So, something just hit me as I was fishing through the different demographics(seinen, shoujo, shounen, josei) and realized how some manga being serialized in magazines like GFantasy, constantly have themes crossing different demographics. Like they showcase bishounen and subtext with said bishounen, you know, stuff that appeal to teenage girls, while still maintaining a shounen feel. Many of the mangakas are suprisingly female. Kuroshitsuji is a popular example.

IDK, I've seen this is some other series, and wondered, what manga publications you would consider enjoyable for two or more demographics?

Also, disregarding gender for a moment, how many seinen series look totally shounen, or vice versa. What I'm trying to get at is, other than the publications, what MAKES a series seinen vs. anything else. I've always though shounen was action/adventure, but I've seen that cross demographics. You'd think seinen was gritty and mature(which many are) but I've seen many romcoms labled seinen, though we know it is due to the magazine it was serialized in. Do you think these romcoms also appeal to a female fanbase? Do some of the female members on this site equally enjoy seinen romcoms along with their shoujo or josei romances? Many of them are created by female mangakas so it could be possible? Heck, it is funny since I've read a few seinen series with cheesier romances than some of the shoujo manga out there ( but they did have some ecchi or fanservice), which makes me question, if there really are a good amount of unisex publications out there?

Also, I know that Comic Yuri Hime, although targeted at girls(straight or lesbian is another issue), has a huge male fanbase. I also wonder about male readership for some of the female orientated magazines. For example, I've seen a lot of action in Comic Gene, Aria, and Comic Zero Sum. I think some series can be enjoyed by both genders, seeing how they are no different than some series in GFantasy.So what do you think? What Publications can be considered Unisex? And do you have good examples that would fit this bill?


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Vision without power does bring moral elevation but cannot give a lasting culture ~ Iqbal

Well demographics are an incomprehensible sham and Comic Yuri Hime S existed once that was "technically" seinen. Such infrequently published companion magazines tend to be weird (or pr0n) but these also have become rare as the printing market is about to be put to death in it´s current form.

Fellows! goes for a small (20k) but loyal crowd which is pretty unisex but they also insists on giving a lot of their series an erotic edge too stay afloat so the seinen tag isn´t utterly unearned.

The now dead Manga Erotics F had hardcore seinen-ish sex dramas/porn but they also did yaoi and cooking manga with no story and ... They were nuts.

Newtype is a propaganda magazine for new shows that also runs highly random series.

Good old SJ is now having a bit of an identity crisis as the average reader is above 18 and some series as Bleach have more female readers then male. Going for one demographic only on a big scale is actually pretty dangerous in my eyes and only specialty magazines as Ikki (now Hibana) should try such things but it´s Dorohedoro (9,5/10) is written by a woman and it is surprisingly shipping-tastic so you never know.

The steadily growing viewers (our future gods) aren´t publications of course but they also try to go broad and thus don´t go deeply adult focus unless it is shonen porn/yuri or both...

That´s enough from me and expect a different industry in 10 years time and i found some pretty crazy magazines in our database. 50%-ish percent of gamers and comic readers are now women so unisex in the geek space is here to stay i guess .
Just look up who goes to horror conventions these days and be surprised. MU should have more female then male members to my knowledge. Right?
Found it: 88% of One Piece Readers Are Adults Shonen

Last edited by residentgrigo at 5:34 pm, Apr 24 2015

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

What makes something a demographic-based manga is which publication it was published in. Some borderline series that are known as Shounen would be known as Seinen if they were published in a different magazine, same for Shoujo/Josei.

As for whether those romcoms in male-targeted magazines would appeal to females obviously it depends on the individuals but generally the romance series aimed at guys tend to have unrealistically drawn female characters and female characters who fall for the guy MC even if the MC is a prat (lol). Shoujo romances tend to be somewhat similar in the opposite direction.

There are definitely a lot of females who like shounen (DBZ, One Piece etc) or even seinen but not many guys will read josei or shoujo because of some weird male pride lol and also because there are just more male-targeted manga in circulation and they have more variance in terms of genres, whereas it seems to me that shoujo and josei are typically romance or comedy and rarely action and even if it is an action series it tends to have romance in there too....just going by searching I've done for Josei/Shoujo stuff. The more mature stuff will have an easier time crossing over across genders I reckon, stuff like Honey and Clover, Welcome to Room #305, Liar Game because they just tend to be more realistic and not conform to dumb tropes found in shoujo or shounen manga which are likely to push away the opposite gender.

My 2nd favourite manga is Again!! (my avatar is from it) which is a shounen but it seems like it could be a shoujo too. It's written by a woman. Dorohedoro is my fave and as mentioned by residentgrigo was written by a lady too. I find series written by women for guys tend to be more balanced between emotion/characterisation and action/gags. FMA is another. That said there are things in Dorohedoro that make it clear it was aimed at guys (huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge breasts).

Don't know much about publications so just talked about individual manga.

There is certainly overlaps in demographic targets when it comes to readerships in manga magazines. Whether a manga is labeled shounen/shoujo, etc is determined by where it was published, and the label changes when a manga is moved to another accordingly. Example would be MPD Psycho. It used to be in Shonen Ace, but now moved to Young Ace (seinen). I actually agree with its moving because it seems to have more appeal to mature readers because of the violent themes.

I agree with residentgrigo's point about Manga Erotics F, which is pretty much out there, and various readers could have probably appreciate the now-defunct magazine. You have Litchi Hikari Club (gory shonen-ai), Kakumeika no Gogo (straight up porn yo), Sekine-kun no Koi (romance with male lead), and Ristorante Paradiso (romance with female lead).

I would also say AX and Garo magazines, which have a select group of readers, are unisex publications under Seirin Kogeisha. I'm only familiar with the artists in here like Nananan Kiriko, Maruo Suehiro, and Tatsumi Yoshihiro (who recently passed away).

Readers of Weekly Young Jump are comprised of both males and females (who are the majority) too.

As a female reader, I enjoy shoujo/josei rom-coms more because it's more relatable (very predictable, I know) since most are centered around workplace/university affairs. Yoshihara Yuki and Kawachi Haruka are my favorites in that area.To be honest, I haven't read that much of seinen rom-coms.

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Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,
Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust.

Spin-offs as let´s Jump SQ publish shonen with a seinen edge and the line between josei and shoujo is impossible to define at times as some run in both forms of magazines at the same time.
Under the Rose (2 highly confusing magazines again) could easily be seinen as the identical side story already is. I can further name a lot of josei manga that won awards in the shoujo category (josei tends to be the redheaded stepchild of the manga world) while Ore Monogatari!! tells a shonen story through a shoujo lens and...

Rakuen Le Paradis is confusing as hell as is looks like a regular josei publication at first but half of their series have a lesbian focus which screams (female targeted) specialty magazine while others are republished as seinen in tankōbon form. That´s 3 demographics @ once and their La Pomme Prisonniere takes the cake here as it is an exhibitionism porno by a mangaka who´s bread and butter is seinen with a nudism focus. It is also a spin-off sequel to a seinen too. I am not saying that women can´t be interested in confusing arthouse pr0n but still...josei...really?

The now dead Comic High! was a seinen magazine which used a moe art style that they described as shoujo and women were also invited to read their "stellar" works too while the content had a strong loli / yuri focus and some of these are highly popular on porn sites. That´s at least 4 demographics @ once!
The amount of recently deceased magazine is staggering btw. so the world of manga could be different in only 5 years if we keep going with the current Wind of Change.

Nouvelle Manga (the art form that followed Gekiga) can further be anything and there are further cooking / fashion magazines that feature manga too so have fun tagging them.

On demographics and stuff: Akita Shoten / Kadokawa Shoten are infamous for publishing hentai in shonen magazines that wouldn´t fly in a respectable seinen anthology and the female love interests are often bisexual too (which leads to easy to censor sex scenes). That is THE definition of demographics overkill with a lot of genre boxes now in lockdown. For children ! One even managed to get smut applied and i know of shonen manga that were continues as hentai doujinshi. Nothing wrong here...

Read about more such nonsense here as Berserk nearly started as shonen.
This is blasphemy! This is madness! This Is Manga!
So stop trying to see reason in any of this and the tales of the bookmark i could tell.

@15C08 His latest Joshi Kouhei (one 3/10 is me) is the most deranged yet so look at how i did the categories as he included all his favorite sex fetishes and then some. The future comments section will be juicy.
@wolffanghameha Look Kayono´s "stellar" shoujo work. Good god did she love to draw big tities and a readership analysis of the smut world should wield interesting results too.

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb