Everything about Sh Jo totally explained
is a term used in English to refer to
manga aimed at a female audience between the ages of 10 and 18. The term is a
transliteration of the
Japanese 少女, literally
Young girl. Works aimed at this target audience are generally seen as
melodramatic stories of
romance usually with a female
protagonist, and drawn in a flowing style where beautiful characters with huge, intricately drawn eyes become spontaneously surrounded by flowers, stars, and/or bubbles. Still, shōjo works cover a huge range of subjects, from
historical drama to
science fiction and by no means do all adhere to the same artistic sensibilities or conventions. Overall, shōjo isn't a style or a genre but a target
demographic.
History
The concept of the "shoujo" herself, between childhood and adulthood began around the 1920s. Shoujo manga borrows from the earlier tradition of shoujo shousetsu - girls' fiction. Shōjo manga has its roots in the early
Shōwa era, for example
Machiko Hasegawa's
Nakayoshi Techō and
Shosuke Kurakane's
Anmitsu Hime, and then the manga expansion in the
1950s, with titles like
Princess Knight by
Osamu Tezuka. However, it took off with a new wave of female authors beginning in the
1970s - centered around the
Year 24 group, named as such because they were all born in the 24th year of the
Shōwa period (
1949). In particular,
Moto Hagio,
Keiko Takemiya and
Yumiko Ōshima were instrumental in redefining manga from a female perspective, and inventing the
shōnen-ai genre. Around the same time but not as conveniently born in the same year,
Suzue Miuchi,
Riyoko Ikeda and
A-ko Mutsu have created equally influential manga.
Shōjo anime has been a part of television animation from its beginnings,
Tōei Dōga starting the '
magical girl' emphasis with
Mahō Tsukai Sally and
Himitsu no Akko-chan in the second half of the
1960s.
Also active at the turn of the
1970s were
Tōkyō Movie Shinsha with sports anime
Attack No. 1 and
Ace o Nerae!, and the
1979 historical drama
Versailles no Bara has been highly influential.
The 'World Masterpiece Theatre' series by
Nippon Animation, based on classic works of
Western literature, began in
1975. While not aimed solely at female viewers, it had a huge impact, running for two decades from and widely
syndicated outside Japan.
Magical girls were everywhere in the
1980s, notably with the various
Mahō no... series by
Studio Pierrot, but the genre became recognized in the west through
Toei Animation's
Sailor Moon, begun in
1992. There are some shōjo girls who are not magical, but who exert extreme, unreal stunts, like Yuniko Sakuraba in
Wild Act, who jumps to the ground from tall buildings with little to no injury.
The anime adaptation of
Machiko Hasegawa's
Sazae-san, published between 1946 and 1974, is still running today. Being a stylistic innovator, Hasegawa's focus on daily life and on women's experience also came to characterize later shōjo manga. Between 1950 and 1969, increasingly large audiences for manga emerged in Japan with the solidification of its two main marketing genres,
shōnen manga aimed at boys and shōjo manga aimed at girls.
In 1969, a group of female manga artists later called the
Year 24 Group (also known as
Magnificent 24s) made their shōjo manga debut (year 24 comes from the Japanese name for 1949, when many of these artists were born). The group included
Hagio Moto,
Riyoko Ikeda,
Yumiko Oshima,
Keiko Takemiya, and
Ryoko Yamagishi In the following decades (1975-present), shōjo manga continued to develop stylistically while simultaneously evolving different but overlapping subgenres. Major subgenres include romance, superheroines, and "
Ladies Comics" (in Japanese,
redisu レディース,
redikomi レディコミ, and
josei 女性).
Meaning and spelling
As
shōjo literally means 'girl' in
Japanese, the equivalent of the western usage will generally include the medium: girls' manga (少女漫画
shōjo manga), or anime for girls (
shōjo-muke anime). The parallel terms
shōnen,
seinen, and
josei are also used in the categorisation of manga and anime, and are qualified the same way. Though the terminology originates with the Japanese publishers, cultural differences with the West means application in English tends to vary wildly, with the types often confused and misapplied.
Due to the vagaries involved in the
romanization of Japanese, 少女 (written しょうじょ in
hiragana) may be transcribed in a wide selection of ways. By far the most common is
shoujo, largely because it follows
English phonology, preserves the spelling, and requires only
ASCII input. The
Hepburn romanization shōjo uses a
macron for the long vowel, though the prevalence of
Latin-1 means a
circumflex is often substituted instead,
shôjo. It is also common practice to just ignore long vowels,
shojo, however this is sometimes discouraged due to potential confusion with 処女 (
shojo, lit. 'virgin') as well as
other possible meanings. Finally
Nihon-shiki type mirroring of the
kana spelling may be used,
syôjyo, or
syoujyo. None of these many variants are any more 'correct' than the rest, unless a particular
style guide is expected to be followed.
