Comment on [Discussion] What are some anime whose demographics fans tend to get wrong?
wjs018@ani.social 3 days ago
The genre that I most often see people mix up is CGDCT. A lot of casuals that I have talked to don’t realize that the target audience for these series is almost always either boys or men. Instead, they kind of lump these series in with stuff like Precure, which is aimed at girls. To prove the point, AniList only has 13 series that are shoujo and CGDCT, and a grand total of 0 that are josei.
Endmaker@ani.social 3 days ago
It makes sense once one think about it. Straight dudes would rather look at girls, and vice versa.
NineSwords@ani.social 3 days ago
I don’t think that is the appeal of CGDCT shows for the seinen audience. I think the appeal of CGDCT shows for the seinen demographic is the perceived innocence of girls. Not in the sense of “I’m a mindless, hormone-driven beast and want to ravage that innocent girl”, but in the sense of “I’m surrounded by constant anxiety, malice, and selfishness in my day-to-day life, and watching those innocent girls do whatever lets me forget this for 25 minutes”. Girls are generally perceived as nice and free of malice (before I had two of those myself, I thought the same), so that’s why there are no “cute boys doing cute things” shows. The general expectation for a show following boys would be for it to be more raunchy. Compare K-On! to Nijiiro Days, for example.
AyuTsukasa@lemmy.zip 2 days ago
I have to counter your point about not having cute boys doing cute things. There’s Kimi to Boku, Daily Lives of High School Boys and I’d probably even throw in Hetalia just to name a few off the top of my head.
NineSwords@ani.social 2 days ago
I have only seen the first episode of Kimi to Boku and am not familiar with Hetelia from memory, but Daily Lives of High School Boys is a prime example about how boys centric show would generally follow more raunchy themes. If the other two shows are different and genuninely show innocent themes, then I would call them outliers more than the rule. Same as with outliers to girls being depicted as innocent. Sure there are girls that play on the gap-moe bit those are the outliers (and lets be honest here, they are more often then not just there to deliver some innuendo joke).
The appeal of CGDCT is not singular. Innocence is certainly a part of why girls are chosen. But also, it needs to be cute and to most only girls are cute. Neither is the innocence universally applied and there are often not so innocent girls included in the cast. For example Konata in Lucky Star says some really not innocent things yet she is a popular moe character.
In the end, dudes rather looking at girls than at guys is still an important factor I think. Somehow being straight makes you like girls more even if you are not romantically or sexually attracted to those girls.