Just curious. I've seen this mentioned in a couple posts, but I have no idea what it means. Any help would be appreciated.

"Manga" are Japanese comics. Using a separate term is useful because of different drawing styles and the differences in "visual vocabulary" (to clarify that -- American comics' "visual vocabulary" includes things like drawing "speed lines" to show someone moving quickly, and drawing birds flying around someone's head to show that they've been knocked out. The "visual vocabulary" of manga includes things like a single drop of sweat being shown to indicate that someone's nervous, or slashed lines across someone's nose and cheeks to indicate blushing).

"Shoujo" is Japanese for "Girl". Thus, "Shoujo Manga" are "Girl Comics" -- typically these involve young girls as the main characters, have heavy romance themes, etc. "Shonen" is Japanese for "Boy", which leads to "Shonen Manga" being the term for Japanese "Boy Comics" -- the kind which tend to have big robots, lots of fighting, etc.

At least, that's my understanding of things... anyone else, feel free to jump in with corrections/clarifications/expansions.

--Travis

As I have been reminded every so often, the line tends to blur when you get into the right kind of subject matter. Vision of Escaflowne is clearly shoujo even though giant robots play a very large part in the story, for example. Likewise there are shonen love stories -- Maison Ikkoku leaps to mind as an example.

It all depends on who you are marketing towards, and who your target audience is. Which of the gigiantic "phone book" manga you are serialized in makes a big difference. Anything in Makayosi, Ribon or Ciao is likely to be labeled shoujo regardless of what the storyline contains.

Then there are the stories that REALLY blur the line. Macross is a shonen giant robot story with heavy shoujo elements -- a cross between war story, romance and idol singer saga.

Chade wrote: Just curious. I've seen this mentioned in a couple posts, but I have no idea what it means. Any help would be appreciated.