Removing "Shoujo" and "Josei" tags

Discussion in 'Suggestions & Bug Reports' started by fumikothefox, Jan 27, 2022.

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  1. fumikothefox

    fumikothefox Active Member

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    Hi,
    Latelly someone has been removing the "Josei" and "Shoujo" tags from a bunch of novels, especially Kr shoujo/josei novels. Without these tags, it's a lot harder to find/search female-oriented novels on NU, and the person has been doing this to A LOT of these kinds of novels. It's pretty annoying.
    Can yall please make the person who's been removing the tags stop this shit. I might be repeating myself and stating the obvious, but the "josei" and "shoujo" tags are really useful and important both for people who are into the genre and for people who are not into it and want these novels filtered out.
    So yeah, plese make the person stop editing out these tags :blobawkward:



    Seriously, looking at the links it seems like the person removed shoujo/josei from almost all korean novels that had one of the tags??? :blobconfused:

    edit: btw, i'm not sure if this is the right place to post this thread, pls tell me if I posted at the wrong place
     
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  2. MangoGuy

    MangoGuy Rambling Mango

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    I think that the most likely explanation is that someone has interpreted that the above two genres can only be used for JP series.

    @runsing @marine1corps

    Please help out. As per the current NU definitions of the genres, there is no JP-specificity.
     
  3. runsing

    runsing status : bleeding, health -10/s Novel Updates Staff

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    personally, i'm more in favor of kr or cn novel not using josei nor shoujo. even for some (a lot) japanese ones.

    the original reasons the genres are there was thanks to direct-copying of mangaupdates' term, a database site originally meant for primarily mangas/doujins. as you'd know, traditionally, (printed) mangas got their genre classifications based on the magazine they're published in. not to mention, being illustrated (as opposed to novel), the demographic is easier to differentiate.

    in other words, how dark, or light, or mature, or sexual a work is does not contribute to a work to being genred shounen/shoujo/seinen/josei. their publication platform is. easy example - K-On! . it is a seinen title.
     
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  4. Parth37955

    Parth37955 NU #3, [Dead Inside], Mid-Boss, Dark Dealer Staff Member

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    I'd be in favor of removing it altogether and simply having a different category for demographics
     
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  5. MangoGuy

    MangoGuy Rambling Mango

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    That's actually a pretty nice factor. Imo, shoujo and jousei in general hit specific demographics based on their manga artstyle and the story elements. I follow your thought process about removing the shoujo/jousei or shounen/seinen split and instead having only one genre each.

    Perhaps, shounen and shoujo can remain,while seinen and jousei get merged into one? I am not so sure personally, cuz jousei to me feels like generally having a different tone compared to seinen.

    Shounen and shoujo can probably be more easily diversified by male/female protagonist. I think this rule applies almost 100%. In that case, do we even need shounen/shoujo genres? I believe that adventure/romance and others sufficiently describe the elements, along with the gender of the protagonist.

    Or should we instead go for a gender neutral "Young adult" or "teen" genre, doing away with the localised shounen/shoujo genres? (Maybe, all of the content on NU actually falls under this category?) I feel like a change of this scale/significance should be discussed more deeply, with more people involved. Cuz leaving them as is might seem simple right now but in the future, they may actually be highly inefficient.
     
  6. Parth37955

    Parth37955 NU #3, [Dead Inside], Mid-Boss, Dark Dealer Staff Member

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    it's one of those things that has been going on for so long that it would be hard to shift to something else.
     
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  7. baka8roukanako

    baka8roukanako Well-Known Member

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    It would be better to replace them with something like 'female reader targeted'.
     
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  8. Tan nu shen li

    Tan nu shen li Active Member

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    I am against removing "shoujo" and "josei" tags, because it's harder to find novels without them. And I can't keep up with my ongoing novels without these tags, it's frustrating. Also for some new novels at least I can keep tabs on them. It's is good if all the novels are in one place, I don't have to find them, its much easier. Please don't remove them.
     
  9. moonlight dream

    moonlight dream Active Member

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    I also against removing Josei tag. It is really frustrating that i can not keep tab of upcoming chapters update. I dont want to wasting time just to search one by one from the main database.
     
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  10. Ral

    Ral Not a Well-Known Member ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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  11. patient

    patient Well-Known Member

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    The moderator clearly told me shoujo/shounen/josei/seinen genres are for Japanese novels only. I even got banned because I added shoujo/shounen/josei/seinen genres for non-Japanese novels.
     
  12. fumikothefox

    fumikothefox Active Member

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    Can you ping the mod here please? I’ve been using NU since 2019 and this is the first time I’ve seen/heard any of this, so I’m a bit confused
     
  13. Fuyuneko

    Fuyuneko winter cat

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    Last edited: Feb 9, 2022
  14. astralmech

    astralmech [ ✨ ~ snooze ] [ kr translator ] [ jpn native ]

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    I noticed that happening with the novels I translate as well, but I figured there must be a reason. Though, I was a little confused on what made them make that decision since filtering the difference between shoujo and josei is fairly important (at least, it is for me as a reader).

    Someone did that as well with the R15 and R18 tags. I understand that in the description for the tags on NU, it's stated that they should ONLY be used for JP novels, but a lot of KR novels are explicitly labeled as R15 and R18 (or R19) on the sites where they're original published. I find those being removed to be an even more confusing thing to have happened.
     
  15. Nancy Drew

    Nancy Drew Well-Known Member

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    If I'm not mistaken, Korean novels on Korean websites are divided into three ages:
    1) for any age;
    2) for 15 years of age;
    3) for 19 years of age.
     
  16. sithkazar

    sithkazar Professional Screw Up

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    Here are my two cents:

    I understand that the terms in their purest form refer directly to the Japanese publication the manga was printed in. However those terms have widely been adopted by those reading translated Asian novels and other online resources at this point. I prefer adopting the terms to a broader use myself and see no problem with the definition evolving with their use in the community.

    However, if NU wants to be strict on their use on only Japaneses novels, then a similar alternative should be implemented. I would suggest something simple such as: "josei-like" or "josei-ish"