It's strange that women in their 30's and 40's get so forgotten, they have a lot more money to spend than teenagers and students... My budget for comics and books is much larger now than it was when I was in my 20's.
You are me. I am you. I have been watching shonen and seinen for 10+ years. I recently got into slice of life, shojou, josei....but I'm so clueless with what to watch
I'm convinced that the reason why manga that are technically josei get nominated and awarded under shoujo categories is because (they) want to keep the "general" section for manga primarily aimed at men. (They) don't want excellent manga made for women to receive praise and get acknowledged unless it's kept in a category "for women" because it otherwise puts us on equal footing with (them).
That's a theory I had to but excluded it from the video since I couldn't find info on who the board members that voted were. (I can assume it's a majority old men though lol)
Yeah when she mentioned that it gave me the same vibes as when Tyler the Creator won a Grammy in the “Rap” category instead of “Pop”, and spoke out that it felt like a backhanded compliment since black creators are often put into separate “Rap/Urban” categories instead of what their work actually falls under.
“When realism is equated to just sadness and depressing endings, it negates the fact that happiness is real and attainable.” Yes!!!! This is something that bugs me about a lot of popular, adult western shows. It’s like, the more depressing your show the better and more “realistic” it is. Sorry, but the fact that literally nothing happy ever happens to your characters does not make it feel that realistic to me…
So true. The reason why I liked honey and clover so much back in 2008 and now march comes in like a lion because chica umino depicted the whole color spectrum that is life. Funny, witty and extremely sad or heartbreaking, all part of being realistic. Some wholesome happy manga show this too.
I agree, but those kinds of shows are still great and have their place. The only problem is the label "realistic", and that's semantics. We have a place for all kinds of shows, and lots of people love shows that focus on the darker side of life and existence. And I also think that this modern interpretation of "realism" in media is a counter to sterilized happy ending stories.
That's why I love Castlevania's ending so much. For how much of the show was very dark and depressing, it felt so good knowing that the characters got a happy ending.
Apperantly happiness is childish according to adult animation...no wonder adventure time was praised for being dark yet fun...why can't we get more adult media like that?
I've heard Nana being referred as josei pretty much every time, but it makes sense that it started as shoujo then stopped being serialized as shoujo when the topics became more mature. Super interesting topic!
It's interesting that it's not considered popular in Japan, because alot of the popular webcomics in Korea are arguably for an older female audience. I'm wondering if the medium of publication is important.
Well when I say not popular, I mostly mean "the least popular" when compared to other demographics. There are wildly popular josei series like Wotakoi, Do Not Say Mystery, Chihayafuru, etc. There's just less wildly popular series in comparison.
Most manhwa are self produce, soooo most of this women did not HAVE to waste time convincing very mysogynistic old men thats their story WILL HAVE A TARGET😅 Thats why there are sooooooooo MANY manwhas with all type of female characters, and most are very strong willing and manyyyyy are so in touch of their sexuality something that lacks a Lot in manga we're Even in SHOUJO women are more submesive
personally, I consider it a Josei when the characters are all adults, and a shoujo when they're minors. it's both if the characters grow into adults during the story and it continues instead of ending.
I currently am obssessed with reading josei mangas. It's been a little late to the party but holy shit I'm amazed by how many great stories I have got to read. The only sad thing is that we don't have a lot of josei manga licensed in English.
This same fuzziness/blurriness of demographics has been happening in the western publishing world when it comes to the Young Adult (YA) category. It boomed massively with titles like Twilight, and booksellers realized what a huge market young female teens were. But they all grew up and many still read YA, but want representation that more matches their life, so New Adult became a thing for a bit, was forgotten, and the community and booksellers have realized it's a category that needs to come back and expand (the "spicy" scenes and the ages of the characters being a significant part of this). Not only that, but now 'Adult Fantasy' has become a thing, since all the YA fantasy readers have also grown up and needed to distinguish stories meant for "all ages" (classics like Tolkien) and stories written specifically for young people. The conversation there has kind of settled on the idea that the tone and language used in Fantasy is not as accessible to a young reader, even though it doesn't directly exclude them - so that even tallies with what you said about the use of furigana vs hiragana. The type and style of language of the medium seems to be a big difference, not just the tone and content. Phew, that's a lot of background, but I just find the parallels to the Shoujo/Josei thing fascinating. 😅 This issue of companies not knowing what to do with these stories is a sad cross section of how age and gender are regarded. YA and New adult, like Shoujo and Josei, tend to be looked down on as "just romance" or low-brow, fluffy, and "simple". Add on to this the attitude towards younger readers, that just because it's for youth, it can't be complex or heavy. So basically all four categories of media get disregarded on one end for being young and girly, and then when it grows up, it's not taken seriously because it's feminine and frivolous. A lot of this is just companies, both east and west, massively failing at marketing and missing out on all the sweet, sweet dollars we'd all be too happy to throw at them if they just let the stories we love be free.🥲
So true! As an adult now, I’m happy there are more adult fantasy options and contemporary works. I think it’s also because the authors probably grew up reading YA. I know there are also a lot of publishing issues with these adult fantasy that’s shojo/josei mangas have. Not exactly the same, but still issues
I recently heard someone call this the millennial book boom, as it's similar to the effect the baby boom had on virtually everything as that generation moved through life stages (building lots of schools, then schools closing bc the population of kids shrank back etc). Millennials as a generation have permanently altered the publishing industry.
And all this trouble is why I'll always defend that demographic targets based on gender and blurred age are just idiotic and a waste of resources. Just put a label on age recommendation based on explicit content and genre and move on. The world will be way better
It seems like a lot of josei manga win shojo awards! I didn't know this until now. I don't think there are specifically targeted josei awards, but I double checked to make sure, and Princess Jellyfish was indeed published in a josei magazine. This magazine is "Kiss", the same one that brought you Nodame Cantabile, Perfect World, and Tokyo Tarareba Girls. What a great video! I feel like josei is often overlooked in manga.
Yeah, the fact that there aren't a lot of josei-specific manga awards (+ the constant change when it comes to women/girls' publications and serialization) can make josei titles more confusing to categorize than the other demographics. Especially when it seems josei series are the only ones that can be up for completely different awards (shojo vs general) while all running in the same or similarly-targeted magazines. You don't see that nearly as often with seinen titles which almost always are awarded in general categories. I simply go by current publication because it becomes too much of a gray area otherwise (not who the magazine used to be targeted to, what awards the series has won, etc...), so I consider all of those as josei. But at the same time I'm not going to get bent out of shape if someone calls them shojo either haha
We have basically the same issue in France. The word "josei" is being used more and more, but I feel like it is really a way to say "this is too good/adult to be a shôjo manga"; and pretty often, biases will be used to determine what it a josei or not, more than the mangashi. As a result, Machi de Uwasa no Tengu no Ko by Nao Iwamoto will be seen a shôjo manga because it depicts high school girls, contrary to Mystery to ru nakare by Yumi Tamura (considered as a josei manga), while both manga series are from the same magazine: Flowers. I recently stopped using the word "josei" to only stick to "shôjo", not only because of these biases, but also because there is no clear line between these two categories. It would depend on the age of the target audience, but a mangashi such as Cookies is aimed at high school girls and young adults, so is it a shôjo or josei magazine? Most japanese publishers do not use the word "josei", none of the French ones has a collection called "josei", and I assume it is the same in English-speaking countries. That does not mean that manga series often referred to as "josei" are not available in the West.
Emma had me wheezing 😂 I’m glad you compiled all of this. Now I can relax knowing trying to distinguish between shoujo & josei is pointless. Although to be honest, I’m glad Seven Seas is making some kind of distinction with its Steamship imprint. Because there are times when I want to read a mature story and times where I don’t and it’s not straightforward for how to find one over the other when browsing a shelf.
