No one else wants to play acafan okay fine

[canis_m]

Can anyone think of shoujo series or other by-women, marketed-to-women anime/manga (including BL, josei, and yuri) that have generated substantial fandom activity in Japan? By "substantial fandom activity" I mean not just discussion or attention but a decent body of doujinshi or other fanwork, fansites, etc. (edit: NOT limited to textual fanwork

Comments

[acchikocchi]

Yeah, to second the above commenter, the CLAMP oeuvre in general! I assume the TB/X fandom is relatively comparable in Japan to on the English-speaking internets, but I don't actually know - otoh CCS in particular inspired a truly ridiculous amount of doujinshi even some years after the fact, if the Mandarake shelves were anything to go by. *g* For that matter, there's an awful lot of 12K doujinshi as well... though as it was an anime adaptation does it count? You probably have a better grasp on Japanese 12K fandom anyway. :)

Saiyuki is a strange mix because - this time I checked magazines before running off at the mouth, ahaha! - it was serialized first in a shounen and then in a shoujo magazine. (GFantasy, under Square Enix, and Zero Sum, under Ichijinsha, respectively.) But it's definitely by-a-woman-marketed-to-women. :) And Wild Adapter I think ran in Chara, but the fandom isn't anywhere near the size of Saiyuki's...

More if I think of them!

edit: the above commenters in the plural, who beat me to the punch on everything else as well. XD;

Apologies if I double post, I tried to edit the comment and it... disappeared.

[canis_m]

I have yet to discover a TB/X fandom on the J-internets, actually, and the doujinshi presence 9 years ago was virtually nil. CCS though, you're right, I'd forgotten about that!

12K I wasn't counting in this survey--because the J-fandom is fundamentally novel-based, not anime-based--although maybe I should be. It's by-a-woman, and I thiiink the fandom skews female, but at this point it seems to be marketed-to-everybody, sort of like HP. It's borderline, though.

Thanks, yeah, keep 'em coming if you think of more. XD;

aaand now that I've gotten started...

[acchikocchi]

Huh, that does surprise me, given the rather active fandom here around the same period! The more you know... Anyway, re: above mention of TRC: they definitely have the doujinshika wrapped around their little finger - same for xxxHolic. Not a huge fandom, in either case, but decent-sized! Thing is, TRC runs in a shounen and 'Holic in a seinen magazine... but is anyone really kidding themselves about the real target audience? XD;

In that same vein, what about Peacemaker? XD

Reading all the other comments is sparking my memory. Other ideas:

Koko wa Greenwood is interesting - there's a small but tenacious J-fandom, with fanart/fic sites and meetups and everything, hanging around almost 20 years after the manga ended its run. (I believe last summer's dorama adaptation injected a little juice into it, too, but it was trundling along steadily even before that.)

Not quite what you're asking for, but Eroica totally deserves a mention. The - the the only 80s June manga to beget a small and prolific W-media slash fen based fandom that I know of. Eroica is such a weird interesting case. *g* As long as we're talking the classics, I believe Banana Fish had a faithful doujinshi following back in the day? Predating the internet. Ahaha. Obviously I was not observing this firsthand, so take it as hearsay.

Other series that may or may not have active J-fandoms: Loveless (I, uh, know there's at least some doujinshi >_>), Petshop of Horrors. Also, I know next to nothing about Kuroshitsuji, but it seems to have a pretty active fandom, so maybe someone more knowledgeable could say whether or not it really fits the bill. :)