Why are mal tags stupid?

Maybe instead of calling others wrong u could just ponder if you are all that right.
i think you have a major problem understanding tags
SoL means indeead a slice of someone's life but what wouldn't fit that description alone...
no cause rly
in SoL its implied there will never be any major turn if events nor character development, you are following someone's daily life over a short period of time. it wont be a story with start midle and ending.
or Demon slayer should be SoL? we are just seeing the life of tanjiro as he gets friends and fights demons

there are many things implied in tags that wouldn't seem obvious to a non anime viewer.

take spyxfamily for example
it has the sol tag cause there wont be any major event in s2, u can watch most ep scattered and get the story, you wont see any major development on the "couple" relationship, no one will die, no one will reveal their secrets. thats exactly why sols are viewed as voring to many.

A slice of life is a slice of life. A adventure is a adventure. It can’t be both and you’re a scoundrel.

@ktg

The difference maker is having a goal that you are constantly moving towards.

And mainly, having the focus be on that goal.

Which is why JOJO part 3, or made in abyss or one piece will never be called a slice of life.

But girls last tour, kino's journey, or mushishi will.

Clearly not a kino's journey or girls last tour fan smh

@MusashiKarlsefni frankly, in this case, I'm mostly pointing this out because I want them to remove the isekai tag of sonny boy.

It is literally the only "technically isekai but no one would see it as one" isekai that is tagged as one. and it bothers me. I always point it out with the goal of getting the tag of sonny boy removed at some point.

I agree with you in regards to frieren being a slice of life, but I want to push back against your take about isekai.

The trend of people showing how clever they are by saying stuff like digimon, spirited away, Alice in wonderland and so on are isekai is very cute and obviously correct on a literal level, but it ignores the point of why the term and sub-genre became their own thing and came into being in the first place and kind of empties them of meaning.

The reason we even have an isekai term and tag, is because people recognize this contemporary body of works, that begun primarily in light novels as its own sub-genre with many shared tropes and this kind of culture of taking very liberal inspiration from one another, iterating or parodying the same concept and so on.

These older fantasy shows do not share that DNA and therefore it makes perfect sense (in my humble opinion) to not tag them as isekai, despite them having the plot point and premise of transporting to another world. going back to mark every such instance as isekai, despite the obvious differences to the kind of shows that birthed the term is pedantic and counterproductive to the usage of the term and mention of the sub-genre, there’s nothing wrong with still maintaining those are ‘just’ fantasy shows.

Thank you for listening to my ted talk.

The MAL tag would have been named differently in that case, and not a Japanese word that means "other world."

@Lucifrost didn't really understand what you mean.

as mentioned in my previous comment, as far as i know, people only really started to use the word as such a term, due to the mass of similar light novel works that share a lot more in common, so i think it's fair to not talk about other shows in the same conversation and i don't think there's a need to tag them as such, regardless if they qualify on a literal level, this is strictly my opinion, which may not and doesn't need to reflect anything formal that MAL does or says.

Afaik sol doesn't have much thing going on except the characters' mundane daily lives and Frieren leans much more towards adventure than sol.

MAL tags can be quite inconsistent yes but not in this case.

Yeah, if Girl's Last Tour tagged as SoL, then Frieren also fit in SoL

@TRC_Randy I've always thought this was pretty obvious on a meta-fundamental level, especially if you've read fantasy classics like The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien literally explains on a meta level how adventures differ from the characters' everyday lives.

@TRC_Randy I've always thought this was pretty obvious on a meta-fundamental level, especially if you've read fantasy classics like The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien literally explains on a meta level how adventures differ from the characters' everyday lives.

@RobertBobert Not if the adventure is the everyday life.

A pure example of it would be the story of a traveler who lives in his van and just goes around the world doin shit.

That is 100% a slice of life and 100% and adventure.

Slice of life is based on context of the character we are following.


Look at something like girls last tour, its probably the anime that shows the idea of an adventure slice of life the most.

