is an editorial category of Japanese comics targeting an audience of adolescent girls and young adult women. It is, along with manga (targeting adolescent boys), manga (targeting young adult and adult men), and manga (targeting adult women), one of the primary editorial categories of manga. manga is traditionally published in dedicated manga magazines, which often specialize in a particular readership age range or narrative genre.
manga originated from Japanese girls' culture at the turn of the twentieth century, primarily (girls' prose novels) and (lyrical paintings). The earliest manga was published in general magazines aimed at teenagers in the early 1900s and began a period of creative development in the 1950s as it began to formalize as a distinct category of manga. While the category was initially dominated by male manga artists, the emergence and eventual dominance of female artists beginning in the 1960s and 1970s led to significant creative innovation and the development of more graphically and thematically complex stories. Since the 1980s, the category has developed stylistically while simultaneously branching into different and overlapping subgenres.
Strictly speaking, manga does not refer to a specific style or a genre but rather indicates a target demographic. While certain aesthetic, visual, and narrative conventions are associated with manga, these conventions have changed and evolved over time, and none are strictly exclusive to manga. Nonetheless, several concepts and themes have come to be typically associated with manga, both visual (non-rigid panel layouts, highly detailed eyes) and narrative (a focus on human relations and emotions; characters that defy traditional roles and stereotypes surrounding gender and sexuality; depictions of supernatural and paranormal subjects).
The Japanese word (å°Â女) translates literally to "girl", but in common Japanese usage girls are generally referred to as and rarely as . Rather, the term is used to designate a social category that emerged during the Meiji era (1868âÂÂ1912) of girls and young women at the age between childhood and marriage. Generally this referred to school-aged adolescents, with whom an image of "innocence, purity and cuteness" was associated; this contrasted the moga ("modern girl", young unmarried working women), with whom a more self-determined and sexualized image was associated. continued to be associated with an image of youth and innocence after the end of the Meiji era, but took on a strong consumerist connotation beginning in the 1980s as it developed into a distinct marketing category for girls; the gyaru (ã®ã£ã«) also replaced the moga as the archetypical independent woman during this period.
Strictly speaking, manga does not refer to a specific style or a genre, but rather indicates a target demographic. The Japanese manga market is segmented by target readership, with the major categories divided by gender ( for girls, shà Ânen for boys) and by age (josei for women, seinen for men). Thus, manga is typically defined as manga marketed to an audience of adolescent girls and young adult women, though manga is also read by men and older women.
Shà Âjo manga is traditionally published in dedicated manga magazines that are directed at a readership of , an audience that emerged in the early 20th century and which has grown and diversified over time. While the style and tone of the stories published in these magazines varies across publications and decades, an invariant characteristic of manga has been a focus on human relations and the emotions that accompany them. Some critics, such as Kyoto International Manga Museum curator Kayoko Kuramochi and academic , emphasize certain graphic elements when attempting to define manga: the imaginative use of flowers, ribbons, fluttering dresses, girls with large sparkling eyes, and words that string across the page, which Honda describes using the onomatopoeia hirahira. This definition accounts for works that exist outside the boundaries of traditional magazine publishing but which nonetheless are perceived as , such as works published on the Internet.
As the Japanese publishing industry boomed during the Meiji era, new magazines aimed at a teenage audience began to emerge, referred to as shà Ânen. While these magazines were ostensibly unisex, in practice the editorial content of these magazines largely concerned topics that were of interest to boys. Faced with growing demand for magazines aimed at girls, the first shà Âjo magazines were published, and shà Ânen magazines came to target boys exclusively. The first exclusively shà Âjo magazine was ', first published in 1902. This was followed by Shà Âjo Sekai in 1906, Shà Âjo no Tomo in 1908, Shà Âjo Gahà  in 1912, and Shà Âjo Club in 1923. These magazines focused primarily on shà Âjo shà Âsetsu ( "girls' novel", a term for illustrated novels and poems aimed at an audience of girls) and only incidentally on manga.
Shà Âjo shà Âsetsu nevertheless played an important role in establishing a shà Âjo culture, and laid the foundations for what would become the major recurrent themes of shà Âjo manga through their focus on stories of love and friendship. Among the most significant authors of this era was Nobuko Yoshiya, a major figure in the Class S genre whose novels such as Hana Monogatari centered on romantic friendships between girls and women. The visual conventions of shà Âjo manga were also heavily influenced by the illustrations published in these magazines, with works by illustrators Yumeji Takehisa, Jun'ichi Nakahara, and featuring female figures with slender bodies, fashionable clothing, and large eyes. Japanese artists who studied in France at the time were influenced by the methods of expression of Art Nouveau and early pin-up artists.
