I post this in "Chatter Box" because I want it to be a general discussion, not just about manga and mangaupdates (there are also historical books, films, even games).

Today I was browsing through "historical" genre manga and I was a bit surprised that there are titles like Fullmetal Alchemist, D.Gray-man or Saiyuki (and many others). I've always thought that "historical" means something like "about something that existed in the past", and by "something" I mean, for example people (like king Canute from Vinland Saga) or places (Otoyomegatari), events (Vagabond). Fullmetal Alchemist world does resemble ours from the past, but it's completely fictional, so can it be called "historical"?

I'm not saying that these manga shouldn't be on the list, perhaps I'm wrong, or maybe the word "historical" means something else in English than in my language. If so, please explain this to me ^^'

I think what is meant by historical for FMA is that it's styled after the European Industrial Revolution. Although yes, it is fictional, its era is not.

One of it's definitions is: "having once existed or lived in the real world, as opposed to being part of legend or fiction or as distinguished from religious belief". The time of the Industrial Revolution that FMA is set in has happened; the mangaka didn't make it up, thus the historical genre does fit.

History is indeed based on past people, places and events but also periods in time, which is the type of historical factor FMA has for example.

in Saiyukis defence...its actually based on a true "historical" event
Xuanzang did in fact exist and went on a big journey from china to india

i have not read FMA nor d.gray man but im pretty sure there are atleast some hints to actual historical events in d.gray man or atleast the settings are as belivable as in vinland saga

you should complain/talk about silly things like
the
Category Recommendations

and the
Recommendations
list
that you find under every manga coz ppl seem to add all sorts of shit to those list making them useless as some form of guides

if you like FMA why would
monster,berserk,death note and SAO be good Recommendations?
ppl need to stop putting on their favorite series to everything else they like
...
that would have been a better topic

that is a much bigger problem than tagging something with historical

Well, featuring a real historic figure will make it "historical"

but also there are story that doesn't have known historic figure, but it portray the era in a realistic manner. which characters that act the time Shipwrecked is an example. although none of the characters in the story are known historical figures. it may have happened. given the circumstances at the time.

and there are country like Fushigi Yuugi and Saiunkoku Monogatari that is obviously fictional, but resembles the known historical eras so much.

all of these i would count as historical. it's also related to how much author emphasizes the historic background. but i won't say Fullmetal Alchemist is historical, because i would count that as an alternate world. but i would say D.Gray-man is historical, although since the author doesn't put emphasis on it's historic-ness, so it's kinda hard to decide. and this is because things portrayed in D.Gray-man isn't far from what we know of the past. Sure there is the exorcist and whatnot but that is sort of a secret society. unlike in Fullmetal Alchemist where knowledge of alchemy was a norm

Well I think historical is used in a vague way most of the time. I think that even most history books can be questionable because when it comes to history there can be a lot of human error, so unless you've lived for 5,000 years and have seen everything the process of handing down information from generation to generation can't be extremely reliable. So when it comes to manga etc I consider it historical when it resembles the past and uses people/places that existed in the past.