Create Anime and Manga et al Metadata

[branchandroot]

So, Fanlore (which is in no way synonymous with the Fandom History fiasco, despite the efforts of the FH creator/troll) is looking for knowledgeable people to talk about that eternal question:

What do we call this stuff?

I find myself torn, really. I mean, a big part of me says "this should be simple, Categories are like tags, so you create as many Categories as there are Kinds Of Stuff and slap all that are applicable on any given wiki page".

Another part of me says "but that will make the Category structure really unwieldy and hard to navigate!"

One thing I'm sure of is that I do not think Anime should be merged into Cartoons, nor Manga into Comics. The latter are names for specifically Western art forms, and using them for non-Western forms would, in my eyes, be a nasty sort of erasure, given the cultural history involved.

Kind of like using Manga as the Category for something that's really manhwa. Given the cultural history involved.

And so I come back to "a Category for everything". Actually, I'm not at all sure that's a problem. I don't think it would be that unwieldy, in the end. And trying to limit the Categories implicitly assumes that the world is only as big as X number of categories. Which is just plain wrong.

So, what do you think? What Categories do we need?

Comments

[ticktocktober]

Are subcategories out of the question? Comics, manga, manwha all under 'Graphic Novels' or somesuch? Seems like a reasonable solution, unless the wiki isn't equipped to function that way.

[branchandroot]

That could work, yeah. It is possible to put categories under other categories. I like the idea of using Graphic Novels or similar. That's a functionally descriptive term that isn't too tightly wedded to a culturally specific art form.

[wombat1138]

"Sequential Art" is one phrase that sounds suitably generic, multiculturally covering everything from four-panel single strips to multi-decade complex narratives. Though it doesn't cover single-panel pieces... in some cases, such as Family Circle (blech), the sequentiality could handwaved as taking place in the reader's acquisition over time of the general narrative cloud collectively formed by all of the aleatoric one-shots. However, in stricter one-shot one-panels like the ones in newspaper editorial sections and the pages of the New Yorker...?

"Narrative Artwork"? *throws hands into air* (darn, now what do I catch them with?)

[branchandroot]

*laughs* There was already a little scrap about that between two European (I think) members, one pointing out that Sequential Art was a term invented by Will Eisner and popularized by Scott McCloud not many years ago, and is a very US and comics specific term.

I do kind of like Graphic Story as a descriptor. It emphasizes the difference between a graphic that's intended to go with words or convey a narrative, and one that isn't (which we might call Artwork or Visual Art I suppose).