Discussion Prejudices about Seinen

[Roflkopt3r]

This thread is about the gathering and discussion about prejudices or assumptions of Seinen as a demographic subset of manga.

What was your personal concept of Seinen, before reading one? Did your conception about it change after reading certain Seinen works? And how do you think is Seinen perceived in general, both by those who like it and those who avoid or just don't really know it?

For myself, I was quite surprised finding quite a good amount of Seinen which don't rely on explicit content at all in the beginning. I also liked that many use the possibilities of explicit showings without overdoing it in the slightest, but rather showing what "should be shown". I especially had this feeling in Berserk, even though many might argue that it's very gory and bloody. Yet it felt suitable and without violence as an overdone self-purpose based element.

 

[thornofcarrion]

Explicit contents were what bothered me when I picked my first Seinen series. But with passage of time I realized, sometimes these contents are necessary to leave the desired impression on the readers. For example, many would complain about excessive nudity and gore in Woflguy, especially when Haguro is showed. But at the same time, it make his character more disgusted, which I am sure the writer intends to do.

Seinen is my favorite demographic at the moment. Over the years I have realized that most of the explicit contents used are necessary for the setting. Berserk as Rofl mentioned, is a fine example. The gore and violent parts are needed for the story to have the dark feeling.

 

[CBlitz]

well Seinen is just a demographic, not all manga classified under it have to be explicit. There's no nudity or violence in Aria for example and Nanoha is a Mahou Shoujo series yet its still serialized in a seinen magazine. Although yes, when I started reading my first seinen manga (Berserk), I was under the impression that they were all extremely violent or obscene in some way.

 

[igotthegoods]

well Seinen is just a demographic, not all manga classified under it have to be explicit. There's no nudity or violence in Aria for example and Nanoha is a Mahou Shoujo series yet its still serialized in a seinen magazine. Although yes, when I started reading my first seinen manga (Berserk), I was under the impression that they were all extremely violent or obscene in some way.

Yup, exactly. My foray into seinen was Gantz (plenty of nudity and violence right off the bat), which gave me the wrong impression as well. I assumed it worked like it did here in the US: violence, explicit content, nudity, strong language, mature themes = targeted at adults only. I didn't realize until later that it was the magazine in which the manga was serialized that dictates the demographic label. The more manga I read and more I learn about the industry, the more I find demographic labels to be bogus. People can miss out on a lot of great stories due to their false preconceived notions based on them, which is very sad. I would hope that someone didn't pass up a fantastic, sweet, slice-of-life manga like Noramimi because of the seinen tag for fear that it might be full of sex and/or violence, when that couldn't be further from the truth.

 

[benelori]

I don't know if I had any expectations or had any prejudices about Seinen...I don't even know which was first...but if I think back a bit, I think that the only thing I wanted is to read a deeper, more serious story...in whatever sense:violence, story, realism etc...

 

[baboysai]

My first encounter with seinen would have to be Berserk.

I really didn't read any seinen before, much less knew that it actually existed! I thought manga was all about shounen and shoujo, really, until I watched the Berserk anime and decided to read the manga... I understood from there that seinen was what it was- for mature readers/viewers.

And yes, my thoughts of "mature" was violence. It was until much later that I came to realize slice-of-life could also be seinen, as well as some romances.

 

[Ju-da-su]

I still can't even get the clear line between each demographics...I mean, I don't even realized that lots of the manga I like are considered by many people as seinen until I try looking them up, probably because seinens are considered by some people as "manga without furigana for men". -.-"

I don't really have any prejudices against seinen though, now and before. The demographics I used to have prejudice against are shoujo and josei, but that too got changed a bit (since I become more and more interested in otome and even BL). Tbh, at first, I though seinen and shounen are the same thing (yes, for real...-.-") Guess because even some shounen also have those seinen-ish context, like nudity, violence and stuff, just not as much as pure seinen, I guess. On the other hand, I still refuse to call many of the manga I like as seinen because despite of the fact that they are characterized as such, the overall context is similiar to one of shounen more than seinen. So, guess I still have trouble drawing lines between each demographics, so... ._."

