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DonGato
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Post by DonGato »

Well, Japanese people had really weird ideas of what Christian religion and their elements are. Angels are not the only think changed. but the most abused. :P
Elias
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Post by Elias »

Skywalka wrote:In AMG it is not really clear whether the sisters really are angels
The sisters in AMG were goddesses (at least they are called this way), but in manga every goddess (and sometime others) has her own personal angel (excluding Skuld, who were too young for this until volume 27). I really have to check AMG anime for this, are there no angels, what a shame ...
Elberet
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Post by Elberet »

As for Aa! Megami Sama, I'd actually suggest categorizing it as Fantasy / Romance. Then again, there just might be a need for a new genre to cover this special kind of fantasy that takes place in the modern age but is still not science-fiction - such as 3x3 Eyes, AMG, but also Serial Experiments Lain and Paranoia Agent. Maybe "Mystic"?
SilverWordz
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Post by SilverWordz »

I'm not going to get too involved with this discussion because I really don't have too much to say on it and actually I'm here because of genres I think are missing.

I agree there should be some genres removed. Like dementia and cars, and is it really needed to have romance and love story? Its a bit over kill.

One complaint that I do have with the genre system is the lack of shounen-ai and shoujo-ai as genres (or even as a sub genre to romance if you want to go the subgenre route). If a series has a touch of shounen-ai in it, people automatically add the genre yaoi, which is silly in my opinion. And well, shoujo-ai and yuri are completely ignored. Seems there's a great need to be warned if somethings going on between two guys, but hell, if its two girls no one needs to know.

Yaoi and yuri are labels for items with more graphical content, meaning hentai. Shounen-ai, and shoujo-ai are merely romances between the same sex without any hentai content.

Series like Gravitation, Yami no Matsuei, and Kyou Kara Maou are all currently labeled incorrectly as yaoi because of this. (On a side note I don't even think Yami no Matsuei fits as shounen-ai either but something about lots of bishounen being friendly with each other makes some of you men automatically say "OMG!!! They're yaoi!!11")

It should be one of two ways:

One method having a genre for each:
Shoujo-ai
Shounen-ai
Yaoi
Yuri

Or the subgenre method having:
Genre- Romance
Subgenres to Romance - Shoujo-ai, Shounen-ai
Genre- Hentai
Subgenres to Hentai - Yaoi, Yuri


Anyway, just a little nitpick from me after seeing yet another series being incorrectly labeled as yaoi again today.
analogued
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Post by analogued »

I have read the thread and I'd like to add my oppinion on this, but first...

DISCLAIMER!! What follows is just my oppinion which may be somewhat different from the conclusions towards which this thread was heading. I know that but I thought someone might still find this interesting. However, if you don't agree then please don't jump at me like hungry wolves :D

I see that the general consensus is that there are too many genres and that the number should be reduced. I disagree. I think there should be more... Let me explain.

- First of all you have the very broad genres: shoujo, shounen, hentai*. If it's one of this then it can't be the other. You won't see an anime that's both shoujo and shounen. Also, each anime can be put into one of these genres. However, what's really missing is seinen .. that's also a very broad genre that should definately be among the genres in AniDB. Currently, seinen titles are classified as shounen, but that's obviously incorrect.

- Then you have the broad genres: action, adventure, comedy, drama, scifi, ecchi and romance/love story (yes, there should only be one of these). Well, maybe you can exclude ecchi from that list. All the animes can be put into one or more of these categories.

The above two categories are essential... All the animes can be classified with just the above two, however it wouldn't tell you anything about those animes... That's why you have the following:

- The specific genres. This is where I think the problem is. There are some animes that can't be put into any of these specific genres, and if you can't do that then you're left with only the generic genres for that anime, which is not very descriptive. Let me give you a few examples as it is more suggestive (NOTE: I have not seen some of the following animes):
  • Legend of Galactic Heroes - Action, Drama, SciFi, Space... that doesn't say very much, does it? If it weren't for that Drama in there then it would be very generic. However if you add War in there somewhere you get a whole different picture.
  • Patlabor - Mecha, SciFi ... How many Mecha, SciFi animes are there? TONS! That says absolutely nothing. If you add Police however...
  • Another genre which I think we start to see more often is Harem. You know the type: girls vying for the attention of a single boy, who most of the time is very indecisive, doesn't know what to do or is not interested. I'm sure that description isn't necessary however... harem says it all (I took this from some forums, I don't remember which ones exactly). There are a lot of animes that would fit into such a genre perfectly, I'm sure you all agree.
There may be other genres but I can't think of any others right now.


