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When I added the etymology section with it's references, Timothy Perper put {{ citation needed}} tags to all sentences that have already their references. What should I refer any further? Please tell me. -- Kasuga 13:54, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
God be with you, folks, and I mean that sincerely.
I can no longer take any responsibility for the content or structure of the manga article. Kasuga just inserted some changes, in obvious genuine good faith and with every intention of helping. His contribution lacks citations for a number of statements, and he cites Adam Kern's book apparently without knowing that it has already been cited in the revision (he added a new reference). That leads to some musing.
Wikipedians seem very proud that "anyone can edit Wikipedia." In one sense, they should be proud, but in another sense, Wikipedia is -- or should be -- cause for considerable, shall I say, modesty. One cannot build a coherent building simply by putting bricks and planks wherever one wants; one needs a plan. That's what artchitects are for. But this article, and a great many articles on Wikipedia, have neither architects nor architecture: they are more or less random and incoherent jumbles of facts, opinions, information and misinformation all heaped together and fiercely protected by their amateur carpenters and brick-layers.
I have years of experience on the internet and have rarely seen flame wars as vicious and as hate-filled as the edit wars on Wikipedia. These are not about content, not in the sense of what the article says, but about ego, turf wars, and ownership. Right below this editing box it says "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable." Well, not really, because the norm on Wikipedia is not to use citations at all, but to insert "original research," and half-complete ideas all felt to be True by someone. The result is not merely an incoherent jumble, but an incoherent jumble of half-truths and opinions.
When I began editing and revising the manga article about a month ago, I had hoped to reshape it into a useful architecture. With the invaluable help of Peregrine Fisher, we were able to get fairly far -- up to the history of shojo manga, and, over on my user Sandbox Timothy Perper/Sandbox5, a first draft of the sections on shonen manga, gekiga, and the role of women in shonen manga. We put in nearly 100 references, and the three sections I just mentioned would have added more -- with the result that our contributions were throroughly referenced.
That would have finished the section on the History of Manga After World War II, to be followed by the next section, about the History of Manga Before World War 2. That then would have ended the history sections, and we were planning next to insert sections on Manga Genres and Their Stylistics. It would have introduced another 50 or so references.
What I had not anticipated was the egotism, turf warring, and claims of ownership (though not in that word) that descended on the article. You'll have to forgive my naivete -- I work, and have worked for some 40 years, in professional print scholarship, where the rules are very different. Some of things I've seen and read on Wikipedia, especially about turf warring, would get people fired from a job within minutes if they tried it in the real world out here -- but Wikipedia isn't the real world out here. It's more like a high school playground, with angry and hostile kids screaming and pushing and shoving. It's no wonder that out here -- in the real world, I mean -- Wikipedia is treated like a high school newspaper: a great source of not quite trustworthy news about pop culch and not quite trustworthy summaries of somebody's coursework in something or other. Wikipedia has many miles and years to go to overcome that, and it might never.
A harsh judgment? No, not really. Wikipedia lacks the structure to become anything else. As long as you allow egotism, turf wars, and ownership battles to rule the roost, you will have only amateur work. As long as you do not recognize the need for planning an article rather than throwing bricks in a pile and hoping they will magically become a castle, you will have only jumbles of incoherent stuff, none of it referenced, all of it defended ferociously by various people against who I do not know.
I will make one further change to the manga article. A while ago, I promised Kasuga that I would replace some material temporarily removed about the history of manga before World War II. I am going to do that next, creating a new subsection to receive it. I can't vouch for its accuracy or verifiability; you'll have to take that up with Kasuga. But I did promise him I would do it, and so I will.
In any event, sayonara. God be with you, and I mean that sincerely.
Timothy Perper 14:39, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
On October 7, 2007, two anonymous users made a bunch of changes in the manga article. User 190.40.176.127 spent most of their time changing "American" into "U.S.A." regardless of grammar. I reverted many of these, but kept them when "American" seemed too broad -- then I made it into "US". Whereupon anonymous user 69.134.91.171 came along and added a sentence in the opening that said that manga means only Japanese manga. User 69.134.91.171 did not bother to read the article; no, they know it all without reading. So 69.134.91.171 simply ignored OEL manga, Amerimanga, la nouvelle manga... I took that out too. (sigh).They'll be back with their hobbyhorses and invincible ignorance.
Timothy Perper 07:40, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
So looks like we've not now got an awesome, long, sprawling "History and Characteristics of Manga" section and...well, the same poor article we had all along. So, here's some things I think we need to do:
Once that's done, we can start working on the rest of the article and maybe see about getting that up to GA status. Now's a good time to make that push since we've been given a good start.-- SeizureDog 11:21, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello again, Timothy Perper. The theory of the current etymology section is the most common in Japan. But I might overlook the more accepted theories because my knowledge is imperfect. If you think the current section to be POV, you should add more theories the section with their reference.
"The History Before World War II" section was originally contributed to your subpage as mere references. I didn't expect that you copy it to the article. (Moreover, your copy is the GFDL violation obviously (because you didn't cite the original page's name), but I won't pursue it.) -- Kasuga 10:34, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Is the term "manga" used in Japan to refer to foreign works as well? I.e., would Superman be counted as a manga in Japan, like how anime can also refer to foreign cartoons, or do they use a different term to refer to foreign comics?-- 75.57.240.101 18:11, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
In the section "What to do with what we've been given", Kasuga-san has said that the material in the section "The History Before World War II" is copyrighted and that it was placed in the article in violation of copyright.
I have therefore removed it completely, together with the section heading. I am acting here with what I believe US law calls "due diligence," which means, again as I understand it, that mistakes like this must be rectified as soon as they are called to one's attention. Therefore DO NOT REVERT this deletion. It is not vandalism but is mandated by the Wikipedia policy, quoted immediately under this editing box, that "Content that violates any copyright will be deleted."
Kasuga-san's posting is dated "10:34, 12 October 2007" and my removal is dated "11:38, 12 October 2007" (both are UTC).The error was made in the good faith belief that there were no copyright impediments to including the material, and was made without malice or intention of causing harm. Moreover, the material was deleted in only a little more than an hour after Kasuga-san notified me about the copyright situation.
