| Slice of Life genre, according to Wikipedia, borrows from the theatrical meaning of the term, which refers to a naturalistic representation of real life, yet also from the distinct literary meaning of the slice of life narrative technique, which presents a seemingly arbitrary sample of a character's life, which often lacks a coherent plot, conflict, or ending. As I browse through MAL's Slice of Life anime list, I see good examples of the former definition, such as renowned realist movies like Byousoku 5 Centimeter and Garden of Words, but most of them falls to the latter definition which is more episodic, having incoherent plot, like Azumanga Daioh and Mushishi. But one thing which intrigues me also is how Wikipedia enlists Slice of Life animes. It is lesser and more definite than how MAL categorize, including Romance and/or Comedy SoL shows like Azumanga Daioh, YuruYuri, and and the like, even listing Historical movies like Kaze Tachinu as SoL. Also, the list doesn't have some of the Supernatural SoL titles like Mushishi, Clannad, and Angel Beats, but has AnoHana and Wolf Children nonetheless. But still, I am yet to know how we can easily define an anime as Slice of Life. Must all anime with realistic themes be considered SoL? Should those with incoherent, episodic with open ending plots a SoL as well? |
JomsMar 27, 2017 8:24 AM
| Isn't the bulk of Slice of Life anime generally listed as something revolving around day to day activities with minimal to no conflict as opposed to something with an overarching, conflict driven narrative? From my experience, it's not so much about something tackling realistic themes in a natural manner - plenty of anime that people would not consider slice of life at all would then be called slice of life - so in this case I'm much more inclined to follow the latter one with examples like Daioh and the like. The former is a bit broad and vague to actually serve a real purpose in dedicating an entire genre to it. Then again, I've never really thought much of MAL's genre listing to begin with. Monogatari and KLK aren't Ecchi anime, but the second season of the Asterisk War and Nazo no Kanojo X are both magically Ecchi, in spite of both being far, far more tame in this regard than the former. Stuff like that seems kind of ridiculous. |
ManabanMar 27, 2017 8:23 AM
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| tl;dr: Wikipedia is absolute garbage. |
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| It's a bit hard to define how I see slice of life. Is there any objective definition? There are also "slice of life episodes" in action show. In Railgun this was viewed as "pointless filler" but I personally enjoyed them. I wouldn't consider Railgun to be a slice of life anime as a whole, but there's a lot of slice of life in it. Sports anime are arguably a combination between slice of life and action since they're about real people's everyday lives but their lives happen to be interesting and action packed. |
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| Slice of life can be characterised by 4 subsets: CGDCT Iyashikei Character-driven Gag comedy A show may exist in many subsets, but every sol contains at least one of these |
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_Lightsbane said: The TV Tropes definition always made more sense to me. "What separates slice of life as a genre from the literal meaning of the phrase (which would encompass nearly all fiction) is the emphasis on the very moment, with the intent of focusing the audience on that moment rather than using that moment as part of a narrative." I can't seem to follow what the sentence actually meant. Could you please explain the way you understand it? RedInfinity said: Slice of life can be characterised by 4 subsets: CGDCT Iyashikei Character-driven Gag comedy A show may exist in many subsets, but every sol contains at least one of these Interesting subgenres, I say. How do you define character-driven in SoL though? Manaban said: Isn't the bulk of Slice of Life anime generally listed as something revolving around day to day activities with minimal to no conflict as opposed to something with an overarching, conflict driven narrative? From my experience, it's not so much about something tackling realistic themes in a natural manner - plenty of anime that people would not consider slice of life at all would then be called slice of life - so in this case I'm much more inclined to follow the latter one with examples like Daioh and the like. The former is a bit broad and vague to actually serve a real purpose in dedicating an entire genre to it. Then again, I've never really thought much of MAL's genre listing to begin with. Monogatari and KLK aren't Ecchi anime, but the second season of the Asterisk War and Nazo no Kanojo X are both magically Ecchi, in spite of both being far, far more tame in this regard than the former. Stuff like that seems kind of ridiculous. I also agree that most SoL have the latter characteristic, but we must dismiss realist anime like 5cm/sec as SoL here in MAL if that's the case. |
