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What counts as "Avant-garde"?

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Topic Starter
Patatitta
TLDR: I believe that a lot of (the best) avant-garde mangas like ultra heaven, are not being considered as avant-garde on websites like myanimelist, and this may be a problem, you can go post now about general avant garde shit, no need to read the rest of my ramblings

The rest of the post
Avant garde, as defined by the oxford dictionary:



This term refeers to mainly experimental works, so, fair, let's go to myanimelist, let's go see some examples of this



only 71 results? why?, and all the ratings are actually quite low too, the best rated one only being a 7.6, the lowest out of any category in myanimelist



are these the only avant garde works that there are? is this really it?

I don't think so: Let me explain

Avant garde as I explained earlier, is a term meant to differentiate very experimental works, in this case, experimental mangas/animes, however, what counts as experimental is subjective, it depends on what you have experienced so far, and how far and innovative the thing you're reading is

not only that, but the historical period when the work was created also matters a lot in order to qualify things into this category, I think the highest rated avant-garde manga on myanimelist does a very good job at explaining this, so, let me analyze it, in order to find out what counts as avant garde

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Part 1: Jun: Shoutarou no Fantasy World
Jun is a manga created in 1966, that could be considered an anthology, each chapter contains different characters, in different situations, with stories inclosed to those chapters.

What's so interesting about this manga, is the panel structure, in a era when most of the mangas feel very stiff with it's structure, where mangakas aren't really decorating the pages or reusing panels, you have jun, where it tears this concept to the ground, I feel chapter 5 is a very good example of this





most mangas wouldn't have dared to do this, have a initial scene, where something happens, and then that action affects the way the page is designed, to then create dialogue in a way that you cant really distinguish any specific panel, this was unseen, this was a crazy development

not only that, but in following chapters, a lot more techniques were showcased, chapters with no dialogue, abstract imaginery and storytelling, unorthodox panel shapes, it has it all

however, if you read all of that description, and thought "I've already seen all of this before", you would likely be right. This manga was written in 1966, and many of these elements have been implemented into works that are not considered avant-garde, a lot of mangas, do stuff outside the panel realm now, here is an example from Witch Hat Atelier



that element, once considered avant-garde, is now being used commonly on modern mangas


okay, so we've stablished what an old, avant-garde manga looks like, let's now analyze a modern avant-garde manga, and one of my favourites,

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Part 2: Yuugai Muzai Gangu

This manga was written in 2019, and while it's still an anthology, it's very different to the last. Here, the avant garde elements are mainly in plot since it showcases ideas that you've probably never read in any manga before, the first chapter is a great example of this

In this chapter, there are a couple of weird inventions being showcased, one of them is a doll that looks like whatever the person will find the most appealing

here is that invention in action




this is the most bizarre element of the manga so far, the most shocking, however, there are many other plots thrown around in the many chapters, all of them could be a whole manga long, and there are in fact mangas that feel like this, so, let's see one of them

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Part 3: If you didn't expect me to talk more about shimeji simulation, you dont know me well enough

This is my favourite manga of all time, in fact, my favourite work of all time, be it videogames, mangas, movies, books, etc

Shimeji has it all, the plot feels like a chapter of the previous manga, while it has a panel structure which at times is crazier than in juns

a lot of the plot questions a lot of philosophy and other psychological works, in fact, from time to time it does mention a lot of the books it refereces out loud, works like no longer human, zaratrusta or even the bible

i'm not going to go too in depth, I already made a thread about shimeji, this is the most apparent during chapter 44, were, the manga straight ups ditchs drawing, and turns into a novel for a little while, not only that, but the plot and worldbuilding supports this change (dont actually read the text as it contains spoilers but yeah, it's like that)



the entire later half of shimeji is like that, it throws so many concepts, so many ideas, and so extreme too, like ditching drawing, that has to be the most extreme case i've ever seen of breaking a manga structure, no manga i've read contains anything like that, this is experimental, this is original, this is clearly avant-garde

but if you look in myanimelist, this is not considered avant-garde, and my theory on it, is that this is because it's not an anthology

if you look at all the mangas considered avant-garde, most of them, except with a few exceptions are anthologies, not only that, but a lot of the tropes, like textless chapters, repeat, however, a non-anthology manga like shimeji simulation, with a innovative idea that's the reverse of that avant-garde trope, is not considered one

something that takes the avant garde, and makes it even mroe avant garde, is not avant garde, and I have another work, that is very clearly avant-garde, that is not an anthology, that is not considered avant garde


