Misused: Bishoujo Series

I was reading the character page for the Street Fighter series, and got to Sakura, and saw that one of the tropes on her list was... Bishoujo Genre. Eh? What's this?

I looked around and saw that people are using the term "Bishoujo Genre" to refer to any female character that they find attractive. I think this comes from the fact that "Bishoujo", one of the redirects, is a valid anime Fan Speak term that means just that: any sexy female character.

This is a real mess. First of all, it's referring to characters, not series. Second of all, the way that they are using it is very subjective, even though the trope is quite objective. Third of all, they way they are using it is just a chair.

On the other hand, this trope is completely valid. I've Seen It A Million Times: the the series is marketed towards boys and teenage guys or young men. They know that healthy young men like seeing healthy young women, and decide to include some. They get a little carried away, and the entire bloody cast ends up composed of healthy young women.

Examples:

Lyrical Nanoha

Arcana Heart

Aria

My suggestion is that we keep the trope as "Bishoujo Series", but ax "Bishoujo" and "Bishoujo Genre" as redirects.

edited 4th Apr '12 5:39:30 PM by TropeEater

   Evil is my favorite color.   

This is kind of a known problem. We need to take Bishoujo Style or Bishoujo Character to YKTTW for the character-design elements. So far no-one has stepped up to do that.

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

I can explain what's happening. "Bishoujo," which is a redirect to Bishoujo Series*

, is custom-titled to appear as Bishoujo (wave over the link to see what I mean). This is a long-proven faulty way to attempt people to stop people from misusing these kind of redirects like this. As you can clearly see, it doesn't work at all.

The redirect should just be cut altogether.

The custom-title should definitely go, but the redirect would most usefully point at the character-design/art-style trope that we don't have yet, so I'd be against cutting it.

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

Okay... I think I might start that YTTKW... but first, I need to know what the actual Bishoujo characteristics are. It seems to me to be one of those ones that really doesn't have much of a definiton, like Moe.

   Evil is my favorite color.   

Sadly, all I can think of is that she's a pretty young girl age 13-20 or so.

Bishoujo is sometimes used to cover any attractive youngish women, which would just be fanspeak. I think we might be better off pitching it as an art style or character design:

• young, usually teenage; older characters are likely to be Older Than They Look
• emphasis on youth and cuteness, generally doesn't include sophisticated women like The Vamp
• shoujo-influenced: big eyes with detailed highlights, detailed hair in lots of individual tendrils, often with fluttery costume elements like ribbons or swirling skirts, tendency to light/pastel colors, flowers and sparkles
• closely related to moe, tends to involve moe elements

Maybe link to some examples bishoujo design and some of of 70s/early 80s non-bishoujo female characters for contrast.

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

So something like these four then?

Edit for clarification: As examples of modern bishoujo, that is.

edited 6th Apr '12 8:57:49 AM by tdgoodrich1

"Polite life will fill you full of cancer." - Iggy Pop "I've seen the future, brother, it is murder." -Leonard Cohen

Yup. Actually, almost any anime for a mostly-male audience that isn't based on hard-boiled old-school seinen manga will have bishoujo designs, it's become the dominant style for attractive female characters. Shoujo and especially josei is more likely to have non-bishoujo girls, which is kind of odd because the bishoujo thing was borrowed from shoujo...

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

So then, should we go ahead and start working a YKTTW for the definition (potential title Bishoujo Character Design?) and cleaning incorrect wicks? If we do YKTTW this I would propose running it as a definition-only page.

"Polite life will fill you full of cancer." - Iggy Pop "I've seen the future, brother, it is murder." -Leonard Cohen

Does Bishoujo Character Design fit any actual usage or would it just attract misuse for clashing with a broader pre-existing term?

Also, it probably needs to be made anime-only or the Fast One will throw a fit.

edited 8th Apr '12 10:56:06 AM by MorganWick

The broader definition of "bishoujo" is "hot chick", so the worst-case scenario is people throw everything on there. On the other hand, bishoujo style is currently so dominant in male-oriented Japanese media that at least 90% of intended-to-be attractive female characters in shounen / seinen stuff made since 1995 or so are bishoujo, and we don't seem to have very active fans for the kind of stuff that doesn't use bishoujo, so hopefully misuse would be limited.

And yes, it should be an East Asian trope, except for things that are deliberately copying it, like the Bishoujo DC statuettes.

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

I only threw out Bishoujo Character Design because, as lebrel noted in the second post, the proposed new trope is strictly about the actual character design. I'm open to suggestions. Either way, something needs to be done about the misuse as the OP noted.