So, to summarize:

The current mix of genres is pretty good. The only genre which I think should be removed is Love Story (Romance is maybe a little more generic but it's basically the same thing). Also I think the whole shoujo - shoujo-ai - shounen-ai is a bit too much... three genres for basically the same thing: shoujo.

Also, we should really consider adding a few more specific genres.. There are some very popular genres that are missing from AniDB and also, currently, some animes can only be classified using generic genres because the appropiate specific genres are missing. The genres I propose are: seinen (this is a very generic genre that should definately be added), war (or military.. however, they don't have the exact same meaning; war is better I think), police and harem.

I'm also in favour of adding an age rating. However the kids genre (maybe it should be renamed to Young Audience) should be kept, the reason being that there are some All Ages animes that are not for kids. Sure they don't have any violence or other elements that can't be viewed by kids, but their story, characters or some other things are too complex for kids to fully understand. Also, there may also be adults that might want to avoid kiddy animes: Doraemon anyone? :)

DISCLAIMER!! As I said above, this is only my opinion.

* You can also include yuri and yaoi in this category. Granted they can be considered as subgenres of hentai, but I thought that yaoi and yuri already included the hentai part and not the other way around. Anyway this is really not that important for me.
DonGato
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Post by DonGato »

I understand your point but I think for the level of clarification you want it's better to read the reviews instead.
Ultima
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Post by Ultima »

SilverWordz wrote:I'm not going to get too involved with this discussion because I really don't have too much to say on it and actually I'm here because of genres I think are missing.

I agree there should be some genres removed. Like dementia and cars, and is it really needed to have romance and love story? Its a bit over kill.

One complaint that I do have with the genre system is the lack of shounen-ai and shoujo-ai as genres (or even as a sub genre to romance if you want to go the subgenre route). If a series has a touch of shounen-ai in it, people automatically add the genre yaoi, which is silly in my opinion. And well, shoujo-ai and yuri are completely ignored. Seems there's a great need to be warned if somethings going on between two guys, but hell, if its two girls no one needs to know.

Yaoi and yuri are labels for items with more graphical content, meaning hentai. Shounen-ai, and shoujo-ai are merely romances between the same sex without any hentai content.

Series like Gravitation, Yami no Matsuei, and Kyou Kara Maou are all currently labeled incorrectly as yaoi because of this. (On a side note I don't even think Yami no Matsuei fits as shounen-ai either but something about lots of bishounen being friendly with each other makes some of you men automatically say "OMG!!! They're yaoi!!11")

It should be one of two ways:

One method having a genre for each:
Shoujo-ai
Shounen-ai
Yaoi
Yuri

Or the subgenre method having:
Genre- Romance
Subgenres to Romance - Shoujo-ai, Shounen-ai
Genre- Hentai
Subgenres to Hentai - Yaoi, Yuri


Anyway, just a little nitpick from me after seeing yet another series being incorrectly labeled as yaoi again today.
I totally agree, I've been poked to remove the yaoi genre too much lately. -_-;;
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Post by Gambit »

Reading some of the latter posts (and paying more attention to analogued and Silver), I`ve also come with my opinion (yeah, as if there weren`t enough people with an opinion here already :P )

Shounen-Ai & Shounen-Ai
Although not that often used in anime, there are some specific series which do need such a genre. Maria-sama and Gravitation are probably the most known series which use these genres.
ps: analogued - shoujo-ai is not only shoujo ... it can also be working for more shounen-based titles.

Seinen
How much I think you`re right, analogued, I doubt that there are many people in AniDB who can distinguish the difference between Shounen and Seinen. So I`d say not to use it. Not to mention that about everyone kind of knows what Shounen and Shoujo is, but few know what Seinen is. And if you`re using seinen (adult men), then what about the female counterpart (adult women)? Which you probably didn`t even know it existed ;)

Kodomo
Instead of the Kids-genre, I think the Japanese genre Kodomo could be used. Kodomo is known as a genre for the kids themselves, including Pokemon, Doreamon, but also My neighbour Totoro. That should give a better difference in seperating 'normal' anime from 'kiddy' anime.

Romance/Love Story
Personally I`ve never really seen the use of Love Story since I believe that romance is already the parent of Love Story. And I think that everyone can find themselves in thinking romance when hearing Love story and the other way around as well. So I vote for dropping Love Story

Harem
For some reason I think this subgenre might be useful. I`ve seen a bunch of people who want only this kind of genre and another bunch of people who really dislike this kind of genre. But it`s starting to become more or less a genre on itself already. While Love Hina and Tenchi were more or less unique titles, with Happy Lesson and in a bit less extremeness, Maburaho and more of such series, it kind of became an actual subgenre. So I vote for putting this one in.