@@ColleensMangaRecs Oh it’s definitely not hard to parse between seinen vs josei spicy series. But I’m just jealous that in Japan there are magazines that you inherently know the contents are for mature readers. Like if I want to read a certain type of story, I can trust certain magazines to deliver. Meanwhile it all gets tossed into a blender in the US publishing industry under labels like “Shoujo Beat”. Like I don’t fundamentally think of “Yakuza Lover” as being in the same readership demographic as Arina Tanemura’s works. But it’s all under the “Shoujo Beat” imprint. I really think they should consider subdividing that imprint.
I’ve been reading some vintage Shojo and it’s interesting at how dark some of them get. So I’m glad that you talk about the blurry line between both Josei and Shojo! It can be confusing, but to me, it really doesn’t matter. I am playing catch up on my Shojo/ Josei reading! I knew Emma was a seinen!
I really appreciate ladies comics as a 27 year old. Love Yona, Fruits, Sailor moon however it can get a little immature for me in some areas. I read this Korean(?) manga called “Positively Yours” and adored it because it was centered around a woman my age, dealing with unwanted pregnancy from a one night stand and the affects it has around her whole life like her career. Plus, women get horny too! We deserve to see sex from a woman’s perspective. I’d love to see more that’s relatable to me as an adult female careerist. Plus, more smut the better. Many of us learn who we are based on our sexual experiences and identity.
I never knew that Emma was a seinen. All works that I have read from Kaoru Mori give me more yosei vibes. Even the Pride Story seems to have more action that would interest male demographics. In my mind Emma falls more to ´longing and pining from far a way in restricted British social class system romance´ like Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre or Jane Austin's novels which would attract more female audience than anyone else. I have never heard a man gush about Emma like they do with Berserk for example.
I know wat u mean. As a girl i thought stuff like emma & devils line were josei. I feel they hv elements that appeal more to women. Emma is a classic class difference romance (titanic etc) while devils line has the sexy but dangerous romance (vampire knight etc). To be clear, im not saying that guys cant enjoy these things. I just feel like a large amount of people who do r women
This was super interesting, thank you! It's fascinating to see how this is similar in some ways to the blurry space between "young adult" and "new adult" in the English-language novel publishing scene. There are some books that no one can decide where to shelve, and it often comes down to those same issues of sexual content or some perception of how "serious" and "mature" they are. Demographics are such a fun thing to study because they're all made up by humans, which means they're messy!
Doesn't help that ever since the 00s manga boom and the era of Tokyopop, a lot of josei (and also shounen romance manga) was marketed to teenage girls in the English release to sell more copies.
Bc shojo is such a popular genre, marketing it as a shojo ends up being a business decision. For the contest side it's just the categories of many contests don't keep up with the newer terms
Out of the four main demographics, josei appears to easily be the most obscure one out of all of them, and that alone makes me more interested in reading and watching josei. So far, the only josei I've seen is Kids on the Slope, and I wasn't even aware that it's considered a josei until this video.
the ending omfg. also I was absolutely gobsmacked at the princess jellyfish reveal. even with the answer being that there isn't really a way to reliably differentiate/that there's a lot of overlap, I do still feel like I "get it" better than I did before watching this :)
Mars is my absolute favorite series ever. It completely changed my life. It's so nice to not only hear you reference it but to see it in the background! Thank you!
Thank you so much for talking about josei! It’s so overlooked. My fav josei so far is Utakoi, the mangaka is apparently working on it again after having some health issues.
I find it interesting that manga shares many similar issues to NA fiction novels. So many books get cast into the Young Adult section even though they clearly should be in adult. This is especially prevalent with books geared towards women, they’re either published as YA or Romance, but often make more sense in the general adult pool. Now I feel like it’s a marketing flaw above all 🤷🏻♀️
10:54 yes! Not related to manga but i hate the trend of edgy/dark teen shows (riverdale, fate winx saga). Its somehow seen as better or more mature?? I liked the OG tone of archie & winx club as a kid & i still like it now!! Lol
Princess Jellyfish had me stumped, like, they themes are very Josei, but the story telling makes me think of shojo (anime only)... But yeah, I am so stumped lol
It always was hard for me to pick up the difference between shoujo and josei (and even seinen at some points), and thank you for addressing how blurry are the lines between one demographic of manga with another (nice shoutout to Emma), because I've read and bought manga in the past with the impression that it was shoujo/josei only to find out it that it was seinen (and sometimes the other way around). Sometimes the division of demographics feels like a detriment for western audiences, but unfortunetaly that's just how it works in Japan. Thanks again for making this video, I'll check out some of the examples you gave, they seem very interesting!
9:40 OMG I've seen this tendency in shojo in the last 5-7 years, like a LOT of late 90s-00s to 10s shojos have depictions of sex, sexuality, alcohol, parties, smoking and even drugs on teens years, while right now i feel like they are scared of those topics. Idk maybe its just me
The Harmful Books Act like I mentioned keeps this from being a thing. It specifically targeted shoujo magazines as politicians were concerned that the material was harmful to girls. (meanwhile ecchi series in shonen were still perfectly fine and no one did anything about that for years)
Kare kano had sex ... Shoujos nowdays don't ... But shonen can (horimiya) , weird RIGHT? Like if editors (i Bet are mostly old men) think women don't think about sex ahhahahahahahahhahaha
The "is it X or Y?" discussion/question reminds me of the early 00's of Japanese Lolita fashion when everyone of us in the west was trying to fit into a certain category of style (Sweet, Gothic, Classic, Sailor, bla...) and Lolitas in Japan seemed to be like "meh, whatever, it's Lolita, I wear what I like" and didn't seem to care that much about fitting into a distinctive style category. Is it the west again trying really hard to make it fit? Like you mentioned (or at least that's what I mainly take away from the video, German here and it's late in the evening) it all seems to be very blurry today demographic-wise and at the end of day I, as a 30 year old woman, will still grab onto a manga series if it sounds interesting, despite it being a shoujo manga and "not for me" age-wise. Looking at our German publishers I'd rather have every shoujo and josei manga be classified as one under the umbrella term "shoujo" and NOT as "romance", but that might be just me. Sorry if my comment didn't really make any sense. It's been a long day. :D
As an avid and long time reader of josei, I would like to add somethings to what you've said. It is very true that it gets particularly hard to distinguish between which demographic a manga might fall under when it comes to josei and shoujo and I would like to say that a lot of the times mangas that touch up on psychological elements and tend to be character-driven, introspective plots tend to fall under josei, and by this I don't mean that shoujo doesn't have psychological elements to it, it does but mostly in the context of character development (at least in my experience). I personally feel Josei mangas (or lady mangas) have beautiful and nuanced takes of internal turmoil and life in general, they portray the inner lives of women and paint the human psyche in raw and often compelling storylines. Honestly Josei is very underrated and should be known as the pioneer of psychological mangas in my opinion. Some of my favourites are Ikoku Nikki and Angels nest, sayonara midori chan or even Unmei No onnanoko
This video is eight months old at this point, but it came at the perfect time for me. After *loving* Wotakoi and wanting more of that kind of story, there are so many great recommendations here. I actually went out and bought Ladies on Top after finishing this video and am loving it too. Thanks for your recommendations and insights!
Nodame Cantabile is great. As a classical musican, I love Chiaki's character. I also like Kids on the Slope (cause jazz). Right now I'm reading IS (a manga about intersextuality). Nice video and Emma had me laughing.
Same, it was such a popular show in the early 2000s, such a shame it faded out, Chiaki is lit my standard man hahaha. Also a classical musician (pianist)
I also find that some josei that has adult content gets blurred with seinen. Theres some manga (particularly by kyoko okazaki) that are (to me) such quintessential josei but are listed as seinen or were only published in seinen magazines
i found your channel recently and am absolutely loving the content. It’s made me nostalgic for my early teen years where i realise i was mostly engaging with shoujo content and it’s something that’s been missing from my later life, i found your video on shounen anime taking the spotlight very interesting as well as the isekai video. It’s been really nice taking a walk down memory lane and remembering what i loved about female orientated media. ty. I want to make more of an effort to bring this back into my life and promote female works.
I love watching your videos to learn more about Shoujo and Josei series. I used to assume that Josei was more mature than Shoujo and merely meant for older teen+ audiences, but there are actually some surprisingly (sexually) mature Shoujo out there so I was often confused-- especially since I never used to pay that much attention to demographics in general. I was also excited to see you mention "Ikoku Nikki" by Tomoko Yamashita -- the mangaka of "Sankaku Mado no Sotogawa wa Yoru" / "The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window"! < I really want to read it properly) from her at this point, but I'm certainly interested in trying more! I just-- I would absolutely love to read more Shoujo and Josei series, but a lot of the series catching my attention lately end up being Digital-only and I don't buy Digital series because I can't properly enjoy them. I even recently tried out a friend's Kindle and it made my eyes hurt worse than trying to read Manga on a computer screen D'= It's incredibly frustrating that Shounen and Seinen series all get print editions, but Shoujo and Josei only get a select few.
@@mourningcoffee7705 I'll have to try and find some scans! Sankaku Mado captured me instantly and is currently one of my absolute favourite series, so I'm sure Ikoku Nikki is amazing, too! I just wish these series were available in print in English so I can give them proper read throughs without getting headaches (and so I can support the mangaka!! ) If you haven't read "The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window", I highly recommend it! =)
I’m still so surprised that Sweat and Soap is a seinen series. It really does feel sooooo much like a josei series. Great video as well. Now I know “all” about josei. :)
To be honest, I feel awards are not a good marker for what is or is not a certain category, because there isn't a josei (and sometimes a seinen) category. So while I understand why we would call things like Princess Jellyfish a shojo, I think it has more to do with jury knowing it deserves an award but not wanting to include it in the general category and only having one female-oriented category in the awards. In the end I think the only marker (other than the magazine) is about the audience that will read it --which as you say, is very difficult to determine, especially for works not published in a magazine. Also added to the blurred lines mix is the fact that josei and seinen might as well not be all that easy to determine sometimes (as you point out with Emma!), especially when the mangaka behind a seinen is a woman and people immediately assume it's a josei
For the blurred lines between josei and seinen it comes more from magazines caring less about the art styles that are typical in their younger gender demos. Shoujo and josei often have similar artstyles and while seinen CAN overlap that there are still differences often which I get into in my What Is Shoujo video. But like I said there's overlap since mangaka like Georga Asakura and Chika Umino who worked in shoujo are now publishing series in seinen magazines.
We’re gonna need a video explaining Emma!!! I feel like you are doing awesome edutainment about my childhood basically. Love your videos thank you for making them!!
What an informative and neat video, thank you! And it was nice to learn about furigana since I've seen it in the OPs and EDs for anime series like Pretty Cure and Yumeiro Patissiere, which have a very young target audience.
Honestly the whole discussion about demographics makes me wish people were more curious about all the different magazines their favorite mangas are published in. Knowing how often chapters are published and what other series are currently running in the magazine or what are the classics that originated from it add so much context the manga you're reading! Also two magazine can target the same broad demographic but make completely different editorial decision. For example Weekly Young Jump and Young Animal are both seinen magazine but they publish very different series.
funnily enough, i researched the magazines a little and i was surprised that there's the same blurred line between shounen and seinen as well, and it's mostly differentiated by whether it has furigana or not as well my life was a lie
Its great that you explored this topic, I have wondered about the two as well. My guess as to why people insist on distinction is that there spear counterparts, shounen and seinen are in there own categories. And those two have had a blurred line between them in recent years.
Another good video. Your shit had been consistently entertaining and informative. Once again I'll say thank you for making content that made me question why I wasn't reading more of the female targeted manga. Turns out that the answer was simply that I wasn't informed well enough to know what I'd like from that demographic. You mentioned the steamship line in this video. Would you consider doing reviews of those books or maybe theline as a whole? I picked up Ladies on Top after reading a description from the publisher and I really enjoyed it. Sorry about the rambling post that went in several directions. I'll shut up now.
Man these bits are absolutely hilarious! I love the blend of serious in-depth introspection on the world's of shoujo and josei contrasted with these great bits
Just to mention, Josei is a demographic and not a genre. Shoujo is also a demographic. Genre and Demographic are two separate things ^^ thanks for reading
i absoloutly adore your channel! its so intresting with the ways you explore stuff especailly your different characters and game show !!!! you teach me so much i didnt know about this topic thankyou! i enjoy manga o much more now
This was really informative! I thought I knew the difference between shojo and josei, but they really are almost one and the same. I guess if I said I would like to see more female-oriented series with older characters and social issues in English, that wouldn't be exclusive to josei, but could also apply to shojo series as well.
I’m not sure how confidently I can say this is related, but I haven’t seen much discussion on it so I just wanna add that another reason why these demographic labels are so wack might be because the gender/age bracket terms in Japanese in themselves are wack. Warning: long linguistic spew ahead. To start it off, the age brackets younen 幼年、shounen 少年、seinen 青年、chuunen 中年 and so on are actually all historically gender neutral terms. Shounen historically referred to juveniles in general, but coz of good old sexism, boys at some point were the only people allowed to represent their age group in official events, so it got more and more standardised for shounen to mean boys exclusively. However, in formal areas such as law, where language shift is slow to happen, it still retains a gender neutral status, which is why you may notice that juvenile delinquency is still called shounen hikou 少年非行. The word shoujo did originally exist, but it’s historical usage referred to “the youngest of your daughters” until it got adapted as the counterpart for shounen coz girls wouldn’t have a word to call themselves otherwise. Seinen historically meant “person in their youth” and also became largely associated with men, but not to the extent of shounen, so it’s got a stronger gender neutral vibe than shounen does. This puts it in a weird limbo of being a man thing 70% of the time, but not 30% of the time, so there has yet to be enough demand to prompt a direct standardised female counterpart. Josei straight up means the female sex, which is supposed to be the direct counterpart of dansei, meaning male sex. As such, the label for manga aimed at adult women is unstandardised mess. While the term Lady’s Comics has more widespread usage than Josei in Japan, joseimuke seijin manga (female-targeted adult manga aka porn) also calls themselves Lady’s Comics, so some magazines distanced themselves from that by terming their manga Josei Comics. And then there’s the magazines that straight-up term themselves as “shoujo manga for grown-ups”, which has actually increased in recent years for similar reasons. Because of this messy stuff, a lot of people just straight up use shoujo to refer to both demographics coz shoujo draws a hardline at porn. From anecdotal experience, I think the common Japanese sentiment is Shounen manga ⇔ Shoujo manga Seinen manga ⇔ Still shoujo manga Seijin manga (adult manga, defaulted as male-targeted coz we love male normativity) ⇔ Lady’s Comics And then there’s the mess of what ages each age bracket actually includes, with the Ministry of Health referring to gender neutral shounen as everyone between 5-14, child welfare law referring to it as “primary school age till 18”, and juvenile law referring to it as anyone below 20, so a clear so a clear demographic cut off was just screwed from the beginning. The phenomenon of gender neutral words becoming exclusive to men, prompting the need for a new female counterpart and creating the status of men as the default is actually pretty common in Japanese (and a lot of other languages coz sexism is everywhere). For example, the word for actor is 俳優 haiyuu, written with the characters for “farce” and “excellence”, is technically a gender neutral word, but coz women were forbidden from acting between 1624 and 1643, it got associated with men over time, and women had to come up with 女優 joyuu, literally “female excellence” to differentiate themselves. 男優 danyuu also exists but rather than male actors as a a whole, it got mostly associated with male porn actors. Female porns actresses are just called sexy or AV joyuu. So it’s like haiyuu = mostly actors but sometimes includes actresses too, joyuu = actresses, danyuu = male porn stars but mostly the hot ones, sexy/av joyuu = porn actresses. Because sexism.
