It seems like shounen tag went bonkers? It feels like it started about one or two months ago, but suddenly lots of novels adopted this tag at about the same time? And this trend seems to continue till now? What a fcking pain in the ass. It's already hard enough to understand what some novels are about with their vague description and missing/misused tags and now shounen is added to the mix. Lets all gather together and with our united efforts slap 'Shounen' tag on every novel possible! Such a great idea! What's shounen? - Literally meaning “few years,” “shonen” (少年) typically refers to young boys under the age of fifteen. Thus, shonen anime and manga are aimed at that demographic. A lot of these anime and manga have a young male hero and are focused on action, adventure, and fighting. Some interesting examples: A demon Lord's tale: now it has seinen and shounen tags. Valhalla Saga: Mature/Shounen. FFF-Class Trashero - Seinen, Mature, Ecchi, Shounen Ccccccccoombo! Since it already has 3 other tags why not add one more, right? Right??? The First Order - what a nice post-apocalyptic shounen. MC murdering people in batches every other chapter. Guess it's done in the name of friendship? Arifureta - I wonder why Nidome No Yuusha didn't get this tag too for a company. The Righteous Player(s) - Ah yes, mysterious bloody murderers committing all kinds of different atrocities in the name of club activities. K-On of the dark fantasy world. The Regressed Demon Lord is Kind - Though it's now seinen but I've seen it with shounen tag not long ago. Guess someone fixed it. The Dark Magician Transmigrates After 66666 Years - contains explicit scenes of human experiments with dark magic. Nothing unusual, I understand, it's like the beginning chemistry in the middle school. There are lots of other examples, but I think you've got my point. Btw these novels didn't have the tag ~2 months ago, I'm sure of it. I don't know who is doing this but please calm doing and stop. This tag is important cause it can show that novel is usually against explicit violence / brutal scenes. It's a big turn off for some people like me. For example it shows that instead of killing his enemies MC will let them go like a pushover. And they will come back to bother him thrice more (typical cliche). Or for Romance-Shounen combinations it's meaning similar to 'still holding hands' at volume 15. P. S. I wonder if it's possible now to find R-18 + Shounen combo on NU. Will be interesting to see it.
I mean, shounen as a genre is getting weirdly broad nowadays. AOT is shounen, apparently. And that's one of the most brutal animes I've ever watched. There are some slightly darker novels, as well as r-15 novels (like OreAku), that are still shounen (or, everyone seems to think they are, anyway). I still don't think it should be used in combo with seinen or mature, though. The Regressed Demon Lord is Kind could have fooled me, but FFF-Class Trashero is decidedly not shounen.
You know the currently aired Mieruko-chan, right? It's supposed to be horror and comedy. But then author was like..... Yooo let's make it shounen.
AoT is considered shounen mostly because it was printed in shounen manga magazine. God knows what's behind the scene story here was, and in all honesty I'm not that interested. Quick google search showed that there are more than enough discussions about this topic. I attribute it to the open-mindedness of japanese people though, they are not so rigid and don't particularly care about age restrictions (maybe I'm wrong but that's my overall impression). Lots of anime/manga/games and novels are bordering at the edge of age restrictions. It helps author to get access to broader auditory and earn money.II have nothing against it, and usually such works will have 14+ age restrictions anyway. Which is hardly shounen. (Though 14 is still lower than 15, we all know that everything 14+ is basically a stuff for mixed audience, including 18+ adults, just a bit less sexual/gory) But this is this and that is that. I highly doubt that there are lots of kids on NU that are doing their best to avoid seinen/mature tags, so much so that someone began stamping shounen tags everywhere. Simply take a look at 'The Righteous Player(s)' tags: Tags[ ] [Edit] Apathetic Protagonist Calm Protagonist Cold Protagonist Cunning Protagonist Curses Depictions of Cruelty Evil Gods Game Elements Game Ranking System Gods Gore Male Protagonist Monsters Mystery Solving Nobles Overpowered Protagonist Ruthless Protagonist Sword Wielder Transmigration And it has shounen in its genres. What's this? It's a good thing that this novel is rich with tags, but what if it wasn't? Actually its title, cover and description are very misleading. No one will really realize that it's a gory story without them. So if you miss them and only look at 'shounen' genre you will think that it's a novel about kid for kids.