AniDB

Heh. This is a rather simple question, but I have no idea where to ask it except for here in the Support section of the forum.

I'm pretty new to anime, and there are some genres on here that I dont really know. Can someone tell me what the following mean?

Ghibli, Shoujo, Shounen, and Yaoi.

I think the other categories are self explanatory.

Ghibli: Anything conceived and produced by Studio Giblies. SG has mainly produced movies, but despite children being their target audience, some of their works are quite outstanding and have become well-known outside of Japan, even among non-otakus. (Spirited Away aka Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi, for example.)

Shoujo / Shounen: I am not sure which is which, but these genres focus on either the male or the female sex, showing exclusively beautiful/cute girls or women / boys or men during the series, with as few exceptions as possible. Take this with a grain of salt tho, I could be (terribly) wrong...

Yaoi: Romance / love story between two male characters (yes, that means that they're homosexual).

Elberet wrote:Shoujo / Shounen: I am not sure which is which, but these genres focus on either the male or the female sex, showing exclusively beautiful/cute girls or women / boys or men during the series, with as few exceptions as possible. Take this with a grain of salt tho, I could be (terribly) wrong...

Kinda.

Shoujo literally means girl. Shounen literally means boy.

A shoujo series is a series that was designed to be targeted at a female audience.
Likewise a shounen series is targeted at a male audience.

It doesn't exactly mean that they show "exclusively beautiful/cute girls or women / boys or men during the series". It has to do with whom the series ideal audience is.

But you can also say a series is filled with bi-shounen, which would mean that the characters in the series are all pretty boys, or inversely bi-shoujo (pretty girls). But this has nothing to do with the genre listings shoujo and shounen.

Elberet wrote:Yaoi: Romance / love story between two male characters (yes, that means that they're homosexual).

Actually thats not quite accurate either but most people seem to think it is so popular opinion makes it so. Shounen-ai is a romance/love story between two guys, just as shoujo-ai would be a romance/love story between two girls. Yaoi and yuri are actually much more explicit and "adult" in content. But most people think that if there's even a hint of male/male romance its yaoi. So many series get mislabeled. Like Gravitation.

Anyway, thats at least how I see things.

SilverWordz is correct here In short Yaoi can be explained as Hentai between 2 male characters. This includes explicit sexscenes.