Answerman

What Happened to Shoujo Anime?

Matt asked:

Back when I was growing up (US circa ~2000s), it felt like Bleach got a renewal! Meanwhile I struggle to name five popular shoujo anime that aired in the past few years. Are shoujo anime truly becoming more sparse than they used to be, or is this just an example of my selective memory at work?

First of all, it should be noted that anime adapted from shoujo (girls) manga were always relatively few in number compared to Tsubasa: RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE debuting in the same time frame.

Yet when you compare the seasonal charts then to now, there's no denying that the offerings are even slimmer, with the most standout titles being reboots of yesterday's hits, like Sailor Moon, Ribon. Still, they are far from the only manga magazines to suffer that fate in the digital era, and there are currently plenty of bestselling shoujo titles that don't get anime adaptations.

One possible factor is the changing trends in female-targeted media. Game franchises like Touken Ranbu, Boys-Love manga is also seeing a boom, resulting in a small uptick of anime adaptations. The same applies to Korean webtoons and Japanese web manga, which eschew the traditional shounen/shoujo labeling, but are a thriving space for artists to tell stories about what it's like to be a woman.

But this doesn't mean that there is less demand for the old-school boy-meets-girl shoujo anime adaptations. At a 2021 business seminar, Kaguya-sama: Love is War is partially a result of anime fans trying to fill the shoujo-shaped hole in their hearts.

At least some of the scarcity can be put down to the male-dominated world of anime business overlooking the needs of a historically marginalized demographic. Nowadays, a number of popular shoujo and Cartoon Network's controversial comment in June that girls “graduate” out of animation for an example of the short-sighted thinking that undermines animation for girls. The shoujo anime genre absolutely has the legs to grow if producers give it a chance.

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