While I agree with the futility of making hard distinctions between the genres, there is a tonal difference among stories that I used to enjoy 10 years ago and they I can't be bothered with right now. It is a mixture of the character settings (I don't enjoy school romances as much anymore) but also the tone itself, that the story engages with its circumstances beyond some tropes. That said, I do think that there are stories like that in every genre. These labels are about demographics (how and who they're marketed) and the magazines they're published in, not about their content, so it makes sense they're so different
The popularity of manhwa aimed at women proves that women will read it if you make it it's ridiculous how well some Webtoons series aimed at women are doing Japan should take note.
It can get really confusing when databases like MAL change the listed demographic. The Kageki Shojo anime adapts the first 2 volumes that were published in a seinen magazines and some of the ongoing series thats published in a shojo mag. The anime was originally tagged as shojo but they only listed the seinen magazine run as what's being adapted. Now both runs are listed as source material and the anime is listed as seinen instead of originally shojo. There's also My Next Life As a Villainess which is a LN so it didn't get listed with a demographic. But I guess the manga adaptation was published in a shoujo magazine because it was listed as shojo for a while and later the anime. Now the LN is listed as shojo alongside the anime but now the manga is listed as josei instead.
Off topic: everytime I see Colleen’s bookshelf I think this, while almost every other manga collection that I watched on youtube, have the shelves as this as possible to make collections look that much bigger😅 even using acrylic raisers etc, and here is Colleen who is the total opposite and doesn’t care to show off the amount she has.
@@ColleensMangaRecs Please shoot a shelf makeover video when you do organize. And maybe organized sections based on authors or publishers 🤩 i can totally see you having sections dedicated to all things Chihayafuru, Tsusbasa, natsume including prints, figures.
I’ve only read a few Jousei titles like Kimi wa Pet, Gokusen, etc., years ago for example. I like that style. I miss my manga reading days but real life got in the way. Someday I’ll fully go back to it. Being in my 40s now, I’m even more interested in Jousei titles.
I love authors grow with their work and their audiences. I looooove love com so much. Shoji tends to have a lot of sus shit hoy have to bare but love com is widely good
I' ve never understand people tendency to try to strictly define genres. One of the favorite of the few Josei, I' ve read is "Petshop of Horrors" which contained horror, sex, romance, mystery, drama, politics etc. Parts of it fit right in shonen, seinen, shojo. It is easy to tell that it is written by a woman. The majority of fictions are wishfulfilments. The one thing I looked for a Josei/Seinen story instead of Shojo/Shonen story is the feeling that character action or inaction create some consequences. That' s how it felt more real. For example, contrast the beginning of Usagi Drop (Josei) with Koikimo (Shojo). Due to adopting a girl, the mc sacrificed his freedom and job prospect, and learn how to be a parent. Her birth mother left her because she want to pursue her managka career, while being sad about it, decided it is best for her. It is easy to see the author wrote the character based on human life experience. Koikimo, is a cliché wish fuifilment fantasy where a rich, older, handsome womanizer try to court the teenage mc. Not much serious consequences (ending of Usagi Drop felt like a Shojo because of that). If a story is called Josei, I would expect it to be more like Usagi Drop or Harekon (Seinen). If it was shojo, I might get more like Koikimo or Daddy Long Leg.
I picked up Otoyomegatari a while back and I was a bit surprised when I found out it was a seinen! With all the 19th century Central Asian women sewing and cooking etc it did feel a bit off but then we got to the clan battles and the woman's bathhouse and it was clearer why it would be a seinen.
odd story time: I took japanese in highschool and I had to go by a katakana version of my name. My name is Josie 😅 You can only imagine what the computer generator changed my name too 🙃
@@adorabell4253 Unfortunately it was never licensed in English. If it was on Indogo, it might've been a French version since I know that site carries the Eng and FR versions of manga but I wish it was in English 😩
@@RonnieBirdyy Not Indogo, Indigo, the Canadian retail book chain. There were a lot of random series translated back in the day, that never went past one or two volumes.
This is absolutely out of topic but thanks to this video I came around to finally read Life and... Jesus fucking christ I wasn't ready for that, I had to skip to the ending just to be sure that everything would turn out fine AND STILL IM PISS POOR ANNOYED THAT SOME OF THE CHARACTERS GOT AWAY WITH THEIR HIDEOUS ACTS JUST BECAUSE THEY SAID THEY WERE SORRY WAIT TO KILL THE VIBE
I feel like another thing that makes shoujosei overlooked by publishing communities is the assumption that girls and women are more interested or adept compared to boys and men when it comes to reading based on patterns or perceived patterns in the world. For example, what I see in the BookTube/BookTok/BookStagram communities being majority female and the creative writing club at my school having no guys in it. So publishing companies would put more emphasis into shounen and seinen titles because they would assume more males would be interested in manga while females would be more interested in books that are just words.
There was a post in reddit r/manga where OP asked if watakoi is shojou or seinen. She and her friend were fighting and then everyone in the comment section were laghing and explained to OP that watakoi is josei.
It's strange that women in their 30's and 40's get so forgotten, they have a lot more money to spend than teenagers and students... My budget for comics and books is much larger now than it was when I was in my 20's.
Colleen: *breathes*
me, a shojosei newbie: wRItE tHaT DOwn! WrITE ThAt dOWn!
LMAOOO
You are me. I am you. I have been watching shonen and seinen for 10+ years. I recently got into slice of life, shojou, josei....but I'm so clueless with what to watch
I'm convinced that the reason why manga that are technically josei get nominated and awarded under shoujo categories is because (they) want to keep the "general" section for manga primarily aimed at men. (They) don't want excellent manga made for women to receive praise and get acknowledged unless it's kept in a category "for women" because it otherwise puts us on equal footing with (them).
That's a theory I had to but excluded it from the video since I couldn't find info on who the board members that voted were. (I can assume it's a majority old men though lol)
Yeah when she mentioned that it gave me the same vibes as when Tyler the Creator won a Grammy in the “Rap” category instead of “Pop”, and spoke out that it felt like a backhanded compliment since black creators are often put into separate “Rap/Urban” categories instead of what their work actually falls under.
Why are you putting they in brackets
the patriarchy infects and takes over everything, even our hobbies
“When realism is equated to just sadness and depressing endings, it negates the fact that happiness is real and attainable.”
Yes!!!! This is something that bugs me about a lot of popular, adult western shows. It’s like, the more depressing your show the better and more “realistic” it is. Sorry, but the fact that literally nothing happy ever happens to your characters does not make it feel that realistic to me…
So true. The reason why I liked honey and clover so much back in 2008 and now march comes in like a lion because chica umino depicted the whole color spectrum that is life. Funny, witty and extremely sad or heartbreaking, all part of being realistic. Some wholesome happy manga show this too.
I agree, but those kinds of shows are still great and have their place. The only problem is the label "realistic", and that's semantics. We have a place for all kinds of shows, and lots of people love shows that focus on the darker side of life and existence. And I also think that this modern interpretation of "realism" in media is a counter to sterilized happy ending stories.
That's why I love Castlevania's ending so much. For how much of the show was very dark and depressing, it felt so good knowing that the characters got a happy ending.
Apperantly happiness is childish according to adult animation...no wonder adventure time was praised for being dark yet fun...why can't we get more adult media like that?
This is why Bojack horseman sucks, just nihilistic smarm
I've heard Nana being referred as josei pretty much every time, but it makes sense that it started as shoujo then stopped being serialized as shoujo when the topics became more mature. Super interesting topic!
It's interesting that it's not considered popular in Japan, because alot of the popular webcomics in Korea are arguably for an older female audience. I'm wondering if the medium of publication is important.
Well when I say not popular, I mostly mean "the least popular" when compared to other demographics. There are wildly popular josei series like Wotakoi, Do Not Say Mystery, Chihayafuru, etc. There's just less wildly popular series in comparison.
