Shoujo Romance Anime is Disappearing. This Might Be Why.

All I want is season 3 of Snow White with the red hair

The thing with anime that gives me hope of an eventual comeback of shoujo anime is manga. Thankfully, manga is still a place where you can find anything and with a lot of new and old ideas an genre. All we would need then is a really good shoujo manga that ligth the spark for others and eventually we might get another shoujo era, maybe with not the same feeling as the old ones, but a new thing that might appeal newer audiences. That might happen tomorrow, in 5 years or never, but it's something that can happen as long as manga keeps being this independent thing.

An example of "something new" is romantic killer. It combines the old feeling of shoujo manga with a more modern view, and combine it perfectly.

Sadly, that means that yes, probably the 2000's shoujo is pretty much dead, as other anime genre had died in the past like mecha, but they can still be reborn, we just need to wait for that.

The ambience of a patriarchal society is so strong and we can see it based on how many men watch Japanese anime especially anime targeted to male audiences and women also watch Japanese anime too that is specifically targeted to male audiences. Well, this is real life. There is nothing we can do about it. Sad reality.

I hard disagree with Shoujosei being not profitable outside of the manga sales. Figures and merchandise outside of, maybe some buttons and file holders, are just not made at all. You can't say that women aren't buying figures, dakimakuras and other merch if merch is not made to begin with. Goodsmile has only just started releasing nendoroids of shoujo characters and I preordered all of them.

Lets also not forget bluray sales as well. Even though not technically a shoujo, Yuri on Ice was definitely made for a female audience and that series sold 50k copies of the bluray in it's first week. When you compare that to Mappa's other work Chainsaw Man. CSM only sold 1.7k copies in it's first week. Women have just the same spending capabilities as men, it's just that companies do not make the merchandise.

On top of all that, think about all the artist allies or artists online as well. People who sell shoujo merch make good money like Ocean in Space. We are so desperate for merch we turn to each other for it.

Im a big shoujo fan and i recently found that all of those “villainess” titled shows are shoujo isekai. And some are pretty dece)

I know what you mean. Yona of the Dawn and Fushigi Yuugi were some of my top timeless faves. I haven’t seen anything quite like those. Shounen anime can be fun but it does not always accommodate for my feminine palate, what with the male gaze’s inclination towards competition and action…

maid sama my beloved

You are such a beautiful girl you could star in your own anime.

As a guy I love shoujo hope it makes comeback

great input

I grew up watching a shojo anime and manga as a kid along with Shonen and seinen, because anime was anime to me for the most part. Marmalade Boy, Boys over Flowers, Cardcaptor Sakura (saw the dub of Cardcaptors first but my library had a bootleg dvd of the original japanese, and I was hooked), DN Angel, Fruits Basket, Fushigi Yugi, I don’t know if it counts (I don’t think it does due to the fan service) but Love Hina, etc.. but yeah, at some point as I got older I didn’t really watch them anymore. Well I just watch less anime in general. And I think part of it was me and my tastes just being less broad as I got older, but also partly things seem different. Fun video

Honestly it’s crazy, most of the mangas I read are Shoujo, and most of them are relatively new. But the best Shoujo anime I find are from like ten years ago. I feel like modern Shoujo anime are both lacking in quality and quantity, which is such a shame.

Girls switched to yaoi mangas))

Its not us but the manga industry itself that's trying to kill shoujo. One review for nana in Japan was " two girls with the same name move into an apartment where one finds out sleeping with multiple men doesn't get her a husband while the other forms a band to stalk her ex" that is not a proper review for any series. And I'm glad you mentioned Clamp as the studio enforced rules on their manga on what or how far they could go with romance. If you've read their angel series then you know the last volume felt off. It was because Clamp was supposed to be green lit for another 3-4 volumes more but even with its high ratings but were told to can it in the forth volume. This shocked me as Clamp was one of the highest seller manga artist at the time following Chobits. But they weren't the only ones that got this treatment as many more shoujo manga and anime started getting bought up and put in hiatus mode as studios would buy them and then do absolutely nothing with them. And once a studio bought them not even the mangaka could continue the series. Hell things have gotten so bad one mangaka was even arrested for making a manga about periods. She got five years for making a chibi vigina character. Shoujo hasn't died its just gone underground and moved to other platforms. I also hate that crunchy roll romance (and sadly shoujo section) is full of shounen romance or haram anime......if they didn't have decent horror, classic, and action titles I wouldn't still bother to stay with CR but it is not far off if something doesn't change soon

BRING BACK THE FEMALE GAZE! <3 you're such a gem for bringing awareness to this xoxo

this season (end of 2023) has no good romance in it. we can expect the re-make of spice & wold, season 3 of from me to you and a few other possibly good romance anime's, but i'm very dissatisfied with what we got

The Japanese Anime industrial complex is making a huge mistake by not animating Shoujo and Josei manga and other content. Many in the industry make excuses that women also watch shonen, but in actuality they are losing market share to places like Korea and America through K-Drama and Netflix Shoujo and Josei animation. Shame on Japan for continuing to be so very sexist towards women and girls.

