Gender differences in anime preferences, the outliers
I was looking at the [gender differences in anime preferences](https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/6w60ru/gender_differences_in_anime_preferences/) and I was trying to look for “hidden gems” that men or women like significantly more than the expectations suggest (sorry non-binary people it's hard to find data on your preferences)
I took the 25 most popular shows for each group, and graphed them by 2 factors
Popularity as percentage female
Female rating-male rating
Now originally I did a linear regression on these 2 points, however upon seeing that the linear regression was expecting >100% male konusuba I knew I needed a small adjustment.
The small adjustment is popularity by % female is now represented by Tan(pi*percent female -Pi/2)
This transformation means that you need to have infinite female-male rating in order to be 100% female (or negative infinity to have 100% male)
[Linear version](https://imgur.com/5T19cvw)
[Tangent version](https://imgur.com/gDjWhpi)
Note that the correlation coefficient of ..81 (linear or .85 (tangent) is extremely high making it extremely likely that factor(s) that mediates both rating and interest is in play. .85 is almost an unheard of strength of correlation. With notable rare exceptions (which is the main topic of the post) if a show is said to be “for girls” or “for boys” The correlation suggests that your initial assessment is almost always correct. Shows like [Black butler](https://myanimelist.net/anime/4898/Kuroshitsuji) or [Re:Zero](https://myanimelist.net/anime/31240/Re_Zero_kara_Hajimeru_Isekai_Seikatsu) are stereotyped correctly. But see below for counterexamples
[This chart](https://imgur.com/GUwYwQt) shows the error terms of all 34 shows. The ones on the far left are “underrated for men” and the ones on the right are “underrated for women”
For men the most notable outlier is [From me to you](https://myanimelist.net/anime/6045/Kimi_ni_Todoke). If you look at the linear regression it’s the dot way out in the middle of nowhere far below the line. It’s also visible in the tangent regression and is the single biggest outlier in general. It’s such a massive outlier that it dwarfs the importance of basically all the other outliers combined The other outliers from the male direction (high school of the dead angel beats steins gate) were already predominantly male just less male dominated than the regression expected not the type of shows I’m looking for, but there were 2 shows that were mixed male with higher error terms Anohana and Madoka magica. Which were more female than the median
The outlier group for women is bigger but less skewed. There are about 7 major shows that had notable error terms. The most notable one was Blue Exorcist. While Tokyo Ghoul, Naruto and Attack on Titan make up the other 3 big jumps before the drop into Akame ga kill noragami and my hero academia.
However if we look at the cardinals of some of these, I would definitely rec Attack on titan Blue exorcist Tokyo Ghoul and Noragami well before reccing the other 3. While Naruto had a high difference (similar to attack on titan) it had a *low average score*. My hero academia and Akame Ga Kill were also still rated as “not popular with women” they were just *less unpopular* than expected.
TLDR
Even though in general anime taste and anime that people choose to watch are *extremely* well correlated there are a few outliers worth checking out.
If you’re an open minded man check out [From Me to you](https://myanimelist.net/anime/6045/Kimi_ni_Todoke?quot%3B%3EKimi=) you’ll probably be impressed.
If you’re an open minded woman try [Blue Exorcist](https://myanimelist.net/anime/9919/Ao_no_Exorcist?q=blue%20exor&cat=anime), [Tokyo Ghoul](https://myanimelist.net/anime/22319/Tokyo_Ghoul?q=Tokyo%20ghoul&cat=anime) and [Noragami](https://myanimelist.net/anime/20507/Noragami). Those 3 and especially Blue exorcist are much more likely to appeal to you than marketing suggests.
I took the 25 most popular shows for each group, and graphed them by 2 factors
Popularity as percentage female
Female rating-male rating
Now originally I did a linear regression on these 2 points, however upon seeing that the linear regression was expecting >100% male konusuba I knew I needed a small adjustment.
