Often invisible and caricatured, the “manga for girls” in search of recognition

This is undoubtedly the most anticipated exhibition of the Angoulême International Comics Festival, open from Thursday January 25 to March 17, 2024. “Moto Hagio, beyond genres” celebrates, over 163 original boards, the career of an essential designer of “shôjo mangas”, these Japanese comics intended for girls.

In France, this editorial category is well known to amateurs but suffers from a lack of media and commercial recognition. Overwhelmed by shônen, that is to say the “manga for boys” (One Piece, Naruto, Dragon Ball...), shoujo has long been invisible, sometimes disguised, often caricatured and assimilated to flowery romance blue. Some French publishers are today trying to highlight its diversity. Will 2024 finally be “the year of shoujo”?

In Japan, the concept of “shôjo” dates from the Meiji era (1868-1912) and designates a young girl before her marriage. Magazines intended for these “shôjo” emerged at the beginning of the 20th century and included an increasing number of manga from the 1930s. Women artists became the majority from the 1960s. Today, the term “shôjo manga” refers to a comic strip pre-published in a magazine aimed at an audience of young girls (before its publication in a bound volume). In France, although such magazines do not exist, the word "shôjo" was used by publishers in order to organize their catalogs, alongside "shônen", its equivalent for young boys, and "seinen" , for adults.

There is a typically shoujo narration which often allows these works to be recognized without knowing their original magazine. According to Satoko Inaba, the editorial director of Glénat Manga, this narration is characterized by “highlighting the sensitivity of the characters, beyond the scenario or the actions that may happen”. Concretely, this can take the form of “moments suspended between two words or two looks”, explains Yuki Takanami, editor at Kana, citing the example of Io Sakisaka, “very gifted at making emotions shine through without words”. Inner monologues are also frequently highlighted.

Certain graphic codes are strongly associated with shoujo, such as the large eyes full of stars but also the fact of deconstructing the boards by partially or completely freeing themselves from the boxes, as well as the recurring use of symbolic elements (for example lilies , roses or angel wings at Moto Hagio).

This “shoujo culture” extends beyond just the manga published in shôjo magazines. Other terms exist to describe manga intended for female audiences, notably that of “josei”, intended for older girls and claimed by a growing number of publishers and readers. Bruno Pham, the editorial director of Akata, prefers to keep the word “shôjo”, “a somewhat catch-all but immortal term” which can encompass josei.

In the collective imagination, shoujo is often synonymous with romance, but in reality it touches on all genres, including – and counter-intuitively – horror: “Horror explores the feelings of fear, disgust … Very visceral things which, thematically, stick with the interiority of shôjo,” recalls Julia Popek, contributor for Club Shôjo and author of an article on the subject. The same goes for the themes mentioned: “It can talk about school bullying, the practice of a sport, development, mourning…”, lists Nathalie Bougon-Bastide, manga adapter – her job consists of reworking the raw translations from Japanese, especially humor and cultural references. But then, why is shoujo less valued than shônen?

Manga aimed at boys completely dominates the market. In 2022, according to the GFK organization, 48 million Japanese comics were sold in France, including 36.5 million shônen and only 2 million shôjo. The gap has widened over the years. Xavier Guilbert, co-curator of the Moto Hagio exhibition and specialist journalist, estimates that annual volume sales of the shôjo segment were divided by four between 2010 and 2020, going from 1.6 million to 400,000, while total sales of mangas climbed from around 11 to 22 million.

“The problem is that the publishing world generally tends to invest in what is “guaranteed to work”, this is true in marketing, but it is also unfortunately true in purchasing rights,” says Sullivan Rouaud, collection director at Mangetsu.

“For several years, we haven’t had a shoujo locomotive,” notes Satoko Inaba from Glénat. I don’t have the impression that there is a title today that unites an entire generation, and that manages to bring people into shoujo.” Indeed, the biggest shoujo successes in France – notably Fruits Basket by Natsuki Takaya, Nana by Ai Yazawa and Vampire Knight by Matsuri Hino – date from the 2000s and no bestseller has seen the light of day since the end of the 1990s. 2010.

