A Shojo Day

This is turning into a shojo-obsessed day — which I guess makes sense, since this is a girly blog. Following is the “Japanese Schoolgirl Watch” column from the current issue of WIRED:

Anyone who thinks schoolgirls and boys enjoy the same fantasies needs to bone up on shojo manga. The Japanese comics for gals are the antithesis of typical shonen titles. In series for guys, like Gundam and Dragon Ball Z, robots are death machines and sound effects of pitched battles (bwa-whoom!) are common. In series for girls, like Absolute Boyfriend, bots are cute guys and the sound f/x tend to be of the protagonist’s heartbeat (ba-bump!) as she approaches a robohunk. Shojo stories also get interspersed with shopping tips on clothes and cosmetics, ostensibly to help teens look like their heroines. Americans can see what the fuss is about when Shojo Beat magazine debuts at bookstores in late June. The monthly mag translates six popular shojo serials into English.

The image included in this post is from the manga NANA.