The Truth About Shounen Vs Seinen (Remastered)

I had covered this video topic a few years ago when I was just starting the channel and I looked back at that video and I realized how horrendous it was so hopefully this time I can go about the topic properly Shonen versus sane and is something that you hear often when people talk about their preferences in manga and even though it's understandable the way that it's done is completely mistaken as they are defined and talked about as if they were genres of manga and not what they actually are demographics now there are five major demographics when it comes to manga there's children Shonen saying in Shojo and Jose what essentially these are are Target audiences that magazines are catered towards therefore the products or the series that are within these magazines are going to be directed at certain age groups however this has changed over time and in reality the more that I go into this you'll kind of see the overall point of the video sane and manga could be tracked back to the 1850s where it was a good amount of erotic stuff targeted towards young men and just men and then later on in the 1890s is where Shonen became more of a thing targeted towards a younger demographic now later on in the 1960s is where we would get Astro Boy the poster child of what's shown in manga was really like at the time given the god of manga himself Osama tezica however this whole sort of thing of Sean and insanin would become more defined within the modern era however again I noticed a large issue in the way that people talk about this as if it was a genre of manga and not Target demographics to explain it genres of mango would be things such as horror action romance comedy yowie Slice of Life historical sci-fi Yahweh Yahweh the more that you read the more that you realize that series Within These genres of manga can exist within any demographic and that's based off of what magazine that it's published in but why is it that I usually hear people talk about Shonen saying and Shojo Jose more specifically shown in insane and as genres and not demographics why did that happen could there be some sort of common denominator within the top selling manga of all time that I could observe in pinpoint as to a possibility as to this giant misconception I looked into it and I found something interesting out of all the series that have sold 20 million copies or more a hundred of them are shown in 50 of them are saying in six of them have been either both in Shonen and sainin a prominent example of that being JoJo's Bizarre Adventure five of them targeted towards children 21 of them being Shoujo only two of them being Jose one of them being both Shoujo and Jose and there's one Series in particular was a Shonen Shojo and Jose what an absolute court but nonetheless this is too large of a sample size for me to find an answer so I narrowed it down a bit series that have sold 50 million or more copies within that there have only been 55 series ever to do so five of them being other which could be a combination of the two Shojo Jose children eight of them or sainin and 42 of them are Shonen take it even further series to only sell 100 million or more copies there are only 18 series two of them being both which again JoJo two of them being sainin one of those being golgo 13 which has been going on since the 1960s and one of them being a children's series Doraemon and the other 13 out of 18 series that have sold over 100 million copies are all shown in in fact if you were to narrow it even more only six series have sold above 250 million copies four of those being shown in now there are a lot of variables that play into why Shonen has dominated the top selling manga of all time list one of those being that I think it has an extremely friendly and flexible Target demographic even though it's technically 13 to 18 as shown in does mean young boy it is one of those things where in reality that's not a hard limit someone who enjoys a Shonen at 18 it's most likely going to appeal to someone 20 21 22 23 and a Shonen that appeals to someone who is 12 or 13 it could still appeal to someone of much younger audiences series such as Dragon Ball should be a very great example of this it's much more flexible in that as well as on top of the fact that the majority of the most prominent anime adaptations which is the largest form of promotion for manga have all been for Shonen in fact the best anime adaptations usually go to Shonen series and that's just is what it is versus you take a good amount of saying in series and due to their graphic content it is extremely difficult to Market towards younger demographics or at least to the extent in the freedom that many shown in series have but what's with the giant misconception regarding these terms where does that come from I had a little bit of a theory beforehand that this simply had to do with the most prevalent and well-known series regarding these demographics and to a certain degree I was right when you look at the most popular shown in manga of all time in that list you will find one piece Dragon Ball Naruto slam dunk Demon Slayer and bleach go further down on the list and you'll get things such as Full Metal Alchemist and Tama fairy tale Hunter Hunter Attack on Titan Etc et cetera Etc as for sainin some of the most popular series of all time are Kingdom Vagabond and berserk now this is where I'm going with this given that these are the most popular series for their demographics many people are going to