[Discussion] What are some anime whose demographics fans tend to get wrong?

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Endmaker@ani.social⁩ to ⁨anime@ani.social⁩

Inspired by comments from 10 Most Rewatchable Shonen Anime Series, Ranked (not the first ones I’ve seen)

Here are a few examples that I know of:

title	expected	actual
Frieren	non-shounen (seinen?)	shounen
Attack on Titan	seinen	shounen
The Apothecary Diaries	shoujo	seinen
Umamusume: Cinderella Gray	shounen	seinen
100 Girlfriends	shounen	seinen

What are other instances of misidentified demographic you have seen?

Quick and dirty definitions of anime demographics:

shoujo - girls
shounen - boys
josei - ladies
seinen - men

Free feel to correct me if I got them wrong.

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Comments

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keimevo@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
If people think Frieren’s most important parts are the fights, they need to watch more media (and a variety of it, western and eastern).

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- Endmaker@ani.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  If people think …, they need to watch more media
  
  AFAIK the target demographics are determined not by the eventual audience, but by the publishers. So if they think it would appeal to shounen, it gets classified as shounen.
  
  think Frieren’s most important parts are the fights
  
  Personally, I can see why Frieren gets classified as shounen even after discounting the fight scenes. I find that the characters’ thinking lack a certain depth / maturity / dimensionality of seinen and josei anime.
  
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  - missingno@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The reason Frieren is classified as shounen is because the manga is serialized in Weekly Shounen Sunday.
    
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- Unboxious@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Shounen aren’t all about fights in the first place though. Sure some of them are, but as covered by other posts in this thread there are plenty of shounen romance series too.
  
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lil_baka@ani.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
A target demographic for Frieren is like a target demographic for Lord of the Rings.

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wjs018@ani.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ 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.

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- Endmaker@ani.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  the target audience for these series is almost always either boys or men
  
  It makes sense once one think about it. Straight dudes would rather look at girls, and vice versa.
  
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  - NineSwords@ani.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    It makes sense once you think about it. Straight dudes would rather look at girls, and vice versa.
    
    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.
    
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ReluctantlyZen@ani.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Tbh, at least in the western side of the anime fandom the words shounen, shoujo, seinen and josei function as pretty decent genre descriptors rather than demographics.

When we think shounen, we typically think action-focused anime with lots of screaming and younger protags (your Narutos, DBZs, MHAs etc). When we think shoujo, we think romance in high school settings. For seinen and josei pretty much the same, but with aged up characters and a bit more mature in general.

I think it’s fine for those words to mean something else here. After all, we don’t have the reference of the magazines where this is all based on

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e0qdk@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
K-On - Expected: Shoujo - Actual: Seinen

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- CsXGF8uzUAOh6fqV@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  K-ON is certainly made for men but notably it is very popular among women. This is kinda rare for CGDCT. Maybe it has to do with the female director giving it a certain touch that resonates with women.
  
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missingno@fedia.io ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I think a common misconception comes from people assuming most romance is shoujo or josei, but a lot of the most popular romance series, like Horimiya, Kaguya-sama, Dress-up Darling, and You and I are Polar Opposites, are actually shonen or seinen. There's actually a pretty notable difference between shounen and shoujo romance if you compare them.

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hitagi@ani.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I remember reading about Minky Momo in Patrick W. Galbraith’s book. I thought it was pretty funny:

“In a personal interview, producer Satō Toshihiko recalled his surprise at encountering “male” shōjo fans attracted to Magical Princess Minky Momo and its eponymous heroine:

‘The anime started in spring 1982 and these guys started showing up after about six months. It was completely unexpected, but this guy came to our studio asking for permission to make something for his fan club. I was shocked! He told me that he was the head of this fan club, which was made up of members between eighteen and thirty years of age. He told me that he was attracted to the character Minky Momo. He thought that she was cute. It is still hard for me to understand. Minky Momo is cute, yes, and she is someone that everyone likes. I expected this response from five-year-old girls and their mothers, who might be watching the anime with them, but not adult men.’”

Galbraith, Patrick W. Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan. Duke University Press, 2019. doi.org/10.1515/9781478007012.

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- nyan@lemmy.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  So . . . kind of the Japanese equivalent of bronies? 😅
  
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  - hitagi@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It might be but I don’t know much about bronies
    
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die4ever@retrolemmy.com@retrolemmy.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I thought shounen was a genre not a demographic lol. Never even heard of the other 3.

