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TL;DR
Most of what I am about to say is a refinement of what I already said. @DANDAN_THE_DANDAN, jump straight to "Cutting all ties" for a reply arguing away at should fanservice affect the genre.
In "The death of plot", I argue that plot elements are not part of the genre. However, setting and mood elements are.
In "Cutting all ties", I argue that the "setting and mood" elements do not have to affect the plot in order to be part of the genre. I balence this argument off of the popular belief that not all manga(nor stories) have a plot, and the belief that these plot-less manga should still have a genre.
In "What remains?" I leave the question of how much of these "setting and mood" elements are needed before we give a genre tag unanswered due to the much more explicitly subjective nature of the question.
@Hoanghoiham
You honestly didn't say which side you were voting for (is or is not part of the ecchi genre, assuming you are going for is not), but it seems like you did agree with everyone here that the ecchi presented here is not part of the plot (aka. fanservice).
Under the assumption that you are my enemy (I am paranoid), I will now argue that "Artistic style" also contributes to the genre. Sure, it doesn't directly change the plot, but if this were a LN or narration, they would have added in a bunch of alluring and seductive words to describe the scene just the same. In other words, although it is not part of the plot, it is part of the story.
As you claimed, a story element(weather it be fanservice, background, conversations, etc) with no ties to the plot is easily replaceable by something else or removed altogether. But it is there and it does affect the story.
Plot is unaffected by it. Granted. However, a story is made of many elements, and plot is just one of them.
Fanservice scenes are part of the imagery (both in written and drawn works). And imagery may affect the mood and setting of the story.
Genres are a form of categorization based off of common elements of stories. These elements come from theplot, no... wait a moment.... setting and mood.
When you think of fantasy, are you imagining a plot or a setting? Unless you have a wildly different idea of what fantasy is, your imagining a setting. Horror is a genre based off of the mood. There may be common plots for a given genre, but there are no direct ties to the plot from it. A story may use a completely unique plot without loosing the genre it received from the setting/mood used. (also, if plots were directly tied to genre, then the genre tag itself would be a spoiler. We can often infer the plot from the genres, but the author can still surprise us. The World God Only Knows, a member of the harem genre, is a good example of this)
In short, plot is something that should be different from story to story. Even if there are common plot elements for a genre, you cannot conclude that any of those plot elements will be their from the genre alone.
This conclusion above is step 1 of my evil plan to remove the very idea that plot is necessary for a genre, and thus permitting fan-service to affect the genre. Pretty convening right. But @DANDAN_THE_DANDAN doesn't go down easily. The ringleader of debates playing the devils advocate with plans to take over theworldforum
This argument, thus far, has been nothing more than a refinement of what I already said in my first reply, but put into more definitive terms with examples. As such, I still need to counter what seems to be your common belief, "genre is a story element that affects the plot". While I have argued that genre does not define the plot, I have yet to give a valid argument saying it doesn't affect it.
There are many genres which we attribute to each title, honestly, I would love to see you all give examples where each genre tag affects the plot (it would be a noble effort and quite an enlightening exercise which I am sure other readers would love to see), but I will save you from that and go down a more stable route.
I am sure we can all come to a consensus that not every manga(nor LN nor anime) has a plot. You may be able to attribute some plot to our lesser titles by claiming the entire plot is to be inferred(at which point it would also be different for every reader), but I doubt anyone would go that far. If not, you might be able to lower the bar for defining plot, but it would be hard to do that without becoming so inclusive that everything is part of the plot, and thus negating your argument against labeling this as part of the ecchi genre. (plots are not required for a story, but almost every story will have one)
However, even these plot-less manga with little to no story have genres attached. Even without a plot, we still have a setting, and sometimes we have a mood as well. Removing the genre tags which categorize them would yield no benefit to us readers. Even these 1-4 star plot-less manga have readers who like it for the setting alone. As such, for consistency with plot-less titles, we should not require that a story element affects the plot in order to be part of the genre.
@buttsaggington has already covered the requirements of "ecchi". And although some seemed to disagree that the "light ecchi" presented is sufficient enough to conclude it's genre, everyone seems to have acknowledged that those scenes are indeed ecchi (on the low side of it) at the least. As such, I do not believe I need to argue that ecchi elements are in the manga.
With this, the only thing I believe left is deciding at what point a story element becomes part of the genre. How often must it reoccur? Every chapter? Once or twice per volume? At least 2% of the pages? Or something more dynamic like "at least 5% of story elements must contribute to the genre" or "must be of the top 25% of the genres a story elements contributes to(meaning up to 75% of story elements that are part of a genre may not apply the genre should another genre have more story elements contributing to it)".
I already gave my rule of thumb. "Multiple times per volume", but that is not definitive. Perhaps I will write an equation for it latter(leaning towards the more dynamic definitions). Though defining what counts as "a story element contributing to a genre" is likely to be a pain as well.
For the time being, I will post this and see if anyone counters any of those points. If not, then all that's left is figuring out how often we need an ecchi scene before we attach the ecchi genre to something.
