I hate generalizing (as there's horrible art in both shounen and shoujo) but overall they're the same for me. I don't even have a personal preference, as both genres have amazing mangakas. I probably have a slight bias towards shoujo due to its appeal to females (bishies and pretty hair +_+), but eh.


I like shounen art for having much more variety in faces, bodies, character's faces and clothing, etcetc. and I also find the solid toning and crisp, clear lineart much more relaxing and easier to look at. Plus, I notice shounen art usually pays more attention to the background than shoujo.

Bad points: sometimes the art is bad, sometimes it's too simple (making the mangaka seem lazy HunterxHunter I'm looking at you.) sometimes it has no appeal for the female population (translation: NO bishies) and too much appeal for the male population (too many girls providing ecchi fanservice and the like).


I like shoujo art for paying alot of attention to the character's details (clothing, hair, eyes, sparkles, roses and whatnot). The best authors also pay the same amount of detail to the environment and paneling too, often leading to stunning pages of artwork (often better than shounen imo).

Bad points: there are many, many more authors of shoujo than shounen, so there are obviously many more shoujo mangaka whose artwork sucks. Also, the art doesn't vary too much, so instantly recognizing some mangaka's work is usually harder. Sometimes the characters all have the same face, with only the hair, haircolor or clothes changed, and usually, less attention is paid to the background (so often, the entire action seems to happen in front of a giant white wall. -___-'')


Tl;dr? I know.

i'll go with shonen on this, though seinen art is what i prefer

and there is such a thing as to much ecchi (never would have said it 5-6 years ago)...some manga i actually dropped coz overwhelming amount of ecchi....

shoujo i normally don't like...but art made by few mangaka, like nakamura yoshiki i find very good.


Last edited by bedob at 4:55 pm, Sep 11 2008

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If the sea were made of Whiskey and I was a duck
I'd swim to the bottom and never come up

I'm a shoujo fan but I like shounen art. I wish they could put a little of those shounen looks into shoujo. *sighs* that would be awesome.

It really depends on the mangaka and their art.
Some are better then other.


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i prefer shounen art

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i was nervous at first it was big & long & went straight up i had to try it i eased onto it & liked it! i went up & down on it.... i love escalators now!


(great onizuka ftw)

OMG oh great has seinen works when i checked his bios it only said he's done shounen and hentai.

im going with shounen because i've had more moment where i just stared at panel admiring how awesome the drawing was. And to me their only seems to be three types of shoujo style art and like some one said to many characters look alike

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we are all of the creed
the creed we worship rules us all
the creed of okutoness forever
that and when the next flight to japan

Tenjou Tenge, is seinen from Oh! Great. It's a good, albeit sometimes confusing, series. The art is wonderful though (especially the art depicting Maya Natsume)


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wow i didmt know it was seinen it seemed way more shounen to me but your right about it being confusing at times but it did have great art

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we are all of the creed
the creed we worship rules us all
the creed of okutoness forever
that and when the next flight to japan

I prefer shonen art, seems more crisp and clean but at the same time i find shoujo art intriguing because i usually pay more attention to it.

Ah. Finally someone asks the question.
I've looked at a the manga covers of about a few thousand different series (since that's mostly how I choose what I will read), and shounen definitely tends to have better artwork. If I make a quick rough estimate here, in my experience, about 7 times out of 8 a shounen manga series will have better artwork than a shoujo one.
My complaints about the typical shoujo art: tends to have too much those big, gaping, overdone eyes, body/arms/legs too thin and gangly, faces with the wrong shape, hands that are often very poorly done, not enough variety in character design, about a third of the time the characters are wearing ugly clothes, and also, this one thing that I can never figure out why they do it... Sometimes the characters have an open mouth that's completely white inside... as if the inside of their heads is a white void. Of course you can only tell when the rest of the picture is in color, but it's still rather disturbing, really. Oh, and it bothers me so much when the characters that you can tell from context are supposed to be bishies, are really ugly and nasty looking.
Now, despite the many problems the typical shoujo style of artwork is plagued with, there certainly is shoujo art out there (unfortunately, few and far between) that is well done and worth looking at. There's a certain charm and lightness to the lineart, and an intricate subtleness about it that's quite unique (and I mean that in a good way).
My complaints about the typical shounen artwork: sometimes the ridiculously exaggerated and over emphasized muscles will be a problem, and the lineart is sometimes too sloppy, or too angular, sometimes the artwork is purposely made to be ugly, and of course the occasional impossibly ginormous boobs will always look stupid.
These problems tend not to be the norm (thank goodness), and, in general, shounen will have well shaped, solid lineart, nice variety in character design; a good blend of form as well as substance.
So, all things considered, my vote definitely goes for shounen art.
(and thanks if you read my whole rant there, by the way)

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shoujo art better. I just like looking at it, in my personal opinion, I enjoy the art in shoujo better than shounen. I think its pretty.

Shonen ftw. The guys are cuter. And their hair is spikier OTL'''

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Not to be a dick, but 7/8 isn't a very common stat. I agree with your points though.


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Shounen is good and everything but the guys are much cuter in shounen hands down.

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Is there a guide or something that shoujo mangakas follow? There's like 3 or so different shoujo art styles and almost all shoujo mangas follow one of those three. Once in a while someone comes up with a unique style.

There's much more variety in art styles in Shounen. Death Note artist? Reading a couple pages of Bakuman or Blue Dragon can tell you its him. 666 Satan? People instantly compared it to Naruto because they looked similar in terms of art and they find out the authors were brothers. Fairy Tail and One Piece as well (they used to work together I believe). The art styles are usually pretty unique so when another manga comes out with the same art style, people notice.

In shoujo however, if I didn't know any better I'd think that there were only 3 shoujo authors for all shoujo romance mangas. There's like only 5-6 character designs each for male and female protagonists. At least give more variety in hair style.

Shoujo art isn't very detailed either.