Japanese Manga Anime Essay

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Anime/Manga Readings

Sh-nen and Shojo manga/anime

Sh-nen and shojo differ from each other mainly through the thematic stories they choose to tell. The narratives given in each type of anime or manga are indicative of the audience, where sh-nen gears toward boys, and shojo gears toward girls. The two have some similar aspects; for one, Osamu Tezuka had played a large part in the influence of both as popular manga culture. Not only has Tezuka penned the likes of sh-nen works such as Astro Boy and Kimba the White Lion, he has also been responsible for the shojo manga of Princess Knight. The manga culture owes this man much of its beginnings.

As far as narratives, go, however, sh-nen and shojo differ as easily as apples and oranges. Angela Drummond-Matthews states that the general narrative of boys' manga follows a formulaic turn of the hero's journey. This hero's journey typifies the themes of sh-nen manga and anime, which can then be split into their various genres of adventures (sports, war, action, horror, giant robots, etc.). Through such general themes, it is no surprise that the sh-nen manga industry is much more lucrative, being the largest segment of the manga publishing industry -- most of the themes are so broad that even the female audience has no problem enjoying the stories. Shojo differs in this narrative respect. Other than the fact that its stories are not as heroically epic as its sh-nen counterpart, shojo's historical themes also branched differently.

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At its creation in the 1960s, romance was just an added factor, not exactly the major be-all-end-all goal that is in most shojo manga of today. Kukhee Choo relates this observation, stating that contemporary popular stories find that shojo has gone about with moving the image of the female heroine back to a more domestic place: Choo cites Hana Yori Dango and Fruits Basket as examples of the females working as maids in a rich, male establishment.

2. Sharon Kinsella's "Cuties in Japan"

There is much to be said about the popularity of the kawaii ("cute") culture in Japan, which seems to encompass many different products in the nation. Kinsella's "Cuties in Japan" article illuminates the beginnings and reasoning of the emergence of the cute culture, as well as the capitalization of businesses and marketing strategies that cater to the popularity of what is considered cute to the youth of Japan. There are, of course, caveats to this culture; though with the youth's attempt to break away from traditional Japan, the faction against the cute culture will find that opposing it will do very little into eradicating it.

Kinsella has pinpointed the fact that Japanese culture has embraced and cultivated the idea that childhood is an idealized, "otherworldly" notion. In-so-doing, by the 1950s, Disney inspirations brought Japanese culture into a reminiscence….....

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