(I refined this ~7 times. I hope it still makes sense)
Most of what I am about to say is a refinement of what I already said. @DANDAN_THE_DANDAN, jump straight to "Cutting all ties" for a reply arguing away at should fanservice affect the genre.
In "The death of plot", I argue that plot elements are not part of the genre. However, setting and mood elements are.
In "Cutting all ties", I argue that the "setting and mood" elements do not have to affect the plot in order to be part of the genre. I balence this argument off of the popular belief that not all manga(nor stories) have a plot, and the belief that these plot-less manga should still have a genre.
In "What remains?" I leave the question of how much of these "setting and mood" elements are needed before we give a genre tag unanswered due to the much more explicitly subjective nature of the question.
@Hoanghoiham
You honestly didn't say which side you were voting for (is or is not part of the ecchi genre, assuming you are going for is not), but it seems like you did agree with everyone here that the ecchi presented here is not part of the plot (aka. fanservice).
Under the assumption that you are my enemy (I am paranoid), I will now argue that "Artistic style" also contributes to the genre. Sure, it doesn't directly change the plot, but if this were a LN or narration, they would have added in a bunch of alluring and seductive words to describe the scene just the same. In other words, although it is not part of the plot, it is part of the story.
As you claimed, a story element(weather it be fanservice, background, conversations, etc) with no ties to the plot is easily replaceable by something else or removed altogether. But it is there and it does affect the story.
Plot is unaffected by it. Granted. However, a story is made of many elements, and plot is just one of them.
The death of plot
Fanservice scenes are part of the imagery (both in written and drawn works). And imagery may affect the mood and setting of the story.
Genres are a form of categorization based off of common elements of stories. These elements come from the
When you think of fantasy, are you imagining a plot or a setting? Unless you have a wildly different idea of what fantasy is, your imagining a setting. Horror is a genre based off of the mood. There may be common plots for a given genre, but there are no direct ties to the plot from it. A story may use a completely unique plot without loosing the genre it received from the setting/mood used. (also, if plots were directly tied to genre, then the genre tag itself would be a spoiler. We can often infer the plot from the genres, but the author can still surprise us. The World God Only Knows, a member of the harem genre, is a good example of this)
In short, plot is something that should be different from story to story. Even if there are common plot elements for a genre, you cannot conclude that any of those plot elements will be their from the genre alone.
This conclusion above is step 1 of my evil plan to remove the very idea that plot is necessary for a genre, and thus permitting fan-service to affect the genre. Pretty convening right. But @DANDAN_THE_DANDAN doesn't go down easily. The ringleader of debates playing the devils advocate with plans to take over the
Cutting all ties
This argument, thus far, has been nothing more than a refinement of what I already said in my first reply, but put into more definitive terms with examples. As such, I still need to counter what seems to be your common belief, "genre is a story element that affects the plot". While I have argued that genre does not define the plot, I have yet to give a valid argument saying it doesn't affect it.
There are many genres which we attribute to each title, honestly, I would love to see you all give examples where each genre tag affects the plot (it would be a noble effort and quite an enlightening exercise which I am sure other readers would love to see), but I will save you from that and go down a more stable route.
I am sure we can all come to a consensus that not every manga(nor LN nor anime) has a plot. You may be able to attribute some plot to our lesser titles by claiming the entire plot is to be inferred(at which point it would also be different for every reader), but I doubt anyone would go that far. If not, you might be able to lower the bar for defining plot, but it would be hard to do that without becoming so inclusive that everything is part of the plot, and thus negating your argument against labeling this as part of the ecchi genre. (plots are not required for a story, but almost every story will have one)
However, even these plot-less manga with little to no story have genres attached. Even without a plot, we still have a setting, and sometimes we have a mood as well. Removing the genre tags which categorize them would yield no benefit to us readers. Even these 1-4 star plot-less manga have readers who like it for the setting alone. As such, for consistency with plot-less titles, we should not require that a story element affects the plot in order to be part of the genre.
What remains?
@buttsaggington has already covered the requirements of "ecchi". And although some seemed to disagree that the "light ecchi" presented is sufficient enough to conclude it's genre, everyone seems to have acknowledged that those scenes are indeed ecchi (on the low side of it) at the least. As such, I do not believe I need to argue that ecchi elements are in the manga.
With this, the only thing I believe left is deciding at what point a story element becomes part of the genre. How often must it reoccur? Every chapter? Once or twice per volume? At least 2% of the pages? Or something more dynamic like "at least 5% of story elements must contribute to the genre" or "must be of the top 25% of the genres a story elements contributes to(meaning up to 75% of story elements that are part of a genre may not apply the genre should another genre have more story elements contributing to it)".
I already gave my rule of thumb. "Multiple times per volume", but that is not definitive. Perhaps I will write an equation for it latter(leaning towards the more dynamic definitions). Though defining what counts as "a story element contributing to a genre" is likely to be a pain as well.
For the time being, I will post this and see if anyone counters any of those points. If not, then all that's left is figuring out how often we need an ecchi scene before we attach the ecchi genre to something.
(I refined this ~7 times. I hope it still makes sense)