The small adjustment is popularity by % female is now represented by Tan(pi*percent female -Pi/2)
This transformation means that you need to have infinite female-male rating in order to be 100% female (or negative infinity to have 100% male)
[Linear version](https://imgur.com/5T19cvw)
[Tangent version](https://imgur.com/gDjWhpi)
Note that the correlation coefficient of ..81 (linear or .85 (tangent) is extremely high making it extremely likely that factor(s) that mediates both rating and interest is in play. .85 is almost an unheard of strength of correlation. With notable rare exceptions (which is the main topic of the post) if a show is said to be “for girls” or “for boys” The correlation suggests that your initial assessment is almost always correct. Shows like [Black butler](https://myanimelist.net/anime/4898/Kuroshitsuji) or [Re:Zero](https://myanimelist.net/anime/31240/Re_Zero_kara_Hajimeru_Isekai_Seikatsu) are stereotyped correctly. But see below for counterexamples
[This chart](https://imgur.com/GUwYwQt) shows the error terms of all 34 shows. The ones on the far left are “underrated for men” and the ones on the right are “underrated for women”
For men the most notable outlier is [From me to you](https://myanimelist.net/anime/6045/Kimi_ni_Todoke). If you look at the linear regression it’s the dot way out in the middle of nowhere far below the line. It’s also visible in the tangent regression and is the single biggest outlier in general. It’s such a massive outlier that it dwarfs the importance of basically all the other outliers combined The other outliers from the male direction (high school of the dead angel beats steins gate) were already predominantly male just less male dominated than the regression expected not the type of shows I’m looking for, but there were 2 shows that were mixed male with higher error terms Anohana and Madoka magica. Which were more female than the median
The outlier group for women is bigger but less skewed. There are about 7 major shows that had notable error terms. The most notable one was Blue Exorcist. While Tokyo Ghoul, Naruto and Attack on Titan make up the other 3 big jumps before the drop into Akame ga kill noragami and my hero academia.
However if we look at the cardinals of some of these, I would definitely rec Attack on titan Blue exorcist Tokyo Ghoul and Noragami well before reccing the other 3. While Naruto had a high difference (similar to attack on titan) it had a *low average score*. My hero academia and Akame Ga Kill were also still rated as “not popular with women” they were just *less unpopular* than expected.
TLDR
Even though in general anime taste and anime that people choose to watch are *extremely* well correlated there are a few outliers worth checking out.
If you’re an open minded man check out [From Me to you](https://myanimelist.net/anime/6045/Kimi_ni_Todoke?quot%3B%3EKimi=) you’ll probably be impressed.
If you’re an open minded woman try [Blue Exorcist](https://myanimelist.net/anime/9919/Ao_no_Exorcist?q=blue%20exor&cat=anime), [Tokyo Ghoul](https://myanimelist.net/anime/22319/Tokyo_Ghoul?q=Tokyo%20ghoul&cat=anime) and [Noragami](https://myanimelist.net/anime/20507/Noragami). Those 3 and especially Blue exorcist are much more likely to appeal to you than marketing suggests.
Commentaires
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Is it\* catered to male viewers?
Noragami was made by two women so I would say they definitely added things other women would enjoy in the series. I don't think its true they mainly wrote it to appeal to teen boys. They were probably trying to appeal to a broad audience of boys and girls.
Apparently the label is all that matters to you guys. Even if shonen series regularly get over 50% female audiences apparently its just coincidental and they never intended it that way.
These days, I recognize its influence on shojo manga and that Yato was very attractive/stand out a lot, while Hiyori was just adorable—which already tells you who the manga was aimed at—but I still think it has elements that can appeal to guys.
In actuality, this, along with those other two shows mentioned to be honest, have tons of female fans due to the characters and designs. It's not hidden at all.
> Popularity as percentage female Female rating-male rating
Where did you get your data from? MAL's API?
2025:
https://xtrend.nikkei.com/atcl/contents/18/01178/00010/
[chart translated](https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/2030aa4e03e1.jpg), not by me, just searched on google
I'll see if I can get Claude Code to hack together a scraper for MAL's API and scrape 2000 MAL profiles to create my own data set.
