Girls and young women have always been a key part of the U.S. manga audience, but that audience is changing as it grows up and branches out—and publishers are eager to follow.
In Japan, most manga are divided into categories by gender and age group: boys (shonen), girls (shojo), women (josei), and men (seinen). But the readership is more fluid than those strict labels suggest, especially in the North American market.
“Boys are reading romance, girls are reading action,” says librarian Jillian Rudes, author of Manga in Libraries: A Guide for Teen Librarians, who studied manga readership among American teenagers under a grant with IMLS. “I know girls who are obsessed with Demon Slayer, and a boy who loves reading Love Is War.”
Editor Nancy Thistlethwaite handles titles in Viz Media’s Shojo Beat line, dedicated to girls’ manga, including the series Not Your Idol and The Demon Prince of Momochi House: Succession. “For Shojo Beat,” she says, “readership does tend to skew female, but that doesn’t mean exclusively so. Looking at social media, there are now more fans from different demographics.”
Most top-selling manga titles, though classified as shonen manga, also boast huge female followings. Some are also the work of women, like the hit series Delicious in Dungeon by Ryoko Kui, translated by Taylor Engel (Yen). But girls’ manga is growing in popularity, especially subgenres exploring LGBTQ+ themes. And as the manga audience ages, following a decade-long boom in young adult readership (according to the Beat’s annual BookScan analysis, graphic novel sales reached an all-time peak in 2022, with tween-to-teen manga titles consistently among the top sellers), publishers report that female readers in particular seek out more mature and diverse subject matter.
One of the buzziest subgenres of girls’ manga is boys’ love (queer romance between male characters). The genre, often called BL, grew out of 1970s shojo manga and first took off in Japanese fancomics communities. Most creators are women, and the readership is overwhelmingly female.
The BL selection from online publisher Manga Planet displays a typical range of subgenres, including historical fiction, workplace romance, and omegaverse, which is a subgenre of fantasy set in a specific alternate universe that got its start in American fanfiction. Subscribers can filter for a “spice level” ranging from one to five hot peppers based on the degree of explicitly erotic content they’re seeking. Manga Planet managing editor Emma Hanashiro says that with the BL category launch, “our goal was to show the diversity and variety.”
“BL has one of the most reliable fanbases,” adds Mark de Vera, director of sales and marketing at Yen Press, reporting that most BL it publishes reliably makes “a solid debut” in sales.
Yuri: it’s complicated
Publishers are now investing in related LGBTQ+ categories—notably yuri, or girls’-love, manga. Erica Friedman, author of By Your Side: The First 100 Years of Yuri Anime and Manga, estimates that the readership is roughly 60% female and there are slightly more female creators than male. “But it’s more complicated than that, and it’s not making less money, but it’s not making more money.”
Whereas the BL scene is dominated by straight women drawn to the fantasy of guy-on-guy romance, yuri draws a mixture of male, female, straight, and queer fans and creators. “In Japan, you now see a lot more indie comics related to yuri at fan events,” Hanashiro says. “Sometimes even more than BL.”
Yuri recently broke big with the series launch The Guy She Was Interested in Wasn’t a Guy at All by Sumiko Arai, translated by Ajani Oloye (Yen), with volume three scheduled for late 2025. Nicknamed the Green Yuri for its distinctive spot color on the cover, the romantic comedy follows a girl who falls for a record store clerk without realizing that the clerk is a woman in butch hipster fashion.
It’s proved a mainstream hit, de Vera says. “It’s become one of our bestsellers, and it was one of our best debuts.” The first volume has gone through multiple printings in the five months it’s been on sale, and volume two, which dropped in February, is already on its second printing.
The series’s publication reflects the winding paths many yuri manga take to market. Arai first posted the story as a series of wordless short comics on social media; the lack of dialogue helped the posts go viral internationally. A longer version ran as a webcomic on the Japanese art community site Pixiv. By the time the first print volume came out, the Green Yuri had a global platform waiting. (Check out forthcoming yuri picks).
A generational shift
Manga has been successful in North America for decades, with more adult readers than ever before—and women make up a particularly loyal audience. “There’s a lot of intergenerational sharing now,” Rudes says, “because kids’ parents are reading manga and they’re able to share those stories with their families.”
Among older readers, says Kacy Helwick, youth collection development librarian for the New Orleans Public Library, “the manga that are more queer are the popular ones.” She mentions the yuri series I Married My Female Friend by Shio Usui, translated by Avery Hutley (Seven Seas), as a frequently circulated title.
The generational shift affects artists, too. Friedman notes that older female yuri creators have begun drawing manga inspired by their experiences. “They wake up one day and go, I’m not a child,” Friedman says. “We’re not doing children’s things anymore.” Artist Akiko Morishima, for example, self-published her series The Single Life: The Single Lives of 60-Year-Old Lesbians directly to Amazon and Book Walker between 2023 and 2025.
The manga and manhwa offerings from indie comics publisher Drawn & Quarterly represent a growing wave of mature, personal stories by women creators. D&Q’s forthcoming list includes work by alternative manga creators Murasaki Yamada and Kondo Yoko, as well as manhwa artist Sungmin Choi’s Narrow Rooms, translated by Janet Hong (spring 2026), about a woman’s unhealthy obsession with her neighbor.
My Friend Kim Jong Un (Feb. 2026), a graphic memoir manwha by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim, also translated by Janet Hong, describes life with another level of bad neighbor: Gendry-Kim lives on a small island within sight of North Korea. “Especially with the rise of fascism globally,” says Tracy Hurren, senior editor at D&Q, “she felt an impetus to take a look at a dictator and figure out how someone becomes this person.” With such mature topics, Hurren finds, there’s also more crossover with audiences that don’t usually read manga. The titles “belong with our other literary graphic novels. We’re reaching out to manga-specific press, but it’s not a manga-specific trade campaign.”
Hong, an influential translator who works with D&Q, exemplifies how women in the industry are playing significant roles in discovering and promoting manga by and for women. Women at the leadership level at manga publishers include JuYoun Lee, publisher of Yen Press, and Lianne Sentar, publisher at Seven Seas.
The growth trends in female manga readership reflect readers’ desire for manga that feels relatable and represents a diversity of identities as its readership grows and changes. Rudes says her survey of manga readers bears this out. “Universally, both female and male readers say they feel represented through manga.”
Shaenon K. Garrity is a PW comics reviewer and a writer, editor, and cartoonist. Her latest graphic novel is The Dire Days of Willowweep Manor.
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