What's a shounen manga? A shounen anime, or even just a shounen? What's the difference between shounen, shoujo, seinen, and josei? What's the meaning of these words in Japanese?
女性, women. A shounen anime is so-called because it adapts a shounen manga, which is so-called because it's serialized in a shounen magazine, which is so-called because it targets a boys demographic, its primary audience are underage boys, it's marketed toward them.
By the way, a shounen protagonist is the protagonist of a shounen manga/anime, not a protagonist who is a shounen, i.e. not a boy protagonist, a protagonist of a series for boys.
Messy But Brilliant Josei Manga Titles You Need In Your Life
Note: not to be confused with shounen-ai and shoujo-ai, which, in English, refers to gay and lesbian genres of manga and anime.
If you want to know whether an anime is shounen or shoujo, check what manga it's adapted from, and what magazine the manga was serialized on.
For example, Naruto ナルト is a shounen anime, because its manga was serialized on Shounen Jump 少年ジャンプ, which is a shounen magazine.
Mara's Manga Series: Josei Manga
The magazine has its target demographic, so its editors will prefer content that its demographic will like. If a manga is published on Shounen Jump, it's because the editors of the magazine think it's suited for a shounen demographic.
Naturally, the editors whose job is literally to figure this out probably know what they're doing, so there's no point in arguing a manga isn't shounen when it's published in a shounen magazine.
I want to emphasize that if Naruto got published in a shoujo magazine instead, it would have been called a shoujo manga, EVEN IF THE CONTENT WAS THE SAME.
What Does Josei Mean In Anime? Meaning, Definition & Examples
The content doesn't matter at all, it's whom it's marketed to that matters. It just happens that one thing influences the other.
Sometimes people ask if it's okay for them to like shounen manga if they aren't children, or shoujo manga if they aren't girls. Of course it's okay.
This is just the audience the magazine is aiming for. If more girls than boys bought a shounen magazine, the magazine would gladly take their money.
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In some cases, a manga published in a shounen magazine is more popular with its female readership than with its male readership.
This is specially the case if it's a series that has very few female characters in it, which occurs with sports series like Haikyuu ハイキュー, that has volleyball teams full of male characters, and almost no girls around.
Often, there's a focus on learning new things, exploring, connecting to new people, and growing as a person, in other words, adventure, bravery, making friends, protecting your nakama 仲間, making rivals, and so on.
Feature: Ladies Choice
Many shounen series are about starting a new life in a new town, or starting high school, or embarking in an adventure, and so on, placing the protagonist in a situation where he will be alone.
Unfortunately, the shounen adventure combination tends to yield child protagonists who are orphans because they're supposed to start alone, or whose parents are missing for one reason or another.
In particular, the ecchi エッチ genre, which features somewhat erotic drawings, including tropes like panty shots (panchira パンチラ) and lots of fanservice, is also often targeted at a shounen audience, and published in a shounen magazine.
A Look At Shojo And Josei Manga
Pornography is obviously restricted to adult audiences, but shounen is any boy under 18, so we aren't talking about little kids here. A series in a shounen magazine could be target a high school audience, for example.
Means girl. It's the female counterpart of shounen, so any underage girl, no matter how old, is a shoujo, including high school girls.
In particular, the harem genre, in which a guy is surrounded by potential girlfriends, is even reversed into a so-called reverse harem genre, in which a girl is surrounded by potential boyfriends.
Types Of Manga
The shoujo manga are known for their pretty drawings. Girls are drawn like princesses, guys are drawn like princes. Clothes are detailed, eyes are sparkling, and backgrounds are full of flowers.
The magical girl, mahou shoujo 魔法少女, genre, traditionally targets a shoujo audience, and in this genre some pretty normal and average girl transforms with magic into a cute outfit, much like a Japanese Cinderella.
