It seems that there is some confusion about this issue, since every time I change this manga's genre to shounen somebody revert it back to seinen. I know that the reading level and complexity of this manga is unusually high for a shonen manga, but the fact that it was serialized in Monthly Shonen Ace, a shounen magazine (The same one that serialize Evangelion, and Blood+) undoubtly makes this title a shonen one, not seinen.

It can be said that Shonen Ace is an unusual shounen magazine due to being aimed at a less mainstream and a higher age audience than most shounen magazines, but that doesn't mean that we can change this manga's genre at will because doesn't meet the preconceptions that we have about what a shounen manga should be.

________________

nope, MPD is seinen. It contains explicit contents and is suitable for 18 and up. Which is for seinen (18-24)

Shounen is like for teenagers 6 to 17.

Shounen is like Naruto, I KNOW you don't think naruto and MPD are the same genre............

________________
Life, what would it be without so much wrongs and rights?


Star Trek XI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZiR-NETDr0

If a title is seinen is not decided due to its content, but by which age and genre audience the manga is marketed for (I know that for most of us this can be shocking due to the enormous cultural differences between Japan and the western world, but that's the way it is, it can't be helped.)


If you think that is surprising that Naruto and MPD Psycho belong to the same genre, you'd be shocked to know that Yotsuba to! is as seinen as Berserk.


Shounen is not aimed at 6 to 17 years olds, but at a male audience between the ages of 13 and 18 (But these number aren't strict, since some magazines can be easily aimed at teenagers in their earlier twenties). If there is a manga aimed at children of less age then it's not shounen but kodomo.


No, some seinen magazines are even aimed at an older audence. For example, Monthly Comic Ryu was launched as an "over 30 years old readers recommended" seinen magazine.

________________

I never read Yotsuba. Is that a lolita thing? I'm not interested.

anyway....MPD is seinen, explicit subject content justify this. End of story.

________________
Life, what would it be without so much wrongs and rights?


Star Trek XI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZiR-NETDr0

Shounen? LOL, no.

Seinen? Yes.

NeoFireHawk is correct. This is a SHOUNEN title. It was released in a shounen magazine for the entire duration of its 11 volumes. The fact that it didn't get moved to a seinen magazine during the entirety of its 11 volume long run means that the publishers did not believe it to be aimed at an older audience, or that the content was unsuitable for their younger audience.

You should also realize that Japan's standards are quite different from ours when it comes to various things.

this is America, we do it the American way with American Standard.

________________
Life, what would it be without so much wrongs and rights?


Star Trek XI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZiR-NETDr0

If that were the case we should just drop the whole seinen/shounen issue, because that's a Japanese classification.

whatever.......it's being marked as mature. As long as mature stays, it can be shounen, seinen...

________________
Life, what would it be without so much wrongs and rights?


Star Trek XI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZiR-NETDr0

MPD psycho is seinen, no offence...but man you've got to be kidding!

how can you think mpd is shonen?! if you read it you will understand that this manga is for mature people and i don't mean the age thing, i mean people who have a thinking capacity, do you really believe that a 16 years old boy will read mpd and like it, or understand it like a 20 years old guy?

Last edited by ranmaru at 2:14 pm, Jun 14 2007

________________

People are missing the point in NeoFireHawk's post. Shonen is aimed at ages 13-18. In Japan, that kind of audience is already well familiar with most of the mature stuff that we'd consider for over 21 audiences in America. In fact, it's probably true that in America, we're starting to get more familiar with that too - we see enough R-rated movies in our teens, after all. How many of us really need "parental guidance?"

It's true that we're mostly familiar with tame shonen, but that doesn't change the fact that MPD Psycho is still targeted at shonen audiences in Japan.

So, looks like to me it's a mature shonen? Heh.

As I said before, the inclusion of nudity, violent and graphic situations in a manga aimed at teenagers is one of the significant differences between Japan and the western world.


You seem to be forgetting that the word "manga" in the English language refers to Japanese "comics". These "comics" are made by and for the Japanese, following Japan' standards, not America's. In fact, this art is unique because it's Japanese in origin and is intented specifically for Japanese consumers. It's very different from American comics strips and graphic novels because it's not American and is not aimed at them.

As far as I know, in this site manga is not classified according to the "American Standard", but to the Japanese one, for God's sake.


________________

The problem which this discussion is that one of you is using seinen as a Genre while the other is using seinen as an age indicator (the "target" audience). As far as contents goes it looks pretty seinen. Based on the argument magazine dictates seinen, shonen, josei or shojo then logically the reasonable recourse should be get rid of these genres and simply label the magazine...I think. But since more people in the west use seinen and shonen as indicators of the contents because only the real difference (in my opinion) is furigana and straight kanji but because it's translated this is not a factor and thusly based on the contents which is subjective to the person...so this paragraph is meaningless...I think. Though I'm not a believer that magazine dictates genre.

________________
Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill!

Seinen is a demographic genre, not a descriptive one. That's where its name comes from (Seinen means "young Man"). The problem here is that people don't think that a manga like this can possibly be aimed at teenagers because it's "too violent and mature" for them. That's a pretty ethnocentric opinion, since they're judging a Japanese product under Western standards and morals.


The lack of furigana is not a secure indicator of a manga's genre. For example, Futari Ecchi is clearly a seinen manga, but it does have furigana in its dialogue.


It seems that you still don't understand very well this. Look, I think that we are drowning in a glass of water. If a manga is classified as "shounen" it simply means that is aimed at an audience between 13 and 18 years old. And if its seinen, at an 18-30 male public (But as I said before, these numbers are very roughly approximations). That's it.
For example, there were some shoujo magazines that were considered "harmful" by the Police Department of Osaka and were pulled out from stores since according to them, they depicted sexual situations unnappropiated for minors and weren't labeled as 18+ material (Which is understandable, since those magazines were aimed at 13-18 old girls).

________________

No need to flame anyone. As far as I'm concerned, MPD can be shota, as long as it is marked 'mature'.

________________
Life, what would it be without so much wrongs and rights?


Star Trek XI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZiR-NETDr0