His

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His [ ˈsɛː.nən ] ( Japanese 青年 , dt. "Young man") refers to a category of Japanese comics and cartoons, manga and anime . The works of the genre are aimed at a young, adult, primarily male audience. The female counterpart to his is Josei . Manga for teenage boys are known as shons . Due to the older audience, successful manga series of the genre are not only adapted as anime, but often also implemented as real films.

Target audience, content and styles

Speedlines, relative movement and playing with perspectives are of great importance when depicting action-packed scenes in the His-Manga

The target group are men aged 18 to 30 years or up to 40 years. However, many of his works are also aimed at older men, although the term is used less often the older the target audience is. The boundaries of the genre are therefore fluid in adult comics, until the term is also used generally for comics for adults. On the other hand, works for an older male audience are sometimes also delimited from what is intended for younger readers, without a term being given for this category.

The mangas offer their target group, mostly employees and therefore commuters, an opportunity to escape from everyday life or to entertain them during the commuter trips. The readers' professional or fantastic dreams are therefore addressed, but also their hobbies. Some of the series also offer hero characters corresponding to their successful, male ideals, such as samurai, hit men or women heroes, identifying figures for young adults involved in their jobs. Contrary to the declared target group of the genre, however, it can also be assumed that a third of the readers are women. The typical characteristics of the genre aimed at a male audience do not prevent a series of his own from addressing other target groups on another level.

In terms of content, his works cover a wide spectrum and cannot be restricted to individual genres. A large proportion of the stories deal with the everyday life of special jobs. The manga and anime-specific genre gourmet , which is about cooking and eating, is strongly represented. Even sports series and those about hobbies are common. At the same time, action is an important element of the plot. There are also series and magazines that offer a lot of action and eroticism, as well as crime stories, historical material, dramas and thematization of social problems. In the field of romantic-erotic stories, the harem genre is popular, in which several women crowd around the rather inconspicuous protagonist to advertise him and create scenes that are both erotic and comical. On the other hand, there are action and erotic series in which aggressive, muscle-bound and sexually active heroes fulfill the clichés and wishes of the readers. These heroes are at the same time the counterpart of the ideal male type of the beautiful, androgynous bishon common in the girl manga . There are also some stories about lesbian couples belonging to the Yuri genre. Science fiction and fantasy are less common, but there are also magazines that specialize in them. Usually the series are more violent than in the shōnen area. Some series are aimed specifically at a fan audience ( otaku ) by taking up the fan scene itself as a topic. Despite the frequent and revealing depictions of sex and violence, both are rarely excessive, but rather embedded in the stories. Nevertheless, every now and then there are conflicts or scandals over series that are suspected of being harmful to young people, discriminatory or glorifying violence.

The drawing and narrative style of the works is often geared towards the emphasis on action and therefore makes extensive use of quick changes of perspective, varied composition, speed lines, subjective movement and onomatopoeia . Thomas Lamarre calls the “mode of address” of his being focused on the role of the observer. The consumer, especially in the case of series with erotic content, is a third party watching the action or, as a young man, in particular the viewer of the female characters. The staging of the manga and anime is based on this.

history

Yoshihiro Tatsumi's Gekiga movement was one of the roots of the Seinen manga

The Seinen Manga developed around 1970 from the current Gekiga manga. This movement has brought out serious stories, often on socially critical issues, in a more realistic drawing style for an adult audience since the 1950s. With the dissolution of the artist groups and the loss of importance of the scene magazine Garo , Gekiga ended as a movement of artists in the 1970s - their field of activity and audience merged into the broader genre of his own. Its basis was also the growing up of the post-war generation who grew up with the Shōnen Manga. Accordingly, the serious themes and more realistic styles of Gekiga mixed with the Shōnen's escapism and action. Manga Action , which appeared from 1967 and contained, among other things, the successful series Lupine III , is regarded as the first Seinen Manga magazine . The magazines Young Comic (1967), Play Comic (1968) and Big Comic (1968) followed. The success of these magazines had an impact on the older Shōnen magazines, which now also offered series for older readers. According to cultural historian Tomafusa Kure , his series also gained readers because Japanese literature, over the same period, increasingly concentrated on psychological states and moved away from narrative clarity and story-driven stories, thereby losing the interest of most readers.