Early shà Âjo manga took the form of short, humorous stories with ordinary settings (such as schools and neighborhoods) and which often featured tomboy protagonists. These works began to develop in the 1930s through the influence of artists such as Suihà  Tagawa and Shosuke Kurakane; this period saw some female shà Âjo artists, such as Machiko Hasegawa and Toshiko Ueda, though they were significantly less common than male artists.
Among the most influential artists of this era was Katsuji Matsumoto, a lyrical painter influenced in moga culture and the artistic culture of the United States. Having grown tired of depicting typical innocent shà Âjo subjects in his illustrations, he pivoted to drawing manga in the 1920s, where he was able to depict moga and tomboys more freely. His style, likely influenced by American comic book artists like George McManus and Ethel Hays and American cinema of the era, introduced sophisticated and avant-garde innovations in shà Âjo manga, such as the art deco-inspired Poku-chan (1930), the cinematic Nazo no Kurà Âbà(1934), and his most famous work Kurukuru Kurumi-chan (1938).
With the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, censorship and paper rationing hindered the development of magazines, which either folded or were forced to merge to survive. The magazines that continued to published were reduced to a few pages of black and white text, with few or no illustrations. 41 total magazines remained in publication in 1945, two of which were shà Âjo magazines: Shà Âjo Club and Shà Âjo no Tomo.
With the end of the war, Japan entered into a period of large-scale artistic production in cinema, radio, and publishing. Fiction novels enjoyed a surge of popularity, while the number of published magazines grew from 41 in 1945 to 400 by 1952; the number of publishing companies grew from 300 to roughly 2000 during the same period. While not all of theses magazines and companies published children's literature, publications for children constituted a significant percentage of publishing output. Contemporaneously, kashi-hon (book rental stores) experienced a boom in popularity. These stores rented books for a modest fee of five to ten yen, roughly equivalent to half the cost of a subway ticket at the time. This had the effect of widening access to books among the general public and spurring additional manga publishing.
Shà Âjo manga artists who had been active prior to the war returned to the medium, including Shosuke Kurakane with Anmitsu Hime (1949âÂÂ1955), Toshiko Ueda with Fuichin-san (1957âÂÂ1962), and Katsuji Matsumoto resuming publication of Kurukuru Kurumi-chan. During this period, Matsumoto developed his art into a style that began to resemble the kawaii aesthetic that would emerge several decades later. New manga artists, such as Osamu Tezuka and other artists associated with Tokiwa-sà Â, created works that introduced intense drama and serious themes to children's manga using a new format that had become popular in shà Ânen manga: the "story manga", which depicted multi-chapter narratives with continuity rather than a succession of essentially independent vignettes. Princess Knight (1953âÂÂ1956) by Tezuka is credited with introducing this type of narrative, along with Tezuka's innovative and dynamic style, to shà Âjo magazines.
At the same time, shà Âjo on the kashi-hon market developed its own distinct style through the influence of jojà Âga (lyrical painting). Jojà Âga artists Yukiko Tani and Macoto Takahashi drew cover illustrations for shà Âjo manga anthologies such as Niji and Hana before transitioning into drawing manga themselves. Rather than following Matsumoto's trajectory of moving away from the visual conventions of lyrical painting, Tani and Takahashi imported them into their manga, with works defined by a strong sense of atmosphere and a focus on the emotions rather than the actions of their protagonists. Takahashi's manga series Arashi o Koete (1958) was a major success upon its release, and marked the beginnings of this jojà Âga-influenced style eclipsing Tezuka's dynamic style as the dominant visual style of shà Âjo manga. Not all kashi-hon shà Âjo conformed to this lyrical style: one of the most popular shà Âjo kashi-hon anthologies was , which launched in 1958 and ran for more than one hundred monthly issues. As its name implies, the anthology published supernatural stories focused on yà «rei and yà Âkai. Its success with female readers resulted in other generalist shà Âjo anthologies beginning to publish horror manga, laying the groundwork for what would become a significant subgenre of shà Âjo manga.
As manga became generally more popular over the course of the decade, the proportion of manga published by shà Âjo magazines began to increase. For example, while manga represented only 20 percent of the editorial content of Shà Âjo Club in the mid-1950s, by the end of the decade it composed more than half. Many shà Âjo magazines had in effect became manga magazines, and several companies launched magazines dedicated exclusively to shà Âjo manga: first Kodansha in 1954 with Nakayoshi, followed by Shueisha in 1955 with Ribon. From this combination of light-hearted stories inherited from the pre-war era, dramatic narratives introduced by the Tokiwa-sà Â, and cerebral works developed on the kashi-hon market, shà Âjo manga of this period was divided by publishers into three major categories: , , and .
