Manga for a young girl?

[Brian G Turner]

Any recommended Manga for a young teen - ie, not rapey or gory?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Can't help you with the specific question but...

My teenage daughter and I have been having some discussions about Anime and Manga, and I have to say that the depiction of women in the pictures (in books from the school library, too) really concerns me. Little sexy schoolgirl dresses, the uniformed ladies bursting out of their jacket...

It's really popular in schools at the moment -- Deathnote is the one she and her friends all watch on Youtube. I took the view that the genre is so subsumed into cliched images of women, that I used it as a chance to have a good discussion about women and body images portrayed in general. At first, worryingly, given she has a mum so un-self absorbed in image, she couldn't see the sexism, but she went off and stewed on it for a while and came back a week later with the view that I had been right (of course I was, dear; I'm your mother. )

So, in short, even if the story is "clean" the imagery may still be something to talk about first.

 

[Mouse]

Backstage Prince - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Maybe?

 

[jastius]

'supercute', 'captain tsubasa', 'doctor slump', ' Kochira Katsushika-ku Kameari Kōen Mae Hashutsujo', 'One Piece', ' Kekkaishi', 'zatch bell'... ?

 

[hopewrites]

I was reading Bakuman, left off about the thrid, I have them somewhere about, I just forget where.

Its mainly about boys trying to write manga and get an animated series. but its more story than action driven. The artist of the team has been in love with a girl forever and finally manages to confess his love and propose marriage all in the same night.
she accepts on the condition that they never date until they have gone out and achieved their dreams. so that he can focus on his manga and she can focus on becoming a voice actress.

last I checked there were about 7 volumes out. and at least two season of it as an anime (each season consists of two volumes)

 

[Overread]

Naussica Valley of the Wind. The original manga that the film was based upon and vastly more detailed and a generally longer story. It's in 7 books so makes for a reasonably long read without being one of those never ending series that gets long in the tooth.

Even if she's seen the film the manga has a different story line and so is a totally new experience.

It also is a more "serious" manga in that its not caught up in the cliches (some of which have already been mentioned in the thread) and does its own thing.

 

[Kissmequick]

My daughter got Death Note for her birthday today

It deals with death in a non gory way, and has characters that oppose the MC etc. (no rape afaia, though I thin k there is the threat of it once which is soon dispelled) The deaths are mostly heart attacks.

It's not like she hasn't seen much of this this stuff before. I think that's the thing. Kids these days (*snort*) know a lot more about stuff than I did at their age, and I can't stop it because it's all over school etc. So I try to make sure it's a) positive and b) talked about. My son has been reading adult SFF since the age of 11 cos YA bored him...but we ta lk about it. I think that is the crux. I talk about portrayals of women with my daughter (and offset itwith other stuff)

Is the recipient going to get to talk about any themes etc they find?

 

[JoanDrake]

While having none of my own to suggest I really have to dispute DeathNote for a very young teen. The two main antagonists are a boy who kills people out of a very twisted sense of morality and an amoral girl who is an erotomaniac and apparently kills people for casual fun. The protagonist, at one point, tortures her to gain information. The only characters who exhibit any real humanity are the shinigami, supernatural gods of death who owned the DeathNotes. Don't get me wrong, it's really a great story but the very definition of morally ambiguous and clearly not PG or even PG 13 IMO.


Doesn't anyone read Sailor Moon anymore? It jumped several sharks before it was done but it could be a surprisingly poignant story at times. There's also Inu-Yasha which REALLY makes me question Japanese child rearing practices but is, in many ways, a sort of teen's anime version of classic Shinto stories.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Happily Deathnote has - um - died a death. If I'd dug my heels in it would never have. I'm a bit of a believer in some (limited) self censorship, all done openly, because, frankly, I can't protect them from everything anymore and if all our mates are watching it and we're not... It's a hard judgement call and this one pushed us to the limit. Luckily my kids have more morality than I do so it got kicked into touch.

 

[tinkerdan]

There is supposedly a rating system

Shōjo manga: Manga for adolescent girls
Shōnen manga : Manga for boys 13 up

I don't know all the criteria for control or how strictly they adhere or even how to determine specific instances.

 

[HareBrain]

Naussica Valley of the Wind. The original manga that the film was based upon and vastly more detailed and a generally longer story. It's in 7 books so makes for a reasonably long read without being one of those never ending series that gets long in the tooth.

