Is there a spin-off tag?
2 Likes
Dang, I was just browsing through the tags and we’ve got some good ones here; I appreciate the Data Book one in particular.
I wish there were a better UI for adding and browsing tags…
3 Likes
If there’s anything in that vein, it doesn’t come up when writing in “Spin-off”.
But if “Adaptation” only covers direct adaptations of the source and no spin-offs, then it’s kind of redundant with “Novelization”. At least for actual novels, I guess… anime/manga adaptations, etc., wouldn’t fit for “Novelization” 
I actually just added that one, ive been adding some data books that i own and was miffed that there wasn’t a tag for them already, although i didn’t know the mods already approved of it
3 Likes
I say go ahead and make a spin off tag, theres nothing that covers what one would go over right now anyway it seems
2 Likes
I’m not opposed to also having a spin-off tag, but I still need some clarity as to what constitutes a spin-off versus an adaptation, and what the difference is between an adaptation and a novelization, and whether any of those tags would be appropriate to use for cross-media series.
For the Ace Attorney books I mentioned and books like サモンナイト U:X〈ユークロス〉 | L30?? that continue the canon story of something using a different medium, calling them “spin-offs” doesn’t really feel accurate, since I think of a spin-off as taking side characters or minor elements from the original and focussing on those, instead of having a story that could have equally been told in the original series using a different medium.
To me “Novelization” implies a very direct re-telling of something in a different medium, and would be too narrow for books like that. I would normally think of “Adaptation” as only slightly less strict than that, but considering both tags exist, they would be redundant if “Adaptation” didn’t capture a broader definition of how stories can be adapted.
i think its pretty clear a spin off and an adaptation are different things. The way I define things, an Adaptation is when something gets directly adapted into a different medium with little to no major changes, like a manga getting an anime adaptation or a light novel getting a manga adaptation. Novelization to me is a type of Adaptation where something is adapted into a novel or light novel with little to no major changes. And Spin-offs are for things that are like side stories to the main property but do not directly adapt it and are doing something new.
like, to use some examples: The So I’m a Spider, So What? manga is an adaptation of the light novel of the same name. meanwhile, the So I’m a Spider, So What? The Daily Lives of the Kumoko Sisters is a spin off of the light novels and manga.
3 Likes
The muddy part would be stuff like the first Full Metal Alchemist anime, i still see it as an adaption but it changes a lot of major story elements due to how it caught up with the manga it was adapting and overtook it.
The harem and reverse-harem tags seem to have disappeared. Can’t find them on the add a tag UI or the browser tags screen
2 Likes
I agree with those definitions, but if those are the intended usages of the tags, there’s no real reason to have a “Novelization” tag at all, because the only nuance it has that isn’t covered by “Adapation” is what medium the adaptation is in. That nuance doesn’t really help the end user in any way, because whether they’re searching by tag or looking at the tags on an item’s page, they can already narrow down what the medium is.
And also in that case, there’s still a need for a tag that describes cross-media series entries that contain new stories but aren’t spin-offs.
They are under “Female Harem” and “Male harem”.
2 Likes
and yet neither appears if I type harem 
Thx!
1 Like
Yeah I’ve had that problem before. Also mixed harem (which I think is solely populated with https://learnnatively.com/book/e39e9b16b1/) is hard to find as well.
2 Likes
“And also in that case, there’s still a need for a tag that describes cross-media series entries that contain new stories but aren’t spin-offs.”
not sure what you mean by this, you mean that full metal alchemist example i gave? if it is then maybe “Partial Adaption” would work?
There are some others (spoilers included, about 7):
I’ll have to keep in mind that tag exists… I always feel weird about using the harem tag anyway, b/c I associate it with genre rather than content… but that’s a “me” thing
1 Like
Oh wow, two other series that were in the periphery of my radar that have moved way in 
2 Likes
No, I’m talking about things like the original examples I brought up – 逆転裁判 | L28 and サモンナイト U:X〈ユークロス〉 | L30?? – which are books based on video game series. They aren’t strictly novelizations/adaptations, because they tell new stories that aren’t in the games, and they aren’t spin-offs, because the focus of the stories doesn’t diverge from the main series. They’re their own entries under their series umbrella, but use a different medium than the original work.
To continue to use Ace Attorney as an example, those games do have proper adaptations in the movie, anime, and manga adaptation of the anime, but there is also the chapter book series above and another manga series that tell new stories not adapted from the games; those should be tagged as some sort of extra cross-media series content, but I don’t know what tag would be appropriate if “Adaptation” doesn’t work. (Ace Attorney also has comic fanbooks, which is a category that probably needs yet another extra-series-content-that-is-neither-an-adaptation-nor-a-spinoff tag.)
2 Likes
I think you‘d call such things part of a franchise. No idea how to name a tag from that, though.
1 Like
im sorry but i see them as spin offs if they’re not direct adaptations. i havent seen either of these so it might just be that i’m not understanding your point?
Honestly, I feel like this probably can’t be solved cleanly with a tag, and really wants something more like the “is related to” feature that has been talked about elsewhere.
imo, I don’t think it makes all that much difference what you tag it. I maybe would like to be clued in that it’s not an original work, but I can’t see myself searching for an adaptation like “oh boy, I want to read a manga that was originally written as a light novel”. What I can see myself searching for is what was the source material for a property: the manga, LN, game, or anime. Because it doesn’t always go the same direction.
Until Natively sees more features, I personally use My Anime List since I think it has the best relationship indication, but that obviously requires it to be one of the types of media that site tracks (so 千と千尋の神隠し | L23 doesn’t point to 霧のむこうのふしぎな町 | L26, for example).
4 Likes