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Part 4: Ultra heaven

Ultra heaven is the purest for of avant garde, as the manga is literally based on the experiences they had with LSD. The story is from time to time told in a way that is not chronological, the plot it's absolutely insane, the art is crazy, and it introduces many new concepts

i'm not going to go in-depth on this one, i'm just showcasing it to support my theory, you should just read it yourself, here is a panel from it so you know i'm not bullshitting






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Part 5: Why is this a problem? / conclusion

so yeah, stuff is misstagged, why does this matter?

well, it's just bad for the anime fandom in general

first of all, it's hard to search for avant garde works that are not anthologies, if you were trying to read something like ultra heaven, you could be days googling until finding something like that, mainly since a lot of these mangas are a lot less well known

not only that, but by not tagging these correctly, we are not actively trying the archive of techniques and original ideas that the avant-garde should be, it's giving a wrong impression on what the avant garde actually is.

If you want to write a story yourself, you may be inclined to go see inspirations, and works like these are a fantastic source of inspirations, but again, we're not tagging it correctly, making a lot of people miss the truly ground-breaking stuff

This is the only tag I can recall that has a problem like this, and I think it would be on everyone's best interest to fix it

so, what's your opinion on this? what other works do you think are misstaged?, what are your favourite techniques and tropes?
ClevelandsMyBro
i dont think the problem is that the people that run mal don't know much about what avant garde is but more like they couldn't care less about it.
Topic Starter
Patatitta

ClevelandsMyBro wrote:

i dont think the problem is that the people that run mal don't know much about what avant garde is but more like they couldn't care less about it.
thing is, it's not just mal that has this problem, but also anilist and all the other websites
ClevelandsMyBro

Patatitta wrote:

ClevelandsMyBro wrote:

i dont think the problem is that the people that run mal don't know much about what avant garde is but more like they couldn't care less about it.
thing is, it's not just mal that has this problem, but also anilist and all the other websites
i see, a lot of people in general doesn't seem to be interested in the genre then. not only that but the term itself have quite a bit of a negative connotation around it. just like emo in music, its a coined term given by the masses that no artist/writer really wants to be labeled as.
Kobold84
So what, the whole issue is that websites don't tag properly? "avant-garde" as a genre is flawed anyway, because you can be experimental without delving into stuff that is noticeably different (e.g. visual trickery), you don't have to be an outlier to bring in new ideas, some manga/anime were just so good at what they did, the stuff they introduced naturally became the norm. Yet nobody in the right mind would call it avant-garde. Good example would be urusei yatsura (old one), if you were to watch/read it now, you would think "hey, that's just a normal romcom with gag humour", but this is exactly it! Before urusei yatsura there were no romcoms or rather they were vastly different from what you see now.
Avant-garde to me is a genre used when a work either makes it clear its main focus is experimentality or a work that fails to be good at anything but being experimental.

