Two major genres of anime and manga in Japan are geared specifically at women: shojo, which technically means a young, unmarried woman, but as a genre tends to include teenagers through adult women, and josei, which is geared toward the adult woman and therefore tends to be more sexually explicit. The shojo genre has much higher circulation, and therefore more commercial translation and marketing in the US. Shojo stories tend to be defined by a focus on emotional exploration of the relationships between characters, rather than being driven by plot and action, which characterizes the shonen (young man) genre.
The shojo genre is generally willing to explore a number of uncomfortable or taboo subjects that are unusual or hard to find in other media, such as:
- exploration of gender roles
- gender alteration
- incest and other abuse
- homoeroticism
This exploration is not always feminist in nature, which can be frustrating. However, feminism does appear in places, sometimes where it's least expected.