So I live in north Texas and my older brother and his family live in norther Virgina/DC area so I only get to see him and his kids like once every two years. Apparently his two oldest daughters (one is going to be a freshman and the other a sophomore) are really into Anime and want to buy manga. With anything the slightest bit in the "nerd sphere" he always tells them to contact me, and so they texted me and asked me all about different anime and what I would suggest.
So I know what I will be sending them this Christmas. I love how unlike western entertainment Anime/Manga understands who their audience is and caters to it, so what would be ideal for a teen girl? I know the older one enjoys Attack on Titan and said she likes stuff with romance and the other one loves Vinland Saga and I told her about Ah My Goddess, and she seems to like that one so far.
Any suggestions would be appreciated, and thank you in advance.
Crazy how a lot of those recommendations are for boys, too. Just goes to show manga and anime is pretty universal. I have similar thoughts and would put the same up, maybe not jojo though, a bit too wacky if you're not too into manga and anime at first.
Yeah, but its kinda for different reasons usually. Girls (and women) usually want someone to gush over, in pretty much every work I listed there is at least one notable male character (if not multiple) to gush over.
They also really don't care for sexualization of females (and they really don't like harems of women for male characters); pretty much all the ones listed have little to no sexualization of female characters and nothing like a harem.
Female characters have to be handled carefully, either as self-inserts, supporting characters, or as competition, or tools/toys for an intelligent/edgy male to use. Women really don't like bimbo supporting characters. Evil women are fine as villains. All female casts might be more of a different story in terms of expectations.
If its popular/buzzing, it also helps a lot too.
They like the action and whatnot reasonably well enough of course, but these are important aspects of determining whether they will like or dislike something. Something could have great action/story/characters, but be a lot more of a turn-off if they have a negative issue with the work.
To women you have to have something to hook them in particular besides just a good story/content (unless its really good), and you have to avoid pissing them off too much. If its already popular, that does give you a lot of leeway though.
I've seen enough female fans of JoJo that I think its fine, imo after they've seen 1-4 anime, they'll be fine. My sister saw and enjoyed JoJo based on my sibling's recommendation, and she wasn't exactly a huge anime/manga fan or anything beforehand, only probably seeing a single digit number of anime/manga (though she was reading manwha/webtoons so... maybe not completely analogous)
But at the same time, one of the best names on that list was written by a woman. FMA is the production of a rural girl who was asked to write a popular series and she got it right on her very first arc, just because she totally got it.
I know, a lot of women wrote some of my favorites like Ascendance of a bookworm(which is based on a lightnovel) or Inuyasha/Ranma. There's tons of women making good stories in Japan...and all without needing some quota to fulfill.
When I was a kid, anime/manga was still mostly niche and I read whatever I could find. Only later I find out that half the stuff I read was "shoujo". Most of CLAMP's stuff is accessible to boys even though they are an all female group writing stories for girls.
CLAMP in general is amazing. Sakura, xxxHolic, Chobits...I don't think even one of theirs is bad and when I grew up I watched a lot of "girl" series also, even some of the outright girly stuff like for example Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne or Doremi, didn't bother me one bit.