Clean-up on aisle:: Anime Character Types

Anime Character Types is listed as "Tropes that show up primarily in anime, manga and other Eastern pop-culture works. Some of them, if not a large portion, orgininated in early American TV."

I see a couple of problems with the article, the first being that several of the character tropes listed here show a great deal of usage in western works according to their example pages. Adult Child, Ascended Fanboy, and Chivalrous Pervert are just a few examples. This is in contrast to some of our other "Stock Character" indexes like Stock British Characters, which is limited strictly to character types that have obvious British influences.

The second issue is that the title implies a limitation to the specific sub-medium of Anime, when characters influenced by Eastern culture could show up in any number of mediums. While usage statistics are generally less relevant to indexes, I hold that the title is driving people to list "Characters that often appear in Anime" regardless of any unique cultural ties, which would constitute misuse in each instance.

My recommendation is that we clean up the index so that it only lists character tropes that have primarily Asian cultural ties, and rename it to something more accurate along the lines of Stock Asian Characters. If consensus is to do so, I will open a Special Efforts thread to take care of the cleanup once we have a name decided.

This strikes me as something that a fan got over zealous and didn't look at other similar pages before making a page with.

I think Stock Anime Characters would work best, I think we were going to set up an entire horde of them. We planned to use Anime (in place of Hollywood) since things like Chinese Girl needed something to show that it was a stock Japanese character, but tacking on either Japanese or Asian didn't provide sufficient clarity.

That very well could be.

If it's something that's not medium specific, though, I would prefer not to specify Anime in the title.

It's the term people have consistently decided on like Anime Chinese Girl.

edited 15th Jul '11 10:12:13 AM by Raso

And that's fine for the trope, as the vast majority of the examples are either anime or anime-stylized video games.

This, however, is an index of tropes that is supposed to cover all "Eastern" character types. Limiting the title of the index to Anime will only invite further misuse.

I think we should change this to Eastern Character Types. It indicates the idea better. Likewise, Anime Settings should probably be Eastern Settings and focus more on setting tropes common in media set in Japan and China rather than listing Cool Starship.

That would work for me, on both counts.

I would prefer to keep the naming theme consistent with Stock Characters and Stock British Characters, but that's something that can be decided in an alt titles crowner.

edited 15th Jul '11 10:18:23 AM by Meeble

Not a fan of "eastern" one bit there are far too many differences and this is strictly Japanese Animesqe common types.. China, Korea, Japan are all very different (and all hate each other). And use different things unless directly inspired by anime, manga and such which is this index.

Stock Anime Character Types works very well.

edited 15th Jul '11 10:47:13 AM by Raso

@Raso: The issue with that is that the article as described covers all eastern cultural character types. So the name should reflect that.

Even if it was just Japanese, I would still object to having Anime in the title for the reasons I described above.

Korean Manwa I can see somewhat but even that gets lumped together with Anime and those even get animes (like Freezing) but not China that is a completely different everything not a damn thing in common.

And we would need a separate index those anime related (anime, Manga, Visual Novel, Animesqe character type Video Games (not all are like that), Anime inspired western works and Manwa) specific ones IE the entire page.

edited 15th Jul '11 11:03:56 AM by Raso

I don't see why we would need distinct indexes for different mediums, when the other Stock Character tropes don't.

If there were enough entries that we were running into page size issues, that would make sense. But we're not even close to that point as it stands currently, and at least some of what's currently on the index will be getting removed.

There's no need to distinguish by medium when most of the valid tropes are based on cultural concepts.

We're using "Anime" as a shorthand for "Japanese Media in General"

These are really Anime Manga Visua Novel And Japanese Produced Video Games Stock Characters

All of which can easily be covered by Japanese Character Types or Eastern Character Types, which would further cover all of the other media that comes out of Japan.

edited 15th Jul '11 11:26:36 AM by Meeble

Except it doesn't necessarily follow for all the rest of the media coming out of Japan. It might, but I'm well and truly unfamiliar with Japanese live action and would rather not go leaping to conclusions about how it handles these stock characters.

And we definitely should not use "Eastern", thats very, very misleading.

That's what this is though anime related (insert long list here include some live action like Toku ) character types. To broaden to include things completely different would make a freaken mess of the trope.

Cultures and tropes are different too, Does China use Anime Chinese Girl? No Tsundere no. Osanawhatever? No. Again this index is character types used all the time in anime related works. (they use them in excess or exclusively.)

Eastern Character Types or such is so misleading it could easily mean the way the west deals with stuff like Yellow Face and crap.

edited 15th Jul '11 11:38:37 AM by Raso

What doesn't follow for all of the rest of the media?

I'm not saying that every trope on the list would apply to all Japanese media, but that there are enough general cultural tropes that can apply to any media to warrant a change of title from "Anime", which excludes those media.

Things like The Chikan, Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy, Ninja, Elegant Gothic Lolita, Miko, and Rōnin (among others) can and do appear in non anime/manga based media. The reason for this is that they are derived from Japanese or Asian culture and then spread to Anime and Manga, not the other way around.

edit:

No. They show up in Anime because Anime is part of Japanese culture. Anime didn't invent Chikan, Samurai, Ninja, or numerous other cultural tropes. They use those tropes as storytelling tools, just as any other media can.

edited 15th Jul '11 11:45:44 AM by Meeble

Again Japanese concepts like that get lumped in with an "anime" because that's our stock term for it. As well as they apply in anime inspired works such as Korean manwa. You could make a broader super index for all the east but it would have like two tropes, this really needs to stay Japanese (and some Korean works) specific the rest are just too different.

Since we are going to be segregating the wiki soon this index is going to be very much needed like that.

edited 15th Jul '11 12:03:14 PM by Raso

No, we don't. The Anime article does not mention any lumping of other media under the Anime term, and Japanese Live Action TV, Films, Literature, Music, and other media are not listed under the "Anime And Manga" folders in example pages.

Exactly two of the tropes listed on Anime Character Types have "Anime" in the title. I can't speak to why those titles were set up that way, as I wasn't involved in those decisions.

Regardless, the "segregation of the wiki" has absolutely no bearing on whether we refer to these tropes as Anime Character Types or (for example) Japanese Character Types. The only difference between those titles is that the first one is factually incorrect, while the second one is not.

edited 15th Jul '11 12:08:21 PM by Meeble

Ok that's a name I could get behind this index needs to stay Japanese (and some Korean works that borrow from like half the index.) specific, everyone else in east Asia is far too different.

Japanese Character Types works well.

I remember at last one thread arguing that we use 'anime' as short hand for 'Japanese meida'. Particularly comparing to how we use 'Hollywood' as a short for 'American media'.

PS:Also, I think the description "Tropes that show up primarily in anime, manga..." is fundamentally wrong. Instead of 'primarily', it should be 'commonly'. Many of these tropes are also common elsewhere, but, since they are frequent in Japanese media, it is listed here.

edited 15th Jul '11 1:23:30 PM by Heatth

But primarily would mean we couldn't list Ninja.

I would like to stay away from "commonly", as that would basically give an in for all of the incorrect trope listings that are there currently.

Perhaps we should modify the description to somehow indicate that these are tropes that have arisen from Japanese cultural influence?

No it probably needs ti be Majority, in excess or exclusively.

Well, I'd say that it would work best as something that either is A)used exclusively by Japanese works or B) originated there. Something used by more than one group is just a Stock Character (like the Big Eater).