Talk:Seinen/Archive 1

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Copied from VfD

quite hard to follow:

Seinen is a genre of anime or manga that is generally targetted at a 18 - 25 year old audience. Sometimes it is classified as shoujo or shonen, but it has distinct features sometimes focuses on serious matters in a light hearted manner. It isn't usually ecchi, but sometimes it can have a lot of fanservice.
A good example of seinen is Love Hina.

Obviously about a genre of anime or manga, but what makes the genre distinct is something I have a hard time following from the article. I'd just add a basic description myself, if I knew what seinen meant, but I don't; and Google yields tens of thousands of pages in German that I'm not going to sift through looking for something relevant -- IHCOYC 16:11, 22 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Well... it IS a distinct category of anime/manga. It just isn't a very well-written article. Shoujo is pretty much the exact polar opposite of Seinen, dunno what the author was even trying to communicate there. The description of what make a work "seinen" can describe every other type of anime, too - it is a non-description. Perhaps I'll take a stab at rewriting this weekend. Snarfies 8/22/03
That would fix it, of course. The way it's written, it seems that just about any anime or manga would fit, and I don't know enough about the particular genre to attempt. -- IHCOYC 16:53, 23 Aug 2003 (UTC)
wikipedia:pages needing attention if you think it's important. Martin 10:47, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

removing Love Hina

I'm removing Love Hina, since its clearly not Seinen (and would be distribing if it was given the age of the love interests) and was published in Shonen Magazine and is shounen according to Anime News Network. Oh! My Goddess is borderline, I didn't remove it since it was serialized in Afternoon manga, I'm not sure what the audience of that magazine is.

Why I re-added Love Hina

An anonymous poster removed Love Hina from the seinen-list.

While he may or may not be correct I think there are some issues here that need to be adressed. I will do this by presenting the arguments of aforementioned poster and adding my remarks.

  1. Love Hina, [is] clearly not Seinen (and would be distribing if it was given the age of the love interests)
    • I disagree with the word clearly. The fact that there is a discussion going on about this proves that this issue isn't all that clear.
    • His remark between the parens apparently is about target audience. Because of his vague use of language it is hard to say what he exactly means, but it appears to be "It would be disturbing if a male between 18 and 25 would be interested in a romance between a 20 year old boy and a 17 year old girl". I must disagree on this. Is it really more disturbing than a young boy reading Love Hina? I doubt it, especially considering some of the graphical content...
  2. was published in Shonen Magazine
    • This is actually a good point. As I understand it the terms shounen/seinen originally didn't identify genres but the age groups at which the manga were marketed. Love Hina was published in Shonen Magazine, so its targeted at young boys.
    • Or is it that simple? Part of the confusion seems to arise from the fact although it is marketed at young boys, there are readers who think that in genre it more resembles seinen manga.
    • It should also be noted that Koudansha (the publisher) seems to have a combined shounen/seinen award.
  3. is shounen according to Anime News Network
    • I don't know of course if our anonymous poster has read the manga, but it should be noted that the manga is a lot more, how should I put this, graphical than the anime. Hasn't it struck him as odd that in the anime everyone wears a body-covering towel when bathing?
  4. Oh! My Goddess (...) audience of that magazine is
    • This is a hint that indeed our dear guest just looks at the target audience for marketing purposes and nothing else.
  5. No e-mail / No account
    • Such a shame. If he would have left us an e-mail we would be able to drop him a line and ask for clarification.

I think one of our basic problems is that we haven't quite got our definitions straight.

Perhaps we should also try to make a clear split between actual genre and the intended target audience of the the magazine where the manga was originally covered. (Personally I think the genre tells you a lot more about a manga, but that is just my opinion.)

I will put Love Hina back on, mainly on the basis that the writer of the article for Love Hina probably knew what he was doing. Also I think it is a bit inappropriate to make Love Hina disappear from both lists, which is apparently just what happened.

A final recommendation: don't remove manga from the lists until we have got our definitions straight. If you really think something is misclassified, add it to the correct list and post a remark in the talk page. I hope there are some experts out there who can help -- I whish you all the wisdom, you'll need it!

Shinobu 14:30, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Animenewsnetwork is not only anime, there's also quite a lot of information in their manga encyclopedia, [this] is the entry on Love Hina. A nice thing about ANN is that they have age ratings along with genres (shonen or seinen, etc. (hm, they don't seem to be using the seinen genre actually)).

And yes, looking at the magazine it was published in is a good indicator of what it is, taking a look at what has been published in Shonen Magazine gives the idea that it is a shounen series.

I would consider Love Hina shounen, but I don't really care either way. The best would be to remove any references to it frmo both this page and the shounen page :)

Oh, and another way of telling shounen from seinen is comparing the amount of furigana, in shounen pretty much every kanji will have furigana, but in seinen kanji will often be without it (Bastard!! as an example). I'm afraid I have no untranslated version of Love Hina handy though so I can't make a judgement.

Philip Nilsson 15:25, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

(Note: following are actually reply's to the seperate points of the previous post.)

Anime News Network doesn't use seinen for e.g. Ghost in the Shell (serialized in Young Magazine). Maybe it's just me but I am tempted to think that ANN uses shounen for both shounen and seinen in their genre classification.

Love Hina was tagged with a 16+-sticker in Europe. Although in Japan fan-service may not be such an issue, it might still hint that the target age is nearer, say, 20 than 12.

Most things in Shonen Magazine (using the spelling from the cover) indeed leave little room for doubt. However, since we tend to use the terms shounen and seinen as genre indicators it might not be a good idea to base our classification entirely upon the magazine a manga first serialized in. On the other hand, since the words shounen and seinen weren't really genre indicators in the first place, maybe it's our fault for using them that way.

I don't really care either way too, in the sense that I have no personal favourite opinion. But I would kind of appreciate it if it ends up in the right place.

I have found a few scanned jpegs (hail the web), some with, some without furigana. Not enough jpegs with text intact to get all statistical about though. Most jpegs have the kanji and kana edited out entirely (for obvious reasons). Note: Negima (by the same author) is extensively "furiganafied" (word coined for the occasion): from a sample of 222 kanji, 80.4% had furigana (I love my calculator).

Summary:

Shounen

  • Shonen Magazine
  • Possibly the furigana usage (needs to be checked)
  • Japan Manga - see below

Seinen

  • Artwork / fan service (although maybe it's not the same for Japanese)
  • Storyline (although there is also a lot of action)

There is of course another possibility: Love Hina could be something in between.

Also we should ask ourselves what the purpose of the lists on the shounen / seinen pages really is. If it is to characterize the genres rather than trying to fit every manga in one of the lists it may be that it would be better not to list doubtful cases at all. On the other hand, if we want the lists to be exhaustive, we could put doubtful cases on both lists, possibly with a remark to that effect.

Last minute update: Japan Manga sells this book and classifies it shounen. They're Japanese, they should know it, right? And guess what... the cover for the Japanese album (re. my comment on the Love Hina discussion page) - must check whether it's Fair Use or not first though.

I'm kind of tired of searching the web. I'll check back in a few days time to see if (and in what way) the dust settles.

Shinobu 02:17, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I was able to find some untranslated blurbs in my scans... and guess what, some had furigana and some did not :p

--Philip Nilsson 14:56, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Kodansha themselves list it on their English page as "for boys", as opposed to "for teenage boys" or "for men": [1]. Can we stop this silly argument now? --130.232.85.15 13:41, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

As you can see from the signatures, this argument was already decided way back in spring. Thanks for the link though. Shinobu 10:17, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Love Hina was added again in October, though, with a reference to taking it up on the talk page. I removed it. --130.232.85.15 14:24, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

I guess we didn't notice. Thanks! Shinobu 09:21, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Genre versus Target audience

Merger of the discussions here and on Talk:Shonen. — Shinobu 14:10, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