This is actually not that hard, for you to not waste your time, tell claude to use the Jikan API if not already, there are two endpoint related to users that you can pretty much check way more than 2000 if you know what you are doing
Thanks
Yeah I program a little but web scraping is definitely not in my nicheI make CRUD apps.
That's a change from a previous (2023?) version. ~~Yuru Camp no longer takes the crown of sausage-fest (well there was that ep where there made sausages) as it's now Too many Losing Heroines.~~ Precure was ~59% male in the age ~29 bracket in that version but now it's ~61% female age ~31. I can believe that franchise is current entry sensitive as the more action focused Soaring Sky Precure (2023) would appeal more to males than Wonderful (2024) or You and Idol (2025). Plus the Idol one has one of Snow Man voicing the role of a recurring character (Kaito, was [introduced early on](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaatnOU2Urs)) which might have helped bring more women in.
Blue Exorcist and Tokyo Ghoul have always been for women. If they are liked by men more than women then they failed to capture their target audience and are lucky they still made money. No comment on Noragami, at the start it did give off the BL feel. I think there were enough female characters to attract dudes to the show.
While I'm already throwing dirt at your research since I'm not reading all that I hope your research was based on actual customers of anime, the Japanese. Crunchyroll subscriptions sustain Crunchyroll only, not the anime industry.
Blue Exorcist is published in Jump Square, a shounen magazine marketed towards teen boys.
Tokyo Ghoul was published in Weekly Young Jump, a seinen magazine marketed towards adult men.
>If they are liked by men more than women then they failed to capture their target audience and are lucky they still made money.
They are both extremely successful best-sellers and each has sold dozens of millions of volumes.
>No comment on Noragami, at the start it did give off the BL feel.
Noragami was published in Monthly Shounen Magazine for teenage boys. There isn't BL in the series as far as I can remember.
>I hope your research was based on actual customers of anime, the Japanese.
You have not done any research yourself...
For Tokyo Ghoul author actually said the series takes a lot of influence from shoujo so may explain why its so popular with women. Not really sure its all that unique though since pretty much every big shonen/seinen has a large female audience.
Also GFantasy which publishes stuff like Black Butler is labeled "shonen" by English sites but is considered more of a girls magazine in Japan and even runs ads for makeup.
Yeah shonen was originally just the boys demographic, but since its the most popular lots of series get published as shonen that aren't really aiming for teen boys primarily. Since there's no "for everyone" demographic shonen just becomes the default.
JJK, Chainsaw man, AoT, Full metal alchemist, demon slayer. Are for boy's or for everyone audience?
Shonen having prevalent male protagonists means they're still catering towards that boy/male demographic. Why do you think they aren't anymore? This isn't a girl club
Having male leads doesn't mean women can't be a part of the target audience as some shoujo themselves have no female characters. Many women like seeing hot guys interact/be emotional with each other and shonen often intentionally cater to them up to having fanservice of the male characters. Whatever they are doing works well enough that some shonen even have a over 60% female audience. Women also make many shonen including big ones like FMA and Demon Slayer.
If that was the case, then why were both of those titles released in Shounen and Seinen magazines? Both Jump Square as well as Young Jump have 90% male readers.
While I'm not really aware of the marketing genres for all three of these, I have watched and/or read these series and pretty much all three of these are enjoyed by a vast majority of my female Anime-watching friends. I'm wondering if this is genuinely a "hidden gems" thing because it feels like something that's probably already well-known among the Anime fandom in general, from both sides of the world, as opposed to "That doesn't look like it's for me... oh hey wait I might actually enjoy that."
Some other things my female friends have enjoyed that are pretty known too are Bungo Stray Dogs, Durarara, and Attack on Titan.
conversely, I've read and watched a lot of Shojo but barely any of my male friends have so I don't even know what the general male consensus on media generally suggested to be for women but actually has a lot of appeal for the male demographic.
The other 3 shows on the list for "appeals to men primarily but may have surprising crossover appeal" are Naruto, My Hero Academia, and Akame ga kill. mostly naruto and my hero academia.
