why are women being so unseen as audience ?

OP, many women watch shonen or BL now. Demographics have already lost their meaning time ago.

And mahou shoujo was always more popular with adult males, not women lol.

Because women don't spend money on merchandise. You are your own worst enemy, women.

@BigBoyAdvance

Also, literally Gojo and Geto were built for the female gaze. The amount of money women have probably spent on JJK merch, would be insane. Female purchasing power is not really the conflict in this scenario.

That depends on what you consider the "good old days" of shoujo/josei. How many were airing at the same time in those days, and what were your favorites?

More would be nice, but I feel like we get at least one or two good shoujo/josei every season these days.

Yubisaki to Renren (A Sign of Affection) seemed surprisingly popular back in Winter 2024. My Happy Marriage as well. We had Kimi ni Todoke come back last season. Natsume Yuujinchou is also back.

Also, there have been multiple re-incarnation/villainess shows every season for the past few seasons (not too sure if they're targeted towards women, though). And we're getting 2 new Mahou Shoujo shows this season, plus PreCure.

There's always something, even if it's slim pickings.

In short, yes, shounen, seinen, isekai make more money than shoujo, josei, in anime format at least, shoujo/josei tend to get live action drama adaptations as they're more popular among the female audience

Still there's been a bit of a shoujo anime revival this year, so never say never

Over the last year or so, I feel like they've been starting to become considerate to the female audience. I don't know how long it'll last, but let's see. But in terms of shoujo alone, I cannot stress enough how saddening it is that the budget or effort never goes enough into shoujo shows. If I think about all the animes that got shelved or stopped at 12 or 24 episodes, but barely reveal even the main crux of the story, it hella hurts.

Horimiya on the other hand went from a 100+ ch manga, stuffed into 12 episodes in the first season, because they had no clue people were gonna take interest in it.

Shows like Ao Haru Ride, Orange, Kimi ni Todoke (recently got season 3), Akagami no Shirayuki, and many more, barely got the screentime they deserved. Meanwhile, shounen anime for so long can keep on easily churning out so many types of anime. How many isekai's is too many, please tell us? And recently to combat this problem, we've been fed FEMALE isekai, and thrid rate romances that are stale in writing, minimum effort animation and art, and simply the same revenge or hard-working main female lead who gets everything handed to them on a silver platter. Just like how in shounen isekai, male characters somehow just get all the power-ups.

And with all due respect, I understand that these shows are coming out to pay the pockets. Or some are adapted from genuinely good writing. But the anime anyone can tell has minimal effort. But just think of how many JAPANESE manga alone, have amazing writing, and amazing storytelling, that goes unnoticed every time. But yeah I understand too that artists and animation studios are more complicated than how it meets the eye. But I wish the investors could see that there is potential to bringing Shoujo/josei or really any anime that is female oriented/has romance to be a good story.

For instance, I think "Last Game" will do amazing with the masses. You've got a friendship-to-lovers trope, slice-of-life story line that revolves around a group of friends. You follow the characters from childhood to college. And the humor in the manga can hit very well if it's properly executed into the animation. Or a manhwa that has dark tones and themes they can adapted, since they've been doing Tower of God, Solo Leveling, Raeliana, etc... Hopefully with the right companies taking up projects, we can have josei or shoujo manhwa with dark themes be animated more seriously.



Which brings me to my lifelong complaint xD..... sorry bear with me if you came this far --> Akatsuki no Yona, which is easily one of the saddest things I can't believe didn't get a full anime. We were left with merely a prologue, and the anime painted the story as a romantic harem (not a harem), rather than the adventure of a fallen royal member who goes on an adventure to bring restoration and peace to her nation despite being betrayed by the same country. It's empowering, and other than the romance and comedy aspects of the manga, it delves into tragedy, war, politics, and social topics, and amazing historical world-building. And I believe that it's aspirational and with great female writing. And manga like Yona of the Dawn, are palatable and described as shoujo, but are very impactful, extremely impactful.

But going back to the topic....female audiences are increasing with global platforms like Crunchyroll and netflix, all that ya know. Female Audience will increase, as well as male audience who are interested in female-targeted shows. Increasing in shoujo and josei will do well, if they invest in it. And I do think they'll be on the path towards it for sure in the future. But I'm honestly not too sure about marketing campaigns getting the same level of attention or investment.

I think a distinction needs to be made between "anime that appeal to a female audience" and "shoujo/josei" because I don't think they are the same thing nowadays.

Many shounen and seinen heavily market towards women in everything except in name and have a predominantly female audience.

Inuyasha and Noragami have huge female audiences. Mushishi, despite being classified as seinen, is slow and focuses on characters, which greatly appeals to women. I didn't watch Natsume, but I've been told the two franchises are very similar. House of the 5 Leaves is classified as a seinen, but is also slow, lacks action scenes, focuses on characters and the two main leads are suspiciously shippable.

Want another example? "The Ancient Magus' Bride" is classified as a shounen. Still, everything on it is extremely girly: female lead, "pretty", romance-heavy, deals with heavy topics related to the inner-self, all these are shoujo characteristics. Then you have Hetalia, a manga marketed as Seinen, whose audience is 95% female (I went to look it up, that's why I'm giving an actual number). Oh, and I almost forgot, there's also Black Butler, which rose from the ashes this year. BB is also a shounen, but it's undeniable who it's aimed at.

That's not to mention the ones that are marketed towards guys but that have eye candy for women, like Jujutsu Kaisen and Owari no Seraph.

So actually I think a lot of anime is trying to cater to women to different degrees. But the creators have more to gain if they classify it as being for boys/men. The reason being that women are a lot more open-minded and will gladly give a shounen/seinen a try, while some guys will go out of their way to avoid shoujo as if watching it will make their parts fall off. By classifying something as shoujo, you are automatically driving away half of your audience, and even some women too (because a lot of women, believe it or not, do not like plots whose main focus is on romance, and there is still the misconception - both from the part of the consumers and from the creators themselves - that shoujo = romance and drama)

In short: if you animate something as a shounen/seinen, both men and women will give it a try. If you animate something as a shoujo, you're losing audience from the get-go. Or in other words, shoujo/josei is seen as super girly while shounen/seinen is seen as gender-neutral.

But take all of this with a grain of salt, because I'm basing all of this on the Western audience only, while what affects decisions in regards to the anime industry is mostly the Japanese audience.