Are there certain things that dictate what is and what is not?
I can't make sense of it.
Seinen:
>Berserk , Vinland Saga, Arakawa Under the Btidge (no seriously)
Shounen:
>Dan da Dan, Death Note, Naruto, Rahxephon
Shoujo:
>almost all Ghibli
Josei:
>who tf reads/watches Josei?

These demographic categories are integral in almost all of Japanese culture, not just anime. But I can't figure out a criteria for what dictates what is for one demo and not another

>>280835568 (OP)
it entirely comes down to what magazine publishes it

>>280835568 (OP)
The magazine in which the series is published

>>280835568 (OP)
You're a retard.

>>280835589
>>280835581
And those magazines are aimed at specific demographics and thus have criteria for what they will and won't accept. Which is why Urotsukidoji wasn't in Shounen Jump.
Lets not be niggers lads. What criteria do they use?

>>280835568 (OP)
Akanebanashi is a josei.

>>280835702
go ask them

>genre purports to be targeted at shounen
>all its fans are josei who ship the boys

>>280835589
>>280835581
That's not enough. You have general audience magazines (male specific magazines don't exist) that include series published under a female-oriented label.
It's best not to think too deeply about these things at all. Shonen and Shojo tend to include furigana for everything while Seinen and Josei do not but it's not a 100% rule.

>>280835568 (OP)
No it's entirely based on the stated target demographic of the magazine a manga is published in

>>280835568 (OP)
>>280835702
It's literally completely fucking arbitrary and the labels are completely fucking meaningless
Grow the fuck up and stop caring about this shit

>>280835702
>What criteria do they use?
"Some guy makes a decision." There is no plan or order. There's a slot for something to be published, and someone finds something to publish there.

>>280835568 (OP)
depends on the themes as opposed to the content, josei and seinen are less idealistic than shojo and shonen since the latter categories are intended to teach a lesson to the youth. The former adult genres have readers mature enough to deal with uncomfortable themes that are bad for children taking seriously.

Vinland Saga started off as shonen, but became Seinen when Thors grew up.

>>280835702
You'll see there's a lot of differences in content between magazines in all of these "demographics".
Something that flies in Shonen Ace may not work in Shonen Sunday. Even with a single publisher you'll see variations beyond the publishing date.
The editors decide on these things and their criteria aren't well known. And notably they can change over time. As a specific example, in 2022 Winvurga had to move from Champion RED, which itself identified as a "Seinen" magazine since 2011, to Young Champion Retsu, another age-unrestricted magazine by the same publisher, because the author wasn't willing to further censor his work.

>>280836372
So japan is okay with kids seeing gore? How does their age rating system work?

>>280835568 (OP)
Sanrio thread?

>>280835568 (OP)
The magazine that publishes it. Think of it how like Nickelodeon is shonen, and comedy central is seinen.

>>280836725
That's sounds based. Just dont post the cringe feminist one.

>>280835568 (OP)
Can you fix the issue with friendship - shounen
Can you fix the issue with murder - seinen
Can you fix the issue with love - shojo

>>280836771
Wrong.
Death Note is Shounen.

>>280836765
Feminist?

>>280835568 (OP)
The target demographic.
A kid would probably find Vagabond boring.
A little girl would normally find DBZ boring.
A grown man would find shoujo lame.
A grown woman... I don't even know what josei is.

However new gen shonen authors are intentionally blurring the lines, so a young girl could read Jujutsu Kaisen or DandanDan for the fanservice or to ship the characters.
Some romcoms have an obviously shoujo setup like My Dress Up Darling but a young man can read it and not be disgusted by love triangles and other lame shoujo tropes.
Vinland saga is sort of built for you to transition from shonen to seinen together with the MC.

>TL;DR "who will buy this manga"

>>280836971
No not Kuromi. Kuromi is theedgy 12-14 phase every girl has.
No the feminost one is the lame af red panda

>>280837015
What are the criteria of Japan's age rating system? That may have the answwer.

>>280835702
no
also most series shouldn't be considered to have a demographic "tag" like this at all because they were published somewhere that doesn't worry about it. e.g. Ousama Ranking doesn't have a demographic and isn't seinen or shonen, because it's from a web comic site that doesn't work that way.