Love this breakdown. You can see the same in Western comics, where female-gaze fare like Rogue & Gambit is critically acclaimed but doesn't sell as well as putting Emma Frost on the cover, even from the same writer's room.

As a dude I just want a good anime of any type. For better or worse some genres end up loosing or gaining polularity. Im fine with it as long as good anime in general ends up being produced. Times change and some things simply have to go eventually.

Whenever someones asks me if i watch anime and i say yes they immediately assume i just watch shonen and starts asking if i have watched the big three and other popular shonens
Not to attack the people who like shonen but when i tell them i watch shojou they look at me weird and drop the topic
Like i am sorry i like 'girly' stuff????
And someone told me to watch dress up darling when i told them i like rom-coms so i started it and dropped it soon
Didn't liked fan service throwed at my face every second
Absolutely loved kaguya sama the romance and comedy was perfectly balanced and had a good plot

I like how I just got into some classic shoujo series, and then you tell me it's dying.😭

Men prefer watching to reading. Just how it always will be. We are more visual creatures. I don't think Shoujo anime has disappeared it melded into anime that both genders can enjoy Kimi wa Houkago Insomnia.
Hollywood has rom coms but there really are no romance in Hollywood targetted towards men. There is a big market of men who want romance media targetted towards them.

Edit: You lost me when you started complaining about big titties. When shoujos are creepy slender figures with men with insanely wide shoulders. Why is one good and other is bad.

Lowkey gatekeepy argument to say that a lot of what could be considered new wave shoujo like Skip and Loafer or Horimiya are not shoujo purely because of where they were published or because we also get to hear from male characters rather than shutting out their perspective in favor of mystifying them. Horimiya especially makes a whole case out of the fact that people view Miyamura as this classic brooding bad boy stereotype purely because of how he chooses to express himself but that his inner self is in distress just as much as Hori is. We hear both of their perspectives and find an equilibrium of male and female POV in a series about two people with very different lives and problems finding each other (and NOT magically solving all of their problems by getting into a relationship. WOW! who knew nuance and character depth could exist in a romance series?!?)

I never really cared about gender definitions for anime and manga. I happily watched Cardcaptor Sakura and Sugar Sugar Rune. And a LOT of shoujo manga.
However, a lot of the actually good shoujo manga never got anime adaptation. While the new shoujo anime that did come out was pretty mediocre.

I'm gay as hell, so I read Yuri/GL.

As a guy this shouldn't bother me (you'd think) but I was a big fan of nana and my little monster (hoping that one counts) so this wasn't really something I was super tuned into but I keep seeing that one show about that really big innocent guy (can't remember the name right now) and horimiya mentioned as a shonen and I feel kind of duped...

I think it's actually a posivite thing, after all this "romance" was just trash... No one of them portrayed any real women. Girls just like to lie and trick themself and others acting like that trash is how love and girls work and think... But girls are worse than any serial killer, any teenager may become your worse nightmare, even when you have no idea that she exists, just because she choose to hate you or to hate who you love.

Shojo is garbage to me because they just create the most perfect husbands guy but all the girls look bland and mid in their design like wtf if you make guys sexy make the girls sexy too or ain’t watching that sissy shit

C - capitalism. Profit maximization. Why invest in the "female audience" when you can invest in the "male audience" and get more profit. Capitalism is not about taking care of people. For the same reason, computer games have turned into casinos. But there is salvation from this. Temporary, but salvation. Capitalism will eventually kill everything again in some other way. Computer games will be saved by indie games, and the anime industry will be saved by indie studios when neural networks become advanced enough to generate video on demand.

also most romance animes taking place in high school is so annoying. give us more people in their 20s, 30s...

LETS WATCH SKIP AND LOAFER!!!

I miss my pretty men 😢😔

Before this video I had never heard of the 2nd most successful series before. Anpanman is extremely obscure outside of Japan. As for Shojo I feel like a successor of Sailor Moon is necessary much as Naruto & One Piece followed in the foot steps of Dragon Ball. Shojo Magazines need some sort of epic to make the demographic popular again. Plenty of series that aren't traditional Shonen have been getting published in Shonen Magazines to increase their views. Shonen is becoming the entire industry these days it seems.

