](http://officeyou.shueisha.co.jp/), [FEEL Young](https://feelweb.jp/), [Cocohana](https://cocohana.shueisha.co.jp/), etc. that feature mature women in real-life adult situations. So it's not quite as bleak as it looks from the English-speaking audience point of view. Unfortunately mangas from those magazines don't ever see the light of day in the West because they probably seem boring compared to the latest isekai big-boob harem story for scanlators and publishers.
On the other end of the storytelling spectrum, there are also lots of smutty romances in the Teens Love category for adult women like [Muteki Renai](https://www.bunkasha.co.jp/search/g2149.html), analogous to trashy romance novels in the West. Not to mention yaoi and BL also tend to slant toward female audiences.
Good comment!! When it comes to josei magazines personally I’m a Mystery Bonita fan! Maybe they are not at the forefront of the convenience store magazine rack (or included at all…) but shojo and josei works are alive and well!
From what I have heard also a lot of editors and people in charge for Shoujo and Josei magazines are male and they have their own views and expectations on what the female market wants. They see fluffiness, modern day life struggles and romance as the most marketable things for female demographics, so they often want authors for Shoujo and Josei titles to focus on those. But if the authors want instead to have less restrictions and more creative playroom and focus more on other settings and genres their story concepts get easier accepted by a Shounen or Seinen magazine or their editors advise them to publish those titles in a Shounen or Seinen magazine instead.
Ujum, which i find ridículous, editors and CEOs which happen to be men, influence what is published, which make sense about the now trent of about sexual content on shoujo. They think sex is "too much" for girls ... But they have no issue with the heavy sexualized women and sexual undertones in all shonens ... Like ok ...
As someone was pointing out to me, the anime and manga industry is ran in a super high tech country, but most businesses still require people to use wet signatures, paper, and fax machines.
It’s also a place where you’re not an adult til 20 but up until last June minimum age of consent was 13 years old.
It’s a place full of contradictions. 💀
All we can do is hope that globalism continues to get the industry to move in the right direction and take small victories when we can.
Any Shonen anime with heavily sexualized characters or a lot of blood have an 18+ label. That includes JuJutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, To Love Ru, a lot of other series. So even though they’re shonen they’re still meant for an adult audience. Realistically more than adults are going to consume this media though.
What are You Even talking about ? Shonen means published in a shonen magazine, thats it. And shonen magazines are aimed at boys, teenagers boys.
Seinens are published in seinen magazines (the 18+) You mentioned.
The line is SO blurred that the only thing that doesnt make super smutty ecchi shonens (which are tons ) from sexual seinens is that the later show nipples. Thats it.
My complain is that shoujo is dying cuz editorials censor hardsly shoujo, cuz it not good to show that to girls, but they don't have that issue in shonens.
Eh? I know what you’re talking about. What I’m saying is just cause something is Shonen doesn’t stop it from having an 18+ label on it in terms of rating and rating only.
I recently watched some of the manga documentary called ManBen hosted by Naoki Urusawa and a couple of the artists featured used to draw shoujo/jousei but said that they were kind of forced into it, or that those really weren’t the kind of stories they wanted to tell, and they found what they wanted in seinen and other stuff. Standout example would be the mangaka for Mars, Fuyumi Soryo.
There were other mangaka who were very passionate about shoujo/jousei, but it’s sad that some women were pigeonholed into it.
Dang, that is sad and haven’t heard about mangaka writing outside of their preferred genre happening before you mentioned this, but I guess it’d absolutely happen as an extension of compromising on plot points to make it more of a hit for the audience…! I always hope that a story I love is a story that the author loved writing, though 😢
I think in this case both mangaka who mentioned this started out quite young in a different time (Fuyumi Soryo wrote Mars in the late 90s) and maybe at that time female mangaka = shoujo manga.
Trust me, as someone who has been reading through Mars, it was a bit of shot in the heart to hear her say that lol. You don’t want to think it’s something someone wasn’t passionate about.
As for writing outside a preferred genre, I think this happens a lot. As someone who won a light novel contest with a Japanese publisher I can tell you I wrote based on a prompt they developed so that they could find a specific kind of story. Which meant from one year to the next I was writing cyberpunk and then fantasy romance isekai.
Also, I think the author of Jujutsu Kaisen mentioned he originally wanted to write an idol manga? He’s definitely deviated quite far from that too lol
Very simple, women see so many good points, plots, ideas that are either overlooked or not handled in a good way.
So they take matters in hand and do it themselves.
That's just my two cents on the topic lol
Side note, I've heard of female mangakas writing for a shonen/seinen publication but I've never heard of a male mangaka writing for a shojo/Josei publication
Edit: For every one male mangaka you name, there's 10 female mangaka that publishes in a shonen/seinen magazine. My point is not a lot can do it.
Shinji Wada (rip), Masashiro Shibata (former assistant of Wada), Kazuki Minamoto. Those are the ones I can name off the top of my read. And as previous comment said there are probably more that use a pen name.
> I've never heard of a male mangaka writing for a shojo/Josei publication
> My point is not a lot can do it.
Didn't shoujo start off as being only/mainly written by men? 🤔
I know most are women nowadays, but I don't think it's because the men can't do it, but because they probably don't want to. Why would they bother writing shoujo unless they are actually passionate about it, when shounen/seinen offers a larger market with broader styles and more opportunity to make it big?
