There's a genre-war going on for Coiling Dragon (Novel) and Panlong. Is this shounen or seinen?

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A just ruler amongst tyrants

Probably more seinen because there's quite alot of torture, murder, slavery, genocide and rape.
Most of it isn't explicitly shown but you can kinda gleam it by the fact that Linley has the 'might is right' approach to things and he's considered the good guy. Everyone else is like a whole tier worse than him. Pretty mature themes imo.

If you ignore all that then its basically a shounen.

I can´t speak for the novel and i don´t think that web publications with no print arm should get any demographic but i tried the Manhua adaptation for you. The hero is a young and overpowered teen who fights against simplistic cartoon villains and they all talk in easy to grasp sentences. (The used prose is the biggest difference between manga for adults and children). The art style and colors are very child friendly and there is a strong focus on gags. "Funny" talking animal show up and i saw zero objectionable content.
Naruto, Bleach or YuYu Hakusho are way harder stuff but content and target audience aren´t the same of course. (Akumetsu, Claymore, Death Note and a lot of pr0n say hello.)

The genres Action + Adventure + Comedy + Drama + Fantasy (and Shounen i guess) look perfect to me as that is exactly what our big SJ manga have.
Martial Arts needs to go badly as Naruto is (correctly) in lockdown for not matching that criteria but this one meets it even less.

Who knows how the novel is but reviewers state over and over that the comic was strongly "kiddified". My friend´s ElanorR´s novel review mentions the misuse of rape and torture so who knows about the Seinen (K-On is Seinen too) but keeping Mature sounds like a solid idea.

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

As much as my knowledge goes, this novel, Coiling Dragon (Novel) is standing somewhere between Shounen and Seinen. But, I believe it should be considered Shounen as the amount of Shounen attributes(if you know what I mean) amounts more than Seinen attributes.

Panlong, being a Webtoon/Manhua is censored anyway. So, don't need much consideration for this.
It may count as plain Shounen easily.

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Tv Tokyo - Anime & Manga ~ MinatoAce

Comeon shounen? The only thing shounen about this novel is that protagonist get stronger. If so is the Edge of Tomorrow shounen because Tom Cruise gets stronger? I don't think so.

Pan Long is a massive compilation of volumes that entails the protagonist's journeys over thousands of years. Only in the first couple of beginning chapters was he ever in the teenage years, after that for the overwhelming majority of the vols he's already got a wife and kids.

I'd say its more comparable to Dante's inferno. Oh did anyone mention the killings? Over the course of the novels, especially when the story reaches the abyss the body count would of already been higher than any world wars.

I would say neither are good categories since both are Japanese categories and not Chinese. Xianxia and Wuxia type Chinese novels should be in a category by itself. But if you have to choose one or the other it would have to be seinen since it at least partially implies its for an older audience.

FYI the manga is joke, its so bad its not funny. Do not read it and think the novel is the same.

I haven't noticed any censorship there but the novel is certainly not censored. Not to mention this is the novel thread not the manga one.

Last edited by lambchopsil at 11:45 pm, Nov 24 2015

The film Edge of Tomorrow specifically targeted teens and the originating All You Need Is Kill is a light novel which are produced for a young adult audience in nearly all cases.
It thus needs to be put in the youth novel section alongside Hunger Games and so on.
Only the identical manga adaptation was Seinen and that was due to the magazine in question and nothing else.
Moby Dick and The Three Musketeers are further children’s books which easily proves how little marketing terms can mean. Weak to strong narratives are also as frequent in Seinen as in Shounen manga (e.g Berserk or Vinland Saga) and narratives based on rape/gore are nothing unusual in children’s manga (or 13+ US comics.)
Just look @ the Shoujo Basara or DC´s infamous Identity Crisis. The marketing terms “youth novel or “adult targeted comic” are also only guidelines and all of them can be put in any section of a library or books store due to the lack of an age restriction.
Hellsing is thus about as appropriate for children as Peanuts and both can be sold equally to a reader below the age of 18. The only exceptions are genuine hentai publications or such equivalents on the US/EU porn market. (Or games/films.)
The 50 Shades of Grey novels are lastly all-ages books and i regularly lend them out to customers below 18 without violating any laws. The more you know .

(MinatoAce is a friend of mine so feel free to trust his words lambchopsil-san.)

Edit: @TheIro Moby Dick (Great Classics for Children) Hardcover

http://amazon.com/Moby-Dick-Great-Classics-Children/dp/14037 05976
You do know that librarians have to go the a specific school to learn how the book market works amongst other thing? MU further features a lot of Shounen manga in lockdown with porn/gore genres and Attack on Titan is also a thing...
You even gave a slightly weird age range for the 2 demographics. The only real difference to tell them apart is to see if furigana is used over the original kanji text.

Last edited by residentgrigo at 7:16 am, Nov 29 2015

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

Wow do you even know what those terms mean?
Shounen = Young boy (elementary - 15)
Seinen = Young adult (15 to twenties)

And did you just call literary classics like Alexander Dumas's Three Musketeers and Moby Dick children's books!? Children's books? Like Cat in the hat??

I don't even.... well, I'll just let the ridiculousness of that statement sink in for other readers, along with your claim that "rape/gore are nothing unusual in children's manga".

I don't, you tell me. Is rape and mass murder shounen?

I seem to remember when the Dillon

Also how about the one scene where

I said my peace and i have no idea who web novels target anyway but let me ask you all a question instead:

How come that the followup novel Xingchenbian (Novel) always had a Shounen attached?
I even checked The Wayback Machine and it remained unquestioned. Can we please agree that a series shouldn´t be pulled apart by being "stocked differently". That is an actual golden rule book shops and libraries try to follow in as many cases as possible. Either "upgrade" one or "move down" the other. I assume that it may have less objectionable content but that isn´t how target demographics work.
Teen books as Stephen King´s The Long Walk (called Death March here) or The Hunger Games say hello and the US comic industry's main bread maker Batman by Scott Synder has a 12+ attached by editorial dictate despite featuring more gore than the first Saw film.
It also has such child friendly covers (!) as this yet i would still fight for it getting a Shounen tag if it was a MU listed entry. DC has a separate adult market division, but i also would apply a Mature tag for obvious reasons. I wouldn´t put it into the children´s section of a library but i would type out the suggested age range into the database one to one, which only exist for non-adult targeted books anyway.

Fun fact: Marvel´s editor-in-chief Joe Quesada said on a Kevin Smith (a former DD writer) podcast that Daredevil by Netflix was developed with teenagers in mind and Smith even though that he considered it to be grade school appropriate. Lol. The official rating though is a TV-MA. That´s how much publisher care about saving the children.

Last edited by residentgrigo at 10:46 am, Feb 4 2017

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I also read EU/US comics and am a librarian.
Manga-Masters, My ANN-Lists + Imdb

Yeah that just says to me there's a problem with America's messed up rating system. Also with you thinking that's normal and you trying to apply that messed up American rating system here (which is even more messed up because this is a Japanese manga site, extended to include Chinese novels. Nothing to do with America.)

I don't know what you're trying to say with the always been Shounen tag argument either. You've been here long enough. MU tags are done by volunteers and that just means someone (you?) had tagged it as Shounen. That doesn't mean the novel is age appropriate for kids, nor suddenly make it Japanese.