Guest Blogger: Sasa
Posted in Anime, Random Concepts on May 28th, 2007 By Runningkid
If I look at the numbers of manga I am currently reading, I see 35 shounen series, 49 seinen series, 64 shoujo series and 26 josei series. (In fact, I’m not sure whether I got the genres right because I don’t know all the magazines they’ve been published in. On top of that, I file some Afternoon series into shounen and others into seinen.) However, you get an idea of the distribution and probably notice that I basically read anything. At the same time, the anime I am watching go from science-fiction (Planetes, GiTS) to romance stories (Ouran, Paradise Kiss) to funny stuff (Azumanga Daioh) to “cute girls doing cute things with cute [**censored**]” series (Ichigo Mashimaro, Lucky Star). However, quantity isn’t anything and I believe I only read 26 josei series because there isn’t anymore out there available for a japanese-illerate like me. If I look at this list, I see that I have read basically everything in it. However, if I look at the nearly 2000 shoujo series listed on Baka-Updates, I don’t even read 5% of it. Since RunningKid said he wanted me to write a post because I’m female, I thought it might be a good idea to write about the genre where I am part of the targeted audience. And as I have already described already, I effectively seem to be the perfect target for this genre *hrr*
Unlike shoujo the romance is more realistic and less idealized. The storytelling is more explicit and mature.”A lot of josei series are simply porn for women: A (most likely) blond girl falls in love with some (most likely) dark-haired alpha dog (mafia boss, student council president, president of some huge company) and lets herself get sexually abused and raped by said person. In reality, he’s paying a lot of attention to her and extends the foreplay so long that no healthy man could stand if it would be real. Other kinds of porn-like josei are yaoi, but I will not talk about it because I dislike yaoi to the extent that I have forgotten its existence while writing this post. (I got only reminded while I searched for some nice definitions of josei.) So these kinds of josei series actually are far from being realistic.The really interesting josei series are those which actually are like the description above: Most of the time they are love stories or revolve around the pursuit of ‘love’ (or at least a healthy relationship), but whose main interest is the search for oneself, whether it is through love, work or friends. Josei manga tend to question the ‘why’ behind the things we do: Hataraki Man is a good and famous example, because it is freely available as fansub and scanlation - on top of that, I’ve read that it is very popular in Japan. No wonder, in my opinion, the series reflects the japanese world of work perfectly with all its different characters and their point of views of work and life.Other very recommendable josei anime series: Honey & Clover, Paradise Kiss, Gokusen. (I won’t recommend Nodame Cantabile because I don’t like the anime *hrr* The manga is absolutely gorgeous though.)
eyes are smaller and women tend to be more slender and look like some fashion magazine rather than a children’s book. Therefore, nudes aren’t
particularily arousing, but still look provocative. Ai Yazawa (Nana, Paradise Kiss) is a good example, even though her drawings are still very mainstream.If you’re interested, take a look at this page. It features a lot of good josei mangaka, such as George Asakura, Sakura Fujisue, Erika Sakurazawa, Kyoko Okazaki (who has won the Media Festival Award with “Helter Skelter”), Kiriko Nananan (my favourite!), Mitsukazu Mihara, Mari Okazaki and Yukari Ichijou.PS. Yes, I know what the attentive reader will automatically think: Hataraki Man runs in Morning, a seinen magazine. That’s true, and for me it’s actually a sign that seinen and josei are much more similar to each other than shounen and shoujo. But aside from that, I do think that Hataraki Man, especially the anime, shows a rather female point of
view of things.
RunningKid’s Response:
I think Sasa manage to hit a genre that generally lacked discussion in the world of blogging, I don’t read nearly as much manga as Sasa, unlike her you can count how many manga series I’ve read with just 10 fingers (okay, may be not quite; try using you toes it might come close). As far as I can remember I haven’t experienced much, if any, series of this genre but from what I’ve gathered it seems like a more serious and more realistic genre, perhaps the reason why it’s target audience are women of an older age. As Sasa already said, these series often reflects views of the real world, may be this allows women, who have already experienced the cruel world of working, to emphasize with the series.
The romance may not be as idealized as they may be in other genres, which brings about more flavors into the stories. However I don’t think it’s correct to think of this genre for women aged 18-30, since I know fair a few people who enjoyed Honey and Clover a lot and (as far as I know ^^;) they aren’t old women.With a genre like this, I feel the art can get away with be sketchy, since people aren’t reading these, expecting what you would get in a shounen series, flashy moves and explosion of blood. Also, who said sketches can not looks good, as I’ve mentioned before I am a sucker for line art or even concept sketches, in a way I think its style. Searching around, its surprising there isn’t an awful lot about josei so I am glad Sasa has brought this up, I will definitely give this type of stuff a try, thanks Sasa!
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To think that Sasa had read that many titles of Mangas, I can assume that most of the titles should be anoymous to the manga world. What I mean was, the mangas that she have read are not necesarily famous. Try mentioning one to anyone on the internet and they might tell you that they have never heard of it.
Mainly this is because there are not many famous josei titles out there compared to other genres. Honey & Clover is one I know since I’ve also watched the anime (not the mangas!) and I totally agree with RunningKid that there are quite a few out there who actually enjoyed the series. But Hachikuro isn’t about hardcore josei. Josei mangas are for women aged 18-30, and therefore some of them might carry unsuitable elements for those underage readers. Forturnately there’s minimal not-too-healthy scenes in the Honey and Clover anime (not sure about the mangas, though).
I think that Sasa’s a good writer and she’s able to portray the word ‘josei’ in detail even though it’s only a few paragraphs. Nice work. =P
Sasa is in the otaku subspecies known as Woman. Runningkid, pick me next!
Although Sasa’s states that josei isnt a mainstreem genre, ive seen alot of the art style displayed in americanised manga and advertising. And alot of it seems to be aimed at children here yet anime and manga is still seen has a cash cow for kids in the west.
kristalyamaki, you seem to have a little more knownledge on josei than me, which is good at elast what you said make sense, not like my random paragraph. Of course I agree that Sasa is a good writer, I recommend you go read her blog
Tj, haha I feel really special now!
Thunder, I am not sure about that, while its true anime and manga here is targetting kids for cash, I cant really think of any josei series that kids here are crazy about.
@yamaki: I think Honey & Clover is the most famous josei among anime fans and bloggers, but I really think that Hataraki Man is an even better example, because it isn’t that cute.
I recommended less famous titles on purpose, although I put emphasis on titles which are (relatively) popular among josei series. Fact is that josei (without yaoi) is and will probably always remain a niche, therefore I’d be glad if the mature seinen reader would take a look at the female side as well.
I also don’t think that josei can necessarily be characterized by the amoung and gravity of sex scenes - indeed, a woman’s relationship tends to include more and wilder sex than a girl’s, but there are a lot of manga that are completely innocent concerning the relationship. What makes them josei is mainly the fact that the protagonist is older and has more ‘adult’ problems like college and work (like Clover by Toriko Chiya, a manga about an OL that runs in the same magazine as Honey & Clover). Then again, you have slice of life series similar to Aria (which is seinen) that simply depict peaceful life. But of course, those series are even more rare than your ‘typical’ josei à la George Asakura, Erica Sakurazawa, Kiriko Nananan: pain adult love stories.
@RK&yamaki: Thanks so much for that compliment! Seriously, I don’t know what to say about it - it feels so good to hear taht… Now I also realize that my post was pretty short, but whatever, I think I got the message across and I guess readers prefer shorter postings anyways XD