Merge "Shoujo Ai" tag with "Yuri" :planned:

[GoggledAnon]

It's 2019 and y'all just gotta accept that Yuri is a wide genre of everything girl's love related, not just the explicit stuff, and Shoujo-Ai isn't even a real thing. Having these as two seperate categories just makes it difficult for uploaders and confusing for readers. If you want a tag for the really low end of the yuri spectrum, may I suggest "Yuri Subtext" as an alternative? Maybe also consider similar options for Yaoi/Shounen-Ai.

 

[Yatsuki]

Lol no it's not. If anything merging the two would inconvenient readers instead.

I know people who are ok with shoujo-ai and shounen-ai, but doesn't like yuri or yaoi (actual some people just don't like any smut/explicit content for that matter). Nothing wrong with wanting to read just some light fluffy girls or boys love stories instead of all that fucking and fornicating. And seriously what's confusing about these genre? Shoujo-ai/shounen-ai = girls/boys love with no smut. Yuri/yaoi = girls/boys love with smut, R-18.

 

[GoggledAnon]

That argument's a bit moot considering this place literally has Smut and Ecchi tags.

Putting aside the fact shoujo/shounen-ai are extremely dated terms that have never been used by the Japanese (and has dubious conotations when translated literally), the line over whether something qualifies as one or the other is purely subjective with no clear distinction, making it a frustrating time for users as content posted under one will miss an audience searching through the other. Now that we have Smut, Ecchi, and Hentai tags in nice flashy colors, having a tag specifically for "not smutty yuri" is pointless.

 

[icedkocha]

I agree. The term "shoujo-ai" doesn't even apply to GL work in Japan, where it's actually a synonym for lolicon.
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B0%91%E5%A5%B3%E6%84%9B
Yuri is an umbrella term that covers everything from subtext to erotic work, and additional tags such as "ecchi" and "hentai" can be used to better define the work

 

[yassaimossai]

Yuri/yaoi = girls/boys love with smut, R-18

There is already a tag for smut. It's called "smut".

If the readers aren't inconvenienced by the lack of two separate tags for het romances (with and without porn), I don't see how merging these two pairs of tags would make the situation worse. If anything, it would eliminate the need to search for two tags instead of one, because these tags aren't used consistently — some uploaders only use one tag for both SFW and NSFW content (yes, there are releases that are marked as 18+ yet tagged as either "shounen ai" or "shoujo ai"), some use both at the same time (therefore tagging SFW content as "yuri" or "yaoi"). Clearly, this distinction is redundant when a NSFW tag exists.

 

[Plykiya]

@icedkocha We don't follow strict Japanese definitions for a few of our tags, such as Doujinshi being more used for parody works or Hentai being applied to basically any story with a focus on sexual content with explicitly showing genitals, despite doujinshi basically meaning any kind of self-published work and hentai not even being a category of media. Saying we should follow what Japan does is a bit moot, it should be how the western audience understands the terms

@yassaimossai We don't have an NSFW tag (?)

 

[igenetycs]

Shoujo Ai is a bit of a useless tag, especially given the ambiguity of it. When the tag covers both friendships between girls (e.g. https://mangadex.org/title/22955/nettaigyo-wa-yuki-ni-kogareru) and romantic relationships between girls (e.g. https://mangadex.org/title/24924/hana-ni-arashi), what exactly is the tag accomplishing? The tag fails to accurately convey to the reader the nature of the story.

On the topic, MangaDex writes about Yuri:

"Japan typically uses this single category for all forms of these relationships, sexual or not. In the West, the term Shoujo-ai categorizes stories that focus on the emotional aspects of the relationships, while Yuri categorizes more of the sexual aspects and explicit content."

I think the important thing to note here is that Japan uses this single category for all forms of these relationships. The definition of how "the West" sees it is questionable at best. This has long been a source of debate, with "Shoujo Ai" being especially criticized by those who are aware of its origins.

Given that MangaDex has the "Ecchi" and "Smut" tags, as GoggledAnon mentioned above, there is no need to specify that an individual yuri story contains aspect of sexuality; there are other tags that accomplish this quite handily. Let's look at heterosexual stories for comparison, there is no distinction between "Romance" and "Sex Focused Romance," because we have the Smut and Ecchi tags to do that for us. Why does Yuri need this distinction, when straight relationships do not?

Not to mention that MangaDex thoroughly fails to adhere to their definitions of the tags. Tsurezure Biyori (https://mangadex.org/title/22831/tsurezure-biyori) has a yuri tag, but the story has a total of two kiss scenes over 17 chapters, and nothing further than that. Is this story focused on sexual aspects and explicit content? Yuki and the Authoress (https://mangadex.org/title/32306/yuki-and-the-authoress) similarly has very little focus on sexuality, yet it has a Yuri tag (and no Shoujo Ai tag!). I'd assert that the separation of "Yuri" and "Shoujo Ai" creates more confusion than it solves.

 

[yassaimossai]

@Plykiya How is tagging something as "smut" or "hentai" not an 18+ or NSFW tag?

