Manhua/ and Manhwa/ namespaces

The same is true with Light Novels, as they are arguably even more well-known than Manhua and Mahwa, yet the LightNovel/ namespace got deprecated and merged with Literature/ anyway

Edited by AudioSpeaks2 on Jan 9th 2024 at 10:00:16 PM

Manga is arguably seperate enough due to close ties to anime and that they tend to be read from right to left rather than left to right and as Uchuu Flamenco pointed out is known already as a seperate thing in the anglosphere

Manhua and manhwa do as well as they pointed out

And while so did light novels which got merged anyhow, I feel like they're seperate enough by what I said here while light novels, are novels which would be literature

I'm not sure how well known or established they are IRL is an argument, unless I misunderstand what Namespace is for, which IMHO is for functional differences between works and not how they are actually called. People normally don't even see them. We're not touching indexes or media categories, or classification yet, they're fine.

Edited by Amonimus on Jan 9th 2024 at 5:30:29 PM

Agreed, they're more about functionally what these are. Manhua and Manhwa are essentially just comics from China and Korea. If Filipino, Thai, and Singaporean comics get to go under Comic Book/ namespace, I don't see why Chinese and Korean comics shouldn't be able to use that namespace too. We can still keep the names as indexes for navigation and definition purposes of course.

Edited by AudioSpeaks2 on Jan 9th 2024 at 10:58:12 PM

that they tend to be read from right to left rather than left to right

That's not an argument for manga, that's an argument for the Japanese language. By that logic we should put Japanese literature in its own namespace.

But yeah. If this was done at the beginning, it would be one thing. If we were doing it to all graphic works, it would be one thing. But going and actively cutting these namespaces and leaving Manga/ really reemphasizes how special and super grandfathered Manga/ is which I don't care for. And creates a ton of work in that process.

I agree with that it's arbitrary to divide comics by their country of origin, but the thing is, we're going to continue to do that anyway. No one is actually suggesting we cut the Manga/ namespace so it just seems off to cut some for the sake of eliminating namespaces that are just "one medium from a particular language" while leaving one conspicuously behind, especially when that is the one that has historically caused problems and disagreements.

It's not leveling the playing field for all these countries' works, it's elevating Manga further.

Edited by Larkmarn on Jan 9th 2024 at 11:17:11 AM

"We should have more random exceptions because we have an existing and troublesome exception" isn't improving the situation, it's actively worsening it. By that logic, we shouldn't just reverse the LN/literature combination, we should actively try to generate as many namespaces as possible just because.

Seriously, we shouldn't avoid making steps towards namespace consistency because "it makes something look special".

I mean, this is not the only weird namespace split. Anime is different from Western Animation which is different from plain old Animation, which is further split from Web Animation. Fanfic is split from literature, but no other fanwork is kept segregated. Web Comic is separate from Comic Strip which is separate from Comic Book which is separated from, you guessed it, Manga, Manhwa and Manhua.

My point is, the namespaces have always been kinda silly and Chaotic because when you break it down, so many mediums are just split into subcategories. And at least Manhwa and Manhua have precedent in the form of Manga, unlike something like Light Novel which had no logic besides "book in Japan".

And again we're not making a new namespace. So it's a weird argument to say that keeping these is allowing more arbitrary namespace splits. It literally hasn't happened anyway.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 9th 2024 at 11:27:32 AM

The Comic Book/Web Comic/Comic Strip split is the one that feels like it makes the absolute biggest pain of getting rid of the manga split (putting aside anyone ever trying to change folderisation).

Since we're already classifying Chinese and Korean works appropriately under the current weird classifications, they really are just the same as "literature but Japanese". Even more so, in some regards, since that was itself a subtype.

Also to the argument that it'll make Manga/ stand out even more, to me "standing out" either not measurable, or good for further emphasis.

Why would it be good to further emphasize Manga? It too is just "medium in Japan", but if it exists I don't see why the other two can't remain. As keeps being pointed out, Anime and Manga are actually way more problematic as namespaces since we don't entirely know how they should be defined. The only issue caused by Manhua and Manhwa is debate over where to categorize them, which is much less of a big deal.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 9th 2024 at 11:55:41 AM

I mean, if you want to go through every single manga namespace and double check which one it should be, and answer the question of where yonkoma should be (or if that is itself focused on publishing location), I'm not necessarily against it. It'd just be a pain to do.

I mean, the fact that it's a pain is kind of the point (though idk what you mean by "Manga namespaces"). Manga and Anime have way more complicated issues, but nobody wants to chop them. It just doesn't feel helpful to make them even more pointlessly distinct by getting rid of similar but less complicated namespaces.

Entries. Dunno why I said namespaces.

Why not get rid of things we can get rid of without a huge cleanup and cataloguing project? Like, these namespaces aren't actually adding anything or simplifying any situation, it's just a distinction for distinction's sake.

And if enough people want to tackle the hard case, great.

(Mmm, as for anime, I guess the problem there is that you'd also want to simultaneously remove western animation as a similarly arbitrary namespace, which would be long)

Edited by RainehDaze on Jan 9th 2024 at 5:08:31 PM

I mean, as a counterpoint, why change things that aren't actually broken? The other defunct namespaces didn't even have precedent, so it made sense to merge them. But you cannot cut Manhwa and Manhua without implying something about Manga, either that it somehow "deserves" to be separate or that we need to be merging it too. It's a can of worms.

