I adore it 'cause it's such an utter train wreck. In a weird way, it's the utter unlikableness of the characters that make it compelling. It's very much reading it to see how much worse it can get, but Aihara throws in enough snippets to keep it from becoming completely horrible. So yes, the train wreck/soap opera factor is sometimes very important to shoujo-it's the hook that keeps people reading. Vampire Knight, Nana, Mars and all the other really popular dramas also have this train wreck factor keeping them going.

The other branch of really popular shoujo is the heavily character driven stuff that gets criticized for having horrible pacing and really dense characters. [m]Kimi no Todoke[/m], Koukou Debut, and Lovely Complex are great examples of this and the less popular Akagami no Shirayukihime is a different approach to character heavy stuff, not making anyone dense but still taking everything really slow. I think it leads to really great development, but it also leads to a lot less physical relationship stuff.

Ouran and Perfect Girl Evolution end up coming up somewhere in the middle-lots of character stuff and lots of drama, but kind of too schizophrenic to take an approach. It leads the manga to feel like they're basically gag manga (much more so PGE since Ouran started fleshing out the actual plot the past couple of volumes) which turns off a lot of readers who want more focus.

I think the best shoujo makes use of the fact that it's also both a visual and textual medium-panels that show through the art, strong dialogue, great details, etc.

The bishies.

________________
“𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝓇𝑜𝓈𝑒'𝓈 𝓇𝒶𝓇𝑒𝓈𝓉 𝑒𝓈𝓈𝑒𝓃𝒸𝑒 𝓁𝒾𝓋𝑒𝓈 𝒾𝓃 𝓉𝒽𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝑜𝓇𝓃𝓈.” ― 𝑀𝒶𝓌𝓁𝒶𝓃𝒶 𝒥𝒶𝓁𝒶𝓁-𝒶𝓁-𝒟𝒾𝓃 𝑅𝓊𝓂𝒾.
あたしは腐女子です。少女漫画、たくさん読んでください。

what makes a good shoujo...
for me it's the story, the plot, and the ending... of course the art take part too when i decide to read something, but even the art is gorgeous it doesn't mean it's a good shoujo... it's often happen to me...
i found a manga that the art is really doesn't suit my taste, but i ended up waiting the update.... lol
and back to the story, the story is the one that make a shoujo good, because shoujo is basically same.. it's really easy to noticed the storyline, that's why if the author can't make a good story, or a unique one, it'll make us bored... (that's is one of reason why i love josei)
and of course after the story, the plot have an important role too...
if the the author make too complicated plot, or too long, it will make the reader get sick, i stop reading some of shoujo because the author seems don't want to ended it >_> or just make it too monotonous..
i hate it when a manga being like that, it lost the core of the story... it's just like seing the same scene in every chapter but with different picture...
and of course if a shoujo manga is already like that, then the author want to ended it... it will be a weird ending :/
after those long and monotonous story.. suddenly it end... and usually i'll feel dissapointed with the ending...
and not just that, sometimes i found a shoujo with a great stroy, great plot, great art...but bad ending... and it's really makes me pissed...
it's like... what the hell o___O
it's like the author is in lack of creativity... or lack of paper... idk.... after those great chapter she/he ended it with just like that....
it's a shame i think.... because a story is not gonna stay in reader's memories if it ended with bad ending.. people just gonna dissapointed..

well that's all my opinion tho :3



LMAO xD
i think all shoujo have bishie in it... shoujo is a manga genre which the character should look really real, and ofc beauty... that's why usually all the boy look bishie.... :3

Last edited by lambchopsil at 5:11 pm, Jul 4 2011

The drama! Any good shoujo needs a bit of drama.

the main character Girl has to be a strong woman that doesnt give up and is goal driven.<3
and good artwork as well.

________________

With all the shoujo manga I've read... I've only come to remember the titles that really left an impression on me... For me what makes a good shoujo, is how much I can relate and the uniqueness of the female lead character is. Drama! Just the right amount though, too much is bad for you Also Morals... and those really special interior monologue, Yes, definitely that. Since Shoujo manga is all about emotion

________________
||Mangabullet||

as long as it doesnt turn into a daytime soap opera with the omg-i-love-you-no-wait-i-love-him-more-no-wait-i-hate-you-both kind of plot ,all is fine
since shoujo targets girls..characters should be sensitive(but not too sensitive),realistic and the personalities should be believable...things should fall in place and there should be no omg-wherever-i-go-i-bump-into-you situations
characters shouldnt randomly faint or collapse the way it happens in mexican dramas
as a reader i should be able to see WHY the girl fell in love with the boy,it should make me think ,it should be deep to some extent
no super-popular-wow-look-im-flipping-my-hair-coz-im-cool-like-that characters
personalities shouldnt be extreme...nothing like a total crybaby or super sadistic character....she should have her good and bad times...i really loved how the main character was feeling insecure about her looks and a little jealous of the good looking girl in narration in seventeen that was so realistic
characters should do bad or selfish things..they should be "human" you know,a perfect example is please save my earth..the characters were so real...sometimes selfish sometimes caring sometimes jealous sometimes insane,thats how a shoujo should be.

The characters.

One of the main things that makes me throw up my hands in disgust when reading shoujo is characters acting in ways it is absolutely impossible for me to relate to.

I don't mean "I would do that"-- most shoujo characters have complexes I don't have and so think and respond differently than I ever would.

I mean "I understand and sympathize with why someone would do that".


