Any time I add a series, I'm always super confused about which of these two genres I should select, and for good reason.
Listed below are the official site descriptions for these two genres. Let's see if you can tell them apart.

"Contains subject matter which may be too extreme for people under the age of 17. Titles in this category may contain intense violence, blood and gore, sexual content and/or strong language."
"Contains content that is suitable only for adults. Titles in this category may include prolonged scenes of intense violence and/or graphic sexual content and nudity."

Aren't both of these descriptions essentially describing the same exact thing!?

My proposal is that we should consolidate these two genres into a single genre, even if it's called something like "Adult / Mature" or "Mature / Adult", and have all of the series that are currently linked to them linked to this new genre, because it simply makes more logical sense this way.

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While I agree that the description is confusing, I think mature and adult are two terms that have nothing to do with each other. However, some updaters confuse the terms and thus make it harder to search this particular two categories. What I would suggest is to change the descriptions into more accurate ones.

Below is my explanation and by no means is absolute.

Adult: A manga that can be read only by 18+ year olds. May contain sex or violent scenes, in-depth sex scenes or in-depth gore without going into great detail about who and why.

Mature: It may contain the same scenes as above but they are dealt entirely differently. For example, a story may contain elements that are only suited for mature audiences (ex. rape that the protagonist comes to terms with). Mature manga are not only for adult audiences, it always depends on the story (ex. serious relationship between highschoolers). A mature category may also mean it is suited for 16-17 year olds, since they kind of gloss over *adult* things.

Please keep them like they are. In my country (USA) there is intense ongoing social pressure to "sanitize" all media in multiple ways. Opening up these two tags opens the door to sanitization.

I like Japanese manga because it comes to us unsanitized, in accordance with the mores of a very different culture. I'd like to see that keep happening.

Not sure what you mean... I don't think this has anything to do with sanitization, also, the tags are already open, just separated, which simply seems confusing to me...


So, by your definition, it's essentially, "mature" uses the same themes but treats them in a less explicit manner, while "adult" is more explicit?

In that case, where would the "hentai" genre fit into this? Since it'd essentially mean that all "hentai" series would also be "adult" by their very nature, even though I suppose not all adult series could be classified as hentai. (the ones that solely focus on blood & gore)

However, in that case, I still think even the most extreme gore-based manga could be classified as 17+, right? So, couldn't they fit into the "mature" genre?

Specifically, to me, it seems like "adult" is just completely needless, as all it has, by it's very definition, is a collection of series that would either belong in the "hentai" or "mature" genres, which are more specific and a user could search both of those genres if they wanted the full list.

Last edited by vigorousjammer at 1:26 pm, Jul 21 2017

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Neither "Adult" nor "Mature" are needless to me, but "Hentai" certainly is. On other sites that sell this material, it is listed as "Adult"/18+. We should arguing over "Adult" versus "Hentai" instead.

But we could argue over semantics all day and get nowhere. It's fine the way it is now. Just need to educate some users on the definitions so they can stop goofing on the tags.

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Hentai refers to manga that are explicitly pornographic. They are necessarily published in seijin (i.e. adults only) magazines. (Hentai should arguably be treated as a demographic by MU, given that yaoi & yuri are, but that's a separate matter.)

There are series with explicit sexual content that aren't hentai. For example, Arigatou and Believers, a pair of series with significant sexual content, were published in the same magazine as Happy! and 20th Century Boys. If we were to mark the former pair as "hentai" like you suggest, it would imply that Happy! and 20th Century Boys were published in a pornographic magazine.

I also see Adult and Mature as two different tags in the same context as Aominecchi said, Adult being much more graphic and should be read by 18+ and Mature dealing with mature themes that don't necessarily mean it's as graphic or as prolonged. Perhaps one of the more important parts of the descriptions to me is the 'prolonged' aspect of the Adult genre. It suggests it's not just some instances, but rather a lot of instances of graphic content.

Hentai, in comparison, is a manga that has the sole purpose of depicting sexual content whereas an Adult manga may have a grittier plot that deals with sexual content and violence in a very graphic way. Quite honestly, Hentai's whole purpose is to act as porn while an Adult manga would have a plot driving it.

Though I do agree that the descriptions could be rewritten to be more clear.

Mature is for R-rated manga, with gore, "reasonable" sex stuff, a no nonsense take on drugs, etc. Adult is for entries with a graphic focus on sex first and foremost, so both (all ages) Seinen or Shounen and Hentai can get it. Hentei is further mostly treated as a demographic by this site, due being correctly viewed as a separate publishing from.
Again, every child can get a copy of a Seinen sex manga by porn artist X or 50 Shades, yet that same minor won´t get a Hustler or a Hentai manga drawn by the same porn artist X. View it as or NC-17. A manga can also easy earn both if it´s equally gory and basically phonographic. See Gantz or all that locked Champion Red trash.

We really don´t "need" this separation, as categories were retroactively added for a reason, but none of it is hurting anymore. The worst that can come out of this is bad tagging, the best is an easier to use search function by genre, shrug.
The genre FAQ could use a re-write for sure though. Every genre text could/should be supported by 1 or 2 exemplary entries via hyperlink for example.

