why are women being so unseen as audience ?

@AppleIceCream I wouldn't say shoujo automatically alienates half the audience, i mean if that was the case we wouldn't have phenomenons like Sailor Moon, not an anime but inspired by mahou shoujo, Winx Club was insanely popular with both girls and guys when i was a kid, to the point the guys knew the lore better than the girls, and back when my uncle was a kid Aishite Knight had gained that same popularity

It's not that guys are desperately avoiding shoujo, most have no problem giving such series a shot, even while poking fun at them for being "girly", but they aren't going to continue the series if it doesn't appeal to them

@DigiCat

Really, Winx Club was popular with guys? I never met a single guy who said he had watched the show, even less that he liked it. Kim Possible, yeah, obviously, but Winx Club I had no clue. If any guy I came in contact with liked it, he kept that fact hidden very well.

Sailor Moon became so popular that it is kind of a pop culture phenomenon at this point, so it's no wonder it's watched by both.

But you do have a point, I suppose that the guys who refuse to watch Shoujo might just be very loud, so it seems that there are more of them.

Still, I think that doesn't change the fact that Shounen and Seinen are a lot more gender-neutral than Shoujo and Josei will ever be, and I keep feeling there's a tendency to classify as Shounen/Seinen even shows that are marketed toward women. Some of the "girliest" shows I watched weren't Shoujo or Josei.

I'm actually creating a manga that is based on a fantasy book that I've written, and it is a very "girly" book in the sense that it uses a lot of troupes that can be found in the romantic fantasy genre (not to confuse it with fantasy romance): the story focuses on relationships instead of actions, characters find their place in the world and deal with their inner demons, you have an antagonist that ends up on the protagonist's side, etc.

My readers were mostly female (although I had a very small but loyal fanbase of male readers too). If that manga were to be animated I am 100% sure it would end up classified as a seinen though. Mostly because of the art style, but also because it has gruesome scenes.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that romantic fantasy can't appeal to guys, I'm just saying that when an anime has some elements that appeal to guys (even if they are very few) it means that it automatically gets classified as a shounen or seinen. In other words:

shoujo/josei = very feminine

shounen/seinen = all range of shows, from feminine to gender neutral to manly

I'm not even necessarily saying this is a bad thing, btw. I'm just saying that I think "anime that appeal to women" and "Shoujo/Josei" can NOT be used as synonyms for that reason.

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.

if there was more romance written by women for women, the romance genre would certainly get a lot more watchable for everyone, its a shame that we get fucking harem shows instead

womxn don't really buy manga that isn't fujo bait with a bunch of hot men hence the waves of shounen series that try to appeal to womxn (Haikyuu, Kagurabatchi, JJK) and even older series have a female shotacon audience such as hxh. You're just projecting your own tastes as if there isn't thousands od shoujo manga. And no one gives a shit about josei btw only people who are contrarians and want to act like theh have good taste by liking shit no one cares about.

@rodmanii are you a real person lmao

@rodmanii why are you so mad 😭😭

Brony type losers on the internet have wrapped your perception of viewer demographics, I don't think many full grown men worldwide were ever interested in shows written for 10 year old girls

@SuperAdventure Of course not all women like the same things. But I’ll share my tastes.

Something I look for in anime is a majority male cast. It’s rare that I care about female characters since many of them are poorly-written and full of obnoxious tropes. That’s not to say that this doesn’t happen with male characters, too.

An obvious answer to what anime targets a female audience is shameless fujoshi bait series like Free and shonen-ai series like Yuri On Ice. Both full of attractive male characters, both full of blatant fan service and teasing scenes between the main boys. I disliked both of these anime because of these blatant attempts to appeal to the fujoshi audience. It just made me cringe.

Shonen series, on the other hand, have all I could need: a mostly male cast (usually with different, non-conventionally attractive characters), no ridiculous fujo fan service (unless it’s satire), badass fight scenes and, most importantly, they have a decent plot.

But this is all down to personal taste. I’d rather watch a show where the characters are more concerned with defeating evil or being the best like no one ever was than worrying about getting a girlfriend. That’s just what I like.

@NoelleIsSleepy I hate to say it, but I think you're right here. It looks like Twitter may have found its way to MAL. Dark times lie ahead.

@NoelleIsSleepy "ruSSiAn BotS", lol, public school did a number on you, poor real life NPC

@NoelleIsSleepy I hate to say it, but I think you're right here. It looks like Twitter may have found its way to MAL. Dark times lie ahead.

@rodmanii system error, logic not found.

@NoelleIsSleepy yes, public school usually has that effect

@SuperAdventure

I looked at some statistics, and it seems to heavily vary depending on the survey (although "Crime" and "Thriller/mystery" are the ones that more consistently rank higher). On the more, it depends. Maybe it's more of a question of how a story is approached rather than a question of genre (I couldn't find anime surveys btw, I looked into book genres and movie genres and stuff like that).

In my first comment, I mentioned a lot of anime that have a huge female audience despite being classified as shounen or seinen. Looking at what these anime have in common might be useful when it comes to researching patterns.

Personally, I heavily believe that character-driven stories are very powerful when it comes to getting women engaged. With this, I'm not saying that men don't like when characters interact or that they don't care about characters in general, I just think that it might matter more for women (as a rule of thumb of course).

Shoujo anime are essentially just romance anime, and every season offers plenty of romance series, even without the shoujo or shounen label. It's better this way.

This is incorrect.

Here's a breakdown through the decades:


1960s - Less than 10 anime aimed at women
1970s - Less than 10 anime aimed at women
1980s - A bit over 50 anime aimed at women
1990s - A bit over 80 anime aimed at women
2000s - A bit over 170 anime aimed at women
2010s - A bit over 500 anime aimed at women


There has been a sharp increase in anime aimed at women.

Shoujo anime are essentially just romance anime, and every season offers plenty of romance series, even without the shoujo or shounen label. It's better this way.

The space is overwhelmingly male-dominated (anyone who's been to an anime convention can tell you as much), therefore the production output of these companies is overwhelmingly male-oriented. It really comes down to supply and demand.