More about shojou

[avram]

LadyM: Ranma’s shojou, isn’t it?
Wil: No, it’s full of fighting.
LadyM: But Utena’s full of fighting too.
Wil: Besides, Ranma was first published in Shonen Jump.
Me: Ranma’s shonen because the romance is just there to provide an excuse for fighting. Utena’s shojou because the fighting’s just an excuse for romance.

(Speaking of which, Toshimasa Takahashi, the editor-in-chief of Shonen Jump magazine, died unexpectedly a few days ago at the age of 44. I heard about this via ¡Journalista!, an excellent comics weblog.)

Comments

Shounen v. Shoujo

[bigscary.livejournal.com]

That's often a big question: Sometimes it's hard to figure out how to classify something, and often it's just futile or stupid. Observe the following.

• Maison Ikkoku. Pure romantic comedy. Also classified as shounen. Why? Which weekly it ran in, who wrote it.


• Kimagure Orange Road. Same thing, but with ESP. Again, ran in a shounen weekly from a mangaka known for shounen.


• Chobits. Shounen (Strictly, seinin, upper teen males). Done by CLAMP, notorious shoujo-creators, but clearly targeted for a male audience


• Ogre Slayer. Horror/Action, with a male protagonist and no romance whatsoever. Published in a shoujo weekly, by a shoujo creator, with shoujo artwork

For even more fun, note that a lot of manga nowadays that were originally anime (the reverse of the normal situation) will publish TWO entirely different series, one shounen, one shoujo. Escaflowne and Mahou Tsukai Tai! (Magic User's Club) both did this. And, of course, there's the issue of shows targetted at one group but preferred by the other (Gundam Wing, which was meant to be a boy-targeted sentai-flavored Gundam, ended up being a girl-supported bishounen-Gundam.)

But I think at this point I'm falling prey to a binarization fallacy, so I'll stop before I start dealing with the Manga v. Anime of KareKano question.