"We should be merging it but need some capacity for a project of this scope first" would be my assumption. Not 'this is more special because we didn't deal with it at the same time as the easy ones'.

"Manga, either that it somehow deserves to be separate or that we need to be merging it too"

It best to be merged too and the main reason we can't do that is because it's too large.

I guess my issue is... we know we'll never actually merge Manga (and Anime, presumably) into their broader categories, just as we'll never merge Webcomic and Web Animation or Western Animation into it all either. There are always going to be these confusing splits, and Anime and Manga are at the top of things that we just can't undo at this point, unless we want every other effort to be on hold forever.

So this doesn't feel like some first step to confronting a bigger issue. It just compounds on it by making "medium in Japan" remain a core namespace while removing things that have just as much reason to exist. Because Manga isn't going away. It will only be reinforced as unique if we remove Manhua and Manhwa.

This feels like the wrong choice to not reinforce something as unique though, because we're signalling that we'll keep random namespaces around even when we CAN do something, because there's one we don't have the tools for. Like, if we change this, then that makes it easier to argue for addressing the other odd cases when we don't have to deal with all the crosswicking by hand.

Oh, did I miss something? We won't have to do crosswicking for this? Is there a tool that will mass convert the Manhua/ to Comic Book? I genuinely cannot figure out a way to ask this without sounding snide.

But that's good to know. And hearing it makes me kinda feel more certain that the move still isn't worth it. Before, I was assuming that it was a pretty big undertaking, so now I'm looking at it without taking into account the work. And I still think it's... "wrong" sounds strong, but still kinda wrong.

At the end of the day, we're committed to maintaining double standards for these namespaces. The question is whether we want to have several standards for the works of multiple countries, or two standards with one "country" raised significantly to the rest, signaling... something. To me, there's a difference between "there are several namespaces that are arguably redundant" to "we lumped everything together except for Japan because it's unique." And even then, we can't decide what counts as Manga/ or not thanks to OEL Manga which I've been unable to get a straight answer on our policy on that for more than half a decade apparently.

Ironically, I would probably be more willing to go with "lumping manhua into the Manga/ namespace" than Comic Book/. They're literally the characters, written the same way, and rather than "Japan vs. The World" it would be "漫畫 vs. Other comic books" which... feels a bit more reasonable.

Edited by Larkmarn on Jan 9th 2024 at 1:20:33 PM

I think they're referring to the possible crosswicking bot coming out, but we don't even know if that's coming any time soon and it shouldn't color our perception of these projects.

Re-crosswicking wasn't brought up before, but if it happens, there's a lot less work than many TRS moves.

I'm not referring to manga pages as the post I'm replying to doesn't.

Edited by Amonimus on Jan 9th 2024 at 10:06:25 PM

Putting manhua into manga just feels like asking for trouble by using a Japanese label for works from countries with less than ideal relations...

If one comes out, or if that db 2.0 thing ever comes out.

Or if there's ever some much more basic find-and-replace tool rather than someone needing to manually open up 1000 crosswicks to replace Manga/BlahBlah with ComicBook/BlahBlah. Though that'd be more a DB operation...

I mean, it's the number of manga x number of manga crosswicks. I think that might be one of the larger things ever done.

(Not the number of pages with manga on it, then we get the scunthorpe problem)

Edited by RainehDaze on Jan 9th 2024 at 6:19:30 PM

Are we still talking about this lol

If you want a compelling difference besides "too big of a pain in the ass" to justify keeping Manga separate, there's the fact that traditionally published manga, whether intended for kids or for adults (even a lot of original hentai), are usually first serialized in anthology magazines like Shonen Jump, rather than published as individually bound issues like Western comics, and only get gathered into tankoubon volumes later. The only similar Western comic anthology I'm aware of is Heavy Metal. Though even that's changing with several Manga publishers starting online services: The Geek Ex-Hitman started on Shonen Ace Plus. It's a small distinction but it does exist.

Now, I don’t know how Manhua etc. are traditionally distributed in country of origin, so if anybody has that information, by all means.

Edited by StarSword on Jan 9th 2024 at 6:19:13 AM

It's only being brought up in relation to Manhua and Manhwa, both of which are in a weird gray area where questioning them sort of requires us to question Manga as well. Because they're essentially the same thing with different cultural origins but can't be merged because that would be more offensive than keeping them split, so it becomes a debate on whether these two become part of Comic Book... while Manga continues to be separate. So it's sort of bringing up the Manga debate by proxy since the only difference Manga has here is that it's larger and more established.

Don't know if this matters, but for Complete Monster, comic books and comic strips are at Comic Books, while Webcomics have their own page.

Animated series is at other media, but animated films (whether western, anime, or other) are all at Animated Films.

I'm honestly unsure of what to do with Manhua/Manhwa, but I wanna be consistent with the rest of the site. I remember light novels were at anime and manga for complete monster until they got moved to lit.

Edited by ACW on Jan 9th 2024 at 4:26:52 AM