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The demographic category of Anime (and Manga) aimed mainly at girls. It tends to have female leads, romantic subplots and resolutions involving personal growth. This doesn't mean Shoujo is devoid of action, though. In addition to more traditional romance stories, Shoujo can include tales of heroines who kick righteous butt—while pursuing romantic subplots and personal growth.

Alternately, Shoujo stories can focus on implied or explicit homosexual relationships between men (see Boys Love for the genre, Yaoi Guys for characters outside of the genre), or the romantic emphasis could also stem from relationships between women. Some feature all of the above, and usually feature a Relationship Ceiling.

Although series with explicit sexuality are more likely to be Josei (aimed at older women), some Shoujo may have considerable sexual content; a subgenre called Teens Love (by analogy to Boys Love) features erotic romance between heterosexual couples, with much the same narrative conventions (abusive boyfriends, sexual coercion, and Angst; or, alternately, shmoopy romance, ecstatic lovemaking, and Happily Ever After). This stuff tends to snuggle up as close to the "Restricted" (18+) category as it can, and so isn't often licensed for translation.

Not all romance series are Shoujo. Shonen romances take the boy's perspective (Magical Girlfriends and Harem Series are both common), and focus on the boy pursuing the girl, or trying to resolve the Love Dodecahedron. If it doesn't have that, a Shonen romance tends to end with a declaration of love and its acceptance. Shoujo romances, by contrast, frequently involve the heroine finding love early in the series, then stick around to watch the couple work through trouble in their relationship.

Shoujo manga is typically drawn with thinner lines than Shonen Manga, with sparser backgrounds and little (if any) shading—but, contrariwise, it frequently uses screentone patterns to set the emotional tone of a scene, and frames are rarely solely rectangular and borders are often absent. Character-designs with eyes that are even larger than those usually used in Manga and Anime (the infamous dinner plate size) are also usually a giveaway that the work in question is Shoujo—especially when the characters are not children.

Shoujo is a demographic (usually identified by the time slot or magazine a story runs in) and shows so classified can fit into any "standard" genre, up to and including martial arts and Science Fiction. And even this is variable; popular female leads sometimes gain a male fan following, to the degree of the infamous older men fanbase. Anything Magical Girl is usually Shoujo by default. But there are exceptions, specifically made for said Lolicon fanbase.

Should not be confused with Bishoujo. Or the Order of the Stick character of the same name.

In some romanization systems, the word is romanized as "shōjo" or "shoujo".

Series sometimes mistaken for shoujo[]

• Ah! My Goddess - Seinen, published at the equally Seinen magazine Afternoon
• Aria is hard to pin down; it contains some definite Shoujo elements, but also some of Seinen and Josei, considering the more thoughtful subjects it sometimes touches upon. Still, it first got published in a Shonen magazine, so the general consensus is to label it as such.
• Axis Powers Hetalia - It has a Cast Full of Pretty Boys, a bright cutesy art style, Homoerotic Subtext, plenty of fanservice from the male characters, and a fandom that's overwhelmingly female and teenaged. It would seem like a Gender Flip of the usual Moe franchises aimed at men. But it was published in seinen magazine Comic Birz.
• Azumanga Daioh - Like Lucky Star, it's a Shonen.
• Clannad - Another Seinen.
• Vision of Escaflowne - actually a mix of both shoujo and Shonen genres, it features a shoujo heroine and a Shonen hero.
• Eureka Seven It jumps into several genres with such frequency that pinning it down is nearly impossible, but it ran in Shonen Ace and is therefore officially Shonen.
• Haruhi Suzumiya
• Honey and Clover - Like Nodame Cantabile below, it's actually Josei, and they lump it in with shoujo.
• Ichigo Mashimaro - Very Moe Seinen (Amazon.com even goes so far as to say that it's obviously targeted at adolescent girls and that boys and older viewers will find it cloying.)
• Kashimashi: Girl Meets Girl - Even though the premise is very Shoujo-like, the execution is typically Shonen.
• Lucky Star - Even though most main characters are girls and dealing with "girly" subjects, it's still Shonen.
• Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha - Despite being a Magical Girl show, the anime was aimed primarily at men and the manga ran in a Seinen magazine.
• Maison Ikkoku - Rumiko Takahashi is known for her cross-genre appeal to both shoujo and shonen fans, but this one ran in a seinen magazine.
• Nodame Cantabile - Close, but it's actually Josei. Most Westerners haven't heard of Josei, so they lump it in with shoujo so they don't get confused.
• Pita-Ten
• Sakura Wars - It's based on a Dating Sim, so the usual rule of classifying it by which magazine first ran the story doesn't apply.
• Shakugan no Shana
• Strawberry Panic - Despite having "strawberry" in the title which is typical of shoujo, TOW says it's a Seinen.
• Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou