American?
InuYasha, Bleach, Dragonball Z, etc. are not American... Though I see where you're coming from.

The days that 'shounen' was something for boys and 'shoujo' something for girls are long gone.
Gender roles are becoming less apparent and the gender divides with it also. I have no qualms (now or in my youth) about watching TV show that are quite obviously mainly targeted at females and actually enjoy it more than shows that are (obviously) mainly targeted at males... I'm not alone in this (though 15-20 years ago it was still something you didn't say aloud).

Shounen is, in my opinion, just a label you put on a story when it matches certain format/publishing conditions (or to be more precise, every story that gets published in a 'shounen magazine' is automatically shounen).
Example: Yotsubato!. Definitely not a manga targeted at a male audience exclusively.
Who decides this? I don't know and I don't care. Don't judge manga by labels someone else put on it, at least look at the content.

That's the 'shounen' bit, now for the 'long' bit:
As said before, MONEY.
Superhero/Action content lends itself especially well to episodic design and copy-paste villains and scenarios.
Something that is harder to do (but not proven to be impossible) when you want to do this with a story that is driven by actual plot. This gets very old very fast and it's hard to keep the story going (and interesting)... Without falling back to senseless 'filler/side' stories that often makes you lose interest even more (or makes you forget what the actual story was about).

The real question is not why they are long, but why they are so popular?... and not by a small margin.
Something I, never having liked any of the mentioned shows, really can't understand.

________________
Who they, what are, and why?
- Manga Cover Database -

Money basically, lol

________________

the reason why american popular shounen is so long because if it wasn't popular, would it be long at all?

________________
D'oh!

In my opinion, this thread should be in the shojo/josei section with the question, "why are shojos shorter than shonens?"
simply because they would know better as to why they'd like shorter series
for shonen, it's as people have said: a series can go on for as long as it can keep bringing good ratings
though there should also be long shojos, I just don't know where they are

________________


Recruiting:
https://quicksandscans.wordpress.com/recruitment/

There are obviously shorter shounen stories. Most robot shows only went upto the 50-60 episode count because their anime. There's also relationship and slice of life stuff, like Suzuka was pretty short ect.

This is about the type of story, and the type of medium. Adaptations of Manga are long because manga's are long running, and they have to have filler so they don't overtake it.

But action shows tend to be longer because you have two things to do. The drama of the conflict and relationships/human drama.

Sailor Moon was very long running because it was adapted from a manga and an action show. See, it's pretty simple.

Shoujo mostly romance, and if romance goes so long...
OMG why don't you just read Twilight? *just kidding*

That's for myself, shounen goes so long because the characters have something to achieve, and It's something that really need efforts, sweat, blood, blahblahblah.
For shoujo, mostly they search for... The ONE?
and if it took dozens of volumes (for me, maybe more than 10), IMO, the main female will start to look like a drama queen or worst, whore.

For example: (cynical, sorry, since I prefer shounen than shoujo. )
Shounen: One Piece
Luffy, a boy in an island, wants to be The King of Pirates, and sure, it's NOT EASY.
Understandable why It'll took dozens of volumes.
Shoujo: Parfait Tic
Fuuko had to choose: Ichi or Daiya. And it took 22 volumes to decide that.
For me, that's an EPIC LOOOOOL.
(Sorry for bad example, search your own example)

But not all shoujo like that, I love shoujo where the main chara's life is about something other than just get bf. But since they're shoujo, the romance is fully treated. I like it.
Maybe like: Basara, 7 Seeds, (Tamura Yumi rocks!)
Same case for shounen manga where the mangaka is female, the romance is fully treated.
Maybe like: Erementar Gerad, Youko x Boku SS

btw, if you wonder why one piece, naruto, etc took so long, try read Bakuman.
yeaaa this is the main reason:





Last edited by monkry at 11:27 am, Jan 25 2012

________________

if a series is long it got nothing to do with being popular in america... its long because ITS popular in japan well maybe bleach its still running because its popular in america...

Cause thats all US will ever publish?

________________
Is this me in a nutshell?
Pretty much.

well it was popular in japan first so they send it over here so others can buy and read the manga, its always a lot slower to publish here as well ._ this is true with almost all manga series.

________________
just living my life like any teenager would, facing the world, dealing with all the things that come at me. im not the special yet not that all normal, just somewhere in the middle ground :3.

There is only so much story material for the 'He loves me, he loves me not . . .' types of manga.

________________