
Shogakukan, the mega-publishing house behind many famous manga magazines such as Shounen Sunday (and incidentally also an owner of North American anime/manga company Viz Media), announced the results for their 54th Annual Manga Awards earlier this week.
The winners of this year’s awards are all likely unknown to most international fans, but in past years the Shogakukan awards have been bestowed to popular series such as Bleach, Fullmetal Alchemist, Inu-Yasha and Detective Conan.
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This fascinating and rather amusing image attempts to describe a few key differences between ero-manga for men, and ero-manga for women (which do tend to overlap with shoujo/ladies manga at times), by way of a handy comparison.
Below you see the full image, which you just read in place if you are able, but otherwise I have prepared a translation on the Channel; please have a read, and share your thoughts if you are of a mind.
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The illustration in all the following images fails in one or more crucial respects. Frequently dismally so. Feel free to heap ridicule on them. Artists take note.
Needless to say, these images will not be finding their way onto the Channel, although the last one is rather amusing.
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The Okayama prefectural government has been drastically tightening restrictions on the sale of manga it has designated “harmful”, with a great many such titles being “ladies’ comics”, essentially erotic shoujo manga, usually targeting a slightly older demographic.
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JAV star 蒼井そら / Sora Aoi (or Sola Aoi), has received a decidedly erotic manga adaptation, and what’s more, we find the pornographic performer’s 2D antics are published in Kodansha’s Dessert magazine, aimed squarely at 15 to 25-year-old females, even helpfully including furigana should the vocabulary stray into unfamiliar areas.
A brief look at the content seems to suggest a highly romanticised account of her career of having sex with people for money is presented:
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Popular anime マリア様がみてる / Maria-sama ga Miteru unsurprisingly finds itself with a new season, its fourth, set to start in January 2009, and to air with a variety of stations.
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Shoujo manga is actually some of the most explicit manga outside of actual ero-manga, vastly more so than shonen manga and seemingly considerably more so than most seinen manga.
Thus, I couldn’t help but notice the interesting question raised by the Vippers in this thread, “Why doesn’t it ever get censored?” Examples proffered below…
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