| Just like other tags and genres it's not black or white and shows can have slice of life aspects to varying degrees. When the threshold for warranting a tag is reached is subjective. In general the latter definition seems much more accurate and useful for how I use it. It also encompasses most shows that would fall under the first definition. But the first talks more about the content while the second one talks more about the structure of the narrative and slice-of-life was always a more structural term to me than related to any specific type of content. The latter definitely makes us be able to find slice of life aspects in a variety of shows that aren't classically considered slice of life (Stand Alone Complex S1, Cowboy Bebop etc...) but I don't think that's a problem because arguable these aspects are overshadowed by more dominant aspects therefore justifying not attaching the tag to these shows. Basically whenever the next episode (or scene) starts at a point that is not a direct continuation of the previous one (while still following the same character) it can be seen as having slice of life aspects since it's always seemingly arbitrary where you pick up their story again if it's not one continuous stream of consciousness. That's why to me slice of life is more of a technique than a genre. At least in that sense. Only if that technique is extremely dominant would I call a show a slice-of-life show specifically. The first definition is more useful when it comes to labeling a genre because it refers to content of a specific type (naturilstic life's of people from (our) real life/world) but I overall find it less interesting and don't really use it that way often. Especially since I think that most shows that fall udner that category also fit the second definition to some degree so that's usually enough for me to call them 'slice of life'. |
| I probably regret this post by now. |
Joms said: _Lightsbane said: The TV Tropes definition always made more sense to me. "What separates slice of life as a genre from the literal meaning of the phrase (which would encompass nearly all fiction) is the emphasis on the very moment, with the intent of focusing the audience on that moment rather than using that moment as part of a narrative." I can't seem to follow what the sentence actually meant. Could you please explain the way you understand it? RedInfinity said: Slice of life can be characterised by 4 subsets: CGDCT Iyashikei Character-driven Gag comedy A show may exist in many subsets, but every sol contains at least one of these Interesting subgenres, I say. How do you define character-driven in SoL though? A character driven sol is one where the characters' relations, stories or futures are what determines the show. Looking upon your list, the sol I would classify as character driven are: Clannad (more after story) Haibane Remnei Colourful (movie) Omoide Poroporo Wolf children And Mimi wo Sumaseba Others which you haven't seen are such examples: K-on Natsume Aria Amanchu And many more of the like |
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Joms said: Manaban said: Isn't the bulk of Slice of Life anime generally listed as something revolving around day to day activities with minimal to no conflict as opposed to something with an overarching, conflict driven narrative? From my experience, it's not so much about something tackling realistic themes in a natural manner - plenty of anime that people would not consider slice of life at all would then be called slice of life - so in this case I'm much more inclined to follow the latter one with examples like Daioh and the like. The former is a bit broad and vague to actually serve a real purpose in dedicating an entire genre to it. Then again, I've never really thought much of MAL's genre listing to begin with. Monogatari and KLK aren't Ecchi anime, but the second season of the Asterisk War and Nazo no Kanojo X are both magically Ecchi, in spite of both being far, far more tame in this regard than the former. Stuff like that seems kind of ridiculous. I also agree that most SoL have the latter characteristic, but we must dismiss realist anime like 5cm/sec as SoL here in MAL if that's the case. Eh, then I wouldn't argue at all if they decided to do that. It's a lot more telling when SoL defined in that sense than something simply being "realistic" anyway. Just like I think ecchi should simply be something that has a lot of sexual content that doesn't really ever go into straight up hentai territory. Or mecha being something involving the giant robot stuffs like in Eva or TTGL instead of just little exo-suits like in Date A Live or Hundred, since those aren't particularly mech-y at all ._. Of course, if we begin to start calling for sweeping reforms in the genre tags on this site people will just fight over it. I have absolutely no doubt, for example, that there will be people getting triggered that something they didn't necessarily like for the ecchi is suddenly being called an ecchi, even though it's completely within the realm of an ecchi, those aspects just aren't the reason why they liked it. The same logic can be applied to genres like mecha and, most importantly in this context, slice of life too, because lord knows there's enough people who dislike those genres and will probably get assblasted if something they like is suddenly labeled as one. So I also feel like it wouldn't really be worth changing the way things are, even though a lot of stuff can probably be better described this way. The genre tags on MAL don't really strike me as even reasonable sometimes, though, but eh. Better that than idiots getting pissy over some tag change meant to categorize things better. |
ManabanMar 27, 2017 9:23 AM
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| If it's episodic, it's not really slice of life to me. It would have to be carried by its other genres (if applicable) to be worth watching to me. (Usually comedy) Thank you for reminding me to drop Kobato. |
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| SoL can be seen as, Slice of unrealistic Life. Because in truth, no one really wants to see, or peek at life. |
| Sol is a genre that can easily kill you of boredom 😴 |
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| In general, SOL anime will not have a big conflict. If they do, it'll be in the background and serve as a starting off point for minor stories. Episodes will be self-contained, and the attention will be to small details. SOL's anime narrative will always be a bit low-key, with minor events that don't seem to mean much outside their context. The focus is more on how characters experience things rather than set-pieces. The connection between events is the character itself. |
| WEAPONS - My blog, for reviews of music, anime, books, and other things |
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