Even if she's seen the film the manga has a different story line and so is a totally new experience.

It also is a more "serious" manga in that its not caught up in the cliches (some of which have already been mentioned in the thread) and does its own thing.

Yes! Brilliant, humane, no sex, and violence (war) is handled superbly, exciting without any glorification (quite the opposite) or gore. Also has one of the best-realised female lead characters in manga (and maybe in SFF). The drawing is great too -- Miyazaki has his own style, whereas pretty much all other manga drawing looks the same to me these days. One reviewer I read said that it was not only the best graphic novel he'd ever read, but one of the best novels, and I can see where that came from. It deserves more readers.

 

[chongjasmine]

I will recommend detective conan and one piece.
Detective conan, also known as case closed, is my favourite manga and one piece is an interesting manga.

 

[Michael Colton]

IIRC, Angelic Layer is pretty clean.

 

[Kylara]

ie, not rapey or gory?

I think you have removed most anime/manga with that lol. There is good child friendly stuff out there if you know where to look.

But as springs said the portrayals in imagery can be rather umm male orientated and not particularly equal ops. I know of quite a few child safe ones but no idea on names really. Will have to dig them out and contact some friends who really know their stuff!

 

[HareBrain]

Any recommended Manga for a young teen - ie, not rapey or gory?

Since this was almost a year ago, did you go with any of these suggestions (or anything else) in the end?

 

[Brian G Turner]

Since this was almost a year ago, did you go with any of these suggestions (or anything else) in the end?

She simply watched through Crunchy Roll, an app that makes a lot available. She didn't seem keen on additional recommendations.

 

[JunkMonkey]

Another very late addition to the list but my Number One Daughter (12) loves all the Studio Ghibli stuff - she went to the Glasgow Comicon cosplaying Chihiro from Spirited Away - but her big thing at the moment is Bleach.

 

[Michael Colton]

Okay, I realize this thread is kind of defunct since Brian said she found stuff to watch through Crunchy. But I have to echo Bleach. It is finished now and will go down in history as one of the best anime shows of all time. I'm currently waiting for the complete set to drop in price so I can go through and watch the bits I missed. This is one of those rare cases where the near-universal acclaim of a show is actually justified.

 

[Anushka Mokosh]

There is supposedly a rating system

Shōjo manga: Manga for adolescent girls
Shōnen manga : Manga for boys 13 up

I don't know all the criteria for control or how strictly they adhere or even how to determine specific instances.

They really don't. Shoujo and Shounen mostly label which audience they target, but don't necessarily mean that the manga is appropriate for the target group by western standards. You really have to look at the other tags it might have.

Over the years, Shoujo and Shounen got rather far away from what westerners would consider as appropriate for teens in regards to language, gore, sexual content, thematics, etc. in some extremes. I've seen shoujo manga that I personally don't think suitable for a large majority of themes. Prime examples being Honey x Honey Drops in regards to the rapey scenes

Spoiler: e.g.

Main character is sexually assaulted via fingering and it is all but graphically shown. Some censoring is applied, but there is really little left to doubt.

(it isn't a very good manga regardless of those scenes anyway) and Angel Sanctuary in regards to the themes as incestuous relationship between a brother and a sister is manga's central pairing (which actually is a good manga to read regardless of how that may sound). On the other hand, there is Fairy Tail which is a shounen and has scenes that border on porn sometimes.

Spoiler: e.g.

There is a really infamous scene that invokes images of tentacle port. Also, there is scene where female character's breasts being censored by having a guy grope them. And a scene where a woman who was the power to control her hair tells to another female character while in bath that she'll scrub ever nook and cranny.

I wouldn't be letting a 13 year old read any those. Usually such manga have some sort of other designation like Ecchi or Smut to warn of such content, but I've seen instances where the don't. Fairy Tail has been doing that almost since start and it only got tagged Ecchi fairly recently (year or two ago). Angel Sanctuary has no tag to indicate anything. Honey x Honey Drops only got one after it was scanlated in full even though the rapey scenes happen in first and second volume abundantly. They usually get such tags only after official versions are released in English, but fan scanlations tend to exist much before that and are what is available online so tags like shoujo and shounen are very misleading.