# Talk:Josei manga

Removed the following erroneous examples.
Angel Sanctuary ran in Hana-to-Yume, a shōjo_manga magazine.
Nana is serialized in the shōjo_manga magazine Cookie_(magazine)
Only Yesterday or Omohide Poroporo is published under Animage Wide Comics imprint. I can't exactly describe what kinda of imprint Animage Wide is, but it is not a josei publication. Animage predates the josei classification anyway.
Ebichu is written by a woman, but that means nothing. My best google-fu says the Ebichu was originally published in Manga Action Pizzazz, which is a seinen magazine. However, there are numerous references to Gainax claiming that it's aimed at women (looked at gainax.co.jp, Ebichu pages not there anymore). It could be claimed that Ebichu anime is aimed at women and thus qualifies as josei anime, but I very strongly discourage that for various reasons. (For those familiar with the scholarship, this is analogous to using target audience to classify, say, Escaflowne.) Rather, think of it as Gainax trying to expand the potential audience to include both sexes.
Paradise Kiss is a special case. The manga was serialized in Zipper magazine, which is akin to Seventeen. Calling it josei would imply that the target audience of Seventeen are twenty-somethings. However, the anime was aired as part of the Noitamina programming block. The series originally debuted at 00:35 a.m., which argues against calling it shoujo, but not enough to definitely call it josei. Using "original material" as my yardstick (a common yardstick in the hobby), I'm arguing that it's best to classify it shoujo and not josei. -24.236.176.101

"Ebichu is written by a woman, but that means nothing."  For the record, CHOBITS is written by females so.... yeah.... -Aknorals 10:49, 3 June 2006 (UTC)
Chobits was mainly done by the 4 group of women's leader(I forget her name), and they have MASSIVE influence from male mangaka that they noted on their website. Even so, its still garned almost as many women as it did men since, as usual, for both worse and better the female mangaka's "curse" of middle ground comes to pass lol Wiggalama (talk) 21:07, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

For anyone who is familiar with this series, I believe it is an excellent example of this genre.  I ask that it be added as an example for anyone who knows how to do this.  
Thank you,
Wolffi —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 192.246.231.151 (talk) 21:33, 30 March 2007 (UTC).
Wrong, its both Seinen and well, kinda sucks lol I mean honestly, non-virgin crazy boss chick....yeah..... But still, its from a chick's perspective simply due to the author's gender and the sexual desire the reader is supposed to have for her and her female co-workers. And yeah, most female authors, even when learning alot from males on how to target the audience, still end up making a more middle ground genre, even with Chobits and X by Chobits, but eh, such is the way of things....damn authoresses could at least get rid of all the gay characters save maybe lesbo scenes for our male viewing pleasure lol Wiggalama (talk) 21:02, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

Saiunkoku Monogatari is originally a light novel which is serialized in Bean's Ace, which is described in the Japanese wikipedia article as a magazine which aims at the "shoujo" audience.

"Beans Ace" is not described in the Japanese wiki to be aimed at females, because its not aimed at females. Beans Ace is manga magazine that Kadokawa Shoten started as a hybrid magazine aiming it at both males and females, there's shoujo and shounen manga serialized in the magazine.
"The Beans" on the other hand is a novel magazine aimed at shoujo, its a shoujo novel magazine.
Saiunkoku Monogatari light novel is serialized in "The Beans" and not "Beans Ace". ChuChu

I don't see how Papa to kiss in the dark is in this genre. Isn't it yaoi??
"much like but not to be confused with yaoi; josei tending to be both more explicit and with more mature storytelling." Again, Papa to kiss in the dark isn't a very Mature story, it's just an excuse to make a story about a boy who fancys his dad. And how is Josei more explicit than Yaoi??

In Japan, Ladies' Comics is actually what this genre is called. The Japanese wikipedia article on Ladies' comics actually does not make any reference to the term "josei manga," and only mentions "josei-muke" manga as referring to all manga aimed at women, whether girls or adult women. The term "josei manga" seems to be a creation of the English-speaking fan community, and this fact, I think, should be noted in the article.
—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Charmian33 (talk) 06:17, 11 July 2007 (UTC).