In the 1980s, other magazines were added, including Morning , Afternoon and some offshoots of Big Comic . These were aimed at younger middle-class men, especially white-collar workers, and advertised with " high quality entertainment like in novels and movies" . Action remained an important element of the plot here too. The beginnings of this development go back to 1975. In the 1990s there were attempts to publish their own magazines for older men, including Big Gold . The target group was primarily the aged post-war generation. However, this was not very successful and the publication was discontinued. Instead, the readership of the existing his magazines increased. These began to include sequels of long-discontinued Shōnen manga in their program and thus to address the older fans of these series.

Magazines

Big Comic magazine logo

In addition to the usual manga magazines , his series also appear in lifestyle magazines aimed at men, including Weekly Post and Weekly Gendai . At the same time, some of the Seinen Manga magazines also offer editorial contributions, e.g. B. on films, and interviews with actors and athletes. The more action and erotic magazines often have the word “young” in the title and, in addition to the manga series, contain pin-ups and the like. Others have " comic " in their title, which in Japan stands for more sophisticated, adult comics. The advertising contained in the magazines focuses on video games, lifestyle and cosmetic products, cars, beer and cigarettes, music and films as well as dating agencies. Since the heyday of the manga in the mid-1990s, when the circulation figures of magazines of the genre were up to 1.7 million, the circulation has fallen sharply. The following list includes magazines of the genre with a circulation of over 200,000 in 2017.

title Edition
Weekly Young Magazine 395,000
Weekly Young Jump 537,000
Big comic original 500,000
Manga Goraku 300,000
Big comic 295,000
Manga Times 280,000
Morning 210,000
Young Champion 250,000

literature

  • Paul Gravett: Manga - Sixty Years of Japanese Comics . Egmont Manga and Anime, Cologne, 2006, ISBN 3-7704-6549-0 , pp. 96-115.

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Frederik L. Schodt : Dreamland Japan. Writings On Modern Manga . Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley 2002, ISBN 1-880656-23-X , pp. 95-96 .
  2. a b c Miriam Brunner: Manga . Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-7705-4832-3 , p. 38, 62 .
  3. a b c d e f g Jason Thompson: Manga. The Complete Guide . Del Rey, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-345-48590-8 , pp. 327-329 .
  4. Thomas Lamarre : The Anime Machine. A Media Theory of Animation . University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2009, ISBN 978-0-8166-5154-2 , pp. 218, 230 .
  5. ^ Frederik L. Schodt : Dreamland Japan. Writings On Modern Manga . Stone Bridge Press, Berkeley 2002, ISBN 1-880656-23-X , pp. 87-91 .
  6. ga-netchû! The Manga Anime Syndrome . Henschel Verlag, 2008. ISBN 978-3-89487-607-4 . P. 268.
  7. Shige (CJ) Suzuki: Tatsumi Yoshihiro's Gekiga and the Global Sixties . In: Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer (eds.): Manga's Cultural Crossroads . Routledge, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-415-50450-8 , pp. 57 .
  8. a b c d Paul Gravett: Manga - Sixty Years of Japanese Comics . Egmont Manga and Anime, 2004. ISBN 3-7704-6549-0 . Pp. 96-101.
  9. Thomas Lamarre : The Anime Machine. A Media Theory of Animation . University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2009, ISBN 978-0-8166-5154-2 , pp. 187, 202 .
  10. a b c Angela Drummond-Mathews: What Boys Will Be: A Study of Shonen Manga. In: Toni Johnson-Woods (Ed.): Manga - An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives . Continuum Publishing, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-8264-2938-4 , pp. 68-70.
  11. Marc McLelland: The "Beautiful Boy" in Japanese Girls' Manga. In: Toni Johnson-Woods (Ed.): Manga - An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives . Continuum Publishing, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-8264-2938-4 , pp. 79f.
  12. ^ Tania Darlington and Sara Cooper: The Power of Truth: Gender and Sexuality in Manga. In: Toni Johnson-Woods (Ed.): Manga - An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives . Continuum Publishing, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-8264-2938-4 , pp. 169, 172.
  13. Thomas Lamarre : The Anime Machine. A Media Theory of Animation . University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2009, ISBN 978-0-8166-5154-2 , pp. 316 .
  14. ^ A b Jean-Marie Bouissou: Manga: A Historical Overview . In: Toni Johnson-Woods (Ed.): Manga - An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives . Continuum Publishing, New York 2010, ISBN 978-0-8264-2938-4 , pp. 27 .
  15. Jason Thompson: Manga. The Complete Guide . Del Rey, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0-345-48590-8 , pp. 58-59 .
  16. 一般 社 団 法人 日本 雑 誌 協会. Retrieved March 21, 2018 (Japanese).