A lot of comics tagged "historical" really shouldn't be. I'd like to fix that.

[aceredshirt13]

I like historical fiction, and think East Asian media's takes on Western history are fun, so I was searching through the "historical" tag to see if there was anything interesting to read or maybe add to my group translation list for the future. Unfortunately, in the tag's current state, it's basically unusable - it's clogged up with 8 zillion fantasyworks that don't take place in any time period that actually existed. Given that two different threads have mentioned this before me - here and here - I think it's safe to say that I am not alone in thinking that someone wanting to find manga about the Sengoku era or the French Revolution shouldn't have to sift through a metric ton of comics that have nothing to do with history, any more than someone searching the fantasy tag shouldn't have to find hundreds upon hundreds of real-world slice of life comics. I don't have a problem with fictional fantasy worlds, but I do have a problem with them being mistagged to the point where nearly every single comic on the trending page shouldn't be there, and it's kind of absurd to be scrolling through the list and see "manga adaptation of a nonfiction book by a Belarusian journalist about the horrible things Soviet women saw in World War II" right next to "I got hit by Truck-kun and was reborn in the land of Whifflethracia with a harem of hot people and the ability to teleport". Like, I love Fire Emblem and Dragon Quest, but you wouldn't play those games and say they're historical, right?

So I've decided to do something about it. Here's a list I've made of comics tagged "historical" that aren't set in a real historical time or place. The Google Doc is free and open for anyone to edit or leave comments on (including contesting any entries), and given the sheer number of mistagged manga/manhua/manhwa on this site, I couldn't list them all myself if I tried, so help is appreciated. If you want to see the definition of "historical" that I used to make this list, you can check out my initial thread on this here - feel free to contest that as well.

I'm pretty free about changing tags when they're wrong or missing (upping things from safe/suggestive to erotica/pornographic when they need it, adding "anthology" to anthologies missing it, returning unofficial English titles to their original language titles, etc.), so if nobody complains I'll just go ahead and start removing historical from these, and y'all are free to join me.

 

[RodIshiCi]

Yeah, makes sense. If tags are wrongly used to the point that Hamefura is marked as historical, then the tag itself becomes useless.

 

[Grogzilla]

I like historical fiction

Hey, hate to burst your bubble, but I would encourage you to check our tag definitions:


If you believe a title has the tag in error, I encourage you to cross reference other sources such as MangaUpdates, Anime-Planet, AniList, MAL, or Kitsu (basically anyone we link to). If you find that none of the other databases do not have the historical tag, I would encourage you to file a report stating your findings.

I chose a title at random from your Google Docs list: https://mangadex.org/title/6d7c5c85-3bca-499e-98ec-644056f60107/predatory-marriage
Cross-referenced with MangaUpdates: https://www.mangaupdates.com/series/im3wp19/predatory-marriage
Both contain the Historical tag, therefore the tag stays.

 

[aceredshirt13]

Hey, hate to burst your bubble, but I would encourage you to check our tag definitions:
View attachment 16566

If you believe a title has the tag in error, I encourage you to cross reference other sources such as MangaUpdates, Anime-Planet, AniList, MAL, or Kitsu (basically anyone we link to). If you find that none of the other databases do not have the historical tag, I would encourage you to file a report stating your findings.

I chose a title at random from your Google Docs list: https://mangadex.org/title/6d7c5c85-3bca-499e-98ec-644056f60107/predatory-marriage
Cross-referenced with MangaUpdates: https://www.mangaupdates.com/series/im3wp19/predatory-marriage
Both contain the Historical tag, therefore the tag stays.

I discussed this in the other thread that I linked at the top of this thread because someone brought it up there, too, but I'll mention it again here. The historical tag definition on that doc describes it as an antiquated era on Earth - and as such would not include fictional countries that never existed (like the otome game world in Hamefura). (The only person who said it should apply to a historical "atmosphere" was a random anon who commented on the doc, and whom I disagreed with in the very same comment thread.) The "not necessarily real-world history" is, I assume, there to cover historical fiction or historical fantasy/sci-fi, lest the category be relegated entirely to nonfiction and biographical works. Dororo has demons, which didn't appear in the actual Sengoku period (as far as I know), but it's still historical owing to its era. By the same token, Oscar Jarjayes was not a real royal in real French Revolutionary France (though the bisexual in me certainly wishes that she was), but the manga's still historical due to its setting. Thus, "not necessarily part of real world history". If the tag does indeed mean that anything that even seems vaguely like a historical era counts as historical, even if it is in countries that don't exist and never did (which, honestly, in my opinion and that of the other people who have responded to this thread, my original thread in the manga discussion section, and the two other threads I linked, would render the tag effectively useless to the point that it might as well be removed altogether), then the tag rules should be updated to reflect that.