In the 1950s, shà Âjo manga was a genre that was created primarily by male authors, notably Leiji Matsumoto, Shà Âtarà  Ishinomori, Kazuo Umezu, and Tetsuya Chiba. Though some creators (notably Tezuka, Ishinomori, and Umezu) created works focused on active heroines, most shà Âjo stories of this era were typically focused on tragic and passive heroines who bravely endured adversity. Beside Toshiko Ueda, several female manga artists started working during the 1950s, notably Hideko Mizuno, Miyako Maki, Masako Watanabe and Eiko Hanamura, most of them debuted within the kashi-hon anthology . While they constituted a minority of shà Âjo manga creators, the editorial departments of magazines noted that their works were more popular with female readers than works created by their male peers.
By the 1960s, the ubiquity of television in Japanese households and the rise of serialized television programs emerged as a significant competitor to magazines. Many monthly magazines folded and were replaced by weekly magazines, such as Shà Âjo Friend and Margaret. To satisfy the need for weekly editorial content, magazines introduced contests in which readers could submit their manga for publication; female artists dominated these contests, and many amateur artists who emerged from these contests went on to have professional manga careers. The first artist to emerge from this system was Machiko Satonaka, who at the age of 16 had debut manga Pia no Shà Âzà  ("Portrait of Pia", 1964) published in Shà Âjo Friend.
The emergence of female artists led to the development of roma-kome (romantic comedy) manga, historically an unpopular genre among male shà Âjo artists. Hideko Mizuno was the first to introduce romantic comedy elements to shà Âjo manga through her manga adaptions of American romantic comedy films: Sabrina in 1963 as Sutekina Cora, and The Quiet Man in 1966 as Akage no Scarlet. Other artists, such as Masako Watanabe, Chieko Hosokawa, and Michiko Hosono similarly created manga based on American romantic comedy films, or which were broadly inspired by western actresses and models and featured western settings. Contemporaneously, artists such as Yoshiko Nishitani became popular for rabu-kome (literally "love comedy") manga, focused on protagonists who were ordinary Japanese teenaged girls, with a narrative focus on themes of friendship, family, school, and love.
While early romance shà Âjo manga was almost invariably simple and conventional love stories, over time and through the works of manga artists such as Machiko Satonaka and Yukari Ichijà Â, the genre adopted greater narrative and thematic complexity. This gradual maturity came to be reflected in other subgenres: horror manga artist Kazuo Umezu broke shà Âjo artistic conventions by depicting female characters who were ugly, frightening, and grotesque in his 1965 series Reptilia published in Shà Âjo Friend, which led to more shà Âjo artists depicting darker and taboo subject material in their work. Shà Âjo sports manga, such as Chikako Urano's Attack No. 1 (1968âÂÂ1970), began to depict physically active rather than passive female protagonists. In 1969, the first shà Âjo manga sex scene was published in Hideko Mizuno's Fire! (1969âÂÂ1971).
By the end of the decade, most shà Âjo magazines now specialized in manga, and no longer published their previous prose literature and articles. As the kashi-hon declined, so too did their manga anthologies; most folded, with their artists and writers typically migrating to manga magazines. Most shà Âjo manga artists were women, and the category had developed a unique visual identity that distinguished it from shà Ânen manga.
By the early 1970s, most shà Âjo manga artists were women, though editorial positions at shà Âjo manga magazines remained male-dominated. Over the course of the decade, shà Âjo manga became more graphically and thematically complex, as it came to reflect the prevailing attitudes of the sexual revolution and women's liberation movement. This movement towards narratively complex stories is associated with the emergence of a new generation of shà Âjo artists collectively referred to as the Year 24 Group, which included Moto Hagio, Keiko Takemiya, Yumiko à Âshima, and numerous others. Works of the Year 24 Group focused on the internal psychology of their characters, and introduced new genres to shà Âjo manga such as adventure fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and historical drama. The art style of the Group, influenced by Machiko Satonaka and Yukari Ichijà Â, came to pioneer new visual standards for shà Âjo manga: finer and lighter lines, beautiful faces that bordered on exaggeration, and panels that overlapped or were entirely borderless.
