Nettaigyo wa Yuki ni Kogareru

[definitionofinsanity]

@Pokari

First off, let it be said, before we go further—a lot of the manga on mangadex are improperly tagged. The older entries are mostly okay, but ever since MD decided to severely restrict who could edit the tags (a pool of people which to my knowlege has effectively been shrinking over time even as the site grows), with surprising frequency the tags are blatantly and obviously wrong now and no one gets around to fixing them.

It's not like we're talking about some podunk manga that no one cares about. YuruYuri is basically one of the flagships of the "girls love" genre and a hugely visible series even outside of it. And, again, it's the exact thing you point to as being a problem with being tagged as shoujo-ai because it's pure subtext. And if that fucking manga is tagged as it, pack it up and forget the rest - it's de facto law now because it's not being actively enforced.

Had I cited some bullshit obscure manga, you'd have a point. But when it's one of the most popular and well-known girls love series and it's THE prime example of what you claim is improper tagging... Eh, no. It's kinda steering into valid use then.

This has extra-noticable repercussions for stuff where there's some disagreement among the fanbase as to what the tag means (exacerbated by mangadex not bothering to make it easy to find official statements on all the tag-meanings themselves). Back on Batoto, the "shoujo-ai" and "yuri" tags were broadly crowdsourced into the "correct" (for these sites) meanings since everyone could edit...

And I remember editing wars over tags there. And some series even here on MD have warnings "don't fuck with the tags" for precisely this reason.

Not so on MangaDex. If someone changes the tags in either direction on MD, they tend to stay that way for a while. (Heck, I could probably "prove" this right now by removing the tag now and demonstrating that it will stay gone some time and indeed possibly not come back at all. It wouldn't be the most scientific of tests, of course, but that would be my expectation based on previous/recent experience. But that would not be very proper of me, I feel.)

And you'd likely have people complaining about the tagging in the comments like how I see regularly now until someone put it back in. Again, we're not talking about some bullshit obscure series here.

I've never read YuruYuri so I can't say for sure, but FWIW the fans on MangaUpdates gives that one the "Subtle Romance" category-tag, contrasted with this one's "GL Subtext" tag

Confirmation bias. YuruYuri is also a series that's been running for 11 years, has 17 volumes, had multiple anime seasons and was basically formed out of the gate as a SoL S kankei series. Nettaigyo wa Yuki ni Kogareru is only 2 years old, has 6 volumes (owing mostly to individual chapter length) and is no where near as widely known as YuruYuri. Some readers read into the relationships more than is shown or mistake comedic romantic entanglements that are only set up for a joke as the real deal. Realistically, Nettaigyo wa Yuki ni Kogareru compares with YuruYuri for the most part on implied relationship interest between girls. And it doesn't help that in YuruYuri that often this is done for comedy so it can be pushed off as "just kidding."

I can't speak more than that, but the broad perception of the fanbase appears to be that YuruYuri actually does have romance. Without getting in to whether or not that's correct, which I have no opinion on, I presume the tag is based upon that premise.

Uh, no.
Especially because any romantic plot advances are almost always played off for comedic effect or have no real follow-thru. It's not meant to. So, yeah, if you're thinking wishfully or you're dense and take the comedic bits of hinted romance to be real and you get on mangaupdates and vote for it... Doesn't make it so. The fact that we have 17 volumes of the fucking series and to the best of my knowledge none of the girls are in an actual relationship and there's no sign of that happening... Eh... Color me skeptical, but the fact that it was a comedic SoL take on the subject and it's gone on this long with nothing happening suggests to me that there's no smoke and there sure as fuck isn't any fire.

As was adding it in the first place! A bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here. This is, however, the reason why I have not yet taken it upon myself to remove the tag, personally.

Spoiler

That's just from the first 6 chapters. I know the "girls being real friendly with another another" bit has a lot of leeway, but I don't think even really close female friends tend to nervously take sneak shots of one another while the other is sleeping and are embarrassed about it. Especially in Japan, where personal space is highly respected and you're supposed to even ask for permission to take photos of cosplayers that are publicly displaying their cosplay at events.

I dunno. You better have a good argument how this is not potential S kankei/girls love at the very least. Just because they aren't confessing or swapping spit with one another doesn't make it any less of girls love undertones/shoujo-ai content. More than other series that have done less and gotten away with it, in fact.

