Dragon and Chameleon - Ch. 20 - The Greatest Manga of All Time

[kingdedede]

holy crap, i just read these 20 chapters in one sitting, im fucking hooked

 

[setyaputrab]

The definitions of hard and soft sci-fi are actually fairly close to those of high and low fantasy, conceptually, but in reverse; high fantasy will easily say "wizards did it" and that's that, because the magic of the world is all pervasive and can quite simply do just that, because it is, "the world of heroes and gods and titans..., a world of powers and passions and moments of ecstasy far greater than anything we meet outside the imagination". Low fantasy, however, is more akin to a "magical realism"; the world can still be fantastical, but it's still based in rules and forms that restrict and define how magic may operate within the confines of the society that it is built upon, and the focus is not on the magic but on the people; a lot of what is termed "urban fantasy" is also low fantasy, but that doesn't mean something taking place in the modern world is necessarily low fantasy, either; Fate/Stay Night would definitely be considered High Fantasy, as would the entirety of the TYPE-MOON multiverses. Long story short, High fantasy is fantasy that is epic in the nature of either it's settings or characters vs. low fantasy which features less mythic and more "human" characters and scope.

The conceptualization that "high fantasy" simply means, "takes place in a fantastical world", and "low fantasy" means, "takes place in our world where magic intrudes", is actually a (bad) attempt to redefine the genres and give them sharply delineating facets different from how it was originally acknowledged by Lloyd Alexander, who coined the term to begin with.

Sorry, but i checked the low fantasy page in wikipedia, and it seems that they're using the same definition as the author?