Manga Female Audience Prefers

December 1st, 2008

The army of Japanese comics (known better as manga) fans grows daily among both men and women. Unlike American comics mostly targeting men, manga has a lot of sub-genres with some addressing exclusively women of various ages.

A manga is usually created by one (often with assistants) drawing a comics and writing texts. However there’s also group activity like the Clamp band, still a normal team is 3-4 people at most. Professional manga is next to amateur manga - doujinshi (dojinshi). The following is mostly about professional manga.

A popular genre is shojo (shoujo) manga literally meaning a young girl. So it targets women audience aged 10 to 18. Shoujo manga was first created primarily by men but then many female writers have sprung since about 1969.

Shojo manga is multi-genre and -topic including historical drama and science fiction. It often describes romance and emotions pertaining specifically to girls.

Many publishing houses specialize in this type of manga - Shueish with Ribon monthly magazine, Kodansha with Nakayoshi magazine and others. Most series were first printed in such magazines and then serialized.

  • Hot Gimmick by Miki Aihara
  • Bokura ga Ita by Obata Yuuki
  • Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya
  • Nana Manga by Ai Yazawa
  • Hana-Kimi: For You in Full Blossom by Hisaya Nakajo
  • Ouran High School Host Club by Bisco Hatori
  • Love Hina by Ken Akamatsu, Anita Sengupta
  • Kare First Love by Kaho Miyasaka
  • The One Manga by Nicky Lee
  • Beauty is the Beast by Tomo Matsumoto

A sub-genre of Japanese fantasy anime and manga called magical girls (maho shojo) tells about girls with superhuman abilities forced to fight evil and protect the Earth. Stories with magic and a transformation like Full Moon wo Sagashite often feature girls with a secret identity. Magical girls known in Japan as majokko (witch girl) generally don’t refer to modern magical girl anime first of which was Sally, the Witch in 1966. This genre counts hundreds of stories. Here’re just some except the ones mentioned before:

  • Alice 19th by Yuu Watase
  • Cardcaptor Sakura by Clamp
  • Gakuen Alice by Tachibana Higuchi
  • I-O-N by Arina Tanemura
  • My-HiME by Hajime Yatate, Noboru Kimura
  • Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi

Josei manga (ladies - ladies’ comics) is created mostly by women targeting late teenage and adult female audiences. Josei (seinen for male) means simply female and serves to move away from the primitive image of ladies’ comics.

The stories cover everyday life of Japanese women, sometimes at high school. Their style is a realistic version of shojo manga and tends to be a continuity of female comics.

Unlike idealistic shojo manga, josei comics portray realistic romance with more explicit and mature storytelling like Honey and Clover. Below are some series of popular manga:

  • Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms by Fumiyo Kouno
  • Walking Butterfly by Chihiro Tamaki
  • Bride of the Water God by Mi-Kyung Yun
  • Suppli by Mari Okazaki
  • The Other Side of the Mirror by Jo Chen
  • With The Light by Keiko Tobe
  • Inubaka: Crazy For Dogs by Yukiya Sakuragi
  • Presents by Kanako Inuki
  • IC in a Sunflower by Mitsukazu Mihara

Yaoi is fictional media on gay relationships but by and for females. Yaoi is abbreviated from Yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi (neither climax, nor sense, nor denouement). Originally a pejorative fan term, now it has an extended and almost scientific meaning.

Known in Japan as boys’ love (BL or boizu rabu), yaoi includes parodies, original works, commercial and dojinshi works. However BL features adult males, while young boys stories refer to the shotacon genre. Both original and translated yaoi is now available internationally.

Lesbian stories in manga, anime and related Japanese media are slanged as yuri (girls love or garuzu rabu). Emotions (sometimes called shojo-ai by western fans) and sex are its 2 focuses. Springing from female-targeted (shoujo, josei) works, yuri today is present in male-targeted (shonen, seinen) ones too.

Female manga in English gradually gets more printed. The Web has seen many amateur translator groups targeting only women and sites to read manga online.

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