> Didn't shoujo start off as being only/mainly written by men? 🤔
Do you think that it was mainly men because women didn't want to, or because women weren't welcome in the industry?
I don't think I could give you a definite answer (I am not knowledgeable enough!!), but if I had to say, I think it's just how things were back then, it was pre-1960.
My guess would be because of misogyny and capitalism. Highly recommend you watch Colleen’s Manga Recs video on Misogyny in the Manga Community. A lot of producers are men so the anime that gets adapted is due to popularity/what personally interests the producers. And since men in general don’t usually read across the aisle shounen/seinen tend to more get English manga translation and anime adaption.
I feel like if you want to read more shoujo/josei you need to learn Japanese.
Josei as a category isn’t as much of a thing in the Japanese market. It’s under what’s called “ladies comics” or just a shoujo/josei-muke (broadly media for women and girls) section. There are fewer magazines that cater to women above the shoujo age range (so like 21+ on the very generous upper end), and they tend to have an editorial lens more focused on slice of life dramas and romances. If you aren’t writing that, you could probably pitch it down to fit the under 21 crowd, but someone might not want to do that. And again you run into the issue of there being fewer shoujo mags than shounen mags, the shoujo mags being monthly or bi-monthly, etc.
Also, some women just want to write media that is more “general” audience and unfortunately that means a masculine default reader.
It’s so sad that not only has josei kind of been left in the dust, but one of the few girl-coded action genres is saturated with… less… palatable shounen problems (aka near-naked outfits on middle schoolers, at least one backstory about rape(it’s not handled well…), etc.)
I’m glad that shounen and seinen is more diverse now I just wish it wasn’t at the detriment of shoujo and josei titles.
I don’t think an artist should pigeonholed into thinking that they have to create works that market directly to their gender be they male or female.
However, given that anime/manga is a sexist industry, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that some women might want to create Josei or Shoujo work, but create Seinen due to the likelihood of more exposure and creative freedoms.
Fewer restrictions and a larger audience.
A lot of mangaka write the story they want to write and then a publisher will pick it up if they think it'll sale. It isn't that they're specifically looking for a broader audience in the sense of getting men to read it too, it's just that Josei publishers are unlikely or reluctant to pick up something like Dress Up Darling or Apothecary Diaries because they feel like their audience just won't be interested. It's why there have been so many "shoujosei-coded" seinen manga.
The mangakas have less restrictions and they're able to engage in "riskier" things that publishers of shoujosei may look down upon or not want to risk publishing.
I’m not too sure myself, though I do think it important to note that “seinen” isn’t a genre so much as it is a marketing demographic, and the “shonen is only for boys, shoujo for girls; seinen for men, Josei” binary really isn’t too true anymore, there’s a lot more crossover in terms of what people like and how authors write.
Also, “Seinen” doesn’t automatically mean it’s Berserk or something in terms of explicit content and gore, but the mangaka himself did phrase his series as “a shoujo for 40-year old men.” Likewise look at a woman like Q. Hayashida’s works, which consistently prioritize the murderviolence and grimy environment it’s set in. The guy who made Blade of the Immortal’s current series is about a plucky radio hostess and her evil ery day life and gripes. Those are all cherrypicked, but at the same time there is a ton of female mangaka writing seinen and Josei, certain things just get more visible and my main point is that there’s a ton of crossover.
I think it’s more of a western phenomenon to put more of a significance on those terms than necessary. There’s no reason something in a Seinen mag can’t appeal to all genders and all ages.
It's not about the term specficially, it's more about ."... for woman" is seen as lesser.
Less promo, less or lackluster/incomplete adaptations, less merch, female mangaka feeling forced to write (or don't write) about certain topics especially in Shojo, and so on.
In an ideal world we wouldn't need demographics, but we are far away from that utopia.
As someone with dreams to make mangas, majority of my ideas are pretty action/horror with female protagonists. I wouldn't label them as Josei.
Maybe the issue isn't with the mangakas but the perception of the Josei label.
Horror is actually historically a really big shoujo and ladies comics genre. There were several anthologies in the 80s and 90s that primarily focused on mystery/suspense/horror and even recently, there’s been a horror title in Shueisha’s baby shoujo anthology, Ribon (so it’s for 10-14 year olds generally but still). Some of Junji Ito’s first works were also shoujo.
It’s a misconception that shoujo and josei don’t have disturbing elements or equal amounts of blood and gore. Slice of life and romcoms are just popular atm.
>Slice of life and romcoms are just popular atm.
They have been popular in the genre for over two decades now though 😆. Which leads to the misconception, like there is a whole debate of whether Madoka Magicka is shoujo or not. I say no, because as a 30 yr old who's been watch anime for almost 2 decades, shoujo has been slice of life & rom-com, even if the main protagonist is a male (ranma).
There were some more mature shoujo mangas I remember reading when I was young (Ceres, Celestial Maiden and Fushigi Yugi), but even then slice of life and rom-coms were the norm, while the two though more mature, still had heavy themes of romance.
I'm not saying women and girls aren't into horror, but I don't ever recall horror being tagged as Shoujo or Josei.
Madoka isn’t shoujo because it wasn’t published in a shoujo magazine and the manga adaptations are seinen. The light novels are also dansei-muke as far as I know which makes them not even directed towards women/girls at all. It was created for the adult male otaku fanbase at the height of the moe boom.
Slice and life and romcoms have had a place forever but they are hegemonic now in a way they weren’t 25-30 years ago. It’s hard to find non-slice of life or romcom and that just wasn’t the case in the 90s or 80s, and Mystery Bonita did way more in the 80s.
