What does Shoujo mean?

Shoujo anime is great for those easy-going feel-good anime on the whole. However, due to their pure nature of focusing on relationship building between characters they often hit the feels and break you down before healing you with all their fluff. But what does Shoujo mean?

Definition of Shoujo

Shoujo does not refer to a genre but rather the audience demographic. If an anime is tagged with the shoujo tag it means that the ideal target audience is female preteens and female teenagers between 10-years of age and 18-years of age. That said, it does not mean only females will enjoy the anime with the shoujo tag.

Shoujo does not dictate what type of story the anime or manga will be, like fantasy or romance tags would. Instead, shoujo indicates that the anime or manga was made with the set audience demographic of young women in mind. Using Google translate, shoujo translates directly to young woman .

That said, most shoujo plots are romance based. Not only do they usually consist of a lot of different types of relationship building and romance they also tend to be quite humorous and have more intricate plot lines and side stories with the characters compared to shounen anime.  Often shoujo animation is sparkly and pretty with lots of detailed character shots.

Examples of Shoujo anime:

Kimi ni Todoke

Skip Beat

Fruits Basket

Itazura na Kiss

Ouran Koukou Host Club

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