Shonen - what is it? Anime by genre. shonen anime

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Anime is a Japanese animation with many hand-drawn characters. It differs from the cartoons of other countries in a wide age range. Most anime genres are for teens, teenagers and adults. The anime has a follower called "manga", this is the same as the first, but in the form of comics - a kind of book edition that repeats cartoon plots on its pages.

Anime is divided into several categories, each of which is intended for an audience of different age groups:

• Komodo - for children under 12.
• Anime of the shounen genre - for teenagers and young men from 12 to 18 years old.
• Shoujo - anime and manga, intended for girls and girls 12-18 years old.
• Seinen - anime for adult males over 18 years old.
• Josei - anime and manga for adult women over 18 years old.

Anime Komodo - what is it?

Komodo anime is a genre of Japanese animation designed forchildren under 12 and characterized by the absence of ideological components. Komodo drawing is close in style to the European school of animated films, and in some films one can feel the imitation of American animated series. The similarity is not limited to the style of the picture, the Komodo anime storyline often copies events from the overseas life of cartoon characters. However, Japanese komodo anime cartoons can always be distinguished by their lack of violence. They are generally kind and entertaining in nature. Examples of such films are such films as Speed Racer, Maya the Bee, Grendizer.

Senen - what is it?

The most popular and demanded direction is anime shounen and manga shounen, which have the largest audience. The main features of the shonen genre are the dynamics in the development of the storyline, the pronounced impulsiveness of the characters and high motor skills in their behavior. The works in the anime of the shonen genre are filled with humorous scenes, the ideas of male friendship are a red thread in the plot. In addition, the entire cartoon (and sometimes it is a full-length one and a half hour picture) is imbued with the spirit of rivalry in anything: in sports or martial arts, in everyday life or at work. The shounen anime style is immediately recognizable, it is distinguished by bright female characters, who are in the background in the script, but are strikingly beautiful and sexy. Femininity is opposed to the masculinity of the characters and emphasizes it favorably.

Shounen anime varieties

A common technique in shounen anime films, as well as in manga comics, is the plot scheme, when a huge number of super-beautiful girls yearn for the main character's attention. Pretenders do not always get it, but the plot, nevertheless, develops. The shonen genre has several offshoots: sentai, spokon and harem, each of which can be an independent genre based on popularity. Each genre has its own, fairly large audience. All subspecies of the genre answer the question: "Senen - what is it?" In the first sub-genre, sentai, there is usually a constant close-knit team of five people who are fighting something or someone. The second, calmly, reflects the adventures of athletes of a fairly young age, achieving fantastic success at the cost of dedication and an unprecedented will to win. And finally, a harem, in which the plot content is reduced to the worship of hundreds of women to the protagonist, who is forced to live in their environment.

The best anime shounen are movies:

• "Dragon Ball" (640 episodes).
• "Love, Hina" (Episode 4).
• "Rosary and Vampire" (13 episodes).
• "Rurouni Kenshin" (190 episodes).

Each cartoon is interesting in its own way, the number of episodes filmed is an indicator of popularity, films are produced in accordance with demand. All of these films answer the question "Senen - what is it?" fully. The shounen anime genre has the largest audience. The public capable of viewing hundreds of episodes is not just people who have enteredcinema, it's "top anime shounen" fans, and they number in the millions.

Shounen heroes are not surprised by their super popularity among the fair sex, they feel like masters of life, help friends, are lucky and invincible. The typical image of the protagonist is a muscular optimist, an unshakable protector of everyone and everything, constantly saving someone.

Anime shounen movies list:

• Air Gear.
• "Beelzebub" (Beelzebub).
• Fairy Teil.
• "Big Jackpot" (One Piece).
• "Killer Reborn" (Reborn).
• Soul Eater.
• "Torico" (Torico).
• "Fang" (Kiba).
• "Silver Soul" (Gintama).

Seinen

Another type of shonen is seinen, anime for men over 18 years old. Seinen is usually filmed according to a script with a shallow psychological overtones, the plot is replete with satirical inserts, and there are also erotic scenes. It's considered good form for seinen filmmakers to show a character in the process of self-improvement. Romance is usually not present, although there are plots with love stories. In some cases, anime films and manga comics contain business stories of a criminal nature, they are watched by business people aged 35-40.

Female shonen - what is it? These are shoujo and josei. Shojo - anime foradolescent girls and girls under 18 years of age. Josei - anime and manga for adult women.

