Categorizing Digital Manga

[Eighty-six]

When it comes to determining whether a manga is considered shounen, shoujo, seinen, or josei, you look at the intended demographic of the magazine in which it's ultimately published. Runs in a shounen magazine? It's a shounen manga. Was transferred from a shounen magazine to a seinen magazine? It's a seinen. It has "dark themes"? What magazine is it running in?

Generally pretty simple... except when it's not, because-- say-- the manga originally ran in a digital magazine.

I go through the particulars of my confusion in figuring out the designated demographic of a particular manga in its general thread, but to summarize:

• the site wherein it was originally serialized has no evident demographic designation (and reportedly hosts manga of diverse categories, a claim that confuses me more),
• its label in its listings on Kinokuniya imply it's designated as shounen (and this may be why MangaUpdates currently labels it as "shounen" despite labeling it as "shoujo" in the past),
• its label in its listings on Bookwalker (seemingly contradicting the one that's affixed to its listings on Kinokuniya) implies it's shoujo or josei,
• its stated demographic category with certain SEA English distributors and Comikey imply it's shoujo, and
• the lack of furigana in its raws would normally imply it's either seinen or josei.

What am I missing, here, when it comes to categorizing digital manga? Does a digital manga collection itself have a demographic label, like physical magazines? Or is it normal for them to have no demographic designation?

P.S. I'm aware manga distributors outside Japan may appropriate the demographic categories without necessarily using them as the publisher used them (e.g. Shingeki no Kyojin is licensed in France by Pika Édition, who puts it under its "Pika Seinen" label despite it being an inaugural manga in Kodansha's Bessatsu Shounen Magazine). But in that situation, the deviation is clear and simple. It seems the matter of demographic is intrinsically vague when it comes to digital manga collections.

 

[Shirobane]

A lot of online “magazines” don’t have a strict demographic. Some do provide tags with traditional demographics on the titles themselves but not all. I wouldn’t rely on BookWalker tags because I’ve seen questionable data, including double-tagging.

 

[Kie]

[OP's Question]

Well, you've led me down a fun rabbit hole, and in doing so, I seem to have come across a Japanese reader with your very same question! Here's their post, but if you want the (cleaned up, but still MTL, translation), here it is:

Japanese OP:

[Please let me know] ASAP. Is Promise Cinderella a shoujo manga? What is the difference between a shoujo manga and a romantic comedy?

Response to Japanese OP:

I think it falls into the shoujo manga category, but since the main character is a former housewife, it can also be considered a josei manga.
MangaOne, the publisher of the series, also places it in the shoujo category. [Translation Note: "Published" may mean "serialized" here; not sure which one it is in reality.]

Shoujo manga are manga drawn for girls. Romantic comedies are romantic comedies regardless of [targeted] gender [readership] (both for men and women). There are also romantic comedies for girls even if the main character is a boy, and it depends on who the readership is set to be. If [the manga] is serialized in a magazine, you can [typically] identify it by the magazine's category, although recently there are many neutral magazines and web serials, so identifying it by the source of serialization is becoming more difficult.

I'll actually dive a bit deeper into this, since I spent a few too many hours exploring all of this with no knowledge of Japanese. See, the publisher is actually "Shogakukan", which, uh, publishes everything under the sun. MangaONE is an app published by Shogakukan, which in turn publishes manga from Ura Sunday (as stated in their Twitter bio).

Ura Sunday, on the other hand, has 2 (or more, I'm not going to investigate further) main labels that it seems to puts its comics in - "Ura Shounen Sunday Comics" (裏少年サンデーコミックス) and "Ura Sunday Jyoshibu" (aka "Ura Sunday Women's/Girls' Club", or 裏サンデー女子部). This division is a bit unintuitive, however; "Ura Shounen Sunday Comics" is in fact just "Ura Sunday", aka the main, neutral label. This explains why "Ura Shounen Sunday Comics" doesn't even have its own website - if you look at the titles "Ura Shounen Sunday Comics" is publishing versus the main Ura Sunday website, they're literally one and the same. On the other hand, "Ura Sunday Jyoshibu" is select publications from Ura Sunday/Ura Shounen Sunday Comics which specfically fall under the "female target audience" category. (Indeed, MangaUpdates doesn't even have a "Ura Shounen Sunday Comics" publication category, just "Ura Sunday" and "Ura Sunday Jyoshibu". A number of shoujo/josei manga are listed as being published under both publication categories.) Jyoshibu even has its own separate website to denote these female-aimed publications, which, if you click on the "単行本" (tankobon) tab, includes "Promise Cinderella". What this means to me is that all manga begin in Ura Sunday, and after a time, if they are female-aimed, they are published under Ura Sunday Jyoshibu as well.