Once again, do not revert this change.
Timothy Perper 12:00, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
What is the intent of that section? I believe, that's where the "genre" section used to be. As it stands, what's the purpose of it? KyuuA4 06:17, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Moved section here for later use: KyuuA4 ( talk) 22:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
While 'manga' is defined as "a Japanese comic book or graphic novel", [1] some people contend that manga defines a style rather than a country of origin. This viewpoint can most predominantly be seen by the manga publisher Tokyopop, which markets original English-language manga.
"Manga is like hip-hop. It's a lifestyle. To say that you can't draw it because you don't have the DNA is just silly."
—Stu Levy, Tokyopop CEO [2]
However, like any artistic medium, there is no true set style for manga. Manga can range from the realistic to super deformed. Therefore, when manga is referenced as a style, it generally is specifically referring to the moe style of manga common to the fantasy genre and the most familiar style of manga to foreign readers.
With an immense market in Japan, manga encompasses a very diverse range of subjects and themes, satisfying many readers of different interests. Popular manga aimed at mainstream readers frequently involves sci-fi, action, fantasy and comedy. Notable manga series are based on corporate businessman (the Shima Kousaku and Salaryman Kintaro series), Chinese cuisine (Iron Wok Jan), criminal thriller (Monster) and military politics (The Silent Service). As a result, many genres apply equally well to anime (which very often includes adaptations of manga) and Japanese computer games (some of which are also adaptations of manga).
Manga are often broken up into demographics such as kodomo (children), shōjo (young girls), shōnen (young boys), josei (women), and seinen (men).
Wikipe-tan just got pulled again by our watchdog of the Manga page, SeizureDog. OK with me; I don't care one way or the other. Timothy Perper 21:49, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, no. Here are some reasons. Above all, the iconicity of Astro Boy depends on imagining that manga is still graphically defined today by an image as old as Astro Boy, and that it is legitimate to use a masculine figure for the icon rather than a feminine figure, like Belldandy, Cutey Honey, Sally, Oscar, or Sailor Moon. Next, the use of a single image as an icon implies that manga is monolithic and is legitimately represented by a dominant or overarching image of one character. "Yes," the reader -- sophisticated or naive -- will say, "Yes, he is the prototype, the archetype of all manga!" Next, I question the wisdom of us imposing a POV on manga that says that one character typifies all manga -- and that is what an icon must do. So I do not agree that Astro Boy should be our symbol: manga is too complex, and historically and graphically too diverse, to be represented in a single face, style, or sex.
And, as I say below as well, please sign your name when you edit, and don't do so anonymously.
Timothy Perper 01:30, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Other subgenres of shōjo/redisu manga have also developed, e.g., fashion (oshare) manga, like Ai Yazawa's Paradise Kiss and horror/vampire/gothic manga, like Matsuri Hino‘s Vampire Knight, Kaori Yuki's Cain Saga,[95] and Peach-Pit‘s Rozen Maiden, which interact with street fashions, costume play ("cosplay"), J-Pop music, and goth subcultures in complex ways.
Rozen Maiden is actually a seinen manga, not a shoujo or josei piece. I have replaced the reference to Rozen Maiden and the interview with Peach-Pit with a reference to Mitsukazu Mihara's manga DOLL and a link an an .mp3 interview with her, feeling that this is a good Josei equivalent to Rozen Maiden that incorporates a lot of the same popular culture elements as Rozen Maiden, particularly the Goth-Loli angle, which I suspect is what the original author was referencing.-- 75.68.233.187 19:37, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Nihonjoe. But there are still some problems.
One is fairly narrow, but important: the lack of consensus about how the demographic is identified. By "consensus," I don't mean only anong us here, but in general. As far as I know, no authoritative Master List exists of manga magazines defining their (single or sole) demographic. So we're left again with impressions and criteria from artwork, style, and so on, but this time about the magazine as a whole. Some, of course, are clear -- Flower Comics vs. Shonen Jump -- but others are not, like Garo.
Second, and more broadly, even if we can identify the magazine's "true demographic" with 100% verifiable certainty, it does not follow that all the manga in the magazine are aimed at that demographic. One reason is cross-over readership.
A third point is defining what it means to say "aimed at." Is a demographic defined solely and only by the intentions and narrowly defined marketing purposes of the editors or is it defined by who actually buys the magazine or by who actually reads it including pass-along readers? As far as I know, there is no single and universally agreed upon definition for any of these questions.
So we're left without any clear criterion for saying that "Monthly Comic Birz" really is this, that, or the other thing -- only opinions and impressions. For Shonen Jump, the "shōnen" part is in the title, but no demographic comes to mind at all from the title of "Monthly Comic Birz." Thus, right now, the web is filled with references to Monthly Comic Birz's decision to stop serializing Rozen Maiden -- which tosses us right back in the soup about identifying the genre of the **manga** from a putative identification of the demographic of the **magazine** it appeared in.
Fourth, I am unsure of the value of these labels except as broad generalizations useful primarily for chapter titles in books or in articles here on Wiki. Let's take romance as an example, surely a "shōjo" topic if ever there was one. However, a recent issue of Protoculture had a (very good) essay on "shōnen romances," defined NOT by where the stories appeared but by graphical and other characteristics (an example is Maison Ikkoku).
Finally, these labels were developed in the 1960s-1970s, and have undergone considerable modification since then. It is simply no longer true that girls read manga with lots of flowers and big eyes and boys read manga with giant robots and ninja warriors. Modern manga is marked by the dissolution of previously distinct boundaries, a point that Paul Gravett makes in his book on manga. In 1983, yes, Fred Schodt was able to make a fairly sharp distinction between shōjo and shōnen manga, but 25 years later, those distinctions are very blurry indeed.
Taking all these factors into consideration, I am simply not convinced that the genre labels are very useful except as general pointers. That's how we used the terms in our revisions to the manga article. Genre labels tend to become hand-waving impressions and should not, in my opinion, be used as rigorous definitions of style, artistry, or putative sales demographics.
