What defines shounen Anime? (Shounen vs. Shoujo)

[give me food]

Shoujo Anime is easy to pick out. Frilly skirts. High-pitched voices. A ditzy yet gold-hearted femme main character with lame attack names. Also quite possibly stupid. May also include a shoujo senshi, magic wands, and sparkly objects. You know the type, yet you may not be able to get enough of 'em: Sailor Moon, Tokyo Mew Mew, Cardcaptor Sakura...

But what of Shonen? Yes, sure, One Piece has been labelled Shonen, but what calls it so, exactly? Would reversed roles apply? Low-pitched voices, shonen senshi?

How do you pick out shonen?

Do you like shoujo or shonen more, and what shonen/shoujo (that isn't mainstream) do you like?

Shounen means 'boy' unless I'm mistaken.

I guess I'd consider animé like Rurouni Kenshin or Tenchi Muyo, where there are a few guys but the main male character stands out very well for some reason, a shounen animé.

It's all about the audience target. @.@ I suppose some of them could be considered to be for both genders. *scratches head* You can uuusually tell the targeted gender because there are a ton of love interests for a single person. I.e. Shoujo (Sailormoon, Card Captor Sakura, Angelic Layer) and Shounen (Tenchi, Love Hina, Chobits etc).

Action ones are usually targeted towards guys, I suppose? *shrugs* @.@ Those are always the ones I like.

If there are sparks, it's shoujo. If there's rampant fire starting, it's shounen.

Originally posted by Cirvante:
If there are sparks, it's shoujo. If there's rampant fire starting, it's shounen.

Not necessarily. Love Hina and Tenchi Muyo have elements of both, but I would consider Tenchi Muyo to be shounen despite the larger amount of "affection" in it. It's hard to fit Love Hina into either category IMO.

[Dee Emm]

Tenchi Muyo and Ranma 1/2 could be considered, IMO, but that's only because the show, with a male main character, is still mostly females.

What do I consider a shounen anime? I guess Trigun and Lupin. oO Ass-kicking and comedy rolled into one.

Shounen anime, in my opinion, is anime where the characters punch, kick, fight, play dangerous games, save the world, make jokes not suitable for 3 year olds, and anything like that.

Shoujo anime involves love stories, deep-like-hell storylines, light-hearted fun, and the such.

But not all love stories are shoujo, oh no. >_>()

IT's only a rule if it has exceptions, Silvie [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[give me food]

Originally posted by SuperLuigi64:
Shounen means 'boy' unless I'm mistaken.

I know THAT, you twat. X/

There are way too many exceptions, though. @.@() Chobits, Tenchi, Love Hina, Ah My Goddess, Mahoromatic... HAREM ANIME! >_>

[PSYCHOKID909]

Uh I'm pritty mucht a novis in anime save for Akira, Princess mononokie La blue gril9shudder boy do I regret that) and Jungle what the rest of it's name is i've only seen dubs and i don't really know the difrrence between the two stylies your talking about. So could some one elaberate a bit more?

"Shoujo" means an anime directed towards girls and "shounen" towards boys.

Originally posted by Dee Emm:
Tenchi Muyo and Ranma 1/2 could be considered, IMO, but that's only because the show, with a male main character, is still mostly females.

Ranma 1/2 was generally made for guys to oogle at and girls to laugh about. It is quite amusing.

Hmm....I haven't seen any Ranma 1/2 because there are so many anime that I'd rather have over it, and not enough bling-blingage to go around.

...did I say you didn't know, Neo? It was for the benefit of those who DIDN'T know.

When it comes to the difference between Shounen and Shoujo I believe Dom put it best. This is from ********* just in case you're interested.

Okay, so a pet peeve of mine (inherited from Seiya, who you may remember from the Maburaho rant, and who is giving me tickets to this year's Big Game) came up in the forums today. See, someone was looking for some shoujo manga, which for those of you who are among the video game/tech population of our audience and not the anime/manga side of it, means "girl's comics". You know, comics with a young female audience in mind. Sailor Moon's pretty much the easiest example out there, though Card Captor Sakura can come close in terms of name recognition.
But see, something I've learned from slugging after Seiya at Anime Expo for a few years is... a disturbingly large amount of anime fans throw around the terms "shoujo" without knowing fact 1 about what they're talking about.

For example. Some people say "CLAMP is a bunch of female artists and they draw cute, therefore everything they do is shoujo". That'd be a big fat no. Look at the rant image. LOOK at it. Does that look like it was meant for a young, predominantly heterosexual female audience? Why, no. It's pretty obviously meant for a young, horny, predominantly heterosexual male audience. And yet people persist in bandying "shoujo" about to describe things, because it's not about sports, violence, or a persistent student's endless quest for sexual gratification.

That kind of assertion, much like many statements made without knowing anything at all about the subject, ticks me off. So this rant is going to be dedicated to teaching you the difference between what manga is meant for a female audience, and what is meant for a male audience.

This article (reposted with permission from the Cal Animage folks at UC Berkeley) is a good start. Quick, simple rules about how to tell the difference. Plot and theme have nothing to do with classifying things as shoujo or shounen--audience is everything.

For example. Love Hina is often described as "shoujo" because it's a romance series. Bah. It's shounen on many, many levels. One, the "one guy surrounded by girls who're all in love with him" convention is more often meant for a male audience than not. Conversely, the "one girl surrounded by prettyboys who fawn on her" convention tends to be meant for female audiences. Funny, that. Two, given how often those girls are drawn in nothing but towels, it's hard to see how it's purely meant for a heterosexual female audience. Three, it ran in Shounen Magazine. If that doesn't convince you, I don't know what will.

Anyway. Please, people. Before you call something "shoujo", make sure you know what you're talking about. Do your homework on Google. Hell, just e-mail me (probably via oop-ack, since I actually check that right now) or ask Seiya at Anime Expo about it if you're really curious.

But don't try and claim that Ah! My Goddess is meant for girls without expecting to get shot down hard by anyone with half an idea.

[ November 26, 2003, 07:46 PM: Message edited by: Katsuchiyo ]