You outlined the problem as "if it's not tagged properly it's hard to discover", but I'd argue not a lot of people use this function, most of the time people use google with genres/characters/ideas they want to see and then. This is precisely why these kinds of articles exist on MAL and why other websites do similarly written ones, because this is how google indexing works.
https://myanimelist.net/featured/1906/Top_10_Kamidere_Characters_in_Anime__Whats_a_Kamidere

Actually, the whole problem stems from the fact MAL is a website with a really large database and it's impossible to properly tag everything, especially less popular titles. Your best bet would be to compile everything and put it onto MAL forums. Or even better, find a website that lets its users add custom tags.
Topic Starter
Patatitta

Kobold84 wrote:

So what, the whole issue is that websites don't tag properly? "avant-garde" as a genre is flawed anyway, because you can be experimental without delving into stuff that is noticeably different (e.g. visual trickery), you don't have to be an outlier to bring in new ideas, some manga/anime were just so good at what they did, the stuff they introduced naturally became the norm. Yet nobody in the right mind would call it avant-garde. Good example would be urusei yatsura (old one), if you were to watch/read it now, you would think "hey, that's just a normal romcom with gag humour", but this is exactly it! Before urusei yatsura there were no romcoms or rather they were vastly different from what you see now.
Avant-garde to me is a genre used when a work either makes it clear its main focus is experimentality or a work that fails to be good at anything but being experimental.

You outlined the problem as "if it's not tagged properly it's hard to discover", but I'd argue not a lot of people use this function, most of the time people use google with genres/characters/ideas they want to see and then. This is precisely why these kinds of articles exist on MAL and why other websites do similarly written ones, because this is how google indexing works.
https://myanimelist.net/featured/1906/Top_10_Kamidere_Characters_in_Anime__Whats_a_Kamidere

Actually, the whole problem stems from the fact MAL is a website with a really large database and it's impossible to properly tag everything, especially less popular titles. Your best bet would be to compile everything and put it onto MAL forums. Or even better, find a website that lets its users add custom tags.
the problem is that because works are misstagged, it mostly missrepresents the genre, which then leads to the negative view it has. There is a line between when something is experimental and just borderline insane, avant garde falls in the second category, it's not just combining genres or being a little outside the conventional.

I feel most people would agree that ultra heaven is an incredible manga, it has a high rating in myanimelist and everything, however, most people dont think of ultra heaven when they hear avant garde, but weird, not that good horror anthologies. This makes it difficult to talk about the genre you actually want to talk about, since the definition that we do have, is being completely missused

not only that, but while of course, a lot of people do google stuff, while googling stuff EVERYTHING but the top 10 is hard to discover, that's why we have myanimelist and similar websites. However, you can find everything in myanimelist but ultra heaven, this is the style of manga that is being left in the dust

The only way to properly discover something like this, is to already know a manga that's this style, and then go through recommendations, but that first step is very restrictive a lot of the times

Thing is, normally things are properly tagged, even with really small titles, this is just the one being left behind, for most of the genres, there are thousand of listed, for avant garde, there is only 71 listed, when the number would probably be closer to the 4 digits,
Kobold84
Didn't read ultra heaven, but reminds me of Homunculus by Hideo Yamamoto, I guess because of the odd perception of reality?

Some other avant-garde manga that I read was Panorama Toukitan by Maruo Suehiro, I didn't like it, but the art was good sometimes. Oh, and Travel by Yokoyama Yuichi, it was just amusing in a bad way.
Topic Starter
Patatitta

Kobold84 wrote:

Didn't read ultra heaven, but reminds me of Homunculus by Hideo Yamamoto, I guess because of the odd perception of reality?

Some other avant-garde manga that I read was Panorama Toukitan by Maruo Suehiro, I didn't like it, but the art was good sometimes. Oh, and Travel by Yokoyama Yuichi, it was just amusing in a bad way.
honestly I have not read any of those, and I don't know, I really feel that if we counted and talked about stuff liek ultra heaven, shimeji simulation, or whatever else as avant-garde, the entire genre would be seen in a better light, and people would also have better recommendations when they want to see the avant garde genre for the first time

improving that first impression would help a lot in the long run
Kobold84

Patatitta wrote:

Kobold84 wrote:

Didn't read ultra heaven, but reminds me of Homunculus by Hideo Yamamoto, I guess because of the odd perception of reality?

