Split "Harem Genre" from : Harem Genre

Um, TWGOK is kind of an Indecisive Parody of the harem genre. It's definitely based around it.

So was Negima at the start well mostly, the amount of zig zaging that went on it came out like a parody . When the action elements took center stage its been played straight. (I need to read that manga someday)

Harem applied as a Subgenre should have it's place on the page.

edited 16th Apr '11 10:12:58 PM by Raso

Did I ever say Negima wasn't a harem series? It definitely directs the plot. The character interactions are based around it. I can (and have) made a chart on the Negima character relations and Negi is obviously at the center of it surrounded by girls. I've sort of done the same for Index and it just doesn't work like that there. That is why I say Negima does fall under the harem genre and Index does not. There are harems in both, but what the two series do with them is different.

edited 16th Apr '11 10:13:55 PM by Arha

Not really. It is a clear parody, but it wasn't a Harem Genre, as I said. The girls pretty much vanished or ceased to demonstrate interest after their arcs. Replace the capturing with fightings and the plot will still be more or less the same (but much less fun ).

As for Negima, if someone were to start reading now, he might not even classify it as a Harem. While this aspect is still important, it is clearly secondary to the action nowadays.

It wasn't you it was Heatth that said it sorry.

And Harem Genre relationship Love Dodecahedron don't have to go all over the place a decent number of girls have to blatantly go to one person in a larger way than a canon Launcher of a Thousand Ships and the series must play off of it in some way and not make it just a one time thing.

Edit: Having a Harem Babysitter is also a huge plus which Index has. As well as 10000 girls after him.

edited 16th Apr '11 10:40:31 PM by Raso

Maybe we should do a soft split to three subsections: Normal harem genre (Love Hina, The Familiar Of Zero), works that reference and use tropes from the genre without actually being part of it (Code Geass, To Aru Majutsu No Index), and flat-out subversions and deconstructions (School Days, The World God Only Knows, Mahou Sensei Negima).

Again, the second type could pretty much just link to Unwanted Harem most of the time.

edited 16th Apr '11 10:48:54 PM by Discar

See, that's a suggestion I can support. For the second type I would prefer it to have its own page, however. Subversions, playing with and deconstructions seem like a perfectly valid soft split category.

If To Aru Majutsu No Index is not a Harem Series, then what is it? A Sci-Fi? Or a Fantasy?

If you really want to choose only one genre, you would have to count the number of magical and scientific characters, and demote it from one of these genres as only "a Sci-fi with minor magic-related themes", or an "Urban fantasy with minor scientific themes"

But if it can be both, why can't Harem Genre be a third?

Zero No Tsukaima is also a very straight fantasy series. How is that not only a Fantasy story with harem elements?

What makes something objectively part of the genre instead of just having elements of it? Only how people consider it a part of the genre. It's ann arbitary grouping, mostly based on how the showw "feels like".

With Shoujo, there was a clear objective line: was the manga published in a self-described shoujo magazine? If yes, it is shoujo. If not, it isn't.

But if we don't have that objective line, we can't draw a line on the page either. Some of us believe that Index is in the Harem Genre, others don't. Vice versa about Elfen Lied and Fate Stay Night.

A soft split would be less annoying than a hard split, but still prone to arguments. It should be enough to mention these in the description texts, like "Some plotlines in Code Geass work like this", or "Parodied in Kami Nomi", etc.

edited 17th Apr '11 12:09:52 AM by EternalSeptember

The Familiar Of Zero probably wasn't the best example, but I stand by it. How do most people describe it? "Guy gets trapped in fantasy world with a tsundere and other girls." That sounds like a good example of what you were aiming for with Harem Genre, a simple and obvious mix of both fantasy and harem.

Index is a genre-buster, so it's a bit hard to place. I'd go with Science Fantasy, though. I mean, the entire point is magic vs science. And again, what's the first thing people say about it: "Guy who can nullify supernatural powers gets trapped in a war between magicians and espers."

Yes, there is a bit of subjectivity to this, as this very thread is making clear. But it seems easier to put the obvious straight examples and the obvious subversions/deconstructions away from the rest.

If someone wants to list Code Geass under Harem Genre, they need to mention specific episodes that fit into the genre, since the series as a whole does not.

S1 of the series has this in almost every school scene even more so if it's a Student Council scene. I think I agree with softsplit of main genre and sub genre though. (as well as subversion and so on in another section.)

Word of God can probably cover a lot of the distinction between Harem Genre and just using Harem Genre Tropes. But if we need criteria, I can think of a few. The Harem Genre is when:

• There is an actual "harem," a group of people that are all after one person.
• The one person is a main character, and at least some of people in the harem are main characters.
• The harem is actually important to the plot of the show. That sounds a bit subjective, but it's not in the way we define the word. It just means it has some function in the plot, and isn't overshaddowed by another more applicable genre.

Now, I'm sure more avid watchers may be able to come up with more, but I'm pretty sure those are some very basic criteria. And I'd still say Word of God trumps that, but that's your call.

There are multiple problems with the third point:

First of all, harem elements are rarely "important to the plot" in a serious sense, like influencing any event's outcome, most of them are just there for fanservice. Even in very blatant Harem Series, where there is no other obvious genre, or that it is there just as an Excuse Plot for the harem, you could still remove the harem, while leaving the plot itself intact.

Sort of like, how you could remove the comedy from an action-comedy, a slice of life-comedy, and a sci-fi-comedy, and still have an action, a slice-of-life, and a sci-fi story. That wouln't really prove that they weren't comedy in the first place.

