Anime has now hit a level of not just ubiquity, but full-blown acceptance and enthusiasm in the mainstream public consciousness that has never been seen before. It’s difficult to nail down exactly how it happened, and who deserves what amount of credit for the cultural shift, though I’m certain Megan Thee Stallion had a lot to do with it. Since as far back as 1963, with Astro Boy being the first series to receive widespread syndication in the United States, the Japanese medium has always maintained a cultural foothold beyond its country of origin. In the 1990s and throughout the 21st century, however, anime continued to skyrocket into further relevance, leading to our present moment where Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle is beating the latest Marvel films at the box office to become the highest-grossing anime film of all time. But while its champions certainly have a lot to be happy about, anime remains pigeonholed by its primary representation through the popularity of shonen series, a shadow that must be lifted in order for more diverse and artful examples of the form to flourish.
Shonen is a classification of Japanese comics that are meant to be marketed towards a young male audience. Unsurprisingly, this means stories in this category tend to revolve around action-filled plotlines, violence, and power fantasies that focus on a central teenage male character who is often an underdog of some kind. Misogynistic portrayals of women are not siloed to this category, or to anime in general, but many shonen are notorious for the lack of agency and proper characterization given to female characters, favoring objectification in its stead. For better or for worse, shonen has been the engine of anime’s growing presence for decades now. While the medium was not always as colloquial with mass audiences in the early 21st century, many would still be able to recognize the names of series like Dragon Ball Z and Naruto.
It should be stated for any who are unfamiliar that shonen is an audience demographic that has entangled itself with genre in the context of public conversations. While shonen are meant for young boys, this is only one of four popular groupings, with the other three being shoujo (young girls), seinen (adult men), and josei (adult women). These are not just general demographic classifications, but editorial ones as well, with manga magazines specializing in publishing works meant to appeal to one of the four groups.
With shonen being the most public-facing version of anime, those who question the art form’s appeal in general might point to the childishness of these stories. This is a completely apt criticism, because shonen is, quite literally, for children. But all four of these groupings encompass a myriad of possible stories that can be told: action, comedy, slice of life, romance, historical drama, horror, and much more. There are plenty of works across Japanese animation that handle complex themes in mature ways, and depict underrepresented communities and identities that the most mainstream series never bother to.
Despite this, battle shonen, the subcategory of shonen that focuses on the aforementioned action-filled plotlines, make up the vast majority of stories given a platform and room for discussion with Western audiences. Some of these in-demand series do have loftier goals and a more interesting presentation, but oftentimes they are the animated equivalent of banging two action figures against each other. Moreover, the quality of any one battle shonen doesn’t change the fact that the genre has overcrowded anime canon, and that a sundry appetite amongst audiences would be a boon for both viewers as well as artists, who would gain the freedom to take chances on more kinds of stories.
This is not a problem exclusive to anime, and across the media ecosystem, spectacle often supplants substance. Superheroes remain omnipresent while more inspired endeavors struggle to find distribution. But regardless of how they vary in popularity, non-shonen works have been integral in cultivating what is capable in the art form, and many have become just as recognized as mainstream pillars.
The films of Studio Ghibli come to mind as family-friendly films that tackle serious environmentalist themes, while Satoshi Kon’s filmography is canonized as one of the most ambitious uses of animation, with Perfect Blue standing as one of the most horrifying and unflinching looks at parasocial relationships and stan culture. Shoujo series like Sailor Moon and Revolutionary Girl Utena are pioneering works that explore gender norms and queer identity through the magical girl genre.
Newer examples have continued carrying the torch and show that brilliant animation does not need to be isolated to action scenes. From this year alone, City the Animation is a jovial slice of life that overflows with hilarity and features some of the most inventive uses of animation to depict the idiosyncrasies of a city and its people. The Mononoke films are truly visionary, translating Japanese ukiyo-e art into vivid and kaleidoscopic animated odysseys much like Spider-Verse did with the medium of comic books. While Mononoke does feature climactic battles, the meat of these films and the original show are fantastical mysteries set within a historical drama, exploring societal ills and how women are stripped of personhood under patriarchal structures.
Even some of the popular shonen of today seem to be approaching things in new and promising ways. The popular series Chainsaw Man from Tatsuki Fujimoto manages to address considerably more adult themes despite its packaging as a battle shonen, and its popularity has also allowed for some of Fujimoto’s other non-action-oriented works to get adaptations, such as the compassionate film Look Back. Another recent entry in the classification is Frieren. While certainly fitting the bill as a shonen series, given its fantasy-adventure genre and the stylized action sequences, the bulk of the show is a slice of life reflection on the passage of time, and it features a central female protagonist.
None of these examples are even particularly underground or obscure works. There are scores of talented storytellers, working within action genres and far beyond them, that deserve just as much spotlight if not more than the battle shonen fodder that the art form is most associated with. The seinen manga Witch Hat Atelier, which is receiving an anime adaptation in 2026, focuses on themes of rigid societal systems from the perspectives of young children growing up and learning the cruelty of the world around them.
Hopefully, with anime’s further acceptance into the mainstream, and with Western audiences’ cultural palate growing to include more work from the global stage, historically underrepresented stories will finally receive the attention they deserve. If these audiences are able to step outside of their comfort zone, they will find an entire world of art waiting.