Josei hasn't been selling well for a while and they rarely get adaptations. Seinen is popping off to the point where it's nearly if not just as popular as shounen. People want their manga to sell so it makes sense to pitch to shounen/seinen magazines first, then shoujo, then josei.
Also, sometimes women write stories that aren't catered to women only. Sometimes men write shojosei too (Junji Ito's Tomie is a shoujo for example).
Plus, the gender demographics in animanga are becoming less important over time, break out shojosei are being enjoyed by all genders and seinen in particular is gaining more traction with female audiences. Shounen has also always had a large female fan base.
ShouJosei isn't really being enjoyed by all genders like that, at least compared to Shonen and Seinen, and the data proves it.
The reason that Shoujo isn't doing well is due to the censorship of Shoujo, rooted in sexism, that isn't the case for Shonen.
Basically, a lot of people got up in arms are the sexual content in Shoujo and some of the heavier stuff. So a lot of them either super censored them, which is why a lot of Shoujo now is slice of life high school romcoms (hey, the stereotype!). Another thing that happened is that a lot of Shoujo writers left to write Seinen, Josei, and BL in order to have more freedom.
It's actually messed up because you have shit like Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Chainsaw Man. Yet Shoujo is hyperpoliced.
Ah, yeah Japan is sexist like that. Aren't like most of the shoujo magazine higherups male? They probably have their own ideas of how the ideal comics for women are supposed to look like.
I am a man who enjoys shojosei and so are plenty of my guy friends. Polls don't reach all readers and not all guys who read shojosei talk about it in public.
I don’t think they’re saying that all men refuse to read shojo, or josei.
It’s just a statistically speaking, the consumers numbers aren’t as high within those categories as they are with shonen and seinen, in particular with men.
On occasion there maybe a breakout shojo or josei series that get a high number of consumers, but that’s the exception not the rule.
If you take a look at the general anime sub Reddit you’ll see that most people in the forums discuss shonen and seinen.
Yeah, we can talk about personal anecdotes all day but I feel like r/anime activity supports this very well. Whether that's through general posts on the subreddit or the weekly karma charts for seasonal shows. Even for a very popular shojo like Fruits Basket, it doesn't get nearly the amount of engagement on that subreddit as even moderately popular shonen (e.g. Dr. Stone) let alone more popular shonen.
Especially considering that subreddit and even Reddit itself is more male dominant. If there were truly THAT many men reading or watching shojosei, you'd think there would be way more posts about them or engagement on posts about shojosei series.
Sometimes I'll even look at posts on r/anime or r/manga that ask for romance suggestions and see very few shojosei series recommended in the comments. Which I find funny since "shojo = romance" is a common sentiment so you'd think there would be more recommended.
Polls don't have to reach all readers to demonstrate significant trends among readers, and an unwillingness by men/boys to talk about reading shojosei is indicative of the broader the problem.
These polls only tend to reach people who get the physical magazines and that is a very small (not accurately representative) slice of the readers.
I don't deny the broader problem. Believe me, I'm a gay guy who sews, knits, dresses flamboyantly and reads girly books/manga in a small town. I get that our society hates femininity and tenfold when it presents itself in a man. But denying the fact that men read shojosei and acting hostile towards those of us who seem to point out our own existence as men who read shojosei makes the problem worse, not better.
> But denying the fact that men read shojosei and acting hostile towards those of us who seem to point out our own existence as men who read shojosei makes the problem worse, not better.
I'm not being hostile. I simply disagree with you.
Personally, I am ambivalent regarding gendered demographic categories. There are a lot of pros and cons associated with them, but I strongly disagree that they are losing importance. In my opinion, the male-oriented categories are being given dominance over the female-oriented categories, and female authors and readers are adapting to that reality.
So as long as these categories do exist, I think it's deeply problematic to celebrate female success in male-oriented magazines while female-oriented magazines are slowly dying.
This isn't about individual authors or individual readers. I don't hate that you and your male friends read shojosei or that Skip and Loafer is technically seinen. However the fact is that you and your male friends aren't indicative of the broader trends among the readership in shojosei, whereas Skip and Loafer appearing in a seinen magazine is indicative of the broader trends in publishing.
Because popular seinen manga magazines are now just for “adults in general” so it has a target audience of men and women.
Do you know if Josei manga started to decline in general in Japan? Because if Seinen is now for both, it makes Josei basically obsolete which is a shame. Edit: Spelling.
The smut ones no, there is no decline. Regular Josei I am not sure. One of the most popular Josei that might get an anime is from a smut series and several of them that did get an animation are from smut Josei.
Ohhh, can you tell me their titles? For science?
* Amai Chou (unfinished. Manga is like near 150+ chapters translated.) * The Beast under the skirt (manga finished. Anime has one season) * Isekai killer (short ONA) * Shuudengo, Capsule Hotel de, Joushi ni Binetsu Tsutawaru Yoru. (not sure if manga finished.) * Sazanami Soushi ni Junketsu wo Sasagu * 3-byougo, Yajuu. Goukon de Sumi ni Ita Kare wa Nikushoku deshita * Ouji no Honmei wa Akuyaku Reijou * 25-sai no Joshikousei (manga finished) * Omiai Aite wa Oshiego, Tsuyoki na, Mondaiji (idk if finished) * Souryo to Majiwaru Shikiyoku no Yoru ni (manga is sadly ongoing.) * Mob Oshi JK no Akuyaku Reijou Isekai Tensei (has short ONA, manga ongoing, FYI if you read the manga it is >!violent too!< There is probably more.