Begging your pardon, but this seems like pure sophistry to me—stories are written from a given perspective, and we're allowed to use a character's internal monologue and the like in determining genre. The fact that a character "could potentially be" thinking something on the other hand, means nothing to genre.

...It's interesting that you responded to my comment with claims of sophistry... with sophistic arguments.
Let's look at the definition of "subtext" in this context:
"an underlying and often distinct theme in a piece of writing or conversation."

...I'm really looking forward to the explanation of how this some-fucking-how is not important or valid when talking about a genre that deals with thematic elements of girls being attracted to one another. It is not required for one of the girls to explicitly state that they are in love for it to be shoujo-ai (after all, people can be in love and not be self-aware of this... kinda bizarre, that, almost like it's as if viewing it from... "perspective" lens where we as the reader can be aware of something about the characters that they themselves aren't realizing yet). It isn't required that the girls confess to be shoujo-ai. Nor is it required that they actually be in a relationship. We're talking about a genre that focuses on girls having crushes or being attracted, in some fashion, to other girls, that's the theme of the genre. So when we see UNDERLYING THEMES of that in the form subtext... Well, it doesn't seem like a stretch for me to say that it fits the theme and it has potential to go from there enough so to tag it for now.

Anyway, I meant it when I said "at the bare minimum" a potentially unrequited love is required: At that point it pretty much has to be one of the primary focuses of the work; just like a regular "romance" tag gets applied to shoujo stories of failed romance, and also to action manga that have romance on the side, but not to an action manga where one character happens to like another but nothing comes of it.

Then going by this logic, we should never allow those tags that deal with interpersonal relationships to be applied until the manga is done because you have no way of know whether or not anything fucking becomes of something until it's over.
I mean, plenty of people viewed School Days (and later regretted it) and probably through "oh, a harem is possible" until a certain boat ride that was so abrupt it became a fucking meme.

I honestly personally didn't suspect anything was amiss with the tags until we got the author's notes saying this was based (with permission) on an actual school's club. (And, well, chances of a club wanting to be known as "that club with the lesbian manga based on it," are low. Not zero, of course, but still.)

That was known from the beginning, however. And it's not like there isn't a precedence for this. Google anime/manga "pilgrimages" in Japan. For instance, do you think the myriad of places in and about Chiba City were upset about being associated with brother and sister incest of the highest order of degeneracy because Oreimo took many key places from them? Fuck no! They plastered posters and shit all over the place to cash in on it.
Don't believe me?
Here's a shot from the Oreimo anime:

Spoiler

...And here's the Chiba Urban monorail:

Spoiler

TOOT TOOT, ALL ABOARD THE INCEST EXPRESS.
It gets more interesting, however.
This is a still image from the Oreimo anime where many of the characters go to school, "Chiba Benten High School":

Spoiler

...and here's an interesting picture from real life of the real, functioning school "Chiba Prefecture Commercial High School":

Spoiler

But maybe you're right. Maybe that school and club in this case would be, for some reason, completely irate and furious over a manga where the mangaka stopped by the club, learned from the kids there and incorporated a lot of that into the manga. Let's look at how the local municipality and school is handling the situation:
https://twitter.com/AMW_senden/status/1161171950892306433 - (Oh, hey, students/the school/the club in question... doing... an... official display of the manga...)
https://twitter.com/AMW_senden/status/1161171684486832128
https://twitter.com/TripSan/status/1161205422528663553
https://twitter.com/93choco/status/1163454169010692098
https://twitter.com/93choco/status/1163452989392093184
https://twitter.com/93choco/status/1161145432350658560
https://twitter.com/tv58xXw3t1ZLni7/status/1161138310317666311

...I... Uh... Um... I think they're just fine with it. In fact, more than fine.

