Shojo manga are targeted towards the demographic of adolescent girls aged ~9-18, although like other manga demographics they are enjoyed by people of all ages and genders. When children's magazines in Japan started in the 1900s and became popular, they eventually split by their target demographics into shonen (boy) and shojo (girl) magazines. Shojo magazines initially focused on illustrated novels for girls, but also sometimes contained manga. These novels helped to establish the cultural themes in shojo works like romantic friendships and love, while the artwork was influenced by lyrical paintings (jojōga). As shojo manga established itself into a formal category in the 1950s, it embraced more subgenres like supernatural stories. The first shojo manga anthology was Nakayoshi, published in 1954. Around this time, more female manga artists began producing works and the themes and subgenres included continued to grow. New visual aesthetics like kawaii (cute) and moe were introduced during the decades that followed, and many companies have adopted a cross-media strategy where they release new titles simultaneously across different types of media.

                                                   Sailor Moon by Naoko Takeuchi