Gauging an Observation: More girls into anime than other geeky things?

Long story short, I had this thought in my head that I noticed there are more girls in Anime and Manga fandom than most other "geeky"-type interests

Wanted to see if others had noticed this or if I was suffering from small reference pools or something. And I wanted to see others's thoughts and feelings on the concept or if I'm just plain nuts and overthinking things.

Define "anime." It's not exactly surprising if lots of girls like Shōjo.

...

Gah! I've screwed up again! I always miss something! Grr..

Okay people, nothing to see here, ignore ignore ignore, AC effed up observing stuff once again.

I mean I should be saying in general because from my observations it's not just shojo stuff but many other things too, demographical pinpointing is a factor but there' most certainly more beyond that.

Ya know what? Forget about it, I screwed up.

edited 22nd Dec '10 9:33:14 PM by ACDrawings

Looking @ the Autism Skype chatroom i am in (Anyone want an addon/invite PM me!) there's a lot of girls on there, like 2 girls to 1 guy & we're mainly anime fans.

EDIT: make that more active users, there's more active girls on the chat but the male/female ratio is more evened out....

Also I'm tempted to say there's probably more females @ anime cons than males. Or maybe the fangirls are more noticeable. Or you post a lot in fangirl-filled forums/cultures (e.g. cosplay forums, Hetalis fanforums - compare that to lolicon forums, hikkimori imageboards, etc). IT seems that the anime culture in general is evenly matched males/females given anime is a broad medium & many fans aren't fans of just one TYPE of anime.

EDIT: also note more females got into anime congoing for the social aspects of that culture, rather than 'i like the art/style/plot' from what I remember (4chan /a/ discussions, so note the bias there).

and as you said in your blog, the yaoi influences & whatnot is more palatable to stereotypical females than males due to double-standard remnants in the West (some Australian guy wrote a dissertaion on the western vs japanese Yaoi subcultures, anyone have it?)

edited 22nd Dec '10 10:12:58 PM by BalloonFleet

I'd actually say from my own observations that more girls are into anime in general than other fandoms and I'm removing strictly shojo fans from my observations.

It's not about shojo: There was some poll in Japan about what animes were most popular with males and females, and they were basically the exact same shows. Lots of mecha and shonen stuff.

If they happen to like it for different reasons, well...

(There's also the stereotypes about what sort of fans people are, which can basically be summed up as "girls socialise and do creative things - fanfic, art, cosplay - boys debate on forums and build and catelogue collections (of merchandise, or of facts.)")

>>It's not about shojo: There was some poll in Japan about what animes were most popular with males and females, and they were basically the exact same shows. Lots of mecha and shonen stuff.

I don't remember there being a majority of females in the mecha panels I was in @ ACEN.....then again the Geass panels had a LOT of girls there (also TTGL panel @ C 2 E 2). Damnit -_-

I don't see why girls would be into shojo... shonen & seinen have all the hot guys (and girls, if they swing that way).

I'm a girl and into anime, but then again I'm also into video games, Chess club and some other nerdy things.

My personal theory is that Anime and Manga are more popular among females because they're both "newer" than western animation and can be done over the internet and thus are anonymous unless you want to prove otherwise so there's less pressure. Or if you want Flame Bait, Anime and Manga are just better at storytelling.

I'd say the former is correct, being slightly geeky become more and more fashionable in the late 80's, 90's to 2000's, around the same time of the rise of anime and manga that was mostly unheard of at the time. But comics and old films had stigma's attached anime and manga were basically the wild west of fandom's it was new to America and undefined (it still is slightly). Plus unlike say comic books it had a wider base, being used to tell every thing from super hero stories to slice of life tales, bridging the American gap between newspaper comics and action based comic books, and until recently a guy watching cartoons over that age of say 11-12 was considered weird but a girl could be into those things into adult hood without it being considered odd as along as it wasn't an obsession. the the animation age ghetto slowly dying off it create a huge opening for people to get into the genre and with altering perspectives on whats cool and not cool it create the perfect timing for this to happen, generating a huge female audience in anime and manga that if this had happened 30 years earlier would have probably gone the way of comic books, that are just now starting to have some of it's stigma's lifted.

I hope that doesn't seam sexist, if it does I didn't mean it.

edited 23rd Dec '10 6:14:52 PM by americanbadass

bump

Also hentai.

edited 9th Jan '11 9:47:01 PM by SandJosieph