It’s more about Rei’s introversion and chronic depression, and the people around him that help draw him out of his shell. March Comes In Like A Lion doesn’t focus on the shogi matches the way a shonen might. It follows a 17-year-old named Rei Kiriyama who lives alone off his winnings from shogi tournaments, a board game rather like chess. This show is a prime example of young people struggling with adult issues. Recommendation: March Comes In Like A Lion. When seinen anime does focus on younger characters, it often does so in a manner that doesn’t focus on the high school aspect and instead shows youth struggling with more mature problems. Most seinen shows don’t focus on high school or middle school students as many shounen and shoujo do, preferring to focus on struggles of adulthood like The Great Passage, an anime about a middle-aged man who discovers a passion for dictionary-making. They also speak to a more mature audience. However, seinen shows don’t just use their more mature audience to display bloody violence or graphic sexuality. With this more mature audience, the content will often be far more mature as well - for example, the anime, Highschool of the Dead, is filled with explicit sexual content and graphic violence. Seinen is anime aimed at older men than shounen, usually those over the age of eighteen. It creates a far more compelling and heartfelt story of a young girl coming into her identity than if it only focused on her romantic life. The true strength of Kimi Ni Todoke is that it focuses on the female friendships Sawako builds with her classmates as much as it does the romance between her and Kazehaya. It falls into the will-they-won’t-they plot motivator with Sawako falling for the popular boy, Kazehaya, but facing a mountain of obstacles between them. It's about Sawako Kuranuma, an outcast high schooler who’s feared by her classmates for her resemblance to Samara Osorio from The Ring. Other shows can derive tension from a love triangle of sorts, such as the relationship between Tohru, Yuki, and Kyo in Fruits Basket. It’s not uncommon for shoujo romances to have a very strong will-they-won’t-they factor with much of a series’s conflict coming from a protagonist (usually a girl) and a serious love interest who both like each other, but are too timid or face other difficulties before they can confess their love. However, classics like Sailor Moon and Ranma 1/2 show that shoujo isn’t afraid of embracing its own action sequences, even if they come in a very different package to shounen anime. Shoujo anime tend to focus on idealized friendships or romances as their primary motivators rather than thematic material running alongside battles. Shoujo anime is very similar to shounen anime but aimed at young girls in the same age range of 10-15. This coupled with stunning animation makes Demon Slayer a great introduction to shounen anime, and it's available to watch on Netflix. Tanjiro is the quintessential shounen anime protagonist - driven and extremely powerful, but also deeply kind and caring, and seemingly the inheritor of a mysterious destiny. It’s a classic battle anime that focuses on a secret corp of demon slayers who use swords and mystical breathing techniques to hunt demons at night, but the protagonist, Tanjiro, is the real catcher here.
Recommendation: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba.In many ways, Demon Slayer exemplifies the core themes and tropes that make shounen anime.
Many shounen anime, especially those adapted from manga published in the venerated Weekly Shonen Jump publication, touch on similar themes of friendship, hope, and unity in the face of evil. This action is often blended with comedy in the calmer moments or even in the fights themselves. Shounen anime is often action-focused, placing most of the focus on fighting as Dragon Ball Z does or following a competition that feels like a battle, such as Haikyu!, a sports anime about volleyball that frames its games as battles between two opposing teams. This may be the most familiar type of anime to some readers as some classic shounen anime like Dragon Ball Z, Naruto, and Yu-Gi-Oh! were often a part of Saturday morning cartoons on channels like Cartoon Network and 4Kids. Shounen translates to “young boy,” which also captures the target audience of shounen anime - young boys, usually between the ages of 10 and 15.