War/Military/Police
I actually vote against that one. Usually this is already explicitly explained in the description of the anime itself. No use making it an whole entire genre. Besides, Police would be overused ... You`re under arrest, even Rurouni Kenshin tv would probably get the police-genre because there`s so much police involvement in there at times. The same would go for War/Military, which would be added to anime like Full Metal Panic! and Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu!, which is - imho - also not the right thing to do.
So I think it`s better to leave these ones alone. The difference with Harem, which I do think fits? There isn`t much chance to interpret 'Harem' differently than 1 guy with a lot of girls who`re usually all in love with him :P

Yaoi & Yuri
Agreed on adding these. After all, when you add yaoi, it`s normal to also have Yuri. Although I do wonder how much they`re used ... so far I only know of 1 Yaoi hentai, because nwa pointed it out to me -_-;

More useless genres
After taking a look at the genre-list, I`d like to name a few more useless ones.
Music is the first one. Although it`s true that some series focus completely on a music theme, I don`t think it`s big enough to actually dedicate a genre to it.
Cars Exactly how many 'car'-anime do we have? Some race series and Initial D, which is by far the most known in the genre. Ditch it, since there won`t be that many series out there which focus on cars. It`s a theme, not a genre after all.
School I`m not completely sure about this one, but why the hell do we have a school-genre? 60% (if not more, perhaps even 80%) of all titles are about maincharacters in the age of 15-16 year, which usually means that they`re either going to school or are involved with people going to school. I think because of that this genre is considered pretty useless.
Mystery vs Detective - Also here I believe that there is not so much difference between these genres. Detective-series are always about some mystery (case) they have to solve. Although Mystery itself is not always about Dectives, I think the Detective-genre can be removed since Mystery should be able to cover all of it. And come on ... 8 titles in the Detective-genre? Where 3 of them (Gunsmith Cats, test anime, YUA movie) don`t even involve any detectives - they`re either police officers or private investigators; those are no detectives. Which leaves 5 titles in what, 2000+ anime? That`s a bit useless to me.
Game - Also feels a bit odd here. Who cares if a series is based on a game? If you`re going to include this, you should also include an option whether an anime is based on a manga. So imo we don`t need a way to show the origin of a title. Or are we talking about games in anime? In that case, it would mostly be a subgenre of sports (Tennis, Go, Soccer, Chess, etc) which is already broad enough. You could think of Dragon Drive and Pokemon which are anime completely created because of the vast popularity of the games (or anime who will create these games), but I think there are not enough titles out there which contain these genres. And actually, neither of these titles are listed when I click on the genre 'Game' :P Half of all the series listed there are all Digimon and Yu-gi-oh variants though, but with 10 titles, do we really need that genre? Imo - no.
analogued
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Post by analogued »

DonGato wrote:I understand your point but I think for the level of clarification you want it's better to read the reviews instead.
I too see your point, BUT.... I think genres should tell you something about an anime. Using only generic genres isn't telling you very much. Also, the problem with the current genres is that they are not consistent. Like I said above, there are animes which can only be classified using generic genres becaue there are no specific genres that fit.

Yet another problem with your suggestion is that there are very few reviews, and even fewer meaningful reviews. Patlabor doesn't have any reviews. Neither does Legend of Galactic Heroes.

Please note that while I am trying to make a point here, this is not that important to me as I don't use the genres that much currently due to the issues I have mentioned.

About making the genre change a CREQ... I am in favour of this. Doing it would force the one CREQ-ing it to bring some arguments to justify his oppinion. Freely adding genres is not a good solution in my oppinion. There are also arguments against making this a CREQ, of course.


Gambit wrote:Harem
For some reason I think this subgenre might be useful. I`ve seen a bunch of people who want only this kind of genre and another bunch of people who really dislike this kind of genre.
I'm glad you agree with me. I can't really say I dislike this genre, but let's just say that I'd like to stay away from it if at all possible. :wink:
Gambit wrote:More useless genres
As I said in my previous post, my oppinion is somewhat different from most of the people here. I'm basically proposing making the genres more granular (not too granular though), while the general consensus here is that there should be less genres... so I kinda' disagree with you on this :P
Gambit wrote:The same would go for War/Military, which would be added to anime like Full Metal Panic! and Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu!, which is - imho - also not the right thing to do.
Like I said in my previous post, there is a difference between war and military. Military is indeed too generic... war on the other hand, is actually pretty descriptive in itself... I don't think there's enough room for confusion here. When you say Military you don't necessary mean War... War on the other hand implies a lot of things (most of the time even military)
Gambit wrote:shoujo-ai is not only shoujo ... it can also be working for more shounen-based titles.
While that may be true, that is usually the exception rather than the rule.
Gambit wrote:And if you`re using seinen (adult men), then what about the female counterpart (adult women)? Which you probably didn`t even know it existed
I knew it existed but I didn't know what it was called and I thought I'd dodge the matter altogether by not mentioning it :P Also, while this genre might be more prevalent in manga, I think it is a rarity in anime when compared to seinen... Please correct me if I'm wrong

Edit: Gambit: You do have a point about not adding Seinen though.
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Post by DonGato »

I wasn't talking about AniDB reviews only. ;)
Whenever I see a series I think could be interesting I start to look for more information all over the web. For me adding "War" to Legend of Galactic Heroes doesn't change my first opinion/inclination to it.

