Inspired by comments from 10 Most Rewatchable Shonen Anime Series, Ranked
Here are a few examples that I know of:
| title | expected | actual |
|---|---|---|
| Frieren | non-shounen (seinen?) | shounen |
| Attack on Titan | seinen | shounen |
| The Apothecary Diaries | shoujo | seinen |
| Umamusume: Cinderella Gray | shounen | seinen |
| 100 Girlfriends | shounen | seinen |
What are other instances of misidentified demographic you have seen?
Quick and dirty definitions of anime demographics:
- shoujo - girls
- shounen - boys
- josei - ladies
- seinen - men
Apart from the ones you listed, here are a few anime that I’ve seen people get wrong lately:
- A Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity - shounen
- Kaguya-sama: Love is War - seinen
- Chainsaw Man - shounen
- Blue Box - shounen
For real fun, consider Saiyuki, which moved from a shounen magazine in its initial run to a josei magazine for later material. So which is it, really?
(There are other ambiguous cases—I think Escaflowne had two separate manga, one shoujo and one shounen. Given they were made after the anime, it’s questionable whether they really count, though.)
A target demographic for Frieren is like a target demographic for Lord of the Rings.
New Mobile Report Gundam Wing
The series had more focus on the Drama as opposed to mecha and as a result a slightly cheaper budget (thus the reason the vast majority of mecha scenes are used over and over again) also the fact the teens CONSTANTLY try to blow up their own Gundams. As a result in Japan it was fairly popular with Women. Regardless it was still very popular overall in Japan to the point the studio asked the staff to make a sequel but the creators really had no intention. That being said the one show runner didn’t like how the series ended and thus we got Endless Waltz which also leaned into the popularity of the series with females which is why you get some of the Gundam redesigns.
Of course in the West the show was wildly popular and was the first real introduction of Gundam to a western audience. The show also kicked off the popularity of Gunpla in the west.
The series had more focus on the Drama as opposed to mecha
Just FYI, that’s almost every Gundam series.
Tbh, at least in the western side of the anime fandom the words shounen, shoujo, seinen and josei function as pretty decent genre descriptors rather than demographics.
When we think shounen, we typically think action-focused anime with lots of screaming and younger protags (your Narutos, DBZs, MHAs etc). When we think shoujo, we think romance in high school settings. For seinen and josei pretty much the same, but with aged up characters and a bit more mature in general.
I think it’s fine for those words to mean something else here. After all, we don’t have the reference of the magazines where this is all based on
If people think Frieren’s most important parts are the fights, they need to watch more media (and a variety of it, western and eastern).
Shounen aren’t all about fights in the first place though. Sure some of them are, but as covered by other posts in this thread there are plenty of shounen romance series too.
If people think …, they need to watch more media
AFAIK the target demographics are determined not by the eventual audience, but by the publishers. So if they think it would appeal to shounen, it gets classified as shounen.
think Frieren’s most important parts are the fights
Personally, I can see why Frieren gets classified as shounen even after discounting the fight scenes. I find that the characters’ thinking lack a certain depth / maturity / complexity of seinen and josei anime.
The reason Frieren is classified as shounen is because the manga is serialized in Weekly Shounen Sunday.
It’s also important to note that shounen encompasses a lot more than just battle shounen, that’s one subgenre under a wider umbrella. And even then, Frieren’s fight scenes do check all the boxes of a battle shounen, it’s all there, it’s just that the series encompasses a lot of other elements too.
The reason Frieren is classified as shounen is because the manga is serialized in Weekly Shounen Sunday.
Today I learned the “shounen” label is useless for categorization lol. Sounds like “Netflix show” or “Amazon Prime show” lol
Six of one, half a dozen of the other. It’s like the fact that you cannot create a category that includes all “fish” that doesn’t also include humans (or, if you want to exclude humans by way of things like body plan or living on land, then you have to include cetaceans and start excluding things like lungfish).
To use your example, most people would probably say there are actually pretty clear expectations of tone & pacing between “a Netflix show” vs. “an HBO show” vs. “a syndicated television show (from before streaming services)” despite them all being the same on the surface.
I wouldn’t exactly say that. It’s a broad category, but it is a fairly well defined category. Frieren ticks pretty much every shounen box.
Yeah it’s definitely half battle shounen. But “battle shounen” is a genre, while “shounen” does not appear to be a genre. It’s just the groupings by age and gender (at least according to OP) or publication (according to you). But they’re only decided by the company that prints them, and determined before the actual fanbase is found, and don’t change according to reception.
Doesn’t seem very meaningful or useful for us fans. I always thought it was a description, but it just seems to be an origin. The genre names based on/inspired by it seem fine, like “battle shounen” because the fans have the final say if it is or isn’t. Even if the companies are always right, I’d rather not let them have the final say in our categorizations.
I always thought it was a description, but it just seems to be an origin
It’s both. It’s telling you “hey, if you’re a teenage boy you’re more likely to like this.” It’s also telling you that the writing is less likely to be difficult to read or understand. Once you’re familiar with what gets published for these demographics it tells you all sorts of things, really.
don’t change according to reception
I cannot remember the title off the top of my head, but I remember reading about at least one manga that changed the magazine it was originally serialised in to reach a different market segment.