Western adoption
Fans in the west have adopted a wide range of Japanese
anime and manga terminology, however the strong stylistic and thematic similarities between a sector of shōjo works has led to the term being thought of as a genre or style, sometimes with an attempt to assign it by degrees. This has led to a wide variety of titles that would be classified as something else by their Japanese creators labeled shōjo by western fans. Anything non-offensive and featuring female characters may be referred to as shōjo, such as the light
seinen comedy manga and anime
Azumanga Daioh.
Similarly, as romance is common element of many shōjo works, any title with romance, such as the
shōnen Love Hina
or the
seinen Oh! My Goddess are liable to be mislabeled.
In addition Westerners often declare that particularly violent, gory, or sexually explicit works "can't possibly" be shōjo, or disbelieve that
shōnen-ai titles are aimed at girls rather than homosexual men.
This confusion is by no means limited to the fan community; the terms are also widely misrepresented in articles aimed at the mainstream. In an introduction to anime and manga,
Jon Courtenay Grimwood writes:
Takahashi is a famed shōnen
mangaka, though
Maison Ikkoku is one of her few seinen titles: serialised in
Big Comic Spirits, aimed at males in their 20s.
Matt Thorn, who has successfully made a career out of studying girls' comics, attempts to clarify the matter by explaining that "shôjo manga are manga published in shôjo magazines (as defined by their publishers)".
The
US comics industry in particular has struggled with understanding, let alone competing with, shōjo manga. Having historically failed to produce anything that appeals to female audiences, they'd to cope with
Sailor Moon vastly outselling all domestically produced
graphic novels aimed at their core young, male market.
As such publishers and stores have problems retailing shōjo: unsure of the 'right' way to spell the word, licensees such as
Dark Horse Comics misidentifying several of the seinen titles, and in particular manga and anime aimed at a younger audience in Japan is often considered 'inappropriate' for
minors in the US. As such, titles are often either voluntarily
censored or remarketed towards an older audience. In the less conservative
European markets, content that might be heavily edited or cut in an English release is often present in
French,
German and other translated editions.
One effect of this conflict has been a move by US companies to use the borrowed words that have gained name value in fan communities, but separate them from the Japanese meaning. In their shōjo manga range, publisher
VIZ Media attempt a reappropriation of the term, providing the definition:
shô·jo (sho'jo) n. 1. Manga appealing to both female and male readers. 2. Exciting stories with true-to-life characters and the thrill of exotic locales. 3. Connecting the heart and mind through real human relationships. |
The desire to disassociate the word from its meaning, 'girl', seems largely in fear of putting off potential new readers, particularly male ones.
Manga and anime labeled as shōjo need not only be of interest to young girls, and some titles gain a following outside the traditional audience. For instance,
Frederik L. Schodt identifies
Banana Fish by
Akimi Yoshida as:
...one of the few girls' manga a red-blooded Japanese male adult could admit to reading without blushing. Yoshida, while adhering to the conventions of girls' comics in her emphasis on gay male love, made this possible by eschewing flowers and bug eyes in favor of tight bold strokes, action scenes, and speed lines. |
Such successful 'crossover' titles are the exception rather than the rule however, for archetypal shōjo manga magazine
Hana to Yume, 95% of readers are female, and a majority are aged 17 or under.
Cardcaptor Sakura is another Japanese anime show that's intended for female audiences. It is characterised by beautiful characters, swirling, flowing ribbons scattered across the screen when the main character evolves, and flowers everywhere.
However, it can be noted that many boys find this style of anime attractive. In an independent survey of teenage boys in Australia in the year 2006, 84% of boys preferred shows like
Cardcaptor Sakura and
Sailor Moon to male-oriented shows such as
Dragonball Z and
Yu-Gi-Oh.
Shōjo magazines in Japan
The strict definition of shōjo being that a story is serialized or published in a magazine designated as shōjo, here's a list of past and current Japanese shōjo manga magazines, separated by publisher. These can be published on a variety of schedules, the most common being bi-weekly (Margaret, Hana to Yume, Sho-Comi), and monthly (Ribon, Betsuma, Betsu Fure, Lala).
Shueisha
Kodansha
Nakayoshi (なかよし)
Amie
Shōjo Friend (少女フレンド)
Bessatsu Friend (Betsu Fure) (別冊フレンド)
Dessert (デザート)
kiss
Be Love
Shogakukan
Ciao (ちゃお)
Chu Chu
Shōjo Comic (Sho-Comi) (少女コミック)
Bessatsu Shōjo Comic (Betsu Comi)
Petit Comic (プチコミック)
Cheese!
Pochette (ポシェット)
Hakusensha
Hana to Yume (花とゆめ)
Bessatsu Hana to Yume (別冊花とゆめ)
LaLa
LaLa DX
Melody (メロディ)
silky
Akita Shoten
Princess (プリンセス)
Princess Gold (プリンセスGOLD)
Petit Princess (プチプリンセス)
Mystery Bonita (ミステリーボニータ)
Susperia Mystery (サスペリアミステリー)
Renai MAX (恋愛MAX)
Kadokawa Shoten
Asuka
WEB magazine
MANGA AIRPORT (漫画えあぽーと)Further Information
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