The fujoshi  (“rotten girl”) subculture is well-established in Japan with its sizable population of girls and women who enjoy the past time of homoerotic fan art. Its members are often a contentious presence on the internet for their particular passion of sometimes corrupting young men’s adolescent heroes into love interests. Don’t get me wrong, that’s not to say Goku and Vegeta cuddling and making out itself isn’t right. It’s just not right for them.

Depending on your own parenting aims you may want to steer your young girl away from drawing pictures of unrealistically well-groomed samurai lying naked beneath the sheets together, or you may find it a relatively harmless pastime compared to something like airplane glue sniffing and thus want to encourage fujoshi tendencies in your young one.

Either way, one Twitter user claims to have unlocked the environmental conditions (seven in total) that make a young girl go fujoshi and presented it for peer evaluation on Twitter. But do they hold up to the scrutiny?

▼  “Let’s review! Seven conditions in childhood that would cause a girl to grow into a fujoshi!”
[tweet https://twitter.com/kei_191919jihai/status/657040155404976129 align=center]

#1 Has a younger brother
That’s a fairly widespread accusation, but as Kei, the author of this list, points out later, having a younger brother is a key impetus due to the accessibility to typical boys’ reading material. I suppose the brother being younger would give the sister a sense of power over males in the situation as well.

#2 Likes watching tokusatsu
Tokusatsu translates to “special effects” but tends to refer to films and TV shows with uncomplicated plots that focus on good versus evil…representitives of both preferably in rubber suits. Past and present examples include the Ultraman and Kamen Rider series or, for western audiences, Power Rangers.

I’ve got to say though, if loving tokusatsu is fujoshi, then baby I don’t want to be anything else!

#3 Reader of Nakayoshi manga
Nakayoshi is a long-running manga compilation targeted at preteen girls. It has been host to numerous romantic and fantasy comics over the years (the most notable of which worldwide has got to be Sailor Moon), it may just be this mix of light action and romance that Kei feels triggers fujoshi leanings.

Images: Amazon Japan 1, 2

#4 Goes from young girls’ manga to Shonen Jump instead of fashion magazines
Shonen Jump, being the epitome of stereotypical boys’ fiction with lighthearted martial arts and action-adventure stories such as Dragon Ball and One Piece, should apparently be seen as a warning sign for potential fujoshi if found in the hands of a girl who should be old enough for Vogue.

#5 Enjoys CoroCoro Comics
This ties into the younger brother angle since CoroCoro is aimed at very young boys. However, I’m not really sure how CoroCoro Comics triggers fujoshi tendencies. Aside from Doraemon, its just a bunch of marketing-based comics from video game franchises like Pokémon and Yo-Kai Watch to an even more shameless series featuring frozen snack mascot Gari Gari Kun.

Image: Amazon

#6 Enrolled in an all-girls’ school
I suppose it doesn’t take Freud to postulate that being segregated from males might give a girl a warped perspective of their interpersonal relationships.

#7 Reasonably good student
Is your daughter doing “just fine” in her curricular endeavors? Well, how would you like her to come home one day with this as her book report?

[tweet https://twitter.com/miya_Rin1101/status/654656975427366912 align=center]

If not, you better instill the “school is for losers” philosophy at an early age. It’s a heck of a lot easier than getting your kid to excel, let me tell you. On the other hand, if you want your little angel to enjoy sketching basketball players kissing, getting her right into that B-zone will be tricky too.

These seven rules proved to be highly controversial with fujoshi coming down on both sides of the argument. Many agreed with the rules saying that they fit perfectly or at least were very close.

“Everything is true except the all-girls school! Is that how it happened?”
“Wow! Almost all of them are true! I liked Comic Bombom though.”
“All true…scary!”
“That’s pretty much right, but I’m not a good student at all.”

However, for every fujoshi in favor of the rule, there seemed to be one who said it was way off.

“I’m a fujoshi, but none of those were right except the tokusatsu and studying ones.”
“Not one of those applied to me and I’m a fujoshi who thinks about homo 365 days a year, so I think there’s no connection.”
“None of those fit me. It’s not like I gradually grew to be a fujoshi anyway. It just happened one day.”

Based on the results, it certainly seems that Kei’s theory cannot be considered scientific fact. However, the fact that it netted over 18,000 retweets might suggest Kei is onto something.

In the end, I’d like to think that fujoshi are a lot like plumbers. A majority of plumbers you meet probably got into it for similar reasons such as a family member or friend who was doing it before them. However, that’s not to say that every plumber started out that way. Some might have gotten into it for completely different reasons such as the flexible hours or constant man-on-man kissing that comes with the job.

Source: Twitter/@kei_191919jihai via My Game News Flash (Japanese)
Top Image: Amazon 1, 2 (Edited by RocketNews24)
Video: YouTube/IBCW