Timothy Perper 15:38, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Somehow -- maybe some random act of vandalism, of which there have been more than a few -- a reference got lost. It kept on producing a citation error message. I fixed it. Grrr. Timothy Perper 22:56, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your careful editing of various details. Such corrections are always useful. I added a reference to Kern where it had been omitted, and removed the citation needed tag. But one change I changed back. Sesshomaru had taken the sentence "Tezuka never explained why Astro Boy had such a highly developed social conscience..." and had replaced "Astro Boy" with "the character," which is certainly well-intended but makes the sentence vague: What character does this refer to? Notice that we could make it read "Tezuka never explained why he had such a highly developed social conscience..." where "he" is meant to refer to Astro Boy, but given the sentence structure, it might also mean Tezuka! So I put back Astro Boy's name and now there is no doubt of what the sentence means. Timothy Perper ( talk) 14:59, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
It seems that we've had a number of editors add the {{ Talkheader}} banner to the top of the talk page. Not only does this banner only add to the cutter at the top of the talk page, it should only be added when it is really needed. That is why the banner is not automatically added by MediaWiki. Since we haven't had any significant problems with talk page behavior, the banner isn't needed and, per the banner's instructions, should not be added to this talk page. -- Farix ( Talk) 19:26, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Someone nominated the Manga entry as a Good Article. Since I contributed extensively to certain parts of the article, I want to comment -- not to vote, since I can't -- but to make some observations.
Frankly, I am quite reluctant to call the entry a Good Article as it stands. In fact, it has quite a number of serious problems, ranging from original research to lack of citations, to dealing with material not consistent with the description of what it's supposed to deal with, and length and sprawl.
When Peregrine Fisher and I, plus some other folks, began to revise this article a while ago, we rewrote the introduction and the history sections, adding a good many citations to each. Most of them are to print sources, not blogs or personal opinion pieces on the Web. Well, goodie for us -- but there are long sections of the article without any citations or with only minimal citations. That's not good.
In my own opinion -- that's all it is, an opinion -- the worst section at the moment is #6, International Influence and its subsections. Personally -- and I've said this before -- I think that material should be moved to the OEL or international manga articles, because the description of the manga article explicitly says it's about Japanese manga. I don't have anything against international manga, or whatever you want to call it; I don't think it belongs in this article. Right now, Section 6 is merely a collection of impressions and opinions without any serious documentation at all. Not good.
Other sections -- gekiga, for example -- also have a number of unreferenced assertions and opinions. These sections read as if they were written by enthusiastic fanboys who had impressions about stuff but who didn't know very much about the actual history of manga. They didn't do their homework, substituting OR for real reading and knowledge of what other people have written about the history of manga styles. Thus, gekiga originates partly in radical politics of the 1960s (documented by Fred Schodt in his 1983 book), rather than guesswork about rental libraries. The image associated with the gekiga section -- Marmalade Boy -- is from a fairly typical shōjo manga, rather than from gekiga. Also not good.
The manga article is a work in progress. It can, and slowly, will be improved, But I don't think it's a Good Article by a long shot. Not yet.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 01:08, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
I want to break this out rather that squish it into a bunch of other paragraphs above. Here's more about the problems of using demographic labels.
If a readership changes -- for example, widens out because cross-over readership of one kind or another is increasing -- publishers and editors do NOT say haughtily "That makes no difference. The demographic is X, not X + Y. We, not them, define the demographic." If a readership widens out, publishers and editors are very quick to expand their advertising and their product descriptions on websites and in print. No, I don't have any usable references, but I've seen this process over several decades of experience in various forms of publishing. The point is to sell a product, and not to defend a because-I-say-so style of defining demographics.
A similar reason explains why US manga publishers -- Viz, TokyoPop, DelRey, Dark Horse, and so on -- don't use demographic labels. No one in the US knows what they mean outside of a few otaku and various manga/anime insiders. The result is that in the US manga is displayed, organized, and listed (e.g., in ICv2, Protoculture, or Library Journal) by title and author.
I just checked the J-List, jpqueen, and Mandarake websites to see if they list manga by demographic labels (the kind you would click on to get a longer list). The answer is no. Listings are by title and author and by the hot-selling labels hentai, YAOI, and doujinshi. The website for jpqueen includes shoujo and shounen (nothing else) as labels in a sidebar among others, but their major listing is by author and title. I also searched the three websites using "seinen" as the search term. J-List gave only 1 hit = Flashbang, a hentai manga published by Icarus and Seinen Comics. For jpqueen, I got 10 items, all doujinshi, hentai doujinshi, or YAOI, and all with the word "seinen" in the title. Mandarake gave 5 items, all also with "seinen" in the title. So these websites do title searches, not searches that display a large list of manga all previously catalogued under an overarching and primary demographic label like "seinen." I'm not saying that bookstores in Japan don't shelve manga by demographics (e.g., redisu and seinen) but these websites do not do so, and US practice appears not to use demographic labels either.
In my opinion, that's understandable. If you look up Azumanga Daioh on Wiki, you'll find that the manga demographic is given as seinen. That would shelve Azumanga Daioh next to that other great slice-of-life manga about teenage girls growing up in high school, Fist of the North Star -- which Wiki also lists as shounen and seinen. Maybe the Mandarake bookstores in Tokyo shelve Azumanga Daioh together with Fist of the North Star because both are seinen according to Wikipedia's definitions, but you can't search the Mandarake website using the demographic label "seinen." So, as I said, I'm dubious about the usefulness of the demographic labels assigned to manga on Wikipedia. And I'm also open to people who can come up with references that say these demographics are the industry-standard in manga bookstores in Japan.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 17:32, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
More from TP. Something is not quite right here. Let me explain.
1. Here's the Wiki entry definition of seinen: "Seinen (青年?) is a subset of manga that is generally targeted at an 18–30 year old male audience, but the audience can be much older with some comics aimed at businessmen well into their 40s" (first sentence).
OK, that's pretty clear, and it corresponds very closely to Brenner's definition. [Note added later by TP: "seinen" can be written with different kanji; see note at bottom.]
