Which shounen anime/manga writes female characters very well?

Most of the big shonen male authors are pretty bad. Lot of them have pretty good ideas for female characters, but these authors always squander all of them. They end up becoming accessories, sidelined, or forgotten or maybe they are just palette swap of male characters.

Oda is probably the best one of big shonen authors and less culpable of this maybe because he is consistent with his female main cast. Still not up to par IMO. Hideaki Sorachi (Gintama) seems fine as well as they are portrayed as strong, perverts, funny, and so on.

I think Mitsuru Adachi (Touch, Cross Game) writes female characters decently. He also has a great variety of body types (although main characters are pretty ones, but it's true with male characters), the side characters are portrayed in a very humane way. He actually wrote for shojo audience too which is very rare (it was more normal in the past).

Some may consider slice-of-life more young adult centric, but I think Azuma (Azumanga Daioh and Yotsuba&) is fine at writing female characters considering how he started working with hentai and doujinshis.

I think female shonen authors are less prone of problems male authors have with female characters and portray relationship between male and female characters better which can be frustrating with male shonen authors. FMA as mentioned is a classic example. Shonen works by Clamp too and of course Rumiko Takahashi should be mentioned.

Not necessarily shonen, but Miyazaki is a staunch feminist. Nausicaa is full of strong female characters and female focused.

Quote from whorerwin

Agreed about Miyazaki! love ur answer it's so detailed and interesting however I haven't seen most of these you sound very knowledgeable about manga/anime moreso than the average fan

I know enough to regret

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Boobie Tail?? Nah fam

HAH fairytail was my thing way back...the regrets i have are

Quote from whorerwin

ok but their women are better represented and written than the ones in naruto

erza was almost my favourite, she loves strawberry cake just as much as i do but wendy was the cutest and purest little thing there was

but fairytail doesn’t have a lot going for them other than the “power of friendship” (such an overused trope i-)

i quite liked soul eater by atsushi okubo, only problem with the series is that SoMa wasn’t a thing...other than that, the female characters are varied and have lots of personality

also, i really really like Jibaku Shounen Hanako Kun~! It’s worth the watch and the read! The author and artist is AidaIro and i absolutely loved the characters, both female and male.

One Piece for the most part. The female characters are awesome, even the least important ones. Nami's mom in particular impressed me the most, but I could mention a lot more. I also find hella cool that Zoro have/had an equally powerful swordsman like him that could take the title of best of the world from him and that she is/was a woman.

it depends on what well written means and what the reader likes, for me a well written character means a character I can see beauty on their personalities, something I admire no matter if it's personality or power.

for example I really like the females in naruto for real i think I just dislike 2 ? and I am not even sure if I dislike them or the situation they got into, I really really like them specially Sakura she is my favorite from the manga overall also she is pretty popular for a shounen heroine

let's see another example... Bleach is not well talked about but Orihime is my favorite (tied with Aizen) and I think her powers irl would be freaking amazing! I also think she is adorable.

I really like FT too, I don't read it much anymore, but Juvia IS A QUEEN, I love her she is brave and strong willed, she also is quite powerful, she became my absolute favorite on FT overall, also Mavis is quite powerful very much right? but personally she is not on my list of favorites I guess? Lucy is veeery strong too she can summon a lot now

DB has amazing female cast! ChiChi is now a housewife because she choose too and she is happy that way I love her personality and I understand her marriage even tho it's not "common", but she can use KAIOKEN yall lmaooo she sometimes say awful things but she doesn't mean it (this was shown many times)

and what about queen Bulma huh she has the best man in DBZ (idc if he was evil omg, he already redeemed himself and between the saiyans he is the best husband/father imho, the saiyans are not like regular humans they are not used to human life but he is the one best adjusted ~I am not counting gohan because he is not even fighting anymore and is half saiyan sorry gohan fans nothing personal I love him too) coming back to the point Bulma is the richest, cutest and funniest person in DB I agree that she start weird (but keep in mind she was VERY YOUNG back then) after the time goes by she grow a lot and have a good family OH AND SHE IS A GREAT INVENTOR and without her everyone would be dead already!