Numerous artists contributed to innovation in shà Âjo manga during the 1970s. Takemiya and Hagio originated a new genre, shà Ânen-ai (male-male romance), with Takemiya's Sunroom Nite (1970) and Hagio's The November Gymnasium (1971). The historical drama The Rose of Versailles (1972âÂÂ1973) by Riyoko Ikeda became the first major critical and commercial success in shà Âjo manga; the series was groundbreaking in its portrayal of gender and sexuality, and was influential in its depiction of bishà Ânen (literally "beautiful boys"), a term for androgynous male characters. Ako Mutsu and Mariko Iwadate led a new trend of otomechikku manga. While works of the Year 24 Group were defined by their narrative complexity, otomechikku manga focused on the ordinary lives of teenaged Japanese protagonists. The genre waned in popularity by the end of the decade, but its narrative and visual style made a lasting impact on shà Âjo manga, particularly the emergent aesthetic of kawaii. Veteran shà Âjo artists such as Miyako Maki and Hideko Mizuno began developing new manga for their formerly child-aged readers who were now adults. Although their attempts were commercially unsuccessful, with short-lived magazines such as Papillon (ãÂÂãÂÂã¨ã³) at Futabasha in 1972, their works were the origins of ladies comics before the category's formal emergence in the early 1980s.
By the end of the 1970s, the three largest publishing houses in Japan (Kodansha, Shogakukan, and Shueisha) as well as Hakusensha established themselves as the largest publishers of shà Âjo manga, and maintained this dominant position in the decades that followed. The innovation of shà Âjo manga throughout the decade attracted the attention of manga critics, who had previously ignored shà Âjo manga or regarded it as unserious, but who now declared that shà Âjo manga had entered its "golden age". This critical attention attracted a male audience to shà Âjo manga who, although a minority of overall shà Âjo readers, remained as an audience for the category.
Since the 1970s, shà Âjo manga has continued to develop stylistically while simultaneously branching out into different but overlapping subgenres. This development began with a shift in characters and settings: while foreign characters and settings were common in the immediate post-war period, stories began to be set in Japan more frequently as the country began to re-assert an independent national identity. Meiji University professor Yukari Fujimoto writes that beginning in the 1990s, shà Âjo manga became concerned with self-fulfillment. She intimates that the Gulf War influenced the development of female characters "who fight to protect the destiny of a community", such as Red River (1995âÂÂ2002), Basara (1990âÂÂ1998), Magic Knight Rayearth (1993âÂÂ1996), and Sailor Moon (1991âÂÂ1997). Fujimoto opines that the shà Âjo manga of the 1990s depicted emotional bonds between women as stronger than the bonds between a man and a woman.
In 1980, Kodansha published Be Love as the first manga magazine aimed at an audience of adult women. It was quickly followed by a wave of similar magazines, including Feel Young at Kodansha, Judy at Shogakukan, and You, Young You and Office You at Shueisha. This category of manga, referred to as "ladies' comics" or josei manga, shares many common traits with shà Âjo manga, with the primary distinguishing exception of a focus on adult protagonists rather than teenaged or younger protagonists. Sexuality is also depicted more openly, though these depictions in turn came to influence shà Âjo manga, which itself began to depict sexuality more openly in the 1990s. Several manga magazines blur distinctions between shà Âjo and josei, and publish works that aesthetically resemble shà Âjo manga but which deal with the adult themes of josei manga; examples include Kiss at Kodansha, Chorus and Cookie at Shueisha, and Betsucomi at Shogakukan.
Niche shà Âjo publications that eschewed typical shà Âjo manga conventions emerged in the 1980s, particularly in the horror and erotica genres. This occurred in the context of the decline of kashi-hon publishing, where publishers survived market shifts away from book rental by offering collected volumes of manga that had not been previously serialized in magazines. Hibari Shà Âbo and Rippà « Shà Âbo were among the publishing companies that began to publish shà Âjo horror manga in this format, typically as volumes that contained a mix of kashi-hon reissues and original creations. Horror shà Âjo manga published by kashi-hon publishers was typically more gory and grotesque than the horror manga of mainstream shà Âjo magazines, in some case prompting accusations of obscenity and lawsuits by citizens' associations. These publishing houses folded by the end of the 1980s as they became replaced with mainstream shà Âjo manga magazines dedicated to the horror genre, beginning with Monthly Halloween in 1986.
In the 1990s, a genre of softcore pornographic shà Âjo manga emerged under the genre name teens' love. The genre shares many common traits with pornographic josei manga, with the distinguishing exception of the age of the protagonists, who are typically in their late teens and early twenties. Teens' love magazines proliferated at smaller publishers, such as Ohzora Publishing, which published a wide range of both josei and teens' love manga. The genre gradually migrated from small publishers to larger ones, such as Dessert and Shogakukan's mainstream shà Âjo magazines.
