Clarification on Content Ratings

[TanomoshiiKinoko]

I have been translating the series Luo Zhi Yongzhe. I had initially set it as Erotica, but it was changed to Pornographic and has been locked for editing. I was hoping to get a better understanding of why. I did some searching and found a more detailed descriptions of the ratings, but Pornographic still doesn't seem to fit. The most graphic aspects are:

1.Visible pubic hair
2.Man almost grabs a girl's boob
3.Monster smells a girl's naked body(including crotch)
4.Girls wets herself in fear

While the Content Ratings are defined as:

Safe - No obscene or vulgar depictions of the human body. e.g. no sex, nudity, provocative clothing, or ecchi scenes. (This is obviously not right)
Suggestive - Has minor to moderate amount of risqué and sensual elements. No explicit sex scenes, but can include minor nudity. (The tooltip on the edit page only says "Nudity but no sex". The specification to "MINOR nudity" would rule this out)
Erotica - Has a high amount of risqué and stimulating elements that contribute to the plot, including explicit nudity for sex scenes. The work is still focused on story, rather than pornography. (This seems to fit. The series has lots of nudity, but is also plot focused)
Pornographic - Having sexual intercourse as the main focus of the story with the purpose of sexually arousing the readers, typically published in porn magazines or stated as R-18 content. (The series contains no sex or visible genitals, unless pubic hair counts. It is marked R-18 on pixiv, but I think that's true for anything with nipples.)

I'm also not sure Sexual Violence is warranted. You could see someone grab a boob or an animal smell someone's crotch in almost any ecchi manga. The guy didn't even succeed at touching her boob in this.

I'd appreciate any help in understanding the ratings better and what aspect is believed to have pushed this series over the line into pornographic.

Thank you for your time

 

[Manko-sensei]

It's funny they put Sexual Violence when Konosuba and other Suggestive series have more of that content and it's not catalogued that way, and Erotica would be a perfect fit but maybe someone only saw the chapter 0 (images without text) and concluded this was pornographic. Instead, there's blood but it's not tagged as gore, I don't see the consistency anywhere, and the original tags on Pixiv lack of any warning except for the +18 which in Pixiv means NSFW aka Nudity. Since the chapters were really short I've read them, and it's basically comic relief. I guess someone with powers is hypersensitive to this stuff and activates the helicopter parentalist puritanist mode.

 

[KATCRX]

Well, it's definitely pornographic. The female main character is naked in every chapter, and from what the story suggests, she'll be naked throughout. As for sexual violence, the first six chapters are about her constantly trying to escape from being assaulted by monsters and bandits.

 

[TanomoshiiKinoko]

Well, it's definitely pornographic. The female main character is naked in every chapter, and from what the story suggests, she'll be naked throughout. As for sexual violence, the first six chapters are about her constantly trying to escape from being assaulted by monsters and bandits.

The description of Pornographic says it requires sex. Nudity isn't enough to qualify according to the rating descriptions. Erotica can even have sex if it's for the plot and isn't too graphic.

She spends six chapters trying to escape being killed by a monster. The bandit only tries to grab her boob. If one attempted boob grope was enough for the tag, 90% of ecchi manga would have it.

 

[Akule]

The raws at the Pixiv page isn't helping your argument.

 

[Grogzilla]

After the debates we've seen the past couple of days, everything is under a little more scrutiny. From what I've seen TL'ed so far I can't imagine a reason for the bump, but my spidey senses are definitely tingling

The raws at the Pixiv page isn't helping your argument.

Eh, that would be the standard, erotica or porn

 

[Manko-sensei]

Pixiv marks every nudity as +18, Mangadex does not. If you want to read Erotica examples of nudity with sex, read Ishuzoku Reviewers, Asumi-chan is Interested in Lesbian Brothels, Rosen Garten Saga, Maou no Hajimekata, etc. Same for Sexual Violence, without rape or graphic violence it's not that. Even Kaminaki Sekai no Kamisama Katsudou has nudity plus intends of assault and it's just Suggestive. Being tied up or held up just before being saved is a common standard in series with no Sexual Violence tag, and like it was explained characters can go fully nude for chapters without being pornographic, just erotica. There are no untranslated chapters to check, so until something more happens it's dishonest putting those two. Or are we going to put now Sexual Violence on Konosuba and Jojo in the parts where Dio appears?

 

[Garett]

If it has no high definition of sex, just a glimpse one, then it is an erotica. Simple and plain.

Ah. "high definition", as someone you normally found on pornography in general. This answers why Parallel Paradise is not one.

 

[Grellow]

If it has no high definition of sex, just a glimpse one, then it is an erotica. Simple and plain.

Ah. "high definition", as someone you normally found on pornography in general. This answers why Parallel Paradise is not one.