As for MangaUpdates, the tags there aren't necessarily gospel either, and are often incorrect. For instance, Please, Jeeves, an adaptation of the Jeeves and Wooster stories by P. G. Wodehouse, is tagged on MangaUpdates as "Victorian Era", even though it's definitely not set during that period of time - the original stories weren't even written until the WWI era, which is after even the Edwardian Era (which is also tagged - it's more possible, depending on how you interpret the... very loose timeline of the original stories, but the mangaka explicitly describe the manga as set during "interwar Britain" so the tag doesn't even apply to the manga either). As another example, if you look on the tag "Divorced Protagonist", a significant number of those protagonists have merely suffered breakups, not literal divorce. MangaUpdates is a crowdsourced site like MangaDex, after all - the barrier to changing tags on MangaUpdates is slightly more than on MangaDex, but it is still very slight since all you have to do is send a message and say that you want to update the tags on something (not even why! certainly doesn't require proof or cross-referencing). So it is capable of errors, too; and as such, I think it's safe to say that it's not 100% reliable in what it declares to be "historical", either. In fact, I'm literally sending in a request to MangaUpdates to upgrade my account so I can fix all the incorrect tags there, too.

 

[anifd]

if you're going to try to remove the genres on mangaupdates i think i remember it being stated that the "european ambience" and other "ambience" tags are the ones that set in a fictional but historically inspired era, not exactly the era. so if you're doing a search to eliminate the historical genre from fantasy manga, add a - before the "european ambience" tags and similar ambience ones as it will remove them from the search and narrow it down. just the combo of "fantasy" and "historical" tells you enough though. the "historical persons" or "historical references" tag may be useful.

 

[Grogzilla]

As for MangaUpdates, the tags there aren't necessarily gospel either, and are often incorrect.

Yes, which is why I recommend you check all tracking sites before deciding if a tag is incorrect. The specific example I mentioned only has two tracking sites listed so I went with the first one.

I discussed this in the other thread that I linked at the top of this thread because someone brought it up there, too

I missed the thread, my apologies. As for the rest of your paragraph, yes, Hamefura is incorrectly tagged. Dororo and Rose of Versailles should keep the Historical tag. Can you guess why? The goal should be to have some-what matching tags with trackers. As long as that concept is kept in mind, there shouldn't be a problem.

But I'm not here to stop you, just to warn you that if incorrect mass changes occur, I won't be mad, just severely disappointed

 

[BzzBzz]

I would encourage you to check our tag definitions:
View attachment 16566

Of course you are free to define history whatever you want. But there's lil problem I guess.

According to definition of history and historical it's all about real world things/events. If it's not about real world it's not history.

 

[aceredshirt13]

if you're going to try to remove the genres on mangaupdates i think i remember it being stated that the "european ambience" and other "ambience" tags are the ones that set in a fictional but historically inspired era, not exactly the era. so if you're doing a search to eliminate the historical genre from fantasy manga, add a - before the "european ambience" tags and similar ambience ones as it will remove them from the search and narrow it down. just the combo of "fantasy" and "historical" tells you enough though. the "historical persons" or "historical references" tag may be useful.

Oh I’m very glad to hear that rule exists lmao. It was kind of hilarious to see “Middle Eastern Ambience” on the manga about T. E. Lawrence… being in the real Middle East… in real life… Unfortunately having made a MangaUpdates account to fix these problems, I have found that for some reason even though anyone can add a category, they can’t be removed?? Like you can downvote them, but they don’t go away… very obnoxious. So the difficulty of changing bad tags also makes it less reliable.

@Grogzilla All right, I’ll keep that in mind! I can definitely say for sure that some of the ones tagged historical on this site aren’t even tagged that on MangaUpdates, so I’ll check them on both sites to be sure. I figured I’d mostly start with removing the ones in really obvious fictional settings - but I wanted to make the list so if anyone saw something on the list that really was historical, they could let me know I was wrong for removing/wanting to remove it. (For instance, there was a yuri oneshot I almost put on the “ambiguous western historical setting, not sure it’s clear enough to count” list, until I skimmed far enough to see they referenced the USSR launching Sputnik and realized it was indeed in a real time and place!)