As for right now, well, I do enjoy my slices of "seinen" (in quotation because they aren't really seinen context-wise) a lot. I don't have that much pure seinens in my favorite lists, but I do enjoy those that I have in my list. I did get a little better image of what seinen is supposed to be like though, and have to say, I still avoid a couple of them if I think it's a bit...too explicit...But then again, there are shounen that I avoided because it's too explicit to me as well, so... ._."

 

[Roflkopt3r]

I still can't even get the clear line between each demographics...I mean, I don't even realized that lots of the manga I like are considered by many people as seinen until I try looking them up, probably because seinens are considered by some people as "manga without furigana for men". -.-"

I would even go as far as to say that the lines between demographics are becoming less clear after a while.
To me, they seemed pretty obvious in the beginning: I had Naruto as a Shounen, and Berserk as a Seinen. In Naruto, people had little scratches when they cut each other, in Berserk they're seperated into two parts when Guts' giant sword hits them. In Naruto we may see a kiss once in a while -if at all-, in Berserk there is sex.

What came after was that I read the first chapters of Vinland Saga - when it was still considered Shounen and was published in a Shounen magazine - with Vikings joking about rape and collateral murder, and women picking up arrows on a former battlefield, with body parts pierced on them.
And, on the other side, Planetes as a Seinen. Not a drop of blood, no skin, a fully civil story about astronautics.
Then, Nononono - about ski jumping and a girl who is forced to pretend to be a guy. A lot of comedy, tragedy and sports, but nothing related to what I had considered to be specific for Seinen at that point of time.
Then, to top that by far, Noramimi... a Seinen.

So, as the confusion rose, I tryed wikipedia, which is far away from a definite answer either, but rather states:
"Because of the emphasis on storyline and character development instead of action, some seinen series are often confused with shōjo, or girls' manga."
I guess it is a common missconception that Seinen is some kind of "upgrade" to Shounen, just because both are targeted at a male audience. Most people, me included until a while ago, just read it like that:
Shounen -> Seinen
Shojo -> Josei
But after all, it's so different. I think that Shounen are the only rather clearly defined demographic genre, but apart from that it's becoming difficult to seperate. Seinen might be the hardest one to categorize actually, the bandwith of topics in Josei seems much lower to me for example. Now I plan on reading more Seinen which are further away from Shounen, I really took a liking on some of them already.

 

[Drmke]

Probably like most here, when I first started reading seinen, I expected excessive violence and sex on every page. When here "older teens" or "mature" that's just where my mind goes *shrugs* Of course now that I've read several seinen, I tend to see it as a label that allows more freedom in storytelling rather than violence and sex.

 

[ZERO PHOENIX]

I heard numerous rumors about Berserk and I wasn't about to go down that road. A friend of mine on mangafox hipped me to Jackals so I thought I'd check it out. At first I didn't care too much for it because of the excessive violence and the initial feeling that it was a DMC clone. After the first volume though I was hooked. The violence toned down a little bit and more of the story was expanded on. So Jackals got me into Seinen and I'm looking forward to reading other titles as well.

I don't like excessive violence or nudity in my titles so, here's hoping I find something other than Jackals to keep me involved.

 

[baboysai]

you could try the one from my sig zero phoenix. slice of life seinen.

 

[thornofcarrion]

My perception about Seinen changed much when I started to read different series. Kisswood is another fine example of the diversification of this demographic. It has no nudity so far at least or gore so to speak. Yet it is very good.

 

[baboysai]

So what gives the general public an idea (prejudice, if you may) that seinen= violence and sex?

Probably it's because of the famous and more popular seinen like Gantz and Berserk (then)? Like when people ask, "what is seinen?" "oh it's like Gantz and Berserk and stuff..."...?

