What is the ‘shojo’ and how does it often function in anime?

According to Merrian-Webster (n.d.), shojo is a Japanese word for a style of anime and manga aimed for young women. Most of Japanese anime have a young girl in early age of 5 -18 as the main character. Most of the character expresses brave, active, independent, courageous and inquisitive.

When I was young, I saw Sailor Moon almost every day even I was not really interested in anime and I really wanted to be like a Sailor Moon. She was pretty, brave and good at solving the problems. The anime gave me a fantasy. In my experience, shojo could help children growing to a right way as like they showed at the works.

Also in most of Miyazaki's films suggest that the main character type is different of gender roles that are common in other media. Especially in Mononoke, director described the main character as very strong willed, forceful, intractable girl compare with the other genre’s girl character. Not all shojo characters are strong and aggressive, but most of them tend to act like this way. Also, they are different from the obedient, demure, domesticated stereotype of the asian female.

Mostly anime aims at boys by using some factors that boys like, so girls needed anime only for them. However, shojo is not only attracting to girls but also male. They are beautiful and brave, such as San in Mononoke, who is kind, brave, active, beautiful and passionate.

Furthermore, when a director uses a girl character, they could express purity easily. When they want to show the purity, they set the girl character especially young girl. We can find it from Hayao Miyazaki’s work as an example. He set a young girl as a main character in My Neighbor Totoro and appealed to audiences about the importance of nature by using purity of children. So, many of audiences could understand the director’s purpose without any revulsion.

References

Merrian-Webster. (n.d.). Shojo. Retrieved September 27, 2014, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shojo