2. Here's what the MIT anime website says about Azumanga Daioh
"Azumanga Daioh is a quirky shoujo comedy based on a popular 4-panel comic strip about middle-school life among a group of friends and three of their teachers (two of whom are not particularly good role models)."
http://web.mit.edu/anime/www/Showings/Azumanga_Daioh.shtml
(The second link didn't work right all the time, so you may have to use the previous link.)
3. The advfilms website for Azumanga Daioh DVD says that it's rated 13+.
(click on Details when you get there.)
4. Hmm? Someone is saying, "No, no, no! The last two are for the ANIME, not the manga!!!" So I looked at the four volumes of the AzuDai manga I have from ADV. On the back covers, they all have ratings = "T 13+". "T" means "teen" but "13+" doesn't mean "18 to 30" year old.
5. So, it looks like by definition Azumanga Daioh isn't seinen, at least according to how Wikipedia defines "seinen." That conclusion means believing that the publisher's age ratings are authoritative, which I'm willing to accept.
The point is NOT that "This belongs on the Azumanga Daioh page, not here!!" It belongs here because the point is that when we write about manga and anime, we need secure references and sources, not guesswork or impressions. That conclusion holds, in my opinion, for the entire manga article, as well as for all the manga-related entries on Wikipedia.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 17:01, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
From TP: Maybe I wasn't clear about something -- I included the MIT quote to show that knowledgeable people in the US do differ in their judgments about what a manga "is" -- shōjo, shōnen, seinen, and so on. Thus, for Nihonjoe, AzuDai "is" seinen because it was published originally in a Japanese seinen magazine; for the MIT folks, it "is" shoujo because of its content and focus on relationships among the girls. Next, Brenner's (2007) criteria for shōjo include "three or more" of the following: "teen girls dealing with teen concerns" (yes for AzuDai); "bishōnen young men" (no for AzuDai); "focus on relationships" (yes); heroine traits that include kindness (yes), determination (yes), empathy (yes) and a "girl-next-door" beauty (yes); and elaborate and detailed outfits (no). (Brenner, 2007, op cit., page 34.) So a case can be made for saying that AzuDai is shōjo manga, but -- as I have been insisting -- only when we explicitly describe the criteria we're using and give a source for the criteria. I hope that's clearer. Timothy Perper ( talk) 13:23, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
A request concerning netiquette, added later. If you want to join in, that's great -- but may I ask if commentators would not insert comments into the text but include them at the end as a single, coherent section? The effect of inserting comments -- and I'm sometimes guilty of it too -- is to interupt the flow of discussion, and when they reach several indents deep, it becomes impossible to follow. Thanks. Timothy Perper ( talk) 21:31, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Also added later. 青年 = "seinen" is one way to write the word; Breen gives "youth, young man" for these kanji. Another is 成年 = "seinen", for which Breen gives "adult, majority," and which Eros Comix uses in their logo. The meanings overlap and both refer to young adult men, defined as 18-30 years old. Given that there are two kanji for the word, it's not suprising that most US readers and publishers don't bother making subtle distinctions among the words, and clump them all together to give the definition that Brenner discusses. Timothy Perper ( talk) 09:31, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm hoping this will help clear up some confusion.
1. The "demographic" line in the infobox is for inclusion of the demographic target of the publisher in Japan. That is why we keep bringing up which magazine the manga was originally published in as that indicates exactly which demographic applies (except in a very small number of cases where the target demographic is mixed, such as with the magazine Comptiq--though that might be better listed as "otaku" for the target demographic).
2. Cross-over readership is irrelevant to the contents of the demographic field of the infobox.
3. Yes, cross-over readership is likely important in the States, but it (again) is irrelevant to the contents of the demographic field in the inforbox.
4. The opinions of the the MIT anime club, you, me, or anyone else are irrelevant in regard to the demographic field of the infobox.
Hopefully, that is concise and clear enough to finish this discussion as further discussion will not change what the demographic field is (and has been) being used for since it was introduced. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:43, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Timothy Perper ( talk) 21:24, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, we're discussing manga demographics, not anime. It's a very good point to say that the English-language Wikipedia has a wide readership. Now this is something I don't really know -- how many other nations have extensive sales of English-translations of manga NOT first published by US-based publishers (TokyoPop, Viz, Dark Horse, and so on)? Most of the (non-US) translated-into-English manga I see are on French, British, or Canadian websites, and those are the US editions. And those editions do give US-based age-ratings. I've also noticed, but unsystematically, that manga translated into French (Asuka, Pika Editions) do not have any age-ratings (and don't give the original Japanese demographic either).
It occurred to me that a useful article for Wikipedia might deal with these issues -- original demographics, age-ratings, and so on. I don't know enough to write it, but maybe you do, Nihonjoe? I tend to look on the bright side: our discussion here has raised some significant issues. I'm sorry that Sailor Titan thinks I'm flummoxing people -- that is NOT my intention! Maybe a Wiki article on this issue would help de-flummox things.
I also agree that (unless you disagree) that this discussion has reached if not an end, then a pause. One take-home for me is that we need to clearly distinguish Japanese and American demographics and definitions of target audiences and age-suitability. These differences are, I think, part of various transnational shifts in cultural backdrop and language that are awakened when manga is translated, adopted, and adapted outside of Japan. My sense is that US demographics (and their closely related age-ratings) center on concerns for sexual explicitness. I do know that there's considerable concern among librarians -- manga has become very popular in US public libraries -- about shelving and limiting patron access to prevent legal minors from getting hold of sexually explicit M 18+ manga.
Thanks for discussing all this with me, Nihonjoe!
Timothy Perper ( talk) 13:56, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Way to go, KyuuA4! The article is tighter and better organized with your changes. Will you perhaps -- I hope -- be able to update some of the content as well? If I can help, please let me know. Timothy Perper ( talk) 21:31, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
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This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 |
When I added the etymology section with it's references, Timothy Perper put {{ citation needed}} tags to all sentences that have already their references. What should I refer any further? Please tell me. -- Kasuga 13:54, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
God be with you, folks, and I mean that sincerely.