Most manhwa are self produce, soooo most of this women did not HAVE to waste time convincing very mysogynistic old men thats their story WILL HAVE A TARGET😅
Thats why there are sooooooooo MANY manwhas with all type of female characters, and most are very strong willing and manyyyyy are so in touch of their sexuality something that lacks a Lot in manga we're Even in SHOUJO women are more submesive
personally, I consider it a Josei when the characters are all adults, and a shoujo when they're minors. it's both if the characters grow into adults during the story and it continues instead of ending.
I currently am obssessed with reading josei mangas. It's been a little late to the party but holy shit I'm amazed by how many great stories I have got to read. The only sad thing is that we don't have a lot of josei manga licensed in English.
Yeahhh! Same here in Brazil, I have to read versions translated by fans bc many arent translated and selled in my language
haaai could you recommend me some? Ive never read a josei before and now im curious! they sound so interesting
Yep you have to find other ways to read them.
This same fuzziness/blurriness of demographics has been happening in the western publishing world when it comes to the Young Adult (YA) category. It boomed massively with titles like Twilight, and booksellers realized what a huge market young female teens were. But they all grew up and many still read YA, but want representation that more matches their life, so New Adult became a thing for a bit, was forgotten, and the community and booksellers have realized it's a category that needs to come back and expand (the "spicy" scenes and the ages of the characters being a significant part of this).
Not only that, but now 'Adult Fantasy' has become a thing, since all the YA fantasy readers have also grown up and needed to distinguish stories meant for "all ages" (classics like Tolkien) and stories written specifically for young people. The conversation there has kind of settled on the idea that the tone and language used in Fantasy is not as accessible to a young reader, even though it doesn't directly exclude them - so that even tallies with what you said about the use of furigana vs hiragana. The type and style of language of the medium seems to be a big difference, not just the tone and content.
Phew, that's a lot of background, but I just find the parallels to the Shoujo/Josei thing fascinating. 😅
This issue of companies not knowing what to do with these stories is a sad cross section of how age and gender are regarded. YA and New adult, like Shoujo and Josei, tend to be looked down on as "just romance" or low-brow, fluffy, and "simple". Add on to this the attitude towards younger readers, that just because it's for youth, it can't be complex or heavy. So basically all four categories of media get disregarded on one end for being young and girly, and then when it grows up, it's not taken seriously because it's feminine and frivolous.
A lot of this is just companies, both east and west, massively failing at marketing and missing out on all the sweet, sweet dollars we'd all be too happy to throw at them if they just let the stories we love be free.🥲
So interesting!! Thanks for sharing all that.
So true! As an adult now, I’m happy there are more adult fantasy options and contemporary works. I think it’s also because the authors probably grew up reading YA. I know there are also a lot of publishing issues with these adult fantasy that’s shojo/josei mangas have. Not exactly the same, but still issues
I recently heard someone call this the millennial book boom, as it's similar to the effect the baby boom had on virtually everything as that generation moved through life stages (building lots of schools, then schools closing bc the population of kids shrank back etc). Millennials as a generation have permanently altered the publishing industry.
And all this trouble is why I'll always defend that demographic targets based on gender and blurred age are just idiotic and a waste of resources.
Just put a label on age recommendation based on explicit content and genre and move on. The world will be way better
I remember when Shojo Beat stopped serializing Nana and had an editors note like, ya’ll it is getting too mature!! Loved the vid Colleen!
As a man who doesn’t know much about Shoujo/Josei compared to Shounen/Seinen. Your videos really help me learn more! Thank you!!
It seems like a lot of josei manga win shojo awards! I didn't know this until now. I don't think there are specifically targeted josei awards, but I double checked to make sure, and Princess Jellyfish was indeed published in a josei magazine. This magazine is "Kiss", the same one that brought you Nodame Cantabile, Perfect World, and Tokyo Tarareba Girls.
What a great video! I feel like josei is often overlooked in manga.
ahh i guess that makes more sense i was so confused about princess jellyfish..
Yeah, the fact that there aren't a lot of josei-specific manga awards (+ the constant change when it comes to women/girls' publications and serialization) can make josei titles more confusing to categorize than the other demographics. Especially when it seems josei series are the only ones that can be up for completely different awards (shojo vs general) while all running in the same or similarly-targeted magazines. You don't see that nearly as often with seinen titles which almost always are awarded in general categories.
I simply go by current publication because it becomes too much of a gray area otherwise (not who the magazine used to be targeted to, what awards the series has won, etc...), so I consider all of those as josei. But at the same time I'm not going to get bent out of shape if someone calls them shojo either haha
We have basically the same issue in France. The word "josei" is being used more and more, but I feel like it is really a way to say "this is too good/adult to be a shôjo manga"; and pretty often, biases will be used to determine what it a josei or not, more than the mangashi. As a result, Machi de Uwasa no Tengu no Ko by Nao Iwamoto will be seen a shôjo manga because it depicts high school girls, contrary to Mystery to ru nakare by Yumi Tamura (considered as a josei manga), while both manga series are from the same magazine: Flowers.
I recently stopped using the word "josei" to only stick to "shôjo", not only because of these biases, but also because there is no clear line between these two categories. It would depend on the age of the target audience, but a mangashi such as Cookies is aimed at high school girls and young adults, so is it a shôjo or josei magazine? Most japanese publishers do not use the word "josei", none of the French ones has a collection called "josei", and I assume it is the same in English-speaking countries. That does not mean that manga series often referred to as "josei" are not available in the West.
Emma had me wheezing 😂 I’m glad you compiled all of this. Now I can relax knowing trying to distinguish between shoujo & josei is pointless. Although to be honest, I’m glad Seven Seas is making some kind of distinction with its Steamship imprint. Because there are times when I want to read a mature story and times where I don’t and it’s not straightforward for how to find one over the other when browsing a shelf.
I think it's easier to distinguish which spicy series are made for who lol and I also appreciate that distinction is being made by Seven Seas!
@@ColleensMangaRecs Oh it’s definitely not hard to parse between seinen vs josei spicy series. But I’m just jealous that in Japan there are magazines that you inherently know the contents are for mature readers. Like if I want to read a certain type of story, I can trust certain magazines to deliver. Meanwhile it all gets tossed into a blender in the US publishing industry under labels like “Shoujo Beat”. Like I don’t fundamentally think of “Yakuza Lover” as being in the same readership demographic as Arina Tanemura’s works. But it’s all under the “Shoujo Beat” imprint. I really think they should consider subdividing that imprint.
I’ve been reading some vintage Shojo and it’s interesting at how dark some of them get. So I’m glad that you talk about the blurry line between both Josei and Shojo! It can be confusing, but to me, it really doesn’t matter. I am playing catch up on my Shojo/ Josei reading! I knew Emma was a seinen!
I really appreciate ladies comics as a 27 year old. Love Yona, Fruits, Sailor moon however it can get a little immature for me in some areas. I read this Korean(?) manga called “Positively Yours” and adored it because it was centered around a woman my age, dealing with unwanted pregnancy from a one night stand and the affects it has around her whole life like her career. Plus, women get horny too! We deserve to see sex from a woman’s perspective. I’d love to see more that’s relatable to me as an adult female careerist. Plus, more smut the better. Many of us learn who we are based on our sexual experiences and identity.
I never knew that Emma was a seinen. All works that I have read from Kaoru Mori give me more yosei vibes. Even the Pride Story seems to have more action that would interest male demographics. In my mind Emma falls more to ´longing and pining from far a way in restricted British social class system romance´ like Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre or Jane Austin's novels which would attract more female audience than anyone else. I have never heard a man gush about Emma like they do with Berserk for example.
