week 5

. What is the ‘shōjo’ and how does it often function in anime?

Shojo in Japanese means a young woman or girl, in the context of manga and anime, shoujo describes a genre, most stories feature a female protagonist and plot that is based heavily in romance. Most shojo anime and manga are based in highschools and feature a slice-of-life based story, and have drama stemming from the romance. “Shoujo anime will typically feature romance as part of the main storyline. There are an endless number of shoujo anime and manga on the market revolving around high school romances.” (Angle, 2018).So the intended audience would be teenage girls. As both settings and plot are similar to what young women are experiencing through high school. There are several sub-genres of Shojo, there is the Mahou- shojo, which features a girl who is able to transform using either magic or an alien power, to defeat monsters plaguing their area, the most popular example of this genre would be Sailor Moon, which has since become a classic, inspiring many similar stories.

 Another sub-genre would be the “reverse-harem” genre, in these stories a female main character is surrounded by handsome boys who all want to go out with her, similar to the Shonen “harem” genre. Much like every other anime show, each episode is roughly 24 minutes long and follows a basic episodic approach to TV shows. Episodes usually begin by resolving what the cliffhanger was in the previous episode, and develops the characters and their relationships, and ends with an open-ended cliffhanger, forcing the viewer to want more of the show. Shojo anime functions like regular anime but the only difference is that its intended audience is girls

Comparing Shojo to its more popular opposite, shonen anime and manga. Shounen means “boy” in Japanese, and in the context of anime and manga, it is a more widely known and more accepted genre. Shonen stories usually have a male protagonist, and unlike the shojo genre, stories in the shonen genre vary wildly, with completely different stories depending on what subgenre is watched. An example would be the show, “Konosuba”, where the main character is reincarnated into another world, which is called the “Isekai” subgenre, this particular show is mainly comedy, with a mixture of visual and slapstick type comedy used, but if you look at another show like, “Tate no Yuusha no Nariagari”, it has the same premise of reincarnation, but takes on a much darker tone overall, with issues like; rape allegations, and the class system being tackled. 

Shojo anime is the less popular of the two, and so it has less variety in its series, this may discourage new watchers, particularly male watchers, as the stories rely heavily upon the romance aspect. But Shojo is important and necessary in pop culture, especially now that the internet has connected the world close together, many new viewers are able to access these shows. Also Shojo provides a different option for viewers, while shonen anime becomes similar to each other, as they try to copy the success of previous stories that have succeeded, shojo could become an alternate source for watching.

References

Napier, S. (2005). Why anime? In Anime: from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle (pp.3-34). Hampshire: Palgrave/ Macmillan.

Angle, J (2018, May 28). What is Shoujo [Definition, Meaning]. from https://honeysanime.com/what-is-shoujo-definition-meaning/