I use only the main genres (as you pointed) as a way to understand the main focus of the series, so any additional genre is mostly ignored.

The CREQ change should be done soon, as I'm watching the AniDB database being polluted day by day. Most changes should be like that and if we need new admins/mods because of the increased work I would even consider helping as well. Because now AniDB is the first source for anime info in my case and I don't want it to become a new AnimeNFO.
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Post by Gambit »

analogued wrote:As I said in my previous post, my oppinion is somewhat different from most of the people here. I'm basically proposing making the genres more granular (not too granular though), while the general consensus here is that there should be less genres... so I kinda' disagree with you on this :P
My opinion is to get rid of the useless genres first. After that we can decide on more granular genres, as you call it. But Cars, Music, Games? I think, although they do exist, they don`t deserve to be a genre because they`re mainly themes, while Harem is becoming more like a genre itself.
analogued wrote:Like I said in my previous post, there is a difference between war and military. Military is indeed too generic... war on the other hand, is actually pretty descriptive in itself... I don't think there's enough room for confusion here. When you say Military you don't necessary mean War... War on the other hand implies a lot of things (most of the time even military)
I agree what you say, but I don`t agree with making it a genre. War is very visible from the picture and description together. But ... lots of time they use the wars (think: (pre-)Meiji times) during the Samurai ages as well, which would include that 70% of all Samurai series would get the genre 'war' as well because those times were all about wars being fought. Add to that all the mecha-sci fi series which involve fights between 2 groups/races (SnS-saga perhaps? Macross? Urotsukidoji? Escaflowne?) and then you`ll realize that the genre 'war' is perhaps a bit too generic to use because it will be used too easily.
But perhaps you feel exactly the opposite way and believe that that is exactly the reason why it should be used Image.
analogued wrote:
Gambit wrote:shoujo-ai is not only shoujo ... it can also be working for more shounen-based titles.
While that may be true, that is usually the exception rather than the rule.
Steel Angel Kurumi, Ikkitousen, Airmaster, Vandread and lots of ecchi series include shoujo-ai - which are pretty much shounen-based series ;) When you ask about shoujo, I can actually only come up with CCS and Maria-sama (and I think Utena included some of those as well).
Of course, none of those are mainly focused shoujo-ai, but they do contain some scenes/characters which provide the shoujo-ai.
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Post by wahaha »

Gambit wrote:My opinion is to get rid of the useless genres first. After that we can decide on more granular genres, as you call it. But Cars, Music, Games? I think, although they do exist, they don`t deserve to be a genre because they`re mainly themes, while Harem is becoming more like a genre itself.
So, what about an approach to satisfy all needs and "simply" have both (general) genres and (specific) "themes"?
That way, the more detailed info could be retained (and, more importantly, extended) while avoiding to overuse new genres. As you wrote, part of the reason why some categories shouldn't be added as genres is, after all, that they're simply no genres - even though they may carry useful information.
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Post by DonGato »

If it is an option you can disable (as I don't even want to see that info in my screen), yes... it might be a fair trade off.
analogued
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Post by analogued »

wahaha wrote:So, what about an approach to satisfy all needs and "simply" have both (general) genres and (specific) "themes"?
That way, the more detailed info could be retained (and, more importantly, extended) while avoiding to overuse new genres. As you wrote, part of the reason why some categories shouldn't be added as genres is, after all, that they're simply no genres - even though they may carry useful information.
I like this... wahaha's proposal has my vote.
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Post by Gambit »

@wahaha, you never cease to amaze me how you always end up with a compromis between two parties. I`m in as well ;)

The only problem here is how the series will show themselves. As requiem already stated before, a series like Princess Tutu already used to have that much genres applied. When you want to add the specific 'themes', this list will become even longer. Do we really want that?
Or will we come up with a seperate line for 'themes' which are seperated from genres?

PS: When I click that <more> button after genres, I get a search for similar anime? I thought that button was to show the genres not being displayed, not a 'most similar' anime.
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