For men it really is mostly just from me to you, the other largest errors (Steins gate, high school of the dead, angel beats and Toradora) are all still "high male appeal % just not AS much male appeal as expected" (think being 70% male audience show instead of 80% male)
Yeah, I think this is an example of how labels and statistics used selectively can be misleading.
Even in their original data, Death Note and Attack on Titan were both more popular and better rated with women than those 3 series, but they chose those 3 specifically because those deviated more from "what was expected". I know that as a woman, I love people making assumptions about what I like based on what men don't like! (sarcasm obviously).
Despite popular misconceptions, women don't have to be "open minded" to watch or read shounen or seinen. The majority of female animanga fans already do.
I don't think one can genuinely say that <<if a show is said to be “for girls” or “for boys” The correlation suggests that your initial assessment is almost always correct.>>, when more than half of the most popular and best rated series with women are technically labeled for men. (And I also want to note that more recent data skews even more in than direction)
>hen more than half of the most popular and best rated series with women are technically labeled for men.
This is a trend I've noticed a lot with a *lot* of shows. (less so with Disney talking mostly anime here) The shows that are only slightly gender skewed are often labeled "male". And the shows that are most popular among women tend to be labeled male. Really the correlation coefficient between male rating and female rating is pretty high, and so there's 2 aspects to a show's rating, the first is the shows inherent "goodness" and the second is the shows gender appeal. I measured Gender appeal but maybe just inherent goodness alone would hav been a better measure? Unsure.
Yes, to be fair, it is hard to extract non biased conclusions when looking at male vs female ratios, since there are so many factors at play. For example, I don't know how this applies to anime&manga audiences, but men across all age groups tend to spend more time on their hobbies than women do, so it's just harder for a leisure activity to be female dominated unless it has elements that turn men away.
I wonder how those numbers would change using the worldwide audience
I would be interested, though, in which ones attract the other gender the most and which ones are the most repellent. I mean, in Re:Zero, at least 90% of the audience is male, but I think Konosuba has 93% male viewers, if you know what I mean.
Of the big shonen isekai anime, I'd bet that Tensura has the most female viewers because it has a cute androgynous protagonist: he's not some "self-inserting virgin loser otaku" who scares off so many women, whether his claims are true or not.
* Mushoku: ~95% Male
* Rezero: ~80% male
* Slime: ~75% male
I didn't find the rest you mentioned, [if you want to check it](https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/bef0f4e360f2.jpeg)
On the contrary, I think those shows, particularly Blue Exorcist, appeal to women already just by things like the character design alone. They have quite frequently been favorites of female fans, similar to other shounen manga.
Also you may want to use data that isn't from 8 years ago
In general, I feel like it's a lot easier to convince women to watch shonen/seinen than it is to convince men to watch shoujo/josei. I'm not really sure what can be done to address that.
My personal hypothesis is that stuff that is "for girls" is *extremely* girly while say The Apothecary Diaries *runs in a Seinen magazine*. So the "boys is the default" is *quite* strong.
Nothing really and tbh I don't think it really needs addressing either. I think ultimately women and men have somewhat aligned interests when it comes to male characters in action series, but not when it comes to female characters.
For instance Levi from AoT is probably the most popular character in the show, but as far as I can tell he's popular for similar yet slightly different reason among the genders. Women find him hot and cool, men think he's cool. But can the same be said for many shoujo? Reality is those types of shows are usually more emotionally charged with much more frustrating behaviour (fruits basket as a relatively famous one) and most men aren't into that.
I've read quite a few Otome manga and manwha and watched anime for them as well and I almost never think "wow this MC is pretty awesome". The only ones off the top of my head were Remilia and Roxanna. But I also think that Shonen inherently is way less pandery than Shoujo and Josei are and much more digestible for a general audience hence why more women are willing to watch those.
Even if we go down the rabbit hole and get to fanservice, it's not even equal. A shonen/seinen will more likely have equal opportunity fanservice than any Shoujo or Josei series.
I kinda fall into that basket no pun intended. I recently watched Fermat Kitchen. Seeing the main character go from one extreme to the next emotionally kind of ruined the show for me as a fan of cooking manga and anime. That show isn't even necessarily Shoujo or Josei either, although many of the male character designs are definitely coded for a female audience.