By the 2000s, this niche shà Âjo manga, particularly the teens' love genre, had largely abandoned printed formats in favor of the Internet, in response to the rise of mobile phones in Japan.
In the 2000s, publishers who produced manga aimed at a female audience faced a changing market: josei manga had declined in popularity, girls increasingly preferred television dramas over printed of entertainment, and the manga market generally had slowed. Many major publishers restructured their shà Âjo manga magazine operations in response, folding certain magazines and launching new publications. The majority of the newly launched magazines during this period were commercial failures.
In 2008, the publishing house Fusosha, which had previously not published manga, entered the manga market with the shà Âjo manga magazine Malika. The magazine was unconventional compared to other shà Âjo manga magazines of the era: in addition to publishing manga by renowned female authors, it featured contributions from celebrities in media, illustration, and design; the magazine also operated a website that published music and additional stories. The magazine was a commercial failure and folded after six issues, but came to be emblematic of a new trend in shà Âjo manga: cross-media marketing, where works are published across multiple mediums simultaneously.
Early shà Âjo manga successes in this cross-media approach include Nana (2000âÂÂ2009) by Ai Yazawa, Lovely Complex (2001âÂÂ2006) by Aya Nakahara, and Nodame Cantabile (2001âÂÂ2010) by Tomoko Ninomiya, all of which were alternately adapted into films, television dramas, anime series, video games, and series-branded music CDs. Older manga series, such as Attack No. 1 and Boys Over Flowers, found renewed success after being relaunched with cross-media adaptations.
The shà Âjo magazines Asuka and Princess, which distinguished themselves by publishing a diversity of narrative genres such as fantasy and science fiction, saw new competitors emerge in the 2000s: Monthly Comic Zero Sum in 2002, Sylph in 2006, Comic Blade Avarus in 2007, and Aria in 2010. These new magazines explicitly targeted an audience of anime and boys' love (male-male romance) fans by publishing manga that closely resembled the visual style of anime, featured bishà Ânen protagonists in fantastical environments, and which deliberately played with the visual and narrative conventions of shà Âjo manga. In sum, the magazines represented the integration of moe in shà Âjo manga: a term describing an expression of cuteness focused on feelings of affection and excitement that is distinct from kawaii, the more child-like and innocent expression of cuteness typically associated with shà Âjo manga.
Moe was additionally expressed in shà Âjo manga through the emergence of so-called "boys shà Âjo manga", beginning with the magazines Comic High! in 2004 and Comic Yell! in 2007. Magazines in this category publish manga aimed at a male readership, but which use a visual style that draws significantly from the aesthetics of moe and shà Âjo manga.
English-language translations of shà Âjo manga were first published in North America in the late 1990s. As the American comic book market was largely oriented towards male readers at the time, shà Âjo manga found early success by targeting a then-unreached audience of female comic book readers; English translations of titles such as Sailor Moon, Boys Over Flowers, and Fruits Basket became best-selling books. The English manga market crashed in the late 2000s due to the 2008 financial crisis, and when the medium regained popularity in the 2010s, shà Ânen manga emerged as the most popular category of manga among English-language readers. Nevertheless, every major English-language manga publisher maintains a robust line of shà Âjo manga; Viz Media in particular publishes shà Âjo manga under its Shojo Beat imprint, which it also published as a serialized manga magazine in the mid- to late-2000s.
The visual style of shà Âjo manga was largely similar to that of shà Ânen manga until the late 1950s, a function of the fact that both shà Âjo and shà Ânen manga were created by the same, mostly male, artists. During the pre-war period, these artists were especially influenced by the modernist style of George McManus, while in the post-war period the dynamic style of Osamu Tezuka became the primary reference point for manga. While shà Âjo manga inherited some of these influences, the unique style that emerged at the end of the 1950s which came to distinguish shà Âjo manga from shà Ânen manga was primarily derived from pre-war shà Âjo shà Âsetsu.
Shà Âjo shà Âsetsu is characterized by a "flowery and emotional" prose style focused on the inner monologue of the protagonist. Narration is often punctuated with non-verbal elements that express the feelings of the protagonists; writer Nobuko Yoshiya in particular made extensive use of multiple ellipsis ("..."), exclamation points, and dashes in the middle of sentences, the lattermost of which were scattered across pages in a manner resembling verses of poetry. Prose is accompanied by illustrations by lyrical painters, which are characterized by a sentimental style influenced by Art Nouveau and Nihonga. Particular attention is paid to representations of shà Âjo, who are depicted as well-dressed and possessing large, very detailed eyes that have star-shaped highlights.
This narrative and visual style began to influence shà Âjo manga towards the end of the 1950s; Macoto Takahashi, a lyrical painter and manga artist, is regarded as the first artist to use this style in manga. The style was quickly adopted by his contemporaries and later by shà Âjo artists who emerged in the 1960s, while in the 1970s artists associated with the Year 24 Group developed the style significantly. According to manga artist, academic, and Year 24 Group member Keiko Takemiya, shà Âjo manga was able to develop this distinct style because the category was seen as marginal by editors, who consequently allowed artists to draw stories in whatever manner they wished so long as reader response remained positive. Stylistic elements that were developed by the Year 24 Group became established as visual hallmarks of shà Âjo manga; many of these elements later spread to shà Ânen manga, such as the use of non-rigid panel layouts and highly detailed eyes that express the emotions of characters.
Beginning in the 1970s, panel layouts in shà Âjo manga developed a new and distinct style. In his 1997 book Why Is Manga So Interesting? Its Grammar and Expression, manga artist and critic Fusanosuke Natsume identifies and names the three major aspects of panel construction that came to distinguish shà Âjo manga from shà Ânen manga. The first, naiho ("panel encapsulations"), refers to the use of layouts that break from the traditional comic approach of a series of sequential boxes. In this style, elements extend beyond the borders of panels, or the panel border is removed entirely. Intervals between panels are also were modified, with sequential panels that depicted the same event from different angles or perspectives. Second is kaiho ("release"), referring to the use of decompression to create more languid and relaxed sequences. Oftentimes in compositions without panel borders, text is removed from speech balloons and spread across the page, especially in instances where the dialogue communicates the thoughts, feelings, and internal monologue of the speaker. Third is mahaku ("break"), referring to the symbolic use of white space.
A defining stylistic element of shà Âjo manga is its depiction of characters with very large, detailed eyes that have star-shaped highlights, sometimes referred to as . This technique did not originate in shà Âjo manga; large eyes have been drawn in manga since the early 20th century, notably by Osamu Tezuka, who drew inspiration from the theatrical makeup of actresses in the Takarazuka Revue when drawing eyes. A large central star that replaces the pupil dot began to appear at key moments in shà Âjo manga by Tezuka and Shotaro Ishinomori in the mid-1950s, though these details generally trended towards a realist style rather than the emotive style of later shà Âjo manga.
Contemporaneously, the art of Jun'ichi Nakahara was significantly influencing kashi-hon manga artists, especially Macoto Takahashi. Takahashi incorporated Nakahara's style of drawing eyes into his own manga â large, doll-like eyes with highlights and long lashes â while gradually introducing his own stylistic elements, such as the use of dots, stars, and multiple colors to represent the iris. At the end of the 1950s, Takahashi's style was adopted by Miyako Maki â one of the most popular manga artists at the time â which led to its widespread adoption by mainstream shà Âjo manga magazines.
From this point on, experimental eye design flourished in shà Âjo manga, with features such as elongated eyelashes, the use of concentric circles of different shades, and the deformation of the iris to create a glittering effect. This focus on hyper-detailed eyes led manga artists to frame panels on close-ups of faces, to draw attention to the emotions being expressed by the eyes of the characters. Eyes also came to serve as a marker of gender, with female characters typically having larger eyes than male characters.
Among the most common concepts in shà Âjo manga is that of , which refers to interpersonal relationships between characters and the interaction of their emotions. Relationships between characters are central to most shà Âjo manga, particularly those of friendship, affection, and love. Narratives often focus on the interiority of their protagonists, wherein their emotions, feelings, memories, and inner monologue are expressed visually through techniques such as panel arrangement and the rendering of eye details. When conflict occurs, the most common medium of exchange is dialogue and conversation, as opposed to physical combat typical in shà Ânen manga.
Manga scholar Yukari Fujimoto considers that the content of shà Âjo manga has evolved in tandem with the evolution of Japanese society, especially in terms of the place of women, the role of the family, and romantic relationships. She notes how family dramas with a focus on mother-daughter relationships were popular in the 1960s, while stories about romantic relationships became more popular in the 1970s, and stories about father figures became popular in the 1990s. As shà Âjo manga began to focus on adolescents over children beginning in the 1970s, romantic relationships generally become more important than family relationships; these romantic relationships are most often heterosexual, though they are occasionally homosexual.
Characters that defy traditional roles and stereotypes surrounding gender and sexuality have been a central motif of shà Âjo manga since its origins. Tomboy protagonists, referred to as , appear regularly in pre-war shà Âjo manga. This archetype has two primary variants: the "fighting girl" (as in Katsuji Matsumoto's Nazo no Kurà Âbaa, in which a girl takes up arms to defend the peasants of her village), and the "crossdressing girl" (as in Eisuke Ishida's Kanaria à Âjisama, in which a princess is raised as a prince). Osamu Tezuka's Princess Knight represents the synthesis of these two archetypes, wherein a princess who is raised as a prince comes to face her enemies in combat. These archetypes were generally popular in shà Âjo war fiction, which emerged in tandem with the militarization of Japan in the 1930s, while an emphasis on cross-dressing arose from the popularity of the cross-dressing actresses of the Takarazuka Revue. Otenba grew in popularity in the post-war period, which critic Yoshihiro Yonezawa attributes to advancements in gender equality marked by the enshrinement of the equality of the sexes in the Constitution of Japan in 1947.
By the end of the 1960s, sexuality â both heterosexual and homosexual â began to be freely depicted in shà Âjo manga. This shift was brought about in part by literalist interpretations of manga censorship codes: for example, the first sex scenes in shà Âjo manga were including by covering characters having sex with bed sheets to circumvent codes that specifically only forbade depictions of genitals and pubic hair. The evolution of these representations of gender in sexuality occurred in tandem with the feminization of shà Âjo manga's authorship and readership, as the category shifted from being created primarily by men for an audience of young girls, to being created by women for an audience of teenaged and young adult women; since the 1970s, shà Âjo manga has been written almost exclusively by women.
Though they compose a minority of shà Âjo stories overall, male-male romance manga â referred to as yaoi or "boys' love" (BL) â is a significant subgenre of shà Âjo manga. Works in the genre typically focus on androgynous men referred to as bishà Ânen (literally "beautiful boys"), with a focus on romantic fantasy rather than a strictly realist depiction of gay relationships. Yaoi emerged as a formal subgenre of shà Âjo manga in the 1970s, but its portrayals of gay male relationships used and further developed bisexual themes already extant in shà Âjo manga. Japanese critics have viewed yaoi as a genre that permits its audience to avoid adult female sexuality by distancing sex from their own bodies, as well as creating fluidity in perceptions of gender and sexuality by rejecting socially mandated gender roles. Parallels have also been drawn between yaoi and the popularity of lesbianism in pornography, with the genre having been called a form of "female fetishism".
Female-female romance manga, also known as yuri, has been historically and thematically linked to shà Âjo manga since its emergence in the 1970s, though yuri is not strictly exclusive to shà Âjo and has been published across manga demographic groups. A relationship between shà Âjo culture and female-female romance dates to the pre-war period with stories in the Class S genre, which focused on intense romantic friendships between girls. By the post-war period, these works had largely declined in popularity in favor of works focused on male-female romances. Yukari Fujimoto posits that as the readership of shà Âjo manga is primarily female and heterosexual, female homosexuality is rarely addressed. Fujimoto sees the largely tragic bent of most yuri stories, with a focus on doomed relationships that end in separation or death, as representing a fear of female sexuality on the part of female readers, which she sees as also explaining the interest of shà Âjo readers on yaoi manga.
Shà Âjo manga often features supernatural and horror elements, such as stories focused on yà «rei (ghosts), oni (demons), and yà Âkai (spirits), or which are otherwise structured around Japanese urban legends or Japanese folklore. These works are female-focused, where both the human characters and supernatural beings are typically women or bishà Ânen. Paranormal shà Âjo manga gained and maintained popularity by depicting scenarios that allow female readers to freely explore feelings of jealousy, anger, and frustration, which are typically not depicted in mainstream shà Âjo manga focused on cute characters and melodramatic scenarios.
Mother-daughter conflict, as well as the fear or rejection of motherhood, appear as major motif in paranormal shà Âjo manga; for example, stories where mothers take on the appearance of demons or ghosts, daughters of demons who are themselves transformed into demons, impious pregnancies resulting from incestuous rape, and mothers who commit filicide out of jealousy or insanity. The social pressure and oppression borne from a patriarchal Japanese society also recurs as a motif, such as a curse or vengeful ghost that originates from a murdered woman or a victim of harassment. In these stories, the curse is typically resolved by showing compassion for the ghost, rather than trying to destroy it. Stories about Japanese urban legends were particularly popular in the 1970s, and typically focus on stories that were popular among Japanese teenaged girls, such as Kuchisake-onna, Hanako-san, and Teke Teke.