I can no longer take any responsibility for the content or structure of the manga article. Kasuga just inserted some changes, in obvious genuine good faith and with every intention of helping. His contribution lacks citations for a number of statements, and he cites Adam Kern's book apparently without knowing that it has already been cited in the revision (he added a new reference). That leads to some musing.
Wikipedians seem very proud that "anyone can edit Wikipedia." In one sense, they should be proud, but in another sense, Wikipedia is -- or should be -- cause for considerable, shall I say, modesty. One cannot build a coherent building simply by putting bricks and planks wherever one wants; one needs a plan. That's what artchitects are for. But this article, and a great many articles on Wikipedia, have neither architects nor architecture: they are more or less random and incoherent jumbles of facts, opinions, information and misinformation all heaped together and fiercely protected by their amateur carpenters and brick-layers.
I have years of experience on the internet and have rarely seen flame wars as vicious and as hate-filled as the edit wars on Wikipedia. These are not about content, not in the sense of what the article says, but about ego, turf wars, and ownership. Right below this editing box it says "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable." Well, not really, because the norm on Wikipedia is not to use citations at all, but to insert "original research," and half-complete ideas all felt to be True by someone. The result is not merely an incoherent jumble, but an incoherent jumble of half-truths and opinions.
When I began editing and revising the manga article about a month ago, I had hoped to reshape it into a useful architecture. With the invaluable help of Peregrine Fisher, we were able to get fairly far -- up to the history of shojo manga, and, over on my user Sandbox Timothy Perper/Sandbox5, a first draft of the sections on shonen manga, gekiga, and the role of women in shonen manga. We put in nearly 100 references, and the three sections I just mentioned would have added more -- with the result that our contributions were throroughly referenced.
That would have finished the section on the History of Manga After World War II, to be followed by the next section, about the History of Manga Before World War 2. That then would have ended the history sections, and we were planning next to insert sections on Manga Genres and Their Stylistics. It would have introduced another 50 or so references.
What I had not anticipated was the egotism, turf warring, and claims of ownership (though not in that word) that descended on the article. You'll have to forgive my naivete -- I work, and have worked for some 40 years, in professional print scholarship, where the rules are very different. Some of things I've seen and read on Wikipedia, especially about turf warring, would get people fired from a job within minutes if they tried it in the real world out here -- but Wikipedia isn't the real world out here. It's more like a high school playground, with angry and hostile kids screaming and pushing and shoving. It's no wonder that out here -- in the real world, I mean -- Wikipedia is treated like a high school newspaper: a great source of not quite trustworthy news about pop culch and not quite trustworthy summaries of somebody's coursework in something or other. Wikipedia has many miles and years to go to overcome that, and it might never.
A harsh judgment? No, not really. Wikipedia lacks the structure to become anything else. As long as you allow egotism, turf wars, and ownership battles to rule the roost, you will have only amateur work. As long as you do not recognize the need for planning an article rather than throwing bricks in a pile and hoping they will magically become a castle, you will have only jumbles of incoherent stuff, none of it referenced, all of it defended ferociously by various people against who I do not know.
I will make one further change to the manga article. A while ago, I promised Kasuga that I would replace some material temporarily removed about the history of manga before World War II. I am going to do that next, creating a new subsection to receive it. I can't vouch for its accuracy or verifiability; you'll have to take that up with Kasuga. But I did promise him I would do it, and so I will.
In any event, sayonara. God be with you, and I mean that sincerely.
Timothy Perper 14:39, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
On October 7, 2007, two anonymous users made a bunch of changes in the manga article. User 190.40.176.127 spent most of their time changing "American" into "U.S.A." regardless of grammar. I reverted many of these, but kept them when "American" seemed too broad -- then I made it into "US". Whereupon anonymous user 69.134.91.171 came along and added a sentence in the opening that said that manga means only Japanese manga. User 69.134.91.171 did not bother to read the article; no, they know it all without reading. So 69.134.91.171 simply ignored OEL manga, Amerimanga, la nouvelle manga... I took that out too. (sigh).They'll be back with their hobbyhorses and invincible ignorance.
Timothy Perper 07:40, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
So looks like we've not now got an awesome, long, sprawling "History and Characteristics of Manga" section and...well, the same poor article we had all along. So, here's some things I think we need to do:
Once that's done, we can start working on the rest of the article and maybe see about getting that up to GA status. Now's a good time to make that push since we've been given a good start.-- SeizureDog 11:21, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
Hello again, Timothy Perper. The theory of the current etymology section is the most common in Japan. But I might overlook the more accepted theories because my knowledge is imperfect. If you think the current section to be POV, you should add more theories the section with their reference.
"The History Before World War II" section was originally contributed to your subpage as mere references. I didn't expect that you copy it to the article. (Moreover, your copy is the GFDL violation obviously (because you didn't cite the original page's name), but I won't pursue it.) -- Kasuga 10:34, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
Is the term "manga" used in Japan to refer to foreign works as well? I.e., would Superman be counted as a manga in Japan, like how anime can also refer to foreign cartoons, or do they use a different term to refer to foreign comics?-- 75.57.240.101 18:11, 11 October 2007 (UTC)
In the section "What to do with what we've been given", Kasuga-san has said that the material in the section "The History Before World War II" is copyrighted and that it was placed in the article in violation of copyright.
I have therefore removed it completely, together with the section heading. I am acting here with what I believe US law calls "due diligence," which means, again as I understand it, that mistakes like this must be rectified as soon as they are called to one's attention. Therefore DO NOT REVERT this deletion. It is not vandalism but is mandated by the Wikipedia policy, quoted immediately under this editing box, that "Content that violates any copyright will be deleted."
Kasuga-san's posting is dated "10:34, 12 October 2007" and my removal is dated "11:38, 12 October 2007" (both are UTC).The error was made in the good faith belief that there were no copyright impediments to including the material, and was made without malice or intention of causing harm. Moreover, the material was deleted in only a little more than an hour after Kasuga-san notified me about the copyright situation.