"Polite life will fill you full of cancer." - Iggy Pop "I've seen the future, brother, it is murder." -Leonard Cohen

^^What I'm asking is whether people actually use bishoujo to refer to that.

We got Tall, Dark and Bishōjo but that is about it.

I am really unsure on what your aiming for here though I mean there are a lot of body and face types in anime aimed at guys.

There is

• the short Pettanko usually Spunky maybe Genki Girl [1]◊
• The Yamato Nadeshiko body type kinda short not much in the rack but typically demure and such.
• Tall busty types usually covered by the Tall, Dark and Bishōjo personality [2]◊

And probably many other types too.

Eye styles are very different [3]◊ [4]◊ depending on the artist Tareme and Tsurime arn't even the most common just the most extreme.

Unless you want a series where everyone is designed for fanservice / beautiful like a lesser version of The Beautiful Elite... With the exception of a Token Pettanko and Yamato Nadeshiko body type.

edited 8th Apr '12 9:30:06 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

Face Palm. I meant real people, outside the wiki.

Well The Other Wiki has this

Which I get out of it, series filled with hot girls and Fanservice designed to appeal to various elements, actual story does not matter, no homely or Gonk characters outside of a gag. IE To Love RU, B Gata H Kei and Kore Wa Zombie Desu Ka.

edited 8th Apr '12 9:47:58 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

@ 14 Morgan Wick: Yes, they do.

@15 Raso: The type of show is Bishoujo Series. We are thinking of a trope for the visual elements that a character that is referred to as bishoujo has. What defines the modern bishoujo style vs. old-school seinen women or typical modern shoujo or josei characters? Body shape, personality, eye shape aren't the main points.

For instance, Mitsusu Adachi still uses very old-school shounen art, his girls don't have bishoujo elements even though they're supposed to be cute. How do we explain that difference in words?

edited 9th Apr '12 9:40:49 AM by lebrel

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

I think you pretty much nailed it with your earlier description. If people are in agreement, I can go ahead and run the YKTTW. As stated elsewhere I intend to run it as definition-only. I would also agree with the proposal limiting the current Bishoujo Series page to Eastern works only.

Revision on further thought: Propose adding a stipulation that they match a majority (either simple or 2/3, say) of those and any other proposed criteria.

edited 9th Apr '12 12:21:15 PM by tdgoodrich1

"Polite life will fill you full of cancer." - Iggy Pop "I've seen the future, brother, it is murder." -Leonard Cohen

So your basically just talking about the general Art Evolution of girls in anime and manga? That is a thing but not with this name or anything. We have already the current fad in Puni Plush.

edited 9th Apr '12 12:33:15 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

Not so much the Art Evolution as the stylistic elements the art is revolving around. If you look at the Bishoujo DC Statues I linked to above, and compare them with the way DC characters usually look, what's that difference? What makes "hot chick" in current otaku-bait stuff look different from "hot chick" in josei?

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

Well Puni Plush and Noodle People pretty much are that.

Puni Plush being the Moe style and Noodle People being the Shojo hotness style although the latter is bogged down with stuff not meaning the Josei / Shojo hotness Art Style. (I have tried to split that before.)

In all your idea seems useful notes at best.

I can see a page covering Anime Art Styles Of The Decades because that is a serious thing and well Mysterious Girlfriend X is considered very artsy for using a 90s Art Style since it is set in the 90s. [1]◊

edited 9th Apr '12 1:08:35 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

Puni Plush is a specific type of style that's used in many works that have bishoujo characters, but not all of them.

Noodle People is totally different from shoujo or josei art, check out the page image there, that's what the trope is about. I have no idea why people think it applies to tall thin characters generally.

Calling someone a pedant is an automatic Insult Backfire. Real pedants will be flattered.

Noodle people is a term coined by fans of Clamp character designs and such the codifiers of the Shojo and Josei artstyles which spread out from there, been called that for 15 years. It has appeared in Seinen works like Onii Koto

Others use it for something different and far far more extreme.

edited 9th Apr '12 1:19:44 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

For reference, here are a few samples of josei character designs: Chihaya◊ from Chihayafuru. In her uniform here (click on pic for full-size).

The main cast◊ of Kuragehime

Nodame◊ from Nodame Cantabile

Saki◊ from Eden of the East

Regrettably, I am out of touch when it comes to modern shoujo. If anyone has any examples for reference, please post them.

Edit: found a non-headshot for Chihaya, cleaned formatting

Edit 2: Fixed second link. They really need to add a "Preview Post" function around here.

edited 9th Apr '12 1:38:45 PM by tdgoodrich1

"Polite life will fill you full of cancer." - Iggy Pop "I've seen the future, brother, it is murder." -Leonard Cohen