The greatest is when you have arc long misunderstandings because people couldn't say two words to each other.. like oh brother, not this shit again. I remember last season there was a show called my friend's little sister has it out for me or something along those lines and I was surprised how they handled it. It wasn't emotionally charged angst for episodes upon episodes, the problem was noticed and addressed in a reasonable manner. Literally surprised me lol.
>the greatest is when you have arc long misunderstandings because people couldn't say two words to each other like oh brother.
This is part of the reason why I have a difficult time reading any shoujo/josei or high school romances. Same with the dense as a neutron star MC trope where they're either completely oblivious or pretend not to notice.
You remove those two tropes and there's tons of series that no longer even work narratively. The amount of series that introduced these things and actually make it work are in the minority in my opinion.
My main problem with Shojo love interests has often been that the main female lead is this extremely interesting and deep character with great personality and she's romancing a blank piece of paper who's only traits are being rich or handsome (or both).
I felt this way with Maid Sama, and Ouran High school host club(only the main guy though) and to a lesser degree with the apothecary diaries and Yona of the dawn. (in Yona it was more that the men *lost* their personality though)
I actually find both the MCs and the "candidates" are usually blank pieces of paper, but tbh it could just be Otome skewing my perception. That genre in particular is way worse than typical male oriented Isekai.
Like yeah, creepy shit often happens to shoujo heroines, but at least they're allowed to maintain a certain level of dignity - they're not relegated to the sidelines of the story and only brought out for fanservice, or to make the male characters look cool or whatever.
I can personally deal with a character in-story acting creepy and disrespectful, but when I feel like the story *itself* is taking a creepy or disrespectful attitude towards its female characters, it massively sours me on the whole thing.
Yona of the dawn: the 5 male characters had personality, BUT a lot of their personality *melted* once they joined the harem. Causing it to feel like their only personality trait after joining was being hot. The exception is the first guy.
Ouran High school host club: Takami felt like this to me and he was the main romantic partner.
The Apothecary Diaries: So if we look at Jinshi's personality he honestly feels kinda flat aside from the "hot and rich" aspects. The other main aspect to him [Diaries]>!The double life he leads as the prince!< doesn't really cause *him* to have much new personality. (except [in]>!late season 2!< Meanwhile Maomao is this extremely interesting and well developed character even if she gets [westley crusher syndrome](http://tviv.org/Wesley_Crusher_Syndrome#:~:text=The%20Wesley%20Crusher%20Syndrome%20is%20a%20common%20science,character%20is%20then%20necessary%20in%20many%20tight%20situations.)
Maid Sama: the example of this played the straightest Again our female lead has lots of depth to her and our male lead feels like cardboard.
Ouran is an interesting one because I feel like I've seen more people complain about Haruhi's personality ~~back when people used to talk about Ouran~~. Though I'd say Tamaki does have a personality, just not a complex one - he's childish, flamboyant and so *so* dramatic. He's just used more as comic relief probably because the anime is a parody and stops before his growth in the manga.
I think this is the first time I've seen someone say Jinshi was flat. Of course he pales in comparison to Maomao (who doesn't?), but I thought he was an interesting and fun character. Though I felt that way about most of the characters in the show, so that could be my bias showing.
I agree about Maid Sama. I enjoyed the show despite some of its... problematic elements (still not as bad as wolf girl and black prince), but Usui is used more to foil Misaki.
The main exception being that I found Jinshi flat. I'll have to go into long detail about Jinshi but his main personality trait has been ignoring girls fawning over him and being interested in maomao. Not anything about [Diaries]>!his double life and how he controls it!<
I mean, Jinshi's first introduction to the story shows how intelligent he is. He remembers Maomao's offhand comment from when she was a mere stranger, identifies the likely group of people that made the note from just a scrap of cloth and then uses a trick to single her out. It's interesting seeing him manage the court. He hides behind a facade of confidence and maturity, but really, he's childish and insecure, and believes his looks are the only tool he has. I wouldn't say him "ignoring girls fawning over him" (which I don't remember him doing? He charms them instead, no?) is even close to being his main personality point.
