I like links a lot. My past studying journalism and English lit has ingrained in me a duty to point my readers toward my sources. TV Tropes and Wikipedia are usually sufficient for our casual anime blog, but within them lies a danger. Wikis are rabbit holes, and when you follow the link to learn more you’re liable to fall in.
So I wanted to offer an alternative. There’s a lot of terminology I use in this challenge that may be unfamiliar to readers who aren’t already anime fans. Occasionally, maybe once a week, I’m going to drop a shorter post like this with some handy anime terms so I can put that evenings research time toward larger posts for later on.
That said, these are going to be short, general purpose definitions, and anything I define here could get its own post down the road.
Unit 1: Anime and Manga Technical Terms
Anime – In case you somehow missed it, anime is Japanese animation. We’re going to take a chisel to that definition down the road, but that’s the broad strokes definition.
Cours – A cours is a measure of the length of an anime season. One cours is generally 10-15 episodes. Most shows run in seasons running about 12 episodes or about 26 episodes. A 26 episode anime would have two cours.
OVA – Original Video Animation, an OVA is essentially a direct-to-DVD production without the negative connotations of American direct-to-DVD. OVAs tend to have a reputation of being higher quality than standard TV animation. There’s not really a standard length, and they can extend existing series or be new series in their own right.
ONA – Original Net Animation, web anime are released first on the Internet. They tend to be shorter than traditional releases.
Manga – These are Japanese comic books. For more detail than that you can check out the 16th post in this series.
Tankōbon – A tankōbon is a single volume of a collected manga. Generally, a single tankōbon contains about nine chapters of manga.
Webmanga – Just like it says on the tin, webmanga are manga released online. A few high profile anime are based on webmanga (One Punch Man and Made in Abyss both began as webmanga). Pixiv, a Japanese website for artists, is a not-unpopular platform for these.
Light novel – Light novels are prose works consisting of short, simple paragraphs using common kanji used in daily life rather than older, more difficult text. (TV Tropes tells me this use of kanji is like using modern English instead of Middle English, but with only a smattering of Japanese phrases and no experience with light novels, I can’t verify.) They tend to be aimed at teens and young adults, and there is not a huge translation market as of this writing.
Visual novel – These are video games comprised mostly of still images and narration with branching narratives based on player choices but minimal gameplay. I think dating sims are the genre most Western audiences are likely to recognize, and they can feature heavy-duty erotic content. Still, they have a wide range of subjects and styles, and the sci-fi Steins;Gate series began as a visual novel.
Doujinshi – Broadly, doujinshi can be any self-published work, be it a manga, anime, video game, etc. Narrowly, doujinshi are self-published manga that can contain original content or fan stories.
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