Do you think a battle shounen with a female MC could be really popular

@TheBerserker Ranma is a Romcom with sprinkles of Harem in it. That's basically what Rumiko Takahashi has envisioned during all her career, Romcom series with lots and lots of women going behind few men, few men who are supposed to be us male watchers (of course). The fact that the protagonist turns into the best woman of all the series doesn't mean it's less of an harem, simply the harem extends to the female equivalent of the protagonist. If you want something shounen-like, your best bet are the tokusatsus of the second main writer of the first series (Toshiki Inoue) like his excellent Kamen Riders and Super Sentai, not Ranma 1/2 on itself.

@ProudElitist, ranma becomes much more like shounen from the musk dynasty arc and beyond. esp with the last two arcs kinda feeling a lot more like inuyasha.

@Eggyy I have no idea, I was referring to the first series only, which is the only one I watched in japanese recently because of the person who was the main writer of the second half (the person of which I previously mentioned his tokus). Unfortunately the bad animation of the first episodes of the second, longer season turned me away. I don't have problems with longer series (I've started one this same morning, a battle shounen of all things) but when the animation already sinks after eight episodes there's something wrong in it. Even with all my deep, neverending love for Inoue-Sensei (he plotted a lot of the episodes of the second season), I just couldn't.

@ProudElitist. what i mentioned is from the manga. the original anime never adapted the arcs that i mentioned. but yea, there's many chapters were ranma learns new special moves and fights whatever big bad is in that arc. of course there are still comedic and romance parts, but the manga gets less like a sitcom tho

@Zettaiken

As expected from a zoomer with limited intelligence you believe MAL statatistics is a sign of popularity worldwide. Besides, the numbers you wrote came nowhere close to REALLY POPULAR shows, as I SAID in my first post, like One Peice, AOT or Demon SLayer etc., my boy...

The real gold would be a series that puts a woman front and center without toning down the bloody violence and the carnage. Give her a goal that burns, a tragic backstory that hurts, and villains who make us genuinely fear for her life.
You give her the spotlight and let her go full-powered monologue mid-fight. viewers will eat it up.
Btw I'm obviously talking about Maki Zenin here.
Style minimalist, brutalise battle hardened body that show she been through wars. That’s the blueprint. Not "tough girl lite" but someone who radiates aura through physique, ruthlessness brutality and violence.

I'd probably say a show like Magic Knight Rayearth fits the bill. It's magical girl anime, but really that has nothing to do with its target demographic, and it easily appeals to boys and girls. Nothing I've seen in that show feels like it targets either boys or girls specifically, other than the main characters being girls themselves, which I assume the criteria of this topic would have to allow.

Sailor Moon is based on the meshing of Magical Girl genre and Super Sentais, which are the equivalent of battle shounens in tokusatsu/live action form. The whole thing about the super sentais is the choreography of the fights, and the same it was in Sailor Moon. And there are Ten women protagonists in Sailor Moon, not just one. Even more than the male-focused predecessor of Sailor Moon, Saint Seiya. Hell, there is stuff that was mentioned in the manly man (?) shounen by definition, Hokuto No Ken, that ended remade in Sailor Moon and in particular in Sailor Stars (the ending). Aren't those ten ladies enough for you? you want more?

@RainyEvenings They have a few series like this, but no one really cares for them. The best selling action series with a female protagonist is Fairy Tail.

@ProudElitist Sailor Moon is a Shoujo

@LuxuriousHeart Sailor Moon is a mixture of battle shounen/animated super sentais with magical girls, it's not 100% shoujo. Whatever you look at the shitty manga or the animated experience from the 90's. Hell, Sailor V already itself had stuff in it taken directly from Saint Seiya (Minako going to Greece and sporting a Saint armour), it wasn't just about a choice between good boys and bad boys. Theorically it's also about Sukeban Series but, again, in those (like Sukeban Deka I and II) the fighting part takes the cake the most, if there's romance in them it's very barebone. I know because I've watched a few of them.

@ProudElitist So a Shoujo is not defined by the magazine that it was published in, but defined by whether you like it or not. If you like it, then it's obviously not aimed at girls, because you would never like anything that is aimed at girls. Do I have that right?

@LuxuriousHeart 1) shoujo is my favourite genre of all times and my favourite tokusatsu writers (Toshiki Inoue, Akiko Inoue) are so because they employ storytelling taken from shoujo, 2) I've seen Yaoi series that depicted (suggested, fully blown I couldn't care less) sexual intercourse between men and I liked them 3) in 2025 nobody gives a crap about the intended target audience. Shoujo is consumed by women only like "manly" battle shounens with men as the main protagonists such as Hokuto No Ken or Mecha toys are consumed/bought only by males, which means it's bullshit. That said, magazine or no magazine, SM is a majokko mixed with battle shounens/super sentais/sukeban deka girls shows nonetheless, it's a mixture of fights and soap-opera typical of shoujo (the kind of which you can even find in Hokuto No Ken, curiosly enough). I'm not the one who took the name Luna from a dog in the Denziman movie, I'm not the one who took the idea of warriors born on different planets from Flashman, I'm not the one who took the cyborg crap of Ishinomori (the same behind the battle shounen cyborg 009) and DEFINITELY I'm not the one who took the armours from Saint Seiya and put it in Sailor V, or remade parts of Hokuto No Ken and the last Saint Seiya movie (and let's not speak of the ending of SM classic, taken frame by frame from the house of Sagittarius of Saint Seiya) and remade it in the Masterpiece Sailor Stars. Those are, respectively, hack Naoko Takeuchi and Toei, not me.

@ProudElitist Sailor Moon was published in a Shoujo magazine, therefore it's a Shoujo. Being inspired by Shounen doesn't take away the fact that it's a Shoujo.

@LuxuriousHeart and it was targeted towards male otakus, the same ones for which images of the Sailor Senshis in bunny outfit/maids were made. BTW, I don't understand your nonsensical and frankly ridicolous rantings of the magazine where it was published, doesn't matter one bit where Naoko published her shit. Under the surface, the thing is a mixture of battle shounen/super sentais with magical girls, hence it's a battle shounen/animated super sentai mixed with magical girls. The magazine where the manga barf was published doesn't cancel one bit this fact, nor it cancels the fact that the fights are the main appeal of the series, at least in the anime because in the anime you can actually understand what's going on. End of the discussion.

@ProudElitist It's atill a Shoujo...

Anime isn't published in magazines dumbass, that's manga

@valico This is saying is saying nothing but false information.

Anime isn't published in magazines dumbass, that's manga