UlasanAnime.com – During my high school years, I wrote a paper focusing on Title VII discrimination, specifically through the lens of disparate impact. This was my introduction to what is often labeled a “liberal” concept, and it resonated with my inherent sense of fairness, especially during America’s Black History Month.
Alternatively, one could say this is an introduction to American otaku celebrating iM@S month in Japan, as I’ve been quite occupied with related work. However, this leads us to a segue into John’s post, which, like many of his recent columns, feels somewhat like a deliberate provocation.
In a single word, “No.” The collapse of America’s anime industry in 2008 was a consequence of numerous interconnected factors, and the fickleness of female anime fans was certainly not among them. For female otaku to have significantly destabilized the domestic anime industry through a sudden exodus, they would have first needed to constitute a substantial supporting audience.
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I believe the straightforward lesson that John overlooked is that girls genuinely enjoy shounen anime. This isn’t an isolated oversight; many people fail to recognize the appeal of shounen anime to female audiences. Consider, for instance, the immense popularity of One Piece. Another significant observation is that shoujo anime struggles commercially. In Japan, shoujo manga has largely become a quaint, albeit dying, art form. It persists primarily as an aesthetic, a stylistic influence, a genre defined by its tropes, and a niche category within an otaku’s collection; commercially, it’s on the brink of decline, much like cyberpunk as a literary genre.
Regarding anime specifically, the proportion of shoujo anime produced is already low. Post-1997, this percentage plummets to alarmingly low levels. Most shoujo anime fall into a category similar to Precure, which are mainstream children’s franchises. The international licensing of such titles is a complex undertaking with substantial costs, something that even the mid-bubble American industry would have found difficult to manage.
Therefore, John could have simply stated what I’ve outlined and remained entirely politically correct. However, he would still have missed the first crucial point. To his credit, his original question wasn’t about the impact of shoujo anime itself, but he attempted to use shoujo anime sales as a basis for his premise that few girls purchase anime. While I have no definitive knowledge of the truth of that statement, it’s akin to me claiming no one buys shoujo anime—it’s only accurate in the broadest aggregate sense, if at all. For example, Fruits Basket achieved phenomenal sales, and it is unequivocally shoujo. Yet, its sales are a mere fraction compared to the vast quantities of DBZ sold by FUNimation. Thus, John might be correct in asserting that girls don’t buy much anime, but there’s a lack of concrete evidence to support this claim. It’s worth noting that many male fans purchased Fruits Basket, myself included, solely for the omake. Therefore, for all we know, more boys might be buying shoujo anime than, say, a series like Penguindrum (which occupies a somewhat ambiguous genre space) or Twelve Kingdoms (which is technically shoujo but not originally manga).
In reality, a more significant issue highlighted by John is his complete lack of awareness regarding shows like Kurobas, No. 6, Gravitation, and Free. These are not typically categorized as “shoujo” either. Or perhaps, should we attribute the lack of financial support for Oofuri to fangirls? This notion might exist in some male-dominated online fantasy.
What does this have to do with disparate impact? For those unfamiliar with the concept, disparate impact refers to how certain practices, which appear neutral on the surface, lead to systemic outcomes that constitute discrimination based on a particular characteristic. In a racial context, this could manifest as a poll test, where one racial group, due to historical discrimination patterns, possesses lower educational attainment than another. The test itself isn’t designed to discriminate based on race, but its results can be functionally equivalent to a racially discriminatory measure.
Consequently, it’s easy to assume that “anime shamelessly pandering to women is far rarer than any other type of anime, leading to fewer women watching or buying anime.” However, this is simply baseless speculation. It holds no real significance because these marketing labels (shoujo, shounen, seinen) are largely irrelevant in this context. To demonstrate disparate impact, one must rely on data, and primarily, on numbers alone. This situation might even be more akin to reverse disparate impact, where hiring practices based on race result in a demographic pool that mirrors the general local population. It’s comparable to limiting Asian admissions at Ivy League institutions to preserve an exclusive, historically male-dominated environment.
