http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai/news/20070622p2g00m0dm024000c.html
It seems someone noticed the male fanbase for girl's/women's manga. There's a new manga mag dedicated to girl's manga that's easier for guys to buy. (I must confess expecting to experience some trepidation myself once Honey and Clover starts running in Shojo Beat. OTL)
>"We've done a few pictures guys like and added some gags to make the comics more in tune with guys' tastes. But we thought if made the whole thing exactly like a regular girls' manga, the guys wouldn't like it," Mita says. "Amazingly, a lot of male readers contacted us and said they want it more like a girls' manga. We're going to listen to them and make it more like a girls' manga from now on in."
It some interesting parallels with the recent Shonen Jump appeals to female readers. While SJ and CY both tried to make changes they thought the newfound audience would like, the new audience rejected them, prefering the content the way it was made for its original audience.
Does anyone know what are the stories featured in it, and if there's other content besides manga?
So I'm guessing the Shounen/Shoujo gap is collapsing? Sounds like good news.
But... Honey and Clover isn't really shoujo, it's josei.
I find a lot of josei to be quite enjoyable. But really, Fruits Basket is the one shoujo title I can honestly say I like.
It could just be a loss in information due to poor translation... normally we would expect the word "shoujo" to remain when talking about manga.
>>4
Correct, but in North America it's being printed in a shojo magazine with girly covers. For now, at least. I haven't heard of a book version yet. For real shojo manga, I do like Kare Kano and Someday's Dreamers, but I think I also lean more towards josei.
>It could just be a loss in information due to poor translation... normally we would expect the word "shoujo" to remain when talking about manga.
You would only expect that when talking within hardcore fan circles. This is a normal translation of a mainstream newspaper article. "Shoujo" does translate to "girl" after all.
> "Shoujo" does translate to "girl" after all.
Indeed it does. But what I was pointing out is that Honey and Clover is actually josei, yet that got translated to "girl" too. Which is maybe correct, when you consider that in the west, we call women girls as long as they're still within our acceptable age range to be boned. But whether it's correct or not, two words collapsing into one is a guaranteed way to create ambiguity.
Someday's Dreamers is nowhere near "real shoujo manga". It's seinen, and ran in Comic Dragon.