Forum - View topicWhy Stone Ocean Could Be the Most Important Part of Jojo Yet
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MarshalBanana
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And there are likely some really good Shojo titles out there that we don't know of due this lack of exposure. |
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battle-arc-fan
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The whole "x would be as popular as y if it got as much exposure as y" has never been true. No matter the marketing budget, opera is never going to be as popular as soccer. Pavarotti is never going to be as popular as Ed Sheeran. A TV broadcast of Swan Lake isn't going to pull the ratings of Game of Thrones (or even Princess Tutu). Also, Banana Fish was indeed heavily promoted on Amazon Prime during their anime push. A huge reason why it didn't do as well as, say, DanMachi spinoff Sword Oratoria is because it is (basically) BL. Similarly, only shonen or seinen work that prominently featured LGBT to gain mass appeal was Yuri on Ice. Also with Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju you have shonen titles like Joshiraku that don't gain a following either simply because of the obscure subject matter. Which goes back to the previous point: instead of arguing that shonen and seinen should take their prowess for creating works with mass appeal and use it to feature female characters, shoujo should cease sidelining itself with niche appeal works and aim for mass appeal also. Because really, think about it: the success of Koyoharu Gotouge (Demon Hunter), Rumiko Takahashi (Inuyasha et al), Hiromu Arakawa (Fullmetal Alchemist) fully acknowledged, most shonen writers are going to be male. So you would have the likes of Hiro Mashima (Fairy Tail) and Atsushi Ōkubo (Soul Eater, another huge shonen hit with the "female protagonist Maka Albarn/male hero Death the Kid" template) telling female stories in a way that appeals primarily to 13 year old boys. Shoujo and josei have far more female writers, so those are the ones that we want telling stories about female characters and we also want the primary market for those stories to be female. We just don't want them to be exclusively female. And we especially want to get away from the current situation where far more females watch shonen and seinen than shoujo and josei. |
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Touma55
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What do you mean when you say controversial? The part just isn't as well liked as most of the others. I don't think it has one MAJOR flaw that brings it way down or anything like that. The most common reasons that I have seen people that don't like it give are these. This is a mix and match of Japanese and English speaking fans btw. Don't really like Jolyne that much Couldn't connect with Jolyne Don't like the cast that much The group dynamic isn't as good as the other parts Most of the fights suck The part is longer than it should be The ending sucks Those are the complaints I have seen the most for the part. Honestly, I actually agree with quite a few of them, but I still think it's a good part and definitely not the worst. |
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Gem-Bug
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That's how Mashima treats/draws 90% of his female characters though? All of the other series you list are aimed at the same demographics yet create strong female characters that aren't mostly eye-candy. |
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jdnation
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This is a good point. Boys like this stuff. There are videogames with female leads featuring this stuff that do good. But at some point the shonen and shojo labels lose their meaning outside of what magazine they are in. People buy these expecting certain genres, not necessarily certain leads. At thr end of the day, manga is a competitive industry and artist have to eaen a living. If a shojo romance author came to their editor with a mecha story, the editor has a duty to encourage what is best and safest for them which is either a) stick to what they are good at to ensure they continue to make money b) take the mecha story to the shonen department where it is likely to do better and make more money for the artist. It's one thing when big established artists take a risk, but for the smaller guys, a decision that is not necessarily, but could risk losing readers can lead to cancellation. |
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manapear
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I think, regardless of region, plenty of "JoJo" fans liked Stone Ocean. Which is to say, people who were in it for the story, quirkiness and the mechanics of the universe. But JoJo also has its share of fans that are fujoshi, or shonen fans that like "high brow shonen." And those two groups I feel are the groups that were most going to dislike Stone Ocean before, and that applies now. But I also found out not long ago that plenty of fujoshi attached themselves to more ships than I expected, so I think Stone Ocean will be fine with them. The fans that are looking for "cool battles with thinking" are the fans that might not stick with it, but at this point, I think they're the minority anyway.
Honestly, SO has already had a very strong, positive reaction on social media. I think it'll be fine, especially when SDC starting introducing increasing amounts of merch, and that got upped higher with VA/GW. They'll be able to profit off of merch of the guys just like with VA, and probably won't be shy about some merch with the girls. The landscape of fandom has also changed a lot since SO's manga first came out, and so have the things that drive popularity and sales more. I'm just curious to see some of the smaller aspects of the fandom and how they change. The one thing that gets me about the article is describing Ermes as so violent and brash, and not mentioning how selfless she is. No spoilers, and I get her plot could be seen as "violent" because of its roots, but she's also staking her youth on something rather selfless and then shifts that to helping Jolyne. (And we can't call FF selfless that much more selfless given they're driven by specific motivations as well, but they are loyal, yeah.) I think SO will just be refreshing for anime overall since we get so little shojo animated anymore, even just per season. And of course, any of the stuff aimed at guys isn't featuring a female lead, and if it is, it's fanservice-oriented. The sad part is, even if SO does well, it's not like it's going to change the mind's of execs at other studios, or even Netflix. I'm pretty sure they're still going to continue mostly ignoring shojo and female lead shonen, or in Netflix's case, completely letting the series get trashed and changed just for shock value to appeal to... I don't even know who. (Still bitter over 7 Seeds.) |
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BonusStage
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A female character being sexy doesn't make her a bad character. There's this overall mindset that a character needs to be ugly or completely covered up to be 'strong' in western media that I find pretty regressive. Whether you find Jolyne sexy is up to how you view Araki's... unique art style. Araki has never shied away from drawing her in revealing outfits so whether you find her hot is up to personal taste. David Productions seems to have made some tweaks to the designs going off the trailer such as making Ermes's breasts larger so it's more apparent she's a woman where Araki's art is pretty ambiguous at times (for a lot of characters, let's be honest The manga can get pretty rough art-wise at times, especially early on) |
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Gem-Bug
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I mean most of the other characters that were listed are sexy and not always covered up? And are still strong, great characters? I didn't say anything about "strong = ugly/covered", but I agree it's a dumb concept. I think there was like, one time that Nikaido lost her clothes in Dorohedoro, but for (mostly)Lucy in FT, there are dozens of times where she's put in a bikini, or walked in on, or her clothes are burnt off, or magically removed, or whatever. Any all of those character examples are, again, shonen, so it's really just Mashima relying on the fanservice factor. |
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Top Gun
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I really wonder if this is really all that true, or if it's just the conventional narrative because of traditional gender roles. Certainly we know that young girls have no problem enjoying franchises with male leads, as popular franchises on both sides of the Pacific have shown, but do you really think there aren't a huge amount of boys watching Disney's traditional princess stories? Or that back in the day there weren't a bunch of boys watching Sailor Moon episodes every afternoon? I don't think most kids care about the gender of a protagonist nearly as much as many adults think they do. What's important is writing strong characters regardless of gender. It infuriates me to no end that more than one mega-popular shonen author has gone on the record saying they find it "difficult" to write female characters. Gee, I dunno, maybe start by writing them as normal human beings. |
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DavetheUsher
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The thing about Disney is they purposely market and write their stories to be as gender neutral as possible to not alienate the boy demographic. It's all that carefully constructed marketing tactics being done to get boys to go see movies like Frozen and Moana. Maybe little girls are more open minded than little boys, but I remember back in the day no one ever wanted the toys of female characters like April O'Neil when they could have the toys of the Ninja Turtles or the villains. That seems to still be true even in modern toylines from what I've seen where female character seem to never get toys or very few in toylines. We're only now getting figures of Katara from Avatar the Last Airbender because the new toyline is aimed at adult collectors who don't really have that kind of stigma anymore. As far as Sailor Moon goes, well, the Barenaked Ladies wrote some lyrics about why they liked Sailor Moon and I'd say that was a primary motivation for why boys were tuning in back then. That's what got me and my friends back then interested in it, at least. And that's why a lot of women get into shounen as well. I'd say as long as you make attractive and likable characters you can draw in a wide variety of audiences. At least as far as the teenage and adult demographics are concern. |
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jdnation
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It is true. It's the same way advertising continues to work now whenever you sign up for a service like youtube or twitter or anything else that is 'free.' They want to know at least your age, sex, location etc. Why? So they can target ads at you. That some girls watch boys shows or boys watch girls shows is irrelevant. The question is - who makes up the majority of the audience, or which is your target demographic for the thing that you are making to which advertisements want to be attached to. If you're running a business for a particular product geared at a specific market and you need to pay for advertising, you want to ensure that it is reaching the people your product is for. DavetheUsher brought up an interesting point about modern Disney programming. But back in the day, the Disney Princes fairytales were theatrical films intended for the whole family. But you bet the products with the princesses on them were targeted at girls. Again, you are right on one point - it's not about main character - but 90% of the time, especially for children, it is. There are the rare shows where that is transcended as an exception to the norm and achieve some kind of cultural status, such as Sailor Moon or Escaflowne (Heck, I'm one of them). But largely the stereotypes work and are maintained for a reason. I might check out Sailor Moon or a Madoka Magica, and the odd Flip Flappers but otherwise the magical girl genre doesn't interest me. Escaflowne was awesome because it had the appeal of mecha and swords and sorcery for boys. Sailor Moon was largely campy fun that we loved as much as we made fun of. But the other thing they had going for it - they were anime - and anime was different and cool, especially around the 90's where it was slotted in during Saturday Morning Cartoons of various varieties. America had plenty of its own boys/girls/unisex programming, and while boys watched Sailor Moon, they didn't bother with other American shows squarely aimed at girls. |
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Horsefellow
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There's a distinct difference between older viewers and kids who haven't gone through puberty and are still in their 'cooties' phase. While it's common to see people consume media with opposite gendered protagonists, the same isn't usually true to much younger viewers who aren't old enough to get into a male targeted show because they find the male characters hot and vice versa. Toei is on record saying they market Precure to adult men in addition to its primarily girl audience. Not young boys, adult men. Most young boys probably find it too girly to enjoy, while adult men are watching it precisely because of the girls. Older guys watching magical girl stuff isn't new, whether it's shows aimed at little girls or ones aimed at adult men already like Madoka or Nanoha. A lot of guys I know watched Mean Girls back in high school because of Lindsay Lohan, Lacey Chabert, and the other actresses we all found hot at the time, despite it generally being called a 'chick flick'. Or the guys who watched Crossroads just to see Britney Spears dance around in her underwear for a scene. Granted, most of us saw those films with our girlfriends at the time so it was a two birds with one stone so to say, but once people enter puberty and become teenagers they certainly become more open up to the idea of consuming a wider berth of media, regardless of their intentions or reasons.
There's also a difference between a shoujo and a shounen starring a female character. A lot of the shounen with female characters tend to have the themes and set pieces that boys traditionally like. Soul Eater is filled with action, plot, fanservice, and all kinds of cool stuff that male audiences will enjoy. To go back to the Disney examples, my favorite Disney movies growing up were Lion King, Aladdin, Hercules, and Mulan. Granted, Mulan is a woman who spends most of the movie pretending to be a man, but the the other thing they all have in common is they were more action/adventure stories. All the action/adventure stories (sans Mulan) just so happened to star male characters while the female led Disney films tended to be the traditional princess/romance type stories: Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty and the Beast, etc. That's probably a whole topic in itself, but I'd say the theme and the writing are far more important than the gender of the main character, although I'm not one to doubt multiple billion dollar companies extensive market research into this subject so I'm sure gender of the protagonist is an important factor at the end of the day. |
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