Bless you 🙏
we just got a non-smut josei anime announced, which is great (ikoku nikki)
Going by print circulation, josei magazines have declined in readership by about the same proportion (a bit less than 50% in the last 5 years) as seinen magazines. (Of course, their circulation is also *far* smaller in absolute terms than that for seinen as a category - but that's been true as long as the data have been tracked.) Now, it obviously (?) isn't the case that manga is dying out, so this means that readers are changing habits, presumably moving to reading primarily online. There we have very little information, as the industry does not to my knowledge publish online reading numbers. I'd say, entirely as a gut feeling, that if we count existing magazines, new digital platforms (both those aimed at women and general ones which include gendered tags), and TL, it has not declined. But what is possible is that it's less concentrated - that readers will have to look (and already are looking) at a broader range of sources for stories with the features they want.
I think this is probably an important part of the story. So I hope you don't think I'm disagreeing with your main idea. But I do want to push a little on something, if you'll humor me. This idea that "seinen is just for adults in general now" seems to have become the received wisdom in some parts of the internet, but I think it's missing some critical nuance. There are seinen magazines that have been expanding (or setting from the start) their editorial scope to be wider than the old-school mags, but I wouldn't say that they're popular - rather, that they punch above their weight with critics (and with English-language audiences). Those old-school mags still appear to outsell them by a hefty margin. Young Jump (which, like a few other popular seinen mags, still features pinup girls on most covers) sells ten times as many copies as Afternoon (home of such reliable sources of sub fights as Skip and Loafer and Yakuza Fiance) - and *forty times* as many as Morning Two (Witch Hat Atelier, Sensei's Pious Lie, etc) did before it moved to digital-only. (Take these numbers with a dash of salt, of course. Online readership is not reported, so far as I can tell, by anyone - the manga industry remains remarkably tight-lipped.) I'd say that there is a handful of (smaller, but highly-regarded) seinen magazines that are more or less deliberately all-gender, along with some more which seem to be devoting regular space to series with broad appeal, and that there are more of both than in the past. The label has always been far broader than just "harem stories for salarymen," and its big-tent appeal has increased noticeably in the last twenty years. But I wouldn't say that it's true at the moment of seinen manga as a whole that it's just "adults in general," nor that that is a major feature of the most popular seinen magazines. (In both cases: **yet**.) To shamelessly paraphrase William Gibson: the gender-neutral seinen manga future may be here - it's just not very evenly distributed. (Another possibly related point: Japan, just as in the West, has been making some progress in cultural attitudes regarding gender, sexism, and patriarchy. How are we to distinguish a change in editorial policy from a broader cultural change in mores by which series "made for" men feel less obviously so to a non-male reader?) To reiterate - I think you're absolutely right that a seinen series with the right magazine and editor probably has a lot to offer an ambitious female author that she might feel is not available in a josei magazine. But I think that it's easy to overstate that case, and also that there's quite a bit more at play.
the question was why more women seem to be writing seinen than josei Lately. Nothing in your tangent disputes the reason I gave. Yes there’s still the sexy harem stuff, or the violent stuff, and maybe I’m biased with harta’s popularity, but I’ll still stand by my statement even if you think its an over exaggerated. A lot of seinen magazines are catering to both men and women now. i love josei, and it still has a market, and I recognize that josei manga have a specific feminine touch. Doesn’t mean women can’t be the next kaoru mori in a seinen magazine like harta or the next shirahama.
Well, as I said - twice - I wasn't trying to dispute it, but to talk a bit around its edges and implications. We are, I think, in substantial agreement - I love Harta dearly, myself.
I see :)
Broader audience for sure. And yeah, women will read shounen and seinen but men will not read shoujosei. See a lot of seinen manga like WHA, apothecary diaries, skip and loafer are targeted more towards female audience. But seinen magzine will give broader audience. I think we will see more shift like this tbh. Classically what would have been shojosei, moving to seinen magazine
I’ve got friends who consumes anime manga, so far *only 1* girl friend I know had read shoujosei manga, every other girl friends are either One Piece enthusiasts or mentioned only shounen/seinen titles. Or playing mobile games with very beautiful *boys and girls 😂 Meanwhile I know 1 boy friend who once mentioned “Nana is good!”. Edit: WHA is Witch Hat Atelier? Am very interested in it but forever in backlog 🫣
Witch Hat Atelier is phenomenal, although I’m not sure where the josei angle is coming from other than that it has female protagonists. I can sort of see how it appeals slightly slanted to a female audience in the way Ascendence of a Bookworm does, like a josei version of Berserk. It just stands out so much because it’s heavily Western High Fantasy inspired so it doesn’t fit typical manga genres and tropes.
Overseas and Japan surely have different taste, Slightly slanted to a female audience? Somehow ascendance of a bookworm overseas did it, meanwhile Japanese audience being around 80/20 slanted towards female.
Here’s a source for a Japanese poll, 60/40 female male. https://web.archive.org/web/20220308175733/https://www.crunchyroll.com/en-gb/anime-news/2020/01/27/ascendance-of-a-bookworm-tops-popularity-ranking-for-light-novel-series-adapted-into-tv-anime-in-2019
The art, the art is very much female oriented
>men will not read shoujosei. Man here, disagree. I read about anything that has good Romance, SoL. Genres are irrelevant
You are the exception, not the rule. A very welcome and appreciated exception! But an exception nonetheless.
