Word: shojo
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...world of comics, men are superheroes and women are superficial. But not in shojo manga, the emerging genre of Japanese comics that is finally giving girls their...
...Shojo manga, the cute-but-cool subgenre targeted at girls, are a big part of that boom. Shojo typically feature 13-to-16-year-old female protagonists and are generally written and drawn by women but have little in common with the corny romance titles of yesteryear. Shojo plots focus on love and relationships, and often include adventures in magical worlds outside the humdrum realities of school and home. Mecca Moore, 13, of Los Angeles, buys manga every week and says she spends $1,000 a year on the stuff. "[Shojo] tell a story in art that makes a person...
...surprisingly big seller for TOKYOPOP is "Gravitation" by Maki Murakami. It falls into a splinter genre of shojo called shonen-ai, translated literally as "boy-love." Though targeted at girls, shonen-ai features the romantic relationship between two males, in this case between high-schooler and aspiring musician Shuichi and a slightly older romance novelist named Eiri Yuki. Though it features a passionate kiss, "Gravitation" and other shonen-ai never get sexually explicit. The appeal for girls seems to be in looking at two pretty boys entering into an untouchable romance. Though quite popular in Japan, very little shonen...
American-born shojo talent has also begun to emerge. Jill Thompson's manga-style book "Death: At Death's Door" became one of DC Comics' best sellers last year. Using the popular goth-girl character from Neil Gaiman's Sandman universe, "At Death's Door" tells of Death's struggles when her brother Morpheus takes over Hell. "One of the reasons I like manga is there are just pages and pages of characters regarding each other," Thompson says. "You can flip through them fairly quickly but you feel a lot of emotion without having to read words. I've always...
...Shojo comics have little in common with the corny romance titles of yesteryear. These books are for an audience like the characters they depict, independent-minded girls for whom romance becomes another complication in a busy life...