Shōjo manga

Nonetheless, several concepts and themes have come to be typically associated with shōjo manga, both visual (non-rigid panel layouts, highly detailed eyes) and narrative (a focus on human relations and emotions; characters that defy traditional roles and stereotypes surrounding gender and sexuality; depictions of supernatural and paranormal subjects).

[2] Shōjo continued to be associated with an image of youth and innocence after the end of the Meiji era, but took on a strong consumerist connotation beginning in the 1980s as it developed into a distinct marketing category for girls; the gyaru also replaced the moga as the archetypical independent woman during this period.

[6] The Japanese manga market is segmented by target readership, with the major categories divided by gender (shōjo for girls, shōnen for boys) and by age (josei for women, seinen for men).

[10] While the style and tone of the stories published in these magazines varies across publications and decades, an invariant characteristic of shōjo manga has been a focus on human relations and the emotions that accompany them.

[16] Among the most significant authors of this era was Nobuko Yoshiya, a major figure in the Class S genre whose novels such as Hana Monogatari centered on romantic friendships between girls and women.

These stores rented books for a modest fee of five to ten yen, roughly equivalent to half the cost of a subway ticket at the time.

[32] Shōjo manga artists who had been active prior to the war returned to the medium, including Shosuke Kurakane with Anmitsu Hime (1949–1955),[23] Toshiko Ueda with Fuichin-san (1957–1962),[33] and Katsuji Matsumoto resuming publication of Kurukuru Kurumi-chan.

[37] Rather than following Matsumoto's trajectory of moving away from the visual conventions of lyrical painting, Tani and Takahashi imported them into their manga, with works defined by a strong sense of atmosphere and a focus on the emotions rather than the actions of their protagonists.

[43][44] In the 1950s, shōjo manga was a genre that was created primarily by male authors, notably Leiji Matsumoto, Shōtarō Ishinomori, Kazuo Umezu, and Tetsuya Chiba.

[46][36][47] Beside Toshiko Ueda, several female manga artists started working during the 1950s, notably Hideko Mizuno, Miyako Maki, Masako Watanabe and Eiko Hanamura, most of them debuted within the kashi-hon anthology Izumi (泉).

[61] This movement towards narratively complex stories is associated with the emergence of a new generation of shōjo artists collectively referred to as the Year 24 Group, which included Moto Hagio, Keiko Takemiya, Yumiko Ōshima, and numerous others.

[55][62] The art style of the Group, influenced by Machiko Satonaka and Yukari Ichijō, came to pioneer new visual standards for shōjo manga: finer and lighter lines, beautiful faces that bordered on exaggeration, and panels that overlapped or were entirely borderless.

[64] The historical drama The Rose of Versailles (1972–1973) by Riyoko Ikeda became the first major critical and commercial success in shōjo manga; the series was groundbreaking in its portrayal of gender and sexuality, and was influential in its depiction of bishōnen (literally "beautiful boys"), a term for androgynous male characters.

The genre waned in popularity by the end of the decade, but its narrative and visual style made a lasting impact on shōjo manga, particularly the emergent aesthetic of kawaii.

Although their attempts were commercially unsuccessful, with short-lived magazines such as Papillon (パピヨン) at Futabasha in 1972, their works were the origins of ladies comics before the category's formal emergence in the early 1980s.

She intimates that the Gulf War influenced the development of female characters "who fight to protect the destiny of a community", such as Red River (1995–2002), Basara (1990–1998), Magic Knight Rayearth (1993–1996), and Sailor Moon (1991–1997).

[82] These publishing houses folded by the end of the 1980s as they became replaced with mainstream shōjo manga magazines dedicated to the horror genre, beginning with Monthly Halloween in 1986.

The genre shares many common traits with pornographic josei manga, with the distinguishing exception of the age of the protagonists, who are typically in their late teens and early twenties.

[84] By the 2000s, this niche shōjo manga, particularly the teens' love genre, had largely abandoned printed formats in favor of the Internet, in response to the rise of mobile phones in Japan.

The magazine was a commercial failure and folded after six issues, but came to be emblematic of a new trend in shōjo manga: cross-media marketing, where works are published across multiple mediums simultaneously.

[88] Early shōjo manga successes in this cross-media approach include Nana (2000–2009) by Ai Yazawa, Lovely Complex (2001–2006) by Aya Nakahara, and Nodame Cantabile (2001–2010) by Tomoko Ninomiya, all of which were alternately adapted into films, television dramas, anime series, video games, and series-branded music CDs.

[95] Narration is often punctuated with non-verbal elements that express the feelings of the protagonists; writer Nobuko Yoshiya in particular made extensive use of multiple ellipsis ("..."), exclamation points, and dashes in the middle of sentences, the lattermost of which were scattered across pages in a manner resembling verses of poetry.

Oftentimes in compositions without panel borders, text is removed from speech balloons and spread across the page, especially in instances where the dialogue communicates the thoughts, feelings, and internal monologue of the speaker.

[106] A defining stylistic element of shōjo manga is its depiction of characters with very large, detailed eyes that have star-shaped highlights,[107][108] sometimes referred to as dekame (デカ目).

[108] From this point on, experimental eye design flourished in shōjo manga, with features such as elongated eyelashes, the use of concentric circles of different shades, and the deformation of the iris to create a glittering effect.

[11] Narratives often focus on the interiority of their protagonists, wherein their emotions, feelings, memories, and inner monologue are expressed visually through techniques such as panel arrangement and the rendering of eye details.

[126] A relationship between shōjo culture and female-female romance dates to the pre-war period with stories in the Class S genre, which focused on intense romantic friendships between girls.

[132] The social pressure and oppression borne from a patriarchal Japanese society also recurs as a motif, such as a curse or vengeful ghost that originates from a murdered woman or a victim of harassment.

[137] Notable manga artists associated with this trend include Macoto Takahashi, Masako Watanabe, and Miyako Maki,[137] the lattermost of whom had their designs serve as the foundation for the popular Licca-chan doll in 1967.

[41] This system of talent discovery and development is not unique to shōjo manga, though the practice originates in pre-war girls' magazines, where female readers were invited to submit novels and short stories.