Josei is a
demographic category of manga, anime, and other entertainment aimed at female audiences aged 18 to 40. Like its
Spear Counterpart Seinen, Josei is notable for more realistic, less idealized portrayals of romance and life than in
works for young girls.
It typically uses a more realistic artistic style. Most are written by women, and feature in magazines or anthology collections directly sold for the demographic. Stories typically portray everyday life for young Japanese women — usually adults, but occasionally high school age.
Fuji TV's
noitaminA anime block is notable for focusing on this demographic.
Compare
Seinen, which is aimed at young men of the same age; and
Shoujo, which is aimed at younger females.
Shounen is aimed at younger males.
Examples
Series sometimes mistaken for josei:
- Axis Powers Hetalia: Very close, but the involvement with Comic Birz pulls it closer to the seinen category.
- Nana, which is really close to a josei, but it's a shojo.
- Kuroshitsuji (known as Black Butler in English) seems to be a mix of Shōjo (Demographic), more so in the anime, and Seinen, more so in the manga. As such it is often thought of as a Josei but it's actually a Shounen.
- Comic Zero Sum is a magazine targeted at women of all ages. This often leads to confusion as to whether a work is shoujo or josei. These include Amatsuki, Loveless, 07-Ghost, Karneval and HatenkouYuugi.
- Works by Mayu Shinjo like Sensual Phrase, Haou Airen or Akuma Na Eros, due to the extremely high sexual content that often includes Sexual Harassment and Rape Tropes. The melodramatic storytelling and the fact that the protagonists tend to be girls in their late teens, however, push them more towards shoujo; the only one which might qualify as jousei would be Love Celeb.
- Sakura Gari by Yuu Watase. Again, super sexual and melodramatic storyline makes you believe it's a josei, but technically speaking is a shoujo.
