The issue with Web-published Manga

There're at least two work pages on this wiki which were originally published in Square Enix's free online anthology (or "magazine" as you like) GanGan Online — Manga.Daily Lives Of High School Boys and Manga.Its Not My Fault Im Not Popular.

I don't object categorizing them as manga for namespacing purposes, as these works resembles more of traditional manga than Webcomic. GanGan Online resembles a traditional print manga anthology in all senses outside of the fact that it is distributed online: editor exists and so it has a higher entrance barrier than webcomics and is less prone to Schedule Slips, and some works on GanGan Online has more continuity than these two. Like traditional manga it would be collected into printed volumes.

But, still, it is distributed online for free and hence would fit into the basic definition of Webcomic.

So:

1. Should we list these web-published manga into the appropriate webcomic lists as well as the manga list?
2. Would Print Bonus—the only trope IIRC applies only to webcomics—apply to these works?

edited 31st May '12 7:05:35 PM by SamCurt

Nevermind. Misread.

edited 31st May '12 9:41:52 PM by Nocturna

Well, web novels are done under Literature/, so it makes sense for web manga to be in Manga/. For question 1, no idea — if they're very similar, sure, but I'm not familiar with them so I can't really answer. 2, that looks like it should be able to apply to these. It's the same principle and all.

It's a really tricky issue, since there are already quite a few online manga and manhwa that are listed under the webcomic namespace (see our Korean Webtoons index for examples of the latter). And then you get into the many webcomics that have Japanese-styled art but aren't classified as manga...

In general, I'd say the typical approach is to prioritize something being online over the art style in classification. It's not always the neatest or tidiest solution, but it works for us so far.

Even, in the case of the two works cited, they would clearly be categorized as manga but for the fact that their publisher released them online? "Their publisher" is the key here, as, IMO, this difference made it more similar to traditional commercial comics/manga than webcomics, as the latter are (at least initially) self-published.

edited 1st Jun '12 3:51:38 PM by SamCurt

What qualifies a work as a manga? Is it the art style? The cultural origin of the artist? The country of the publisher? Or the fact that the author just decided to call it a manga?

I don't claim to think our system is the best system for sorting works, but it's what we've got, and it gets the job done. If you want to change it, fine, but you have to be able to define a clear boundary between the categories. Right now, there is a lot of overlap (there are entire sites devoted to hosting "manga"), so we try to do what we can without allowing the number of namespaces we use to proliferate beyond the point of practicality.