Shojo Manga
This genre is geared towards adolescent girls and deals with romance and the formation of relationships between different people. The main characters are always females who are generally in high school and are usually actively trying to find love or happen to stumble across it. After this occurs, the rest of the story is spent exploring the nature of these new relationships, not without plenty of drama and challenges thrown in along the way. Shojo manga reflect a lot about Japanese high school culture, such as with the sports and culture festivals high schools have annually and the competition to test into good schools. In addition, the behavioral differences between girls and boys can be clearly seen in this genre. See Shojo Manga: The Eternal Quest for Love for more information.
Shonen Manga
This genre is aimed at adolescent boys and is centered around characters developing their physical strength and fighting skills rather than relationships with others. It is drawn in a flashier, more incredible style than shojo manga, which relies on subtler details to create different ambiances. Shonen manga, however, relies on huge battle scenes every few chapters to move the plot line along. The general formula for this genre is that the main character, who is always male, goes through a training arc and fights with an opponent who has challenged him to become more powerful. If the main character wins, he rejoices for a bit but is quickly met by another even more menacing opponent. If he loses, then he simply trains again for the rematch. Either case, physical prowess is the focus of shonen manga. Female characters surrounding the protagonist are trivialized and those that are given larger roles are usually provocatively dressed. This sends the message that women in shonen manga cannot be taken seriously if they are not sexually attractive.
Seinen Manga
Seinen manga is similar to shonen manga in the sense that it also focuses on fighting and strength-building but in a more adult context. The fights and drawings are often extremely gory and the protagonists, who are still always male, are developed and muscled. Seinen manga can be very sexually explicit, even more so than ecchi manga, and explores more deeply the nuances of themes like good and evil and masculinity. Plotlines are also more developed in seinen manga than in shonen, but women are still marginalized and overtly sexualized.
Josei Manga
Josei manga is to shojo manga what seinen is to shonen. This genre is directed towards an adult female demographic and takes the plot and character development seen in shojo manga to another level. In josei manga, much more serious themes are covered as opposed to the relatively saccharine shojo manga. For instance, there are many josei titles regarding eating disorders, rape, sexual abuse, and death. The protagonists, who are female, are still concerned with finding love and many series are built around a woman and a love interest. However, what’s different this time is that the leads are also trying to discover their own identities. This awareness of self is refreshing but, as with shojo manga, many of the qualifications the female characters are using to evaluate themselves are based on what men feel merit validation.
Ecchi, Kodomo, and Doujinshi
- Ecchi is essentially any manga with tremendous amounts of fanservice. The term is highly inclusive in the sense that while a series can be ecchi alone, a shonen series, for instance, can be both shonen and ecchi. Ecchi is not as explicit as hentai (manga pornography) but is still shows a lot of sexually suggestive content. Nonetheless, genitalia and breasts are usually censored in ecchi manga and actual sexual acts are almost never shown. Needless to say, this series capitalizes on the sexualization of female characters and is always based on a male protagonist trying to find sexual gratification.
- Kodomo manga is geared towards young kids. It has simple stories and cutely designed characters that are meant to be appealing to children. Many other genres satirize the kodomo style, such as Crayon Shin-chan, which is actually for adults though it looks like it could be something a five year old would read.
- Doujinshi are independently published manga, often by fans of certain series.