I'm not gonna read this insanely long argument happening here, but I will say that I agree with you and (I know this is gonna piss people off), for nothing else, SOL have a certain vibe and feeling to them that others don't. we can break it down to be more technical than that, but I enjoy it as an umbrella genre to express that certain anime have that type of feeling and pacing.


and for the the people saying "it's literally only a slice of a person's life" ffs, ok got it, so in that case let's just throw Higurashi, MHA, Baki and heyyy why not all of Junji Ito's work in there as well. 🤦‍♀️

@RobertBobert you've read those books of his?

oh, of course, hence why I said I knew it would piss people off if I said it. I can come up with a list of adjectives and describe music and animation that makes something fall under SoL, but that takes a lot more time and effort than I'm willing to put into this thread. And tbf, it really does boil down to a vibe that the vast majority of SoL fit under. Things like Mushi-shi, Horimiya, Natsume, Barakamon, etc. all have that same type of slower, simple pacing and overall neutral swinging upwards vibe. That is what I'm referring to. The feeling that that inspires in a person should stay somewhat consistent within the individual. Therefore, subjectivity is less relevant here.

and yeah, being facetious with examples from my last response. I just can't agree with it being defined by a piece of someone's life because that apples to literally anything. I just randomly chose some examples I thought would contradict it well.

Frieren though? yeah, 100% is a SoL.

I'm relatively sure that when having a conversation/debate about art "feelings" is quite literally one of the primary points (paired with technique). Unless, of course, your point is whether or not something has a marketable appeal or not, and when discussing genres, that's doesn't seem applicable.

And tempo, "peaceful, everyday life," is the term you would use to describe that tranquility. There are so many holes here it's ridiculous. Not only is peaceful also a "feeling," but to state that action and big events can't also happen in "everyday life" or in a SoL is ridiculous. This would limit the amount of genre pairings that SoL could have down to next to nil. You could have main genres (such as the ones you listed), but for a show to hit every SoL marker and then be discarded because there is mild action in it (so where does Mushi-shi fall....)? Should also point out that your statement *implies* that a SoL can't also be tragic, which so many of them are.

Frieren is peaceful, contemplative, slower paced, and a rather simple story of her and her new companions on this long journey for her to develop as a character and gain closure. The issue here is that while I just described a SoL, it's hard to fully capture in those terms. Hence why verbage such as "feeling" and "vibe" can be useful to try and explain something that ends up equating to attempting to explain a sensory experience. Regardless of how precise one may prefer the language to be in its description, some things just have to be experienced for one to understand them.


and to the last point, um, yes, I am aware of my intentions. I agree with OP on Frieren being a SoL, not their take on how to describe that genre.

If something like Nichijou isn't tagged as sol, why do you think Frieren should?

@TRC_Randy Yes, like a lot of other fantasy. And I know very well the difference between adventure and everyday life on a meta level.

Unlike Girls' Last Tour, Sousou no Frieren has a well-defined goal and that's the main reason why not considering it a SoL makes sense. On the other hand, someone could argue that Frieren's life would basically be the same even without that goal, I mean just wandering around like Girls' Last Tour.

I'm pretty sure Frieren would have been considered SoL on MAL, before the genre/theme overhaul that made the definition way more strict.

@RobertBobert you most likely have but have you seen the movie trilogy? I've got sth to ask about it and the novels.

@TRC_Randy Depends on what you need. I'm not one of those people who can easily quote the right passage or refer to Tolkien's letters to explain the "true meaning" of certain scenes.

@Nirinbo Adventure, especially in the form of a clear quest, in itself contradicts the idea of ​​​​SoL. The argument about Die Hard being a Christmas movie because it happens at Christmas is more meta reasonable than this.

@RobertBobert Adventure in itself doesn't contradict the idea of SoL if wandering around the world is literally the life of the MC (Girls' Last Tour still has both tags). The difference is that Frieren has a well-defined goal, so I agree with not considering it a SoL.

@RobertBobert Nah just the old how faithful is it question. Are there any important elements that the movies omitted? Sth like that.

@RobertBobert Okay, how about this one:

"They (the commentators) have, however, found the characters and the story greatly weakened by Jackson's emphasis on action and violence at the expense of psychological depth; the loss of Tolkien's emphasis on free will and individual responsibility; and the replacement of Frodo's inner journey by an American monomyth with Aragorn as the hero."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Jackson%27s_interpretation_of_The_Lord_of_the_Rings

Thoughts? Since reading that i've been wanting to ask the readers on how true that is.

Arigato gozaimasu @RobertBobert -san.