Josei manga lit. comics for women are Japanese comics aimed at women in their late teens on into adulthood. Josei manga are for younger girls on the one hand, and „ladies comics“ which tend to have erotic content on the other. Readers can range in age from 15 to 44. In Japanese, the word josei means simply „woman“, „female“, „feminine“, „womanhood“, and has no manga-related connotations at all.
Josei comics can portray realistic romance, as opposed to the mostly idealized romance of shojo manga, but it does not always have to be. Josei tends to be both more sexually explicit and contain more mature storytelling, although that is not always true either. It is also not unusual for themes such as infidelity and rape to occur in josei manga targeted specifically more towards mature audiences.