I am a native speaker of Japanese.  I totally agree with you on renaming this article.  "Josei" in Japanese connotes woman or  women in general usage.  Josei in Japanese does not connote "comic books intended for women".  If English-speaking anime fans think Josei connotes "comic books intended for women", they are raping our Japanese culture by showing no respect for Japanese language. Gleamdiscoversdarkside (talk) 03:33, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
I wouldn't even regularly find this article if it wasn't mention on the JA:WP talk page, and much less bother to reply to this, but... raping our Japanese culture by showing no respect for Japanese language.? Don't you think you're going overboard here? I mean, this sounds equally ridiculous as the whinings of Americans in Japan about how the Japanese are misusing their language - about the various katakana words of English origin... I mean, the article's subject is an apropriation of the language, yes. It's a use that sounds funny/nonsensical to the Japanese speaker's ear, yes. But rape of culture and lack of respect for the language? Tell me I can apply Poe's law on you, otherwise, you're a scary person. TomorrowTime (talk) 16:11, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
ChuChu, please don't move this or other pages until there is a clear consensus to do so.
I understand the objection that in Japanese, shojo, seinen, josei etc refer to girls, youth, women etc as a whole, and not specifically their manga.  However, this is the English Wikipedia, and as used in English otaku circles, the terms refer pretty much exclusively to manga.  If you do an English-only Google search for josei, the first six hits all refer to josei manga, and the rest are about Jōsei (城聖) Toda the Soka Gakkai guy.  None use "josei" to mean "woman", because that's not what it means in English.
To give a comparison, the English Wikipedia article Cider talks about an alcoholic beverage made from apples, while ja:サイダー is about an artificially flavored, colorless, non-alcoholic soda.  Is the Japanese Wikipedia raping English? Jpatokal (talk) 16:46, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Josei manga is clearly the better title.  Fg2 (talk) 20:40, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Fg2, it is probably better. But it need not be a correct one. Wiktionary defines josei to be "a class of manga written for an older female audience, also josei manga." [1]. If this is the common usage, that's what we need to use. (Needless to say, whether this constitutes a raping of the Japanese culture is really irrelevant. I'm a native Japanese speaker, and I'm too used to be offended by this kind of misuse.) -- Taku (talk) 07:33, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Taku (even though I'd like it to be at Josei manga). As for the whole language raping thing, people in Japan do at least as much of the same thing with ENglish as we do with Japanese. I'd say it all balances out in the end. ···日本穣? · Talk to Nihonjoe 02:33, 10 June 2008 (UTC)
I just stumbled onto this discussion while doing some disambig with links to shōjo and shōnen. The problem with josei manga is that josei isn't a type or genre of manga, but a target demographic. You also have josei light novels and theoretically josei anime among others. So renaming this article to josei manga would actually be a poor choice for a name. --Farix (Talk) 15:44, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
Sorry to dispute Taku, but simply because Wiktionary says so does not make it correct. Wiktionary is just a prone to editing mistakes, POV and just plain stupidity as Wikipedia itself. This article is about a genre of manga, and as Fg2 indicates, having the word "manga" in the title makes sense, as is more explicit and easier to understand that simply the Japanese word for "woman". And I am afraid that the argument that the title should be called simply "Josei" because that is what it is what the genre is often called in otaku circles is completely out of line. Wikipedia is not "Otaku-pedia", despite the best efforts of some editors who insist on attaching manga/anime references to every article they can. Would it not satisfy everyone to use "Josei (manga genre)" as the title? Or if the current lack of other "josei" articles to justify disambiguation raises streneous objections, then drop the Japanese name altogther in favor of "Ladies Manga", since as some of the above editors pointed out, this is English Wikipedia? --MChew (talk) 03:51, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
How about a survey? "Support" or "Oppose" renaming to "Josei manga," and please include reasons (or at least refer to reasons given above). Matt Thorn (talk) 15:05, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
Support: The "Shōjo" article's title has recently been been renamed "Shōjo manga." You can see the reasoning in the discussion page there. As I wrote there, the article on Leonardo da Vinci is not titled "Da Vinci," even though English speakers commonly call him that, for the simple reason that "da Vinci" simply means "Of/from Vinci." Try to rename that article "da Vinci" and see what kind of reaction you get. This article is about a Japanese phenomenon, and just because it is consistently misnamed in English doesn't make that misnaming any more correct. There is no logical reason I can think of not to rename the article, and create a disambiguation page for the word "josei," other than stubbornness. And I do know a bit about the subject. Matt Thorn (talk) 15:05, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
Support "Josei manga is clearly the better title" (as I wrote above) and "as I also supported moving Josei to Josei manga" (as I wrote in support of renaming "shōjo") Fg2 (talk) 20:30, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, not much of a response here. Have the people who were defending the current title lost interest? Can we just go ahead and make the change? Matt Thorn (talk) 11:33, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia's pretty much on summer break. I'd suggest waiting a month, even though I'm an advocate of the name change. But there's no rule against acting boldly. Fg2 (talk) 11:35, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, Fg2. I hadn't thought about that. I'm in no hurry. (^^) Matt Thorn (talk) 11:38, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I thought the rule of thumb on Wikipedia was to avoid lists. I can see that it may be important to offer examples so that readers get an idea of what is and isn't josei manga, but right now we have a very short article and a very long list. I'm not saying I necessarily oppose including a list; I'm just bringing it based on my understanding of Wikipedia policy. Matt Thorn (talk) 11:39, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Josei is sometimes used within anime or manga, mostly by male characters, to refer to a sexual preference for older women, as contrasted with lolicon.

