33 replies to this topic

[Edoc]

Agreed.

Also, I've been considering the idea of changing the description to include what magazine it was published in, after I edited 5-6 wrongly mislabeled comics. You might find my comments in some of the manga I corrected...

http://vatoto.com/comic/_/comics/bonnouji-r1019

http://vatoto.com/comic/_/comics/tonari-no-kashiwagi-san-r445

http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/2357/74784678647844.png

Spoiler

Does anyone think they may alter the comic perception, desription-wise in a negative way for readers? And if anyone feels I've overstepped my boundaries, feel free to edit them. Do post your opinion, though.

Are you going to rate every manga based on where it is published? I've seen shounens published on seines magazines, if you tag a shounen as seinen because of the magazine anyone who reads it would figure it out and be pissed because of the false tag, and there has been cases like this... I don't think you should tag anything based on the magazine, but based on its real contents..

P.S This has nothing to do with the example you used, but I believe it was needed to explain that the magazine does not always matter..

[kdom]

A shonen is a serie published in a shonen magazine. That's its definition and it is the best way to rate it. Real contents means nothing and is completely subjective.

[God Ginrai]

A shonen is a serie published in a shonen magazine. That's its definition and it is the best way to rate it. Real contents means nothing and is completely subjective.

MangaUpdates defines Shounen as:

A work intended and primarily written for males. These works usually involve fighting and/or violence.

And AniDB defines shounen as:

In the context of manga and associated media, the word shounen refers to a male audience roughly between the ages of 10 and 18. In Japanese, the word means simply "young male", and has no anime/manga-related connotations at all. It does not comprise a style or a genre per se, but rather indicates the publisher's intended target demographic. Still, while not mandatory, some easily identifiable traits are generally common to shounen works, such as: high-action, often humorous plots featuring male protagonists; camaraderie between male friends; sports teams and fighting squads (usually coupled with the aforementioned camaraderie); unrealistically attractive female characters (see fanservice). Additionally, the art style of shounen tends to be less flowery than that of shoujo and the plots tend to be less complex than seinen, but neither of those is a requirement.

And even Wikipedia suggests:

According to Japanese law, the term "shonen" refers to "a person from the time they enter elementary school until the time they are 15 years of age",^[1] and "Any person who has not reached the age of 15 years" (Juvenile Law (少年法 Shonen Hō^?), Article 2.1). In the realm of education and culture, this is the period of compulsory education.

In none of these definitions, does it say anything about what magazine a series is published in. I think you have things backwards: A magazine's target demographic is best reflected by the content it publishes, not the other way around.

Do some research next time before you try to tell people what the definitions of things are.

-God Ginrai

Edited by God Ginrai, 03 February 2013 - 08:22 PM.

[101010]

But you are wrong, God Ginrai. You just quoted what the word shounen means, which has almost nothing to do with the current discussion, because we are talking about manga here and not about male human beings midway in their puberty. Here is the article you should have cited - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Dnen_manga. Notice how it is about manga. Here is what you can find inside:

Note that none of these listed characteristics are a requirement, as seen in shōnen manga like Yotsuba&!, which features a female lead, and almost no fan service or action, and that what most defines whether or not a series is shōnen are things like the magazine (see Weekly Shōnen Jump) it is serialized in or the time slot it airs on T.V.

Besides, it's a common knowledge that shounen, seinen and the rest are not genres, but demography at which a certain comic is targeted.

[svines85]

Besides, it's a common knowledge that shounen, seinen and the rest are not genres, but demography at which a certain comic is targeted.

"common knowledge" or not, Batoto refers to shounen, shoujo, seinen and josei as genres............as does every other reader site.

[101010]

And Justin Bieber has sold 15 million albums. Just because something is popular, doesn't mean it's right. Here is another Wikipedia article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

[God Ginrai]

But you are wrong, God Ginrai. You just quoted what the word shounen means, which has almost nothing to do with the current discussion, because we are talking about manga here and not about male human beings midway in their puberty. Here is the article you should have cited - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Dnen_manga. Notice how it is about manga. Here is what you can find inside:



Besides, it's a common knowledge that shounen, seinen and the rest are not genres, but demography at which a certain comic is targeted.

I quoted Wikipedia's Shounen article, that is indeed true. However, you seem to have ignored my two other quotes which happen to be from two of the main accepted sources of information on anime and manga, which I would give a lot more credibility than Wikipedia, since it is targetted specifically towards anime and manga, unlike Wikipedia. (Hence the reason I listed them first)

Also, I never said that they were genres. Please read my whole post next time before trying to argue with me.