Some other avant-garde manga that I read was Panorama Toukitan by Maruo Suehiro, I didn't like it, but the art was good sometimes. Oh, and Travel by Yokoyama Yuichi, it was just amusing in a bad way.
honestly I have not read any of those, and I don't know, I really feel that if we counted and talked about stuff liek ultra heaven, shimeji simulation, or whatever else as avant-garde, the entire genre would be seen in a better light, and people would also have better recommendations when they want to see the avant garde genre for the first time

improving that first impression would help a lot in the long run
I doubt it, most of the stuff is just not very good and the good stuff is usually easy to find for people who are interested in it. Shimeji simulation is good because cute girls are good, I would enjoy it much less if it had a more realistic depiction of characters.
Topic Starter
Patatitta

Kobold84 wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

Kobold84 wrote:

Didn't read ultra heaven, but reminds me of Homunculus by Hideo Yamamoto, I guess because of the odd perception of reality?

Some other avant-garde manga that I read was Panorama Toukitan by Maruo Suehiro, I didn't like it, but the art was good sometimes. Oh, and Travel by Yokoyama Yuichi, it was just amusing in a bad way.
honestly I have not read any of those, and I don't know, I really feel that if we counted and talked about stuff liek ultra heaven, shimeji simulation, or whatever else as avant-garde, the entire genre would be seen in a better light, and people would also have better recommendations when they want to see the avant garde genre for the first time

improving that first impression would help a lot in the long run
I doubt it, most of the stuff is just not very good and the good stuff is usually easy to find for people who are interested in it. Shimeji simulation is good because cute girls are good, I would enjoy it much less if it had a more realistic depiction of characters.
thing is, i'm into it, and i'm struggling to find stuff, since all the tools I used to use to really find these, are unusuable, and yes, there are a lot of good avant garde shit, I would even argue that houseki no kuni is avant garde, the plot is basically never seen before, while it is fantasy, it's a style of fantasy I did not know it existed, it's deep, the art is original using a lot of negative space, it's really just unlike anything i've really read, if you were to compair it to the rest of the top 50, this is clearly an standout, and it has basically a 9 in myanimelist, with a very big fanbase

there do are good avant-garde stuff, it's just not the thing people think or find when talking or searching for it

also, I would argue shimeji would still stand where it is if it didn't have cute anime girls, just less popular, since the strength of the actual work is in the world and plot
Kobold84

Patatitta wrote:

Kobold84 wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

Kobold84 wrote:

Didn't read ultra heaven, but reminds me of Homunculus by Hideo Yamamoto, I guess because of the odd perception of reality?

Some other avant-garde manga that I read was Panorama Toukitan by Maruo Suehiro, I didn't like it, but the art was good sometimes. Oh, and Travel by Yokoyama Yuichi, it was just amusing in a bad way.
honestly I have not read any of those, and I don't know, I really feel that if we counted and talked about stuff liek ultra heaven, shimeji simulation, or whatever else as avant-garde, the entire genre would be seen in a better light, and people would also have better recommendations when they want to see the avant garde genre for the first time

improving that first impression would help a lot in the long run
I doubt it, most of the stuff is just not very good and the good stuff is usually easy to find for people who are interested in it. Shimeji simulation is good because cute girls are good, I would enjoy it much less if it had a more realistic depiction of characters.
thing is, i'm into it, and i'm struggling to find stuff, since all the tools I used to use to really find these, are unusuable, and yes, there are a lot of good avant garde shit, I would even argue that houseki no kuni is avant garde, the plot is basically never seen before, while it is fantasy, it's a style of fantasy I did not know it existed, it's deep, the art is original using a lot of negative space, it's really just unlike anything i've really read, if you were to compair it to the rest of the top 50, this is clearly an standout, and it has basically a 9 in myanimelist, with a very big fanbase

there do are good avant-garde stuff, it's just not the thing people think or find when talking or searching for it

also, I would argue shimeji would still stand where it is if it didn't have cute anime girls, just less popular, since the strength of the actual work is in the world and plot
You earn for simplicity, and it's a nice wish to have, but either you yourself make tools for people to use or no one makes them. Obviously a rant is not going to make your life easier.

