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Shojo: Anime For Girls

One of the biggest successes on television and DVD over the last few years has been the rise of anime, or Japanese animation. From the genre-defining classic Akira to the latest Sailor Moon tales, this form of television originated from comic books, yet has found its latest and arguably biggest success on the small screen in the West. Yet despite a penchance for robot gunsuits and psychotic megalomaniacs giving off the idea that anime is a decidedly male genre, there are a host of more female-friendly anime that proves otherwise.

With a younger and female-oriented demographic in mind, shojo (or shojou as it’s occasionally called) anime is finding a large audience for whom romance and love stand head and shoulders above robotic destruction. Such is the popularity of this newer anime that the DVD’s can make a perfect gift for those female relatives or friends of yours that wouldn’t normally spare anime a single minute of their time. Some of the most popular are:

Fruits Basket

Telling the story of Tohru Honda, this series has been a runaway success in America and is the tale of the orphaned heroine’s adventures with a family that’s been cursed. Depicting the rather unfortunate ways that the members of this family change into animals of the Chinese zodiac whenever they’re hugged by a member of the opposing sex, it has strong story lines and extremely funny situations for its extremely likeable characters.

Fushigi Yuugi

Often known by its English name “The Mysterious Play”, this is the story of a girl called Miaka who finds herself in ancient China due to a special portal in a book that she is reading. The inhabitants of this ancient world she finds herself in declare her a mighty Priestess, and tell her that her destiny is to invoke a god, by collecting the Celestial Warriors of the time, thus saving the world. However, she keeps getting transported back to her own time, and has to combat that predicament as well as the ancient one.

Angel Sanctuary

A more mature anime, this depicts the tale of an angel who is more rebel than innocent, who is reincarnated into the body of a young boy, Setsuna Modo. A tale of the fight between good and evil for the boy’s soul, it’s a dark and foreboding story.

Princess Tutu

A mixture of fable and surrealistic fantasy, this much-loved anime tells the story of Ahiru, a young ballet dancer who is smitten by the school’s lead male dancer, Mytho. However, there’s a slight problem – Ahiru is a magical duck with superhero powers! With a touching storyline and a warm feel, this is a definite favourite of shojo anime.

Here Is Greenwood

Set in a more realistic world of a boarding school, Here Is Greenwood is the story of a doomed love affair, as the hero Kazuya Hasukawa falls in love, only to see the unrequited object of his desire marry Kazuya’s brother. What follows is the story of Kazuya’s adventures at the school, which include some crazy characters, as well as his scheming brother being the head of the infirmary, and it makes for an enjoyably madcap story.

The army of Japanese comics (known better as manga) fans grows daily among both men and women. Unlike American comics mostly targeting men, manga has a lot of sub-genres with some addressing exclusively women of various ages.

A manga is usually created by one (often with assistants) drawing a comics and writing texts. However there’s also group activity like the Clamp band, still a normal team is 3-4 people at most. Professional manga is next to amateur manga – doujinshi (dojinshi). The following is mostly about professional manga.

A popular genre is shojo (shoujo) manga literally meaning a young girl. So it targets women audience aged 10 to 18. Shojo manga was first created primarily by men but then many female writers have sprung since about 1969.

Shojo manga is multi-genre and -topic including historical drama and science fiction. It often describes romance and emotions pertaining specifically to girls.

Many publishing houses specialize in this type of manga – Shueish with Ribon monthly magazine, Kodansha with Nakayoshi magazine and others. Most series were first printed in such magazines and then serialized.
* Hot Gimmick by Miki Aihara
* Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya
* Peach Girl: Change of Heart by Miwa Ueda
* Hana-Kimi: For You in Full Blossom by Hisaya Nakajo
* Love Hina by Ken Akamatsu, Anita Sengupta
* Kare First Love by Kaho Miyasaka
* Doubt by Kaneyoshi Izumi
* Happy Hustle High by Rie Takada
* The Wallflower by Tomoko Hayakawa
* Beauty is the Beast by Tomo Matsumoto

A sub-genre of Japanese fantasy anime and manga called magical girls (maho shojo) tells about girls with superhuman abilities forced to fight evil and protect the Earth. Stories with magic and a transformation like Full Moon wo Sagashite often feature girls with a secret identity. Magical girls known in Japan as majokko (witch girl) generally don’t refer to modern magical girl anime first of which was Sally, the Witch in 1966. This genre counts hundreds of stories. Here’re just some except the ones mentioned before:
* Alice 19th by Yuu Watase
* Cardcaptor Sakura by Clamp
* Gakuen Alice by Tachibana Higuchi
* I-O-N by Arina Tanemura
* My-HiME by Hajime Yatate, Noboru Kimura
* Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi

Josei manga (ladies – ladies’ comics) is created mostly by women targeting late teenage and adult female audiences. Josei (seinen for male) means simply female and serves to move away from the primitive image of ladies’ comics.

The stories cover everyday life of Japanese women, sometimes at high school. Their style is a realistic version of shojo manga and tends to be a continuity of female comics.

Unlike idealistic shojo manga, josei comics portray realistic romance with more explicit and mature storytelling like Honey and Clover. Below are some series of popular manga:
* Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms by Fumiyo Kouno
* Walking Butterfly by Chihiro Tamaki
* Bride of the Water God by Mi-Kyung Yun
* Suppli by Mari Okazaki
* The Other Side of the Mirror by Jo Chen
* With The Light by Keiko Tobe
* Inubaka: Crazy For Dogs by Yukiya Sakuragi
* Presents by Kanako Inuki
* IC in a Sunflower by Mitsukazu Mihara

Yaoi is fictional media on gay relationships but by and for females. Yaoi is abbreviated from Yama nashi, ochi nashi, imi nashi (neither climax, nor sense, nor denouement). Originally a pejorative fan term, now it has an extended and almost scientific meaning.

Known in Japan as boys’ love (BL or boizu rabu), yaoi includes parodies, original works, commercial and dojinshi works. However BL features adult males, while young boys stories refer to the shotacon genre. Both original and translated yaoi is now available internationally.

Lesbian stories in manga, anime and related Japanese media are slanged as yuri (girls love or garuzu rabu). Emotions (sometimes called shojo-ai by western fans) and sex are its 2 focuses. Springing from female-targeted (shoujo, josei) works, yuri today is present in male-targeted (shonen, seinen) ones too.

Female manga in English gradually gets more printed. The Web has seen many amateur translator groups targeting only women and sites to read manga online.