Bishonen Jump SyndromeGurenn wrote:Je mag er wel zeker van zijn dat er ook in Japan meer meisjes zijn die shounen lezen dan jongens die shoujo lezen. Wordt ook wel het Bishounen Jump Syndrome genoemd.
AKA Shoujo Jump Syndrome.
Bishonen Jump Syndrome is a specific trend in shonen (boy's) manga (and anime), aimed at attracting a female Periphery Demographic through gratuitously bishounen character design.
The manga anthology magazine Weekly Shonen Jump (on which the US magazine Shonen Jump is based) has long been the best-selling manga magazine in Japan. Although it is targeted to boys, it has a large female Periphery Demographic. Sometime in the mid-1990s, Shonen Jump realized the sales potential of this demographic, and began to deliberately court female readers via Estrogen Brigade Bait. Specifically, they took standard shounen all-male teams and simply made them all bishounen: the origin of the Blue Bishonen Ghetto (an idea promptly picked up by shoujo as too good to waste on the guys). Traces of Ho Yay are often also added (if not, the fangirls will see it anyway).
Among the first series to show this effect were The Prince Of Tennis and Gundam Wing; compare the art in these to Slam Dunk or Great Teacher Onizuka, which have old-school character designs. Katekyo Hitman Reborn is probably the most blatant example that's currently serializing.
The fangirl-bait worked, sales went up, and the idea was promptly copied by other shonen magazines, to the extent that it is now more-or-less standard procedure. It is nonetheless often ridiculed by readers who prefer the older tough-looking art styles, who deride Shonen Jump as "Bishonen Jump" or "Shoujo Jump".
"There are no women in Yu-Gi-Oh! There are only extremely girly men! And I am the girliest of them all!"
— Marik, Yu-Gi-Oh! - The Abridged Series
A popular anime character type, the Bishonen, or "beautiful boy", is a male character that possesses androgynous or 'feminine' physical traits. He is tall, slender with almost no fat, little to no muscle, and no body or facial hair. Large, expressive eyes are almost a given. The appearance and behavior of the archetypal bishonen is a product of youthful spontaneity and experimentation with sexuality and gender norms. Thus, they are sometimes Yaoi Guys, but not always. And sometimes they are crossdressers, but again, not always. In anime, many bishonen have female voice actors, although those that don't get startlingly deep, sexy voices instead. It is not uncommon for other characters to mistake them for women, or for savvier examples of the type to take advantage of such an assumption.
Bishonen can be found equally distributed between heroes and villains; bishonen villains often develop devoted followings among fans. Bishonen with white hair are almost always villains, no matter how they initially seem.
In English fandom, the term 'bishonen' simply connotes "a really really attractive male", but in its original usage it refers to a specific type of attractiveness that is found in adolescents. The cutoff for bishonen in the strict sense is around 18 years old. (Beyond this age, the Japanese describe male attractiveness through terms like biseinen/bidanshi ("beautiful man") or "ikemen" (roughly, "cool guy").) The affectionate English fandom shorthand "bishie" bypasses the lexical issues somewhat.
Originally, bishonen characters were the province of shoujo and Boys Love, but since the mid-90s it has become the default style for teenage boys in pretty much any work looking for a cross-demographic audience.
We hebben hier dus te maken met een verkoopsstrategie
Het beste voorbeeld hiervan dat ik me kan herinneren is "Tiera Erde" uit mobile suit gundam 00
Dat is zo'n jongen met vrouwelijke trekken. Als ik het me goed herinner is hij/zij een vrouw op een bepaald moment op een of ander bal waar ze dan met "Ribbons" danst. Dat was wel een vreemde plotwending