But regardless, back in my days we never had fancy search engines and all that, most of the time we found good anime/manga by word of mouth when discussing it on anime-related forums. And even then, it's still possible to find what you're looking for by scraping google for information. Yes, it's daunting, but you have to do what you have to do.
Topic Starter
Patatitta

Kobold84 wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

Kobold84 wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

Kobold84 wrote:

Didn't read ultra heaven, but reminds me of Homunculus by Hideo Yamamoto, I guess because of the odd perception of reality?

Some other avant-garde manga that I read was Panorama Toukitan by Maruo Suehiro, I didn't like it, but the art was good sometimes. Oh, and Travel by Yokoyama Yuichi, it was just amusing in a bad way.
honestly I have not read any of those, and I don't know, I really feel that if we counted and talked about stuff liek ultra heaven, shimeji simulation, or whatever else as avant-garde, the entire genre would be seen in a better light, and people would also have better recommendations when they want to see the avant garde genre for the first time

improving that first impression would help a lot in the long run
I doubt it, most of the stuff is just not very good and the good stuff is usually easy to find for people who are interested in it. Shimeji simulation is good because cute girls are good, I would enjoy it much less if it had a more realistic depiction of characters.
thing is, i'm into it, and i'm struggling to find stuff, since all the tools I used to use to really find these, are unusuable, and yes, there are a lot of good avant garde shit, I would even argue that houseki no kuni is avant garde, the plot is basically never seen before, while it is fantasy, it's a style of fantasy I did not know it existed, it's deep, the art is original using a lot of negative space, it's really just unlike anything i've really read, if you were to compair it to the rest of the top 50, this is clearly an standout, and it has basically a 9 in myanimelist, with a very big fanbase

there do are good avant-garde stuff, it's just not the thing people think or find when talking or searching for it

also, I would argue shimeji would still stand where it is if it didn't have cute anime girls, just less popular, since the strength of the actual work is in the world and plot
You earn for simplicity, and it's a nice wish to have, but either you yourself make tools for people to use or no one makes them. Obviously a rant is not going to make your life easier.

But regardless, back in my days we never had fancy search engines and all that, most of the time we found good anime/manga by word of mouth when discussing it on anime-related forums. And even then, it's still possible to find what you're looking for by scraping google for information. Yes, it's daunting, but you have to do what you have to do.
of course I know that a rant isn't going to make things better, at the end of the day i'm saying this in the osu forums, I just want to have a conversation about this. It's too big of a problem to fix it myself. And of course there are still ways to find these, but it's just laughibly more difficult than the rest of the entire mediun
Nuuskamuikkunen
Before I start, a tip, you can ask to remove and add genres in MAL, there's a thread for it. I myself requested a couple anime to have the Avant-Garde tag added and removed.

https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=2004232 - For anime
https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=2004233 - For manga

Well, back to what I am to say. As someone that watches avant-garde (thanks for this thread señor patata <3) but in anime version, there seems to be a more clear, albeit still vague definition on what could count as an avant-garde anime and whatnot. Basically, not only the plot, but the execution of said plot must be something innovative and unique. BUT there is a problem with the genre in MyAnimeList that could have made the current definition of avant-garde confusing: The fact that this genre was called "Dementia" in that site.

The definition of "Dementia" had nothing to do with a work being experimental or anything, in fact, the definition was something as vague as "Works with mind-bending plots", or in other words, plainly confusing stuff. Anime like Higurashi no Naku Koro ni used to have that tag because of the story being (purposely) difficult to understand, that's all, heck, even something as body horror counted for its addition as dementia, like this short because... REASONS!