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Furthermore, “shôjo are more rarely adapted into cartoons, unlike the major shônen titles,” estimates Satoko Inaba. “And when there is an adaptation, it often stops after one season!” regrets Yuki Takanami, who nevertheless believes that the frustration of viewers deprived of the end of their story can push them towards the manga, citing the example by Blue Spring Ride. “Japan has for quite a few years adopted the bad habit of only adapting shoujo into live series, with actors, with no way for us to access them,” adds the editor of Glénat, although, according to its counterpart at Kana, Netflix is ​​offering more and more of these Japanese “dramas”.

Finally, while manga readers happily navigate from shoujo to shônen via seinen, readers would have a much more difficult time being interested in works initially intended for a female audience. “A large part of the male readership – especially heterosexual – does not want to go to manga that resembles “girl stuff” because society is fundamentally misogynistic, believes Bruno Pham. We can also talk about the internalized misogyny of many women who refuse pink things and romance… Shoujo and romance are nothing to be ashamed of!”

The stereotypes from which shoujo suffers and its difficulty in broadening its audience question the very interest of this label. So, should we continue to talk about shoujo in France? Yes, according to the editor of Akata: “It’s important to make shoujo, what it represents, visible. There is no country in the world where the editorial world of comics has given as much space to women as Japan! Shoujo is the specificity of manga, it is the cultural exception of Japan. To claim it is to say that women make comics, are readers, are editors.”

Indeed, shôjo are generally conceived, written and drawn by women, which has consequences: “Female characters are much better represented,” believes Hélène, co-creator of the Actu Josei account on social networks. The authors highlight both their strengths and their weaknesses where we find many clichés in manga written by men (a strong woman is a woman who knows how to fight, a weak woman needs a man, etc.) .”

In an attempt to evade the curse of its lesser commercial success, shoujo has sometimes been disguised by publishers. In 2016, Children of the Whale by Abi Umeda was presented by Glénat as a seinen: “At the time, shôjo was losing a lot of readers and removing it from the shôjo collection allowed us to target a wider readership” , assumes Satoko Inaba, who perhaps would not make the same choice today. Indeed, Glénat has since launched an “off the beaten track” Shôjo collection, with a burst of four very diverse titles published in the fall of 2023 and a second planned for 2024.

Obviously, publishers are still looking for the right formula for shoujo to expand its audience. Inspired by the German market, Pika, for example, created a graphic charter in 2018 called Shôjo Addict, with three thematic sub-collections and a promotional magazine. The idea was to “provide guidelines for booksellers and buyers, readers or parents,” says Mehdi Benrabah. “Very attentive to the shoujo community on social networks”, which two readers confirm, the publisher has finally abandoned this charter “more in tune” with the public and in which its new shoujo titles would be “ too cramped.

Why not completely abandon all the shôjo, shônen and seinen collections? “Morals are changing and the categorization that was practical twenty years ago no longer corresponds to reality today,” recognizes Yuki Takanami of Kana. But for a historic publisher like us, it’s complicated to change the labels, it would really be a huge job.” “We need a minimum of classification, there is such a profusion of titles…”, estimates Mehdi Benrabah. And if certain publishing houses (Akata, IMHO, Le Lézard noir...) and specialized bookstores classify their manga by genre or theme, general bookstores and supermarkets are not ready for such a revolution. “Saying that it is an adventure or a thriller, with a mature target or something else, will ultimately be much more meaningful than saying shôjo or seinen,” nevertheless believes Émile Marembert, junior sales manager at Panini, who abandoned its orange, pink and blue cartridges at the end of 2020-beginning of 2021. In Japan, the Shogakukan Prize this year removed the “children”, “girls” and “boys” categories – a highly symbolic decision.

Fausto Fasulo, deputy artistic director of the Angoulême BD festival and editor-in-chief of Atom magazine, does not hide his lack of interest in these questions of labels: “The almost anthropological classification of manga in Japan is a specificity of local industry. It follows a vision of the market different from ours. Duplicating it in France is therefore absurd... And then this false debate is still confusingly sterile, right? If we have to give voice to a “cause”, we might as well do it with publishers so that they release titles that are missing in our French landscape, incunabula which would allow the French-speaking reader to historiography more precisely manga culture. »

Better analysis of manga and their editorial history could help develop readers’ taste and curiosity. Works dedicated to shôjo are unfortunately very rare, even if we can cite two recent examples: the beau-book Shôjo! by Julie Proust Tanguy to Electric Moutons and the e-book Fruits Basket by Roseline Mornet, both published in October 2023. Concerning the latter, the author “wanted to show that Fruits Basket was more than a romantic manga and also highlight the topicality and relevance of the social subjects it deals with, which are too often passed over in silence. I also wanted to show the visual innovations that Natsuki Takaya uses to express the unspeakable.”