be introduced to these demographics of manga and see them for the most popular series therefore assume or lump in anything that is similar to these Series in the same demographic however again this is treating them like their genres of manga and not Target audiences let me give an example of how ridiculous this really is for example say you took a console like the PlayStation 4 the PlayStation 5 whatever and then you took a shoe for example like a Jordan or a Nike shoe or whatever the hell and both of them happen to have the same target range audience of 13 to 18. you wouldn't look at those two products and other than the fact that they share a similar target audience you would not lump these two things together however we've done that with manga and it's completely ridiculous oftentimes I've heard people say and I myself have said that they prefer sane and manga to Shonen manga that's not true or at least it's not entirely correct you might actually prefer action horror series to comedy action series or you might prefer Thriller mystery to Slice of Life comedy so the massive mistake that we have all made with this at some point or another is that we are taking these entire all-encompassing Target demographics that have over dozens of different genres within them and we compare it to another large all-encompassing Target demographic that has the same sort of thing it would be illogical to compare a horror series to a comedy series so then why would you lump the two together in form of comparison again I've made this mistake myself as we as people tend to see little and say and think much but in reality what we are doing is encompassing all of these different things and comparing it to something else completely and correctly again these things are simply Target audiences and therefore it can mean nothing if you want examples of this devil man in the 70s while though what could be seen is shown in insane and at the time is very different from now in days Devilman classifies as a Shonen because of the magazine it was in Attack on Titan one of the highest selling series of all time given the nature of the series a lot of people would look at that and because of the false assumptions of what Shonen insane and R assume that attack on Titan is a Saiyan when it is a Shonen one punch man which is very similar to some of the highest selling more prominent battle Shonen series due to it being a mix of comedy action and superheroes something like my Academia could be seen for it could be lumped in the same demographic as my hero Academia when that is not the case micro Academia is a Shonen one punch man is a sane and so it's completely mistaken to say you prefer Shonen or sane into Shonen it's completely mistaken in the fact that in reality you like the things that you've read the saying in manga that you've read more than the Shonen manga that you've read however you could read a saying in manga that lies within specific genres such as Slice of Life comedy and not really like it and then you could read a thriller horror that's in a Shonen magazine and like it more than a sainin so I think what's happened is people read a few series from either demographic and assume that's what the entire demographic represents but again that is completely mistaken there are also some wild cards such as things that are adapted from visual novels and Anime Originals those things don't pertain to either shown in or sanding because the source material was not manga fun fact if it's a visual novel there might be a high concentration of people from India that happen to be very interested in that and if they say consumer of media at any point in their life then uh it's it's a higher likelihood that they're from India shouts out to all the people who watch me from India but nonetheless I think it's become this thing that has been said often in this weird thing we do and not just in the anime Community but in communities in general where we're always trying to compare things instead of appreciating things for what they are instead of appreciating a horror series for being a horror series we want to look at a horror series a comedy series compare the two and then rank them for the sake of ranking and comparisons now I know I have my whole top whatever list and all that but in reality I've always said those are more glorified lists and recommendations more than anything in reality it's this whole thing where we're so obsessed with this being better than this that we've lost perspective on just enjoying whatever the hell we want and I think that in reality in the long term that leads to a lot of burnout and is extremely detrimental in the way that we look at different things in the way that we can enjoy them I heard a really good quote recently that says comparison is the thief of joy and so just be sure next time you go into a series don't ever look at it for the target audience and demographic it has and hell not even for the genre that it might pertain to you might read something new and like it hopefully this video might have cleared up any sort of misconceptions regarding this topic and if you're new to the channel consider liking as well as subscribing for some of your favorite anime and manga content this has been the masked man everyone has a blessed rest of the day and peace [Music]

Channel: The Masked Man

Views: 94,194

Keywords: manga, manga recommendations, berserk, one piece, shonen, seinen

Id: ah3zuwogORs

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 21 2023