anyways shounen sometimes are not the best at writting female characters? idk overall shounen is target to the younger audience so if we think like that, sometimes they are even kind "silly" even in their own main plot (note: majority of them have plot holes lol) but honestly i don't mind those plot flaws too much because it's just something common on shounen not something too bad people watch shounen mostly for the hero and fights, that's all, just like shoujo focus on romance, it's all a matter of finding the good shounen for you, for example men usually don't like shoujo but My Story!! got really populat between the male audience

a little plus: is SNK even a shounen? it's considered to be a seinen, no? because of the themes and gore I would say it looks more like a seinen? specially because the main character is very controversial?

seinens usually are better written overall, not just a character vs other type of character, because seinens are more "serious" or whatever, but SNK for me is very disappointing I came with terms with it's ending but it's kinda... ugh lack of words rn

Quote from pinksz

a little plus: is SNK even a shounen? it's considered to be a seinen, no? because of the themes and gore I would say it looks more like a seinen? specially because the main character is very controversial?

seinens usually are better written overall, not just a character vs other type of character, because seinens are more "serious" or whatever, but SNK for me is very disappointing I came with terms with it's ending but it's kinda... ugh lack of words rn

SNK = Attack on Titan?

Well, the term shonen as a "genre" is very misused by Western fans. We kinda get what it means, but sometimes it can be confusing. Shonen isn't a genre per se, just a marketing demographic. Some shonens from the same magazine will have the similar"feeling" or style, but it will be totally different from other shonen publishers.

AoT is published by a shonen publication, so it is shonen for the Japanese audience. It may not fit the Shonen Jump style that most people associate with "shonen genre", but lot of proper shonen series don't fit shonen jump style anyway.

Seinen has the same problem. It seems more mature themed or serious, but in actuality it can vary from very serious and complex to very silly one as lot of slice-of-life are published in seinen magazines. I guess shoujo is for the most part well defined, but josei may overlap with shoujo , shonen, and seinen themes.

Lot of publications just publish random stuff and go wide even thou they market themselves as one specific demographic like shonen. There are some works that may be published in different magazines at the same time like I think one of Mitsuru Adachi's works got published in shonen and shoujo magazine, so technically it's both although in our heads shonen = DB, OP, Naruto while shoujo is just for girls.

Anyway, seinen manga authors (both male and female) are usually better than shonen ones as their audience wants something more elaborated or these authors rely on simple human interaction (like slice-of-life ones).

Quote from pinksz

it depends on what well written means and what the reader likes, for me a well written character means a character I can see beauty on their personalities, something I admire no matter if it's personality or power.

for example I really like the females in naruto for real i think I just dislike 2 ? and I am not even sure if I dislike them or the situation they got into, I really really like them specially Sakura she is my favorite from the manga overall also she is pretty popular for a shounen heroine

let's see another example... Bleach is not well talked about but Orihime is my favorite (tied with Aizen) and I think her powers irl would be freaking amazing! I also think she is adorable.

I really like FT too, I don't read it much anymore, but Juvia IS A QUEEN, I love her she is brave and strong willed, she also is quite powerful, she became my absolute favorite on FT overall, also Mavis is quite powerful very much right? but personally she is not on my list of favorites I guess? Lucy is veeery strong too she can summon a lot now

DB has amazing female cast! ChiChi is now a housewife because she choose too and she is happy that way I love her personality and I understand her marriage even tho it's not "common", but she can use KAIOKEN yall lmaooo she sometimes say awful things but she doesn't mean it (this was shown many times)

and what about queen Bulma huh she has the best man in DBZ (idc if he was evil omg, he already redeemed himself and between the saiyans he is the best husband/father imho, the saiyans are not like regular humans they are not used to human life but he is the one best adjusted ~I am not counting gohan because he is not even fighting anymore and is half saiyan sorry gohan fans nothing personal I love him too) coming back to the point Bulma is the richest, cutest and funniest person in DB I agree that she start weird (but keep in mind she was VERY YOUNG back then) after the time goes by she grow a lot and have a good family OH AND SHE IS A GREAT INVENTOR and without her everyone would be dead already!

anyways shounen sometimes are not the best at writting female characters? idk overall shounen is target to the younger audience so if we think like that, sometimes they are even kind "silly" even in their own main plot (note: majority of them have plot holes lol) but honestly i don't mind those plot flaws too much because it's just something common on shounen not something too bad people watch shounen mostly for the hero and fights, that's all, just like shoujo focus on romance, it's all a matter of finding the good shounen for you, for example men usually don't like shoujo but My Story!! got really populat between the male audience

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Shonen series like these have awesome female characters in paper, but these authors squander their true potential. I think lot of fans who want well written female characters get aggravated by them.