Shoujo, let's face it, is not exactly awash with creative world-building and extremely original plots. What it relies on to make it interesting is the characters.

In Nakahara Aya's works, for example, it is always possible to predict the final pairing in the first chapter. But that's okay, because Nakahara's characters are always interesting enough that you're actually interested in finding out the unique way that they, specifically, come to that foregone conclusion.

Or Strobe Edge. There was a manga in many ways as cliche as you could get-- but what hooked me into it was the fact that I sympathized with the main character, primarily because she avoided the idiotic thinking patterns so commonly associated with shoujo heroines.

I also have a weakness for genuinely kickass, independent heroines. Think Oresama Teacher, or, in a rather different way, Skip Beat (at times). I specify "genuinely" because one of the types of manga that I hate most is when the female character is described as strong or talented or smart etc, but her behavior is that of a limp dishrag or a dumb dolt.


Original characters will hook me in, always-- at least up until the author decides to throw away all originality and transform her characters into the same boring cookie cutter templates...



The other thing, I guess, that will hook me in is originality in plot or even deliberate cliche-busting.

Cliche-busting is the sort of thing which in itself can get pretty cliche pretty fast, but it's still so uncommon in shoujo that it hasn't gotten to that stage yet. Dengeki Daisy won my heart in the scene where the heroine,rather than being an idiot and obeying the instructions to come like a good hostage and not tell the police (like, um, way too many shoujo heroines from series whose names I have erased from my memory, forever) does, instead, the intelligent thing and plans out a course of action, with backup.

And authors like Ichinose Kaoru might follow extremely cliche patterns of character relationships, but they at least engage in a certain amount of world-building instead of just plopping standard heroine into standard highschool with standard male lead...




But mostly, good shoujo means not being lazy with your characters. Not making them do things simply because that's what is always done in shoujo. Not making them react in the stereotypical cliche moe ways... taking a premise and thinking it through, properly.

Last edited by wanpisu at 4:32 pm, Jul 27 2011

Well, good art work for one. X/1999 is one of my favorite series, but in the beginning it was pretty boring. (I'm not gonna lie, until about volume 6 I was wondering if I should read this series.) It was so beautiful that I was forced to continue. Clamp's art work is breathtakingly beautiful, especially from volume 7 or 8 and up. (It's one of my favorites so I'm glad I stuck with it.)

Strong female characters make wonderful shojo. Girls are not all weak and they're not all crybabys. Everyone cries at some point, but girls don't need a man to get on their feet and take the situation into their own hands. I'm not saying that a heroic rescue is a bad thing, but nothing turns me on more than when a girl shows she can handle herself.
One of the reasons why I love Tail of the Moon. Usagi is a crybaby and can't do anything on her own. But volume five, with the whole burning building, after she dumped the water over herself and from the rest of the series she got stronger and stronger - and that's why no matter how girlie it is I'll never get tired of it.

I agree with you there. The story line can be excellent and the art beautiful but if the characters are 2D and unrelatable then its doesn't hook you in.

It's hard to really say what makes a good shojo, but I'd say it has to do with story and characters...

For me, usually it will be the female character who will make or break the story...
I don't like shojo's where the boy and the girl just don't seem to go together, whether it's because of the way the author drew them (sometimes the girl looks way too infantile compared to her 'handsome' companion) or because realistically their personalities clash so much than in real life that type of romance would fizzle out faster than a JLO marriage...

For example, I liked Fruits Basket, even though Tohru straddled the line of annoying weak characters I hate, but Tohru was physically weak, but had a strong core...she was a well-grounded girl...
Yet, I can't bring myself to read any of the popular shojos w/ strong females like Maid-sama, Skip Beat, Nana, and others...something about the summaries turns me off...

I like my romances, but I also like surprises, so as much as I enjoyed Ouran, I would have liked that Haruhi developed feeling for Hikaru before chosing Tamaki, simply because that's how most people fall in love, I don't think we go through out lives w/ only one crush, and most manga kinda ignore that....

So I guess a good shojo has to have a well-rounded heroine that has a hero that goes well with her and a simple love story....no need for over dramatization of the romance.

I think that it depends on the reader.. there have been times where shoujos i have really liked and thought were good, were thought of as "annoying" by a friend. However, from the shojous that I have seen become big I have to say there is usually two common factors. A strong/or trying to become stronger heroine who is not all smiles and fun but has inner (and sometimes physical) power, and a hero that has more than one side to him (the trend of the guy having a dark/emotional side is specially common). As if trying to convince the readers that most guys are not simple idiots....not saying that all are.... lol
O! and I guess a hint of comedy always helps

Since I'm cheap, all that a good shoujo needs is at least a single strong point. be it art,storyline or characterization. I'm game if one of them is well made!

I agree with the characters. In my opinion many of the shoujo female leads are weak, only focused on love, not the least bit independent and don't have pride. For that case I really like Tsukushi of Hana yori dango. She didn't endure anything without paying back. (but well, she was also stupid -.-)

But also the art, if it is cheap, I wouldn't want to read it that much, but if it is too beautiful and full of bishounen it feel so unrealistic that my reading mood drops as well.

________________
There's nothing to see here. Proceed with what you were doing or throw rainbows at random pedestrians.

A TSUNDERE GUY + a pure hearted genki genki girl = LOVE!!!!~!

________________
oh please do click this!
The sweeter the apple, the higher the branch. The quieter the fart, the nastier the smell.
GUESS WHO??