Here’s how much females like anime:
There are plenty of females who like anime, but there are plenty more who don’t like anime.
It’s not reasonable to supply a blanket yes or no to such a wide group of people, especially considering how split they are on anime.
In terms of liking, disliking, or feeling neutral, there is no majority female opinion.
So if you want to learn all about how much girls enjoy anime, then you’re in the right place.
Keep reading!
Do Females Like Anime?
This question doesn’t have a singular answer.
I’m going to get deep into statistics to give you strong reasons for the various viable answers, but before that, we can take an overhead approach.
It’s not right to say that females like anime in general.
It’s also not right to say that they dislike anime.
The truth is that there is no clear majority on anime when it comes to large-scale female surveys and studies.
Plenty of females like anime.
Plenty don’t.
A whole bunch is pretty neutral on the whole topic.
There are a few breakdowns that will shed more light on the conversation as a whole.
I’ll show you how female opinions on anime compare to male opinions, and I’ll show you what kinds of anime females seem to prefer.
By the time it’s all done, you won’t be able to say definitively whether or not females like anime, but you’ll understand the nuanced answers that are more meaningful anyway.
How Much Do Females Like Anime Compared to Males? (2 Surveys)
The first thing we can do is compare females to males.
I have a couple of statistical breakdowns to show you, and I want to start with a bit of an explanation of how the data work.
These statistics are based on surveys.
Each survey had thousands of participants, so they give us meaningful results.
But, the surveys are dependent on the respondents’ answers.
As an example, respondents were not given any type of medical examination.
These were just online surveys.
One thing to point out is that the participants selected their sex in the survey.
This means that we’re comparing self-identified females to self-identified males.
A different breakdown along sex or gender lines probably wouldn’t change the results significantly, but I want to remove any ambiguity from these comparisons.
Also, the surveys measured tastes on a sliding scale.
That’s never perfect, but it at least provides some direct comparison that we can use to draw conclusions.
#1 Statista Data
The first survey was conducted by Statista.
It asked more than 2,000 participants how they felt about anime movies, and it was performed in January 2020.
It split the results along male and female lines, and there were a few notable results.
First (and probably unsurprising), is that there are more males who like anime than females.
From the survey, 35% of males have a favorable opinion of anime movies (including very favorable and somewhat favorable responses).
Meanwhile, only 27% of females saw anime favorably.
Since the survey had equal numbers of male and female responses, it suggests that there are significantly more males who like anime.
But, that’s not the whole story.
There are also more males who dislike anime as compared to females.
41% of surveyed males dislike anime compared to only 39% of females.
You might also notice that neither males nor females have a majority opinion in the like or dislike category.
That’s because significant numbers had no opinion on anime at all.
25% of males were neutral on anime movies, with 8% never having heard of the movies in the survey.
Meanwhile, 34% of females were neutral and 14% had never heard of the movies.
When you put all of this together there are a few nuanced takes we can derive.
First, the clear majority of the anime fanbase is male, but there are significant numbers of females who like anime.
Second, the majority of people who dislike anime are males, but this is by a slimmer majority.
Most of all, there are a lot more females who have not been exposed to anime, and even among those who have, there’s a larger number who don’t have a strong opinion.
Overall, a minority of females have a negative opinion of anime, even if there isn’t a majority that openly likes anime.
#2 A Different Statistical Take
That’s already a pretty good breakdown of how females feel about anime, but we can look at a very different data set and draw even more conclusions.
This next survey pulled ratings from MyAnime List.
For those unfamiliar, this is pretty much THE leading online resource for rating and discussing anime.
Here’s the thing to keep in mind.
People who make a MyAnimeList account are already fans of the medium.
So, the data we’re looking at in this section only refers to males and females who definitively like at least some anime.
With that covered, here’s what the data show, compiling results from 3,000 males and 3,000 females.
For both males and females, the vast majority of ratings were above 5/10, confirming our suspicions that this survey group likes anime.
Looking more closely, the average rating from females across all genres and shows was higher than that of males.
Namely, females gave out many more 10/10 ratings than males did.
This suggests that among anime fans, females like anime more than males.
What Kinds of Anime Do Females Prefer? (5 Types)
The MyAnime List data gave us more specific information too.
From those females who like anime, there was a strong statistical breakdown of the various genres that were preferred by females as compared to males.
In general, males and females like the same stuff.
The very most popular shows are popular with both groups, and that’s not surprising.
The most popular shows usually have the highest production values and are sourced from some of the most popular mangas, so the average quality is higher.
Also, there are still more males watching anime than females, so most genres have a majority male audience.
Here’s where things get interesting.
There are a handful of genres where the female audience matches or even exceeds the male audience.
That doesn’t mean that these genres are the most popular among female viewers.
It just means that these are the genres with the most gender disparity in terms of positive female viewership.
#1 Historical
Technically speaking, the historical anime crowd is still majority male, but by a lot less than most genres.
A full 46% of viewers are female in this genre.
Historical anime isn’t the most popular of all genres, but the fact that it has a near-even split between male and female viewers is interesting.
#2 Music
Music is a pretty big genre, and there are a lot of shows to choose from.
The male-female split in this genre is slightly closer than historical.
In this case, 46.2% of all viewers are female.
That’s not much more than historical, but because music is such a large genre, it makes for a significant finding.
To put this in perspective, across all genres, the median female viewership constitutes 36.2% of the total fanbase.
Music and historical anime have a 10-point increase from that level.
#3 Josei
To the initiated, this won’t be surprising, but Josei is watched primarily by female viewers.
67.2% of viewers identify as female, marking a clear majority.
For those who aren’t familiar, an explanation of the Josei genre will probably help a bit.
Josei is a term for anime and manga that is deliberately marketed to mature female viewers.
That doesn’t mean that it consists entirely of mature content (although some shows do).
Rather, the intended audience is adult females and not children.
There are a ton of different types of stories within the Josei genre.
They can include romances, dramas, soap opera-influenced melodramas, and even pornographic content.
It’s a bit all over the place because the marketing defines Josei rather than the actual anime content.
#4 Shojo
Another popular genre among female viewers is Shojo.
Again, this isn’t surprising as the genre is marketed directly at females.
The major distinction between Shojo and Josei is age.
Shojo is marketed to younger female audiences (ranging from kids to young adults).
Considering that, it won’t surprise you to see that 72.2% of Shojo viewers are female.
#5 A Few Others
There are a few other genres that have a majority of female viewership, but overall, these are more niche genres with smaller general audiences.
Also, the distinctions between some of these niches can be rather small, so I’m going to group them together.
First, here are the numbers:
- Shounen AI: over 90% of viewers are female
- Yaoi: roughly 85% of viewers are female
All two of these categories focus on same-sex relationships.
There are plenty of other genres that have the same defining characteristic, but many of those have the majority of male audiences.
If you really want to peel back the layers, the various genres in this broader category are usually distinguished by specific aspects of the relationship depicted.
For example, Yaoi is defined by the relationship centering on “boy love,” as the characters are male, not yet adults, and have a less overtly romantic or sexual relationship (in most cases).
You can find similar specific characteristics for Shounen AI (typically male homosexual relationships but usually not explicit) and various other genres that often fall under the “Yuri” umbrella.