Destablization and Stabilization: Interrogating Shoujo Manga

Shoujo as a generic category of manga or Japanese graphic narratives is gendered in its very nomenclature as the term literally translates to “girl”. Sharalyn Orbaughs claims that the term conveys a complex social construction of little girls and young adult women. The umbrella term of “shoujo” has been bestowed upon mangas which revolve around cis-het females of the age of 6-18, and whose target audience are also of that same age. As Fusagi Ogi states, shoujo manga has been used to both reaffirm and subvert conventions, leading to various academic discourses which analyze the social effects of shoujo manga. This fact echoes Gayle Greene and Coppelia Kahn’s assertion that literature as a pedagogic tool of culture creates and perpetuates collective ideology, and so does manga as a form of literature.

This paper intends to analyze Nanami Mao’s 'Half and Half', and Takase Umi’s 'Kanojo ni Naritai Kimi to Boku' to surmise how different shoujo mangakas(creators) experiment with this form in multifarious ways to represent characters from different intersections, while simultaneously illuminating their shortcomings as well. It will aid in understanding shoujo as a cultural tool.