Once again, do not revert this change.
Timothy Perper 12:00, 12 October 2007 (UTC)
What is the intent of that section? I believe, that's where the "genre" section used to be. As it stands, what's the purpose of it? KyuuA4 06:17, 16 October 2007 (UTC)
Moved section here for later use: KyuuA4 ( talk) 22:31, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
While 'manga' is defined as "a Japanese comic book or graphic novel", [1] some people contend that manga defines a style rather than a country of origin. This viewpoint can most predominantly be seen by the manga publisher Tokyopop, which markets original English-language manga.
"Manga is like hip-hop. It's a lifestyle. To say that you can't draw it because you don't have the DNA is just silly."
—Stu Levy, Tokyopop CEO [2]
However, like any artistic medium, there is no true set style for manga. Manga can range from the realistic to super deformed. Therefore, when manga is referenced as a style, it generally is specifically referring to the moe style of manga common to the fantasy genre and the most familiar style of manga to foreign readers.
With an immense market in Japan, manga encompasses a very diverse range of subjects and themes, satisfying many readers of different interests. Popular manga aimed at mainstream readers frequently involves sci-fi, action, fantasy and comedy. Notable manga series are based on corporate businessman (the Shima Kousaku and Salaryman Kintaro series), Chinese cuisine (Iron Wok Jan), criminal thriller (Monster) and military politics (The Silent Service). As a result, many genres apply equally well to anime (which very often includes adaptations of manga) and Japanese computer games (some of which are also adaptations of manga).
Manga are often broken up into demographics such as kodomo (children), shōjo (young girls), shōnen (young boys), josei (women), and seinen (men).
Wikipe-tan just got pulled again by our watchdog of the Manga page, SeizureDog. OK with me; I don't care one way or the other. Timothy Perper 21:49, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, no. Here are some reasons. Above all, the iconicity of Astro Boy depends on imagining that manga is still graphically defined today by an image as old as Astro Boy, and that it is legitimate to use a masculine figure for the icon rather than a feminine figure, like Belldandy, Cutey Honey, Sally, Oscar, or Sailor Moon. Next, the use of a single image as an icon implies that manga is monolithic and is legitimately represented by a dominant or overarching image of one character. "Yes," the reader -- sophisticated or naive -- will say, "Yes, he is the prototype, the archetype of all manga!" Next, I question the wisdom of us imposing a POV on manga that says that one character typifies all manga -- and that is what an icon must do. So I do not agree that Astro Boy should be our symbol: manga is too complex, and historically and graphically too diverse, to be represented in a single face, style, or sex.
And, as I say below as well, please sign your name when you edit, and don't do so anonymously.
Timothy Perper 01:30, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Other subgenres of shōjo/redisu manga have also developed, e.g., fashion (oshare) manga, like Ai Yazawa's Paradise Kiss and horror/vampire/gothic manga, like Matsuri Hino‘s Vampire Knight, Kaori Yuki's Cain Saga,[95] and Peach-Pit‘s Rozen Maiden, which interact with street fashions, costume play ("cosplay"), J-Pop music, and goth subcultures in complex ways.
Rozen Maiden is actually a seinen manga, not a shoujo or josei piece. I have replaced the reference to Rozen Maiden and the interview with Peach-Pit with a reference to Mitsukazu Mihara's manga DOLL and a link an an .mp3 interview with her, feeling that this is a good Josei equivalent to Rozen Maiden that incorporates a lot of the same popular culture elements as Rozen Maiden, particularly the Goth-Loli angle, which I suspect is what the original author was referencing.-- 75.68.233.187 19:37, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Nihonjoe. But there are still some problems.
One is fairly narrow, but important: the lack of consensus about how the demographic is identified. By "consensus," I don't mean only anong us here, but in general. As far as I know, no authoritative Master List exists of manga magazines defining their (single or sole) demographic. So we're left again with impressions and criteria from artwork, style, and so on, but this time about the magazine as a whole. Some, of course, are clear -- Flower Comics vs. Shonen Jump -- but others are not, like Garo.
Second, and more broadly, even if we can identify the magazine's "true demographic" with 100% verifiable certainty, it does not follow that all the manga in the magazine are aimed at that demographic. One reason is cross-over readership.
A third point is defining what it means to say "aimed at." Is a demographic defined solely and only by the intentions and narrowly defined marketing purposes of the editors or is it defined by who actually buys the magazine or by who actually reads it including pass-along readers? As far as I know, there is no single and universally agreed upon definition for any of these questions.
So we're left without any clear criterion for saying that "Monthly Comic Birz" really is this, that, or the other thing -- only opinions and impressions. For Shonen Jump, the "shōnen" part is in the title, but no demographic comes to mind at all from the title of "Monthly Comic Birz." Thus, right now, the web is filled with references to Monthly Comic Birz's decision to stop serializing Rozen Maiden -- which tosses us right back in the soup about identifying the genre of the **manga** from a putative identification of the demographic of the **magazine** it appeared in.
Fourth, I am unsure of the value of these labels except as broad generalizations useful primarily for chapter titles in books or in articles here on Wiki. Let's take romance as an example, surely a "shōjo" topic if ever there was one. However, a recent issue of Protoculture had a (very good) essay on "shōnen romances," defined NOT by where the stories appeared but by graphical and other characteristics (an example is Maison Ikkoku).
Finally, these labels were developed in the 1960s-1970s, and have undergone considerable modification since then. It is simply no longer true that girls read manga with lots of flowers and big eyes and boys read manga with giant robots and ninja warriors. Modern manga is marked by the dissolution of previously distinct boundaries, a point that Paul Gravett makes in his book on manga. In 1983, yes, Fred Schodt was able to make a fairly sharp distinction between shōjo and shōnen manga, but 25 years later, those distinctions are very blurry indeed.
Taking all these factors into consideration, I am simply not convinced that the genre labels are very useful except as general pointers. That's how we used the terms in our revisions to the manga article. Genre labels tend to become hand-waving impressions and should not, in my opinion, be used as rigorous definitions of style, artistry, or putative sales demographics.
