Josei (Japanese: 女性, lit. "woman", IPA ; also redisu or redikomi, lit. "lady's comics") is a subset of manga or anime created mostly by women, for late teenage/adult female audiences. The male equivalent to josei is seinen. Unlike seinen, in Japanese, it is not directly indicative of sexual matter, and is more often used to simply to mean female in general.

The stories tend to be about everyday experiences of women living in Japan. Though there are some that cover high school, most cover the lives of adult women in Japan. The style also tends to be a more restrained, realistic version of shōjo, keeping some of the wispy features and getting rid of the very large sparkly eyes. There are exceptions in the style described above, but what defines Josei is some degree of stylistic continuity of comics within this particular demographic (the same is true with different different demographics that have different stylistic tendencies).

In addition, unlike shōjo, it can portray realistic romance (as opposed to mostly idealized romance). A subset of josei comics are comics that are aimed at women about homosexual male relationships, called yaoi. Josei is also known for a very sexual edge; many of the magazines have some of the raunchiest porn produced in Japan.

Josei is sometimes used within anime or manga, mostly by male characters, to refer to a sexual preference for older women, as contrasted with lolicon.

Examples

• Blue
• Happy Mania (manga)
• River's Edge (manga)
• Only Yesterday (anime and manga)
• Ebichu The Housekeeping Hamster (anime and manga)