Josei manga in the context of Shōnen manga

Shōnen manga (少年漫画; lit. "boys' comics", also romanized as shonen, shounen or syônen) is an editorial category of Japanese comics targeting an audience of both adolescent boys and young men. It is, along with shōjo manga (targeting adolescent girls and young women), seinen manga (targeting young adults and adult men), and josei manga (targeting adult women), one of the primary demographic categories of manga and, by extension, of Japanese anime. Shōnen manga is traditionally published in dedicated manga magazines that often almost exclusively target the shōnen demographic group.

Of the four primary demographic categories of manga, shōnen is the most popular category in the Japanese market. While shōnen manga ostensibly targets an audience of young males, its actual readership extends significantly beyond this target group to include all ages and genders. The category originated from Japanese children's magazines at the turn of the 20th century and gained significant popularity by the 1920s.

Seinen manga (Japanese: 青年漫画; lit. 'youth comics') is an editorial category of Japanese comics marketed toward young adult men. Together with shōnen (manga aimed at adolescent boys), shōjo (adolescent girls and young women), and josei (adult women), it is one of the primary demographic categories of manga.

Seinen emerged as a category in the late 1960s, when a generational shift motivated the manga industry to cater more to adult readers, and quickly came to combine mass-market appeal with more serious literary ambitions than those typically found in the shōnen manga of that era. The manga industry saw a seinen boom in the 1980s, but since then, few new seinen magazines have gained a foothold in the market; instead, readership of existing seinen magazines has expanded. While seinen magazines feature many of the same genres as shōnen manga, seinen manga tends to feature more mature story lines and themes, and it has its own characteristic visual and narrative styles.

Shōjo manga (少女漫画; lit. 'girls' comics', also romanized as shojo or shoujo) is an editorial category of Japanese comics targeting an audience of adolescent girls and young adult women. It is, along with shōnen manga (targeting adolescent boys), seinen manga (targeting young adult and adult men), and josei manga (targeting adult women), one of the primary editorial categories of manga. Shōjo manga is traditionally published in dedicated manga magazines, which often specialize in a particular readership age range or narrative genre.

Shōjo manga originated from Japanese girls' culture at the turn of the twentieth century, primarily shōjo shōsetsu (girls' prose novels) and jojōga (lyrical paintings). The earliest shōjo manga was published in general magazines aimed at teenagers in the early 1900s and began a period of creative development in the 1950s as it began to formalize as a distinct category of manga. While the category was initially dominated by male manga artists, the emergence and eventual dominance of female artists beginning in the 1960s and 1970s led to significant creative innovation and the development of more graphically and thematically complex stories. Since the 1980s, the category has developed stylistically while simultaneously branching into different and overlapping subgenres.