What sorts of Manga do you/have you/would you read?

Which is best?!


  • Total voters
    16

Dr.Strangefate

He Sees You When You're Sleeping. He Knows When Yo
Joined
Oct 24, 2004
Messages
10,075
Location
New York, NY
There are two dominant forms of Manga out there:

Shonen (or Shounen) - Shonen anime and manga is typically characterized by high-action, often humorous plots featuring male protagonists. (examples: Dragonball Z, Gundam Wing, Neon Genesis: Evangelion). There is a more adult variation called Seinen, but it often comes down to the same idea with more blood, gore, and sex.

Shojo (or Shoujo) - The genre is stereotyped as melodramatic stories of idyllic romance usually with a female protagonist, but often move out of the stereotype to cover all sorts of genres, most popularly sci-fi/fantasy with the Magical Girl series. These are usually the more emotional Manga series, with young characters dealing with their emotions while in High School or similar settings (This would be series like Sailor Moon, Fruits Basket, and Cardcaptor Sakura). Josei, like Seinen, is the more mature variation of this with a more realistic approach to Romance and Sex, but still from the female perspective.

SO WHICH OF THE TWO TICKLES YOU JUST RIGHT??

Also: what are your favorite series of each type?
 
Last edited:
Shonen, since I read mostly Bleach, Hellsing, and Naruto. I guess Battle Royal too. Out of those Bleach and Naruto are my favorites.
 
Last edited:
I generally like both.

Interestingly, my favorite animanga (I know we're talking about manga, but bear with me here) franchise, Fullmetal Alchemist (JP-name: Hagane no Renkinjutsushi) isn't very shounen or shoujo.

For one thing, shounen usually features a lot of growth from the character --- they usually start out on a 'low competence' or at least 'high idiocy' (usually a combination of both, as best exemplified by Naruto Uzumaki in Naruto) and the narrative is essentially predicated on improving their skills or earning respect (i.e. Great Teacher Onizuka, Slam Dunk's Hanamichi Sakuragi).

Fullmetal Alchemist doesn't give a damn about that. While they do study to 'become better', most of that takes the form of puzzling out a mystery in the form of the Philosopher's Stone. Other than that, they pretty much start out at insane power levels --- Edward is a natural supergenius and Alphonse is rather artistic. So it's anti-shounen (and I mean anti in the anti-hero sense, rather than anti as a repudiation of shounen values).

On the other hand, shoujo places fundamental emphasis on character relationships --- Fruits Basket's Sohma clan, the interactions of the various bishounen in Ouran High School Host Club. A lot of people would take the anti-shounen properties as a sign that Fullmetal Alchemist should be designated as shoujo.

However, while the Elric brothers do find themselves engaged in complex relationships with people (a strained sense of fealty to the military, Edward's antipathy towards his father) they place their relationships secondary to their goals. They burn down their hometown ties as a purposeful declaration that there is 'no going back', they maintain a utilitarian relationship with their military brothers and sisters and Edward treats his potential love interests (Rose and Winry) rather dismissively.

Fullmetal Alchemist is antishoujo in the sense that while relationships do exist, Edward and Alphonse regard them as distraction at best. The only real sustained friendship that exists is the one they've forged with each other as brothers, as alchemical peers, and most importantly the promises they've made to each other --- Edward's guilt-driven desire to return things to the way they were and Alphonse's loyalty-bound dedication to follow his brother on whatever road he takes to accomplish that goal.

This anti-shoujo property is best explored in the movie Conqueror of Shamballa, but I'd have to get into spoilers to talk about that.
 
Considering my extensive pull list for American comics, as well as my interest in other non-comics reading material (interpret as you please), I'm too cheap for manga. As a result, I usually read whatever my girlfriend buys.

And usually, that's stuff that doesn't neatly fit into the "shounen/shoujo" binary. For example, I love Cromartie High School with its absurdist, quasi-Adult Swim humor, with an all-male cast. In addition to the 'voice of reason' protagonist (who is rather calmly unhinged himself), there's a guy who is meant to resemble Freddie Mercury, and a rich would-be warlord, and a Kingpin wanna-be (who may or may not be pattered after Wilson Fisk, no really!). Oh, and there's a robot and a gorilla, too.

Now, on the surface, the circumstances -- a high school of 'troubled' guys -- would be the ideal setting for testosterone-feulled aggression sublimated into yaoi boys' love. But that's NOT the case here. And frankly, the mangaka (whose name escapes me, at the moment) doesn't even explore the possibility of this happening.

There's very minimal character development; the cast exist mostly as devices for carrying out sub-Seinfeld gags about the nuances of human behavior (like noticing a superior's nose-hairs, during a meeting... that kind of thing). And yet the whole series is compulsively readable. I can't recommend it enough.
 
Last edited:
Now, on the surface, the circumstances -- a high school of 'troubled' guys -- would be the ideal setting for testosterone-feulled aggression sublimated into yaoi boys' love. But that's NOT the case here. And frankly, the mangaka (whose name escapes me, at the moment) donesn't even explores the possibility of this happening.
You make it sound like 'testosterone-fuelled aggression sublimated into yaoi' is an unfortunate 'default' condition within male-oriented animanga.