I know wat u mean. As a girl i thought stuff like emma & devils line were josei. I feel they hv elements that appeal more to women. Emma is a classic class difference romance (titanic etc) while devils line has the sexy but dangerous romance (vampire knight etc). To be clear, im not saying that guys cant enjoy these things. I just feel like a large amount of people who do r women
This was super interesting, thank you! It's fascinating to see how this is similar in some ways to the blurry space between "young adult" and "new adult" in the English-language novel publishing scene. There are some books that no one can decide where to shelve, and it often comes down to those same issues of sexual content or some perception of how "serious" and "mature" they are. Demographics are such a fun thing to study because they're all made up by humans, which means they're messy!
Doesn't help that ever since the 00s manga boom and the era of Tokyopop, a lot of josei (and also shounen romance manga) was marketed to teenage girls in the English release to sell more copies.
Bc shojo is such a popular genre, marketing it as a shojo ends up being a business decision. For the contest side it's just the categories of many contests don't keep up with the newer terms
Out of the four main demographics, josei appears to easily be the most obscure one out of all of them, and that alone makes me more interested in reading and watching josei. So far, the only josei I've seen is Kids on the Slope, and I wasn't even aware that it's considered a josei until this video.
Any plans for a NaNa video? Would absolutely love to hear your thoughts and how although an incomplete manga why it's still so popular.
the ending omfg. also I was absolutely gobsmacked at the princess jellyfish reveal. even with the answer being that there isn't really a way to reliably differentiate/that there's a lot of overlap, I do still feel like I "get it" better than I did before watching this :)
I never clicked on a video so fast lol
Nana being considered a shoujo is just convincing me that these labels don’t mean ANYTHING at all. That’s just ridiculous
Mars is my absolute favorite series ever. It completely changed my life. It's so nice to not only hear you reference it but to see it in the background! Thank you!
I have a full video on it too if you haven't seen it already! 🤗
o7 ghost is josei seinen, holy crap, im gonna stack those books everywhere, thank again colleen.
Thank you so much for talking about josei! It’s so overlooked. My fav josei so far is Utakoi, the mangaka is apparently working on it again after having some health issues.
I find it interesting that manga shares many similar issues to NA fiction novels. So many books get cast into the Young Adult section even though they clearly should be in adult. This is especially prevalent with books geared towards women, they’re either published as YA or Romance, but often make more sense in the general adult pool. Now I feel like it’s a marketing flaw above all 🤷🏻♀️
10:54 yes! Not related to manga but i hate the trend of edgy/dark teen shows (riverdale, fate winx saga). Its somehow seen as better or more mature?? I liked the OG tone of archie & winx club as a kid & i still like it now!! Lol
If Princess Jellyfish and Nana are Shoujo, I’m second-guessing if I’ve ever watched a Josei before 😅
Princess Jellyfish had me stumped, like, they themes are very Josei, but the story telling makes me think of shojo (anime only)... But yeah, I am so stumped lol
This channel is a safe space for me, as an "anime tourist". keep up the good work colleen
It always was hard for me to pick up the difference between shoujo and josei (and even seinen at some points), and thank you for addressing how blurry are the lines between one demographic of manga with another (nice shoutout to Emma), because I've read and bought manga in the past with the impression that it was shoujo/josei only to find out it that it was seinen (and sometimes the other way around). Sometimes the division of demographics feels like a detriment for western audiences, but unfortunetaly that's just how it works in Japan.
Thanks again for making this video, I'll check out some of the examples you gave, they seem very interesting!
I'm sitting here, frantically writing notes. I'm so invested in shoujo and josei manga now. I'm so glad I discovered this channel.
9:40 OMG I've seen this tendency in shojo in the last 5-7 years, like a LOT of late 90s-00s to 10s shojos have depictions of sex, sexuality, alcohol, parties, smoking and even drugs on teens years, while right now i feel like they are scared of those topics. Idk maybe its just me
The Harmful Books Act like I mentioned keeps this from being a thing. It specifically targeted shoujo magazines as politicians were concerned that the material was harmful to girls. (meanwhile ecchi series in shonen were still perfectly fine and no one did anything about that for years)
Kare kano had sex ... Shoujos nowdays don't ... But shonen can (horimiya) , weird RIGHT? Like if editors (i Bet are mostly old men) think women don't think about sex ahhahahahahahahhahaha
We really need more Shojo and Josey titles translated!! TT
Kids on a Slope 😭 One of my top animanga ever.
Nice, glad you like it.
And here I thought Ooku was a Josei Dx something learned today. Great Video! Will also now definitely check out Omi Ga Hashiru End Roll now!
The "is it X or Y?" discussion/question reminds me of the early 00's of Japanese Lolita fashion when everyone of us in the west was trying to fit into a certain category of style (Sweet, Gothic, Classic, Sailor, bla...) and Lolitas in Japan seemed to be like "meh, whatever, it's Lolita, I wear what I like" and didn't seem to care that much about fitting into a distinctive style category. Is it the west again trying really hard to make it fit? Like you mentioned (or at least that's what I mainly take away from the video, German here and it's late in the evening) it all seems to be very blurry today demographic-wise and at the end of day I, as a 30 year old woman, will still grab onto a manga series if it sounds interesting, despite it being a shoujo manga and "not for me" age-wise. Looking at our German publishers I'd rather have every shoujo and josei manga be classified as one under the umbrella term "shoujo" and NOT as "romance", but that might be just me. Sorry if my comment didn't really make any sense. It's been a long day. :D
I'm a 35 year old woman and I love shojo and josei manga I wish I could find more josei titles
I like wotakoi it's fun and nice
As an avid and long time reader of josei, I would like to add somethings to what you've said. It is very true that it gets particularly hard to distinguish between which demographic a manga might fall under when it comes to josei and shoujo and I would like to say that a lot of the times mangas that touch up on psychological elements and tend to be character-driven, introspective plots tend to fall under josei, and by this I don't mean that shoujo doesn't have psychological elements to it, it does but mostly in the context of character development (at least in my experience). I personally feel Josei mangas (or lady mangas) have beautiful and nuanced takes of internal turmoil and life in general, they portray the inner lives of women and paint the human psyche in raw and often compelling storylines. Honestly Josei is very underrated and should be known as the pioneer of psychological mangas in my opinion. Some of my favourites are Ikoku Nikki and Angels nest, sayonara midori chan or even Unmei No onnanoko
This video is eight months old at this point, but it came at the perfect time for me. After *loving* Wotakoi and wanting more of that kind of story, there are so many great recommendations here. I actually went out and bought Ladies on Top after finishing this video and am loving it too. Thanks for your recommendations and insights!
IT'S 8 MONTHS OLD ALREADY?!?! 😭
Nodame Cantabile is great.
As a classical musican, I love Chiaki's character. I also like Kids on the Slope (cause jazz).
Right now I'm reading IS (a manga about intersextuality). Nice video and Emma had me laughing.
Same, it was such a popular show in the early 2000s, such a shame it faded out, Chiaki is lit my standard man hahaha. Also a classical musician (pianist)
What's the manga you're reading called?
@@vriskaserketblog IS
I also find that some josei that has adult content gets blurred with seinen. Theres some manga (particularly by kyoko okazaki) that are (to me) such quintessential josei but are listed as seinen or were only published in seinen magazines
i found your channel recently and am absolutely loving the content. It’s made me nostalgic for my early teen years where i realise i was mostly engaging with shoujo content and it’s something that’s been missing from my later life, i found your video on shounen anime taking the spotlight very interesting as well as the isekai video. It’s been really nice taking a walk down memory lane and remembering what i loved about female orientated media. ty. I want to make more of an effort to bring this back into my life and promote female works.
On the bright side we now know why they aren't many josei and people who seek josei can just seek out shoujo manga that fit what they want
Wat a channel! I am a man 40+ and enjoy Josei and Shoujo, I know something off with me :)
watching it once for all the info, jokes and entertainment. re-watching it to write down all the manga titles
I love watching your videos to learn more about Shoujo and Josei series. I used to assume that Josei was more mature than Shoujo and merely meant for older teen+ audiences, but there are actually some surprisingly (sexually) mature Shoujo out there so I was often confused-- especially since I never used to pay that much attention to demographics in general.