"Shounen" and "shoujo" are generally not used to refer to content or artwork, but to target audiences. And which magazine something is published in is about as good an indicator as you can find of this. Removing Love Hina, since it is a pretty much a poster child of the shounen romantic comedy sub-genre, and has nothing to do here. --130.232.85.15 13:43, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Outside of Japan the terms have come to label certain genres. This is not entirely correct (as stated above by User:130.232.85.15).
Unfortunately the intended target audience of the publisher is not always a good indication of the actual genre of a manga. So while I think it is a good idea to be as "purist" as possible on the definitions of shounen and seinen it would hamper the location of a manga by genre.
The obvious solution is adding genre information in some other way, but as I'm not an expert in these matters, I'll leave that job to folks who know their way around. Bye, Shinobu 14:29, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

"Genre" would be "sci-fi", "fantasy", "romantic comedy", and so on. There is some correlation between whether a manga is shounen or shoujo, and its genre, but "shounen" and "shoujo" really aren't genres. If you want to sort manga by genre, you should create lists sorted by actual genre. Seinen, shounen, shoujo, and so on are terms used to label target audiences, nothing more, nothing less.

Do you not create more confusion than you solve if you start using words to mean different things than they usually mean? It is true that as an indicator of content, these terms aren't very good, but that is because they were never intended to be indicators of content. --130.232.85.15 11:53, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Hear hear!
@'Do you not create more confusion': Indeed. Before extensively browsing the web I was unaware of the normal Japanese usage of the words. It can be really confusing if words acquire a slightly different meaning to the foreign fan base - especially if one is unaware of that. That's for a large part where most of the confusion came from in the first place.
So I think we solved this issue. If I've got some free time on my hands maybe List of manga by genre might become a reality. Or should we perhaps use the cat-system for this? Shinobu 11:07, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Azumanga Daioh & Chobits

Recently these two were removed:

After the Love Hina discussion, and keeping in mind that the above two were serialized in Young Magazine and Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh respectively, I'd say these should be put back on. Shinobu 08:00, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

"Azumanga Daioh" and "Chobits" are obviously more for Teen audiences, not adult. So I don't believe that they fit in this article. Also, I don't believe that "Saint October" and "Rozen Maiden" should be included here either. I also noticed that "Lucky Star was recently added and I don't undertand how that fits at all. Please explain why those count. Zanders5k
Firstly, the definition of whether or not a series is seinen is categorized by the magazine in which it is serialized, and as Azumanga Daioh and Chobits are serialized in the seinen magazines Young Magazine and Monthly Comic Dengeki Daioh respectively, they are seinen. See MANGAOH CLUB for a list of seinen and other magazines. Please also see Wikipedia:Attribution, as Wikipedia prioritizes published material and sources, not opinions when it comes to content. ···巌流? · Talk to Ganryuu 04:23, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

list doubled?

Somehow the list of examples was doubled up in a previous edit. Have removed the duplicate.

Evangelion

What target audience was NGE aimed at? Was it Seinen? MatthewKarlsen 12:56, 21 December 2005 (GMT)

NGE is in the border of shounen and seinen i´d call it a "shounen+"--AlLoCuRa 03:09, 12 January 2006 (UTC)
Massive hint: the very first word in the opening song is shounen. --20:34, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

The Evangelion manga is serialized in Monthly Shounen Ace. The name suggest that it is a shounen mag, but in practice it's kind of borderline. --130.232.85.15 14:06, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I added some stuff

Gantz (manga and anime) Battle Royale (manga) Homunculus (manga) Jiraishin (manga) Kiseijuu (manga)

Homunculus and Jiraishin are clearly Seinen the rest are "shounen+" and "shounen++" --AlLoCuRa 15:14, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

s-CRY-ed

An anon added s-CRY-ed to the list. I'm not sure if this is considered seinen or not. --Kuroki Mio 2006 12:49, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

More additions

  • Crying Freeman (manga and anime), published in Big Comic Magazine.
  • Sanctuary (manga), published in Big Comic Superior Magazine.