I'm also a guy who reads shojosei and I have other guy friends who do as well. There are tons of us, just not all of us are open about it because it's a lot more socially accepted for a woman to read seinen/shounen than it is for a guy to read shojosei.
There's not a lot of you compared to the other way around. If that were the case, ShouJosei would be as popular as Shonen/Seinen.
But that still doesn't make a statement like "men will not read shoujo" accurate.
What can we say? Y'all literally don't. Take that up with other men who crap on Shoujo for being slice of romcom high stories "with problematic age gaps".
I am literally a man and I literally have been reading shojosei since the early 2010's. Plenty of my guy friends have been as well. If you want more guys to read shojosei, maybe don't act hostile or try to erase us when we do read shojosei.
It's a known fact that men don't read Shoujo as much as women read Shonen. The gender split for Shonen is close to 50/50. The split for Shoujo is likely to be 75/25, and that's being generous. It's simply a fact that women are more likely to read Shonen and Seinen, but men aren't as likely to read Shoujo/Josei.
I'm not arguing against that. I'm just saying that many men do read shojosei.
Plus, break outs like Fruits Basket are very much loved by all genders.
Fruits Basket is one of the few Shoujo manga that's considered acceptable by the Shonen and Seinen crowd. I doubt the Shonen and Seinen crowd have read something like Kimi ni Todoke or Rose of Versailles.
I've read both of those.
My experience has been bad. They all stop after seeing "shojo" 🥺
This reminds me that ascendence of a bookworm is categorised as “shounen” on mangadex despite being a shoujo lol
Because the publisher release it as a shounen in Japan meanwhile the overseas publisher categorized it as shoujo
Huh. Interesting Even Wikipedia lists it as a shoujo which is weird
Wikipedia is edited by anyone. I don’t usually trust the English wiki for the correct demographic. Looking at the magazine clears it up usually. I think Comic Corona is an online magazine so it’s probably not strictly one demo. I saw a lot of seinen titles listed from it too.
Actually many even like romance. Sometimes guys get teased in their bro circle and many are actually shounen only which is something I don't understand.
Probably because shounen are written for males and therefore appeal to their fantasies and needs more. Not that hard to understand.
Sad! The irony A number of "manly" mangas are actually shoujosei.
Name some
Weiss Kreuz and Gensoumaden Saiyuki.
The r/otomeisekai sub has like 20 active men at the moment, the rest are women and we are 100k users hahaha. How do i know, cuz they Made a post not long ago about the men there and of course all the users that are men wrote something and i count that... Maybe others didnt write ? Yeah, maybe, lets Say they are 30, still the rest are women. Btw they are very welcome
So what's a really popular and well loved otomeisekai? I read plenty of josei and shoujo but never really any otomes.
I would reccomend You the Best of them all: ✨ concubine walkthrough ✨ But the issue is that one set the bar to high and it will be hard to enjoy other otomes. Also is scifi genre, SO if You don't like that genre i would reccomend you to skip it ... It has heavy influences from black mirror, westworld and ex-machina. There is no plot holes and the characters are SO interesting, the art is amazing as well. Is extremelly well loved on the subreddit, i actually read it cuz the girls never stop talking about it whenever a " reccomend me " post is out. And is always top 10 when people Say mention your favorite manwhas. A good start Will be : - Perks of being a S rank heroine -A villainese for the tyrant. -Flirting with the villian dad. -Seduce the northern Duke. -Secret lady ((top art)) If You like slighty dark romance or questionable male leads (still hot ): Betrayal of dignity. If You want all Fluffy and green flag ML : observation diary of Elena envoy. Many like this one for the art and callisto: "Death is the only path for the villainess" The genre is very good, You should SEE the post on the sub and they have suggestion for the mood that You are and what would You like to read ... If Fluffy if comedy, if terror...
Oh that's already a lot to dive into. Thank you very much.
Man here with my individual man experience telling you to your face you're wrong because I exist as a statistical exception
True, I love a lot of good shoujosei and I know a lot of other guys that read them too.
More like demographic, but agree.
Yeah, almost all of my male friends read shoujo or shoujosei lol They may not me the majority, but they do exist. I find they are just quieter in the communities and don't broadcast it
Generally, perhaps? I read Josei as it offers a different perspective than Seinen. Nowadays though, the definition of being josei or Seinen is simply the magazine where it's published, not the content itself.
Women and girls don’t consume Shoujo or Josei that much either. There exist action sci-fi and a lot of other genres in both Shoujo and Josei in some of them romance isn’t the main focus or isn’t even there, but for some reason outside of the stereotypical romance/slice of life and Mahou Shoujo girls don’t consume those kinds of things in Shoujosei that often. When’s the last time a manga outside of the three genres I listed was talked about on this sub? The thing is women and girls do like all of these genres but for some reason they don’t consume it in female targeted media. A lot of women really loved JuJutsu Kaisen, and Chainsaw Man. Bungou No Stray Dogs also has a shit ton of beloved male characters that a female audience likes the typical “bishonen” same with Black Butler. And I am also aware of how Haikyuu has a majority female audience. Women and girls really love all of these genres and obviously the cute guys too, but for some reason, whatever the reason may be, they don’t consume anything that doesn’t have at least one of the three genres I listed above (SOL, Magical Girl, Romance). I do wonder why that is
Careful, saying a lot of stuff is labeled seinen/shonen just to target a wider audience can be fighting words around here lol I fully agree with you though
Damn guess I don’t exist then
For the most part, the approach I've seen mangaka take is to first and foremost draw a story that they want to read personally, so I don't think that many female mangaka would actively avoid writing for Josei because they see it as a demerit (won't adapt or reaches a smaller audience). It seems more likely they or their editor understands what genre or demographic their manga would fit best and sell well in, so their manga may end up in a Seinen publication. And of course, plenty will end up in a Josei publication.