Despite these beneficial initiatives, analytical content is lacking. “Manga has always suffered from a very incomplete critical discourse,” confides Fausto Fasulo. With Atom, we are trying to humbly fill this deficit. This has also had an impact on the reception of certain works... And today, the blowback is happening on social networks with a community fired up, vehement, excessive to the point of generating a lot of tensions and sometimes misunderstandings. There is sometimes a desire or idea of ​​a split among fans. It’s a shame, because to recruit new readers, you have to be audible, and for that, you have to be articulate, precise and... open.” Sullivan Rouaud “prefers to think of the superb blogs and accounts specializing in shoujo which encourage publishers to make an effort, and who are keen to share their passion”.

On social networks, it is true that the tone is sometimes tense. “Young people are more inward, some take on publishing houses, there is a pack aspect. We can’t reach outside our community,” regrets Julia Popek who, self-taught, studies and popularizes the history of shoujo. For Hélène of Actu Josei, “the excesses are the consequence of frustration with the treatment of shoujo in France, which is often denigrated in addition to editorial failings.”

Shôjo needs the support of general media to open up to the general public, according to Bruno Pham. “Lots of things were done but did not get the recognition they should have had because the press did not do its job,” said the editor of Akata, citing the example of the arrival in France by Rie Aruga in 2019: “His series Perfect World talks about disability, in Paris, with accessibility problems... The metro is a gag: holy bread for journalists! More or less, the press preferred to interview male authors even though they had a best-selling female author. She was snubbed!” Coming to the Center Pompidou in 2012, Moto Hagio and Keiko Takemiya were also shunned by the press (it must be said that none of their works were available in French at the time). We could also talk about the limited media coverage of Riyoko Ikeda in 2011. The famous author of The Rose of Versailles was nevertheless decorated with the Legion of Honor in 2008.

2008 was also the year of the Clamp exhibition in Angoulême which, according to its co-organizer Nathalie Bougon-Bastide, was a great success. “There were a lot of people: fans, young people… and then people passing by. The feedback was really positive!” she recalls. The aura of this quartet of authors was certainly already recognized at the time, because their mangas were among the first shôjo published in France in the 1990s (RG Veda in 1995 and Tokyo Babylon in 1996 by Tonkam). Returning to Paris in 2009, this time in the presence of mangakas, the exhibition even won over Le Figaroscope.

In addition to the Moto Hagio exhibition in Angoulême and its impressive catalog available for sale, three mangas by the mangaka are coming out in January, wonderfully illustrating the diversity of shoujo: volume 1 of Barbara, l'entre-deux-mondes (science fiction thriller), Leo (slice of animal life) and volume 2 of Clan des Poe (vampiric fantasy).

At Pika, we don't hesitate to talk about a "pivotal year", with the arrival on February 21 of Limit, by Keiko Suenobu (Life). For Mehdi Benrabah, “releasing a survival shoujo in which people die during the month of Valentine’s Day” is not trivial and is part of his desire to break down barriers. From February 7, the reissue in the Pika Masterpiece collection of Nodame Cantabile by Tomoko Ninomiya, a josei classic, is also an event.

At Mangetsu, The Blue Flowers and the Ceramic Forest by Yuki Kodama will be released on February 14. This will be the first josei from the young publisher, who also has no shôjo in his catalog, apart from those of Junji Itô. A certain Aoi Ikebe (Ritournelle) will also soon be included in the catalog.

At Panini, an adaptation of The Tale of Genji has been announced for the end of the year: AsakiYumeMishi (1979-1993), by Waki ​​Yamato, “a great author who had never been published in France”, according to Émile Marembert. For Panini's junior sales manager, this heritage release and "the revaluation of [its] authors (Akimi Yoshida, Fuyumi Soryô, Matsuri Hino)" are part of "a global movement of rehabilitation and revaluation of forgotten works of art". 'history', alongside the highly acclaimed Akata Heritage collection, in which The Poe Clan and Barbara by Moto Hagio are published, but also Gone with the Mist by Eiko Hanamura. Let us hope that the general public and journalists will be curious and open-minded, in order to encourage publishers to further explore this still largely unexplored continent.