Huh? I've been studying this stuff for twenty years, and have never heard of this. There's also no citation. Unless someone comes up with a reference, I'm going to delete this line in the near future. Matt Thorn (talk) 11:43, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Removed. Also removing reference to adult BL. It is misleading, since adult BL is seen as a wholly different category from josei manga, and it is also unreferenced. Matt Thorn (talk) 03:09, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
Someone probably got josei confused with jukujo. Fg2 (talk) 10:52, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
That's what I think, too. I just find it hard to understand someone who would add something to an article without checking its veracity, let alone not including a citation. (-_-;) Matt Thorn (talk) 12:27, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I've created a sandbox to play around with additions/revisions to this article. Feel free to jump in. At this point it consists only of the beginning of a rough draft of a history, without references. Needless to say, I'll add the references before moving anything to the main article. Matt Thorn (talk) 16:53, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I made this into section and added data from other categories for comparison. Is this overkill? I'm planning on making similar sections in the Shounen, Seinen, and Shoujo manga articles. Matt Thorn (talk) 16:20, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

ChuChu removed Cookie from the list, saying that the magazine is classified as "shoujo" by the publisher. The JMPA data is based on data provided by publishers (it is, after all, an association of publishers) and Cookie is included in the josei list, not the shoujo list. I was surprised to see it in that category myself. I can't find anything on the official Cookie web site that explicitly describes the magazine as "shoujo." However, on the official "Shueisha Manga Net" page, Cookie is clearly categorized as "shoujo". Cookie is an ambiguous case, and I suspect Shueisha likes it that way. The magazine's readership is probably about evenly split between "high teens" and women in their twenties, but for the JMPA data, Shueisha may have preferred to have potential advertisers see it as the top-selling josei manga magazine rather than as the 7th best-selling shoujo magazine. (Advertisers are the core target of the JMPA publication.) I don't feel comfortable changing the JMPA classification without at least adding a footnote of explanation. It just goes to show how difficult it is to draw clear boundaries. I was the one who originally offered the "it's shoujo if the publisher says it is, otherwise it's not" definition way back when, but this case demonstrates that even that seemingly straightforward definition doesn't always apply. For the time-being, I'll add the Cookie info to the footnote. If someone can come up with a better solution, I'm all ears. Matt Thorn (talk) 00:35, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
I also added office YOU to make the list an even ten. Matt Thorn (talk) 00:47, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Comics for Grown-Up Women, Part 1 - Tramps Like Us and Other Josei Manga from Sequential Tart.  It's a review of some josei manga titles which provides some potential thematic information. -Malkinann (talk) 00:31, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
The circulations and examples are ridiculous. Honestly, Seinen is FAR more popular all over the world in both sales and number of comics, yet the Josei wiki page dares to be excessive in both detail and citations needed when comapared to Seinen?! lol Stop trying to desperately justify Josei as relevant, it is kinda, just to a far lesser extent than Shonen, Seinen, and even Shojo. Not saying all Josei suck, some are pretty good, just saying, circulations and the list of url examples are excessive. Besides, remember, Josei is the least selling of all the demographs in Japan for manga and anime(Shonen, Seinen, and Shojo, in that order)....unless you want to count Shojo Ai/Yuri and Shounen Ai/Yaoi *laughs at first pukes at the last part mentioned* among other deviant subversions<(^o^)>    Wiggalama (talk) 20:58, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

The lead of this article isn't very good. It just reads as a rant that josei doesn't equal yaoi, and that it all stems from Western misconception. Doesn't look too helpful. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 12:14, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

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