Genderifying Manga : Shōnen and Shōjo Yokai

To modern manga readers it comes as no surprise that manga is heavily designated by gender and age. You have shōnen and seinen for males and shōjo and josei for women. Each genre has specific narrative boundaries and tones that are heavily weaved into each title and make it easier for consumers to gravitate toward the magazines that hold what they want.

The main reason why I have started thinking about this idea was that lately, I have been interested in reading manga that depict Japanese traditional culture, particularly yokai, Japanese traditional monsters and spirits. After I read Black Bird, I really noticed something in the way that all the yokai were drawn by Sakurakoji in comparison to the yokai that I read about in Kekkaishi.

What follows is a quick foray into my thoughts on not only yokai manga, but how manga has been slowly breaking out of the genderification that it has, almost willingly, put itself into.

     

Eyeshield 21 - Shōnen Jump Manga Marathon #2

To continue with my Shōnen Jump Manga Marathon, I picked an older manga that is also related to the post that I made last week about Kuroko no Basuke when I quoted a forum post comparing the characters and their "super skills". Even before I made the last post, I knew that Eyeshield 21 was going to be the next Jump manga I read specifically because I wanted to weigh in on the comparison. The Eyeshield 21 anime came out while I was in college and the manga was serialized from 2002 - 2009 in Weekly Shōnen Jump. Spaning 37 volumes and 333 chapters all together, the manga focuses on Sena and how he becomes involved with his schools American Football Club; which consists of 3 members including himself. The manga-time for this story is only a year, or a little less than.

As an American, I was tickled pink by the fact that there was a manga that dealt with American Football. From what I understood American Football is like Aussie Rules Football, way more popular in their home countries and generally ignored by the rest of the sports loving world. Was I wrong about that? Soccer is still king my friends.