Both penned by Ryoichi Ikegami, and published in English.

Please delete this article and change to "Seinen Manga"

This article is woefully off-topic. Perhaps you should be writing about Seinen no Hi (Coming of Age Day), or how Japanese society believes that adulthood begins from 1/20 on your 20th year? Maybe that would make sense... Furthermore, seinen manga is targeted from the 20th year - the year that one becomes a "seinen". Please stop taking Japanese words that appear in anime and making them their own catagory.struggle 13:46, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

If you want the article deleted, you should take it up at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion. However I'd suggest that what you're actually asking for is a rename and a rewrite, in which case you might like to join in at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Japan#Bot-powered redirect fixing? (perm) instead.
I agree that the current article is dire, and that 'seinen' is a term in Japanese widely used, and in English not established. I'd caution you on being prescriptive based on original usage though, you may like to compare fr:Porc and Pork.
I'd also take issue with you assertion over the meaning (where you seem to confuse 成年 with 青年), data on the JMPA website shows that many 青年 (or 男性向 as they put it) manga magazines have a small but significant teenage readership, ~15% for the best selling mag. --zippedmartin 15:36, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
I am suggesting just that, but I'd like the authors to deal with the transition, with seinen, shojo, and shonen. The other problem is that seinen (成年) is the more dominant usage. Seinen no Hi would be a good place to put this. struggle 15:47, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Dominant usage in Japanese - this is en.wikipedia, which is a somewhat crucial point. While I agree that 'seinen' isn't widely used in English, shōjo and shōnen are, and article titles in an English encyclopedia should obviously reflect English usage, not Japanese. Unless you're suggesting we move the article Japan to '日本' (or a romanisation of it). That said, feel free to Be bold and do a rewrite of this article how you think it should be, me and njoe did one each already, and everything can probably be used somewhere. --zippedmartin 16:09, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Initial D?

I noticed that Initial D appears on both the Shōnen and Seinen articles. I'm not that familiar with the series myself so I'm not sure where it should go, but I thought it would be worth pointing out. -- LostPhrack 12:05, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I vote Seinen... You can't drive until 20 in Japan (and $3000 worth of driving school) :<struggle 02:18, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
It's seinen as it ran in the seinen Young Magazine. --日本穣 18:43, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Tournament of the Gods

Is the anime Tournament of the Gods a Seinen anime?

(207.200.34.177 15:01, 11 April 2006 (UTC))

Why Anime?

"Why do anime titles even appear on this page when the term is used for *manga*?", I ask. Hopefully someone will have a good answer ready ("seinen" anime seems to be no more than Progressive anime, considering that Haibane Renmei appears on this page). ~Kentaru

Category beats list

Why is there even a list on this page? Can't people use categories for this sort of thing?

Please don't add anime and shonen/shojo to this list

Kino no tabi's an anime! please don't add it again. This is exactly why the progressive anime list shouldn't have been deleted: Now people keep adding anime into the seinen manga section - proving they don't understand what seinen is in the first place. Same thing for Perfect Blue.PB = prog. anime. PG =/= seinen. Got that? [....] for Wings of Honneamise and Paranoia Agent.

Dengeki Daioh which Please Teacher and Please Twins were serialized in is clearly a Shonen mangazine. Therefore, both onegai's = Shonen..... NOT seinen (!) Shakugan no Shana is in Dengeki Daioh... like the two PT's. The manga version of samurai Champloo was published in a Shonen magazine. Trinity Blood > monthly Asuka > ////Shojo////. Warriors of Tao> wiki category (don't know the prepublication mag but I assume the wiki cag is correct) > Shonen Video Girl Ai> Weekly ///shonen///// Jump therefore =/= seinen. I suggest wikiers reconsider if they want to recreate the Progressive Anime article. If the idiots who keep adding anime/shonen/shojo to the list can start using their brain that'd work fine too. 80.198.55.166 17:08, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

No problem

Dengeki Daioh, Dengeki Teioh, Dengeki Moeoh, Dengeki Maoh, Dengeki G's Magazine, Dengeki hp are seinen magazines.

