Split "Harem Genre" from : Harem Genre

Unwanted Harem is trying to be two things:

First the generic concept of several girls crushing on one unfortunate guy.

Second, the japanese media genre, "Harem Anime" or "Harem Series", with it's specific settings, plot points, and character types. (That is recognized by various anime sites, and even Wikipedia, as an anime genre.)

The latter is definitely tropable on it's own, but if the current page would truly be that, many of the current examples would be incorrect. For example "Harry Potter ends up with a large number of admirers in the sixth book." could be an example of the Unwanted Harem plot, but not of the Harem Series genre.

Also, the genre wouldn't need to have "unwanted" in the title. It's not a crucial part of it, and it isn't called that anywhere else.

Agreed that these are two separate tropes.

Harem Anime probably won't work, since its not necessarily a solely Anime/Manga trope, though I'm sure it primarily is.

Also its worth noting that these can also be "reverse" Harems with a female lead, and rarely (though not unheard of) harems with the same sex for the "Protagonist" and the Harem members.

Harem Genre? It has the benefit of being very clear.

Ah, Harem Anime is currently a redirect to Unwanted Harem

edited 27th Feb '11 4:40:38 AM by SakurazakiSetsuna

I thin Harem Series sound better. And it is already a redirect, anyway.

Yeah, Harem Series is better. If for no other reason than that "Harem" is less and less a standalone genre, its increasingly being welded into other, increasingly diverse types of shows.

Support.

If it gets created, the Unwanted Harem redirects Harem Anime, Reverse Harem and Harem Series should be moved.

Harem Genre would be better than Harem Series, because some standalone works, like Visual Novels and Dating Sims can also be examples.

edited 27th Feb '11 4:55:15 AM by EternalSeptember

Of course.

edited 27th Feb '11 4:55:24 AM by SakurazakiSetsuna

Don't disagree, though I don't like "genre" because its not really a genre in the way a lot of people think. There are totally straight Harem shows (lots of V Ns actually), but as I said, more and more you have Mecha+Harem, Mystery+Harem, Action+Harem, etc etc.

That can happen with many other genres, like "comedy", that is anything that has fun in it. "Slice of life comedy", "action comedy", "romantic comedy", "sci-fi comedy", or with Thriller, that's anything that has suspense, like "sci-fi thriller", "action thriller", or "mystery thriller".

Personally, I just thought 'Harem Series' had a better sounding then 'Harem Genre'. But I guess calling a Dating Sim 'series' is not quite correct.

PS: I just notice you have recently launched Balanced Harem and Supporting Harem, Endless Nine. I suppose it is how you have come to notice this problem with Unwanted Harem?

edited 27th Feb '11 5:13:07 AM by Heatth

No, I already planned to bring this up, I just finally have some free time to help with sorting this one out now that I'm done with those two.

(By the way, I just noticed that the Wikipedia article on Harem Genre already uses a classification pretty similar to the one that I just "invented".)

edited 27th Feb '11 5:17:36 AM by EternalSeptember

They also have a separation between Harem Series and 'Series with Harem elements'. Though they got these totally mixed up, for some weird reason.

The more I think about it, the more it looks like that the most appropriate name for the genre would be just plainly "Harem", that is the pre-existing term, all anime sites have genre listings in that way, as Comedy / Ecchi / Harem / Mecha / Mystery / Slice of Life, etc.

The medium is not part of the genre name, neither "anime", nor "series".

Just as there are "Comedy Anime", "Comedy Series", "Comedy Films", "Comedy Comic Books", but the genre's name is just "Comedy".

edited 27th Feb '11 5:38:34 AM by EternalSeptember

We still have Gag Series, though.

Yeah, but in that one, being a series is an important part of the structure, there is no Gag Show equivalent, that wouldn't work.

Edit: The genre page for Mecha is also called Mecha Show, but that is a neccessary preexisting term, as Mecha on it's own means the Humongous Mecha machines themselves, not the set-up.

edited 27th Feb '11 5:55:49 AM by EternalSeptember

I could argue that 'harem' is also more known for the actual harem, not the genre. But I agree with you. The reason I found 'Harem Genre' bad sounding is probably because we don't put a 'Genre' in any genre page. And since calling it 'series' when a good sized segment of the genre are not, in fact, 'series', would be strange, I think just Harem is the way to go.

I'm pro calling the Genre Harem as long as we make note of the other tropes on the page and redirect Harem Series there.

...Or at least I will be as soon as Harem starts looking like a word again.

The more I think about it, the less I like each option.

Harem Anime and Harem Series are misleadingly narrow. Harem Genre is redundant and unatural, not a pre-existing form. Harem doesn't fit into sentences on it's own, so, if people want to say that "Kiss X Sis is a Harem Anime/Manga/Series", and there is a redirect for those compoud words, they will rather use that redirect, and the main title will fall out of use.

Not to mention that people will misuse it for "harem", as in the generic concept.

How about Harem Show?

'Show' is not much better then 'series', though. The vast majority of the 'shows' will be a 'series' as well, I believe. Except 'show' can't include printed media, like Manga(and the genre is quite common in there. Mecha Show can get away with it because most of it start as an Anime, anyway.

If we aren't going for just Harem, then I vote for Harem Series, instead. It is already a redirect and a commonly used term.

But we use "show" on this wiki as a synonym of "work", as in Show Within a Show, or Hostile Show Takeover.

Anyways, here is a YKTTW for the genre page, as a draft. Title still undecided. After we aare done with writing this, we still need to de-nipponify the Unwanted Harem description.

edited 28th Feb '11 3:38:07 AM by EternalSeptember

Ok, launched Harem Genre, and rewrote Unwanted Harem.

The problem is, that Unwanted Harem has almost 1000 wicks, and many of them used it for the genre.

Searching for the term "Unwanted Harem Genre" alone brought two pages of results I fixed them), and Unwanted Harem is often used so vaguely, that even if the work happens to use the Unwanted Harem reaction, it was probably used with the intention of serving as a placeholder for "generic harem plot".

Should we change every wick that doesn't specify how unwanted the harem is?

I think you're being unnecessarily general with your definition. For example, you put Code Geass on the Harem Genre page. I just don't understand how that works—there's a harem, he doesn't want it, and it is by no means the main thrust of the plot. It's more like a romantic subplot with multiple love interests. But if we go by that definition, ninety percent of all anime would be included.

I think limiting it to only series with the harem as the primary plot would be a good idea. There would be a few gray areas that could be put on both pages with the subversions listed—Rosario To Vampire started off as Harem Genre with a Monster of the Week format, but once Cerebus Syndrome hit the harem took a back seat. There are a few like that, but mostly it should be easy to determine. Like how Star Wars isn't fantasy, despite having knights, princesses, and magic. Eventually Star Wars became popular enough to spawn its own genre of Science Fantasy, but that's beside the point.

edited 15th Apr '11 8:32:41 AM by Discar

Yeah, Code Geass is Unwanted Harem, not Harem Genre

How is it portrayed as unwanted? You say that "he doesn't want it", but how is that aspect emphasized in the story?

The example on the page was only describing how many people are crushing on Lelouch, so I was forced to assume that people just put it there because there was no generic page for harem set-ups back then. If I was wrong, it has to be rewritten.

Otherwise, Unwanted Harem isn't Harem Genre But Less Significant, it is just a specific main character reaction to a harem, so we can't dump there other examples.

If you think that we need yet another page for Harem As A Secondary Element, go ahead and make a subtrope for that, though I don't think that we need it. A work can have multiple genres, even if one of them is less relevant, it's not like we have to choose between them.