However, I think the fundamental motivation for how all the comedy is written in Cromartie High School is that Eiji Nonaka writes all of the male bonding with metaphysical/existential self-awareness. It's not that he's trying to 'critique' and 'question' group machismo by calling it a bad thing, it's that he's genuinely curious and inquisitive about what makes manliness manly. And that I think is the essential genius of the series.

In fact, I think to 'question manliness' by using homoerotic desire is just so old hat and contrived that only a lesser writer would resort to it. Hell 'questioning manliness and group machismo' is the very reason why I'm fascinated with stuff like Wing Commander and Top Gun.

It's not that I care about the 'psychology of war' or all that goddamn Oliver Stone/Stanley Kubrick bullcrap about its horror and tragedy and OMG we're still human inside but they dehumanize us cry cry cry --- but because the sociology of male bonding is interesting on its own terms and I refuse to agree with anyone who insists otherwise.
 
You make it sound like 'testosterone-fuelled aggression sublimated into yaoi' is an unfortunate 'default' condition within male-oriented animanga.
Actually, no, you misunderstand me -- I was referring to it as an "an unfortunate 'default' condition" at male-centric manga aimed at females.

So yes, I think it's a bad -- or at least tired/over-done/uninteresting to me -- but I think it's a characteristic of ostensibly "girl-targeted" series like Ouran High School Host Club, more than it mainifests in, say, any implicit homosocial team dynamics in a Gianax-style giant robot drama or a Bioman-esque sentai property,
 
I read both but I voted Shonen as I re-read my dragon ball mangas most.
 
Actually, no, you misunderstand me -- I was referring to it as an "an unfortunate 'default' condition" at male-centric manga aimed at females.
That's exactly how I interpreted you. Except that I didn't specify the bold-faced part.

However, by 'unfortunate default condition', I meant that you make it sound like that it is more widespread than it actually is. I think part of the problem is that it gets too much academic exposure from Western scholars --- and to be fair, I can't blame them since it is ripe material to explore the cultural differential between American and Japanese media --- and as such, the male homoerotic aspects of girl manga APPEARS omnipresent to people who are generally looking at animanga culture at arm's length.

That said, your thoughts on 'manliness as serious theme within pop culture' would be appreciated.
 
I didnt really used to care about Manga, more about the Anime that was spawned from them. For example i ****in love Keroro Gunsou (Sgt Frog) and i figured that it was so great the Manga could never be as good but i was so wrong im up to vol 5 of the Manga and really loving it. I find it different with Cromartie High School though as i definitely like the anime more than the manga. The live action version of Cromartie was funny also but it felt way too long
 
Shonen.

I read One Piece, Naruto, Shaman King, Bleach, Dragonball, Death Note and Eyeshield 21. It's been awhile since I've read anything else. My girlfriend usually picks up Shojo, with the occasional Naruto thrown in.
 
I've only consistently read Dragon Ball (and Z) and Inu-Yasha, but a few volumes of Dragon Knights and Chobits too. Really, it's too expensive for what I get out of each volume, but I've really liked what I've read so far.
 
Shonen. I read a lot, but Yu Yu Hakusho and Death Note are my favs. Speaking of death note, there was a thread for that around here somewhere, could one of the mods please move it to the manga forum?
 
I didn't even know about these two types!

I want to get into some kickin' manga. Empowered has developed my taste for it.
 
Definitely Shoujo for me. Anything CLAMP will do it for me. I'm currently reading Venus Versus Virus, Alice 19th, Tsubasa, and Aria, I'm currently rereading RG Veda, Revolutionary Girl Utena, and XXXHolic.

I'm also a sucker for Shoujo-ai.
 
Woo!

I read Gravitation, but I'm not really sure manga-wise what Shounen-Ai is good and what is just basically smut with no heart... Although I guess that'd be more Yaoi than Shounen-Ai...

As a self-proclaimed Manga Expert, what's the difference between Yaoi and Shounen-Ai, or Yuri and Shoujo-Ai
 
As a self-proclaimed Manga Expert, what's the difference between Yaoi and Shounen-Ai, or Yuri and Shoujo-Ai
I guess the most concise way of answering that question without going into a lengthy essay-sized post is to say that the former (yaoi/yuri) places more emphasis on the erotic aspect (not necessarily hentai) of the relationship while the latter (shounen/shoujo-ai) is more about the emotional/relational aspect.

Manga storytelling is generally comfortable with describing the idea of homosocial relationships of a romantic nature, without fundamentally drawing attention to the erotic/sexual aspects that we often assume should be explored as a natural result of that relationship.

So with shounen-ai and shoujo-ai, we get to see two people who love each other, and the fact that they are of the same gender is merely incidental. The erotic aspect is something that is 'ignored' in the sense that it's not really important to the author or is regarded as not necessary to the development of themes being handled.
 
Ourchair beat me to it, both in time and eloquence.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top