If you like them it's fine to have a couple but people with walls of them where 90% of it is variants or characters you can't tell apart who pretend somehow they are more mature than people who build Gunpla is like...gross.
Remember, characters older fans find ~annoying- like Shippou in Inuyasha, Chibiusa/Chibimoon in Sailor Moon, Hitsugaya in BLEACH, and the Detective Boys in Detective Conan are audience surrogate characters. For the seven year olds watching. Power/freedom fantasies for the little kids.
(I know Hitsugaya isn't actually that young, but him looking like a little kid and having trouble being taken seriously, and the preoccupation with his height, and his ridiculous popularity in Japan aaaare because he's the little kid appeal character.)
The same parents also admitted to knowing NOTHING about anime which was part of why they wander in with that sort of “oh god you look like a nerd fucking help me where do I find this shit” attitude that you get from some parents in retail jobs, so it ain’t just anime nerd parents
rainafterdrought
: I'm well aware of the kid appeal character. Heck, I tend to be defending them most of the time. I just guess I didn't see Naruto as something a 4-year-old would watch, but that's on me.
Thank you for understanding their function and defending them. ;_; I guess I just got used to a lot of (English speaking) fans bashing them largely because they don't get that the show is not just for older viewers originally...
it IS weird to think of some VERY young kids liking it rather than Hamtaro, Pokemon, etc., but some kids like stuff for older kids or even adults, fff.
rainafterdrought
: This is hilarious because in America a lot of kids hate child audience surrogate characters in cartoons. It only really worked once with Scrappy Doo in the first season he was first introduced and in the Red Shirt Shaggy movies, but then quickly fell off when it became the focus and now everyone hates him.
I guess it kinda works with Disney cartoons like with Huey Dewey and Louie or Max and PJ in Goof Troop where the story is kinda about them, but like...yeah idk in other cases.
Also characters like Shippo to me seems more like another "cute mascot character" for the female audience if anything. Which Inuyasha already kinda leans more towards girls anyway.
Although I don't think it's quite the same either for anime when most of them are adapted from manga with usually one creator, who's probably not thinking too hard about demographics like that. That seems more of a corporate thing :va
A lot of them probably just want kid characters because it makes sense for kids to exist in their world at least somewhere. Whether or not irl kids actually latch on to them seems kind of more of a bug than a feature.
Jubilee is weird cause she filled a role that usually is for Shadow Kat but because she kinda aged out by the time the 90s cartoon happened they made a new girl, and then she kinda picked up in popularity and development just like Kitty did
I think X-Men gets a lot of leeway cause it was always a group of teenagers or a stand in for some other opressed peoples, it was designed to be relatable from the get go.
Also unless they're a key focus character and not just an evolved side character I think Shounen series have it less often than Shoujo, or else we'd have as much merch of Konohamaru as we do Chibiusa and Shippo
like, inuyasha ran in weekly shonen sunday, which is also the home magazine of mitsuru adachi, whose career is almost entirely based on "sports series but make it romance drama too"
and I don't see people automatically assuming that, say, nisekoi or blue box are "shojo" just because they're romances. or that fairy tail is shojo because it's got cute mascot characters
These ideas you've got are based on stereotypes, though. ^^;;; It's really not... BLEACH has a very beautiful art style that's rich on detail, the (male!) author loves fashion, but it's undeniably shounen too.
Also, Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun is also shounen. Shounen isn't about what genre it is, just that it is geared at a male demographic and runs in a magazine meant for it, regardless of the huge female periphery demographic.
Shoujo also are not all romances, even if the most common these days are school romances, there's also a lot of sci-fi/space operas, fantasies, historical dramas, etc., particularly in older works. There's also shoujo works aimed at much younger girls that are just comedies or slice-of-life or adventures.
Yeah. I like to call it "I Can’t Believe It's Not Shoujo." Of course, some of those series did get marketed to girls in the NA release anyway, like Pita-Ten.
but that's literally not what shonen means. shonen means it was published in a magazine aimed at adolescent boys. trying to give it a different definition results in stereotyping, like
rainafterdrought
said
tbh it's also weird to me that you'd say that when we're talking about rumiko takahashi, whose art style is "rumiko takahashi," and not, idk, someone whose art imitates rose of versailles or something
No see I KNOW THAT but then I look at something and if I don't know what it's published under I make the aesthetic judgement of "that's Shounen" "that's Shoujo" "i dunno what that is, somewhere in the middle"
....you have a fair point on the "Rumiko Takahashi looks like Rumiko Takahashi" thing, it really is just EARLY Inu Yasha that's got like...that certain kinda shading.
Ah, just an assumption based on the art style's fair, although not always accurate, since there's alwats artists taking inspiration from others and a lot of mangaka started off in shoujo before shounen back in the day, or were influenced by artists.
(Like, the ever-present beautiful boy/bishounen we see in anime/manga is heavily influenced by the kind of boys drawn by the likes of Takemiya Keiko, who based her Gilbert Coctaeu on Bjorn Andresen as Tadzio in A Death in Venice. Folks behaved very inappropriately around him and Bjorn hates that movie and how it overshadowed his life. )
There are look-alikes that pop up even in shounen and as I recall, the super manly famous manga/anime Ashita no Joe's author had shoujo influence, also because he started off writing for shoujo (because it was easier then/standards for it was lower).
(So, it's possible the shoujo-ness of Rumiko's earlier art is... because one of her idols was a man who drew shoujo before he drew shounen, fff. And he was friends with Hagio Moto, the other lady who was writing BL with prettyboys in the same era as Takemiya Keiko and who lived with her and a bunch of other female mangaka in the same apartment.)
TC
the thing is, you made a very broad assertion about kid-appeal and mascot characters in shonen vs. shojo without bothering to look up the facts about the series you were bringing up
Those would later have a huge falling out because their stories were similar, but Hagio Moto's work was seen as more mature/realistic, etc., and Takemiya was very jealous and Hagio Moto apparently had never experienced envy before, so she didn't empathize with her much.
BUT YEAH, the blending of art styles and cross-inspiration was because you had a lot of people starting in one and migrating to the other or continuously writing both (like Chiba, who continued to write both shoujo and shounen a while rather than abandon shoujo entirely to write solely shounen.)
and when jisu correctly pointed out that inuyasha is shonen, you again didn't bother to check the facts and instead claimed that takahashi basically doesn't count as shonen and is "gender neutral" instead
it comes off as very "oh but boys couldn't possibly be the target audience, there's romance and a female lead and no boy would ever want to read that!"
semi-sarcasmwhich granted, it is not nearly the same as Twilight, but the similarities were kinda hilariouscomparing it to twilight reeks of "haha female authors are all just dumb romance writers"
but that's literally not what shonen means. shonen means it was published in a magazine aimed at adolescent boys. trying to give it a different definition results in stereotyping, like rainafterdrought said
Folks behaved very inappropriately around him and Bjorn hates that movie and how it overshadowed his life.)This kid basically became a celebrity in Japan.
I think more like the same apartment complex? But yeah.it's less okay to keep responding with some justification to make it seem like you were never incorrect in the first place