Shoujo

Shojo - anime for older girls, from 12 to 16 years old, and girls from 16 to 18. In the plots of anime shojo, there is usually a theme of love relationships, the degree of closeness of young people according to the script is different, depending on the age of the potential viewer, for the youngest, only kisses on the cheek, and for an older audience, love scenes of a more frank nature, although also quite chaste. Shoujo is distinguished by the emphasized grotesqueness of the picture, with humorous overtones, and if the script develops deep love relationships, then the film is drawn in a manner of romantic sophistication. Male heroes in shojo films are necessarily endowed with outstanding external data and heroic character. An offshoot of the anime shojo is maho, a style describing girls with magical powers who don't seek adventure but who adventure finds. Sometimes a shoujo film is made in a "harem" manner, where a girl lives surrounded by young guys who are completely subordinate to her.

Josei

Anime for older women is josei, a calm narrative film without action-packed collisions, telling about the daily life of a simple Japanese woman. The story begins, as a rule, from the school years of the heroine, from her acquaintance with other characters. Then there is a further development of the plot, in which the characters of the film do nothing unusual, and nothing special happens to them either. At first glance, the genreboring, but it should be remembered that josei is an anime for adult women, mostly housewives who love films about nothing, without any shakes. The josei style of drawing is more realistic than the shojo, and is characterized by careful attention to detail, especially if the plot contains a love story. The artists in this case prefer the sad expression on the face of the heroine, who never smiles throughout the film. Examples of films in the style of anime josei are "Kiss of Heaven" and "Honey and Clover".

Manga-shonen - what is it?

Manga - stories in pictures, or comics. Manga is part of Japanese culture and makes up 25 percent of the country's printed output. Often, anime shonen plots go into manga format (although much more often it happens the other way around, when the manga provides a theme for the film script) and then manga comics are published in huge editions, an endless chain of series. Like fiction, manga shonen is published in separate books, and in the case of a large amount of material, it is combined into volumes, the so-called tankōbon. The manga is distinguished by a characteristic drawing style, in most cases the image is black and white, the drawings are as semantic as possible, not requiring lengthy explanations, this is their difference from American comics.

Manga industry

In recent decades, the manga industry has been formed, the popularity of book anime is so high that projects for publishing stories in pictures are bought from Japan by the largest US publishers andCanada, France, UK and other countries. In 2007, the "International Manga Award" was established, for which artists from all over the world now compete annually.

Manga magazines

For the general public, the manga is published in a magazine version, printed on good paper, printing for comics is of the highest quality, millions of copies are printed. List of best manga magazines:

• Shonen Magazine, published since 1959, publishes shonen manga.
• Shonen Jamp weekly, published since 1968, shonen genre.
• Monthly ShonenJump, published in the shonen genre since 1970.
• Shonen Sunday, started in 1959, shounen and seinen.
• Monthly Jump Square, produced since 2007 in the shounen genre.
• Shonen Ace Monthly, released since 1994, shonen genre.
• Monthly Magazine Special, published since 1983 in the shounen and shoujo genre.
• Sunday Gene-X, launched in 2000, shounen genre.
• Weekly Shonen Rival, published since 2008 in shonen, shojo and josei.

Anime shounen on TV channels

Shounen mega-genre is distributed among the reading and viewing audience and in other ways, such as broadcasting anime shounen, as well as other subgenres, is widely practiced in the format of a television series. To date, anime television series have the highest viewing ratings among television programs. Japanese TV channels allocate some specifictime to show the next anime series, and these hours become "sacred", no one can cancel them. The episodes are mostly short, within half an hour, so viewers don’t get addicted to anime on the TV screen - they watched the next episode and went on to do their own thing. As a rule, a television series is an adaptation of a popular manga.

Usually a seasonal show consists of 12-14 episodes, organically fit into a 12-week broadcast. Series are long, in which the number of episodes is over a hundred or more, evenly distributed over several seasons, this practice has long been worked out on television, using the example of cinematic series. The duration of an anime series directly depends on the level of its popularity, the record was "Doraemon", which consists of more than two thousand episodes, and this is not the only example.

Anime shounen and computer games

Recently, with the development of computer technology, the number of games in the Visual novel genre has increased. These computer entertainments became the basis for creating anime based on the plots of games, action movies, "shooters" and other interesting developments of programmers. Today, anime films are not only adaptations of manga, but also direct adaptations of computer games. The regulation of innovation was determined immediately, most digital entertainment does not have a plot as such, except for the simple alternation of episodes. Therefore, the director who transcribes the game from the computer to the anime shonen is limited in material. ButThe interest of the audience in the shounen taken from the game is huge, everyone wants to see their favorite characters on the big screen.