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- Endmaker@ani.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  XKCD: 10,000
  
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- Unboxious@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  So, publishers know full well that it’s not just teenage boys reading shounen stories. There are actually more girls reading shounen than there are girls reading shoujo. For this reason a lot of stories that appeal to both end up being published as shounen, whereas stories that are more likely to only appeal to girls get published as shoujo. The same thing happens with seinen and josei; lots of adult women read seinen stuff, whereas it’s less common for adult men to read josei stuff. Seinen magazines have also been around for a lot longer than josei magazines, so sometimes if a mangaka wanted to publish something spicy in a shoujo magazine it would end up getting rejected and getting published in a seinen magazine instead if the publisher and the mangaka thought they could swing it.
  
  This one I don’t have stats on, but I suspect there are more adults reading shounen/shoujo than there are kids/teens reading seinen/josei. The big shounen magazines are really big, so if the mangaka for a story like Frieren thinks their story appeals to everyone it makes sense to pitch it with the big shounen magazines first.
  
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isyasad@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
There’s a really good short video (4 minutes) from The Bellman about some of the differences in the demographics between shounen and seinen. youtu.be/o0Ts5_q6sMc

TL;DR is that a lot of it is the dialogue complexity. Frieren might appeal to an older audience, but it is written in a simple way that children can understand. Maybe it uses more common words, more furigana, or less kanji. It’s hard to notice, and maybe comes across even less in translated subtitles/dubbings.

Another thing to keep in mind is that anime databases like MAL usually categorize demographics entirely based on the magazine in which the source manga was published. Anime originals and light-novel-source anime don’t have demographic tags. [Though it seems that with consensus/community tags on AniList, this isn’t necessarily true.]
If it was published in a shoujo magazine, it’s technically a shoujo. Even if it’s something like Nana that has themes about contraception, pregnancy, and rape, it’s a shoujo because it was published in Cookie.

I’m personally not really a fan of these demographic categories since they are kinda arbitrary and useless, especially for western anime-watchers who won’t even notice or care if the dialogue of the source manga had more furigana (reading/pronunciation guides) or not.
And as an adult male who accepts shoujo manga as easily the greatest of any of these categories, I think I can also acknowledge that the demographics themselves don’t really apply to me.

But to just literally answer your question, it’s Nana. Like WOW, it’s pretty heavy for something ostensibly oriented towards children. Also featuring drugs, underaged prostitution, and a character who is a porn actress.

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nyan@lemmy.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
For real fun, consider Saiyuki, which moved from a shounen magazine in its initial run to a josei magazine for later material. So which is it, really?

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Unboxious@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Apart from the ones you listed, here are a few anime that I’ve seen people get wrong lately:

A Fragrant Flower Blooms With Dignity - shounen

Kaguya-sama: Love is War - seinen

Chainsaw Man - shounen
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- Endmaker@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  What demographic labels did people gave to each of these?
  
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  - Unboxious@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I often see people assuming Fragrant Flower is shoujo, Kaguya-sama is either shounen or shoujo, Blue Box is shoujo, and Chainsaw Man is seinen.
    
    The base assumptions seem to be “There’s a love story where we’ve gone two chapters in and the female lead hasn’t stripped yet??? Must be shoujo!” and “Wow that’s a lot of blood, must be seinen.”
    
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rozodru@piefed.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
New Mobile Report Gundam Wing

The series had more focus on the Drama as opposed to mecha and as a result a slightly cheaper budget (thus the reason the vast majority of mecha scenes are used over and over again) also the fact the teens CONSTANTLY try to blow up their own Gundams. As a result in Japan it was fairly popular with Women. Regardless it was still very popular overall in Japan to the point the studio asked the staff to make a sequel but the creators really had no intention. That being said the one show runner didn’t like how the series ended and thus we got Endless Waltz which also leaned into the popularity of the series with females which is why you get some of the Gundam redesigns.

Of course in the West the show was wildly popular and was the first real introduction of Gundam to a western audience. The show also kicked off the popularity of Gunpla in the west.

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- Unboxious@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  The series had more focus on the Drama as opposed to mecha
  
  Just FYI, that’s almost every Gundam series.
  
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Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
What type is A Certain Scientific Railgun?

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