 

[Plykiya]

@yassaimossai Smut implies there's sexual content and hentai doesn't mean 18+. It's H instead of 18+ because I'm pretty sure we're not an age rating authority, nor would the appropriate age rating even be 18 in all countries

As for NSFW, one could argue that a ton of the site in general is NSFW. Ecchi sure as hell wouldn't fly in a workplace, nor would a majority of manga content outside of ecchi/smut and whatever.

 

[igenetycs]

@Plykiya

Are "Smut", "Ecchi", and "Hentai" not sufficient at conveying the level of sexuality present in yuri works?

 

[Takaala]

As a typesetter/uploader(although I admit for only a few things) I definitely agree with Goggled Anon. Shoujo-ai is an outdated and confusing term and arbitrarily separating it from the term Yuri is silly. I have personally seen shoujo-ai used in four different ways. In the literally translated way, it can refer to the love of little girls i.e. lolicon or something similar. In Yatsuki's definition, which is non-sexual relationships between women or even sexual but not explicit relationships between women. I've even seen it used to encompass any kind of relationship between women, sexual, non-sexual, explicit, or whatever. On this very site I have seen manga tagged shoujo-ai with sexually explicit situations. While classifying specific works into genres can sometimes be difficult, we shouldn't have this much confusion on such basic genre definitions.
The point is the term "shoujo-ai" is extremely confusing to the point of being practically meaningless and I personally refuse to use it to describe anything. I understand this is how it has always worked for some people but I simply must disagree. Yuri works just fine with smut/hentai tags as an all-encompassing term and if you must separate it into another category "yuri subtext" is self explanatory.

 

[yassaimossai]

hentai doesn't mean 18+

Alright, "hentai" means "porn". "Yuri", according to the site's definition, means "porn between girls". Same with "yaoi" and "porn between guys". Why does there need to be a redundant tag for a specific kind of porn when there's already an all-encompassing tag for every kind of porn?

As for NSFW, one could argue that a ton of the site in general is NSFW.

Every single release on the site is technically NSFW, because reading manga on your job is sure to get you fired. But generally this abbreviation is used to refer to sexually explicit content to avoid typing the entire phrase out.

 

[Plykiya]

@igenetycs Dunno, haven't thought about it in-depth yet. Just answering the other people about the stuff I have an answer to right now

@yassaimossai The Japanese definition of hentai is basically any kind of perverted act drawn or not. They have a separate wiki page to classify how the west uses hentai, to be drawn porn and stuff. Sure, you could argue NSFW means sexually explicit content, but then we'd have to deal with people constantly arguing to us about whether or not x series is NSFW and marked as NSFW to hide it from the general public which we have no interest in getting involved in

 

[yassaimossai]

The Japanese definition of hentai is basically any kind of perverted act.

But you're not using the Japanese definition of hentai.

 

[igenetycs]

@Plykiya Understood. Please tag me once you've thought it over and want to discuss it further.

 

[mikatheidiot]

authors dont produce content based on this distinction, its all yuri to them
because this distinction has no basis in the actual content, its application is completely arbitrary
parroting the idea that theres a legitimate basis for the distinction in terms of sexual content will merely cause more confusion for all of the cases when a manga is tagged with both

 

[GoggledAnon]

@Plykiya It's not so much the origin of said words (I was obviously aware of the whole "hentai" usage thing), but rather having multiple tags for pretty much identical content with no notable difference leading to unneccessary division. It's like a kitchen having seperate compartments for aubergines and eggplants.

 

[Plykiya]

@yassaimossai Sure, we say it means porn, but we'll mark sexually explicit stories with explicitly showing genitals as hentai. Regular yaoi that's redrawn with dicks, wasn't sold as R18 but we'll still mark it as hentai despite it not being porn. The original implementation reason for adding the hentai tag was because MangaDex was banned in Indonesia during the first few months of the site for not hiding hentai. It doesn't exactly mean porn, but yeah basically porn is a good enough descriptor for people to get the gist of what falls under as hentai.

@GoggledAnon Yeah, I get the gist of the argument. Just thinking about how changing the tags for yuri and yaoi will play out in my head.

 

[igenetycs]

@Plykiya If it comes down to it, I've read a few hundred different yuri manga / manhwa / etc., and I'd be happy to go through and help adjust the tags.

I'm sure a lot of the other individuals replying have read just as much if not more, and may be willing to help as well.

 

[MarvN]

> Sure, we say it means porn, but we'll mark sexually explicit stories with explicitly showing genitals as hentai. Regular yaoi that's redrawn with dicks, wasn't sold as R18 but we'll still mark it as hentai despite it not being porn. The original implementation reason for adding the hentai tag was because MangaDex was banned in Indonesia during the first few months of the site for not hiding hentai. It doesn't exactly mean porn, but yeah basically porn is a good enough descriptor for people to get the gist of what falls under as hentai.

so, you're saying the hentai tag isn't actually for hentai, and instead should be used as an NSFW tag. Sure, make a NSFW toggle and a hentai tag.