Timothy Perper 15:38, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Somehow -- maybe some random act of vandalism, of which there have been more than a few -- a reference got lost. It kept on producing a citation error message. I fixed it. Grrr. Timothy Perper 22:56, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your careful editing of various details. Such corrections are always useful. I added a reference to Kern where it had been omitted, and removed the citation needed tag. But one change I changed back. Sesshomaru had taken the sentence "Tezuka never explained why Astro Boy had such a highly developed social conscience..." and had replaced "Astro Boy" with "the character," which is certainly well-intended but makes the sentence vague: What character does this refer to? Notice that we could make it read "Tezuka never explained why he had such a highly developed social conscience..." where "he" is meant to refer to Astro Boy, but given the sentence structure, it might also mean Tezuka! So I put back Astro Boy's name and now there is no doubt of what the sentence means. Timothy Perper ( talk) 14:59, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
It seems that we've had a number of editors add the {{ Talkheader}} banner to the top of the talk page. Not only does this banner only add to the cutter at the top of the talk page, it should only be added when it is really needed. That is why the banner is not automatically added by MediaWiki. Since we haven't had any significant problems with talk page behavior, the banner isn't needed and, per the banner's instructions, should not be added to this talk page. -- Farix ( Talk) 19:26, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
Someone nominated the Manga entry as a Good Article. Since I contributed extensively to certain parts of the article, I want to comment -- not to vote, since I can't -- but to make some observations.
Frankly, I am quite reluctant to call the entry a Good Article as it stands. In fact, it has quite a number of serious problems, ranging from original research to lack of citations, to dealing with material not consistent with the description of what it's supposed to deal with, and length and sprawl.
When Peregrine Fisher and I, plus some other folks, began to revise this article a while ago, we rewrote the introduction and the history sections, adding a good many citations to each. Most of them are to print sources, not blogs or personal opinion pieces on the Web. Well, goodie for us -- but there are long sections of the article without any citations or with only minimal citations. That's not good.
In my own opinion -- that's all it is, an opinion -- the worst section at the moment is #6, International Influence and its subsections. Personally -- and I've said this before -- I think that material should be moved to the OEL or international manga articles, because the description of the manga article explicitly says it's about Japanese manga. I don't have anything against international manga, or whatever you want to call it; I don't think it belongs in this article. Right now, Section 6 is merely a collection of impressions and opinions without any serious documentation at all. Not good.
Other sections -- gekiga, for example -- also have a number of unreferenced assertions and opinions. These sections read as if they were written by enthusiastic fanboys who had impressions about stuff but who didn't know very much about the actual history of manga. They didn't do their homework, substituting OR for real reading and knowledge of what other people have written about the history of manga styles. Thus, gekiga originates partly in radical politics of the 1960s (documented by Fred Schodt in his 1983 book), rather than guesswork about rental libraries. The image associated with the gekiga section -- Marmalade Boy -- is from a fairly typical shōjo manga, rather than from gekiga. Also not good.
The manga article is a work in progress. It can, and slowly, will be improved, But I don't think it's a Good Article by a long shot. Not yet.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 01:08, 18 November 2007 (UTC)
I want to break this out rather that squish it into a bunch of other paragraphs above. Here's more about the problems of using demographic labels.
If a readership changes -- for example, widens out because cross-over readership of one kind or another is increasing -- publishers and editors do NOT say haughtily "That makes no difference. The demographic is X, not X + Y. We, not them, define the demographic." If a readership widens out, publishers and editors are very quick to expand their advertising and their product descriptions on websites and in print. No, I don't have any usable references, but I've seen this process over several decades of experience in various forms of publishing. The point is to sell a product, and not to defend a because-I-say-so style of defining demographics.
A similar reason explains why US manga publishers -- Viz, TokyoPop, DelRey, Dark Horse, and so on -- don't use demographic labels. No one in the US knows what they mean outside of a few otaku and various manga/anime insiders. The result is that in the US manga is displayed, organized, and listed (e.g., in ICv2, Protoculture, or Library Journal) by title and author.
I just checked the J-List, jpqueen, and Mandarake websites to see if they list manga by demographic labels (the kind you would click on to get a longer list). The answer is no. Listings are by title and author and by the hot-selling labels hentai, YAOI, and doujinshi. The website for jpqueen includes shoujo and shounen (nothing else) as labels in a sidebar among others, but their major listing is by author and title. I also searched the three websites using "seinen" as the search term. J-List gave only 1 hit = Flashbang, a hentai manga published by Icarus and Seinen Comics. For jpqueen, I got 10 items, all doujinshi, hentai doujinshi, or YAOI, and all with the word "seinen" in the title. Mandarake gave 5 items, all also with "seinen" in the title. So these websites do title searches, not searches that display a large list of manga all previously catalogued under an overarching and primary demographic label like "seinen." I'm not saying that bookstores in Japan don't shelve manga by demographics (e.g., redisu and seinen) but these websites do not do so, and US practice appears not to use demographic labels either.
In my opinion, that's understandable. If you look up Azumanga Daioh on Wiki, you'll find that the manga demographic is given as seinen. That would shelve Azumanga Daioh next to that other great slice-of-life manga about teenage girls growing up in high school, Fist of the North Star -- which Wiki also lists as shounen and seinen. Maybe the Mandarake bookstores in Tokyo shelve Azumanga Daioh together with Fist of the North Star because both are seinen according to Wikipedia's definitions, but you can't search the Mandarake website using the demographic label "seinen." So, as I said, I'm dubious about the usefulness of the demographic labels assigned to manga on Wikipedia. And I'm also open to people who can come up with references that say these demographics are the industry-standard in manga bookstores in Japan.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 17:32, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
More from TP. Something is not quite right here. Let me explain.
1. Here's the Wiki entry definition of seinen: "Seinen (青年?) is a subset of manga that is generally targeted at an 18–30 year old male audience, but the audience can be much older with some comics aimed at businessmen well into their 40s" (first sentence).
