Women in Shōnen Manga

As I forgot to mention in my first blog, manga is meant to be read from right to left.

Shōnen manga, manga targeted towards young males between the ages of 12 and 18, is the most popular and best selling form of manga. Series such as Dragon Ball, One Piece, and Naruto have captivated audiences and produced anime adaptations, films, and merchandise.  Shōnen Jump, a magazine that publishes these manga is the 8th most profitable media franchise of all time, and several shōnen series are on this list as well. Female representation has inevitably become a topic of discussion.

Due to its extreme popularity, the actual base of viewers of shōnen worldwide varies, as does the content it portrays. Within the shōnen demographic lie several genres, including battle, sports, romance, and even cooking. The ages of shōnen fans go far beyond the intended demographic, and the writers of shōnen know this. Many of the readers of shōnen manga are women of all ages.

One may wonder; how has a Japanese medium that has existed for decades aimed at young boys treated its female characters? The answer? Better than perhaps expected, but far from perfect.

In early shōnen manga, women made up very little of most of the casts in the stories, and when they did appear, they were often relegated to the role of damsel in distress or side character. In Cyborg 009, for example, only one of the original cast members is female, and she is often taken out of the action. However in the late 70s and early 80s, manga saw more prominent female characters,

though they were sometimes in more sexualized roles. The popular Cobra, for example had a large female presence, though most of these female characters wore skintight outfits and were often relegated to non combat roles.  In Akira Toriyama’s 1980 classic Dr. Slump, the protagonist is a young female android who is comedic in nature named Arale. She ended up being a rather popular chracter, also appearing in the later, more iconic Dragon Ball.

Dragon Ball was notable in the realm of female characters for featuring the character Bulma as a deuteragonist in the first part of the manga. She is an extremely smart, albeit selfish teenager who wishes to find the magic Dragon Balls so she can wish for a boyfriend. She enlists the help of the young Goku, taking advantage of his strength on their journey. Though she is vain, she is also portrayed as hard working, resourceful, and eventually caring. I also found  Bulma interesting in that she is allowed to have slapstick humor at her expense. This was a rare, humanizing element for a female character in my opinion.

Another significant character for female representation was Lisa Lisa from the 1987 manga JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. She is a mentor figure to the protagonist with a past that exemplifies her competence and heroism. Hirohiko Araki stated that at the time female characters in shōnen manga were typically cute and designed to be “a man’s ideal woman.” He said readers were not interested in realistic portrayals of women, but rather the type of girl “that giggles during a conversation” with heart marks next to her. He believes this made the warrior-type Lisa Lisa feel fresh and “unheard of” in both manga and society in general and said it was exciting to challenge people’s expectations with her. Araki also said that the supernatural basis of the fights in his series evened the battlefield for women and children to match up against strong men. Lisa Lisa was notably defeated last minute in a strangely written way against the main villain, which has led to speculation that editors wanted her to be toned down in her final role to allow room for the protagonist to shine. Araki has not commented on these claims.

In the modern age, female representation in shōnen still has some ways to go. One of the most popular shōnen of all time, Naruto, has had notoriously poorly written female characters (the author even admitted that he had no idea how to write women). Sakura, the tritagonist of the story, is believed to have heavily influenced many other female characters in other manga going forward, like Noelle from Black Clover, which in my opinion is a pretty bad thing. One Piece has had more luck on actually writing women, with several prominent female characters in active roles, but when it comes to drawing them…welll, I’ll just let the author speak for himself.

Shōnen has also seen the rise of the bishōjo (lit. beautiful girl) character, who is a usually an object of the hero’s emotional or sexual interest, like Shao-lin from Guardian Angel Getten. In other stories, the hero is surrounded by such girls and women, as in Negima! Magister Negi Magi.