>>280837015
>A grown woman... I don't even know what josei is.

Going by the Ooku threads, women love alternate historical fiction.

>>280836372
I'm sure Cooking Papa, Futari Ecchi, and What Did You Eat Yesterday are sad cynical tough lesson stories

>>280836709
Yeah. In the same way a lot of YA novels/accessible literarature is more gruesome/gory than their film/tv counterparts.

It wasn't always that way. Parents in Japan used to boycott Go Nagai's stuff because he pushed the envolope, but he prevailed and we ended up with a generation putting salacious material in their work in material aimed at teens. A lot of teens aren't smol beans, they want edgier content.

The gore/violence for shonen is fantastical and is done to push a message. (showing how evil a villain is, showing how powerful a hero is to make justice prevail, etc)

Whereas the gore/violence from a seinen would be more grounded and morally questionable. In Berserk, Guts got away with killing a nice child for political gain and he shrugs it off. That wouldn't fly in a shonen.

>>280837041
There's not a big rating system for manga. It's either R-18 or not and that's a voluntary declaration, you could sell a completely harmless story as R-18 if you wanted.
There are laws that say certain content can't be published outside of R-18 labelled media but the list is fairly short, namely detailed genitals and advertisement of blood-related incest. Even a lot of pornographic manga are not R-18.

>>280837119
Hellsing has a literal city of gore. Not realy screaming "thematic nuance"

>>280835568 (OP)
You are trying to understand the rules they use to choose what to publish, but these all come from each private publisher. There is no government or private entity administering the will of the companies. They want to specialize to a certain demographic, so their decisions are arbitrary to what their private goal is.

>>280837165
Shit that little list sounds super helpful. I can use it as a "soft criteria"
Link or post plz?

>>280837251
So Japan does not have an age rating board like Australia?

>>280837213
done to show how nazis are horrible. schindlers list the same way

>>280836771
>Can you fix the issue with love
That's also a shounen thing.

>>280837253
For the actual laws?
https://www.cfa.go.jp/policies/youth-kankyou/hikouhigai-research/ordinance
The Tokyo ones are the most relevant. The incest amendment came in 2010.

>>280837041
18+ and no rating, decided by amount of sex and gore shown.
But I guess we can look beyond the obvious explicit content alerts and look to the main tropes and themes which is what we usually talk about and try to draw an example.
Shonen is about good guys fighting evil, and about their personal development and coming to age. Re;zero is shonen, even if very violent.
Eva is not shonen.
Seinen is about ideals, philosophy, ethics, psychology, there may be fighting or not but it's not the main theme.
AoT is seinen, but it tries to make space for romance tropes so it has more female fans.
The first part of Vinland Saga is not seinen until the king's assassination.
Shoujo is a love story, played straight, through the lense of the female main character. A romcom isn't pure shoujo but it can have shoujo elements. Shoujo usually doesn't have explicit content and the main character's morality isn't usually questioned by the narrative.
A Sign of Affection is shoujo. Kaguya: Love is War is not shoujo.
Josei from what I know is the same but realistic, but the difference isn't so apparent to me.
So, Paradise Kiss is josei because it's a shoujo, BUT the characters have real life relationship issues such as incompatible lifestyles, ideals, more disappointment etc.
But Perfect Blue is not a josei, because it's not about love, even if it explores the themes of women's identity.

>>280837277
They have Eirin for films and CERO for video games, but I don't think there's a specific board for manga.

>>280837119
>Parents in Japan used to boycott Go Nagai's stuff because he pushed the envolope
He literally had a chapter in his first manga trying to push real CP and hidden camera footage of school girls as a hip new craze. It was low-brow toilet humor dreck in general compared to his later works, so the pushback against it really was no wonder.

>>280835568 (OP)
seinen is the biggest psyop. some guy be like I'm a fan of seinen and you ask him to name 'em, it's always the same 5 titles. 5. TITLES.
>Vinland Saga, Berserk, Claymore, *starts listing shonen*
You aren't. You're a fan of those 5 titles.
They never read anything else from this magazine and don't list Arakawa Under the Bridge either because it would ruin some narrative in their heads.