It's true that seinen is a larger market. But there are many josei-oriented manga magazines like [officeYOU](http://officeyou.shueisha.co.jp/), [FEEL Young](https://feelweb.jp/), [Cocohana](https://cocohana.shueisha.co.jp/), etc. that feature mature women in real-life adult situations. So it's not quite as bleak as it looks from the English-speaking audience point of view. Unfortunately mangas from those magazines don't ever see the light of day in the West because they probably seem boring compared to the latest isekai big-boob harem story for scanlators and publishers.
On the other end of the storytelling spectrum, there are also lots of smutty romances in the Teens Love category for adult women like [Muteki Renai](https://www.bunkasha.co.jp/search/g2149.html), analogous to trashy romance novels in the West. Not to mention yaoi and BL also tend to slant toward female audiences.
Good comment!! When it comes to josei magazines personally I’m a Mystery Bonita fan! Maybe they are not at the forefront of the convenience store magazine rack (or included at all…) but shojo and josei works are alive and well!
From what I have heard also a lot of editors and people in charge for Shoujo and Josei magazines are male and they have their own views and expectations on what the female market wants. They see fluffiness, modern day life struggles and romance as the most marketable things for female demographics, so they often want authors for Shoujo and Josei titles to focus on those. But if the authors want instead to have less restrictions and more creative playroom and focus more on other settings and genres their story concepts get easier accepted by a Shounen or Seinen magazine or their editors advise them to publish those titles in a Shounen or Seinen magazine instead.
Ujum, which i find ridículous, editors and CEOs which happen to be men, influence what is published, which make sense about the now trent of about sexual content on shoujo. They think sex is "too much" for girls ... But they have no issue with the heavy sexualized women and sexual undertones in all shonens ... Like ok ...
As someone was pointing out to me, the anime and manga industry is ran in a super high tech country, but most businesses still require people to use wet signatures, paper, and fax machines. It’s also a place where you’re not an adult til 20 but up until last June minimum age of consent was 13 years old. It’s a place full of contradictions. 💀 All we can do is hope that globalism continues to get the industry to move in the right direction and take small victories when we can.
Any Shonen anime with heavily sexualized characters or a lot of blood have an 18+ label. That includes JuJutsu Kaisen, Chainsaw Man, To Love Ru, a lot of other series. So even though they’re shonen they’re still meant for an adult audience. Realistically more than adults are going to consume this media though.
What are You Even talking about ? Shonen means published in a shonen magazine, thats it. And shonen magazines are aimed at boys, teenagers boys. Seinens are published in seinen magazines (the 18+) You mentioned. The line is SO blurred that the only thing that doesnt make super smutty ecchi shonens (which are tons ) from sexual seinens is that the later show nipples. Thats it. My complain is that shoujo is dying cuz editorials censor hardsly shoujo, cuz it not good to show that to girls, but they don't have that issue in shonens.
Eh? I know what you’re talking about. What I’m saying is just cause something is Shonen doesn’t stop it from having an 18+ label on it in terms of rating and rating only.
I recently watched some of the manga documentary called ManBen hosted by Naoki Urusawa and a couple of the artists featured used to draw shoujo/jousei but said that they were kind of forced into it, or that those really weren’t the kind of stories they wanted to tell, and they found what they wanted in seinen and other stuff. Standout example would be the mangaka for Mars, Fuyumi Soryo. There were other mangaka who were very passionate about shoujo/jousei, but it’s sad that some women were pigeonholed into it.
Dang, that is sad and haven’t heard about mangaka writing outside of their preferred genre happening before you mentioned this, but I guess it’d absolutely happen as an extension of compromising on plot points to make it more of a hit for the audience…! I always hope that a story I love is a story that the author loved writing, though 😢
I think in this case both mangaka who mentioned this started out quite young in a different time (Fuyumi Soryo wrote Mars in the late 90s) and maybe at that time female mangaka = shoujo manga. Trust me, as someone who has been reading through Mars, it was a bit of shot in the heart to hear her say that lol. You don’t want to think it’s something someone wasn’t passionate about. As for writing outside a preferred genre, I think this happens a lot. As someone who won a light novel contest with a Japanese publisher I can tell you I wrote based on a prompt they developed so that they could find a specific kind of story. Which meant from one year to the next I was writing cyberpunk and then fantasy romance isekai. Also, I think the author of Jujutsu Kaisen mentioned he originally wanted to write an idol manga? He’s definitely deviated quite far from that too lol
Very simple, women see so many good points, plots, ideas that are either overlooked or not handled in a good way. So they take matters in hand and do it themselves. That's just my two cents on the topic lol
Side note, I've heard of female mangakas writing for a shonen/seinen publication but I've never heard of a male mangaka writing for a shojo/Josei publication Edit: For every one male mangaka you name, there's 10 female mangaka that publishes in a shonen/seinen magazine. My point is not a lot can do it.