Naruto is classic. You have Sakura and Hinata who are basically defined by the male ones at start before being elaborated. However, as the series progress they could outgrow this, but they don't really. Same with Tsunade. I like the design, ideas around them, and the potential growth they could have, but Masashi wastes it.

Bulma is a cool character in paper too as she is independent, funny, adventurous, and intelligent. How she is portrayed could be view as problematic thou. First she starts as a 16 years old teen and she is way oversexualized and target of old pervert jokes (well if was a different time, even Rumiko Takahashi did this). She is always a seducer when she needs something which would be fine, but it is showed in a comical and stereotypical manner. As the series stop being an adventure one and focus on power level battles, she is sidelined and become a support character. She does have some growth as a mother and scientist and she is still important as a character. However, DB is prone to forget characters like Lunch which is a super cool character.

Another example is Saint Seiya's female characters. They are comically badly written. Saori seems very strong at start, but she is basically a damsel in distress. Shaina and Marin could be badass characters, but they are basically sidelined and only defined by male characters. Hilda could be a badass female villain, but again she is just a damsel in distress in disguise as these authors tend to be unwilling to write strong female antagonists as well. Not sure if Pandora is better written (I didn't finish this one). Yuna on paper seems pretty cool. Dunno how well she is developed as I dropped the series early on. Maybe Saint Seiya Omega is better in this regard because Kurumada didn't touch this (not sure).

Quote from sleeplessnights

SNK = Attack on Titan?

Well, the term shonen as a "genre" is very misused by Western fans. We kinda get what it means, but sometimes it can be confusing. Shonen isn't a genre per se, just a marketing demographic. Some shonens from the same magazine will have the similar"feeling" or style, but it will be totally different from other shonen publishers.

AoT is published by a shonen publication, so it is shonen for the Japanese audience. It may not fit the Shonen Jump style that most people associate with "shonen genre", but lot of proper shonen series don't fit shonen jump style anyway.

Seinen has the same problem. It seems more mature themed or serious, but in actuality it can vary from very serious and complex to very silly one as lot of slice-of-life are published in seinen magazines. I guess shoujo is for the most part well defined, but josei may overlap with shoujo , shonen, and seinen themes.

Lot of publications just publish random stuff and go wide even thou they market themselves as one specific demographic like shonen. There are some works that may be published in different magazines at the same time like I think one of Mitsuru Adachi's works got published in shonen and shoujo magazine, so technically it's both although in our heads shonen = DB, OP, Naruto while shoujo is just for girls.

Anyway, seinen manga authors (both male and female) are usually better than shonen ones as their audience wants something more elaborated or these authors rely on simple human interaction (like slice-of-life ones).

Shonen series like these have awesome female characters in paper, but these authors squander their true potential. I think lot of fans who want well written female characters get aggravated by them.

Naruto is classic. You have Sakura and Hinata who are basically defined by the male ones at start before being elaborated. However, as the series progress they could outgrow this, but they don't really. Same with Tsunade. I like the design, ideas around them, and the potential growth they could have, but Masashi wastes it.

Bulma is a cool character in paper too as she is independent, funny, adventurous, and intelligent. How she is portrayed could be view as problematic thou. First she starts as a 16 years old teen and she is way oversexualized and target of old pervert jokes (well if was a different time, even Rumiko Takahashi did this). She is always a seducer when she needs something which would be fine, but it is showed in a comical and stereotypical manner. As the series stop being an adventure one and focus on power level battles, she is sidelined and become a support character. She does have some growth as a mother and scientist and she is still important as a character. However, DB is prone to forget characters like Lunch which is a super cool character.

Another example is Saint Seiya's female characters. They are comically badly written. Saori seems very strong at start, but she is basically a damsel in distress. Shaina and Marin could be badass characters, but they are basically sidelined and only defined by male characters. Hilda could be a badass female villain, but again she is just a damsel in distress in disguise as these authors tend to be unwilling to write strong female antagonists as well. Not sure if Pandora is better written (I didn't finish this one). Yuna on paper seems pretty cool. Dunno how well she is developed as I dropped the series early on. Maybe Saint Seiya Omega is better in this regard because Kurumada didn't touch this (not sure).

