Favorite Age Group For Anime Girls

[babybro]

Hey all, I'm in japan pretty soon attempting to submit my manga to manga publishers, right now I have a question to you all that perhaps you can help out with. Usually which age group is your favorite age group? I having trouble coming up with an age for my specific character because well, I"m not sure if I should make them teen or adult. So I thought it would be a good idea to gather other people's opinion.

[cicido]

My favourite age group for the main characters are 17-26, don't ask me why.

However, if you are not sure whether to make them adult or teen, or simply want a in-between age, I would say that 17-20 is good. Typical high school shoujo/shonen have characters from 14-17.

[babybro]

Crap, I am sorry people. I attempted to make a poll but I took to long. Basically put, the poll options were going to be

14-17

17-20

20-24

24-30

[Kaioshin Sama]

9-12.

No seriously, that is me, but this is up to you as an individual to choose for yourself what you plan to do. At least that's what I would hope would work. To me letting someone else tell you what to do and responding in kind wouldn't make the work your own.

Also you don't really need to specifically have characters in all the same age category. Use whatever character ages you think will work best for what you have in mind. I think one of the pieces of advice I've seen most writers (Manga-Ka what have you) give is to make a novel your own in it's entirety rather than someone elses. I'd also agree it's the key to good writing and ideas because you stave off predictability and the cliche better when you aren't just giving the people what they want to see (and god I wish I felt the industry did a little less of that).

Lastly, if you really aren't sure what story you want to try and mostly want to please, entertain and have fun, a good idea would maybe be to do a poll (ask one of the mods to add a poll to the thread) to see what age group/category people are most interested in for characters, tally the numbers and then go about it if it gives you an idea.

[minhtam1638]

Can't you edit the first post of this thread to include a poll?

14-17

[Terrestrial Dream]

14-21. I think you should make it teen, since most manga reader, who are teen will identify themselves with the character better. Though you could try to have both can't you? Why not something like a teacher student relationship between two main character, just some random idea.

[Kaioshin Sama]

Originally Posted by Terrestrial Dream

14-21. I think you should make it teen, since most manga reader, who are teen will identify themselves with the character better. Though you could try to have both can't you? Why not something like a teacher student relationship between two main character, just some random idea.

You mean like Kodomo No Jikan?

[minhtam1638]

Originally Posted by Terrestrial Dream

14-21. I think you should make it teen, since most manga reader, who are teen will identify themselves with the character better. Though you could try to have both can't you? Why not something like a teacher student relationship between two main character, just some random idea.

Didn't Onegai Teacher go in that direction? I really thought that was odd.

[babybro]

I am so sorry, I should have gave some details first to not confuse people. Basically put, my friends sister is a famous illustrator here in japan. As such, she knowns a few publishers who creates the weekly jumps. I told her I wanted to be a manga ka and she told me basically what I needed to know. That story comes first, and I need to finish a book first. After that, we will go and submit it to publishers and see what they say. So I got all the characters done and basically it's based on shinobi's. I aiming it towards the deep thought genre, and am trying to give the main character the "kawaii so..." approach.

If people are interested what it's about just let me know and I can give a slight summary. Anyway, the main character has a close relationship with his older sister, but I do not know how many years apart they should be. That's where the problem is, I am 95% finish with the script to the first issue and afterwards I will be drawing it, but this question is constantly bugging me. Thanks to all the replies, especially your's kaoishin, but to let you know, my manga from the beginning isn't really like any manga you've seen. Hopefully if I get publish, you'll see why when they began fansubbing me lol.

[Terrestrial Dream]

Originally Posted by Kaioshin_Sama

You mean like Kodomo No Jikan?

Originally Posted by minhtam2448

Didn't Onegai Teacher go in that direction? I really thought that was odd.

I never saw either of them, but after looking at the description of those anime, it's not what I meant. I meant more like 15year student old and 20year teacher old. But I was thinking more on shouen, thing like a teacher who would teach fighting. And a question for babybro, what's the story about anyway? because depends on the genre the answer that we give out might not be very helpful.

[cicido]

Originally Posted by babybro

I am so sorry, I should have gave some details first to not confuse people. Basically put, my friends sister is a famous illustrator here in japan. As such, she knowns a few publishers who creates the weekly jumps. I told her I wanted to be a manga ka and she told me basically what I needed to know. That story comes first, and I need to finish a book first. After that, we will go and submit it to publishers and see what they say. So I got all the characters done and basically it's based on shinobi's. I aiming it towards the deep thought genre, and am trying to give the main character the "kawaii so..." approach.