 

[Pokari]

@definitionofinsanity:

^{Edit: As an aside, I do hope you're reasonably enjoying—if that's the right word—or at least not suffering through, this debate (or conversation or argument or whichever it is); it's not off-topic, we're not yet going in circles, so I'm game to continue, but if you find the experience unpleasant please say something. Sometimes people argue out of a passion for truth, sometimes for fun, and at other times out of anger and frustration; and I have been presuming you are not, at present, doing the latter. (As for myself, I'm just nerdy enough to think that correct tagging is something worth hashing out and arguing over.)}

Look, a lot of what you're saying is based off of YuruYuri and I can't have a decent conversation with you about it because, like I said, I haven't read it. The TV tropes page does indeed provide me a clearer impression of what fans might be disagreeing about in particular, but mostly what I get out of it is that the fact that it's a gag series, confounds analysis somewhat (e.g. whether characters should be taken seriously at face value when they say stuff, or similarly, whether or not the status-quo reigning supreme makes it not-a-romance).

Anyway, if you insist upon that one series being the basis for your argument regarding of all of MangaDex's tagging, I can't have a meaningful conversation with you on that point. So I guess that's the end of that part of the conversation?

* * *​

You make a good point about how strong the subtext is in the original chapters as to why this was presumed shoujo-ai in the first place—since I was assuming it was back when I read those chapters I think I'd forgotten some of those scenes by the time I'd re-evaluated. Fair enough then; let's say the original assumptions behind adding the tag were justified, and that we shouldn't bother to take it off until it's contradicted (such as by the series ending with an effective denial thereof).

_{(Also, it occurs to me I somehow ended up in this debate rather than reading the latest chapters, so there may be egg on my face yet. Well—if it does come down to that, I'll sincerely apologise for wasting time. My assumption based on the state of debate was that the story was in largely the same state as I'd left it a few chapters ago, wherein it was leaving me to doubt if romance is indeed on the table here.)}

...It's interesting that you responded to my comment with claims of sophistry... with sophistic arguments.
Let's look at the definition of "subtext" in this context:
"an underlying and often distinct theme in a piece of writing or conversation."

...I'm really looking forward to the explanation of how this some-fucking-how is not important or valid when talking about a genre that deals with thematic elements of girls being attracted to one another.

Essentially, because there's a difference between holistic literary analysis, and tagging. Tagging guidelines, where extant, are often as objective as they can be, while still maintaining meaningfulness.

Objectivity is useful to avoid tag wars between people with differently-tinted glasses, e.g. every series with a bromance getting tagged shounen-ai by fujoshi who sincerely believe, and can articulately argue, that the subtext is plausibly there (and likewise for shoujo-ai).

It isn't required that the girls confess to be shoujo-ai. Nor is it required that they actually be in a relationship. We're talking about a genre that focuses on girls having crushes or being attracted, in some fashion, to other girls, that's the theme of the genre.

Again, the exact bounds of the (totally fan-invented, strictly western) genre of shoujo-ai are disagreed upon by different portions of the fanbase. Some definitions, such as that used here, do exclude cases where no romantic feelings of some sort are clearly involved (although indeed obviously there are a hundred different ways to express romantic feelings, and people will reasonably disagree on what's "clear" in certain cases).

Then going by this logic, we should never allow those tags that deal with interpersonal relationships to be applied until the manga is done because you have no way of know whether or not anything fucking becomes of something until it's over.

Nonsense! We apply them once it's clear someone is interested in a relationship (and clear that that's sufficiently relevant to the story). Occasionally we get really strong false signals and have to take the tags off afterwards (a situation which this series may yet end up being in!), but that's pretty rare. And for will-they-or-won't-they situations, like when two leads have obvious chemistry but that's not what the story's about, one indeed waits patiently to see if it becomes a thing.

It is worth noting that the conventions of romance storytelling make this practice a lot more reliable than it would be in reality. We can often presume something is a romance simply from how the characters' interactions are framed. Occasionally this is wrong (again, potentially this very series), but usually it's right.

 

[CatrACAB]

This manga is pretty great, but shouldn't it be tagged Josei instead of Seinen? Or really, it could totally be Shoujo...

 

[Lilliwyt]

@Shesk0S Might be too High school focus and too lightheart to be tagged as a Josei. Josei mangas had more heavy theme and much darker stories than that. Yes it's a bit gloomy tone but i still think it's a Seinen. As for Shoujo, well everybody is judge. Relation go too slow to havethe slightest idea if you gonna go this way.

 

[noguza]

I totally agree with @definitionofinsanity and they are honestly right about all of this and have proved to know their stuff. I'm questioning at this point if you, @Pokari, are used to this very specific Japanese genre that started around 1913.
Let me add my 2 cents which are probably worthless but I had bottled up for years now.

