Re: When is shoujo going to start selling on DVD?

[Leon_Belmont]

Blah blah blah shoujo sucks anyway.

It's the fans of good anime that are getting screwed. Where's my Fighting Spirit OVAs? Where's my Fafner OVA? Where's the other half of Gundam? Why isn't Destiny banned for human consumption?

[roastedpekingduck]

Originally Posted by Hot Otak

Blah blah blah shoujo sucks anyway.

Generalizing the genre a bit, don't you think? I admit that I may be rather allergic to shoujo, but even I can see that some shoujo shows are quite well done. Every subgenre has its good shows and its pile of crap.

[DanielJr]

At the risk of sounding ignorant...

Maybe girls just outgrow manga? Why work 20 hours a week at McDonalds to buy some girly comic books or DVDs? They can get the latest perfume, dress, shoes, or make-up hardware. They're growing up, part of it means putting away the kid habits.

It's not like boys or guys, we keep our hobbies well into our adulthood.

[Andre]

Originally Posted by DanielJr

At the risk of sounding ignorant...

Maybe girls just outgrow manga? Why work 20 hours a week at McDonalds to buy some girly comic books or DVDs? They can get the latest perfume, dress, shoes, or make-up hardware. They're growing up, part of it means putting away the kid habits. It's not like boys or guys, we keep our hobbies well into our adulthood.

I dunno, there's a lot of women out there with crazy hobbies, from toy collecting to fantasy novels [Harlequinn actually has a line of fantasy novels called Luna, featuring popular Harlequinn authors, and recognized big name fantasy authors like Mercedes Lackey, focusing on books written by and for women].

And there's a fair whack of women out there buying
those adult only, 15-20 buck yaoi manga. There are a growing number of Fujoshi fans out there, something that'll continue to grow, and is leading to some grow in publishers experimenting with the publication of Josei titles as well, which is aimed at the same age range of fans [if something a bit more general audiences].

There's always been female fans in anime/manga, and like in many fandoms, I think male fans often overlook this fact. Given most anime/manga fans I know are women past university age, who are still into it, I imagine as the years pass, we'll see more and more older female anime fans in the hobby [and fyi- a large number of domestic manga creators are women well into their adulthoods, so there's some girls making geekery into their life's work].

The thing is younger female [and younger male for that matter] fans still make up a huge chunk of the fandom, just because we're still only about 6 or so years into the BIG anime boom, and the growth of graphic novels into a profitable market for book stores. Younger fans of both genders are a large sector at Cons, manga sales, TV ratings and other aspects of anime.

I don't really think the thing we should be asking is "Why Don't Shojo Anime sell?"

It's "Why doesn't Niche Anime Sell as well?", "Why do some fans not buy their anime", and mabye "Why don't they adapt as much shojo manga into anime as they do shonen manga?"

I like that one poster pointed out that shojo anime adaptions tend to be shorter nowadays, and have always tended to be less common. Yet shojo magazines probably make up 1/2 of what's published in Japan. It's only in the past few years that there's been a dedicated block of shojo anime aimed at older viewers in Japan.
I imagine part of the reason we don't see as much shojo anime as people would like over here is that there isn't much shojo anime produced to begin with each year, and of all the new series that debut each year in all genres, only a certain number will get licensed over here.


This whole "outgrow" thing just seems silly to me....... I think there are better reasons that have popped up here, such as a lesser amount of shojo being adapted [often with series getting less complete treatment then some non-shojo anime], the newer growth of manga fans coming around the same time as internet downloading/bootlegging became a problem in fandom, and the general, overall issue of Anime DVD's not selling as well as they used to [and selling niche titles in a crowded market]. The larger sector of the market that's adult only material marketed at adult women, charging prices at the higher end of manga titles, tends to argue against outgrowing to me......

[The Pirate Queen]

Originally Posted by Hot Otak

Blah blah blah shoujo sucks anyway.

It's the fans of good anime that are getting screwed. Where's my Fighting Spirit OVAs? Where's my Fafner OVA? Where's the other half of Gundam? Why isn't Destiny banned for human consumption?

Can we refrain from the blatant flamebait in the future? It's really not necessary, and that's speaking as a fan of both shoujo and what you class as "good" anime