So... is Flowers still Josei even though it has furi? Hmmm... the stories it has, feel like josei but that doesn't mean anything. >>;;

Last edited by VampireBanana at 11:35 am, Apr 30 2010

My personal opinion is that it's shoujo*. But it really could be either, so it's not like I'm going to make a fuss about the classification here.

*shoujo that hasn't been lobotomised, though.

Yup, you're right. It doesn't really matter anyways.

I made a fuss a while ago about how Champion RED series should be labeled "shounen" and not "seinen" (you can find my rant about it here), but unlike before, the magazine is now calling itself a seinen magazine. The content hasn't suddenly gotten a lot more extreme, so it's probably due to recent political pressure. In any case, I think it's safe to label Champion RED series as seinen from now on.

Here's my proof, which is the cover of the latest issue. The upper left corner says "High quality and high end seinen comic magazine!" in Japanese:


Last edited by gringe at 1:46 pm, Jan 20 2011

I'm confused, is Dengeki Daioh seinen or shounen magazine? The list show the manga it publish are shounen, but it listed as seinen on front page.

Shounen.

________________

Reviews of my Work:
You are kind of boring - Blackorion
Congratulations! Ur an asshole! - tokyo_homi
Your awesome!!! - Cherelle_Ashley
NightSwan also said that she wanted to peg me, once, but I'm not sure whether to take that as a compliment or a threat...

OtakuUSA - Has anyone mentioned it? It's an information type magasine on manga, anime, games, j-dramas, music, and other stuff in/from Japan. It touches many themes and genres.

________________
Live your life, don't just pass time in it.

There seems to be a serious confusion about Rakuen Le Paradis anthology magazine. I'm confused myself so I'm asking our dear scanlators to clarify the situation.

Back when the publication only started, the public must have assumed that since almost the entire series lineup was devoted to love and sensuality, the mag was aimed at female audience - clearly an adult audience (the manga there has little or none furigana at all), although Comipedia still lists Rakuen Le Paradis as shoujo. It's become a habit for some MU members to switch demographic tags back and forth though, because many of the mangaka contributing to that anthology were established seinen authors who never used to draw josei prior to that and apparently a number of fans couldn't put up with the tag they mainly associated with office romance. >.>

There hasn't been a single attempt to start a proper discussion about the magazine and its demographic despite all that.

More recently, a bunch of stories appearing in Rakuen Le Paradis turned out to be focused on same-sex relationship and, while the respective title entries were justifiably labeled as yuri, the actual demographic - which had been presumed to be josei since the 2009 - was getting continuously removed. Although yuri is a descriptive genre which doesn't indicate the magazine readership's gender.

It's absolutely possible that Rakuen Le Paradis is targeting men and not women as it has been presumed, or rather, that the mag is aimed at adults in general (the thread already lists lists few of examples of this).
For some reason, Le Paradis isn't mentioned on the publisher's website and I can't find any other trusted source of information about this magazine which would clearly define Rakuen Le Paradis as either seinen or josei.

Incorrect and inconsistent tagging doesn't really do MU database any better, so I'd kindly ask all members concerned with the case to try and reach a conclusion about this.

2.0 JOSEI addition/fix

So, I've decided to post this here to see if I can catch the attention of any admin, who is willing to help us, readers. (Whether it's holy or someone else..... Anyone will do.) This is a simple fix that would act as a mighty thank you.

I've sent in a correction form about this matter a few days ago. I'm waiting patiently here. I even made a posting about this over at the Bokura no Kiseki forum.

Edit: The "Aria" portion here has been removed as it clearly is shoujo.

Monthly Comic Zero-Sum and Zero-Sum Ward are both josei. Various online sources prove this. In Japanese bookstores, this proves true also. The exception is the manga magazine section. They usually bunch all boys' mangazines to one side and the girls to the other. No real separation between genres for both sides, so, you'll have the josei mingling with the shoujo in these cases.

Quoting the source links from the Bokura no Kiseki forum:


To any followers of Zero-Sum's manga, I tried my best. I think I almost exhausted all areas of where we can be heard without having to PM any admin. The remaining place would be the shoujo/josei section, but that would be an act of desperation. >,<; 分かりません。 。。　がんばっ て。。て？

Last edited by tgirl at 9:37 pm, Jul 15 2014

________________
- Looking for memory related manga/manhwa? -> click me
- Public webtoon list -> click me
Zero-Sum manga fix status (-super thank you, admins-) -> http://bit.ly/1mTntim

Is there any market at all for non-explicit male-targeted male/male romance-type series?

All BL magazines in the list are female-targeted, and the one entry under G-Comi has the adult tag for everything that was in it.

Would these series appear in general seinen / shounen magazines? Any particular tags that I would look for?

Last edited by gsilver at 8:02 am, May 27 2023

There is, but it's few and far between. Magazines like Reijin (https://www.mangaupdates.com/publishers.html?pubname=Reijin), which is on the list here, have more BL with plot lines and they have male authors as well. I don't think BL or Yaoi would be published in Shounen magazines often, but there might be some seinen pubs that do have a story or two. As the list creator said, the primary consumership for yaoi/BL is women so that is who these mags cater to.

As for the tag you should look for, the "Bara" tag is a start - it's not consistently tagged though and it's absolutely not guaranteed to not be smutty, mindless, or adult-oriented. ): Bara doesn't really imply the target is male but since the authors are gay men themselves, you might find the "gaze" is a little different & more male-oriented by virtue of the author being male.

Other Search mods might help as well. Under Advanced Search, filter out "Adult," "Hentai," and "Smut" while selecting for "Shounen Ai." The implication of Shounen Ai is that it's more 'subtle' than Yaoi, which promises more smut - again, I don't see this consistently applied but it's consistent enough. Sometimes everything is called Yaoi...I'd do a search with one first then the other since the Search operators are 'AND' rather than 'OR' - if you select them both, the search will try to pull only those that are marked Shounen Ai and Yaoi. I am not sure why these series (just did the search to look at the results) are tagged both but alas. You'll get better results looking for one or the other.

It's a shotgun game to find yaoi/BL that isn't...Yaoi/BL-y. Lol. The target audiences doesn't tell you much about the quality or maturity of the story as well. It's been a source of frustration for me as a josei reader (I'm beyond 'shoujo-logic' stories, but not all shoujos are immature & not all josei is mature, too...so *shrug* I'm not sure!) You could also start a thread in the "I'm Looking for..." topic and folks can give you recommendations that might give you some leads as to which authors/magazines tend to have stories that you may like. I will give some reccs as well if you tell me what you're looking for! 🙂

Last edited by flowinmyboat at 1:13 pm, May 27 2023

________________
http://i.imgur.com/LxhWm.jpg (will reformat this some day…)