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Bishōjo (美少女) is a Japanese term for a beautiful young girl, usually below young adult age. A variant term, biyōjo (美幼女) refers to a pretty girl before the age of adolescence.

In Japanese media
Bishōjo characters appear in almost all genres of anime and manga and in many video games, especially in dating sims and visual novels. A shōjo (young girl)“secures her identity as a desirable female yet keeps the abject content of mature feminine sexuality at bay.”

Bishōjo games
Games that are made with the intent of featuring bishōjo characters are known as bishōjo games. Because visual novels are considered games as well, bishōjo games also encapsulate visual novels made with the intent of featuring bishōjo characters. Although bishōjo games are made with a male audience in mind, they can extend to a female audience as well, such as the Touhou project.

Confusion regarding terminology
Although bishōjo is not a genre but a character design, series which predominantly feature such characters, such as harem anime and visual novels, are sometimes informally called bishōjo series. The characters and works referred to by the term bishōjo are typically intended to appeal to a male audience. Since one of the main draws of these series is typically the art and the attractive female characters, the term is occasionally perceived negatively, as a genre which is solely dependent on the marketability of cute characters rather than content or plot.

The word bishōjo is sometimes confused with the similar-sounding shōjo ("girl") demographic, but bishōjo refers to the gender and traits of the characters it describes, whereas shōjo refers to the gender and age of an audience demographic – manga publications described as "shōjo" are aimed at young female audiences.

Bishōjo is not to be confused with bishōnen – beautiful boy. It is also not to be confused with moe – which is a definition for a genre of entertainment which features cute/adorable girls rather than "sexy" girls.

Contests
A televised beauty pageant, the Japan Bishōjo Contest, has been run since 1985. Singer Aya Ueto first became famous through this contest, at the age of twelve. Model and actress Ryoko Yonekura also won a bishōjo contest in 1992.