It's funny, obviously the female-oriented demographics will lose, by a high margin too I imagine. (Women are largely ambivalent to seinen and shounen, but guys view most shoujo and josei with disgust and revulsion.) However, most of the comments here say shounen is the demographic they like the least.
This confrms what I've long thought about mangaupdates.com, that while its userbase is primarily male, the female minority are by far the most vocal users here.

whaaat? how can I hate a whole demographic? 😕

Was there really no 5th option for simply "I don't hate any of em?" Cause I haven't read any shojou nor josei yet, so I couldn't just say that I hate one of em that I've never even gotten to touch upon yet.

@Philip72 actually they're pretty equal between Shounen and Shoujo, with Shoujo leading by about one for comments before you, saying they like the least, so I'm not sure how that contributes to your theory. Also at least one of the people who said they like Shoujo the least is female so again...And women can't really be ambivalent towards seinen and shounen when the largest demographic that reads Bleach is females...

Anyway, I don't hate any demographic especially with how manga for different demographics are now branching more into different genres. I have to say though, that I've really outgrown Shoujo and don't read it much anymore (I still really enjoy shounen e.g. One Piece, Hunter x Hunter, etc) and like Calstine I think scanlators need to scanlate some better quality Josei since personally most of them feel like Shoujo 2.0. So if it was vote for least favorite, I would have voted for Shoujo.

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Ugh, terrible poll. As several have said before, "hate" is a loaded word. If I were to list my top 10 favorite manga, it would have representation from all four of the choices listed. Glad to know many of the users here aren't totally biased against a whole demographic.

I believe "most hesitant to read" or "contains the most annoying cliches" would have been better questions.

Quote from philip72

This confrms what I've long thought about mangaupdates.com, that while its userbase is primarily male, the female minority are by far the most vocal users here.

It's rather strange that you came to this conclusion, given the first part of your post gives a plausible explanation why the results would favor shoujo in this poll regardless of the actual demographics of MU. Anyway...

The last time MU had a poll specifically asking for the users' gender and nothing else was in October 2008 (so ancient history now); the split was female 51.1% and male 48.9%.

The last time MU had a poll in which every response required giving a gender ended on February 7th of this year (the yaoi or yuri poll); the "I'm female and..." responses tallied 51.6% of the vote.

Between these two, in 2013-2014, there were 3 other polls requiring users specify their gender with their response; females were in the majority in 2 of them. (Old poll data here.)

In short, there's not much evidence that females are to any significant extent a minority on MU.

I'm female and the genre I read the least is probably seinen and shoujo. I do read manga from both genres, though.

The shoujo manga I dislike are romance with the cutesy art and cliche plots (what most people think when they hear "shoujo"). However, works like Natsume Yuujinchou are awesome.

The seinen manga I really dislike are...boobs. Just boobs everywhere (especially the ridiculously large ones that somehow defy gravity) and other stupid body depictions like gigantor muscles and stuff. I'm not against violence and blood, but the over-the-top crap done for the sole sake of making a work "more manly" is annoying. However, there are some decent seinen manga out there (like Ouroboros, though Ouroboros still uses the "useless female" trope).

That said, there are things I dislike and like in every genre.

Quote from hahhah42

It's rather strange that you came to this conclusion, given the first part of your post gives a plausible explanation why the results would favor shoujo in this poll regardless of the actual demographics of MU. Anyway...

The last time MU had a poll specifically asking for the users' gender and not ...

Yes! What some people (usually guys) don't understand it that anyone can read any genre. Lot's of girls/women like to read "male" genres, while some guys do read "female" genres. I'm female and I read all genres, but probably dislike shoujo the most (at least the romance kind). You can't tell someone's gender by their hobbies or what they like to read.

I think u need to be more open minded to the fact that seinen doesn't boil down to just "cheap sex appeal, and over the top violence." I feel like the stuff u describe in seinens are found more in shounens (which I could list a dozen examples if ya want), or basically hentais masquerading as seinen series.