To give you a different example, Ura Sunday is currently publishing this title, which I can guarantee you is female-aimed. Its author also wrote this title, also up on Ura Sunday, and it is without a doubt female-aimed as well. In fact, the latter can be found on the Jyoshibu label site, while the former is acknowledged as Jyoshibu in the Shogakukan digital label. I don't quite believe anyone, ever, would put those two titles under "shounen".

A second, perhaps better example, is that Promise Cinderella's author is now publishing this title, which, like Promise Cinderella, is also both under Ura Sunday and Jyoshibu. Funnily enough, there's no controversy over on MangaUpdates on this one; it's clearly labelled as shoujo despite being in the literal same situation as Promise Cinderella.

In brief, Promise Cinderella is without a doubt a shoujo and/or josei. It's definitely female-aimed, and Ura Sunday Jyoshibu is ambiguous enough in its description (at least for my abilities) that you could make an argument for either or both. What it isn't, however, is shounen. Even if it is published under "Ura Shounen Sunday Comics", that just means it was published by Ura Sunday at all.

 

[Kie]

On a last note: there's obviously nuance here that I simply cannot understand by virtue of 1: not knowing Japanese or the expanded history of Ura Sunday, and 2: not having ever read Promise Cinderella. I think, as we move on in the digital publishing age, intended demographic for many manga will become increasingly harder to categorize since publishers/magazines are increasingly taking on the "no defined demographic" identity.

In fact, it reminds of one of the first scanlated manga (or rather, manhua) I read, 1/2 Prince, which is labelled as "shoujo" and "shounen". (And, in fact, you cannot modify those labels without admin permission on MU precisely because people fought over it and the decision was made by MU admins that it was both.) I know it's atypical in that it was a Chinese (and not Japanese) publication, hence the magazine it was published in was "neutral" and not slanted to one demographic, but I do think that that kind of was a precursor to this modern era of some confusion. As more magazines and publishers come out with publications that don't neatly fit themselves into one category or are published for more than just one demographic, what do we do? "Vibes" is very vague, but I think in cases like 1/2 Prince or future stories/magazines like it, it may be the only thing we actually have a grasp on. But that's a subject for another day, and I'm glad at least that Promise Cinderella can be categorized somewhat neatly.

 

[Kie]

Ah, one actual last note: I've been able to talk to MU admins and Promise Cinderella is once again shoujo So all's well that ends well!

 

[hoffingtonleigh]

Good to see this thread
Sorry if repeat myself happy new year everyone
I have spent the last weeks going over magazine demographics. Digital magazines, e-Zines etc. are not manga magazines and shouldn't be treated as such. A magzine is constrained to a certain size according to what the publisher is willing to earn and expense, as well as a reasonable number of pages. Who in their right mind would buy a regularly released manga magazine with the page count of the Bible? Comic sites as Japan mostly calls them are not beholden to these factors.

A publisher can start a site and keep hundreds of manga in circulation on there, as the space they inhabit costs pennies on the dime. Comic sites however sell you on chapters. This leads to a more relaxed grouping. Some sites don't even have a theme you can grasp, they just publish "interesting stories", or "stories you have to see". Demographics are only for magazines since you buy a package, looking to get the most bang for your buck. We non-Japanese almost never consume manga through magazines, leading to us not seeing the covers, which can already give away the target audience. Demographics from what I could gather are especially important and/or overseen by three major associations. The JMPA, the Japanese Magazine Publishers Association, which has a publically available database for magazines published by their members. Although they do not categorize by the same demographics they use: for boys, for girls, for men and for women without further age ranges. Second the Japanese Advertisers Association I think. And the third one wasn't mentioned. When it comes to advertising sex and age are extremely important to know what to market in what magazine. Internet ads however are in most cases personalized, again leading to publishers dropping strict groupings of works on those sites, not to mention the lower quality standards for web releases.

Lastly, if a publisher wishes to include more manga in a magazine or start a new one, then (in many cases) they have the money to do so, but starting a website should prove far more cost effective since magazines are also meant to get you to buy the collected chapters in volumes.

One final thing about MangaUpdates is that there are hundreds if not more entries with false demographics and the admins deciding for themselves whether something is for a certain demographic instead of following the given rules straight from Japan without any explanation for that behaviour beyond we feel like it's a "insert demographic here".