Josei manga
The category became stigmatized in the late 1980s as it came to be associated with pornographic manga, though it gained greater artistic legitimacy in the 1990s as it shifted to social issue-focused stories.
[8] This status quo began to shift in the late 1950s with the emergence of the concept of gekiga, which sought to use manga to tell serious and grounded stories aimed at adult audiences.
[8] Two magazines dedicated to women's gekiga were founded shortly thereafter: Funny (ファニー, Fanī) by Mushi Production in 1969, and Papillon (パピヨン, Papiyon) by Futabasha in 1972, though neither were commercially successful and both folded after several issues.
[2] Despite the commercial failure of women's gekiga, the 1970s nonetheless saw the significant development of shōjo manga through the efforts of artists in the Year 24 Group.
[9] Junya Yamamoto [ja], who as editor of Shōjo Comic published multiple works by the Year 24 Group, became the founding editor of the magazine Petit Flower in 1980, which targeted an older teen readership and published adult-focused works by Year 24 Group members Moto Hagio and Keiko Takemiya.
[10][11] Consequently, the readership of shōjo manga widened from its historical audience of children to incorporate teenagers and young adult women.
[12] Publishers sought to exploit this new market of mature shōjo readers by creating dedicated magazines, which came to be described using the genre name "ladies' comics".
[17] Teens' love also emerged as a subgenre of manga marketed towards women, which utilized the sex-focused narrative structure of ladies' comics, but with teenaged instead of adult protagonists.
The strategy was successful, and by the late 1990s had gained greater legitimacy as a literary genre and attracted a more general audience, with multiple ladies' comics titles adapted as films and television series.
[26] Sociologist Kinko Itō considers that josei dramas serve as a form of catharsis for the reader by depicting a character who is enduring greater hardship than they are,[25] while manga scholar Fusami Ogi considers josei dramas as presenting role models and potential ways of life for female readers.
[29] Josei romances target both a younger and older readership, with many stories aimed at teenaged girls, as evidenced by the extensive use of furigana as a reading aid.
[36] At the editorial level, there is no consistent standard for segmenting manga aimed at a female audience, with terminology and categories varying across decades, publishing houses, and magazines.
[34] Since the 2000s, some large publishers such as Shueisha and Kodansha have grouped all manga magazines aimed at a female audience under a single category.
[36] It is common for authors to create shōjo and josei manga simultaneously, with Mari Ozaki [ja], George Asakura, and Mayu Shinjo among the numerous artists who produce works across categories.
