Action shonen with female protagonists?

Nanoha, Madoka Magica, Symphogear, Mao Chan, Vividred Operation, Ghost In The Shell, Angelic Layer.

If you want non-action or comedies there are a crap ton.

There are plenty with a non-action male MC and action girl, like Change 123. Or things like Negima lots of girl fighters and characters everywhere.

edited 26th Jan '16 4:57:44 AM by Memers

Oh my God I feel absolutely nausated after reading Arachnid's page. Please no one ever mention it again.

I purposefully left out Inuyasha because while Kagome starts off as the viewpoint character the story quickly shifts to making Inuyasha the main focus, only giving it back to Kagome at the very end.

Rumiko Takahashi's latest manga, Rinne, is arguably worse in that respect, since at least Kagome was capable of being an Action Girl.

If we're including seinen, then yeah, Change 123 counts.

And no, Negima doesn't really count. It has a ton of female characters, but Negi is very much center-stage.

I don't necessarily agree. Most of the plot revolves around the both of them. Take Kikyo for example. She might be Inu's dead girlfriend but she's also Kagome. That whole love triangle is decidedly on Kagome's side as well, focusing more on her emotional turmoil and confusion than Inu's.

In essence, Inuyasha is there to kill shit and be badass, Kagome is there for more dramatic stuff. Although she was the first person to seriously hurt Naraku and later on she does became an Action Girl proper. And as I said, since Inuyasha is at best only 50% action, being the main focus of teh drama half is certainly important.

I'd also like to say that I have always felt Relena is the real protagonist of Gundam Wing.

edited 26th Jan '16 11:39:40 AM by Nikkolas

Relena as protagonist makes sense, but she doesn't take part in the action, she's in a very feminine leadership role. She can't be said to go against gender roles (which I understand to be implied by the topic).

FMA doesn't count either. It is very good with its women (the only problem I've heard anywhere is Lust and her Femme Fatale motif) but not only are the two boys very firmly the leads, the author assumed an androgynous pen-name to publish it in a thoroughly male-dominated field. It avoided the sexism found in much of the genre, but could not defy it.

"Shounen" is indeed blurry. But if we widen it to any action series, we have to consider the panty fighter/battle vixen genre started by Ikki Tousen, of generously-endowed girls ripping off each others' clothes. They are very obviously aimed at males, and most are said to be badly demeaning to women even if you look past the fanservice. Among the better-written examples are Queen's Blade and, in the genre but also transcending it, Kill la Kill.

But I would like to mention Seirei No Moribito. It fits seinen more than shounen, but also defies many conventions of the genre: the action is light (but perfectly animated), most of it entirely realistic, the stakes and the casualties are kept quite low, and the lead is an adult woman with martial prowess but no magic powers and has an unstated romance with a non-action man. I can't say I love it but it's very well made.

Yeah I was specifically trying to avoid Panty Fighter in my lists. There are a lot of those but the TC didn't seem interested in those.

There are also a ton of Harem series, not quite harem but male MC and surrounded by girls, where the MC really is just the POV character and everyone else are the actual characters of the show.

Magical Girl though has a ton of Seinen shows, only Cutey Honey is Shonen. Most of those that come to mind were listed in my previous post.

Oh hey forgot one, Project A Ko.

Uh okay how about one where the lead/protagonist is distinctly female without too much yuri subtext & is somewhat gender-balanced cause I noticed in some shows with female leads they go kinda overboard with having a cast completely full of of women & cranking the subtext to eleven?

…Yeah, I hadn't thought about panty fighters. >.>

Initially I was thinking "classic battle shonen" à la Naruto, but then the examples would be scarce…

If we're going to use Inuyasha as an example, then I'll propose The Vision of Escaflowne. Hitomi Kanzaki is The Protagonist of the series, while Van is The Hero that pilots mecha.

It's not like Fairy Tail either, because the series relies on Hitomi as the focal character instead of resorting to an ensemble.

I'm not sure whether Symphogear is shonen or seinen (probably seinen tbh), but it's definitely action-heavy and definitely focused on girls in action. It's also pretty silly (at least after the first few episodes of the first season) and doesn't take itself very seriously.

Same with Kill la Kill. Some people find the fanservice in Kill la Kill a bit much but I personally found that everything was just so over-the-top that it was more humorous than titillating.

edited 27th Jan '16 4:51:15 AM by MoreThanBored

Symphogear had a manga adaptation which ran in Newtype Ace, a Shonen Sci-Fi mag for stuff like Macross and Code Geass mags, before the mag and it were canceled in 2013.

So it is Shonen.

edited 27th Jan '16 4:56:40 AM by Memers

Oh, well then that makes it easier. Watch Symphogear, it has cute girls blowing stuff up to catchy j-pop. Hope you like yuri!

Yuri mathematically makes everything better, so yeah.

…Would Yozakura Quartet count?

@slimcoder: I briefly mentioned it earlier, but I think Kara No Kyoukai would fit that bill. Though it's somewhat lighter on the "action" part.

Moribito.

Action? Check. Female lead? Check. B-e-a-utiful art and animation? Check.

edited 27th Jan '16 1:57:23 PM by TheAirman

It's in the mecha Genre, but Gunbuster and probably Diebuster.

If "slamming your butt each other sports" counts as Action, I guess Keijo!!!!!! kinda counts since it's serialized on Shonen Weekly Sunday.

edited 27th Jan '16 9:59:20 PM by flamemario12

Would Rozen Maiden count? I mean, Jun is basically just a battery for Shinku's powers.

Girls und Panzer deserves mention, though it's closer to sports than action and aimed more at otaku than the wider shounen demographic.

There's also Witchblade, which sexualises to eleven every adult woman, but from what I gather puts actual effort into the writing, unlike typical panty fighters.

You could also just read the actual comic it was based on, too.

Witchblade is a hell of a conundrum. I mean its an ongoing American comic book that somehow got an anime adaption but one with events & a mythology are almost completely unrelated & possess barely any connection to the actual comic.

Reading the descriptions… are you sure the anime doesn't just happen to have the same name as the comic? —'.`—

Speaking of Western comics, I was pretty sure Area 51 was one at first, considering its very unusual artstyle for a manga, but nope, it is Japanese. And its protagonist McCoy kicks serious ass, in addition to being a very fun and enjoyable character.

Imagine a Film Noir taking place in a rotten Fantasy Kitchen Sink, with a half-dead detective woman wielding a sentient gun as the lead, and you have Area 51. After reading 3 volumes, I like it quite a bit.

edited 18th Mar '16 4:01:46 PM by Lyendith

The witchblade anime is canon to the original comic apparently.

Dunno if it's been mentioned, but if the last few examples count, then I nominate Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt.

You've got two female leads who are very obviously the main focus, there's lots of raunchy humor sure, but their active sex lives are never demonized as such, and there is plenty of action to go around that has the two and their rivals as the unquestioned strongest fighters.

PSG is not a shounen, so imo it doesn't count. Seinen is a completely different beast.

edited 18th Mar '16 8:44:09 PM by wehrmacht