>>280837494
I don't blame them, they're boring.
Berserk is super fun even if you don't care about the deeper themes.
Stuff like Oyasumi Punpun and The Flowers of Evil is cock and ball torture and never goes anywhere.

>>280837440
And mind that these are independent self-regulation organizations, not government agencies.

>>280837305
The gore was made by Alucard....the Anglican good guy...

>>280837329
>the incest amendment
Oh Japan

>>280835568 (OP)
The publication
That's it

>>280837571
It included some other parts but incest was the big deal with profound changes to the industry.

>>280837086
Ooku is one of those cases that show how little demographics mean. It ran in Melody (shojo manga magazine according to Hakusensha[1]) but they published the volumes under the Jet Comics and later Young Animal Comics labels.

[1]https://www.hakusensha.co.jp/magazine/

>>280837351
Any true standard would be universally applicable.
But what you outlined would put
Kill Bill as a Shounen

>>280837493
>push real CP and hidden camera footage of school girls as a hip new craze.

I beg your pardon?

>>280837776
I agree, it's a conventional standard.
But if Kill Bill was about philosophy, ethics or something like that I was too busy looking at the cool sword fights to catch any of it desu.

>>280837776
He's completely talking out of his ass.
Eva aired Wednesday at 6pm and the comicalization ran in the aptly named Shonen Ace.

>>280837901
It's a fairly normal mecha show until it isn't.

labelfags are so obnoxious

>>280837277
If you look at eromanga you'll see that there's no fixed standard on R-18 labels. Each publisher has their own and independent releases (doujin) are completely up to the artist.
Anything goes as long as it states it's only for adults/people over 18. Official labeling would state the name of the issuing organization.

>>280837537
>Oyasumi Punpun and The Flowers of Evil
Extremely great series

Labeling demographics is stupid, there aren't definitions set in stone. For example, CLAMP's X was published in a shoujo mag and was full of extreme violence and themes unusual of the kind, and then you have the barrage of slice of life and moe manga published on seinen mags.

>>280837776
Almost no standards are universal.

>>280837351
Limiting shojo and josei to just "romance stories" makes the definition very narrow. Rayearth has romantic elements but it's very much an adventure story, and girls media is home to a lot of drama, historical and mystery series too (including the weirdly popular don't call it mystery)

>>280837494
Hey wait a minute, you didn't list five titles either.

>>280841316
Most people in this thread have no clue what josei encompasses and never read a josei magazine in their life.
You'd think josei is a small niche but it's a bigger group than shonen.

>>280835702
The criteria used are
- the author submitted his work to a magazine with that label
- their work got accepted because it fit a niche that was open or a direction the editor in chief wanted to give the magazine at the time.
Many magazines try to go for a diversity of content that's why the jump is not just battle manga but has gag manga, coming of age stories and romcoms, while Banana Fish is technically shojo despite being a gang war manga.

>>280844051
Don't call it a label. Jump Comics and Flower Comics are labels.

>>280844502
I'm esl so I do whatever I want and you will accept it.

>>280839977
Its actually extremely important.
Why?
Because it is made with its target audience in mind and thus caters to that audience. This is why Japanese culture has been so insulated against feminist horsepiss.
The West fell for the fallacy of "le universal appeal/general auduence", so any time anything catered to men feminists had an "in".
>this alienates women! Is this not meant to be for everyone!?
But in Japan, een going back to the Nihongi, there is a deeply held belief of "this is a space formen, this i a space for women. Men and women can visit each other's spaces but know that they are a guest in them."

Maid cafes, fanservice in games, ryuko's sexy little outfit; these are total nontroversies in Japan because all the women know
"Welp, it wasn't made for me.i have no right yotell men how to run their spaces."

I wanted to know the demo criteria they use so I could synthesize a standard that I could then apply to western media.
Why?
People would stop kvetching abouttCulture War shit if they knew fromthe outset what is and is not made for them.

(It is 4am i am not proofreadimg gor typos,)

>>280846623
>Welp, it wasn't made for me.i have no right yotell men how to run their spaces
Women enjoy those things as well.

>>280847789
Depends on how much Kool Aid they drank.