Doesn't feel like shonen to me


Just so everyone knows, "shonen" refers to anime and manga for boys, "shojo" refers to anime and manga for girls. (However many shojo series have proved surprisingly popular with a good number of guys as well as women.)

This is based on a manga by CLAMP (a group of all-female manga artists and writers) that was supposedly their attempt to create a shonen series. While I've never read the ANGELIC LAYER manga, the anime series feels very shojo to me. This isn't a complaint on my part, I have nothing against shojo anime or manga, and I did really love the show, it's action, characters and voice cast: Jessica Boone as Misaki, Sasha Paysinger as Hatoko, and so on.

This just doesn't feel like shonen; the lead protagonist and most of the main characters are female, the battles are all non-lethal and are fought between robotic dolls, so no person ever gets hurt. (At least, not physically.) Misaki views her opponents as friends and fellow Angelic Layer players, not as enemies. There's lots of emphesis on character relations, such as a romantic triangle and a long-seperated mother and daughter finally having a heart-felt reconnection. Again there's nothing bad about this, it just all makes it seem more like shojo than shonen. I mean lots of other shojo titles have certain amounts of action in them. (Such as REVOLUTIONARY GIRL UTENA and a number of magical girl shows like SAILOR MOON.)

I consider shows like BLEACH or AIR GEAR to be more true shonen titles. This one to me is clearly shojo.

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