I’d say Shoujo & Shounen are targeted to youth and are non-explicit sexually explicit in storytelling. Josei is st8 porn and/or st8 mature content & yaoi is gay porn and/or gay mature content.
Oh. & yuri is Lez porn and/or lez mature content. Sorry I tend to always forget about that genre.
Excuse typo above it left the word explicit twice on accident.
All of those are demograhics. Shounen manga = for young boys, shoujo manga = for young girls, and josei manga = for adult women.
Imo the definitions aren't rigid, so you'll get shounen manga that's more catered towards women, and josei manga that's more catered towards men, so it's not that important to distinguish between the three.
lark explained it rlly rlly well!! there's also shounen ai + shoujo ai and they're not inherently explicit (some have mild nsfw content while others skip it all together)
It’s really about the magazines they are published and the age demographics, but it’s not totally rigid. For example, people tend to think of shojo as sirupy, over dramatic romance, but things like Natsume Yuujincho is a shojo becaus it runs in a shojo magazine, even though it’s really not too romance heavy. Another example is Legal Drug. Originally it ran n a shojo magazine, then when it came back from hiatus, it came back as a seinen, because it now ran in a seinen magazine.
can someone explain the difference between Shounen, Shoujo and especially Josei… it’s so confusing?? ⁄(⁄ ⁄·⁄ω⁄·⁄ ⁄)⁄