Not a genre : Shonen Genre

I...you...what? Where did you get the idea that we needed to delete Seinen?

That is why people who don't even begin to have an understanding of subjects shouldn't waltz in and give their opinion on things.

There has been a lot of that going around.

@INUH: I know. The point is, different norms. In this age, there's virtually no major market for Young Boy comic books, and you can't compare Manga/Anime to Young Adult Literature.

From what I seen on my library shelve, there are Young Adult books targeted at girls (besides Twilight, but they're mostly romances. But most of the big names in Young Adult Literature are targeted for both genders, since girls usually read "boy's literature" anyways, but not the other way around.

And even though Shonen has a Periphery Demographic in America, it's still marketed to boys in Japan.

See? I doubt Fast Eddie read the pages carefully when he decided to start renaming them. Did he?

edited 11th Jul '11 8:22:27 PM by chihuahua0

The popularity of certain Shōnen manga series would disagree with "no market for young-boy comics"; that argument is both used and enforced by Moral Guardians, who are rather more vocal and infuential in the Western world than they are in Japan.

Wait, when you say "young boy" comics, which numerical age demographic are we talking about?

edited 11th Jul '11 8:32:10 PM by MarqFJA

Yeah, there is no reason at all to delete any of the six demographic categories, as all of them are perfectly valid and widely used. We just need a to come up with a compromise with Eddie on nomenclature that promotes clarity and accuracy.

Question: Whichever option wins, will we be able to apply the same changes to all the Japanese Demographics, or will they each need their own TRS thread?

It would make sense to me to apply the same rule to all of them, for the sake of consistency.

I'm gonna go ahead and restate here what I said in the "inscrutable titles" thread.

You're right, but for the wrong reasons. The page shouldn't be called Shonen Genre because it's a demographic, not a genre.

It's not technically a genre, but it's pretty close to it. It's actually a demographic, yeah, but the shows themselves tend to (not always, but often) fall into a few different genres themselves, with their own common tropes. Either way, the point stands— it doesn't help to add 'demographic' to it for the same reason it doesn't help to add 'genre'— it won't tell you anything you don't already know.

edited 12th Jul '11 11:12:49 AM by Wulf

Yes idly does. Heck, it tells you something most of the English-speaking anime fandom tends to miss: that it's a demographic, not a genre.

And yes, it does have some common conventions; otherwise it wouldn't be worth mentioning. It's still not really a genre.

I think this would all be better off merged into categories.

Pre-teen fiction

Exactly what it says on the tin! Fiction aimed at preteens. In Japan this is called Shonen.

Examples

• Blahah DBZ, Digimon Blah Blah Blah
• Blah Blah Samurai Jack, Blah blah Symbionic Titan Blah

Western Pre-teen fiction

• Bla H
• Blah blah blah
  • blah blah blah blah
    • blah

Japanese Shonen

• bakabakashii!
  • Baka baka bak
    • Daka Baka!
  • Bak bak!

Why? No, seriously, what do we gain by lumping all of that together? Especially since the categories don't line up neatly.

And I still don't see why so many people can't comprehend the difference between a genre and a demographic category. Its not a hard concept!

Japan and America have different standards of what counts as "good for preteens" so I don't know if that would work. You would never see something like Video Girl AI aimed at pre-teen boys in the west. For one thing, it's a romance, which means we automatically assume guys wouldn't be interested. For another thing, it has sex scenes. Lots of talk of sex, actually.

I think Shonen is aimed at males. So it would be preteen male demographic. I still think demographic and genre are two different things.

Deboss, there are Shonen mangas that in the United States would be classified as Adult works. Shonen does NOT neatly light up with American "Juvenile" or "Children" categories. Negima, for example is rated in the US as being for 16+ and is lumped in with Adult Graphic Novels by my local library.

But they are aimed for pre-teen boys in Japan. It's Values Dissonance.

@Cider: -whacks you with the Lumper Hammer (You Can't Combine Those)-

And I see that the Shonen option got erased. Very sneaky of you, Eddie.

edited 12th Jul '11 2:03:44 PM by chihuahua0

Why is it that Wikipedia can use the names people actually use for things, and we're forced to come up with awkward, redundant phrases?

Not the least bit sneaky. It was already established that that term is not acceptable.

We are different from wikipedia in that we name things so that the information is more accessible. They name things to document a fact. They are about precision. We are about concept.

They can title a thing 'epidermis'. We should title it 'skin.'

edited 12th Jul '11 3:11:38 PM by FastEddie

Ok, so what? By not calling them "Shonen", "Seinen", "Shoujo", etc, you would be actively misleading people and calling things that are known, established concepts, with words used ALL OVER the internet and in the actual industries, but something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT, thus making us MORE INSULAR.

Eddie, I really do not understand why you cannot admit this fact.

I thought Eddie's objection to "Shonen" was that we needed another word paired with it to clarify what it is. Was I wrong?

Bright Blue Ink has a point, Eddie. Even though we are not Wikipedia, they don't have to clear it up.

Even after all of this, I don't buy the "we have to clarify it" excuse. It's a blind assumtion.

edited 12th Jul '11 2:45:12 PM by chihuahua0

Making our language the language of anime fans speaking among themselves is insular. Anime fans are very much a subset of the readership of the wiki.

We get complaints about the density of anime jargon on the wiki. It's a problem. One that is easy to solve. Just don't have a bunch of anime jargon all over the place. There isn't another fan grouping that so fiercely insists on their own private language for everything, or that so many storytelling tropes are uniquely from their medium.

Ultimately, it comes down to a judgment call. I think we can reach more people by not asking them to learn a bunch of terms not even rooted in the English language.

The anime community doesn't seem to be able to be self-regulating on this matter, so I'm taking the position that we will have a policy. Terms will have enough information in them to indicate at least the kind of information being referred to.

Sorry if that doesn't match up with the way you enjoy your fandom, but that's what I think is best for the wiki's readership.

It's been said time and again: Shonen, Seinen, Shojo, and other such terms are used by the official anime/manga publishing industry in both Japan and the Western world. They are not anime-manga fanspeak/fan-jargon, they are official terminology. What is hard to understand about this?

edited 12th Jul '11 3:41:06 PM by MarqFJA

Those industries are anime-oriented, unlike most of our readers. The medical industry also has a bunch of words that are 'official' but only used in a medical context.