Last edited by residentgrigo at 7:23 am, Jul 23 2017

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I think FeyPhantom has the best answer to your question.



I also agree with rewritting the adult and mature genres/categories because they cause confusion that leads to bad tagging.

Funny, the mature and adult tags seem just fine to me, the differences in them are perfectly clear as far as I'm concerned. Yes, the differences in them are somewhat subjective and yes, OP, you do have to think about the tags and the content/title you're tagging and make a decision as to which applies......might be that not everybody agrees with what you decide, but that's just how the system works.

I'm not quite sure just how some of you are planning to rewrite a pair of definitions that are already unbelievably brief and straightforward to "make them clearer", or think any further amount of tinkering on the site's part is going to help some people tag better who either can't slow down long enough to read the definitions at all or simply can't grasp subtleties.

Downvote and/or report incorrect tagging, bad tagging is just a fact of life in our community and on these user-driven sites, there's no real way to "fix" the rest of the world

Actually, I don't think that's a separate matter, it seems entirely relevant to this discussion. Having it be treated as a demographic would've cleared a lot of things up for me, and the whole thing would've been less confusing.


I actually feel like the search function is entirely hurt by having unclear and confusing genre categories.
If I'm looking at the genre list and I see:
- Adult
- Hentai
- Mature
- Smut

All of those things seem the same to me. Also, we haven't touched on "Smut" yet... how would smut differ? Is it just a higher level than "adult" is? If Hentai isn't treated as a demographic (as it currently isn't) then how does it differ from Hentai?
Perhaps instead of a separation, there should be some renaming of these categories, the most confusing one currently I would say is "mature".



If it's as FeyPhantom says, and it's more about the story in mature titles, then wouldn't it make more sense to call it something along the lines of "sophisticated" or "refined"?
When I hear "mature" I don't think about a refined tale with mature themes. I think about "Mature Content" (a.k.a. a label that they slap onto shallow content that feature an excessive amount of tits, ass, blood, or gore)
Which is why I thought "Adult" was basically the same thing for the entire duration that I've been on this site, because sometimes they use the synonymous label "Adult Content" (I'm sure i'm not the only one).
And then I thought "Smut" was the same but dealing exclusively with sex.
However, "Hentai" was also there... and that's always been pornographic in nature, so... would it be the same as Smut? I've always thought so...


That's not the issue, though. I'd be fine with subjectivity if I understood the differences between the two and they were clearly explained... but for the entire duration that I've been on this site, the four tags I listed above have bled together for me and have felt like they're pretty much the same thing.
It's fine if you understand the descriptions for them and think they're well written, however... I would have to very strongly disagree about the descriptions' clarity, or lack thereof.

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Residentgrigo essentially covered this. Although MU doesn't officially do so, hentai is de facto treated as a demographic by the people who tag series, so changing it isn't a pressing issue. Also, if it were treated as a demographic by MU, it would discourage people from tagging a series as both hentai and yuri/yaoi, which would create its own issues. (The way that MU treats BL & GL works is another separate matter.)

As for your confusion over smut - smut refers to erotic works targeting female demographics, similar to how ecchi refers to works featuring fanservice for male demographics. If you use the advance genre search, you'll see there's little confusion over this distinction.

I agree there are too many categories for the same thing. Mature and Adult are roughly the same thing. Hentai and Smut are roughly the same thing. I personally feel like the definitions may be slightly different, but it is like arguing over close shades of orange. People looking/avoiding for dark orange will probably appreciate not having to select both categories of two very close shades of dark orange. Sometimes, I will reuse the same search tab just to avoid having to reselect/deselect so many similar categories.

True, good point.


Then, again, they should really describe it more clearly in the genre descriptions.
Currently smut is defined as floows:
"Deals with series that are considered profane or offensive, particularly with regards to sexual content"
That doesn't even sound anywhere similar to Ecchi... so unless you told me, I wouldn't have had any idea. Also, their definition of Ecchi doesn't refer specifically to the male demographic, either:
"Possibly the line between hentai and non-hentai, ecchi usually refers to fanservice put in to attract a certain group of fans."

This just further serves to prove my point that the genres are confusing and should be ratified in some manner, either the names, the descriptions, or some other solution.


Yes, precisely. Part of me wonders if perhaps some of these genres are so vague that they might work better as categories.
To me, the way people have defined "Mature" in this thread seems like a perfect example. If it's truly just a type of theme within a book, then isn't that a relatively small aspect? It's certainly not the main genre of the book, just a description of it's tone.
Compare that with other more well-defined genres such as "mecha", "tragedy", or "martial arts", these all describe specific concepts and all have specific elements so you can get a good idea of the type of story that would be told in a book of that genre.
If I just see a book is "mature" thematically, that's so incredibly vague that it would literally be impossible to guess what it would be about.

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All right then, and I am sorry to have to put it this way, but this brings us squarely back to, as I said, the differences are perfectly clear to me, if they're not to you, well, I just don't know what to say.

As brief and straightforward as they are already, I'm thinking no amount of "fixing" is likely going to help.

Last edited by svines85 at 12:23 am, Jul 23 2017