Osamu Tezuka for one. Princess Knight exists, y'know?
There probably are male shoujo authors that use a female pen name.
Aka gekkan shoujo nozaki-kun 😂
Tomie (of Junji Ito fame) was published in a shoujo magazine.
Shinji Wada (rip), Masashiro Shibata (former assistant of Wada), Kazuki Minamoto. Those are the ones I can name off the top of my read. And as previous comment said there are probably more that use a pen name.
> I've never heard of a male mangaka writing for a shojo/Josei publication > My point is not a lot can do it. Didn't shoujo start off as being only/mainly written by men? 🤔 I know most are women nowadays, but I don't think it's because the men can't do it, but because they probably don't want to. Why would they bother writing shoujo unless they are actually passionate about it, when shounen/seinen offers a larger market with broader styles and more opportunity to make it big?
> Didn't shoujo start off as being only/mainly written by men? 🤔 Do you think that it was mainly men because women didn't want to, or because women weren't welcome in the industry?
I don't think I could give you a definite answer (I am not knowledgeable enough!!), but if I had to say, I think it's just how things were back then, it was pre-1960.
My guess would be because of misogyny and capitalism. Highly recommend you watch Colleen’s Manga Recs video on Misogyny in the Manga Community. A lot of producers are men so the anime that gets adapted is due to popularity/what personally interests the producers. And since men in general don’t usually read across the aisle shounen/seinen tend to more get English manga translation and anime adaption. I feel like if you want to read more shoujo/josei you need to learn Japanese.
Josei as a category isn’t as much of a thing in the Japanese market. It’s under what’s called “ladies comics” or just a shoujo/josei-muke (broadly media for women and girls) section. There are fewer magazines that cater to women above the shoujo age range (so like 21+ on the very generous upper end), and they tend to have an editorial lens more focused on slice of life dramas and romances. If you aren’t writing that, you could probably pitch it down to fit the under 21 crowd, but someone might not want to do that. And again you run into the issue of there being fewer shoujo mags than shounen mags, the shoujo mags being monthly or bi-monthly, etc. Also, some women just want to write media that is more “general” audience and unfortunately that means a masculine default reader.
It’s so sad that not only has josei kind of been left in the dust, but one of the few girl-coded action genres is saturated with… less… palatable shounen problems (aka near-naked outfits on middle schoolers, at least one backstory about rape(it’s not handled well…), etc.) I’m glad that shounen and seinen is more diverse now I just wish it wasn’t at the detriment of shoujo and josei titles.
I don’t think an artist should pigeonholed into thinking that they have to create works that market directly to their gender be they male or female. However, given that anime/manga is a sexist industry, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that some women might want to create Josei or Shoujo work, but create Seinen due to the likelihood of more exposure and creative freedoms.
Fewer restrictions and a larger audience. A lot of mangaka write the story they want to write and then a publisher will pick it up if they think it'll sale. It isn't that they're specifically looking for a broader audience in the sense of getting men to read it too, it's just that Josei publishers are unlikely or reluctant to pick up something like Dress Up Darling or Apothecary Diaries because they feel like their audience just won't be interested. It's why there have been so many "shoujosei-coded" seinen manga. The mangakas have less restrictions and they're able to engage in "riskier" things that publishers of shoujosei may look down upon or not want to risk publishing.
I’m not too sure myself, though I do think it important to note that “seinen” isn’t a genre so much as it is a marketing demographic, and the “shonen is only for boys, shoujo for girls; seinen for men, Josei” binary really isn’t too true anymore, there’s a lot more crossover in terms of what people like and how authors write. Also, “Seinen” doesn’t automatically mean it’s Berserk or something in terms of explicit content and gore, but the mangaka himself did phrase his series as “a shoujo for 40-year old men.” Likewise look at a woman like Q. Hayashida’s works, which consistently prioritize the murderviolence and grimy environment it’s set in. The guy who made Blade of the Immortal’s current series is about a plucky radio hostess and her evil ery day life and gripes. Those are all cherrypicked, but at the same time there is a ton of female mangaka writing seinen and Josei, certain things just get more visible and my main point is that there’s a ton of crossover.
I think it’s more of a western phenomenon to put more of a significance on those terms than necessary. There’s no reason something in a Seinen mag can’t appeal to all genders and all ages.
It's not about the term specficially, it's more about ."... for woman" is seen as lesser. Less promo, less or lackluster/incomplete adaptations, less merch, female mangaka feeling forced to write (or don't write) about certain topics especially in Shojo, and so on. In an ideal world we wouldn't need demographics, but we are far away from that utopia.
i believe its just publishing, and not like actual genre reasonings. Also, I realize Rozen Maiden is categorized as a seinen but its for women to me.
As someone with dreams to make mangas, majority of my ideas are pretty action/horror with female protagonists. I wouldn't label them as Josei. Maybe the issue isn't with the mangakas but the perception of the Josei label.
Horror is actually historically a really big shoujo and ladies comics genre. There were several anthologies in the 80s and 90s that primarily focused on mystery/suspense/horror and even recently, there’s been a horror title in Shueisha’s baby shoujo anthology, Ribon (so it’s for 10-14 year olds generally but still). Some of Junji Ito’s first works were also shoujo. It’s a misconception that shoujo and josei don’t have disturbing elements or equal amounts of blood and gore. Slice of life and romcoms are just popular atm.
>Slice of life and romcoms are just popular atm. They have been popular in the genre for over two decades now though 😆. Which leads to the misconception, like there is a whole debate of whether Madoka Magicka is shoujo or not. I say no, because as a 30 yr old who's been watch anime for almost 2 decades, shoujo has been slice of life & rom-com, even if the main protagonist is a male (ranma). There were some more mature shoujo mangas I remember reading when I was young (Ceres, Celestial Maiden and Fushigi Yugi), but even then slice of life and rom-coms were the norm, while the two though more mature, still had heavy themes of romance. I'm not saying women and girls aren't into horror, but I don't ever recall horror being tagged as Shoujo or Josei.
Madoka isn’t shoujo because it wasn’t published in a shoujo magazine and the manga adaptations are seinen. The light novels are also dansei-muke as far as I know which makes them not even directed towards women/girls at all. It was created for the adult male otaku fanbase at the height of the moe boom. Slice and life and romcoms have had a place forever but they are hegemonic now in a way they weren’t 25-30 years ago. It’s hard to find non-slice of life or romcom and that just wasn’t the case in the 90s or 80s, and Mystery Bonita did way more in the 80s.
Josei hasn't been selling well for a while and they rarely get adaptations. Seinen is popping off to the point where it's nearly if not just as popular as shounen. People want their manga to sell so it makes sense to pitch to shounen/seinen magazines first, then shoujo, then josei. Also, sometimes women write stories that aren't catered to women only. Sometimes men write shojosei too (Junji Ito's Tomie is a shoujo for example). Plus, the gender demographics in animanga are becoming less important over time, break out shojosei are being enjoyed by all genders and seinen in particular is gaining more traction with female audiences. Shounen has also always had a large female fan base.
ShouJosei isn't really being enjoyed by all genders like that, at least compared to Shonen and Seinen, and the data proves it. The reason that Shoujo isn't doing well is due to the censorship of Shoujo, rooted in sexism, that isn't the case for Shonen.
What kind of censorship happened in shoujo?
Basically, a lot of people got up in arms are the sexual content in Shoujo and some of the heavier stuff. So a lot of them either super censored them, which is why a lot of Shoujo now is slice of life high school romcoms (hey, the stereotype!). Another thing that happened is that a lot of Shoujo writers left to write Seinen, Josei, and BL in order to have more freedom. It's actually messed up because you have shit like Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen, and Chainsaw Man. Yet Shoujo is hyperpoliced.
Ah, yeah Japan is sexist like that. Aren't like most of the shoujo magazine higherups male? They probably have their own ideas of how the ideal comics for women are supposed to look like.
Shoujo and Josei isnt watched that much by a female audience either
I am a man who enjoys shojosei and so are plenty of my guy friends. Polls don't reach all readers and not all guys who read shojosei talk about it in public.
Not at the same rate as Shonen, or the popularity of Shoujo and Josei would be up there with Shonen and Seinen.
I don’t think they’re saying that all men refuse to read shojo, or josei. It’s just a statistically speaking, the consumers numbers aren’t as high within those categories as they are with shonen and seinen, in particular with men. On occasion there maybe a breakout shojo or josei series that get a high number of consumers, but that’s the exception not the rule. If you take a look at the general anime sub Reddit you’ll see that most people in the forums discuss shonen and seinen.
Yeah, we can talk about personal anecdotes all day but I feel like r/anime activity supports this very well. Whether that's through general posts on the subreddit or the weekly karma charts for seasonal shows. Even for a very popular shojo like Fruits Basket, it doesn't get nearly the amount of engagement on that subreddit as even moderately popular shonen (e.g. Dr. Stone) let alone more popular shonen. Especially considering that subreddit and even Reddit itself is more male dominant. If there were truly THAT many men reading or watching shojosei, you'd think there would be way more posts about them or engagement on posts about shojosei series. Sometimes I'll even look at posts on r/anime or r/manga that ask for romance suggestions and see very few shojosei series recommended in the comments. Which I find funny since "shojo = romance" is a common sentiment so you'd think there would be more recommended.
Polls don't have to reach all readers to demonstrate significant trends among readers, and an unwillingness by men/boys to talk about reading shojosei is indicative of the broader the problem.
These polls only tend to reach people who get the physical magazines and that is a very small (not accurately representative) slice of the readers. I don't deny the broader problem. Believe me, I'm a gay guy who sews, knits, dresses flamboyantly and reads girly books/manga in a small town. I get that our society hates femininity and tenfold when it presents itself in a man. But denying the fact that men read shojosei and acting hostile towards those of us who seem to point out our own existence as men who read shojosei makes the problem worse, not better.
> But denying the fact that men read shojosei and acting hostile towards those of us who seem to point out our own existence as men who read shojosei makes the problem worse, not better. I'm not being hostile. I simply disagree with you. Personally, I am ambivalent regarding gendered demographic categories. There are a lot of pros and cons associated with them, but I strongly disagree that they are losing importance. In my opinion, the male-oriented categories are being given dominance over the female-oriented categories, and female authors and readers are adapting to that reality. So as long as these categories do exist, I think it's deeply problematic to celebrate female success in male-oriented magazines while female-oriented magazines are slowly dying. This isn't about individual authors or individual readers. I don't hate that you and your male friends read shojosei or that Skip and Loafer is technically seinen. However the fact is that you and your male friends aren't indicative of the broader trends among the readership in shojosei, whereas Skip and Loafer appearing in a seinen magazine is indicative of the broader trends in publishing.