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A comment on A lack of male protagonists is making it harder to get young boys into books. Parent comment

Re:A lack of male protagonists is making it harder to get yo... by BobaFloutist on Sunday November 08, 2026 @10:40AM (#50414200)
>Boys grow up to be men who chafe at the 'diversity' and 'representation' topics, because they would happily see them selves represented in anything, even if it were a green alien.

As long as its not a girl.

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Re:A lack of male protagonists is making it harder to get yo... by ryzvonusef on Sunday November 08, 2026 @11:11AM (#50414463)
Not necessarily.

Frieren is a manga that has a female protagonist and is wildly popular with boys, elsewhere in this thread I talk about Ascendence of a Bookworm, another story with a female protagonist, popular with boys.

Yes, female MCs are less likely to be common in boys literature, but if the story is good, then boys will read it. What makes the story 'good' in the eyes of boys, is about the themes, at least to my understanding.

I believe Japan does it best, they clearly delineate young/mature, male/female categories in terms of themes, and then have stories can still have a female MC but thematically targeted towards the category 'young+male'(Shonen) or 'mature+male' (Seinen)

Examples of each:

https://myanimelist.net/stacks/41465

https://myanimelist.net/stacks/59021

Many of these stories are something I've read/watched but forgot that they were not labelled under the female category stories.

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