Hello. Recently, I have been wondering about two genres, which I typically consider demographics, adult and seinen. Most people consider seinen a demographic and adult as just a genre. As I said before, I think otherwise.

Let me make a scenario. Let's say you are... 15? Hell, even 14 would work well. Imagine walking into some random convenience store in Japan, and understanding the Japanese language, you walk into an aisle filled with magazines. As for you, you are looking for the men's section, so you can buy your then typical Young Jump. After grabbing Young Jump, which happened to be the last on that column, you notice something sticking out behind it, put in sideways, whereas the majority of the magazine is covered by the railing. You then lift the magazine to put it back in, but before you can do so, you notice the magazine is plastic wrapped with a sticker written on it saying "18+."

Let's say this magazine was... Young Comic, a magazine which was originally a regular seinen magazine, until it went on hiatus in 1987. After 3 years, it's circulation was finally renewed, with the new exception being that it is now an adult magazine.

Getting slightly excited by the exposing cover, you think of an idea. By sneaking it in between Young Jump and another magazine, you could possibly buy it if the clerk didn't notice. Swiftly, you grab a GQ J to put on the top, the Young Jump on the bottom, Young Comic in between them both, and then flip the magazines, so the covers would not be showing.

After rushing to the clerk, you put the stack of magazines on the counter. The clerk then scans the bar-code on the Young Jump, and then makes a confused expression after looking at the plastic-wrapped magazine below it. He then asks, "Are you 18?"

You managed to leave with the Young Jump, and the GQ J, which you didn't read...
tl;dr, you can't buy Young Comic at the age of 14, but you can buy Young Jump.

Sorry for the pointlessly long example, but what I'm trying to say is that "Adult" should be a demographic as well, rather than just a genre. If not, 18+ should be. If 18+ magazines were "Seinen," then a 14 year old should have no trouble buying one. Someone could simply open a chapter of Nana to Kaoru (a manga with S&M, but no nudity) and then Velvet Kiss (a sex-filled manga).

Apparently, Baka-Updates states that a manga's demographic should be based on what magazine it is or was serialized in. If this is so, Japan considers "Adult" a specific demographic, and thus, I believe it should be one on Baka-Updates. Tons of Shounen manga already have the genre "Adult," whereas they could easily deal with just the Borderline H tag, as "Adult" tends to mean sexual content, whereas Mature meaning dark themes not recommended for minors.

Again, sorry for the extremely long post, but I wanted to receive an answer as best I can. Thank you.

Don't forget that the "adult" label can also be used to refer to josei titles. It isn't exclusive to seinen.

I can't really see your point, since here on MU the system group all the genres and demographics together, as you can see on a series page, group release page and the genre section.

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The genres you are allowed to pick are specific. You can add the adult genre to anything, but only one demographic. In my opinion, I also think you should have only one demographic, but Adult should be one. There are tons of shounen manga with the genre "Adult," and they could easily live without it. Those tons of shounen almost all have "Borderline H" and the ecchi genre. Ah, and yes, it also counts for women's magazines, but I didn't bring up josei specifically because of what I'm trying to do is have "Adult" as a demographic. If not, 18+ should be instead. Basically, Seinen was used as an example. I also do not consider Shounen Ai, Shoujo Ai, Yuri, and Yaoi demographics because... well, they simply aren't.

A demographic of age is something focused towards an age group. Seinen magazines are focused towards 15+, Josei as well, Shounen and Shoujo 8+ (pretty much any age really), and lastly, Adult/18+ focusing on 18+.

OK, I see what you mean but consider this:
adult means adult content, therefore it's content-dependent
demographics aren't content-dependent, it describes the group whom it was published for, therefore the content is (or is mostly) dependent on the demographic, thus "adult" doesn't really qualify.

if you don't get what I mean:
you don't label a manga "shoujo", just because it's shoujo'ish, it is labelled that way, because it was published in a certain magazine/ directed towards that audience
but you can in fact label a manga "adult" when it contains a certain content

see


and



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We know the genres are a bit wonky. We will be fixing them, I just don't know when.

Hmm... I brought something up like this around the beginning of this year as well.

The quote from Adult is saying what it means...
"Contains content that is suitable only for adults."
Saying that it is suitable only for adults would make the entirety of manga labeled "Adult" and "Shounen" made for adults only. What you're saying, as well as the quote, is confusing, seeing as any Shounen manga can be purchased by pretty much any age, this including manga such as Seikon no Qwaser.

As for the labeling manga "shoujo," I really don't know why you brought that up... I already know that its intended primarily written for "young females," and a demographic is something focused towards an age group or gender in manga. Magazines are labeled as what demographic they are, this includes magazines such as Weekly Shounen Jump, Weekly Young Jump, Monthly flowers, Ciao, Vitaman, and Manga Erotics F.

Honestly, I think just keep it as is.

Content =/= demographics.

Demographic can have more prevalent genres that are more widely accepted by the target audience, but those genres does not define the demographic.

We really don't need to open up the possibility for people to go all crazy on changing genres and labels because what they "think" is the right one and ignore the original source magazine that has been printing for an actual intended demographic for years. We've been through this hell before, it was chaotic and stupid with people editing series like crazy with no knowledge of the sources.

Adult is already being used as a "demographic" for series that fit but don't have a predetermined demographic in a similar fashion. But as some series are published in Seinen magazine first containing adult content, having multiple demographic is usually not how the original publisher determines their magazines.



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Indeed; you'll notice that there was a relatively recent change that distinguished demographics from genres.


For the record, this already happens. I've had to lock genre changes several times because of it. If you see it occurring, please report it so that we may restore the proper demographic and lock it from change.

Perhaps the demographic needs to be separated from the genres in the series page; I think the fact that they're displayed together with the genres (that they are displayed alphabetically doesn't help, either) under a heading named "genres" adds to the confusion. This would also allow admins to lock the demographics while allowing the genres to be *more* flexible.

...But I assume this is already part of the planned changes?

Indeed, this is a problem with how demographics were originally handled (they're genres in the back-end). It requires a complete re-doing of how genres are handled, which is a bit of a task, to say the least.