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well we surely have different views on female characters I see your point of view however I stand by what I said about them they aint perfect but honestly it's a shounen people just wanna see fights it's not deep the good characters we get are some of the good extra, so much that OPM that barely has much lore, the main character is not even that much of a character (sorry saitama fans its not personal), is very popular anyways... when it comes to seinen I kinda think that the narrative and the writting is more important and something worth to be judged but even so sometimes the mangaka is having the first work (I guess it was tokyo ghoul case?) and there's snk which is so deep flawed and just wasted so many potential it's funny

about the shounen and seinen thing I guess in the end it depends on which audience they are aiming for? not sure, personally, i do consider aot to be seinen because of the war theme and the "complex" writting, it's nowhere near other seinens like GANTZ but wtv

Quote from pinksz

well we surely have different views on female characters I see your point of view however I stand by what I said about them they aint perfect but honestly it's a shounen people just wanna see fights it's not deep the good characters we get are some of the good extra, so much that OPM that barely has much lore, the main character is not even that much of a character (sorry saitama fans its not personal), is very popular anyways... when it comes to seinen I kinda think that the narrative and the writting is more important and something worth to be judged but even so sometimes the mangaka is having the first work (I guess it was tokyo ghoul case?) and there's snk which is so deep flawed and just wasted so many potential it's funny

about the shounen and seinen thing I guess in the end it depends on which audience they are aiming for? not sure, personally, i do consider aot to be seinen because of the war theme and the "complex" writting, it's nowhere near other seinens like GANTZ but wtv

Yeah, that's basically what some of the authors say about some criticisms they receive about female characters. They focus more on what their audience likes.

I think it's fine although I'd still say some are kinda lost opportunities (like Naruto). I don't criticize them much on this front not on the premise of their works. I think they could do better (like OP and Gintama). However, they need time and big shonen authors tend to not have time to develop their ideas. They have great ideas, but not much time to nurture them, so they can only focus on so much and female characters tend to be neglected (like a lot of them just get sidelined).

Like I said, there are examples of decent and well written stuff in shonen publications. However, some publications are monthly, so authors who work there have time while Shonen Jump mangakas have crazy schedules. In this regard, I don't criticize the quality of female character writing that much as long they deliver the basic goods.

I don't use the term shonen on AoT that much but I don't use seinen as well. It is clearly published in a shonen magazine, so they are shonen even if it may be more in common with some seinen mangas. However, like I said, seinen has has a huge range of quality and themes. Seinen and Josei overlap a lot with shonen/shoujo. Shonen label is already iff (I only use it as a shorthand to Shonen Jump stuff). Seinen is even less reliable term to classify works.

Some shonen deals with heavy stuff like genocide and war (like FMA and even Naruto) and can be as complex as series published as seinen. AoT is published in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. Looking at their other stuff, it's more heavy elaborated stuff compared to the stuff published in Weekly Shonen Magazine from the same publisher. Some of them may separate Monthly and Weekly stuff with very loose criteria and each company will have their own (probably matching mangaka's schedule than themes). Some of them could be published in a seinen magazine no problem. That's why terms like shonen, seinen, josei are very inconsistent as a "genre". Shoujo kinda is the closest to consistency as almost all of them fit the same bill IMO.

Series like AoT or DN may have a "seinen" vibe like Tokyo Ghoul. However, the first two are in shonen magazines meanwhile Tokyo Ghoul is in a seinen one. They have similar themes and quality. The problem stems from both of these seinen and shonen publications targeting an overlapping audience around mid to older teens to early 20s.

Western publications may see gore, death, dark, or mature themes as more for older audiences while Japanese publishers may be OK in publish this for younger audiences as long it fits the vibe of their other publications. Same occurs with some slice-of-life stuff. Shonen and seinen ones are for the most part indistinguishable. In Western publications they may publish them for all audiences as they don't have any violence or sexual materials while in Japan they may focus them to young adults from both shonen, seinen, or josei publications.

I like female characters from Pandora Hearts a lot in general

Quote from sleeplessnights

Yeah, that's basically what some of the authors say about some criticisms they receive about female characters. They focus more on what their audience likes.

I think it's fine although I'd still say some are kinda lost opportunities (like Naruto). I don't criticize them much on this front not on the premise of their works. I think they could do better (like OP and Gintama). However, they need time and big shonen authors tend to not have time to develop their ideas. They have great ideas, but not much time to nurture them, so they can only focus on so much and female characters tend to be neglected (like a lot of them just get sidelined).

