I like my weekly dose of shoujo, as long as it's cute, sure took some time to accept the art, but after a few shoujo titles it's quite easy to adapt...
shoujo's are mostly innocent, pure and yeah cute. And as long as art isn't too bad, then I guess it's ok. But what I found recently and what really turns me off are those guys acting like complete a**holes towards the girl, but well they are really nice, when the girl is about to jump from a bridge, the moon constellation is right, and they got nothing important to do like lazing around at the same time...
seriously, those don't need to be loved, those need te be burnt alive.
and I won't even start talking about possessive mal leads...

still I prefer a romance drama over some mindless action shounen or ecchi-pseudo-romance-massacre. just because we're guys doesn't mean we can't handle emotions...

though I must say, I like Hiyokoi, Hana to Akuma and Akagami no Shirayukihime and enjoy very slow paced things like Orange Marmalade but I didn't even last 10 chapters of Fruits Basket...

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in need of romance?
uncommon, sad, sweet

I love my shoujo manga, but i understand the reasons why people hate it. First, shoujo manga typically always ends with a "and they all live happily ever after." People usually hate that, but I'm one of those who just love happy endings. One of the reasons I read it is to make me feel I could at least have a happily ever after in my life. Stupid? Yes. Embarrassing? Yes. Just like how some people would love to go into the world of one piece, I would love to live a sweet life of love. I hate shounen manga because it is revolved around fighting. The characters are obviously mary sue, but thats what i love about it. Besides, I honestly think that having a romantic life is more realistic than finding a notebook that could kill people.

Not liking shoujo doesn't mean I like shounen with pointless battle or harem. Those can be just as bad. Having supernatural elements doesn't mean generic romance shoujo manga is more realistic (ironically, it can be the other way around - it's just another type of fantasy). Happy or sad endings don't matter. At the end of the day, it's how the characters are portrayed and how the story is written that make people acknowledge a manga's quality.

Not ranting. It's just that I've found a lot of shoujo/shounen and anime with wasted potential and plot elements, with no good writing to use them properly.

Last edited by coffee_11 at 10:16 am, Jun 22 2012

female mangaka writing shonen or vice versa doesn't make them gender neutral, though there are magazines that publish gender neutral/mixed manga such as the ones listed here. Although you are right a demographic label won't prevent it from being popular to the another demographic. (Weekly Shounen Jump is the most popular magazine among Japanese girls today). It's ironic because I think shojo has more diverse mangas such as Patalliro!, Banana Fish, From Eroica With Love, etc than shounen manga (well at least compared to the homogenous dreck that's published in WSJ nowadays).

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I dont usualy read shoujo
but when i do
i read the action-fantasy shoujos

like
Immortal Rain

best overall shoujo magazine is by far Wings


reason why i dont read shoujo
i dont care about love stories,i dont care about the cutest boy in school,i dont care about fashion[especially not weird japanese girl fashion],i dont care about feelings,i dont like to watch ppl cry over any of the above for no good reason,i dont like weak girls who just take shit all day long,i dont like the cute boy who allways gets the girl,i dont care about cooking,i dont care about cakes,i dont like the perfect japanese slave housewife,i dont care about acting,i dont care about dancing,I dont care about dates...i dont like GIRL themed shit lol...it allways feels so extreamly shallow to me and it pisses me off

the action and or action-fantasy are ok for some reason

It's not surprising at all. Anime from that magazine are so popular and shown in mainstream time slots - almost everybody in Japan knows about them. WSJ is also the most popular manga magazine among boys. Indeed, stuff from WSJ is a bit homogenous even compared with other shounen magazines. But I think that's partly because of brand recognision. And when you look in the doujinshi market, you will find WSJ series tend to have the most doujinshi - an indication of how popular they are. I really don't get how manga like Reborn! can be so interesting. But lots lots of obsessive female readers like it, buy WSJ for it and make BL doujinshi about it. That's how WSJ sells to girls today.

