Recently when in the manga section of a bookstore, be it Japanese or English, I find myself gravitating towards the seinen series. “This isn’t so unusual,” I think to myself, seeing as I am exactly in the target age for seinen, but what alarms me is that I seem to be checking out shounen and shoujo less than I used to. I don’t think this has much to do with my tastes in manga changing; many shounen and perhaps many more shoujo titles still rank as among my absolute favorites. So what’s the deal?

I considered that perhaps what’s holding me back is a lack of desire to start new series, especially long ones. Once I buy a first volume, there tends to be a strong desire to keep getting them if only to quench the completionist fire within me. The fact that my most recent truly blind purchase was La Sommelière Volume 1 may be what gets me to approach the seinen section in Kinokuniya, which inevitably leads me to the Monthly Afternoon titles situated nearby. I have a fondness for Afternoon, as it’s where Genshiken was published.

Shounen series, especially successful ones, tend to go on for very long, riding their success as hard as possible, and understandably so. Shoujo series can be similar, though they tend not to be as crazy long as the most popular shounen series. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m ultimately a guy and while I enjoy shoujo immensely it might be always as a guy. Who has the hots for Oscar.