"common knowledge" or not, Batoto refers to shounen, shoujo, seinen and josei as genres............as does every other reader site.

+1

EDIT:

And Justin Bieber has sold 15 million albums. Just because something is popular, doesn't mean it's right. Here is another Wikipedia article - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

He didn't say it was right. The fact of the matter is, you shouldn't try to argue demographics until you get the site to list it as a demographic. That's like trying to argue racoons while everybody still considers the Giant Panda a bear. (For background, for a while, there was a debate whether a Panda was a bear or related to the racoon. I'm not sure what ever came of that, tho')

-God Ginrai

Edited by God Ginrai, 03 February 2013 - 09:36 PM.

[kdom]

Your animedb link says exactly the same thing than I did, if "indicates the publisher's intended target demographic" does not refer to a magazine then what does it refers to ?
The French Wikipedia even decided to subcategorized the shonen manga by magazines.
Shonen is a demographic, it's considered as a genre on Batoto just because nobody decided to create a demographic tag and it was done like that on mangaupdates. But let's be honest demographics are really poor in term of description. Just compare, "this manga is a shonen" with "this manga is a romance"

Edited by kdom, 03 February 2013 - 09:56 PM.

[101010]

Westerners are ignorant. 少年漫画 is what we are talking about. Notice how the expression ends with 漫画 (manga). That's because this type of comics exist ONLY in Japan. It literally means boy manga. It's not a genre. You can go and ask someone Japanese about this and he/she will confirm to you that Japanese comics (manga) can be classified in three ways: by audience, by genre and by format. The first includes boy manga (少年漫画), girl manga (少女漫画), manga for young men (青年漫画), etc. The second includes genres - school manga (学園漫画), sports manga (スポーツ漫画), fantasy manga (ファンタジー漫画), etc. The third one - one page manga (1ページ漫画), 4Koma (4コマ漫画), Webcomic (ウェブコミック), etc.

As you can clearly see, the westerners are stupid and invented their own meaning of shounen manga, which has nothing to do with the original meaning of the expression.

[God Ginrai]

Westerners are ignorant. 少年漫画 is what we are talking about. Notice how the expression ends with 漫画 (manga). That's because this type of comics exist ONLY in Japan. It literally means boy manga. It's not a genre. You can go and ask someone Japanese about this and he/she will confirm to you that Japanese comics (manga) can be classified in three ways: by audience, by genre and by format. The first includes boy manga (少年漫画), girl manga (少女漫画), manga for young men (青年漫画), etc. The second includes genres - school manga (学園漫画), sports manga (スポーツ漫画), fantasy manga (ファンタジー漫画), etc. The third one - one page manga (1ページ漫画), 4Koma (4コマ漫画), Webcomic (ウェブコミック), etc.

As you can clearly see, the westerners are stupid and invented their own meaning of shounen manga, which has nothing to do with the original meaning of the expression.

Once again, I never said it was a genre. I realize that this is targeted towards a specific audience. I am saying that the audience is not always defined by the magazine. Just because a magazine heavily targets one demographic does not mean that they would not publish work that targets another demographic to garner more readers.

Also, I hardly think that calling people stupid helps to prove your point. Rather, it probably alienates you from a large amount of the people you are trying to make your point to, since you are calling them idiots.

EDIT: To further illustrate my point about publishing: Comic Blade Avarus, a shoujo publication, has published multiple works that were originally from Comic Blade Masamune, a shounen publication.

-God Ginrai

Edited by God Ginrai, 03 February 2013 - 11:02 PM.

[svines85]

Shonen is a demographic, it's considered as a genre on Batoto just because nobody decided to create a demographic tag and it was done like that on mangaupdates.

I'd guess the main reason the two, genre and demographic, aren't differentiated between is because it really has no bearing in this setting. For all intents and purposes, on a reader site..............and in general conversation..........genre and demographic are as good as interchangeable. There aren't any sales going on here, there's no one being targeted. Bothering to differentiate between two descriptive terms for a word everybody knows the meaning of is a waste of time. No matter how ignorant some people think everyone besides themselves are.

[Edoc]

Guys, please stop saying that a shounen is about the age.. just look around, you can find magazines like the shounen jump, with content oriented for early teens, with most of its buyers around 12-13.. you also have the jump square, a shounen magazine oriented for males in their late 10s and early 20s.. if you were to sell that to a 12 years old just because it is a shounen just like the WSJ, some parents would be really mad at you.. just think about that kid reading to love-ru darkness....

