I don't mean their age.
Take shounen: a lot of guys are schoolboys, yeah. But they also fight demons, kill vampires, go on dangerous missions, investigate crime, lay ghosts to rest, are secretly millionaires or famous novelists, etc, etc. Some, like Allen in D.Gray-man, never had a normal life to begin with.

Yet it's a rare shoujo heroine who has any kind of adventure not provided by the hero (Hiiro no Isu for example). Usually she has a totally normal boring life until the moment the hero enters her world. Sometimes she discovers later that she has a hidden power, but sometimes she just sort of tags along.

Just a thought that kind of hooked itself in my mind while I'm sorting out my manga notes and archives.

General female audience for shoujo/josei > something calm.
General male audience for shounen/seinen > something wild.

It's basically the preferences that go with each gender, if that makes any sense. In general, female readers would prefer to relate to a setting that's calmer, while male readers, something more out there. I think.

________________

It's pretty simple. A massive portion of shoujo is romance, instead of action, adventure, or even gag-comedies. Romance stories usually try to use characters their readers can relate to, in this case schoolgirls.

Romance manga also don't have as much of a place for action oriented characters. If the characters have too interesting or exciting of occupations, then the genre might unintentionally be changed to something else.

Last edited by x0mbiec0rp at 6:11 pm, Mar 5 2011

________________
This signature was recovered from Hades to serve in my rotting armies.

`i agree with everyone~X3
the general shoujo stories are about romance and we can relate the most if they're about school..
well, school life includes the juiciest stories to be shared with everybody..
we experience loads of freakin' adventures~

________________
http://bloodxsaki.deviantart.com/

HELL, i'm a freakin' fangirl~!
but i have self-control..X3

It'd be impossible to create a shoujo without school because most people attend them- only in other dimensions they don't have to but usually girls don't like fanatsy stuff so it's a closed circle

It's mostly commercial - usually, you want to read something with a main character whom you can identify to. Since shoujos are released to please Japanese teenagers (well, not only Japanese), they mustly use schoolgirls as main characters so the audience would, once again, identify to. (:

________________
« Le hommes construisent trop de murs et pas assez de ponts. » Isaac Newton

well.. just noticed this one just now. girls, as we all know, are after romance and boys, as we all know, are into action... and so i guess that you have to focus on just one in order to a typical romance story that everyone can relate.. i guess.. you have to place it (romance) in a controlled enviroment that anything can happen but you can still control it and as for the action/fantasy it just doesnt choose a place, he might be a schoolboy, or he might not be, action happens anywhere, like romance but its very uncommon for it to happen in a place where the protagonist doesnt go regularly.

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

Its more the genre than the demongraphic in this case. Romance protagonists are usually the most average males/females possible in both shounen and shoujo.

________________
"It is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science."

Every normal girl has lots of insecurities and problems going on in their lives, teenage girls especially which is what shoujo is aimed at, it may seem boring to guys, but it helps girls relate to things going on in their lives and teaches them how to deal with them. How many women want action movies, I don't care much for things with lots of action, it isn't really what I look for in a manga, female audiences are more appreciative to what they can relate to rather than something they find cool or exciting. Naturally, this doesn't apply to every audience or manga.

________________
We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have, out doubt is our passion and our passion is our task, the rest is the madness of art. Henry james

I guess that since the industry is largely stereotypical about how they choose their demographics, they shuttle action-type manga (even if it was written by females) into a more male-oriented magazine, where it might do better.

After all, if a girl gets sick of sappy romance, they can always go pick up shounen jump. It's probably how they segregate the industry as well as segregate the customer segments.