The problem I have with shounen manga not from WSJ is usually that they are either harem, otaku-pandering or lacking depth (or lacking the type of emotional attraction for girls typically found in shoujo) because they still try to remain relatively simple even if they are different from the mainstream shounen. Therefore I don't think most of them will attract a lot of girl readers. However WSJ stuff have elements that attract the girls. I assume after WSJ, the popular magazines among girls should be all shoujo magazines. Being homogenous like WSJ helps here, otherwise they will just buy a series in books instead of buying the magazine issues with a lot of other manga they don't like.

Last edited by coffee_11 at 8:24 pm, Jun 22 2012

I've read a few shoujo's, but for the most part I find the males to be total douche bags I wanna kick the ass of, and well I don't read manga for realism. Anyways my major complaint are the males.
Otherwise the only real difference I've noticed is the number of panty shots.

Last edited by survs at 4:45 pm, Jun 22 2012

I actually read quite a lot of shoujo but it is usually non-mainstream (although I do read/have read some just to kill time). The reasons why I don't like mainstream shoujo are simple:
1) cliches;
2) the typical weak, stupid, incapable shoujo heroine; who sees/wants nothing else in life apart from love;
3) repetitive plot/no plot;
4) no character/plot development;
5) gender roles, double standards, etc;
6) shallowness;
7) childish/adolescent viewpoints, immaturity. Well, I guess this genre is orientated to the younger readers.

I usually read josei, seinen and shoujo from certain authors.

True, WSJ series certainly has a history of being the subject of doujinshi yaoization (Slam Dunk, Captain Tsubasa, Saint Seiya, etc.). I don't get why it's popular with girls for reasons other than that the same old "hot-blooded" characters that are uniformly about "hot-blooded" themes like male friendship and camaraderie which I guess are easy to be reinterpreted as homoerotic desire in doujinshi. They supposedly have even begun to market them to girls by including BL fan service.

I'm certainly no expert on shounen manga (it's my least read of the 4 demographics), but Weekly Shounen Sunday and its monthly counterpart typically is slower paced and focuses more on character development and relationships and generally has less fan service than other shounen magazines, which theoretically should make it more appealing to shojo fans than WSJ. The mangakas in Sunday are also more versatile in that they make manga for other demographics like shojo and seinen (Adachi Mitsuru, Rumiko Takahashi, Yuu Watase) so there should be more crossover appeal.

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well I forgot to mention some shoujos I've read
Honey Hunt: was interesting and bearable compared to hot gimmick ..sadly its on hiatus
After School Nightmare: nice one ...waiting for someone to pick it up again
Yuki Kaori: like i said before I've read lot of this mangaka works and they were my introduction to shoujo (well not your typical shoujos)
Mars no Kiss an obscure Josei short title ... shoujo-ai theme and mature
oh well thats what comes to my mind ... maybe I'll remmeber some other titles I've read

Not going to happen, its been completed by the English publisher.



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What part of "Please do not put in huge images!" did you fail to understand?

damn .... didn't check for licensed status

because All the shouju are designed according to the girl's likings. Unlike Seinen they don't present the story on inert basis and even if they do the artwork destroys it.

I only read Chihayafuru and tonari no kaibutsu-kun manily because of their artistic attributes

Last edited by smokeesid at 1:04 am, Jul 5 2012

the what that they don't like first question was already answered by some posts here
the catch is that most what that (those who don't like shojous) hate about shojou is all what defines shojou
the answer to that and the question of how to introduce them to shojous
is the suggest either an exceptional EPIC shojou that get them hooked
or to make them transition to shoujous progressively by reading shoujous that are so close to shounen titles that the readed can't tell
hope that would answer that question
well the month had already passed ... I seem i'm late

I rarely read shoujo manga. I think I might have liked shoujo if I was still in primary school, but I'm 27 now and I don't enjoy the weak chibi female characters, immature storylines, and lack of depth in shoujo manga.

I like some josei, but romance is my favourite genre, and I rarely come across strong and dominant female characters in josei either. So I read josei purely for the plot factor (horror, mystery etc.). It seems that manga authors just can't cope with strong and non-traditional female characters. That's why I just stick to BL!