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New Poll - Original Series

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9:21 am, Jun 12 2021
Posts: 10648


Another poll suggested by jacob66. How many new series are original? Although in the comments below, maybe you can split them by types too. For example, I feel like manhua generally is less innovative.

You can submit poll ideas here
http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=3903

Previous Poll Results:
Question: If virtual reality games that connected with your brain actually existed, would you play them?
Choices:
No - votes: 932 (27.6%)
Yes - votes: 2443 (72.4%)
There were 3375 total votes.
The poll ended: June 12th 2021

Coincidentally, I just finished watching Memories of the Alhambra last week.

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10:11 am, Jun 12 2021
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<= 1%

I have been reading a lot isekais lately and just normal shoujos and they all basically the same stories rehashed with a different name.

I think that seinen and josei stories are more original, but alot of times what's original is the character dynamic and not the stories in general.

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12:09 pm, Jun 12 2021
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we stand on the shoulders of giants, manga and the asian webcomics exemplify this, there is a good idea, and then they iterate till the next good idea happens, and this goes on and on till a magnum opus comes out and then nothing comes close and the genre dies for a while till the old ideas are now somewhat fresh.

don't expect original, otherwise stories that are just fine and fun to read become a hellish chore, find an idea set you like and dive into it.



Post #791203
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12:38 pm, Jun 12 2021
Posts: 485


I'd say most have their unique and original thing going even if it is, for example, another Korean Villainess Isekai. But sometimes you get one that doesn't bother to tell its story and just vaguely prods you that it is "That story. You know, with this stuff" without actually setting up any of "this stuff"

Post #791204 - Reply to (#791197) by lambchopsil
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1:30 pm, Jun 12 2021
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None of them

Originality is a meme, nothing has been "original" for centuries (Especially in story-telling). And, whether or not something is "original" has absolutely nothing to do with it's quality.

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1:52 pm, Jun 12 2021
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<= 1%. You will be lucky to see a novel pitch among like 100 new works. Maybe one or two. Full-on originally is much rarer.

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2:54 pm, Jun 12 2021
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My answer is none of them are original.
And not only the recent or the past few years' works, but also the classic ones..
Every works are inspired by other works or ideas outside the work itself, and it's not limited to comics.

In what way could we assess something as "original" anyway? 🤔 I recently read quite a lot of webtoon manhwa with the isekai, time reverse, reincarnation and the villain(ess)/hero(ine) theme. The official publishers used the term "Original Webtoon", but we know that the idea of isekai-themed or villain(ess)/hero(ine) is not "original". There are many predecessors..

The story itself are different (characters, settings, etc) to each other (which maybe why people call it "original" ), but we all know how the stories would develop.. It's like there are some kind of pattern, like how we know Shonen Jump's mangas were quite often using the word/idea of "Nakama" during a battle? Or the journey of the ML to be an OP character on each battles? 🤔

I'm sure they were inspired by each other, might be by the trends among the readers too. I once read that the author of The Beginning After The End was inspired by Mushoku Tensei, hence the familiar character introduction on the early chapters.

I might be wrong, but I just wanted to point out that in that sense, there might be no true "original" works, such as in a global culture, often it's nearly impossible to look for "authenticity"..

Last edited by mallika23 at 1:30 pm, Jun 13 2021

Post #791209
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4:39 pm, Jun 12 2021
Posts: 186


<= 5% more or less from the ongoing series(if we include completed it would be 0,000001% or less):

Almost 80% mangas/LN/WN don't even set the scene, going for a lazy outline of the MC and the setting ,dismissing all the rest as a "they were in this type of scenario" with a stockpile MC that's an idealised version of the target reader . In other books and media usually the same happens but with an actually decent start .

Then I'd say there is a 15% that try too hard to be original / mainstream novels that feel like reading a checklist made by the publishers or that after some original chapters/arks devolve into another mainstream series.

And lastly that 5% I consider original. That are a mix of series; some so badly written, you don't know what to make of them that feel as if the one who has written them hasn't slept for weeks; series with a proper start and some original elements; and lastly series that copy so many different series that end up being original.