The relationship between shà Âjo culture and fashion dates to pre-war shà Âjo magazines, where artists such as Jun'ichi Nakahara illustrated fashion catalogs that included written instructions on how readers could make the depicted garments themselves. As manga grew in popularity in the post-war period, shà Âjo magazines continued their focus on fashion by publishing works featuring characters in elaborate outfits, or through promotional campaigns that offered clothes worn by manga characters as prizes. Notable manga artists associated with this trend include Macoto Takahashi, Masako Watanabe, and Miyako Maki, the lattermost of whom had their designs serve as the foundation for the popular Licca-chan doll in 1967.
By the 1970s, consumer trends shifted from making clothes to shopping for them; shà Âjo manga followed this trend with the appearance of stories centered on the careers of clothing designers. Manga in the otomechikku subgenre of shà Âjo manga emphasized kawaii fashion inspired by Ivy League style; the otomechikku aesthetic was later adopted by women's fashion magazines such as An An and Olive. Some women's fashion magazines began to publish their own shà Âjo manga in the 1980s, such as CUTiE (which published Tokyo Girls Bravo by Kyà Âko Okazaki and Jelly Beans by Moyoco Anno) and Zipper (which published Paradise Kiss by Ai Yazawa and Teke Teke Rendezvous by George Asakura). Cosplay began to influence shà Âjo manga in the 1990s, leading to the development of titles like Sailor Moon that directly appealed to an otaku readership. This led to a split in shà Âjo representations of fashion between works that depicted realistic everyday fashions, and those that depicted fantastical outfits that could be cosplayed. The fashion world itself began to take an interest in shà Âjo manga in the 2000s, with fashion shows showcasing pieces influenced by shà Âjo manga or which were drawn from costumes in popular shà Âjo franchises such as Sailor Moon.
Generally, the clothing worn by characters in shà Âjo manga reflect the fashion trends of the era in which the series was produced. Nevertheless, some common traits recur across eras: clothing adorned with ribbons or frills, and outfits that are especially feminine and child-like. Cute and ostentatious outfits are generally more common than outfits which are sexualized or modest. Major inspirations include Victorian fashion for girls â as embodied by Alice from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, who is often invoked by Japanese manga, magazines and brands â and ballet costumes, especially tutus.
Manga in Japan is serialized in manga magazines before being published as books and collected volumes. To encourage repeat readership, magazines seek to foster a sense of community with their readership; this is especially true of magazines aimed at an audience of younger reader aged ten or younger, sometimes referred to as . Magazines seek to appeal to this young readership by publishing content related to anime, video games, and toys in addition to manga. Supplemental materials, typically low-cost novelty items such as stickers, posters, and pens decorated with manga characters, are also used to attract readers, with the items placed in plastic bags that are attached to the magazines themselves. Larger novelty items are occasionally offered by mail order in exchange for coupons that readers can clip out of the magazine.
In the case of both imà Âto and magazines aimed at older readers, referred to as , readers are invited to submit their opinions on current manga serials through letters and polls. Often, a random survey respondent will receive a prize. Publishers use insights collected from these polls to change plotlines, highlight a secondary character, or end a series that is unpopular. These polls are also used when determining which manga to adapt into derivative works, such as anime and video games.
In addition to survey responses, letters from readers are used as a means to gauge audience opinion and develop a sense of community. These letters are sent to publishers, but addressed directly at the authors themselves. The content of these letters ranges from questions for the author, anecdotes from their daily lives, and drawings; some letters are published in the magazines themselves. Meetings between readers and authors also occur regularly. These may be organized by the publisher, who select a group of readers to bring to their offices on a prize trip, or as a field trip organized by schools. In both cases, these visits strengthen the bond between reader and publisher, while also providing the publisher with insights into their readership.
Manga publishers often discover new authors through their readership, who are actively encouraged to submit stories and receive feedback from the magazine's editors. This system of talent discovery and development is not unique to shà Âjo manga, though the practice originates in pre-war girls' magazines, where female readers were invited to submit novels and short stories. Imà Âto magazines develop this system from a young age with the aim of having adult artists one day publish manga in the magazines they read when they were children, while onÃÂsan magazines typically have readers and artists who are of a similar age. By developing a system the authors of manga in a magazine were formerly readers, the distance between the two is reduced and a sense of community is fostered.