I was also excited to see you mention "Ikoku Nikki" by Tomoko Yamashita -- the mangaka of "Sankaku Mado no Sotogawa wa Yoru" / "The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window"! < I really want to read it properly) from her at this point, but I'm certainly interested in trying more!
I just-- I would absolutely love to read more Shoujo and Josei series, but a lot of the series catching my attention lately end up being Digital-only and I don't buy Digital series because I can't properly enjoy them. I even recently tried out a friend's Kindle and it made my eyes hurt worse than trying to read Manga on a computer screen D'= It's incredibly frustrating that Shounen and Seinen series all get print editions, but Shoujo and Josei only get a select few.
Oh please do read Ikoku Nikki it is literally the best Josei I have ever read it is definitely 100% worth giving a shot!!
@@mourningcoffee7705 I'll have to try and find some scans! Sankaku Mado captured me instantly and is currently one of my absolute favourite series, so I'm sure Ikoku Nikki is amazing, too! I just wish these series were available in print in English so I can give them proper read throughs without getting headaches (and so I can support the mangaka!! ) If you haven't read "The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window", I highly recommend it! =)
If anyone wants a good Josei anime recommendation, check out Shouwa genroku rakugo shinjuu! It’s criminally underwatched
You are the first person ever that I did hear about "josei"
Thanks for teach me something new
Emma being a seinen will NEVER looks right for me lol but thank god it categorized as a seinen bc we got a COMPLETE anime adaptation from it!!!
I’m still so surprised that Sweat and Soap is a seinen series. It really does feel sooooo much like a josei series.
Great video as well. Now I know “all” about josei. :)
I always love coming out of your videos with a big stack of new titles to check out! Been tearing through 7seeds the past couple of weeks. Thanks!
To be honest, I feel awards are not a good marker for what is or is not a certain category, because there isn't a josei (and sometimes a seinen) category. So while I understand why we would call things like Princess Jellyfish a shojo, I think it has more to do with jury knowing it deserves an award but not wanting to include it in the general category and only having one female-oriented category in the awards. In the end I think the only marker (other than the magazine) is about the audience that will read it --which as you say, is very difficult to determine, especially for works not published in a magazine.
Also added to the blurred lines mix is the fact that josei and seinen might as well not be all that easy to determine sometimes (as you point out with Emma!), especially when the mangaka behind a seinen is a woman and people immediately assume it's a josei
For the blurred lines between josei and seinen it comes more from magazines caring less about the art styles that are typical in their younger gender demos. Shoujo and josei often have similar artstyles and while seinen CAN overlap that there are still differences often which I get into in my What Is Shoujo video. But like I said there's overlap since mangaka like Georga Asakura and Chika Umino who worked in shoujo are now publishing series in seinen magazines.
Josei is my favorite category and I so wish there were more series in print.
The word ‘young’ is also sometimes used in seinen magazine titles. EXP. Weekly Young Jump is seinen but Weekly Shonen Jump is, well, shonen.
You forgot Josei magazines such as feel young and young you
We’re gonna need a video explaining Emma!!! I feel like you are doing awesome edutainment about my childhood basically. Love your videos thank you for making them!!
What an informative and neat video, thank you! And it was nice to learn about furigana since I've seen it in the OPs and EDs for anime series like Pretty Cure and Yumeiro Patissiere, which have a very young target audience.
Honestly the whole discussion about demographics makes me wish people were more curious about all the different magazines their favorite mangas are published in.
Knowing how often chapters are published and what other series are currently running in the magazine or what are the classics that originated from it add so much context the manga you're reading!
Also two magazine can target the same broad demographic but make completely different editorial decision. For example Weekly Young Jump and Young Animal are both seinen magazine but they publish very different series.
my mind has been flipped, I had no clue how many josei were a mix of being shojo as well! very informative video, thank you.
funnily enough, i researched the magazines a little and i was surprised that there's the same blurred line between shounen and seinen as well, and it's mostly differentiated by whether it has furigana or not as well
my life was a lie
I'm always learning so much from your videos, thank you for making this!
Its great that you explored this topic, I have wondered about the two as well. My guess as to why people insist on distinction is that there spear counterparts, shounen and seinen are in there own categories. And those two have had a blurred line between them in recent years.
Another good video. Your shit had been consistently entertaining and informative.
Once again I'll say thank you for making content that made me question why I wasn't reading more of the female targeted manga. Turns out that the answer was simply that I wasn't informed well enough to know what I'd like from that demographic.
You mentioned the steamship line in this video. Would you consider doing reviews of those books or maybe theline as a whole? I picked up Ladies on Top after reading a description from the publisher and I really enjoyed it.
Sorry about the rambling post that went in several directions. I'll shut up now.
Never say never but I don't have much intention to talk about spicy manga mostly just in case my family ever finds my videos lol
Man these bits are absolutely hilarious! I love the blend of serious in-depth introspection on the world's of shoujo and josei contrasted with these great bits
Looking forward to this 😊
Got me questioning everything I know and making me crack up all the time🤣 thank you for the recommendation as per usual! Would you ever do a q&a?
I'll consider doing one in a video format! If you have insta or twitter though I sometimes do q&a's over there too.
we all need a big video about nana or all Ai Yazawa's works😭🙏
Josei is my absolutely favourite genre i'm excited for this video
Just to mention, Josei is a demographic and not a genre. Shoujo is also a demographic.
Genre and Demographic are two separate things ^^ thanks for reading
@@drcaligaridane ooh thanks ! thats true bcs theres a ton of different genres under both of these😁
I love your content, every time I watch a video I'm having a blast !!
i absoloutly adore your channel! its so intresting with the ways you explore stuff especailly your different characters and game show !!!! you teach me so much i didnt know about this topic thankyou! i enjoy manga o much more now
One easy way to tell the difference is that if it gets adapted into an anime then there's a 99% chance it wasn't a Josei/lady comic
This was really informative! I thought I knew the difference between shojo and josei, but they really are almost one and the same. I guess if I said I would like to see more female-oriented series with older characters and social issues in English, that wouldn't be exclusive to josei, but could also apply to shojo series as well.
I’m not sure how confidently I can say this is related, but I haven’t seen much discussion on it so I just wanna add that another reason why these demographic labels are so wack might be because the gender/age bracket terms in Japanese in themselves are wack. Warning: long linguistic spew ahead.
To start it off, the age brackets younen 幼年、shounen 少年、seinen 青年、chuunen 中年 and so on are actually all historically gender neutral terms. Shounen historically referred to juveniles in general, but coz of good old sexism, boys at some point were the only people allowed to represent their age group in official events, so it got more and more standardised for shounen to mean boys exclusively. However, in formal areas such as law, where language shift is slow to happen, it still retains a gender neutral status, which is why you may notice that juvenile delinquency is still called shounen hikou 少年非行. The word shoujo did originally exist, but it’s historical usage referred to “the youngest of your daughters” until it got adapted as the counterpart for shounen coz girls wouldn’t have a word to call themselves otherwise.
Seinen historically meant “person in their youth” and also became largely associated with men, but not to the extent of shounen, so it’s got a stronger gender neutral vibe than shounen does. This puts it in a weird limbo of being a man thing 70% of the time, but not 30% of the time, so there has yet to be enough demand to prompt a direct standardised female counterpart. Josei straight up means the female sex, which is supposed to be the direct counterpart of dansei, meaning male sex.
