Quote:
Originally Posted by aohige
No, it makes perfect sense.
Otherwise, how are the mere employees supposed to organize the bookshelves?
Are they required to know the content of each and every book? That's impossible.
Or are they supposed to be organized under some category based on content that the bookstore manager set?
If that happened, Jump manga and Hana to Yume manga would be all mixed together in a mess on the shelf, and total nightmare for anyone to organize.
Not to mention it being diffrent from store to store, causing hell of a lot of confusion among the buyers. [...]
EVERYONE's perception is diffrent, and because of this, it's not a good idea to go by when categorizing mediums.
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No no... you got me wrong
. I'm not saying that the categorisation system is wrong. I'm not saying that the existing labels should be replaced either. They're fine as they are and, as you emphasised, are an efficient and standardised way of sorting titles.
I was pointing my finger at the
public perception of these genres: people in Japan take them
too literally. The problem is not with the labels; it's with how they are treated: not only for reference or categorisation, but as an indication of what one should read. Outside Japan, where there's not so much of a "shoujo should read shoujo, shounen should read shounen" mentality, titles have a lot more cross-demographic appeal. That's what I was getting at and sorry for confusing you
This was probably the most important part of my previous post, so I'll restate it here, with my key points in bold:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Yukinokesshou
There's obviously no harm in assigning a label to something. However, when it comes to point that certain people don't want to be caught dead reading certain things just because of the label (and regardless of actual content)... either the marketing concept is far too effective or the society is far too restrictive.
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To look at things from a different perspective, my argument would be
exactly the same if Japan were to go by a "romantic comedy", "action", etc. categorisation system and society decreed that "only girls should read romantic comedy" (okay, don't pounce at me for this example. I'll admit it's a bad one but it's just for hypothetical purposes...). It all goes back to the "square pegs in square holes" concept that Vexx was talking about earlier in this thread.