I'm not saying they all have the character complexity of anime like Monster or anything, but I do see them as more than "hot and rich".
Drop some titles then. Who are we talking about?
Even shonen is so much more popular than shoujo that they'll publish series that could of worked as shoujo in shonen. Like the sequel to the best selling shoujo ever Boys over Flowers was published in Jump+ of all places.
- This looks like it was generated by an AI/LLM. AI/LLM generated content is not allowed on r/anime (except for strictly translation purposes).
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More interested in knowing what female-targeted shows break out of its target market. From Me To You being well-received by men, for example, is interesting. But the other series on that side of your chart—High School of the Dead, Stein's Gate, etc.—are all primarily male-targeted to begin with. (Isn't High School of the Dead an ecchi harem? What is it doing that far on the outlier side?)
you can see high school of the dead and Stein's gate [circleed here](https://imgur.com/GwvURnY) notice that they are *below the trendline* even if they aren't *high on the % female* since outliers are just "how far below the trendline are they" you can see that basically every "female oriented show other than From Me to you just lies on the trendline without really any deviation.
[you can see that more clearly when I circle the points for the >50% female shows.](https://imgur.com/bSq1u2R) red is from me to you and the green points are Ouran high school host club, Maid Sama, Black Butler, Vampire Knight, and Free. The other 5 shows aside from From Me to You are all "completely as expected" with basically no deviation.
While there were a plethora of shows between 40% and 49% male there were 0 shows that were between 51% and 60% female. The issue of anime in 2017 being a mostly boys thing was real. hence why right before this era we had the [peak of ecchi anime]() in 2015.
I collected similar data but from manga, and from my own observation of that, what I can say is that women read more varied, whereas men's tastes are more likely to focus on the popular titles and titles explicitily aimed at them. So usually the only series that end up with a majority female audience are the ones who don't attract much of a male audience, even if those titles are rarely the most popular with women.
Personally, I think looking at male to female ratios on individual series has limited value. Attack on Titan is still the most popular manga with women, regardless of how many more men read it or how many women went for something else.
I loved the vast majority of josei ones I watched in contrast, but thry rarelly get adapted nowadays.
If you want to do this legally better hurry up. [The what's on Netflix blog](https://www.whats-on-netflix.com/leaving-soon/over-100-netflix-originals-leaving-netflix-throughout-2026/) says it's leaving July 1st, 2026. I'm surprised that includes Season 3.
As for Seasons 1-2 (also available elsewhere). I can believe that as a date it'll be gone by (from Netflix and others) because far as I'm aware those are a NIS America licence. That company hasn't licensed new anime in about a decade and other shows of theirs have vanished without warning e.g. A Lull in the Sea and Toradora.
If Noragami was your cup of tea, those legal options are gone (survived the Funimaiton merger only to expire anyway, [there's dozens of those](https://forum.blu-ray.com/showthread.php?p=23451522#post23451522)) it perplexes me that one of the most popular MAL anime ever just vanished form streaming but perhaps the current anime watcher is very different to the 2014 one and it was a flash in the pan popular rather than an evergreen popular (not that evergreens always have it easy e.g. Evangelion).
Favorite animes are: Death note, ouran high school host club, card captor Sakura, and jujutsu kaisen.
I want to note ouran high school host club because many of my friends who are also in the lgbtq2ia+ community also love it.
My partner who is also non-binary does not consider it one of their favorites however.
That's kinda redundant. Women watch and read quite widely compared to men.
> try Blue Exorcist, Tokyo Ghoul and Noragami.
Tokyo Ghoul is written by a man, but the other two are by women, which probably isn't unrelated.
MHA: Male Author
Fullmetal Alchemist: female
Attack on titan: male
Blue Exorcist: female
Tokyo Ghoul: male
Noragami: female.
Naruto: Male
In general seems mostly random Though I don't know the base rates for male vs female authors in japan.
The titles by the women probably succeed just by not alienating female readers with horribly written female characters.