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I'm with Alan45 and MrBonk- demographic categorizations are meaningless to me. I'll watch any show that catches my interest.

Last edited by Touma on Sun May 24, 2015 2:15 pm; edited 1 time in total

I am another who does not find the demographics to be useful. I usually do not know, or care about, the demographic of the manga that I read or anime that I watch.

I appreciate the time and effort that some people here have invested in trying to explain the demographics, unfortunately that does not change my opinion.

I really do not care who it was made for because I already know that it was not made for me.
Even though I am a male I was never the Japanese male that manga is aimed at. I am just as likely to enjoy something that was made for females.

Sometimes, demographics are important. For example, a person shouldn't be aiming to have a kid watch an AV. If you are more of a conservative person, you would aim to have more conservative stuff in your medium. If you are gearing towards a dark show like Gantz, a young kid certainly isn't your target audience.

Mr. Oshawott wrote:

I'm with Alan45 and MrBonk- demographic categorizations are meaningless to me. I'll watch any show that catches my interest.

Touma wrote:

I am another who does not find the demographics to be useful. I usually do not know, or care about, the demographic of the manga that I read or anime that I watch.

I appreciate the time and effort that some people here have invested in trying to explain the demographics, unfortunately that does not change my opinion.

I really do not care who it was made for because I already know that it was not made for me.
Even though I am a male I was never the male that manga is aimed at. I am just as likely to enjoy something that was made for females.

Demographic isn't a guideline that tell you if you should read something or not. Is not about if you care or not about something. That is for you to decide! Not a classification.

This isn't and never was about what attracts, catches your interest! This isn't and never was about if you follow trends. That isn't what demographic is!
This is about for whom the creators(author and supporters of the work) did the work to. The intent in creation not the end result.

Saying that demographic categorization is meaningless because you read from all demographics is the same as saying that genre categorization is meaningless because you read from all genres.

I'm seeing people are confusing demographic classification with rating systems. Like the Film Rating System(G, PG, PG-13, R, NC-17).
Rating systems is about letting people(normally parents) make informed decisions about the work.
Rating Systems normally uses age as classification. Though the age is directly correlated with type of content found in the work and the classification is defined by an external source, and most of time is something enforced by the law.
NOTE: In japan you have manga series that are Hentai and the ones that aren't! Everybody can buy the non-Hentai series without problems.
Also note how series like One Piece, aren't categorized as Shounen, but just has "Jump Comics". Just like that each series as its publisher label, so there isn't any way to see if something is shounen or Seinen or any other demography without you knowing which magazine or group of magazines that label represents.

Examples:

.Slam Dunk and Real. Both series are made by the same author,Inoue Takehiko, they also both have the same genres: Sport, Drama. Though Slam Dunk is Shounen, while Real is Seinen. That kind of information is very informative and useful to understand the different approaches the author takes in each series.

.Honey Clover and March Comes like a Lion. Both series are made by the same author, Umino Chica, they also both have the same genres: Comedy, Drama and Slice of Life. Like with Inoue Takehiko, the approaches in each series are quite different.

.Bastard!! and Jojo's Bizarre Adventure both were Shounen(Weekly Shonen Jump) manga that later in their life changed to Seinen(Ultra Jump), the approach the author had to the series changed accordingly.

Demography is more abstract than Genre(though Genre isn't as concrete as people like to think it is), but is still there and is visible.

bigivel wrote:

Saying that demographic categorization is meaningless because you read from all demographics is the same as saying that genre categorization is meaningless because you read from all genres.

No, it is not the same.

Genre categorization is meaningful because it tells me something about the nature of the show. It provides information that is useful to me.

Demographic categorization is meaningless because it does not tell me anything about the nature of the show. It does not provide information that is useful to me.

Saying that something is a shoujo comedy tells me that it is a comedy, but nothing more than that.

I know that shonen science fiction is science fiction, but that is all that I know about it.

Both of those descriptions are useful, but they are useful because of the genre, not because of the demographic.

I am not saying that demographic classification is pointless, just that it is not meaningful or useful to me.

@bigivel
I shouldn't have said demographic information is useless. It does provide context as to how the manga was published in Japan. In that sense, it is part of a large body of information that may help understand it, such as the dates of publication, length, size of circulation etc. However, its use in determining what I will buy or find interesting is nil. It has always bothered me that US publishers provide none of that context information.

Genre information is more helpful as there are some genres I avoid. It is, however, not definitive. I still want to read the blurb summary and see the art work or at least a cover shot if it is published on paper here.

Touma wrote:

Demographic categorization is meaningless because it does not tell me anything about the nature of the show. It does not provide information that is useful to me.

Saying that something is a shoujo comedy tells me that it is a comedy, but nothing more than that.

I know that shonen science fiction is science fiction, but that is all that I know about it.

Both of those descriptions are useful, but they are useful because of the genre, not because of the demographic.

While it's true it's not always the case, adding the target demographic to a descriptor does tell you what tropes a series is likely to use. It's fairly common for various subcultures and such to have their own spins on things and prefixing the genre with one tells you, assuming you're familiar with that group, a lot more information in a brief space; this is the same concept.

EricJ2 wrote:

In the pictured case of the Avengers, that's true:
Even "Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes"--probably the second-best Marvel cartoon ever made behind the 90's X-Men--had to be cancelled by Disney because it didn't "fit" with Marvel's corporate-wide unified canon with the movie imagery.

Earth's Mightiest Heroes was never cancelled proper it simply ran through it's 52 episode order and Disney chose to leave it completed dangling plot threads and all. Also that last bit is slightly untrue since neither Ultimate Spider-Man or Hulk Agents of S.M.A.S.H are based off the MCU proper like AA is.

EricJ2 wrote:

(So, now, instead of classic print-comic canon, they have to be wisecracking goofs joking about snacks every third line.)

Considering how trippy and cheesy those classic print comics could be that's not too bad.

Touma wrote:

Demographic categorization is meaningless because it does not tell me anything about the nature of the show. It does not provide information that is useful to me.

See, demographic information tells me quite a lot about the nature of a show; tells me that it's likely to contain themes that the target audience will respond to, tells me that the storytelling and presentation will be tailored that way.

I mean, a hypothetical Nakayoshi version of YKK would look pretty different.

Or, real-world example: I just started reading the manga version of Escaflowne that ran in Asuka; it's pretty different to the Shounen Ace version, largely on account of the differing target audience.

This talk about demographics reminds me of how according to i]Death Note 13: How to Read[/i], Tsugumi Ohba talked about how he was going to write the story differently if it were in a seinen magazine rather than a shonen one. As it was in Weekly Shonen Jump, the focus was the battle of wits between Light and L, but if it were to be in a seinen magazine, the focus would've been more philosophical with less action.

Touma wrote:

I know that shonen science fiction is science fiction, but that is all that I know about it.

In addition, science fiction is one of the broadest genres there is and is very often combined with another genre, as science fiction tells you about the setting, not the characters or the plot. This is opposed to romance or comedy, which do pertain to the characters and plot and can give you an expectation of the feel, the tone, and what the work wants out of the audience in return.

In a sense, other setting-based genres like westerns and fantasy are also very broad, but they are narrower in possible settings than science fiction.

Murder, She wrote:

It's true that the Japanese music industry is both ridiculously luddite, and ruled by thuggish talent agencies with delusions of worldwide grandeur. They want to hold back their precious artists from America until they're ready to make a big splashy debut, but when they do, they refuse to play ball with American media and expect their completely unknown artists to be able to throw their weight around like they do back home. But even if that weren't the case, I can't blame them for not jumping on board with services like Spotify just yet. An on-demand streaming service that comes so close to ownership that it makes owning music pointless, without providing much revenue to replace ownership, just isn't a functional business model.

Fun fact: at its peak, there were plans for Rock Band Japan, but even there it was too difficult to make deals with the Japanese music record labels, so the game was scrapped. (And now that Rock Band and Guitar Hero are coming back again, maybe there's a 2nd chance - imagine playing to Hatsune Miku's music with your instruments instead of controllers, and multiple instruments with multiple players!)

5 Things about the J-Music Industry (though it's no longer booming now - the J-CD market has shrunk 2 straight years), paying particular attention to #5:

1. Things are more expensive in Japan - So, CDs are expensive in Japan, and the same goes for digital products. The average song on iTunes is 250 yen ($2.50). Japan certainly sells a lot of units, but what makes the market so big is that the price of each product is so high compared to the rest of the world.
2. Price fixing on CDs - Prices for music product have always been legally protected from discounting — the prices are actually printed onto the product itself, so historically, there has never been any retail price war to drive prices down. The equivalent of Best Buy or Walmart cannot sell CDs at a deep discount in order to get customers in the door.
3. Obsessive collectors inflate the market - Artists who have a rabid following (boy bands, female idols, and K-pop groups) will go even further and release multiple versions of one product — for example, a single album could come in three physical versions: The loyal fan needs all three versions of an album to complete the collection, with each one priced at 30 bucks or more. And girl group AKB48 had the top-five-selling singles of 2012 [the article quotes Swarts], and is an interesting study because their CDs are not just recorded music but currency for something else, like entry tickets for a meet-and-greet with the artist, or voting tickets for the annual election where fans pick a lead vocalist is for the upcoming single. The current size of the market is due largely to a handful of acts who have obsessive fans willing to buy three different versions of an album, or 100 copies of an AKB48 single, because it gets them 100 votes for their favorite girl in the election. The market will shrink when these acts wane in popularity and the value-added CD scheme no longer works.
4. The illegal download revolution never happened here - There has been no Napster, no Bit Torrent, or anything similar, that was embraced by the Japanese youth. It could be that Japanese people are generally honest — or [we like this theory], it could be that the preferred mode of netsurfing for Japanese young people has always been the phone, which won’t allow much file sharing. Most people still buy (or rent) music from legitimate sources, and pay full price. There is concern about the digital future now, because the feature phone download business is tanking as everyone migrates to smartphones. Meanwhile, smartphone music downloads are not growing at the same pace.
5. Physical rules because digital is still in its infancy - The conspiracy theory: Japanese record labels never wanted a real digital music market, because that would threaten the lucrative physical market. Mobile sites selling select singles at $4 a pop was okay. Letting iTunes or an equivalent build a library of music to rival that of a physical retailer was not okay. ITunes launched in Japan in 2005, but it wasn’t until 2012 that Sony Music Japan licensed its Japanese repertoire to Apple, meaning that iTunes Japan had been missing a significant chunk of the Japanese music scene for several years. Meanwhile, Sony’s Music Unlimited launched with an enormous international catalog, and also has Sony Japan material, but has nothing from Japanese major label Avex, which seems less cooperative with other platforms now that it has its own music/movie streaming service, called Uula. Conversely, Uula has no songs from Sony Japan. The bottom line is: There is no digital service that is so complete that it makes consumers think they can abandon CDs and go entirely digital. And that’s probably how the industry likes it.

Anyways, as for manga classifications, demographics are just to give prospective readers an idea - like ya know what type of articles to expect from magazines like Seventeen as opposed to FHM ("For Him Magazine").

lebrel wrote:

Justin wrote:

This forced categorization often does a disservice to those works, because it can add a stigma: male fans are less likely to pick up shoujo and josei works, when they could be something they'd enjoy.

This is depressingly true, but the solution isn't to remove the categorization; it's to remove the stigma. The problem here is sexism, not labels; it's ridiculous that we still accept that male-targeted media is for everyone but female-targeted media has girl cooties ewww.

Yep, even more so in Japan where society roles are more rigid.

Paiprince wrote:

Same goes for "exploit heavy" series like Diabolik Lovers or Brothers Conflict. The hoity-toity reviewer circle may despise those, but surprisingly there are a lot of fans for these kinds of shows. Why else would more of these come out if they're not bringing in the money?

I can believe that. Reminds us of the recent Fifty Shades of Grey - panned by most reviewers, box office success, sequel in the works.

Touma wrote:

Even though I am a male I was never the Japanese male that manga is aimed at. I am just as likely to enjoy something that was made for females.

Though keep in mind, generally in N. America, the manga consumers are not mainstream but outliers of society, thus follow not mainstream but outlier tastes.

Meanwhile in Japan, manga is consumed by the mainstream, and regular public tend to follow regular mainstream tastes.

In short, you're not Joe Public; Japan is Joe Public.

enurtsol wrote:

(And now that Rock Band and Guitar Hero are coming back again, maybe there's a 2nd chance - imagine playing to Hatsune Miku's music with your instruments instead of controllers, and multiple instruments with multiple players!)

Except for the problem that arcades still exist in Japan, and most of the Project Diva games were taken from mainstream arcade games.
Much as I wouldn't relish the challenge of actually playing Guitar Hero to "Heat Haze Days", one could argue that air-guitaring on your home console hasn't really caught on in Japan either.

Quote:

[*] 4. The illegal download revolution never happened here - There has been no Napster, no Bit Torrent, or anything similar, that was embraced by the Japanese youth.
[*] 5. Physical rules because digital is still in its infancy

The same was true back in the days of DVD and Blu--back when neither format was catching on while laserdisc still ruled--and we couldn't release anything classic-Japanese on disk without Toho worrying about reverse importation.
Now it's the reverse situation and they can't accept download because they haven't given up their disks yet. The greedy studios would do well to take notice, there seems to be more profit and control in keeping things on disk.

Quote:

Reminds us of the recent Fifty Shades of Grey - panned by most reviewers, box office success, sequel in the works.

Uh, yes, but that's not because of success, that's because of the now-established Twilight/Harry Potter Envy, that any producer who gets a fan book-series deal feels they "have" to work out the entire series of books--with, of course, the final book getting an "epic" two-part--delusionally regardless of how well or poorly the first movie did in theaters. (Like 50SoG pretty well dropping off a cliff in its second week in theaters, after nobody else went to see it.)
Yes, we got another Divergent, and we're even getting another Maze Runner, believe it or not. Shocked

enurtsol wrote:

Quote:

Though keep in mind, generally in N. America, the manga consumers are not mainstream but outliers of society, thus follow not mainstream but outlier tastes.

Which is part of why Japanese demographic categorization has only minimal meaning to the N. American audience.

enurtsol wrote:

2. Price fixing on CDs - Prices for music product have always been legally protected from discounting — the prices are actually printed onto the product itself, so historically, there has never been any retail price war to drive prices down. The equivalent of Best Buy or Walmart cannot sell CDs at a deep discount in order to get customers in the door.

How did that law even exist? Did the record labels all lobby for it?

EricJ2 wrote:

Except for the problem that arcades still exist in Japan, and most of the Project Diva games were taken from mainstream arcade games.
Much as I wouldn't relish the challenge of actually playing Guitar Hero to "Heat Haze Days", one could argue that air-guitaring on your home console hasn't really caught on in Japan either.

While Japanese arcades haven't taken a nosedive like the ones in North America and Europe have, they seem to be on a steady decline, no doubt because of the rise of the smartphone there.

There still seems to be quite a market for arcade machines there though, but like with North America in the 2000's, it's now shifting towards novelty and spectacle to create experiences difficult or impossible to replicate with a home console (like with that Luigi's Mansion box).

leafy sea dragon wrote:

enurtsol wrote:

2. Price fixing on CDs - Prices for music product have always been legally protected from discounting — the prices are actually printed onto the product itself, so historically, there has never been any retail price war to drive prices down. The equivalent of Best Buy or Walmart cannot sell CDs at a deep discount in order to get customers in the door.

How did that law even exist? Did the record labels all lobby for it?

Heck, because of the growing popularity of second-hand bookshops in their stagnant economy, at one point the Japanese publishers even had the audacity of pushing to control that market and get a cut of the second-hand pie, bypassing the first-sale doctrine. Laughing

leafy sea dragon wrote:

EricJ2 wrote:

Except for the problem that arcades still exist in Japan, and most of the Project Diva games were taken from mainstream arcade games.
Much as I wouldn't relish the challenge of actually playing Guitar Hero to "Heat Haze Days", one could argue that air-guitaring on your home console hasn't really caught on in Japan either.

While Japanese arcades haven't taken a nosedive like the ones in North America and Europe have, they seem to be on a steady decline, no doubt because of the rise of the smartphone there.

It's also a combination of a shrinking population (particularly youth population) and the hallowing out of Japanese towns as more people move to the cities, leaving less places to keep arcades open.

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