doujinshi et al
Sunday, October 11th, 2009 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
charmianMust say, my immediate reaction was "well, manga by women for a female audience is going to have fewer doujin and such, because 1) most doujin is about pairings and shipping, and b) most manga by women for a female audience has pairings in it (and pairings that the audience is interested in). Thusly, since it's already in the canon, there is less of a need to create fanworks."
But then, what about gen? (What, there is gen?) IMHO, a lot of the gen is produced by people who are also shippers of one stripe or another, and also, in fandoms, a critical mass is needed, and that goes for gen as well. Are there Japanese doujin fandoms of substantive size involving female fans making nearly all gen doujinshi? I haven't seen such a thing. IME in doujin fandoms, most of the doujin produced by women are pairing-focused.
Also, at the same time, hasn't shounen changed a bit since the days of Sailor Moon? Nowadays WJ and SS are courting a female audience also, and providing moe fanservice for them. That may affect the equation a bit. Then you have stuff like Kuroshitsuji, which uh... really seems aimed towards women, and magazines with an ambiguous audience.
Plus, I think Meril had a great point about how the genre (meaning actual content, not the shoujo or shounen thing) affects fanworks. Nana and Nodame Cantabile are romance or soap operas (for lack of a better word) set in the real world. Now there are people who write fanfic for such things, but like, they're rarer, and most fanfic is written for SFF or other genre series. They can't really be directly compared to Naruto in terms of content.
After all, people read/watch manga/anime for reasons other than moe. Simply because something is popular doesn't mean that it's solely because it's for moe reasons, you know? (As in, not all readers of manga are otaku; as in, there are Western TV shows widely watched by female viewers which nonetheless inspire far fewer fanfictions than far less popular shows) "Moe" I associate with fanservicey (including the giant robot type of fanservice) titles; and although moe =/= escapism, IMHO the sort of titles which really solicit moe are escapist ones. Nana is not really realistic, but emotionally it's much more so than most shoujo or shounen.
It might also be interesting to consider which titles are widely read by male readers, yet fail to inspire male fan creations? Another thing to ask is, compared to female doujinka, do male doujinka, say, create the same amount of doujinshi for top series like One Piece, Bleach, and Naruto? I don't have raw stats, but the impression I get is that at Comiket, the majority of Naruto doujin is 女性向け, clearly, men are reading Naruto, but they are not producing doujin. Instead, they seem to be producing doujin of other titles: I mean, check out this post, in which the blogger isn't talking at all about titles like the WJ ones, but about Touhou, Higurashi, and Vocaloid.
In other news, am rereading slowly the Ravages of Time. BTW, I heard that someone refused to read it because there was a lack of bishounen, which totally confuses me. (I mean, not that all the characters are pretty, but it's not like there is a lack, either?) But then, I read Jojo, so maybe my aesthetic values have been permanently warped.
But then, what about gen? (What, there is gen?) IMHO, a lot of the gen is produced by people who are also shippers of one stripe or another, and also, in fandoms, a critical mass is needed, and that goes for gen as well. Are there Japanese doujin fandoms of substantive size involving female fans making nearly all gen doujinshi? I haven't seen such a thing. IME in doujin fandoms, most of the doujin produced by women are pairing-focused.
Also, at the same time, hasn't shounen changed a bit since the days of Sailor Moon? Nowadays WJ and SS are courting a female audience also, and providing moe fanservice for them. That may affect the equation a bit. Then you have stuff like Kuroshitsuji, which uh... really seems aimed towards women, and magazines with an ambiguous audience.
Plus, I think Meril had a great point about how the genre (meaning actual content, not the shoujo or shounen thing) affects fanworks. Nana and Nodame Cantabile are romance or soap operas (for lack of a better word) set in the real world. Now there are people who write fanfic for such things, but like, they're rarer, and most fanfic is written for SFF or other genre series. They can't really be directly compared to Naruto in terms of content.
After all, people read/watch manga/anime for reasons other than moe. Simply because something is popular doesn't mean that it's solely because it's for moe reasons, you know? (As in, not all readers of manga are otaku; as in, there are Western TV shows widely watched by female viewers which nonetheless inspire far fewer fanfictions than far less popular shows) "Moe" I associate with fanservicey (including the giant robot type of fanservice) titles; and although moe =/= escapism, IMHO the sort of titles which really solicit moe are escapist ones. Nana is not really realistic, but emotionally it's much more so than most shoujo or shounen.
It might also be interesting to consider which titles are widely read by male readers, yet fail to inspire male fan creations? Another thing to ask is, compared to female doujinka, do male doujinka, say, create the same amount of doujinshi for top series like One Piece, Bleach, and Naruto? I don't have raw stats, but the impression I get is that at Comiket, the majority of Naruto doujin is 女性向け, clearly, men are reading Naruto, but they are not producing doujin. Instead, they seem to be producing doujin of other titles: I mean, check out this post, in which the blogger isn't talking at all about titles like the WJ ones, but about Touhou, Higurashi, and Vocaloid.
In other news, am rereading slowly the Ravages of Time. BTW, I heard that someone refused to read it because there was a lack of bishounen, which totally confuses me. (I mean, not that all the characters are pretty, but it's not like there is a lack, either?) But then, I read Jojo, so maybe my aesthetic values have been permanently warped.
no subject
Date: 2009-10-13 09:20 pm (UTC)Yeah... IMHO, I think part of the reason why the most popular shoujo titles are mainstream (non-SFF, not too otaku-esque) ones are that one of the modern developments is that WJ et al are marketing towards the fujoshi and such. So if the doujin-creating otaku part of the female audience is paying attention to the WJ stuff, that leaves less room for that part of the market in the actual shoujo mags.
[As for why? I think it's a similar reason as to why a lot of the most popular shows in Western mostly-female-fanfic-fandom are actually not the most popular shows among female viewers in general.)