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[IronyOwl]

I have finally finished watching Demon Slayer. It's excellent, though sadly weighed down with shonen nonsense. The fights are mostly great and there's a strong focus on characters, including bad guy mooks, so I'm willing to mostly forgive the power level shenanigans and faceless mook massacres. I look forward to the inevitable Season 2.

Spoiler: Spoilery Conjecture (click to show/hide)

My current theory is that constant breathing techniques corrode their wielder, similar to Harry Potter's "magic is mercury poisoning" fansplanation, which explains both why all of the Hashiras are extremely thematic appearance-wise, and why they're psychotic retards when it comes to earring boy and his sister. Also indirectly explains a lot of other stupid shit involving mook demon slayers getting instagibbed because oops power levels.

[JoshuaFH]

I have finally finished watching Demon Slayer. It's excellent, though sadly weighed down with shonen nonsense. The fights are mostly great and there's a strong focus on characters, including bad guy mooks, so I'm willing to mostly forgive the power level shenanigans and faceless mook massacres. I look forward to the inevitable Season 2.

Spoiler: Spoilery Conjecture (click to show/hide)

My current theory is that constant breathing techniques corrode their wielder, similar to Harry Potter's "magic is mercury poisoning" fansplanation, which explains both why all of the Hashiras are extremely thematic appearance-wise, and why they're psychotic retards when it comes to earring boy and his sister. Also indirectly explains a lot of other stupid shit involving mook demon slayers getting instagibbed because oops power levels.

Now you should continue the manga; the shonen nonsense only escalates rapidly. I'm certain that the author wants to include every shonen trope in existence into one show.

[scriver]

Gotta 'clude 'em all!

[JoshuaFH]

I'm read up on the manga, and the only thing missing is a tournament arc, and where the story is it wouldn't make any sense to ever have one, but I'm still holding out hope.

[scriver]

Do pokemon count as shonen or is it's target audience too young?

[JoshuaFH]

I think the dividing line is demographic. Shonen is targeted at young boys, while pokemon is meant for young people or just really anyone really.

If Super Eyepatch Wolf is to be believed, Kimetsu no Yaiba has overtaken One Piece in sales. Though it's a technical victory, as One Piece is a reliable big earner and only maybe halfway through it's overall story, while Yaiba has won the shonen jackpot and has garnered an explosive amount of attention, leading people to start buying up earlier chapters, and Yaiba seems to be nearing the conclusion of its story.  So, through one giant leap, Yaiba has managed to steal the spotlight from One Piece, right before its destined fall back down as it concludes.

[Reelya]

Also, the term shonen may be confusing here. Shonen technically is anything published in a shonen magazine, regardless of genre. It's a four-quadrants system.

To illustrate why it's confusing:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

This is a Shonen anime:
https://myanimelist.net/anime/17082/Aiura


This is a Seinen anime:
https://myanimelist.net/anime/9776/A-Channel


This is a Shoujo anime:
https://myanimelist.net/anime/32175/Shounen_Maid


This is a Josei anime:
https://myanimelist.net/anime/36864/Akkun_to_Kanojo

Pokemon actually falls under a blanket category "kodomo", or children, which is applied to manga that's gender-neutral but aimed at young kids. I think the general age groups would be that Kodomo is aimed at under-12s, Shonen is aimed at roughly 11-15 boys, Shoujo aimed at roughly 10-17 girls, Josei aimed at women 18-30, and Seinen is aimed at men 15-30. Which series get labelled as which thing is pretty much down to which publisher picks up the series, or which imprint they decide to run it in. Each type of magazine wants to have a spread of type of stuff in them so they pick up different series to run. They don't just want all the same stuff or people won't want to buy it.

Part of the confusion is that the West picked up "shonen" as a loan-word, but it specifically means a type of show that became popular in the west, which is clearly sampling bias due to the paucity of shows that got picked up. Look at the list of top shonen on myanimelist to see the issue here:
https://myanimelist.net/anime/genre/27/Shounen
That includes Mirrai Nikki, Death Note, Your Lie in April as some of the top-rated Shonen Anime.

The word just means "boy" in Japan, as in these were published in male-targeted magazines. The equivalent to the Pokemon question would be as if Japanese people labeled Star Wars as being in the "Boy" genre, then asked whether The Jetsons was also in the "Boy" "genre" because Jetsons also has space ships.

[scriver]

I think your definition of genre is too tight

[Reelya]

It's orthogonal is my point.

Unless you actually think that Attack on Titan and Death Note are in the same genre as Dragonball.

[scriver]

Well yes, the shonen genre

Genres can have genres

[pikachu17]

Shonen isn't a genre though.
Its a demographic.
If its intended for a 12 to 17 year old boy, its shonen, regardless of anything else.
I would consider Battle Shonen a genre.

[Reelya]

Point being, Death Note has absolutely nothing in common with Dragonball. It's not anywhere near them being subgenres of a single genre. Other than both being cartoons, basically. To turn Dragonball into Death Note, you have to remove the entire superpower and battles concept altogether, then you have to also remove the flashy colorful style and exaggerated character designs and render it in a more realistic grimdark, modern urban setting, and change it into a psychological horror crime cat-and-mouse series where the main character is an anti-hero / villain. It's no longer the same genre, by any possible metric. Every single aspect that defines Dragonball as a thing has been removed, nothing is left.

For it to be a genre, you need to point out a framework they both having in common, the point out how they differ in the details or orthogonal things like setting.

[scriver]

Like I said, I think your definition of genre is too narrow.

The thing they have in common is the age group they're targeting. There doesn't have to be anything else.

[notquitethere]

similar to Harry Potter's "magic is mercury poisoning" fansplanation

Wait, I don't think I know this theory.

[Cruxador]

Like I said, I think your definition of genre is too narrow.

The thing they have in common is the age group they're targeting. There doesn't have to be anything else.

For what it's worth, I think you're definition is just out wrong. Genre has always been about the nature of content of the work, and what you're describing has always been called something else, along the lines of target audience or demographic.