While Hinano is most likely evaluating the Sniper-type animeblogger Ani-nouto’s decision for cutting off any comments on his/her blog, it has raised another interesting issue in the animeblogosphere in general: blogging Shounen or Shoujo anime or manga.
In fact if you’ve been keeping up with the blogosphere, it is kind of obvious that it is way better to be a male animeblogger than a female animeblogger. Female animebloggers have the tendency to want to blog Shoujo (as well as Josei) anime since, well, they are female after all. Even really mature female bloggers (congratulations on finally deciding to get married to jpmeyer, btw) like Hinano will want to voice their opinions on the better Shoujo stuff like Shugo Chara.
Personally, my modern Japanese visual culture diet is primarily Seinen, since I’m a 20 year-old-male. But I’ve given Shoujo Shugo Chara a short attention span of 3 episodes because my favourite mangaka duo Peach-Pit (drew Rozen Maiden) was behind the original manga. However due to the simplistic nature of Shoujo (AND Shounen) manga, I couldn’t find the drive to continue with the anime. Too busy with work, eroge/doujin VNs, my huge pile of anime-related CDs, my DVD/Blu-Ray disc collection, artbooks/bishoujo gaming mags, blogging (and reading blogs), and my recently purchased Japanese Wii (don’t worry, I’ll be covering my experiences on the Wii soon).
Anyway, back to the blogsphere. You’ll notice hardly anyone blogs Shounen or Shoujo stuff. Most of the stuff the average reader gets are real-life editorials, news updates (and editorials pertaining to these updates), and then there are the episodic anime summary and/or editorial posts. And most of the time, these posts cover Seinen anime.
Why? Firstly, it is really difficult to blog Shounen or Shoujo anime insightfully. Respectfully Hinano is an exceptional and experienced blogger. However much of her comments are usually comparisons to the original manga, rants/flames, or Seiyuu praises/flames. I doubt you can produce an editorial that is of the quality of any of Hop Step Jump Seinen editorials for a Shounen or Shoujo anime (and yeah, Jeff Lawson’s diet is mainly Seinen as well).
Discussions for Shounen (action/adventure) anime usually centre around crap such as “xxx is so powerful! He pwns xxx anytime! xxx anime is the best I give it 5/5″ without much backup evidence or intelligent reasoning. You can see these retarded discussions in any Naurtard or Bleachtard infested forums. I’ll just highlight a few threads for evidence.
The thing is that even though a huge chunk of Shounen/Shoujo manga/anime are retarded, they are capable of inducing an indescribly orgasmic feeling to the intended demographic they target. I mean I LOVE my Seinen media. KeyAni adaptions rawk. I have re-read all my Gunslinger Girl and Azumanga Daioh manga about 6 times already and I do frequently play eroge demos even though my Japanese stinks (went for 2 lessons in basic Jap so far). I can even faintly remember a time when I thought Bleach was the best freaking cartoon on the face of this planet, and I believe I was 17.
This holds true for Shoujo media. Many females online have professed that when they were younger, they wanted to be magical girls like Amu in Shugo Chara. I believe its probably the same feeling I get when I experience huge moe gushes when I watch Seinen stuff like Manabi Straight! or Clannad.
The fundamental problem with blogging Shounen or Shoujo media is that the internet is a freaking huge wide open space that anyone can tread across, even to those that have not fully matured and are blindly idolising Kurosaki Ichigo or some magical girl. Most male animebloggers are instantly immune to such frustrations that Hinano has to face since moe instantly turns most young (immature) guys off. And due to the nature of moe, it isn’t really possible to draw violent comments from girls such as “IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT THEN DON’T WATCH AND DON’T TALK ABOUT IT!” like Shugo Chara or Special A can.
In fact most anime bloggers will usually generate really huge walls of words that the immature/uneducated generally do not entertain. This serves as an instant force field against immaturity.
So this serves as a general warning for would be dedicated Shounen/Shoujo editorial writers: DON’T. Firstly, there isn’t really much to discuss about, unless you are one really freaking HUGE Seiyuu junkie which most Otakus are generally not (one good reason to watch Shounen/Shoujo is really for your favourite Seiyuu). Secondly, prepare for an exceptionally hellish blogging experience unless you switch of your comments like Ani-Nouto does.
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May 7, 2008 at 2:49 am
tj han
I take my hat off to anyone who could blog about Naruto anime intelligent without sounding stupid.
“Yes, I agree that Naruto should’ve parried instead of launched a giant fireball of doom as that woud’ve caused Sai to have a chance for one of this trademarks Lion launches.” or something.
And you are sorely mistaken. Being a girl gets you an extra 30 percent in comments and hits, solely because the readers want to bang you.
May 7, 2008 at 4:51 am
psgels
May I ask: what exactly is your definition of “shoujo”. I’ve regularly blogged some series that could be considered shoujo, and it’s really fine to get some thoughts formulated for them. The best example for this is Les Miserables, that aired last year. For 52 episodes, I had enough to write about.
I think the series you’re talking about are just “bad series”. Really, I’ve seen enough bad seinen-series as well.
May 7, 2008 at 5:08 am
Hinano
The problem is shoujo and shounen are meant for what they stand for: boys & girls…so really it is hard to take them seriously so flaming or fangirling is about all I can do with these kinds of things.