Be realistic, anyone can tell a shounen and a seinen apart by their content, just because it is published on a seinen magazine it does not mean that its content is the same as the rest of the stuff tagged as seinen, so instead of thinking about god knows what the publisher was thinking, lets be realistic for a moment and simply judge based on what we read.. if the content is another generic shounen, cristal clear shounen.. to the point it could be compared line to line to another shounen.. why would you tag it as seinen? Leave the rest of the world apart, what matters is to have a search function that will deliver what people want, it doesn't matter what the magazine it is published at, what it matters is the content, I can tell a shounen and a seinen apart, and I would not find it amusing getting shounens mixed in the search..


Anyway, back on topic, if you want to stop the genre wars that go around by restricting the edition, you should make decisions about this kind of stuff so that people are aware of it and don't start another war but this time flooding you guys with MPs, and imo, I don't think restricting it would be a nice think to do.. even leechers like myself like to put some missing genres from time to time, maybe making it some kind of wiki style thing, or making it so that more than one person needs to make the same request for a change to be made and if some requests conflict with each other maybe it should send some kind of warning to a higher up to check it out.. anyway, I believe that whatever you do will end up in extra work... so just let the users decide and quarrel all they want, most of us will just ignore them, even it it means wasting 2 clicks in a search.

[Seraphic Mist]

Are you going to rate every manga based on where it is published? I've seen shounens published on seines magazines, if you tag a shounen as seinen because of the magazine anyone who reads it would figure it out and be pissed because of the false tag, and there has been cases like this... I don't think you should tag anything based on the magazine, but based on its real contents..

P.S This has nothing to do with the example you used, but I believe it was needed to explain that the magazine does not always matter..

Warning: Lengthy content. People consult your physician for advice about reading wall of text on the Internet.

Spoiler

I have not been going around tagging all manga based on magazines they were published in. I mainly made corrections were people (excuse me for saying so, but they were quite stupid) who edited in completely wrong genres. Like Shoujo for obviously Shonen manga, or Drama - for Gags like Fujimura-kun Mates. Sheesh, that's a facepalm moment.

Real content is not necessarily an indicator, one can even have a completely girly story in a Shonen magazine. Take Magico, for instance, in the magazine-where-romance-usually-ends-up-axed Weekly Shonen Jump. But it'll still be marked as Shonen.

Or, taking a real life example, Ferraris, Porsches, Lamborghinis are best suited (and marketed to) people who live in European countries like Germany (which has amazing autobahns) and they're definitely marked as "sports cars" but it's not like they're going to mark a luxury car as a transport or family car if it's got some nice mileage and is painted in pink. It'll be marketed to males. Which is why you find bikini babes on yachts and sports cars, not around shoes and makeup retail products.

I'm not putting words in your mouth or accusing you of anything - (I'm trying to be clear, in order to avoid a flame war, you never know if the person you're talking to on the Internet is a drama queen with a fuse the length of a fingernail) - rather, I'm just trying to second-guess the general mindset of the author/publishers.

My final reason as to why content is a poor indicator: During the launch of Comic Gene the publishers declared that the content published in the magazine, would, "subvert the preconceptions of shonen and shojo magazines", meaning that the content would be ambiguous, i.e., would have both Shonen and Shojo content. Interestingly, in an alternate interview (You can find the interview on Google, but the link appears to be broken for me) one of the publishers says that the content is aimed largely at Females - 18 and older, (Implying Josei) even though (as he admits) the content is Shonen-esque.

As such (Because of that interview), you will find any manga published in that magazine that has been scanlated (some have been uploaded on Batoto itself) marked as "Josei" despite the (obvious) Shonen-ness.

TL;DR: Stop or restrict the people who:

Change genre to Shoujo/Josei because the art seems girly;

Change genre to Shonen/Seinen because the story/art is Shonen-esque;

Change genre to harem if there's a love triangle;

Change genre to ecchi/mature if, in a particular chapter, the characters go to the pool or the beach; (Seriously, I know more than half of you have been to the beach at some point before 10 years of age and I'm pretty sure you didn't blindfold yourselves)

Change genre to Drama because the idiot MC has a 'Hmm what do I do' moment for the first time in 50 chapters;

Change genre to whatever they want because it's fine to cause a havoc, someone can fix it for you if there's a mistake.

----

Edited by Shadowed Fate, 05 February 2013 - 11:23 AM.

[mhh]

Okay. This has gone on long enough, with most of the discussion being about the specifics of genres and what they mean rather than the actual topic, whether to restrict the editing features or not. I believe the main points regarding the actual suggestions have been made.

Closed.