There are a ton of great seinen series that I find to be good examples for representing the demographic, and most of them do go beyond your expectations for what would be considered as "decent," such as:
I Am a Hero,
Dorohedoro,
The Voynich Hotel,
Gate - Jietai Kare no Chi nite, Kaku Tatakeri,
Keyman - The Hand of Judgement,
Renai Boukun,
Sidonia no Kishi,
Vagabond,
Otoyomegatari,
Berserk,
Hare Kon. (still needs time to develop tbh...),
Omaera Zenin Mendokusai!,
etc. etc. etc.

Check any of em if u want. If u don't like any of them, that's fine, but I think it's overall always nice to get some recs from someone.

How about an option for "I read all of them"

The term "hate" aside, I think this will be more interesting if we factored in the respondents' genders.

Quote from philip72

It's funny, obviously the female-oriented demographics will lose, by a high margin too I imagine. (Women are largely ambivalent to seinen and shounen, but guys view most shoujo and josei with disgust and revulsion.) However, most of the comments here say shounen is the demographic they like the lea ...

Assuming people don't lie/rig the polls in huge numbers, Mangaupdates has a 50/50 male/female demographic.

If anything, it probably has to do with the fact that shounen and seinen stories are (generally speaking) "gender-neutral" genres. You don't have to be a male just to like DBZ or One Piece.

By comparison, shoujo and josei stories are (generally speaking) VERY heavily female orientated.

Female: "Its a story about love~"
Male: "Thats nice, so why should I read it over another X shoujo/josei story?"
Female: "...CAUSE I SAID SO!"

Quote from imercenary

Assuming people don't lie/rig the polls in huge numbers, Mangaupdates has a 50/50 male/female demographic.

If anything, it probably has to do with the fact that shounen and seinen stories are (generally speaking) "gender-neutral" genres. You don't have to be a male just to like DBZ or One ...

Ehh, I disagree. Not about the MU demographic (I remember that poll), but your generalization of shounen/seinen/shoujo/josei stories. I enjoy plenty of shounen and seinen series, even when it's quite obvious they were intended for a male audience (otherwise we'd have less damsels in distress, better romantic subplots, and more shirtless guy fanservice dammit). I dislike the idea of masculine being treated as "gender-neutral" while feminine remains an outlier, though the English language itself seems to propagate this belief.

I believe it's more about gender expectations. Society tends to be much more lenient towards girls who express interest in masculine things, as opposed to vice versa.

It's clear by your little dialogue that your exploration of shoujo and josei titles thus far has been quite shallow... And that you haven't had a serious conversation with anybody who's tried to convince you to do otherwise. Why should you read X shoujo/josei over Y? It could be due to a plethora of reasons. They're demographics, not genres. The only shared theme is the fact that the publisher decided to put them in a women's magazine because they assumed that's where most of their profits would come from.

For example, I'd recommend 7 Seeds over Midnight Secretary because the former focuses on character development, world building, and survival, whereas the latter tells the story of how some average office lady manages to get in bed with her sexy, rich, abusive, blood-sucking superior (obviously not my cup of tea).

In the end, I believe it just boils down to individual tastes and how comfortable you are with expressing them and discovering new interests. But, as I've mentioned before, girls tend to face less criticism for such a thing, and thus we have the lopsided results of this poll.

Which really needs a fifth option that goes along the lines of "I don't hate any of 'em" to give more people on this site a voice.

I prefer to read mostly seinen these days but end up reading more shounen since the updates are more frequent.

Josei can be very enjoyable reads, if I find something good, which is rare for me. It becomes more of a search than just jumping straight into as soon as I see it, unlike seinen and shounen.

Shoujo... I just can't, the art, the stories... ugh. I mean shounen can be much the same most of the time, but at least they appeal to me as a guy.

Quote from dezin19

The seinen manga I really dislike are...boobs. Just boobs everywhere (especially the ridiculously large ones that somehow defy gravity) and other stupid body depictions like gigantor muscles and stuff.

Are you certain that you're not mixing things up ?
"boobs" ?! Are you sure, that, you're not mistaking Shounen for Seinen ?
If you've not mistaken, then unfortunately you've only read sucky ones...
Please read some descent seinen like 20th Century Boys, Eden - It's an Endless World! etc. before making a statement on seinen ~!

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