It's not flaming, it's a valid argument. Really? Futari Ecchi has furigana because I'm like looking at volume 29 and I'm seeing some but not much like Kurohime, Seto no Hanayome, and Ookami ga Kuru!. Well anyway, I'm saying that if you are using shonen as an demographic indicator (it's indented purpose; eastern) then MPD Psycho is shonen but if you are using shonen as a descriptive genre (western purpose) then MPD Psycho is not shonen. It's pretty much what you said it's an ethnocentric opinion. I do understand that seinen （青年） for mags such as Afternoon, Morning etc.

________________
Every dead body that is not exterminated becomes one of them. It gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill!

.......people really can't tell when I'm joking can't they? I agree it's seinen. But I don't really care because the mature is already up.

________________
Life, what would it be without so much wrongs and rights?


Star Trek XI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZiR-NETDr0

Well, shounen was never meant to be a descriptive genre. People misidentify and misinterpret it as such because they have a generalized and erroneous concept of what "shounen" should be under their own guidelines and morals. I'd say that it's not a "western purpose" as you said, but a "western misunderstanding" of the Japanese classification system.


No, sincerely I can't.


Why are you still saying that MPD Psycho is seinen? Which part of what zindryr, Gold Knight and I said do you still not agree with?

________________

Double post erased NeoFireHawk (see I told you I'd deal with it)
And Manick said he is thinking about it so don't worry.


And to close this discussion and because I had an extremely BAD day.
Let me just say that NeoFireHawk is absolutely correct. Shounen/Seinen/Shoujo/Josei/Kodomo are decided by the publishing magazine as simple as that.
No need to interpret it with north American standards. If japanese decided it is Shounen then it is one. The north american ratings lies within the "mature/adult" labels.
And ares6 don't joke around in a serious discussion that's plain spamming.

So then this makes NHK ni Youkoso!, which is published in Shonen Ace, also a shounen manga?

Quite stupid way to decide genre but whatever. If they air on shounen magazines they get more popular? Dunno, but i have never really understood japanese people

I'm not saying I'm the ultimate authority on the matter. I'm certainly not.
BUT what NeoFireHawk says makes perfect sense, the genre are decided by the Japanese that way, so who are we to say their decisions are wrong?
And if we where planing to use north American ratings we would have used them, and we wouldn't be using Japanese terms. We would be using this kind of stupid stuff:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_content_rating_systems#Un ited_States

And donkabu, I don't know, but NeoFireHawk certainly has an opinion on that. I personally trust his judgment.

I think there were mentioned very much good points, but you forget that this is an English manga site note a Japanese one. Most of the members here are not Japanese, otherwise it would be a little bit weird I use this site for information on new manga that may be interesting, and so I look for specific genres like seinen. And MPD Psycho is a seinen manga, at least for nearly all English readers. I absolutely don´t care if it is published in a shounen magazine because everybody who reads it can see it is seinen in terms of Western readers. Although we use the Japanese terms for categorizing mangas the meaning of this changes, simply because we are not Japanese. It may be the same words but the meaning changes when we use it. The genres section is in my opinion to inform readers of the content of an manga and not the "status" in Japan. Ah my English is lacking so much but I hope you understand what I wanted to say

ok....I think we should all listen to the mod. Because the forum rule says mods are always right.

http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=4

So I change my opinion. MPD is shounen.

________________
Life, what would it be without so much wrongs and rights?


Star Trek XI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZiR-NETDr0

Ok mods are like Gods in their forums but think about it, wouldn`t it be great to change the opinion of a mod
Don`t lose your fighting spirit !

Ok, I agree with NeoFirehawk. If the site is going to use Japanese classifications, it should use them according to Japanese standards. I guess it's confusing that's why ANN doesn't use them (forgive me for comparing). The site lists scanlated releases, their origin dictates their genre, not readers or scanlators. Western publishers don't even use these genres to classify their translated manga. So only when the original publisher is ambiguous, or the manga is non-Japanese, should we start using self-definitions of the genre to tag manga.

Last edited by donkabu at 11:36 am, Jun 15 2007

People keep saying things about how they look for things in the seinen genre, or how what magazine a series is in is a bad way to decide genre, but you people seem to have missed NeoFireHawk's point: shonen and seinen are NOT genres. They are demographic titles, the equivalent of (in movie ratings) PG-13 and R, or something like that. A PG-13 movie isn't a genre, it's a descriptions saying that the movie may have some content that people younger then 13 can't handle.