Doesn’t seem very meaningful for us.
Disagree. I found it useful.
After watching a substantial amount of anime, I noticed - based on my AniList stats - that I enjoy seinen anime more than those of shounen and shoujo. (You can guess which demographic I am a part of.)
This made it easier for me to seek out anime that fit my taste - though it certainly is a self-reinforcing loop.
I’d still check shounen / shoujo anime out; they simply have a higher bar to clear.
I cannot remember the title off the top of my head, but I remember reading about at least one manga that changed the magazine it was originally serialised in to reach a different market segment.
Vinland Saga did this. There are others, but that’s the one that comes to mind.
The genre that I most often see people mix up is CGDCT. A lot of casuals that I have talked to don’t realize that the target audience for these series is almost always either boys or men. Instead, they kind of lump these series in with stuff like Precure, which is aimed at girls. To prove the point, AniList only has 13 series that are shoujo and CGDCT, and a grand total of 0 that are josei.
the target audience for these series is almost always either boys or men
It makes sense once you think about it. Straight dudes would rather look at girls, and vice versa.
It makes sense once you think about it. Straight dudes would rather look at girls, and vice versa.
I don’t think that is the appeal of CGDCT shows for the seinen audience. I think the appeal of CGDCT shows for the seinen demographic is the perceived innocence of girls. Not in the sense of “I’m a mindless, hormone-driven beast and want to ravage that innocent girl”, but in the sense of “I’m surrounded by constant anxiety, malice, and selfishness in my day-to-day life, and watching those innocent girls do whatever lets me forget this for 25 minutes”. Girls are generally perceived as nice and free of malice (before I had two of those myself, I thought the same), so that’s why there are no “cute boys doing cute things” shows. The general expectation for a show following boys would be for it to be more raunchy. Compare K-On! to Nijiiro Days, for example.
The appeal of CGDCT is not singular. Innocence is certainly a part of why girls are chosen. But also, it needs to be cute and to most only girls are cute. Neither is the innocence universally applied and there are often not so innocent girls included in the cast. For example Konata in Lucky Star says some really not innocent things yet she is a popular moe character.
In the end, dudes rather looking at girls than at guys is still an important factor I think. Somehow being straight makes you like girls more even if you are not romantically or sexually attracted to those girls.
I think a common misconception comes from people assuming most romance is shoujo or josei. But a lot of the most popular romance series today are almost all shounen or seinen: Dress-up Darling, Horimiya, Kaguya-sama, Komi-san, and You and I are Polar Opposites, just to name a few. There’s actually a pretty notable difference between shounen and shoujo romance if you compare them.
Even Bloom Into You is categorized as a shounen yuri. Those are not mutually exclusive tags!
K-On - Expected: Shoujo - Actual: Seinen
K-ON is certainly made for men but notably it is very popular among women. This is kinda rare for CGDCT. Maybe it has to do with the female director giving it a certain touch that resonates with women.
What type is A Certain Scientific Railgun?
I remember reading about Minky Momo in Patrick W. Galbraith’s book. I thought it was pretty funny:
"In a personal interview, producer Satō Toshihiko recalled his surprise at encountering “male” shōjo fans attracted to Magical Princess Minky Momo and its eponymous heroine:
‘The anime started in spring 1982 and these guys started showing up after about six months. It was completely unexpected, but this guy came to our studio asking for permission to make something for his fan club. I was shocked! He told me that he was the head of this fan club, which was made up of members between eighteen and thirty years of age. He told me that he was attracted to the character Minky Momo. He thought that she was cute. It is still hard for me to understand. Minky Momo is cute, yes, and she is someone that everyone likes. I expected this response from five-year-old girls and their mothers, who might be watching the anime with them, but not adult men.’"
Galbraith, Patrick W. Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan. Duke University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781478007012.
I thought shounen was a genre not a demographic lol. Never even heard of the other 3. I actually think this is less useful than genre.
I think Frieren is best suited for people 30+, and plenty of women love the show too. I don’t think it’d be unreasonable to suggest it’s not locked into a single demographic, even if the publisher didn’t expect it. Do we still count it if the publisher was wrong? Or maybe I’m just trying to turn this label into something actually useful lol.
This survey says Frieren is about 50/50 men and women (maybe 60/40 looking at the image of the graph), and around the 45 year old mark.
So, publishers know full well that it’s not just teenage boys reading shounen stories. There are actually more girls reading shounen than there are girls reading shoujo. For this reason a lot of stories that appeal to both end up being published as shounen, whereas stories that are more likely to only appeal to girls get published as shoujo. The same thing happens with seinen and josei; lots of adult women read seinen stuff, whereas it’s less common for adult men to read josei stuff. Seinen magazines have also been around for a lot longer than josei magazines, so sometimes if a mangaka wanted to publish something spicy in a shoujo magazine it would end up getting rejected and getting published in a seinen magazine instead if the publisher and the mangaka thought they could swing it.
This one I don’t have stats on, but I suspect there are more adults reading shounen/shoujo than there are kids/teens reading seinen/josei. The big shounen magazines are really big, so if the mangaka for a story like Frieren thinks their story appeals to everyone it makes sense to pitch it with the big shounen magazines first.