 

[thornofcarrion]

Exactly babo, that is a general misconception. Especially for those who, lets say, started reading Gantz or Berserk and didn't like the nudity/gore and stopped reading it. They would think this is what Seinen is about. Really a misconception, you can not judge Seinen as a demographic, basing only on the few famous series.

 

[Drmke]

So what gives the general public an idea (prejudice, if you may) that seinen= violence and sex?

I think it's more along the lines of misconceptions about the word "mature". Seinen is for older people, a more "mature" audience. When people here mature their minds go straight to the gutter primarily because that's how society has altered the word "mature" to mean sex and violence.

 

[Kaiten]

I had the same misconception. My first seinen was Elfen Lied, one of my first manga actually. I expected every series to have boobs and violence. It's still a little mind blowing that something as soft and fluffy as K-On! is seinen I see a lot of confusion about shonen meant for more mature readers too. Series like Shigurui, Franken Fran, and Deadman Wonderland all come from shonen magazine. Because they are darker and more violent they are often mistaken for seinen. The reality is that all that matters is who the magazine is marketed to, not the content of the manga serialized within. Akita Shoten markets Champion Red to (roughly) 16 - 20 year olds, so it's shonen.

Another misconception I've seen is that seinen is higher quality. Some is, I won't lie. Enough that I would identify myself as a seinen fan first, a manga fan second. But there are still piles and piles of poorly written, silly seinen. Art too. A lot of people expect more seinen art to be more realistic. But for every Zetman there are series with deliberately sketchy art, like Freesia. Or there are series like Tekkon Kinkreet with deceptively ugly art and even series like Tokyo Zombie with deliberately bad art. There's even an entire bad art movement, called heta uma.

 

[Styx47ag]

To be honest I only started reading manga recently so I went for the whole seinen demographic right off the bat. I like it for the well developed often realistic characters. the sex/nudity/violence doesn't really bother me as long as it actually contributes to the story and isnt just fan service.

That being said there are some great manga/anime out there that isn't classified as seinen, NHK is one that i can think off.

 

[baboysai]

What made you decide to start with Seinen, styx?

 

[Roflkopt3r]

Another misconception I've seen is that seinen is higher quality. Some is, I won't lie. Enough that I would identify myself as a seinen fan first, a manga fan second. But there are still piles and piles of poorly written, silly seinen. Art too. A lot of people expect more seinen art to be more realistic. But for every Zetman there are series with deliberately sketchy art, like Freesia.

I'm openly convinced that Seinen in general does have better quality than Shounen. But that's just a statistical thing: It does not mean that every Seinen was good and every Shounen bad. I do recognize that there are lots of really bad Seinen and a noteworthy amount of good Shounen which also can be fine for mature readers. It's just a tendency.

I simply think that Shounen has a kind of border which it only very rarely crosses. Shounen storylines and storytelling usually do not exceed a certain complexity, characters and topics usually don't exceed a certain depth. Again, it's not true for every case but for the vast majority.
Seinen does not exceed these limits of Shounen automatically. There are enough stupid and underdeveloped Seinen, too. But the number of Seinen offering these things is severely larger than that of Shounen.

Further, the distribution of Seinen to different genres seems... "better" to me. Shounen tends to clump around some genres/styles like battle manga for example. And it tends to combine certain scenarios (like fantasy or science fiction) with genres (action for these two). Seinen is inclined to be more free in this regards imo, there are very interesting combinations of scenarios and genres (like Planetes: Science fiction totally without action.)
And then there is stuff like Ghost in the Shell which just is so very different of what children -or even generally readers under, let's say, 18 in most parts- would enjoy -yet offering a great depth this way- that it simply has to be Seinen.

 

[barbapapa]

I don't think I've ever had any prejudices about seinen, except from maybe when I was still reading shounen tripe I found it to be "unattractive" looking. What a fool I was indeed.