OK, that's pretty clear, and it corresponds very closely to Brenner's definition. [Note added later by TP: "seinen" can be written with different kanji; see note at bottom.]
2. Here's what the MIT anime website says about Azumanga Daioh
"Azumanga Daioh is a quirky shoujo comedy based on a popular 4-panel comic strip about middle-school life among a group of friends and three of their teachers (two of whom are not particularly good role models)."
http://web.mit.edu/anime/www/Showings/Azumanga_Daioh.shtml
(The second link didn't work right all the time, so you may have to use the previous link.)
3. The advfilms website for Azumanga Daioh DVD says that it's rated 13+.
(click on Details when you get there.)
4. Hmm? Someone is saying, "No, no, no! The last two are for the ANIME, not the manga!!!" So I looked at the four volumes of the AzuDai manga I have from ADV. On the back covers, they all have ratings = "T 13+". "T" means "teen" but "13+" doesn't mean "18 to 30" year old.
5. So, it looks like by definition Azumanga Daioh isn't seinen, at least according to how Wikipedia defines "seinen." That conclusion means believing that the publisher's age ratings are authoritative, which I'm willing to accept.
The point is NOT that "This belongs on the Azumanga Daioh page, not here!!" It belongs here because the point is that when we write about manga and anime, we need secure references and sources, not guesswork or impressions. That conclusion holds, in my opinion, for the entire manga article, as well as for all the manga-related entries on Wikipedia.
Timothy Perper ( talk) 17:01, 20 November 2007 (UTC)
From TP: Maybe I wasn't clear about something -- I included the MIT quote to show that knowledgeable people in the US do differ in their judgments about what a manga "is" -- shōjo, shōnen, seinen, and so on. Thus, for Nihonjoe, AzuDai "is" seinen because it was published originally in a Japanese seinen magazine; for the MIT folks, it "is" shoujo because of its content and focus on relationships among the girls. Next, Brenner's (2007) criteria for shōjo include "three or more" of the following: "teen girls dealing with teen concerns" (yes for AzuDai); "bishōnen young men" (no for AzuDai); "focus on relationships" (yes); heroine traits that include kindness (yes), determination (yes), empathy (yes) and a "girl-next-door" beauty (yes); and elaborate and detailed outfits (no). (Brenner, 2007, op cit., page 34.) So a case can be made for saying that AzuDai is shōjo manga, but -- as I have been insisting -- only when we explicitly describe the criteria we're using and give a source for the criteria. I hope that's clearer. Timothy Perper ( talk) 13:23, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
A request concerning netiquette, added later. If you want to join in, that's great -- but may I ask if commentators would not insert comments into the text but include them at the end as a single, coherent section? The effect of inserting comments -- and I'm sometimes guilty of it too -- is to interupt the flow of discussion, and when they reach several indents deep, it becomes impossible to follow. Thanks. Timothy Perper ( talk) 21:31, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
Also added later. 青年 = "seinen" is one way to write the word; Breen gives "youth, young man" for these kanji. Another is 成年 = "seinen", for which Breen gives "adult, majority," and which Eros Comix uses in their logo. The meanings overlap and both refer to young adult men, defined as 18-30 years old. Given that there are two kanji for the word, it's not suprising that most US readers and publishers don't bother making subtle distinctions among the words, and clump them all together to give the definition that Brenner discusses. Timothy Perper ( talk) 09:31, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
I'm hoping this will help clear up some confusion.
1. The "demographic" line in the infobox is for inclusion of the demographic target of the publisher in Japan. That is why we keep bringing up which magazine the manga was originally published in as that indicates exactly which demographic applies (except in a very small number of cases where the target demographic is mixed, such as with the magazine Comptiq--though that might be better listed as "otaku" for the target demographic).
2. Cross-over readership is irrelevant to the contents of the demographic field of the infobox.
3. Yes, cross-over readership is likely important in the States, but it (again) is irrelevant to the contents of the demographic field in the inforbox.
4. The opinions of the the MIT anime club, you, me, or anyone else are irrelevant in regard to the demographic field of the infobox.
Hopefully, that is concise and clear enough to finish this discussion as further discussion will not change what the demographic field is (and has been) being used for since it was introduced. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihonjoe 18:43, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Timothy Perper ( talk) 21:24, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
Yes, we're discussing manga demographics, not anime. It's a very good point to say that the English-language Wikipedia has a wide readership. Now this is something I don't really know -- how many other nations have extensive sales of English-translations of manga NOT first published by US-based publishers (TokyoPop, Viz, Dark Horse, and so on)? Most of the (non-US) translated-into-English manga I see are on French, British, or Canadian websites, and those are the US editions. And those editions do give US-based age-ratings. I've also noticed, but unsystematically, that manga translated into French (Asuka, Pika Editions) do not have any age-ratings (and don't give the original Japanese demographic either).
It occurred to me that a useful article for Wikipedia might deal with these issues -- original demographics, age-ratings, and so on. I don't know enough to write it, but maybe you do, Nihonjoe? I tend to look on the bright side: our discussion here has raised some significant issues. I'm sorry that Sailor Titan thinks I'm flummoxing people -- that is NOT my intention! Maybe a Wiki article on this issue would help de-flummox things.
I also agree that (unless you disagree) that this discussion has reached if not an end, then a pause. One take-home for me is that we need to clearly distinguish Japanese and American demographics and definitions of target audiences and age-suitability. These differences are, I think, part of various transnational shifts in cultural backdrop and language that are awakened when manga is translated, adopted, and adapted outside of Japan. My sense is that US demographics (and their closely related age-ratings) center on concerns for sexual explicitness. I do know that there's considerable concern among librarians -- manga has become very popular in US public libraries -- about shelving and limiting patron access to prevent legal minors from getting hold of sexually explicit M 18+ manga.
Thanks for discussing all this with me, Nihonjoe!
Timothy Perper ( talk) 13:56, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Way to go, KyuuA4! The article is tighter and better organized with your changes. Will you perhaps -- I hope -- be able to update some of the content as well? If I can help, please let me know. Timothy Perper ( talk) 21:31, 22 November 2007 (UTC)
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