Tue, 28 June 2011
As always, apologies for any and all mispronunciations of Japanese words. We promise it’s not out of disrespect. We are all on Twitter. Melinda is @mbeasi, David is @mangacur, Johanna is @johannadc, and I’m @edsizemore Melinda can be found at Manga Bookshelf David can be found at Manga Curmudgeon Johanna’s Timeline of Josei in the US David’s Josei Alphabet Wikipedia’s page on Josei Johanna’s Review of Erica Sakurazawa’s works The Manga Moveable Feast on Paradise Kiss The Manga Moveable Feast on Wild Adapter E-manga’s Harlequin Manga Store Mitsukazu Mihara’s manga on Amazon David’s Favorites: Bunny Drop Suppli Melinda’s Favorites: Paradise Kiss Johanna’s Favorites: Tramps Like Us Comments[6]
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- I was born and breed in places of the far east where shoujo manga is readily available within "an arm's reach". I guess I, as well as other grown-ups there, have had the luxury of being offered a vast collection of manga that was translated/ distributed/imported from Japan since decades ago! I, like many others out there, grew up from the 70-80's knowing many mangakas' names by heart, such as (just to name a few) Watanabe Taeko, Saitou Chiho, et. al, many of whose work would well be tagged as a "josei" these days.
I still read shoujo manga to days, but never in my mind that I would choose what to read (or "discriminate" what not to read) base on whether or not it was marked a josei/ shoujo, or whatever genre you may call it; personally speaking, it was more on a mangaka-basis that I would select a series... At the end of the days, to me at least, the so called "josei" is still a shoujo manga that is reflected by a more "mature" tone in its storyline that makes it more appealing to the more mature (not necessarily older!) female audiences.
I guess my point is (and i ponder), in this case, is it really necessary to "force tag" a story as josei as such, besides commercial/managerial/ editorial-related reasons if any? Should readers not be guided, thus to decide what to/ not to read based on the story of the series itself rather than purely base on its "branding" (i.e. genre)? In the meanwhile, I wonder if the overseas (i.e. not necessarily limited to US) manga publishing houses could have marketed their manga titles based on their artists/mangakas, instead of their "genre-branding" (e.g. josei). The way it is now, (I could be wrong here) it is as if saying: "hey older girls/ woman, looked up! We have these josei published which WE (the publishers) THINK is in your interest as they are best fitted in your demographics!"..... see what I mean?
By the way, I am not from the US myself, and I have no professional knowledge in the manga industry in general. But I do find your round-table discussions (and other posts in relevant blogs) very intriguing, especially for someone likes me who is rooted in a Far East culture. Your topics were ever so thought-provoking that has really triggered me to look at those shoujos again from a complete different angle, despite of my previous decadeS of shoujo-reading experiences!
.... Just want to say big thank you to the fantastic and a truly professional team here! : )
pS. Pardon for leaving a rather long comment here, which I hope does make some sense to someone! I have to admit english "essay-writing" is never my forte... (I am practicing though!) - I've been meaning to comment on here for a while, sorry Ed. I listen to each of these podcasts and absolutely love them. Thank you for making one about josei - I think it's a fascinating, under-appreciated and misrepresented genre. You've given me a few new series to try and hunt down too, so thanks.
And thanks both to Johanna for the timeline and to David for the alphabet. Both are really great resources for those who want to read more of this genre. - Aaron, thanks for that information.
Matt, Some people use the Japanese magazines to determine what genre a series is. I don't find that argument completely convincing. For example, Nana runs in a magazine that has both shoujo and josei. Other magazines have abandoned traditional demographics and run whatever they think is quality material.
Also, even magazines with very defined demographics like to run series outside those traditional categories. Chi's Sweet Home and Yotsuba&! both run in seinen magazines. I refuse to call them seinen and neither Vertical or Yen Press are marketing them as seinen but as all ages material (and rightly so).
So I let the characteristics of the series itself make the final decision. When in doubt, then I look to the demographics of the magazine. - How do you judge what a genre is, in terms of shounen, shoujo, josei and seinen? For me, I judge by what magazine a story was published in. Other standards are too loosely defined for me.
So, Nana was published in a shoujo magazine, so it is a shoujo. Likewise, Otoyomegatari is a seinen manga, Oooku is shoujo, and All My Darling Daughters is shoujo.
What are your standards for what makes a manga shounen, shoujo, seinen, or josei?
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