loving shoujo + unpacking some internalized shame around it

i struggle with my weeb status sometimes

I started this blog because I love shoujo manga. In fact, I’ve read over 50 shoujo alone this year since picking manga back up last October. And I read shonen/seinen and real books too. I just find shoujo a very easy comfort read in the evenings or after a stressful day. It brings me a lot of joy and I think the stories are endearing and valuable as pieces of fiction.

A Sign of Affection art by suu Morishita.

And yet, I’ve only managed one review, and a very intensely plotted essay on the depiction of Japanese Sign Language through the lenses of “A Sign Of Affection”, “A Silent Voice”, “I Hear the Sunspot”, and to a lesser extent, “The Moon on a Rainy Night” (yeah, I’m crazy enough to want to compare shoujo/shonen/yuri/yaoi for a closer look at the depictions and positive vs negative representation).

I have a little notes folder going with ideas for this space: there’s over 15 post ideas, more if I was to be more specific under a broad theme like “anime review”. Ultimately, I want this to be a space that is joyful and happy: where I write about things that I love in stories that I love.

So what’s been stopping me from posting here? I think a few things.

#1: I’m still grappling with some internalized shame around manga/anime from my youth.

When I was a teenager, anime wasn’t as popular/cool/normie as it is now. This change is great! I love it! I just still clearly remember a time when I was looked down on/a bit socially ostracized for my interests.

When I think about writing in this space about shoujo, besides the immediate glee first and foremost, a little voice still says to me that this is a silly waste of time as an adult and I need to be doing “more productive/worthwhile” things with my time. For many years in early university I held a belief that to be a “proper” adult I couldn’t enjoy anime and had to put that chapter of my life behind me. But, turns out interests and passions are not so easily squashed, and here I am in my late 20s loving anime/manga just as much as I did as a teen. And now, the benefit is that some of my friends come to me for manga/anime recommendations now and I can provide such things with ease!

I’ve been procrastinating admittedly on writing here simply because I’m holding myself back still under the stupid idea I fostered in my early 20s of what being a “proper” adult is.

But this is stupid. I have a career and a loving husband and a cat. Those are enough traditional adulthood markers for me. I can have all of those things and still write about shoujo manga in my spare time if it brings me joy. In whatever way I want. In addition, shoujo is as inherently valuable as shonen mangas and romance is as valid as action as a genre.

The only person holding myself back is me. What other people might think of me doesn’t matter.

#2: I feel that everything I post has to be a fully formed essay to be “worthwhile” or of any merit for readers

This one is definitely related to #1 at its core. It’s totally okay for me to just post a little review, rave, or recommendation that doesn’t have to be a full-length essay. And in fact, a variety of lengths of posts is probably best. Even if I just write 500 words on liking a particularly good part of a manga that’s just as valid!

#3: I got kinda scared of the sudden influx of followers on this space (although it’s not even though there was a lot… like 10 lol).

I think some of the followers gained are genuine shoujo fans (if you’re reading this please say ‘Hi’ or hit the like button at the bottom! Because I’m pretty sure some of the people following this space are maybe not following because they are interested in manga. There’s a few investment substacks which just seem a bit suspicious. And this kind of freaked me out a bit that somehow I was on a spam list or something. Maybe I’m wrong! Maybe there’s people that are interested in manga and signed up with their investment-marketing email hehe.

And I guess part of sending this email is to see an option rate or a bounce rate and just see what happened because I’ve been procrastinating sending an email out because of the fear that there’s random people who will get an email about romance manga and then write something mean back even though they subscribed, bwaha. Sounds silly when I type it out. But realistically, I’m probably just writing this to myself and the email might get 0 opens so the stakes are low :)

And if you’re reading this and you signed up intentionally, let me say this has made me really happy (I’m like 100% sure there’s at least 2 “real” people on here that aren’t my friends! Welcome! I hope we can become friends too!)

#4: Sometimes the community online can be discouraging.

I’ve noticed there can be a bit of a tendency for online fandom spaces to consider a sad/dark work as much more valid as a piece of art, making claims about its emotional resonance and important as “best of all time”, or claims that if a work isn’t profoundly deep or dealing with sensitive emotional topics than it’s “shallow” or “boring”. A lot of this criticism is leveraged at the feet of modern shoujo romances, especially those set in high school or university.

But I disagree with this overarching statement that positive portrayals or storylines in fiction have inherently less value than sad ones (or that to give feminist critique on a piece of media means it has to be negative). Really, this is an essay in itself. And ultimately, I sort of made this space as a place to defend the validity of all shoujo, not just the ones that feature darker themes¹.

All the genres of shoujo have a valid place in the artwork. And I think it’s useful to explore all of them! Really this is just a pep talk because what other people think doesn’t really matter and I know there’s plenty of people out there like me who love a cute, cozy romance just as much. And if that’s you, I think/I hope you’re in the right place! I’m also going to talk about shoujo that isn’t just romance when the mood strikes me :)

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So here’s to just breaking through the self-imposed walls of shame/imposter syndrome and procrastination. Ideally, I’ll feel more confident here, it is my own space after all, and will be able to use this as intended: to be able to write about cute stories that I love. This probably won’t be the only piece I’ll write on loving shoujo as a woman and some dumb feelings of internalized shame around it, but this is enough right now to get these feelings off my chest and feel I can move forward with a clean slate here!

I hope to publish more frequently on this space; I certainly have enough ideas!

Also if you found this blog somehow and got this in your inbox read all of this and are like WTF is shoujo and manga I’m not interested, feel free to unsubscribe ;)

1. As a side note, it’s also a bit murky territory here as the community of shoujo lovers is not a monolith: sad/dark shojous are well beloved but also some of them critiqued for being “toxic” and representing abuse in relationships. This can sometimes lead to the claim that all shoujo is toxic or misleading/misrepresentational or harmful for young women to read.

This in itself is a deep oversimplification that doesn’t have any data backing that draws a conclusive and direct link that young women reading stories featuring abuse makes themselves more susceptible to being in abusive relationships. Many things go into the likelihood of entering an abusive relationship a non-exhausting list being: socioeconomic status, family situation, history of abuse, friends/peer pressure, manipulative men and gaslighting tactics… But maybe we’ll get into that one day on this space. Women, including young women, are stronger and smarter than being immediately deeply influenced by pieces of fiction they read without any critical thought to the story or themselves.

In fact, there are many lovely depictions of healthy relationships in shoujo/josei and consent is a core theme in many new-era romances. And this is really what I want to write about! Not the reasons why the genre is harmful or negative, but the reasons why it’s a lovely, wonderful, and uplifting space.