Second, "it isn't overshadowed by another more applicable genre" shouldn't normally be the criteria for the recognition any genre.

Most works have multiple genres, and that's normal. Our own page on Genres notes that: "many series do straddle multiple genres".

Let's just look at our earlier examples: We could theoretically solve the problem of Index, by, claiming that, as Discar said, it's a Science Fantasy, with harem elements, because the science fantasy part is the most important and the easiest to notice.

But wouldn't the same logic mean that conversely, Zero No Tsukaima, where the harem is the first thing that people notice, is not a fantasy?

(We are taking about a show with a Summon Everyman Hero to Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Medieval European Fantasy, with Magic Wands, Elemental Magic, Dragons, and Elves.)

I could continue with many other examples, but I think it's clear that there are many works where the "less importatnt" genre is still very clearly there.

Honestly, if I wouldn't know you people better, I would feel that you are trying to build up a Harem Ghetto, in the same way as the Sci Fi Ghetto people desperately grab any opportunity to call something "a Drama/romance/horror/comedy/historical story with sci-fi elements", on the basis that as long as it's not just about spaceships shooting lasers from the beginning to the end, it is "more than just sci-fi"

edited 19th Apr '11 9:23:17 AM by EternalSeptember

Well, it is worth pointing out that the Harem Genre is technically a subgenre, and those tend to be much more particular about what a story needs to have to qualify.

For example, to make a Slasher Movie you've gotta have a Serial Killer hunting down victims one by one. If the killer murders one person at the beginning, then spends the rest of the movie playing Cat And Mouse with the Final Girl, then it's probably not a real Slasher Movie since it takes its focus off of the sequential killings, even if it shares many other elements with the subgenre.

EDIT: Okay, how is Cat And Mouse not a trope, or at least a redirect?

edited 19th Apr '11 9:02:38 AM by RavenWilder

Well its a Sub-Genre in most cases some though it can be a full on genre. Shows like Ai Yori Aoshi (in of itself an almost complete deconstruction as the winner wins before the second girl is ever introduced) is solidly there, Nice Boat and Ai Kora as well.

Then there are those that take equal or greater footing depending on who is watching such as To Love Ru or Negima where its hard to tell what is what and when.

edited 19th Apr '11 9:24:00 AM by Raso

Eh, I am not sure if it can be a full genre. I can't think in an example which is not primarily a romance, a comedy, or both.

I don't think that Sub-Genre should be the opposite of "full genre", technically almost all of our genres as we know them are subgenres of something.

Even Sci-Fi is a subgenre of Speculative Fiction, and even some things that we classify as mediums, (like Anime, Fanfic, or Webcomics), are sometimes considered genres, with all of their genres as subgenres.

I'm saying, that being "technically a subgenre" doesn't have much effect on what the genre can or cannot be.

Of course. Just pointing I don't think it is possible a Harem exist on it own. That is why it is a sub genre. It needs to be a major genre as well. It doesn't really effect this discussion, yeah.

(PS: Anime and Fanfiction is clearly not mediums. We just classify that way for sake of simplicity. They are not genre, or even subgenre either. Just something else. Webcomic is a medium, tough. Or maybe a submedium. Not genre, again.)

edited 19th Apr '11 12:56:40 PM by Heatth

My point was simply that subgenres tend to have much stricter criteria than full genres.

Bump.

So what's the final word? The soft split to Normal/Referenced/Subversions and Deconstructions? I'd be happy to do that myself if that's the decision.

Bump. Again.

I'm willing to do the rework myself, I just don't want to if there's no consensus. Maybe we should do a crowner.

I stick to what I said, the disagreements in this thread prove that even a soft split between "full Harem Genre" and "partial Harem Elements" would be, even if unintentionally, treated as a judgemental, ghetto-building choice between "just a Harem Anime", and "Much more than a Harem Anime, it also has plot".

edited 9th Jun '11 1:55:06 PM by EternalSeptember

Saying like that you make seem as "just a Harem Show" is a bad thing. And it has nothing to do with "having plot" either. Love Hina has a plot but it is undoubtedly Harem Genre. I would say that "primary" a Harem Genre has much more to do with whether the "harem dynamics" are the central part of the action or not.

However, I guess you are right people will still see it as "Harem Show I like" and "Harem Genre I don't like", I guess. But leaving the page as it is will still lump shows like Code Geass and Suzumiya Haruhi with Ranma One Half and Ichigo One Hundred Percent.

edited 9th Jun '11 2:50:53 PM by Heatth

Ordinary trope pages are also lumping exaggerated, subtle, subverted, comical, tragical, Gender-Inverted, and deconstructed examples.

Genres are just big supertropes.

Like with anything else, their descriptions are there, for marking the differences. After a certain point, they are more practical than too much categorizing, that just causes more problems than it solves.

edited 9th Jun '11 3:56:00 PM by EternalSeptember

The difference is this is not a trope, but a collection of tropes. If someone ask me to recommend a good Harem Show, I wouldn't recommend most of the shows in this page, as the "harem" there is many times secondary at best (many reach as low as "tertiary"). Having a better organization would help people who come to this page looking for good examples of Harem Show, and not the broad "shows that use Harem Genre elements".

I am inclined to believe lumping them is the lesser of the evils, though. It would avoid the pointless narrow-minded fightings you described. Personally I would preffer a soft-split over a hard-split, but I guess even that would cause pointless bickering.