Quote from Crenshinibon
...that otaku tend to care more about "moe" than they do about gender. It's a genderless quality- it just leans towards feminine characteristics.
Yes, THAT. That's what I'm getting at. (Lol, you said it better than I ever could...)
I'm just curious about whether this is actually true, whether many or at least some shounen/seinen readers were willing to put gender/sexual orientation aside in favor of moe. At least in manga, if not in real life (and maybe even in real life?). Like, "moesexual" instead of "heterosexual" or "homosexual" or any of those tired old terms.
I'm interested in this notion of "moe" as being essentially feminine - rather than that, I thought moe was this indefinable and overwhelming cuteness that made you feel fiercely protective (and yet, at the same time, capable of abrupt ravishment). That "cuteness" needn't be feminine. Am I making any sense? I mean, I can think of some non-effeminate guys that can get pretty "moe," as per my definition of it, anyway. Or am I misunderstanding the general term?
That's entirely possible, given my limited experience with the terminology...
You're absolutely right that Prunus Girl and No Bra are mediocre - I never got past the first chapters of either of those, but I was more intrigued by the responses
to those mangas (as evidenced by the many reviews, both pro- and con-) than I was by the mangas themselves. Some were freaked out by the gender-play, some were just fine with it, some thought it was loads of fun and others were mildly unnerved but willing to go along with it. It just made me wonder about the success of these mangas in terms of the number of reviews/ratings, and what seinen/shounen readers actually thought about the gender/sexuality issues related to these stories.
I love love LOVE
What Did You Eat Yesterday?, too. And also
Hourou Musuko, which also deals with gender-bending themes, albeit in a far more mature, subtle and beautiful way than either Prunus Girl or No Bra can ever achieve. Then there are middle-ground stories like
Okama Report, that fluctuate between serious and silly...
It's interesting that the seinen/shounen demographic can appreciate all these different types of either overtly or subtly queer stories. I mean, these types of stories aren't thought of as "typically" fitting into the demographic, but they still do... What sorts of readers read 'em, and why? The whole gamut - from the "trashy" to the sublime.
Another discussion point: Has shounen/seinen grown more accepting of alternative sexualities and/or genders in recent years? Or were such mangas as prevalent before?
There's
MW which is a pure work of genius and a total classic... It's not gender-bending, admittedly, it's gay - but it shows a degree of interest in or acceptance of things that deviate from the "norm". (Then again, the gay protagonist was a serial killer, so maybe it was a kind of coded rejection, still? But it didn't read that way to me.)
Wasn't there also this old seinen manga (or was it a movie that I'm mistaking for a manga, lol?) about this cross-dressing ninja/samurai dude that killed people for revenge? Sorry for the horrid summary; I'm old, my memory's not as good as it used to be...
I just want a discussion on how demographically-targeted readers of shounen/seinen react to these stories, what makes these stories attractive to shounen/seinen readers, why you would pick them up and keep reading them or stop reading them, etc. Hoping for some honest and civil answers - no flames or homophobic (or heterophobic, for that matter) rants. Lol. Thanks. 
