Anime Genome

[seaglass27]

If you use the Internet radio station Pandora then you have taken advantage of the Music Genome Project. The properties of songs are analyzed and then you get recommendations based on the properties of songs you've liked in the past. Some of the properties (and they claim that there are hundreds catalogued) for a song I listened to were:

hard rock roots
punk influences
a subtle use of paired vocal harmony
varying tempo and time signatures

What I was thinking was, wouldn't it be cool if anime and manga could be catalogued in a similar way. What are properties that could used to differentiate between different anime or manga? Some of the ones I thought of:

Heavy/light outlines
Heavy/light shadowing
Overall positive/negative message
Ambiguous morality (e.g., a Byronic hero)
Heavy/light/no use of CGI
Realistic portrayal of the human body

I'm curious to see which ones you guys can come up with.

[skreyola]

It can be done. Those are some good starting facets.
Not sure how hard it would be to get the myriad anime cataloged. It takes a while, for example, to get them reviewed. But it looks like an interesting project.

[seaglass27]

Yeah, I think if I were to undertake this project I would get a huge number of people to help with the cataloging while I mostly worked on the back-end stuff.

[SierraLea]

Main character could also play a part. It could go something like this
Male main character
Female main character
Trio of main characters

And so on and so forth.

[skreyola]

Also:
Five-man band
Ensemble cast

[seaglass27]

Both excellent ideas I hadn't thought of yet. Thanks to both of you.

[rocklobster]

Magical talismans
Angsty teens
Giant robots
Filler episodes

[skreyola]

Presence of chibi
Heavy use of chibi
Presence of bishi
Plethora of bishi
The list could be endless...

[seaglass27]

Which do you guys think is more important when it comes to determining recommendations: similar artwork or similar storyline or similar characters? I lean towards similar storyline being the most important, but there are some anime art styles I can't stand so...

[SierraLea]

Which do you guys think is more important when it comes to determining recommendations: similar artwork or similar storyline or similar characters? I lean towards similar storyline being the most important, but there are some anime art styles I can't stand so...

Who says you can only have one classification syste. Take a look at the classification system for living organisms. They start with broad categories, then narrow down more and more. for instance, you first split them up acording to storyline. Then you separate them by different main character models, directors, art styles, the amount of fanservice, and so on.

[skreyola]

I'd say story tone is more important than art style. I think most people are more interested in the story than in the art, unless it's way off of what they enjoy.

[SierraLea]

Art does play a factor. I almost gave up One Piece and Zatch Bell! because I couldn't stand the art. I almost missed two great stories!

[skreyola]

No argument it is a factor. I just think that, unless the art's really bad or really off of a viewer's preferred style, story tone is going to have a larger effect on the enjoyment quotient.

[the_wolfs_howl]

It would probably be useful to have a bunch of genres in there - fantasy, historical, slice-of-life, romance, etc.

And also it could be useful to categorize shows as shounen/shoujo/seinen/josei/etc.

[Vilo159]

I know TvTropes.org does something similar to this, although theirs is a little less organized. It's is mostly listing every single possible "genome" in a particular series.

Take their article on InuYasha, for example:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... n.InuYasha

[spark300c]

use of unnatural hair color
larges eyes and character designs that tend to look cute.
heavy use of story arcs for action and adventure genes
facial expression that west does not use.

[skreyola]

I wouldn't say that TVTropes does something similar. There, the focus is not on differentiation but on, well, tropes.
A genome would probably want to focus on more of a hierarchy, like the Linnaean taxonomy.

[Vilo159]

TVTropes does give mostly tropes, yeah, but there are these same type of things that people are posting in there. It just gets way more specific then we need. But the premise is still the same, I think. But perhaps you're right.
And I have no idea how an anime would have a heirarchy; You could trace where an anime got its influences back to some 'parent' anime, but I don't think that's what OJ was talking about. I thought he meant more of certain traits that animes have that would be shared by other animes. I thought that would be a bit more general, but the people here seem to be posting things with the specificity of tropes. But I could be wrong.

[skreyola]

The Linnean taxonomy classifies living organism into groups based on shared characteristics. The anime genome would classify anime series/OVAs into groups based on shared characteristics, if I understand it correctly.
As I see it, tropes are tropes because they happen across genres, in many different types of stories, and don't really differentiate one genre from another. You can have "I Am Your Father" in sci-fi, in slice-of-life, in comedy, etc.
That's what I meant with my previous comment. Sorry if I wasn't clear.

[Vilo159]

Ah, that does make sense then, Yes, I suppose you are right.