- Serenity09 wrote:
oh that makes a lot more sense than what i was thinking of. i thought it was a genre that was really just the demographic; like seinen was the genre that appeals to stereotypical japanese teen males. i didnt really think it all the way through
are there more of these demographic terms? like i wouldn't put monogatari under strictly seinen -- i'd say it very definitely josei at times and seinen at others, is there a term for both?
Seinen isnt for teen males, its meant for 18+ guys, it will usually be more violent, more thoughtful, it may end tragically, and/or have more sexual things (like ecchi and harem)
Shonen is meant for teen males, like 13-17, it will be pretty violent but not too much so, will be fairly straight forward in its plot, be more upbeat rarely ending in tragedy, and/or it will suggest sexual things but not actually show much other than panty shots (it will also have harem elements, but not as direct as seinen)
Shoujo is meant for teen girls, 13-17, it will be very girly, fairly straight forward, very upbeat, and/or there will be love triangles (they are more like love dodecahedrons most of the time) or some relationship issues
Josei is meant for 18+ women, it will be sweet/cute/loving (not necessarily in a girly way), it could also be those things but end in tragedy and be emotional, thoughtful, and/or have the female equivalent to sexual things (this includes males in ecchi, reverse harems, suggestive yaoi, or just romantic gestures that arent explicitly sexual but turn girls on anyway)
Kodomo is meant for children 9 and under, they dont specify girls or boys, it will teach lessons and/or be silly in general (they are very similar to our cartoons for kids)
Interestingly, they dont have a specific demographic for tweens like we do, the 10-12 age range, they either still watch kodomo or they start shoujo/shonen early
The tween demographic is huge here, so youd think japan would have something similar, i dont know why they dont
Things can appeal to mulitple demographics, its just that sometimes they have a specific demographic in mind when making it, hence why you see things like harem and ecchi in seinen since that kind of thing appeals to men and they are purposely appealing to that demographic
Other times the creator doesnt have a specific demographic in mind and it ends up getting classified by what the majority of the demographic is
You can usually tell which is designed to be seinen and which just ends up as seinen from the amount of ecchi there is (the same goes for josei, although it can be harder for us to tell when it comes to josei since we can miss some of the romantic stuff as we men might not see it for what it is)
Attack on Titan is an example of the kind of thing that should have its own term or that should be seinen but it ended up as shonen because it was published in a shonen magazine, the execution of the story is shonen and hence why it went into that magazine, but the premise of the story is seinen so its in this weird spot of being both
Its also an example of why you should ignore target demographics
And Madoka is even worse in that it is everything but kodomo, no one can agree what target demographic its supposed to appeal to, ive seen people argue that its demographic is people that have already seen it and spread it by word of mouth to expand its demographic
I dont even know what to classify it as, if i had to pick id say seinen based on the story elements, but it can just as easily be josei for those same elements
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