Back in like 2021, they decided to change the name of "Dementia" to Avant Garde, quoting a mod at that time (from memory [might be inaccurate]) because most of the works there could count as Avant Garde as well, which is true, but it brought at least two problems: First, there are a number of anime that were tagged "Dementia" which did not fit into the Avant-Garde definition at all, like I said Higurashi before or Poputepipiku which are two known cases, and quite some shorts that don't fit the definition at all, like THIS AVERAGE VIDEO, well, enough melodramatic screaming and let's go with the second problem, there were a lot of mistagged or untagged anime that did fit into Avant-Garde but not into Dementia, like Gosenzosama Banbanzai!, Yuri Kuma Arashi or non-narrative shorts like Heya/Keitai.

At this time, it is just a matter for the DB to get updated accordingly, something I've been making a small contribution too along with other people. There are quite a few "Dementia leftovers" to find that are not experimental or abstract at all

TLDR: Intro, The problem with "Dementia" genre, the appearance of Avant Garde in MAL and the problems it brought, what has been happening and what needs to be done.

I would elaborate on what you said in your posts but I wanted to express my opinion first plus some explanations. Right now MAL and Anime Planet (called Abstract there) are the only sites to properly tag these genres as a whole while other sites just state that X anime has experimental animation but experimental animation alone does not make a work avant-garde.
Topic Starter
Patatitta
oh damn, thanks for the explanation, that really makes a lot of sense now, I didn't know that it was called dementia up until recent. I may try requesting tags too
MangaGrumpy
Mind Game???? Maybe????????????
Nuuskamuikkunen

MaxIsABigKaiju wrote:

Mind Game???? Maybe????????????
It's tagged as such in MAL and categorized as Avant Garde in Wikipedia so yes.
[doofus]
I haven't really read too many avant-garde manga (if any arguably), but I feel like Oyasumi Punpun could fall into that category. I never encountered a manga before where only the protagonist is a caricature.

Plus the story is fits the bill for "dementia" in my book; if not severe mental illness.

I'm pretty into avant-garde fashion so I would love to look more into this genre of manga :0
Nuuskamuikkunen

tsundokku wrote:

I haven't really read too many avant-garde manga (if any arguably), but I feel like Oyasumi Punpun could fall into that category. I never encountered a manga before where only the protagonist is a caricature.

Plus the story is fits the bill for "dementia" in my book; if not severe mental illness.

I'm pretty into avant-garde fashion so I would love to look more into this genre of manga :0
The second accounts for Psychological instead though.
Neigdoig
For something to be avant-garde, you have to get into the Japanese mindset for a moment. As a writer of any sort of medium that could be turned into an anime, you have to consider staying inside a formulaic box, and copy concepts from other people's work in order that your light novel or manga does well. Add to that the amount of pages you need to write, and not necessarily have an ending unless it's a cliffhanger for a publisher to even accept it.

Keep in mind too that part of the standard formula for manga/light novels is that it needs to sit well with an audience who doesn't even care that obvious tropes are inside of said media, so make it as obvious as you can, and it will sell well.

For something to be avant-garde, you have to think outside of the box that's imposed on you in Japan, and some light novels and manga do just that. For example, a Thai writer by the name of Oboretai, was looking to publish a series of light novels entitled Metafiction, which seeks to change the standard of how light novels and manga can become good source material so anime can become better. You can look up his older videos on Oboretai Writing Ch. on YouTube to see what I'm talking about.
I AM VERY SMART
Does this avant garde thing also exists in anime form?
Topic Starter
Patatitta

Anaxii wrote:

Does this avant garde thing also exists in anime form?
it exists in all art-forms. Paintings, books, movies, etc. This includes anime, in fact, eblf talked about avant-garde anime in this same thread just a little bit up
I AM VERY SMART

Patatitta wrote:

Anaxii wrote:

Does this avant garde thing also exists in anime form?
it exists in all art-forms. Paintings, books, movies, etc. This includes anime, in fact, eblf talked about avant-garde anime in this same thread just a little bit up
Ah okkkkkk
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