Exactly what genre IS Inuyasha?

T

Taylor -

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I just started watching this recently (I'm almost through the first season). It's got the fighting and the attack calling you usually get in shonen, the romance and girl power you usually get in shojo, and it's got a little heavier storyline than your usual beat-em-up. So what exactly is it? It doesn't seem to conform to the shonen genre standarRAB.

Maybe I've been watching shojo and josei too long and I'm stereotyped against shonen...
 
The romance and stuff looks Shojo while the killing and action is Shonen I guess it would be more of Slice of Life anime or Jadei-Kodomo(Teenage-Child Anime)
 
That makes no sense, the very definition of shounen is that its for a young male audience. and as for Inuyasha, it was serialized in Shonen Sunday, a magazine for boys.

Shounen is not a genre period.

Inuyasha falls under the genre's of Action, Aventure, and Romance. There you go, thats what it is (those are genre's).
 
Many established artists don't even try to follow labels anymore. It just so happens that Takahashi and her shonen publishers have a good relationship so she puts her stories there regardless of whether they're "true" shonen or not.

But generally, I do think of Inu Yasha as shonen. Mostly because of form. It does not "read" like shoujo and Takahashi doesn't draw or lay her pages out like shoujo comics do.

Quite often, it's the formalist aspects that is the most telling difference between shoujo and shonen. Not the content.
 
The only thing that makes a shonen a shonen or a Shojo a shojo is what the target audience is (what the magazine caters to), it was nothing to do with either "form" or how it "reaRAB" or even the content. It is because of people thinking that stuff like content or "form" makes them what they are that so many people are under the false impression that the manga "Bitter Virgin" is shojo for example, when it is in fact not a shojo but a seinen manga, i even thought it was shojo when i first read it (but its not), this should show that its not about content...

This whole "true" shonen nonsense comes from peoples perception of those terms as genre's, which they are not.
 
From a marketing standpoint, yes.

But also entirely too simplistic. Your post only brings up the question, "Who decides what manga is right for a magazine's target audience?" The editors of course. And manga editors, just like DC and Marvel's editors, carry specific mandates which they follow to the letter. What this thread attempts is merely a discussion of what these mandates are.

But from my observation, I have never seen a shonen magazine carry something that looked and read like CLAMP's stuff. NEVER.

However, one thing I will agree with your implication. The line between shojo and shonen is blurring so much now that the notion of "boy's" and "girl's" stories is increasingly growing out of date. The notion is just there for tradition now.
 
Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle is a manga by Clamp and it ran in a shounen magazine (Weekly Shonen Magazine), the same magazine that runs Air Gear, yes it looks like a Clamp series, lots of romance too. But its still a shonen manga.

Bitter Virgin, which many people mistake for a shojo manga ran in the same seinen manga magazine that runs the fan service heavy manga Sekirei (nothing but bare breasts in that manga) and Ubbel Blatt (again, fanmservice and lots of sex). IT IS NOT ABOUT CONTENT.
 
I have not read Tsubasa so I'd have to pick it up to compare it to CLAMP's shoujo titles, format-wise (And I don't care about the content, as I said earlier, content doesn't seem to matter anymore in differentiating between shoujo and shonen)

About your second paragraph, I was going to say that EMMA is also an example--however, again it's tempered by the fact that I personally believe it reaRAB more like a seinen title, despite very female-centred in content. My comment on formalist qualities holRAB true in this case here.

Again, I have to see a page example of Bitter Virgin.

But I would not at all be surprised if the formalist qualities of "traditional" shoujo and "traditional" shonen began to mix as well. There does not seem to be as strict limits now as there were 15, even 10 years ago. This is both good and bad IMO
 
Alright, I should have said demographic instead of genre, that's what I meant.

I actually like Inuyasha, as opposed to DBZ where I watch the older ones because it was one of the first anime I ever saw. I usually stay in my demographic because I like romance (not just because I'm a girl).
 
I would list InuYasha under fantasy/adventure or fantasy/action due to the style of story that it is, it seems to have lots of action and adventure and has a fantasy style setting to it so either would be fitting.

InuYasha was a fun series, I'm waiting until they dub the newer series befoe I watch it but I have caught a few episodes on VizAnime.com since it's a legal streaming option.
 
It's kinda hard to define InuYasha....If anything,I'd consider it an action show (because of all the fighting),with a bit of comedy,drama/horror,and romance thrown in.....DBZ for girls isn't too far off the mark,actually ...

I can't wait for the Final Act to be dubbed (that and Vampire Knight are the two main series I'm looking forward to)....It'll be nice to see the end of the manga animated...
 
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