
Josei is really just actually manga for an older female audience haha
So usually the themes of the story and sometimes the art too are more mature and realistic like tragic romance, adult characters and problems, sex, and psychological (emotionally). As an example you can take the manga Nana or Wotakoi.
Yaoi is meant for an older female audience (so it goes in the josei category). Some shounen ai also for in here.
Shoujo is for younger girls, so most high school romances and cute stories are shoujo. You can take Sailor Moon as an example.
Shounen ai is meant for a yonder female audience (so it goes in the shoujo category).
Shounen means for young boys. It’s where you have the most popular stories and there’s gonna be countless themes but a certain immaturity to them and the characters. For example naruto, one piece, boku no hero academia.
Seinen is a little less popular just like Josei. Usually both of these categories have very popular stories that people just didn’t know are Seinen/Josei though. It treats themes that are meant for an older more mature male audience like psychological horror, historical, political, it’s usual either pretty serious or has a lot of pretty sexual comedy (usually as slice of life). An example would be Death Note.
Note 1: it’s just the target audience, doesn’t mean it’s for a certain gender. I personally have always preferred Seinen since I was young.
Note 2: The West’s distinction between Shounen Ai and Yaoi is not the true one at all but I still use it to make people better understand the division with like sexual content haha The real term is Yaoi for everything, sexual or not.
Note 3: I believe Shoujo Ai doesn’t even exist and is just a western constructed genre. The one and unique term is Yuri for all lesbian material, sexual or not.
Hope this guide helped
Josei.. can someone please explaine if this is yaoi or josei? Cuz there's a josei tag so I'm thinking that there's a boy x girl