I vote Josei off the island as it is the red headed stepchild of the market and the lack of strong fleeings on it during the discussion is already interesting.
Helter Skelter and
Maihime Terepsikola won the Tezuka Grand Prize and
A Cruel God Reigns the runner up award but this low amount of such wins for the highest critical honor a manga can get (yes Shoujo is underrepresented too) is telling.
Enough Josei works even win Shoujo awards or random essay/special prizes so the critics can´t care that much. A higher honor is to get an anime (long and during the day if possible) but Josei ones barely exist anymore (and most modern Shoujo shows are night time only ~sigh). Even Noitamina which was supposed to give us/me such has gone astray. They can very well get life action adaptions but my respect for these is rather low due to the no budget nature and none can get rich that way.
The clear goal for at least the publisher is to become a bestseller but
best-selling manga only shows me
Sazae-san that became a family targeted anime franchise and is thus Josei in the same way Shin Chan is Seinen,
Nana (i tried fixing but wiki don´t care) and
Nodame Cantabile that got a full anime by Noitamina so i will take it as an exception to the rule and crown it king even if Tomoko now joined the Seinen club.
Chihayafuru is currently having a good go at it too but both also won a Shoujo award. See how little this makes sense? As if the market doesn't care about putting publications into boxes that stop after one turns 30-ish. I am already too old to be targeted by traditional Seinen (it means youth) if i go by our definition alone but the older shewing Weekly Manga Times / Gorakudo exist, so does
Like Shooting Stars in the Twilight (the Bande dessinée market is flooded with such tales) and the king of the mountain
Golgo 13 is even read by high ranking politicians. Pointing out the reverse for Josei is way harder and recent major trend are all males casts and series that come of as Shonen so what is the point again?
Emma,
Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms,
Working Man or magazines as Fellow! could/should be Josei and who knows how the readership shakes out but the publishers will have a reason for the marketing decision. I further gave perfect scores to
Honey and Clover where the author is now a Seinen girl (a lot of quality female writers tend to go for the male market after establishing themselves) and
Kids on the Slope but the manga still hasn´t come to America and only the rushed Watanabe anime.
Josei magazines tend to further be niche (have fun listing a few without a database) and manga as Paradise Kiss can even be published in lifestyle or fashion magazines which is fine but that brings me to my last and most severe reason. Josei is the demographic that covers the least amount of topics with the male publications winning with a landslide here. Content limitations differences between Shoujo and Josei tend to be less severe when compared to male ones due to the lesser amount of themes covered (e.g. Death Note refused to get political and sociological) and girls get enough Smut and Shonen-ai instead of Yaoi. The perfect
Mars or
Please Save My Earth wouldn?t have improved if they got to run in a more grown up magazine and
Nana straight out breaks the system.
The difference between both is that they are placed in different corners in book stores (remember those?) and one is predominantly about high school freshmen finding the love of their life while the other is about OL´s below the age of 27 finding the husband of their dreams if one is honest. I may understand that Japan considers comics and games a children?s hobby that one is supposed to outgrow but i frankly expect more.
Variety isn´t quality too but the much derailed girls manga have more reach of genre content despite the obvious negative contractions and they are a gateway drug in a way that the older sister isn´t. Josei is even the least represented amongst my reading list as it is statistically the rarest one. Agree or not but Mikako17 gave it the moniker
Shoujo 2.0 and math doesn´t lie as scanlators can´t be "blamed" alone here.
Thus i dislike,
nay hate that the demographic isn´t getting a time to shine but these are a sham anyway (please note my job and i have been a comic/anime guy since the 90s) and i highly suggest to look at the respective magazine when you next consider a manga´s demographic as Seinen by Young Animal isn´t the one even Young Animal Arashi will give you to keep it simple. Printed magazines are furthermore Dinosaurs and not a good format to begin with so I, For One, Welcome Our New Digital Overlords.
Bleach was mentioned so i will note that One Piece is now technically a Seinen manga with healthy amount of female readers. Even at my library and our Madoka manga are in constant rotation by girl between 12-16 but aren´t these for serious adult men only?
NBC´s ultra-gory Hannibal gained more female then male viewers which now influenced the show runner´s decision to not go into the sexual violence aspect of the source material and how many porn sites use My Little Pony as mascots as modern day Meo is more of a Seinen phenomenon than anything. Even veterans of the I'm Looking For board don´t take demographic only requests that strictly.
Berserk was lastly envisioned as Shonen once upon a time
. Thank god Hakusensha snapped him up and not Akita Shoten but
Vinland Saga was published as a boys manga for a bit in 2005 too. Of course! I wouldn´t even call male targeted manga that much more sexist as the one´s for women but that is another topic.
I just know that female targeted publication are easier to spot then male ones and my respect for girls manga as a medium is only marginally lower the the ones for boys if i had to line up all 4 in order of quality. Japan also takes the girl comic market way more serious then any other nation currently so that one has my respect overall.
Last edited by residentgrigo at 12:30 pm, Jun 18 2015________________
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