known for being shojo? Shojo started as simple, single page manga and appeared in magazines, and humor sophisticated strips that has become essential for girls magazine. As i have read the kind of manga that is shojo, i can get related so easily that i need to scream in delight. I mean shojo stories are much focused on relationships, especially love and friendship. One of the leading lights is Hana Monogatori which was written by Yoshiya Nobuko that states emotional moods that will be recognizable to any modern shojo fan. Shojo stories today are idealized beauty, the deep emotions, the flower scented and dream-like qualities. Shojo began to take new form to illustrated stories to texts with illustrations, western ideas and influences were flooding Japanese culture.
According to an article entitled "Cult of the shojo: Manufacturing Desirable girls in Shojo manga", from the site www.stereootaku.wordpress.com, Crystal writes that, "Throughout this paper I will analyze depictions of cute, innocent protagonists and sexually-aware secondary characters." Since shojo manga, or Japanese comics for girls, target pre-adolescent and adolescent girls, the messages they send are important, as they can have a great impact on the lives girls decide to live. Some shojo manga present extreme behavior that may lead to skepticism and protest. Such as master to slave, mistress to butler, and president to playboy relationships blooming into romance or the tried-and-true romance between submissive human female and immortal male. The impact of the idealized innocent, cute child already exists within Japan, and its persuasive influence. Like shojo manga after them, these early shojo magazines suggest an ideal form of sexually-innocent, childlike girlhood and encourage their readers to follow that ideal in their lives through their advice columns. On the one hand, shojo manga with innocent, childlike main characters could exist to encourage more immature girls who feel inferior to more mature and knowledgeable girls. However they could also encourage girls who are rapidly approaching puberty to remain as childlike and innocent as they can in hopes of being found attractive within society.
In 1910 shojo magazines appeared, while sophisticated strips appeared in 1930s. The most popular manga, Katsuji Matsumoto's kurukuru kurumi-chan debuted on the pages of shojo no tomo in 1938. Postwar shojo manga initially followed the pre-war pattern of simple human strips. As World War II progressed, comics began to disappear, until the mid-1960s males outnumbered handful female manga artists. Between 1950 and 1969 large audiences for manga increases because of its two main marketing genres. Shonen manga aimed for boys while the shojo manga is aimed for girls. Between roughly 1969 and 1971, a flood of female manga artists transformed the genre again with content and form, inventing new sub genres. From 1975 to 2009 shojo manga continued to develop branching out into sub genres, that became concerned with self-fulfillment that influenced the development of girls who fight to protect the destiny of a community.
In another article called, "Manga for Girls" from the site www.nytimes.com, Sarah Glazer writes that, "walk into almost any chain bookstore and you're likely to find a teenage girl sprawled on the floor reading manga- thick black and white comic books by Japanese authors." Graphic novels, including manga, have been popular with American boys for years now. It began to gain not only a wide audience, but, for the first time acclaim as well. Shojo manga were read and discussed by college students of both sexes. Almost anything was now possible in shojo from sci-fi, fantasy, allegory to horror, history and period dramas. Shojo manga have become one of the hottest markets in the book business. Two publishers Viz Media which is Japanese owned, and Tokyopop an American company have been the leaders in the American manga market, which has more than doubled since 2002, helped along by a $5 billion business in related animated films, TV series, and licensed products like dolls and action figures.
Based on what I have learned from shojo today, is that the manga develops as the time goes by. Whereas manga reading was once the favorite way to kill time on a train maybe, or anywhere else. Today you see more young people using their cellphones to do e-mail and surf the net while communicating. Reading manga makes your world wide, imagining and exploring ideas of what will happen next. Shojo manga develops stylistically with content and form, and is influenced of the development of girls. Shojo genre has been called "big eyes save the world" you know after the characteristic drawing style of girls with saucer shaped eyes who are sometimes endowed with supernatural powers.
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