I stopped watching anime after cleaning all the sites by 2015, i slowly started reading manga and manha that i hated because i was curious about the end of the tragic romance of legends of basara, it wasn't even finish 😂, now i am manhwa an addict ❤ still waiting for 2nd seasons of many unfinished Shoujo animes 😢

as a male. I quite enjoy female targeted media. its a shame to see it go as I have noticed a shift in the media.

It's always about demand for it, commitment for the genre, and being selective in our choices of what we accept to consume.
We don't utilize the power of our money, effectively.

Your analysis is great and informative

I know this is 2 years old but I was thinking about Oshi No Ko and how Aqua is such bishounen even though Oshi No Ko is Seinen.

For me, the problem with Shoujo is that there’s no real plot and the drama in it feels forced and/or simplistic. Also, Shoujo is more about romance rather than fantasy, which is more popular with general anime fans. Magical Girls is the exception, of course.

I think we need more shoujo anime that doesn't have romance element at all

Ive started an anime list surrounding shoujo and romance.

Feel free to add your favorites <3

Maid Sama
Kamisama Hajitsuma (hope im spelling that right)
Vampire Knight
Fruits Basket
Toradora
7th time loop
Ouran Highschool Host Club
Paradise Kiss
Nana
Say I Love You
Clannad
My little monster
Ao Haru Ride
Spice and wolf
Skip and Loafer
Brothers conflict

(exploration/ horror/ other genre anime)
7 seeds (survival)
Made in the Abyss (survival/ kids)
Promised Neverland
Pandora hearts (alice in wonderland)
Amnesia
Black Butler
Shiki (vampire horror)
Elfen lied
Higurashi
Future Diary
Diabolik Lovers (Vampires)
Deadman Wonderland
Danganronpa
Rosario + Vampire (girl vampires)
Orenchi no Furo Jijo (BL?)
How to raise a mummy (tiny lil mummy doll, cute)

(BL)
Junjo Romantica
Sekaiichi Hatsukoi,
Love stage
Hey class president
Mo Dao Zu Shi, Heaven's Official Blessing (not yet watched but heard of)


[Ill keep editing in new ones as i remember them]

Isnt like girls enjoy more dark romance and everything that is more masculin not in a way that is more about ripped bodybuilder guys but handsome guys that look like a prince from the castle or looks like twighlight or sebastian from black butler

Here's my two cents. Anime has historically been more catered to male audiences. The majority of long-running, commercially successful and highly acclaimed shows belong to shonen/seinen. Its why shoujo anime makes up a fraction of the number of total anime compared to these demos, despite having an abundance of shoujo manga published. Anime industry is also in a bubble. More sequels are being made than before, more shows that aren't adapting from manga, and the number of TV productions per season are still very high. Because of how much is being made and still expecting to make a return, the industry is more inclined to go with safer bets for even breaking even. We Never Learn sells less than various shoujo series, but its also serialised in the largest manga magazine, to the largest domestic audience. So I think shoujo have to also go above and beyond in their sales, even when everyone can see it's been an underserviced market for years now.

I tried to watch shojo but nowadays the main character is a boy there no girl as main character what the point of shojo if the character isn't a girl

This video is years old but im 6 minutes in and thats not really fan's fault. that just mean we're systematically set up for failure and lowkey victim blaming. you can strip a community of resources, shit on them for being poor, then call them criminals when they steal in order to have a better way of life. But maybe I jumped the gun. still watching though!

There's a fan culture around anime that generates revenue and attention by way of merch and fan content. There's always fanart/fics that girls make of boys, but do you see boys making fan content of girls? Girls and boys are more attached to boys more than boys are attached to girls.

日本人として感じていることをコメントします。
少女マンガはたくさんありますが翻訳されないものも多いです。
アニメはマンガよりも作ることにお金がかかるため利益が上がる見込みがないと作られません。
見るだけでなく原作を買ってグッズを買うことです。
男性向け、女性向けに関係なく利益が出るものが作られます。
性差別ではありません。
商売として売れる商品が求められます。
日本の少女マンガを愛してくれてありがとう。
私も少女マンガが大好きです❤

You do know Shoujo audience have moved to Kdrama right? It’s okay to let a genre die if the audience number has dropped significantly. There are a few Shoujo anime still out there but it’s reflective on the number of people that still watches that which is little