If people are interested what it's about just let me know and I can give a slight summary. Anyway, the main character has a close relationship with his older sister, but I do not know how many years apart they should be. That's where the problem is, I am 95% finish with the script to the first issue and afterwards I will be drawing it, but this question is constantly bugging me. Thanks to all the replies, especially your's kaoishin, but to let you know, my manga from the beginning isn't really like any manga you've seen. Hopefully if I get publish, you'll see why when they began fansubbing me lol.

Big sisters should be 2-5 years older too have a close relation with their little siblings no? Then again shows like onegai teacher are going more for the extreme.
Who's your friend's sister?

[babybro]

Not exactly sure what the genre is. But I'll try to give a quick summary without going into details. Basically put, the main character is an black shinobi ( I already know, WTF?! lol)
Basically put he's found in the forest and adopted by the head family of a very famous shinobi clan. It first starts out his trouble as being accepted by the village for being black, (as even one of his sister's hates him for a multitude of reasons) He only has two people he relies on, his older brother who is now leader of the clan, and his oldest sister who is the one I'm trying to find the age for. Let me know if this is enough information. If not, I can tell a little more, but I don't want to spoil everything on the internet in case I get famous ahahahahahaha lol.

[babybro]

Originally Posted by cicido

Big sisters should be 2-5 years older too have a close relation with their little siblings no? Then again shows like onegai teacher are going more for the extreme.
Who's your friend's sister?

Hmm...I hope I'm not going the extreme. But it's definitely larger than a 5 year difference as the close sister is also the oldest sister, as the younger sister hates his guts lol.

[cicido]

Originally Posted by babybro

Hmm...I hope I'm not going the extreme. But it's definitely larger than a 5 year difference as the close sister is also the oldest sister, as the younger sister hates his guts lol.

Well I'm only saying 2-5 years if they have some kind of romantic relation. As long as you, the author who understand the story more than any of us, think it's good, then go for it.

[minhtam1638]

The older sister can be a minimum of 9 months old and still act like an older sister.

[Kyuusai]

You need to analyze the relationship you want for the story, and that should make the age a given, really. Deciding on the age first is putting the cart ahead of the horse unless you have a specific reason for wanting that age group.

As for getting published in Japan... Uhm... Good luck.

[babybro]

alright so say if I wanted to make the older sister, say, 21, and made the boy 12, would that be too extreme?

Kyuusai: The lady gave me as much information as possible on how to be successful in the manga world. For anyone interested, if you ever want to consider doing a manga in japan, what is most important is not art, but story. Which is absolute opposite in the states, you can have absolutely crappy art here in japan, but if your story is interesting, it becomes popular.
There is a whole lot more advice she gave me, but it's so much it would take up another thread hahaha. So hopefully my story is good enough to have people like it.

[Vexx]

It sounds like this is being approached backwards but, um, yeah ... good luck?

Of course story is most important (duh?).... but you seem to be overly worried about the age group of your characters. If you've designed the relationships properly, the ages will just kind of fall out naturally. It doesn't sound like you've defined the male well as how he'd act at age 12 is quite different than at age 14, 16, etc. The same goes for any other character. You haven't said what sort of genre audience you're shooting for either.... josei? seinen?

[Kyuusai]

Originally Posted by babybro

alright so say if I wanted to make the older sister, say, 21, and made the boy 12, would that be too extreme?

I don't think that would be extreme at all, so long as the boy's age doesn't make him unrelateable to the target audience. An age of 21 for the girl gives room for the character to be very mature and almost maternal while still being youthful. I think I see what you're going for by your (understandably) roundabout talking, and I can see why you'd be deliberating on it. As Vexx said, though, it seems like the boy's age would already be better established at that point in the planning.

Originally Posted by babybro

There is a whole lot more advice she gave me, but it's so much it would take up another thread hahaha. So hopefully my story is good enough to have people like it.

I'd be curious to know what her advice was. I'd hate that the response to posting it would be that a bunch of gaijin hoping to publish in Japan would raise their hopes even further before they're almost inevitably crushed (er, not to infer anything about you), but it would be interesting to hear who she was and what she had to say. It's always nice to learn more about the industry. I'd be curious to know what she has to say about the going page rate.

[Aoie_Emesai]

Originally Posted by cicido

My favourite age group for the main characters are 17-26, don't ask me why.

However, if you are not sure whether to make them adult or teen, or simply want a in-between age, I would say that 17-20 is good. Typical high school shoujo/shonen have characters from 14-17.

17-20 is a really good place. Plenty of money, and you can sell it well there.

Originally Posted by babybro

Crap, I am sorry people. I attempted to make a poll but I took to long. Basically put, the poll options were going to be

14-17

17-20

20-24

24-30

Go ask a moderator, and they'll happliy insert one for you ^^