Some shoujo series target a niche audience called fujoshi 腐女子, rotten girls, who ship male characters with other male characters. They're in a gay genre called BL in Japanese, and they'll feature pretty boys in fashionable outfits, and the sort.
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Means young adult, but it's typically used to refer to a young man, rather than to a woman. Not to be confused with the homonymous seinen
There are various reasons for a series to be seinen instead of shounen, mainly the fact that it handles more adult themes, which tend to be dark and depressing.
Plot-centered shounen tends to be simple, such that any issue can be solved with perseverance, effort, or power. It's good versus evil. Black and white. While in a seinen the plot tends to be about concession. There will be tragedy, loss, defeat, and no easy solution.
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It focuses on the complexities of life and on moving on, about living in society, about having a job, having a family, etc.
A shounen typically feature a high school student or younger as protagonist, while seinen is more likely to feature adults, college age characters.
Some seinen series are simply chill and relaxing, the slice of life genre, which may be considered boring for younger readers. In particular, these tend to feature a main cast full of girls, leading them to be called Cute Girls Doing Cute Things in English.
Definition And Meaning Of Shoujo
In general, a moe 萌え series is targeted at an older audience that buys blu-rays, which its fans, the otaku オタク, will buy paying with their own money, but children wouldn't afford. Series targeted at younger audiences prefer to sell children toys instead.
There are also several series that are considered seinen because they were originally published as light novels full of text that target an older audience.
An ecchi seinen series is likely to feature some sort of fetishism that a shounen series wouldn't have, and it's likely to have a character trying to get into a sexual relationship with someone, where a shounen would be mostly random nude shots in weird, accidental situations.
A Love Letter To Josei Manga
There are exceedingly few josei anime, so it's hard to say what it typically contains, but the basic idea is that it's the more mature variant of shoujo, so it's more likely to have an adult woman as the protagonist.
In Japanese, josei magazines are classified as yangu redhiisu ヤング・レディース, Young Ladies', if they target an 18–30 year old audience. A magazine like Flowers, which targets an older than 30 female audience, would be josei but not Young Ladies'.
They aren't strictly BL if the protagonists don't actually get into a homosexual romantic relationship, but the series may portray more emotional relationships between male characters that one might say looks pretty gay compared to how male characters are normally portrayed in anime.
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The manga targeted at children have furigana ふりがな in almost every word, that is, they include how the kanji are supposed to be read, so you don't have to guess or look it up. The manga meant for adults only have furigana in kanji that rarely show up, like those for names of animals.
By the way, if you're searching for your first manga to read in Japanese, try Yotsubato! よつばと！ It's very easy to read with big letters, easy words and easy dialogue.If you’re into anime, then you’ve no doubt come across plenty of words that just don’t exist in English. This will tend to happen even when you’re watching it in English dubs!
The word josei literally means woman or female in Japanese, but when it comes to anime it isn’t talking about the sex of the characters, but rather it is talking about the genre of the story.
The 10 Most Iconic Josei Anime Characters Of The 2000s, Ranked
I talked before about the anime genre shojo, which is primarily focused on young girls as the audience and the sorts of stories that they tend to prefer – that is, stories that center around the interpersonal relationships of the characters, and the emotional aspects that go along with them.
Well, josei anime is basically the same thing, but for girls and women who are no longer in high school. The typical reader of josei manga (or josei anime) is a woman who is somewhere between her late teens and early forties.
One of the main aspects that distinguish it from shojo is that josei will typically portray a realistic romance, with all the struggles and problems that come with one, as opposed to the more idealistic romances that are usually found in josei.
Read Josei Manga
Unfortunately, josei isn’t really a genre that has gained much popularity in Western audiences, and so most of them tend to remain untranslated and only in the original Japanese.
Still… these generalizations tend to miss out of the unique parts of the josei genre. Things such as family issues, being a female in the male-dominated work environment, and complicated relationships.
If you’re a female and you’re not looking for an escape from reality, but instead looking for life from another woman’s point of view,
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