Dengeki Comic Gao! is a shounen magazine.

If you don't want to add these titles as seinen, I'll just add them to the shounen list.

A question

Works fine with me. However if Onegai Teacher is seinen it should be added to this list. This depends entirely on one thing: I read on another language version of Dengeki Daioh's page that when D.Daioh became a monthly publication it shifted focus from seinen to shonen. However I'm not sure what year the change took place. If you knew when it happen we'd know where to list Onegai Teacher (I can't seem to find anything about this and figured you might know). 80.198.55.105 16:44, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

An answer

The magazine was listed as shounen for a little while but returned being listed as seinen magazine (well, it doesn't have any furigana in it).

Where can the info be found, well, you can check the Japanese Magazine Publishers Association site which lists manga magazines and their target audience according to what the publishers say.

The site is not a comprehensive site that lists all manga magazines, but it lists just a few, and what they list is according to what the publisher said to them. So if it says Dengeki Comic Gao! is shounen magazine then thats what the publisher told them.

look here at male oriented manga magazines: http://www.j-magazine.or.jp/data_001/main_b.html#003

As you can see Dengeki Comic Gao! is listed as shounen manga magazine.

And Dengeki Daioh is listed as dansei muke comic magazine, meaning: manga magazine for men.

The only magazine that MediaWorks publishes that is aimed at boys, is Dengeki Comic Gao!, all the other Dengeki magazines (Dengeki Daioh, Dengeki Teioh, Dengeki Moeoh, Dengeki Maoh, Dengeki hp, Dengeki G's Magazine, Dengeki Animaga) are aimed at young men.

There are still many japanese sites still listing Dengeki Daioh as shounen magazine, those sites are wrong.

Azumanga Daioh

Although is has been always difficult to classify this manga into an age audience genre, it's often said that it should be classified as seinen. I'm not satisfied with that answer, but anyway I think we should include it in the list considering that the Azumanga Daioh's Page on Wikipedia suggests so.

Aria????

If anyone has read aria it is DEFINATELY shojou, its about GONDOLAS for petes sake!!! I have removed it, if you have a valid reason why its seinen feel free to comment.

Here's a personal message for you from Matt, a guy who knows a bit about shoujo manga:

The notion that a work should be classified as shoujo, shounen, seinen, whatever, based on its content or style shows an ignorance of the way the manga industry works. Subaru, by Masahito Soda, is a ballet manga whose protagonist is a girl, yet no Japanese manga fan would mistake it for anything other seinen manga, since it was serialized in the magazine Big Comic Spirits, which is nothing if not a seinen manga magazine. The manga in question, Aria, is serialized in Blade, which is an otaku-oriented magazine read by otaku of both (all?) genders. Such magazines have increased in recent years, and quite simply cannot be categorized as shounen, shoujo, seinen, or josei. Individual works may have more female fans than male, but that does not make it a shoujo manga.

Personally I'd expect it to have a male-dominated readership, the girlies-of-lots-of-colours is bordering on h-game pick-n-mix. --zippedmartin 02:54, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

ARIA is a seinen manga

Comic Blade is a magazine for male otakus.

Call it a shounen or seinen manga, but thats the type of manga that this magazine serializes, a mixture of shounen and seinen manga.

Either put ARIA here (as seinen) or in the Shounen manga list, but it will be mentioned, since Comic Blade is a male oriented magazine.

Not even one manga that comes from this magazine is mentioned by any japanese site as shoujo manga, you'll find manga from this magazine mentioned as either shounen or seinen manga, but thats it.

If someone's up for the task...

the info in the list of seinen manga article should be transfered to the Seinen category and afterwards the article ought to be deleted. Then this article could link to the category instead. 87.51.114.252 11:45, 10 December 2006 (UTC)