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There are a number of reasons for this, but one element to keep in mind is that for whatever reason (possibly because both Junior and High school are 3 years as opposed to the 2/4 years common in America) Middle School is often given more focus in Japan when it comes to fiction (high school-related fiction and romance is also common in the West, so that isn't something unique to Japan). College also doesn't have the same cultural association as it does in the US (in the sense of being this fun time when you expand your horizons, etc), so high/middle school sort of fills the roll that a lot of college-related fiction does in the US.
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Dec 29, 2016 04:37
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Endorph posted:now how do you explain all the women-targeted anime It's actually kinda interesting how the tropes differ between shoujo and shounen romances. In shounen the MC is either a loser who acquires the affection of a bunch of girls through either "saving them" in some way or just completely arbitrarily. The MC also is usually very average looking and not particularly attractive or unattractive*. In shoujo, the protagonist, while stated to be "average", is usually quite pretty (though more in the sense of being skinny/cute rather than having big boobs, etc), and guys usually end up interested in her because she's "not like all those other girls" (who are often depicted as being universally terrible unless they're the protagonist's close friends - it's actually kinda interesting how vicious a lot of shoujo manga is in its depiction of any girls outside of the protagonist's close circle). Despite its problems, overall I prefer the shoujo depictions because the love interests don't tend to fawn over the protagonist as much. * There are exceptions to this, like the series Domestic Kanojo, which is a pretty bad manga but I have to give it credit for the fact that the protagonist is a really good looking talented novelist, so it's actually pretty realistic that so many girls would be interested in him. Interestingly the author is a woman, so this might help account for why the protagonist is more realistically depicted as the type of guy girls would be attracted to.
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Dec 29, 2016 05:32
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Endorph posted:i dont think youve read a lot of shoujo manga or played a lot of otome games Hm, I actually have, though it's entirely possible my perception is skewed. I'll admit that the first cliche I'm describing tends to be present more commonly in average/bad shoujo (and the ones we discuss in the shoujo/romance thread tend to be much better). And I guess that shounen romances also tend to be pretty vicious towards any love competitors. If you're referring to the "fawns of the protagonist" thing, it's true that the love interests obviously seek out the attention of the protagonist a lot, but they don't seem to view her in such a ridiculous light as shounen love interests ("X is so kind and wonderful"). Regardless, the cliches don't seem quite as universal as they are in shounen; it's pretty easy to find shoujo manga that don't have these characteristics, but almost all shounen romances are similar. edit: I wonder if we're going to see an upswing in high school/college-based fiction in the West as young adulthood starts to become more and more bleak.
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Dec 30, 2016 22:48
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