On a related note, most manga, when it gets translated in America, has a rating of "T" for teenager, and it describes why the manga is T, usually for stuff like violence, crude humor, alcohol use, some nudity, stuff like that. Some series are "M" for mature, like Berserk, Battle Royale, Bastard, most seinen is M rated. But some shonen are "T+" meaning for older teens. T is recommended for kids 13 or older. T+ is rated appropriate for kids 16 and up. The manga in both T and T+ ratings may be shonen, but one will have more graphic violence, explicit content, cursing, nudity, or complex concepts, and that series will be rated T+. For instance, Death Note is shonen, but it's rated T+ in America, because it's kind of creepy, and there are some complex concepts in Death Note that younger teens couldn't handle, at least, not according to the people who decide the ratings. My point is, MPD Psycho is one of those T+ manga, that are still shonen, they're aimed for teenagers, but OLDER teenagers, which is why it has more mature content then the average shonen.

Are you suggesting that the Japanese classification system should only be implemented if the members were Japanese? Then, what are you doing reading Japanese "comics"? Because if we follow your logic, only the Japanese should be reading them, right? In fact, because we are not Japanese, we should stop naming these "manga" and call them "Japanese comics", shouldn't we?


Those aren't "western terms" but "western stereotypes", Generally, people who think that all shounen manga are like Naruto and all seinen manga are like Berserk is because they have been partially exposed to manga and have little knowledge of its terminology and usage.

So, in your opinion, we can get whatever word from Japanese and give it another meaning, like using "kamikaze" to describe "pillows", because you feel like doing so? Look, there is something called "standard". The accepted standard of what should be called or not should be called seinen and shounen is the Japanese one. If we don't agree with it, we should get rid of terms like "shoujo" and "seinen" and use the rating labels that U.S. Publishers use.


There are TWO types of genres:
-Demographic genres (Kodomo, shounen, shoujo, Seinen, Josei, etc.) and descriptive genres (Action, Adventure, Comedy, Mecha, etc.). The first one only indicates at which group the manga is aimed at, NOT its content, DON"T confuse them. In fact, you can say that "demographic genres" aren't genres in all the extension of the word, but demographic profiles.


I believe that the reason of why you still think that I'm wrong is because I lack credibility. If so, let me cite this article, written by Matt Thorn, an anthropologist teaching comparative popular culture at Kyoto Seika University, who has conducted various studies into readers of shoujo mangas in Japan. Coincidentally, this article is about how manga should be classified. It focus more in shoujo, but his guidelines can be used in the classification of any type of manga:

What Shôjo Manga Are and Are Not: A Quick Guide for the Confused




Source

And please, stop changing MPD Psycho genre back to Seinen: If you don't agree with the current classification post here why and don't label it like that just because you feel like doing so.
Seriously, this is the last time I'm changing the genre back to shounen since I'm really tired of doing so.

________________

When words are 'borrowed' by a different language it's actually quite normal for the meaning to change. Just look at all the english words the japanese use with totally different meanings.
The accepted "standard" for what terms like shounen and seinen mean in the english speaking world IS different than in Japan.


IMO I hate it when a manga is labelled something just because it's published in a certain magazine. I prefer to just look at the content.

This is what Deva said:

And then:

He is saying that since this is an English speaking site it's incorrect for us to classify manga like them, and instead, we must use an "adjusted" form of the Japanese classification system, one according to western standards and morals.
I kind of understand the idea of what he was trying to say, but the reasons he gave in my opinion were more like a nativist ideology or a personal point of view rather than a valid argument. If he had said "I don't consider that shounen has the same meaning in the west as in Japan because was adopted differently in the English speaking world" it would've been a valid argument (but mistaken anyways).

I know that words can change its meaning when are adapted by a different language, but is not always like that. For example: In the English speaking world, the word mecha is used to describe only the giant robot genre, while in Japan is used to describe all what's mechanical, from cars and guns to airplanes and robots. In this case the word has a different meaning in both English and Japanese, but also, the word "bishoujo" is used both in English and Japanese to describe "beautiful girls".
What I'm trying to say is that while some words change its meaning when are adapted by another language, this is not always the case. To suggest that because a word is Japanese it must have another meaning in English is erroneous.


You better put some reliable and trustful sources to support that argument because in almost every English site I see it says that "shounen" is manga aimed at boys and "seinen" is manga aimed at young adults. Who knows, perhaps I can't read English correctly and I'm confusing some words or something.


That's the way it is, it can't be helped.

________________