Last edited by Joese at 1:30 am, Jun 13 2021

Post #791210
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5:05 pm, Jun 12 2021
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In the case of manga or other foreign language series, this poll might be a little flawed. The problem is, we are just not going to see most new series. For most of us, it entirely depends on whether they get translated. And fan translators have their own tastes and will often choose series they like. As they should. Then in the case of official translations, the end-all is that companies want to make money, so they're going to choose things that are familiar, established, or seem like they will be popular over the more experimental or out there series. The Manga Plus official simulpub is kind of interesting in that regardless of whether they think it will be popular to English speakers, they will translate it as long as it's being serialized in Jump. We're still going to get some level of unoriginalness with it being Shounen Jump, but we do at least get some series I don't think would have been translated otherwise. Koukousei Kazoku is actually really fun and is a different flavor from other Shounen Jump manga, but it sure as hell would never get picked up by any translators (hell, from what I can tell, it isn't even very popular in Jump itself. But I think someone higher up must like the mangaka, which I hope continues because again, I think it's hilarious)

Not to mention the cases of "I just read this genre I like" or even more commonly, "I just read the subgenre with the particular tropes I like" then yeah no shit things will be unoriginal (also leads back to what scanlation groups choose to translate). At that point, you're just reading for execution. Nothing wrong with that in moderation though.

Post #791212
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9:58 pm, Jun 12 2021
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I agree with what Ceiye said because we don't get to see all the new series and there's no way we can judge them (which have not been translated by the community) as unoriginal at a glance. Isn't this parameter too weak? We know from the definition but everyone will perceive it differently. "It makes no difference" to "This is special". Maybe we can guess from the synopsis, but each of them still has a different experience.

You know every day, week, and month many manga published out there. In fact, we're not even close to some of that big number. Not at all. Even myself feel overwhelmed by the number of newcomers and new magazines I've never heard before as of late. So how can you generalize that everything is the same? But, okay, I accept everyone's "I know it" intuition that grew over the years to come to that conclusion.

One more thing: I will bring up the irony that something "different" actually get less enthusiastic by our community is true. That resulted in what is now where scans group take on a project with common/popular stuff. Again, it all comes down to taste and it doesn't matter. I just feel it's still very lacking to draw conclusions from the lack of material.

Post #791213 - Reply to (#791206) by mallika23
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12:51 am, Jun 13 2021
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This. By now, you simply cannot create anything completely new. Everything has pretty much been done before, only question is if you've read/seen/found it before.
I mean, humanity exists so long, has told so many stories, claiming to create something completely new is just... Nope. not really possible.

Honestly, if someone tells me something is original, I mostly expect a well done world build and/or a refreshing new take that hasn't been used for a while or commonly. But originality in itself is, technically, pretty much impossible to achieve, because everything has been told and even if you think you haven't been inspired by something, you most likely were.

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7:57 am, Jun 13 2021
Posts: 376


I frankly have no idea. How much originality does a series need to be "original"? There are a bunch of isekai webmanga cropping up in the last decade that essentially just steal bits and pieces of other series and mush them together into a "story", and those are all remarkably unoriginal. But like, probably almost half of the series I actually try reading overall have some notable degree of originality to them, at least insofar as I don't see much in discussion threads about their arcs being like "ugh, this is just like x plot in y manga"?

Even most sports manga aren't copies of each other. Rookies, Major, One Outs, and Diamond no Ace are all drastically different baseball manga, for instance.

As a result, I voted <= 50%. It's just an estimate, and the only reason it's as low as it is is because I think most of the truly unoriginal new series actually fail out of manga magazines quickly. Among new series that reach 100+ chapters in established magazines, I would say it's closer to the <= 90% mark (I'd say 80% which, being above 75%, would make the <= 90% vote correct). I think most people are either too pessimistic or too judgmental of what counts as original. Fuck, some people even claim One Piece isn't original enough just because it's "another shonen epic" even though it tells a tale of a grand adventure the scope of which the world has never seen.

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