Like I said, there are examples of decent and well written stuff in shonen publications. However, some publications are monthly, so authors who work there have time while Shonen Jump mangakas have crazy schedules. In this regard, I don't criticize the quality of female character writing that much as long they deliver the basic goods.

I don't use the term shonen on AoT that much but I don't use seinen as well. It is clearly published in a shonen magazine, so they are shonen even if it may be more in common with some seinen mangas. However, like I said, seinen has has a huge range of quality and themes. Seinen and Josei overlap a lot with shonen/shoujo. Shonen label is already iff (I only use it as a shorthand to Shonen Jump stuff). Seinen is even less reliable term to classify works.

Some shonen deals with heavy stuff like genocide and war (like FMA and even Naruto) and can be as complex as series published as seinen. AoT is published in Bessatsu Shonen Magazine. Looking at their other stuff, it's more heavy elaborated stuff compared to the stuff published in Weekly Shonen Magazine from the same publisher. Some of them may separate Monthly and Weekly stuff with very loose criteria and each company will have their own (probably matching mangaka's schedule than themes). Some of them could be published in a seinen magazine no problem. That's why terms like shonen, seinen, josei are very inconsistent as a "genre". Shoujo kinda is the closest to consistency as almost all of them fit the same bill IMO.

Series like AoT or DN may have a "seinen" vibe like Tokyo Ghoul. However, the first two are in shonen magazines meanwhile Tokyo Ghoul is in a seinen one. They have similar themes and quality. The problem stems from both of these seinen and shonen publications targeting an overlapping audience around mid to older teens to early 20s.

Western publications may see gore, death, dark, or mature themes as more for older audiences while Japanese publishers may be OK in publish this for younger audiences as long it fits the vibe of their other publications. Same occurs with some slice-of-life stuff. Shonen and seinen ones are for the most part indistinguishable. In Western publications they may publish them for all audiences as they don't have any violence or sexual materials while in Japan they may focus them to young adults from both shonen, seinen, or josei publications.

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well, in the end, for me it depends on the graphic + deliver of the theme

DN for me like if you have shown me the manga only I would think as a seinen but the anime would make me like ??

so that's that.

Quote from pinksz

well, in the end, for me it depends on the graphic + deliver of the theme

DN for me like if you have shown me the manga only I would think as a seinen but the anime would make me like ??

so that's that.

I agree with you. I'd probably tend to call that seinen as well if you showed me at random and if I had no prior knowledge. However, knowing how the Japanese use these terms, I avoid to use these terms for series with overlapping audiences.

Like if you call Berserk, Vagabond, Mushishi, and GitS seinen. I totally get it. They probably wouldn't be published in shonen magazines almost for sure. They are clear cut examples.

Now if you call a series like Flying Witch shonen, seinen, or josei? I'm kinda lost as it could fit in any of these categories. Probably I would call it seinen as well to be on the safe side. It is published in the same magazine as Attack on Titan, so a shonen series like AoT and DN. Both have nothing in common. AoT, DN, and Tokyo Ghoul are kinda this category. It wouldn't strange to see them in either shonen or seinen publications (which is true for TG magazine, as these mangas would be published in Shonen Jump in the past).

That's why seinen term can be a very iffy criteria.

Thinking about this when discussing demographics, it seems we are bashing Shonen Jump mangakas as terrible at writing female characters. At the same time, Shonen Jump audience is basically 50-50 male female ratio. Even thou female characters aren't that well written, it is still fine for their audience.

I'm being hyper critical, but in reality I don't think much about this when reading these characters and don't bother as well. I do get a little worked out at some missed opportunities or inconsistencies regardless of their sex, but I don't think there is bad intention or men can't write women (maybe Kurumada). Regardless of their faults, these characters work and are memorable.

I still like Lunch!

By the way, maybe they should remove "Shonen" from the name of the magazine at this point and call it All Audience Jump, a big chunk also are older than 25

Fee Carmichael of planetes i think is a pretty good one but idk tbh I only watched the first two episodes.

I agree that Fairy Tail has better female protagonists than Naruto.

I'm putting all the faith that left me with Naruto on Boruto's Sarada Uchiha. She's already better than Sakura and Hinata, personality-wise, and she had a few moments where she really stood out, so I can only hope....

Gintama duh