Well, it's definitely pornographic. The female main character is naked in every chapter, and from what the story suggests, she'll be naked throughout. As for sexual violence, the first six chapters are about her constantly trying to escape from being assaulted by monsters and bandits.

Yeah I'd argue that something that probably shows the thin line between erotica and pornographic would be Rose Garten Saga since it has full blown sex but slightly censored all over the place and using genitals/sexual intercourse as a weapon is a huge part of the plot. And in this title we're discussing, the heroine being naked but powerful also is.

Edit: So far we haven't seen uncensored Genitals and having full blown tits in an 'erotic' manga is not uncommon, just look at the one I linked (which also contains stuff like rape into submission) in the literal first few chapters

 

[TanomoshiiKinoko]

Wow. I just opened a random chapter of Rosen Garten Saga(61 specifically), and it has close-up shots of genitals censored with mosaic. I guess the pubic hair in Luo Zhi Yongzhe could count as censored genitals, but then Parallel Paradise should too. It makes less and less sense for it to be pornographic when you look at extreme erotica series like these.

I wonder if the people saying this is pornographic also think RGS and PP should be. I'm not sure if this is a case of differing opinions on the overall definition, or if they see this series as worse then those in some way.

 

[HelperHand]

@TanomoshiiKinoko the reasons why those titles are under erotica and not pornographic are the magazine in which they are released, the digital Magazine Hero from Shogakukan and Weekly Young Magazine from Kodansha (both Seinen), probably one of the reasons is under pornographic is because it doesn't have a reference, I mean a publisher that defines the category (is self published) and is marked as NSFW in pixiv

 

[Grogzilla]

I'm afraid all y'all are doing is spinning your wheels. Comparing series is only going to make you more upset/outraged/angry and derails the thread from the original issue. I suggest we hold off on this discussion until we are able to receive a direct answer.

 

[KATCRX]

.

 

[memeklobeh]

The term "erotica" itself is a bit weird since it implies that the story is meant to be erotic. Yet Berserk is marked as "suggestive". Where's the line here, folks?

 

[seekermoc]

If it has no high definition of sex, just a glimpse one, then it is an erotica. Simple and plain.

Ah. "high definition", as someone you normally found on pornography in general. This answers why Parallel Paradise is not one.

Parallel Paradise is erotica because the series focuses on the plot, and the (extremely gratuitous) sex is for plot-driven reasons.

If the sex exists to support the story, then it's erotica. If the "story" is simply an excuse to set up the sex, then it's pornography.

 

[seekermoc]

The term "erotica" itself is a bit weird since it implies that the story is meant to be erotic. Yet Berserk is marked as "suggestive". Where's the line here, folks?

The line is literally spelt out in the rules, which are included in the OP. Nudity but no explicit sex = suggestive, explicit nudity and sex in plot-driven stories = erotica, sex for sex's sake = porn.

This whole debate is because people are attributing their own meaning to the category names like "erotica" and "pornography" without giving any care to the actual defined guidelines for what goes into which category.

 

[kohelemon]

Dang, with that specification I think Kingdom should have the Erotica Tag; I'm only almost 300 chapters in and there's been like two sex scenes in total. No crotch though. Hmm, I wonder... Oh, well Keiji Of the Flower Chapters were removed by Hokuto No Gun guys for some reason, but toward the final chapters they translated (leaving us with 30 or so out of the 200, the rest we never got) things got really weird. Though both aren't too explicity. I mean graphically nudey sure, but not Bad-Bad.

 

[jhs_reika]

From all the comments, it seems that the series should be an Erotica than a Porn.
Because of these three main things:
- no sex
- no genitals
- plot driven

Can someone change the rating already?

 

[Teasday]

Without weighing in on what the rating should be on this particular series,

The term "erotica" itself is a bit weird since it implies that the story is meant to be erotic. Yet Berserk is marked as "suggestive". Where's the line here, folks?

It is not meant to imply that at all. If it helps, just think of "Safe/Suggestive/Erotica/Pornography" instead as arbitrary simple one-word labels for "Explicitness Level 1/2/3/4" since that's the actual intent. The labels themselves are unimportant, they're just the best ones we could come up with that roughly correspond with what we wanted set the levels at.

 

[cash5891]

My two cents based on the available English translation:
This falls squarely into the "Erotica" category -- the nudity is central to the story, there is (so far) no overt push to place the MC in sexual scenarios, nor is there excessive emphasis on sexual acts and/or anatomical detail, or other common hallmarks of works generally accepted as "pornographic". So far, everything the MC is going through have just been natural consequences of being naked in another world.

Of course, it could change for the worse in future chapters, but unless the plot changes to "plot" and graphic sexytimes ensue, this still places it squarely in Erotica, not Pornographic. When even Berserk of all things is rated more mildly than this manhua, that's when you know that whoever rated this work either knows more than I do (maybe they read ahead in the original language?) or is tripping hard on outdated medieval morality.