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I know that, in general, the higher-ranked manga tend to be shounen, such as
One Piece, Bleach, and Naruto (based generally, I think, on readership). Is
there anything showing general demographic popularity, such as the overall
popularity of shounen vs. shoujo vs. seinen vs. josei, based on something like
readership? If so, is shounen still the most popular? How do the other ones
rank in relation to each other?


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2013-07-29T16:17:49.067
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2016-01-17T08:15:33.943
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manga-production
What is the most popular demographic?


This is a bit hard to measure, but shounen is clearly the top demographic
group. Popularity is usually measured by magazine circulation. The difficulty
in this is that there is a lot of overlap of readers, and also that different
demographic groups read widely different amounts of manga. For instance, a
young reader in the target audience of shounen magazines is likely to
subscribe to only one or two magazines, while older readers might subscribe to
many. Thus, total circulation numbers for the older demographic groups tend to
be higher relative to the number of readers.

Here are some [statistics from
2010](http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2011-01-17/2010-japanese-manga-
magazine-circulation-numbers) for the circulation numbers of various Japanese
magazines from the [Japanese Manga Publishers
Association](http://www.j-magazine.or.jp/). By demographic, the results are
the following:

[code]

    ╔═════════════════╦══════════════╦═════════════╗
    ║   Demographic   ║ Top Magazine ║ Total       ║
    ║                 ║ Circulation  ║ Circulation ║
    ╠═════════════════╬══════════════╬═════════════╣
    ║ shounen (boys)  ║    2,876,459 ║   8,344,534 ║
    ║ seinen  (men)   ║      807,871 ║   7,624,811 ║
    ║ shoujo  (girls) ║      745,455 ║   2,803,230 ║
    ║ josei   (women) ║      162,917 ║   2,364,666 ║
    ╚═════════════════╩══════════════╩═════════════╝
    
[/code]

It's pretty clear based on this that shounen is the most popular, followed by
seinen. Shoujo is less popular than seinen, but the numbers are similar for
the top magazines, suggesting that the fanbases are somewhat similar in size.
Josei is less popular than the others. However, in terms of total sales,
seinen is almost the same level as shounen, and josei is almost the same level
as shoujo, suggesting about equal market shares.

Admittedly, the demographic listed for the magazines is not perfect. However,
I think the above is a pretty fair representation of roughly what the sizes
are of each of the four main demographic groups. Also, this data is from 2010,
so the current data could have changed a bit, but not enough to change the
conclusions. I used 2010 data because it was easily available in English and
formatted in a way that made calculating totals easy, but more recent data is
available through JMPA's website if you follow the link above.


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2013-07-29T17:02:05.167
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2016-01-17T08:15:33.943
2016-01-17T08:15:33.943
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