Shojo anime and manga is a complicated thing. The word is often retroactively used to mean a genre of anime and manga, but, technically speaking, it actually refers to the demographic, being anime and manga aimed at young girls.

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Plenty of popular series like Sailor Moon and Fruits Basket have often defined what people think of shojo, especially in the West, but the genre is a lot more nuanced than people think. At times, a manga series can be dubbed a shojo work just because it was published in a shojo magazine. Because of this, people often make generalizations over what to expect in a shojo series that often aren't true.

10 They All Have Female Creators

Sukeban Deka

Over the years, there have been a few male shojo mangaka. One such notable example is Shinji Wada, arguably best known for Sukeban Deka, who had a long career working on various shojo manga, published in shojo magazines like Princess and Margaret. Even his main anime creation, Pygmalio, is considered shojo despite being an adventure series and having a male lead.

Of course, ever since Monthly Girls' Nozaki-kun came along, there's been speculation that male shojo mangaka might be more common than they seem, they might just like to write under female pseudonyms.

9 They All Have Female Protagonists

Takeo Gouda from My Love Story!!

Shojo is more properly described as works aimed towards young girls, not necessarily stories about young girls. While it usually goes hand in hand, that isn't always the case and there are a few shojo stories with male leads.

The kindhearted, gentle giant Takeo of My Love Story!! is often treated as the poster child of male shojo protagonists by fans of the genre. Other popular male-lead shojo include Baby & Me and Gauken Babysitters, both of which revolve around a pair of brothers.

8 Anything With A Female Lead Is Automatically Shojo

Anime Cutie Honey

There's also a tendency to assume that any anime or manga series with a female lead is intended to be a shojo series and meant to attract female viewers. This isn't always the case and different genres of anime have showcased female leads. Kill la Kill, for example, is considered a seinen series, a genre usually aimed at adult men.

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One complicated example is the shapeshifting android superheroine Cutie Honey. Originally, the series was intended to be a more romantic shojo series, but was retooled into a shonen series after it was scheduled to air in a shonen block, arguably making her the first magical girl aimed at boys.

7 A Franchise Can't Exist As Both A Shonen & Shojo Series

Cute Honey Flash

Just because a series started in one genre doesn't mean it can't be reimagined in another. The aforementioned Cutie Honey proves to be an example of this in both anime and manga form. The '90s anime, Cutie Honey Flash, reimagined the heroine as a shojo star, due to the influence of Sailor Moon.

Its manga run in Nakayoshi is usually seen as belonging to the shojo demographic while the most of the post-'90s manga based on the character tends to be seinen.

6 They Are All About Romance

Little Witch Academia

While love stories seem to dominate the shojo genre, it's not true that all shojo stories have a have romance, especially at the forefront.

The aforementioned Baby & Me series, for instance, revolves around a young boy having to take care of his younger brother after their mother dies, not that there aren't characters with a few childish crushes on the brothers. Other shojo that have little to do with romance include Little Witch Academia and Hell Girl.

5 Anything Romantic Is Shojo

Belldandy and Keiichi Morisato from Ah My Goddess

Shonen stories can also have a lot of romance, and even have romance as the main focus of the plot. This is especially the case when a story is told through a male perspective. For example, Rosario + Vampire is considered shonen.

And this is true with genres other than shonen. Some other famous romantic anime like Maison Ikkoku and Ah! My Goddess are both considered seinen.

4 They Don't Have Violence Or Action Scenes

Sailor Moon Makoto Pins Video Game Joe

Shojo anime can often feature dark violence and action scenes that make it look like shonen heroes have it easy. Magical girls, for example, have a nasty habit of dying. In one infamous example, in the '90s Sailor Moon anime, the Sailor Scouts all die fighting the Dark Kingdom, a story so controversial children allegedly made themselves sick watching the story. Likewise, so much had to be cut in the original English adaptation, two episodes were condensed into one.

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Granted, there are some unspoken rules with what shojo is allowed to get away with, but it's complicated in practice. According to rumors, Naoko Takeuchi wanted to kill off Sailor Moon and her Sailor Scouts at the end of the first story arc, but was told it would be inappropriate for a shojo series to do so. When the anime adaptation managed to get away with killing off the Sailor Scouts, albeit with them restored to life at the end, she was allegedly upset she couldn't have done something similar.

3 Shojo Can't Have Sci-Fi Or Horror Elements

ai enma from hell girl

Shojo isn't all fairy tales and fantasy, some series are dark and foreboding. The horror series, for example, Hell Girl, in which the titular character regularly drags characters off to hell at the price of the wisher's own salvation, is considered a shojo series.

Some stories like to combine horror or sci-fi elements with traditional shojo ones. Tokyo Mew Mew, for example, has a group of heroines who look like magical girls at face value, but actually get their powers from genetic engineering. And funnily enough, had the creator had their way, the series was going to be a horror series with bloodsucking aliens, as seen in Tokyo Black Cat Girl.

2 Shojo Characters Are All Archetypes, Not Characters

The Inner Senshi combine their powers to help Princess Serenity in Sailor Moon

A common criticism of shojo stories is that, when there are multiple female characters, they are more stock characters than well-rounded personalities. One girl has to be the tough one, another is the smart one, another is the mean one, and so on.

In Sailor Moon, for example, plenty of the girls have a lot in common. Sailor Mercury and Sailor Neptune are both intelligent girls with water-based powers, and even have similar hair colors. In fact, Sailor Moon herself was even designed as a similar character to Sailor V, who would later join the series as Sailor Venus. And many of the girls have complex personalities: Sailor Jupiter is the most athletic of the girls, but also a talented chef, skater, florist, and seamstress.

1 It's The Only Genre For Female Fans

The Cast Of Saiyuki

As mentioned, technically speaking, shojo isn't as much a genre as a target demographic, but it's not the only such terminology for anime and manga aimed at female fans.

Josei is anime and manga aimed at adult women, with shojo aimed more towards younger girls. Because of this, josei is seen as a counterpart to seinen. One reason josei isn't as commonly known as shojo is that it rarely sees anime adaptations, usually aiming for live-action productions if anything. In fact, it's quite common for a series to be mistaken for josei than vice-versa, like the shojo Nana or seinen Emma: A Victorian Romance. One notable example, Saiyuki, has actually been considered both a josei and a shonen series at different times.

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