The western made tags shoujo ai and shonen ai mean specifically male pedophilia and female pedophilia in Japanese, so at first I honestly thought I was going to read stuff taken from Comic LO but later on got that people from the West meant something totally different with these terms. Still it has always weirded me out.

Now, if we want to tag specifically this so called shoujo ai sub-genre I'd actually use S kankei which @definitionofinsanity has been using in this thread which is easy to Google for people who don't know the term and actually manages to describe perfectly what kind of media you stumbled upon. S kankei manga/doujinshi and media in general are very coded in a specific way and fans of the genre, Japanese fans I mean, do like them this way so you have a magazine like Yurihime to cater to fans who don't like that but want something that is more straightforwadly GL.

@Shesk0S @Lilliwyt It's not the manga that decides what kind of audience it's going to cater to but the magazine it's published on. This is aimed at a male audience of 15-20 years old.

 

[Xaelath]

4cha mentioned that this manga might be not about Yuri at all but about the Coming Age.
It might be right,
but since i am currently trying to understand kanji(and learning it(ironically i was trying to figure out Bird/Yearn/FIsh Kanji)) i found out that it might be also about Yuri.

To put it the kanji 焦 following がれる can also mean To be in Love with
雪 as for Snow might be about Ko-Yuki character. (I dont have raw so i dont really know really know how Koyuki name written but i can assume it is written with one of that Kanji for Yuki, let me know if you get her full name in Kanji)

I am not sure the kanji 熱帯魚 as IT IS A TROPICAL FISH and nothing else but if you talk about This Story Context itself then it also could means Fish/Person/Salamander that kept in Aquarium/Space(box)/Cave.
This could also mean a certain character growth that was always in their safe space.

You could translate the whole tittle into A person who kept in their own Space Yearns to Love someone (Koyuki)
Edit for myself : It could be not that kind of love though.

That said, i am abit worried of where this manga heading right now,
It might went for FRIENDSHIP Route! or The Coming Age i mentioned.

Just few thoughts tho.

 

[Pokari]

@noguza:

I've made no claims to be an expert on the history of lesbian manga—though I am aware of the attested paedophilic connotations of the word shoujo-ai in Japan (I haven't personally witnessed this, because, honestly, that's not a sub-culture I'm going to run into in Japanese, but I trust those that say it is so).

The fact of the matter is that our use of these terms is every bit as nonsensical and awkward as the Japanese usage of several English ("Engrish") terms. Shoujo-ai, as you recognize, is as used here a corrupted loan-word, not an original Japanese term. _{(I can understand if you find that a bit cringey, mind. I'm all for moving to "GL" and "BL" and leaving this mess behind: The meaning of "yaoi" is also to my understanding wildly wrong compared to Japanese, only "yuri" approaches correctness, it's really a mess. But, for the present, this is what we have.)}

Your desire to map the terms to equivalent Japanese terms or traditions (e.g. S-Kankei) is perfectly understandable, and you and @definitionofinsanity are not the first to do so—indeed both "shoujo-ai as westerners use it, isn't a thing," and "shoujo-ai means GL subtext," are each "true" statements for different portions of the fanbase—but that's neither how these terms evolved in English originally nor, at least officially, how they are used here.

 

[CatrACAB]

@Lilliwyt I only really suggested Josei because it's sort of the female counterpart to Seinen AFAIK. I'm not an expert though. Really it seems to be written for the Shoujo audience, even if a lot of guys read and enjoy this type of thing.
@noguza I had never considered that! That makes sense, even if it does make it harder to find by searching.
I looked up S kankei/Class S, I agree that that would be a much better term for this type of stuff. According to wikipedia though, it is used more to describe platonic bonds, but this is clearly romantic. Not sexual, but more than platonic.

 

[noguza]

@Shesk0S This is not romantic at all, by Japanese standards. The meme you often can find online by Western fans is that "as long as they don't kiss I won't recognise it as love". Not because Western fans are blind or homophobes but simply put because this genre in Japan has been always vague and you can never tell what crossing the line is. Some manga are very very platonic (they barely hold hands), some goes as far as to kiss but then graduate from high school and see themselves returning to be het as nothing ever happened (which is normal in Japan but totally fucking retarded for us in the West).

Indeed, you don't have to adhere to these labels or nitpick as to whether this is supposed to be yuri, shojo ai or whatever. I'm just pointing out that Japanese people themselves like these manga to be vague and alluring without being overly straightforward because most like the thrill of taboo and that's it.

Regarding the demographic this is catering to, the manga is clearly written for a male audience, you can easily tell by looking at the drawings which are similar to Koe no Katachi — another manga written for a male audience.
Magazines that target shojo are Ciao https://ciao.shogakukan.co.jp/ and Nakayoshi http://nakayosi.kodansha.co.jp/. Compare the draws alone and you got yourself the answer.

 

[CatrACAB]

@noguza I guess I understand that, but I still don't think "platonic" accurately describes the relationship... it's somewhere in between.

I see what you're saying about the demographic. But, I think comparing the art as an indicator of demographic is a little unfair. I know little to nothing about manga in general, but I have looked at a few. You seem to be implying that Shoujo Ai is all shiny and sparkly like those, but half of my MDList is Shoujo Ai and none of it looks like that (though Hino-san no Baka does approach that). Cheerful Amnesia, Hana ni Arashi, Kase-san, Whispering You a Love Song, Yagate Kimi ni Naru, and Tsurezure Biyori all look closer to this manga than what I saw of Ciao or Nakayoshi. You can't really tell if something isn't Shoujo by whether it looks like that, even if you can tell if something is.

 

[CatrACAB]

Ah, I think I just mixed up Shoujo (describing demographic) and Shoujo Ai (describing genre). Whoops... you can tell this is the first time I've ever discussed manga with anyone...

EDIT: I just learned I could've edited my comment instead of posting another...

Yeah, I was totally wrong because of that mix up... you can basically ignore the second part of my previous comment, but I'll leave it up there. It's weird to me that enough straight guys would like girlxgirl manga that it's written with them in mind, but I guess there's just way more straight guys who read manga than gay girls...

 

[noguza]

@Shesk0S Please always keep in mind that shojo and shonen imply het and for kids/teenagers, they are pretty tame in themes and depth.

On the other hand you can have a lot more variety when it comes to manga that target adult or young adult individuals though they are mostly on the shonen/bishojo type when it comes to art.
The often used bishonen/shojo style often implies het romance so most people who are not into that, just by looking at the cover, will either pick the volume up or not — it's a marketing strategy.

 

[mustardhobo]

@noguza like 99z of seinen is edgelord fantasies or porn without any substance.

 

[the_descolada]

is this a monthly serial?

 

[ringo_juusu]

@the_descolada It is, but it takes a month hiatus after the release of the compiled volume.

 

[norctune]

Am I reading too much into this or are they gay?

 

[Raknasuu]

If you want examples on platonic relationships maybe you could look up Natsume's Book of Friends. Which by the way targets a female audience. The MC Natsume has like 3 main platonic relationships in the series (His friend Tanuma, an exorcist named Hatori and his deceased grandmother Reiko) but the love that is portrayed is different to the one on this work, even if both series have loneliness as tema. Like someone else said: You just don't become obsessed 24hrs with your platonic friend. You think of that person as precious but you can part ways and be the same when they or you come back.

So yeah, waiting this to develop.

 

[Raknasuu]

If you want examples on platonic relationships maybe you could look up Natsume's Book of Friends. Which by the way targets a female audience. The MC Natsume has like 3 main platonic relationships in the series (His friend Tanuma, an exorcist named Hatori and his deceased grandmother Reiko) but the love that is portrayed is different to the one on this work, even if both series have loneliness as tema. Like someone else said: You just don't become obsessed 24hrs with your platonic friend. You think of that person as precious but you can part ways and be the same when they or you come back.

So yeah, waiting this to develop.

 

[Halo]

> Shoujo Ai
Fattest fucking lie on this whole website.

But, oh well. Still a good misery manga.

 

[Spookie]

I wish this was yuri, a lot of the other ones build up too quick or the relationship has already started. Sasameki had a pretty decent dramatic buildup but the writing got sloppy towards the end and the confession scene was completely unsatisfying for me. Although can't really imagine Konatsu and Koyuki kissing, I could see them dating and it's impossible to think of how they would ever have that kind of relationship with anyone else.

Heres to hoping that the author changes their mind.