Shonen - Television Tropes & Idioms

alt title(s): Shounen

Manga and anime aimed primarily at pre-teen and teenaged boys. Tends to be focused more on "action" than relationships, with romance generally either perfunctory or played for comedy. Fighting or combat — even if it is sublimated into a form such as a sports competition — is a common element. The title character, and most of the cast, is predominantly male.

Shonen series were the first to be brought over en masse to the Western world, and makes up much of the popular American preception of anime. However, it should be noted most anime is aimed at younger kids simply because they possess the most free time for TV, and nearly all popular western animation is either geared towards males or has Multiple Demographic Appeal. Pure shoujo bounces between the realms of cutesy and melodramatically scandalous for most Media Watchdogs, so it does not get shown in the West as much.

Note that while Shonen tends to include a few standard genres, it literally refers to the target demographic (and in Japan, generally refers strictly to manga, rather than anime). Its older counterpart is Seinen, although both are enjoyed by certain audiences.

General Examples

Almost anything with Humongous Mecha.
Sometimes, adaptations of stories with Multiple Demographic Appeal will create two versions of the story, one shonen and one shojo.
- The attempted localization of Card Captor Sakura in the U.S. could be very generously described as an attempt to create a shonen version of the series (i.e., increase appeal in the proven male market), despite the show being entrenched like a rock in shojo tropes.
- This practice also occurs in Japan. Vision Of Escaflowne had a shonen-version manga produced of its story, while Magic Knight Rayearth's OAVs have a similar bent as compared to the original series.
Nearly all the titles featured in Shonen Jump! magazine have a kind of legacy with each other, enough that a crossover video game was highly received.
- The Dragonball series is by far the most famous example, and due to its age, length and influence provides examples of most of the classic tropes.
- Jojos Bizarre Adventure, released in 1987, is one of Shonen Jump's longest running shonen series, having reached over 90 volumes in Japan. It was only very recently that it got an official English release, and even then it jumped the gun a little, starting with the more-famous Series 3. With its 7th part, Steel Ball Run, it has switched magazines and became Seinen