As such, the label for manga aimed at adult women is unstandardised mess. While the term Lady’s Comics has more widespread usage than Josei in Japan, joseimuke seijin manga (female-targeted adult manga aka porn) also calls themselves Lady’s Comics, so some magazines distanced themselves from that by terming their manga Josei Comics. And then there’s the magazines that straight-up term themselves as “shoujo manga for grown-ups”, which has actually increased in recent years for similar reasons. Because of this messy stuff, a lot of people just straight up use shoujo to refer to both demographics coz shoujo draws a hardline at porn.
From anecdotal experience, I think the common Japanese sentiment is
Shounen manga ⇔ Shoujo manga
Seinen manga ⇔ Still shoujo manga
Seijin manga (adult manga, defaulted as male-targeted coz we love male normativity) ⇔ Lady’s Comics
And then there’s the mess of what ages each age bracket actually includes, with the Ministry of Health referring to gender neutral shounen as everyone between 5-14, child welfare law referring to it as “primary school age till 18”, and juvenile law referring to it as anyone below 20, so a clear so a clear demographic cut off was just screwed from the beginning.
The phenomenon of gender neutral words becoming exclusive to men, prompting the need for a new female counterpart and creating the status of men as the default is actually pretty common in Japanese (and a lot of other languages coz sexism is everywhere). For example, the word for actor is 俳優 haiyuu, written with the characters for “farce” and “excellence”, is technically a gender neutral word, but coz women were forbidden from acting between 1624 and 1643, it got associated with men over time, and women had to come up with 女優 joyuu, literally “female excellence” to differentiate themselves. 男優 danyuu also exists but rather than male actors as a a whole, it got mostly associated with male porn actors. Female porns actresses are just called sexy or AV joyuu. So it’s like haiyuu = mostly actors but sometimes includes actresses too, joyuu = actresses, danyuu = male porn stars but mostly the hot ones, sexy/av joyuu = porn actresses. Because sexism.
While I agree with the futility of making hard distinctions between the genres, there is a tonal difference among stories that I used to enjoy 10 years ago and they I can't be bothered with right now. It is a mixture of the character settings (I don't enjoy school romances as much anymore) but also the tone itself, that the story engages with its circumstances beyond some tropes. That said, I do think that there are stories like that in every genre. These labels are about demographics (how and who they're marketed) and the magazines they're published in, not about their content, so it makes sense they're so different
The popularity of manhwa aimed at women proves that women will read it if you make it it's ridiculous how well some Webtoons series aimed at women are doing Japan should take note.
would love more josei and shojo recs from you 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
18:00 damn, I always thought Wotakoi was a seinen. Goes to show how confusing these labels are when everyone uses them in a different way.
I love how much fun these videos are!
It can get really confusing when databases like MAL change the listed demographic.
The Kageki Shojo anime adapts the first 2 volumes that were published in a seinen magazines and some of the ongoing series thats published in a shojo mag. The anime was originally tagged as shojo but they only listed the seinen magazine run as what's being adapted. Now both runs are listed as source material and the anime is listed as seinen instead of originally shojo.
There's also My Next Life As a Villainess which is a LN so it didn't get listed with a demographic. But I guess the manga adaptation was published in a shoujo magazine because it was listed as shojo for a while and later the anime. Now the LN is listed as shojo alongside the anime but now the manga is listed as josei instead.
it gets hard for me to determine if something is a josei or a shojo so my brain gave up and blended the two so I can enjoy both without a problem
Off topic: everytime I see Colleen’s bookshelf I think this, while almost every other manga collection that I watched on youtube, have the shelves as this as possible to make collections look that much bigger😅 even using acrylic raisers etc, and here is Colleen who is the total opposite and doesn’t care to show off the amount she has.
I'm really running out of room mostly lmaoooo The intense organizer in me hates how cluttered it looks
@@ColleensMangaRecs Please shoot a shelf makeover video when you do organize. And maybe organized sections based on authors or publishers 🤩 i can totally see you having sections dedicated to all things Chihayafuru, Tsusbasa, natsume including prints, figures.
I’ve only read a few Jousei titles like Kimi wa Pet, Gokusen, etc., years ago for example. I like that style. I miss my manga reading days but real life got in the way. Someday I’ll fully go back to it. Being in my 40s now, I’m even more interested in Jousei titles.
I love authors grow with their work and their audiences. I looooove love com so much. Shoji tends to have a lot of sus shit hoy have to bare but love com is widely good
I' ve never understand people tendency to try to strictly define genres. One of the favorite of the few Josei, I' ve read is "Petshop of Horrors" which contained horror, sex, romance, mystery, drama, politics etc. Parts of it fit right in shonen, seinen, shojo. It is easy to tell that it is written by a woman.
The majority of fictions are wishfulfilments. The one thing I looked for a Josei/Seinen story instead of Shojo/Shonen story is the feeling that character action or inaction create some consequences. That' s how it felt more real. For example, contrast the beginning of Usagi Drop (Josei) with Koikimo (Shojo). Due to adopting a girl, the mc sacrificed his freedom and job prospect, and learn how to be a parent. Her birth mother left her because she want to pursue her managka career, while being sad about it, decided it is best for her. It is easy to see the author wrote the character based on human life experience. Koikimo, is a cliché wish fuifilment fantasy where a rich, older, handsome womanizer try to court the teenage mc. Not much serious consequences (ending of Usagi Drop felt like a Shojo because of that). If a story is called Josei, I would expect it to be more like Usagi Drop or Harekon (Seinen). If it was shojo, I might get more like Koikimo or Daddy Long Leg.
I picked up Otoyomegatari a while back and I was a bit surprised when I found out it was a seinen! With all the 19th century Central Asian women sewing and cooking etc it did feel a bit off but then we got to the clan battles and the woman's bathhouse and it was clearer why it would be a seinen.
odd story time: I took japanese in highschool and I had to go by a katakana version of my name. My name is Josie 😅 You can only imagine what the computer generator changed my name too 🙃
What I wouldn't give to have Bokura no Kiseki and Amatsuki licensed in English 😩 Two of my favorite josei series' of all time
I have a memory of reading Amatsuki on the 00s at Indigo. I feel like it was once licensed by one of the defunct companies.
@@adorabell4253 Unfortunately it was never licensed in English. If it was on Indogo, it might've been a French version since I know that site carries the Eng and FR versions of manga but I wish it was in English 😩
@@RonnieBirdyy Not Indogo, Indigo, the Canadian retail book chain. There were a lot of random series translated back in the day, that never went past one or two volumes.
And now I'm starting to wonder if I read it on a scanlation site, but I swear I remember it being in print.
@@adorabell4253 I meant Indigo. Indogo was a mistype
Always look forward to your videos. I am so surprised that Princess Jellyfish is a shoujo, I always thought it was a Josei.
This is absolutely out of topic but thanks to this video I came around to finally read Life and...
Jesus fucking christ I wasn't ready for that, I had to skip to the ending just to be sure that everything would turn out fine AND STILL IM PISS POOR ANNOYED THAT SOME OF THE CHARACTERS GOT AWAY WITH THEIR HIDEOUS ACTS JUST BECAUSE THEY SAID THEY WERE SORRY WAIT TO KILL THE VIBE
oh my gosh I love your channel:)
being a josei fan is painfullll
I feel like another thing that makes shoujosei overlooked by publishing communities is the assumption that girls and women are more interested or adept compared to boys and men when it comes to reading based on patterns or perceived patterns in the world. For example, what I see in the BookTube/BookTok/BookStagram communities being majority female and the creative writing club at my school having no guys in it. So publishing companies would put more emphasis into shounen and seinen titles because they would assume more males would be interested in manga while females would be more interested in books that are just words.
I can't believe that game show host, that looks like you, keeps breaking in. Call the police
thank you for this video! it was very interesting to watch.
There was a post in reddit r/manga where OP asked if watakoi is shojou or seinen. She and her friend were fighting and then everyone in the comment section were laghing and explained to OP that watakoi is josei.
*ears perk up* A RED RIVER REFERENCE?!
1:24 WHAT HOW DARE YOU
Yea this intro GOT ME HEATED good job XD