By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Aeolus451 on 02 June 2016
Edit Thread
fatslob-:O said:
Aeolus451 said:

 Does the age really matter, though? Everyone involved in anime knows that much older people watch any genre of anime. Terraformars has a lot of action and it's target demographic is males. Not much difference between seinen and shounen in my opinion. Alot of people use those words as a term for a genre.

Yes it does! It's all about the intention behind the author that defines it's target demographic ... 

You can't exactly say a series is meant for that particular audience aside from the creators themselves ... 

LuckyTrouble said:
The thing with shonen is that it can be defined as a genre. We can say "targeted at young males", but what does that actually mean? It tends to mean a focus on action, the plot usually driven through repeated conflict resolved through battle of some kind, and it tends to have an absence of romance or only uses it as a comedic plot element (One Piece being a great, long running example of all of the above). Granted, not all shonen will necessarily stick to these basic guidelines, but I could rattle off about a dozen more prominent shonen anime that follow them practically to the letter.

I mean, you can't say that shonen has a target audience and then say that there are no genre specific trends of appealing to a specific target audience. That literally makes no sense.

It means that's what the author intended for it's audience to be. Nothing more and nothing less ... 

The concept of "shounen" isn't tied to ANY specific genre. You can have a shounen manga focus on whatever genre the author wants like comedy, music, romance, crime drama's, slice of life, psychological, or anything else that also not action. Just because a manga is published in a magazine that targets younger males doesn't mean that it has to conform to the trends like it's other contemporaries do ... 

Demographics and genres are practically orthogonal notions ... 

Would you agree that the target demographic for Terraformars, Highschool of the dead, Naruto, Bleach, Hunter X Hunter, Attack on Titan, Parasyte The Maxim, One Piece is males?

The age doesn't matter with any those.

Targeting a certain age is basically pointless with anime because there's only anime for young people. None of it is for old folks (40+). What interests adults and teenagers in anime will be probably interest pre-teens and vice versa. The only thing that's really an exception is the actual kid shows.