Coincidentally enough, Special A is just so dull that I haven’t really received flames about it as most people probably just read the manga and I’ve yet to encounter someone on my comments who truly enjoys the anime. It’s only shugo chara and kamichama karin that attract the rabid immature flame baters
(actually one of my shugo chara posts attracted 4chan trolls too lol)
May 7, 2008 at 6:33 am
gia
I am confused by the reference to me in this post because…I’m a news blog. No one comes to me for episode summaries, shoujo, shounen, seinen, or otherwise.
Also, lulz for the implication that KeyAni shows somehow get blogged more intelligently than shounen/shoujo shows.
May 7, 2008 at 6:48 am
CJ Blackwing
‘Scuze me… I’m a girl, and I WAY perfer shounen over shoujo or jousei.
“Discussions for Shounen (action/adventure) anime usually centre around crap such as “xxx is so powerful! He pwns xxx anytime! xxx anime is the best I give it 5/5″ without much backup evidence or intelligent reasoning.”
Excuse me while I slit my wrists with a sharpened keyboard. I understand that you use the word ‘usually’ here for a reason, but I have seen extremely insightful discussions about shounen manga and anime! Granted, stuff like Naruto and Bleach often get the attention of stupid Myspace whores with ego issues. But other shounen series, like D.Gray-man for example, get insight from older, wiser fans. The same goes with some older shoujo series.
And saying that an aniblogger will be hard-pressed to provide intelligent discussion about a shounen series is kinda rude. I’ve seen lots of intelligent discussion about Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann, though series like that are rare. And take, for example, the series out there with underlying mythological or religious references and metaphors. (D.Gray-man is one of them.) While it’s indeed difficult to discuss such things, anyone can do it if they do enough research and ponder it enough. A brilliant example of an anime analyzer is Mike/Huang of Anime Diet. (Although I’m not sure if the series I read his analyses about were truly shounen, they fall into the action/adventure/mecha categories.)
tl;dr: Lurk moar. Blogging such series is not a ridiculous goal.
And gia’s quote: “Also, lulz for the implication that KeyAni shows somehow get blogged more intelligently than shounen/shoujo shows.”
Precisely.
May 7, 2008 at 9:19 am
Impz
All right. I guess you do not read my blog because every single series I have covered for the 1.5 years has been shoujo. Oh, I am not a gal too. I am a guy who enjoys shoujo for being shoujo ^^
I think that shoujo can definitely be evaluated through character development, understanding of the mood, expectation of future plot twists and perhaps some moral themes (such as information control, incest, blah blah).
I do not see shoujo any much harder than any genre. In fact, I find that shoujo series are the easiest to blog on. I always have to cut short my impression section, lest it becomes way too long. I always get decent discussion too in every single shoujo post I made. So, I really don’t know where your whole perception comes from.
May 7, 2008 at 9:45 am
Haesslich
Impz is a trap, not a girl.
As for shoujo versus shounen… it depends on the blogger and the show. Nana is one of those shoujo manga turned series which can cross barriers to some extent, just as Ouran Host Club did, or how Macross Frontier seems to be doing things in reverse due to the fact it DOES include a love story as being one of the core ideas of the series.
Shoujo and series ‘targeted at women’ can be quite easy to blog at times – look at how Itsumo covered Nana, mostly by digging into the way the relationships crashed together, and forming posts based on character development (or lack of), versus series like Naruto which are basically ‘twist X happens, fight happens, so what’s next?’. But it depends on the writer of the blog as much as the topic in question.
May 7, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Setsukyie
I enjoy Shoujo more than Shounen..
Why?
Because Shoujo animes are related with real life (most of the time) while Shounen animes mainly focuses on action..
I hate it when an anime characters says something like “I am more powerful now. With this new move, I can defeat you. Because this move is bla bla bla bla”.
This happens a lot in Naruto…lol…
May 7, 2008 at 10:25 pm
dKiWi
@Impz: I’m not really interested in Shoujo which is why my eyes auto-filter Shoujo related posts lolz!. But anyway point made and taken. As for the Shounen point to follow…
@CJ Blackwing:
You see, the big problem with “complex” Shounen anime is that they are not actually that theoretically complex. They do contain many complex references to history and mythology (I have read a few volumes of Spriggan), but they can never reach the philosophical/theoretical complexity of Suzumiya Haruhi (physics) or Clannad (physics again).
In a sense when Shounen anime attempts to be complex, they tend to become westernised entertainment (”educational”) instead of being derivatively insightful. Think about reading Da Vinci code for example.
Seinen media will take top cake for most educated and older males since most Seinen media are actually a mix of bishoujos, moe, fetishes (shoujo-ai etc. etc.), as well as complex philosophical and theoretical discussions intertwined.
Just look at Gunslinger Girl for example. The robo-lolis are everywhere, but at the heart of the manga, Yu Aida asks the questions:
1. Is it right to conscript young, dieing girls into cybernetic robots to fight terrorists?
2. If so, is the overall welfare provided to these girls actually more beneficial to society than simply letting the girls die?
The second question becomes more evident in the later parts of the series when the older cyborgs spoil or make huge mistakes. And trust me, the answers to these questions are very, very complex. Probably whole essays and different perceptions can be explored.
This is exactly the combination that is why experiencing Seinen media gives me an orgasmic feeling while westernised entertainment of “complex” Shounen isn’t going to cut the cake.
And perhaps there aren’t enough theoretical KeyAni bloggers? I don’t really know about Kanon or Air, since I watched through those adaptions in a hurry. But Clannad was complex enough to serve as enough brain food for me.