I think its more of a difference in genre labels. Yaoi is a bit broader. Also, most "hentai" with any small bit of plot isn't marketted as "hentai". Generally speaking. But, going off on a small tangent. I seem some of the best plots from ero-games.

@Stealth: I was only half serious, but I don’t really like PWP yaoi stories and the superficial angsty romances either, no amount of well drawn sex scenes will make me read those, same for hentai, to me it’s just boring. At the other hand I laughed till tears at Pink Sniper hentai and that’s what makes me remember it, not the sex. So not all people read things for same reasons.

As for yuri, in it’s male oriented sense they are all hentai to me, I probably should have had make it clearer. I meant yaoi as in sex stories for girls and hentai as in sex stories for boys. There is an in-between category that is different matter altogether.

@Akukame: yes you are probably right and that comes also from the fact that even sligther hint of homosexual activity in a manga automatically labels it as shounen ai / yaoi for some reason (something I will never understand, but let's not analyze it). I don't play that many games outside of rpg/strategy/tactics so i'm completely clueless about ero-games

@candyloop - You can instead look at some of the anime that have been made from them. Kimi ga Nozomu Eien (Rumbling Hearts) is one of my favorites series. Theres other prime examples such as Kanon, Fate/Stay Night, Tsukihime, and others.

As for the slightest bit of homsexuality comment. Thats exactly what I was thinking. Take a series like Dance till tomorrow. Great series, they just happen to go at it like bunnies. I wouldn't consider it hentai at all, but it does feature a lot of sex and a lot of nudity. If it had 2 guys in it instead of a guy and a girl it would instantly be yaoi.

Hmmm, seems that the question wasn't that well put.
The genres Shoujo, Seinen, Shonen and Josei are defined by who reads them in Japan. So with this poll i wanted to find out if the international community { thats us} fit this mold. Of course in Japan not everybody fits the mold either, its a generalization.

And to the whole genre thing concerning yaoi, i myself find it the whole parallel categorization for homosexual content pretty wierd. To keep genre issues away i just concentrated on the four main manga genres in the poll.

i'm male 20,5 years old and i like reading yuri, especially when the girls doing the seme-uke plot

and yaoi ? blah, i'm shivering seeing two guys hugging each other ...

my favourite genres of course hentai and ecchi (hehe, proud to be pervert )

other genres i like are adventure + comedy, like GTO, or romance + comedy like Love Hina series

________________
'''''A-A
=(^_^)=
..((....)),.~' Meow!
....""...""
This is Kitty. Copy and paste Kitty into your signature to help her gain world domination

It's very strange...I love gourmet manga that is "typical shounen" and I love thriller seinens.....YET....I love to relax to some good shoujo/josei.

I think I'm an all around fan of most genres. Although I like to watch shonen anime rather than read it. Exceptions excluded (Deathnote, Yakitate)

I'm 27 years old and I'm a girl

________________
Too Weird to Live. Too Rare to Die. - HST.

There are just too many types of mangas to be just fitted into 4 categories of Shounen, Shoujo, Seien, Josei. When I first read manga onlines, I didn't even know a manga I was reading was considered either a "boy" manga or "girl" manga. Before moving to Canada a decade ago, I was living in Vietnam, and there were licensed mangas in Vietnam. There wasn't any talk about this "boy" or "girl" manga. Mangas were mangas over there. You either read it and liked it or read it then didn't like it. It seems to me that a lot people are too obsessed with the ideas of "boy" manga or "girl" manga that they will never try the manga which are not "meant" for their genders.

ima teen girl and i like shojou.....yup...
but i do read my occasional shonen, like prince of tennis...(i forget...what is inuyasha under?)
but the majority of everything i've read is shojou...^^' kinda sad....i think i need to read a bigger variety!

________________
Cry "HAVOC!"
and let slip
the dogs of war.

Inuyasha is definetly shonen.

I don't mind reading shounen....but sometimes the fact that they are soooooooooooo long.....sometimes puts me off.



________________
Too Weird to Live. Too Rare to Die. - HST.

Mmm... I'm not sure about where I'd fit. I do read mostly shounen and seinan titles (I'm a guy), but a large number of what I consider my favorite mangas are shoujo titles (or borderline stuff like Adachi mangas).

Well isn't it more likely that a shounen manga will seem never-ending than a shoujo? Like with Prince of Tennis (37 volumes and still going), Inuyasha (50 volumes and still going! I think the anime ended at about volume 40 a year or two ago because the studio knew Rumiko Takahashi wasn't going to end the story anytime soon... They were right to just leave it open-ended instead of making up filler. In fact, it's going to be really expensive to buy in English at $10/volume. That'd be $500 for a manga series ), and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure (61 volumes and still going). Oh, and Detective Conan is 58 volumes and still going. The 10-year mark just passed. (I thought Yakitate!! Japan was going to be a never-ending manga, but it's done at 27 volumes! I can hope to read the end one day soon! )

But for shoujo, I can't think of any that went past 30 volumes, except the older ones that I don't know much about. And when I just looked up Rose of Versailles and Candy Candy, they are only about 10 volumes. Hana Kimi is longer than both of those combined. Actually, I overlooked Glass Mask is hiatus/ongoing. But there are more shounen than shoujo that does it, from what I know and stumbled across. It's probably due to the way the story is usually formatted that allows for this. I guess the successful male mangaka are able to wring out more money than the female ones. ;) *wonders if the "wink" will work, it hasn't worked for long time... *

Last edited by Takiko at 11:10 pm, Mar 16 2007

________________
My avatar was Yves Saint Laurent's The Black Evening Dress (with big bow) first shown in 1983, photographed from his 2002 retrospective and final show. [color=#CC0066]Check out some of his collections for free (pre-2008) HERE[/color] courtesy of FirstView.

I think I'm more of an allrounder, I'm not really into one genre specifically. As long as there is an interesting story, I'll read it. No matter what genre it belongs to.

i dont really mind what the genres are as long as the storylines interesting

________________
Name: Bikuki
Date Of Birth: xx/xx/19xx
Location: XX
From: The Place That Rhymes With China.

Same here Bikuki.

Well, you are probably right about shonen being to long sometimes. Especially for those cases... they are to long to be any interesting. I tend to avoid starting a manga that is already past his 10th volume with no hope of an end soon. It just gets on my nerves when a story doesn't want to end.
But sometimes, I started the manga from chapter one... It feels wrong to stop now...
But don't worry, shojou mangaka may not write a lot of 10 volumes + mangas but they write one huge lot of mangas. (and just to say I assume you where talking about shoujo/shonen mangaka not female/male, since Rumiko is a she after all... and she is one of the worst of her kind for the long pointless story's)

There are only a couple of case where the mangas drag for so long and still are really as good and interesting as they where in the beginning. Those are really worth it. (I'm not going to give any names because I'll sound like a broken disk repeating the same thing over and over... I think that everybody knows I'm a fan of *******)