Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anime and manga

Currently, Anime News Network can be put in either the "publisher" or "website" parameter of citation templates. Generally, older articles tend to use "publisher", while newer articles use "website". This affects both the metadata of the citation itself as well as how it appears to the reader. I recently attempted to make this consistent by having the citations default to treating it like a website for reasons explained below. However, I was advised by another editor to seek wider consensus for the changes, so this is somewhat of a request for feedback.

My reasoning for the changes is that:

• The documentation for general cite templates states: "If the work title as given by the site/publication would be exactly or substantially the same as the name of the publisher, do not use the 'publisher' parameter" [emphasis added]. Note that work title refers to the website name.
• The documentation for the {{cite web}} template states: "Omit [the publisher parameter] where the publisher's name is substantially the same as the name of the work".
• The guideline on citation use states "fixing errors in citation coding, including incorrectly used template parameters" is preferable.
• ANN is this project's most widely used source, and citing it correctly is important. Thus, if using the "website" parameter is correct, then this can be implemented as a one-time fix.

Skyshifter, who asked me to seek wider consensus, made some important counterpoints which are also worth considering:

• Anime News Network isn't italicized in the prose of its article.
• It is common for featured articles, which represent the best of Wikipedia's work, to use the "publisher" parameter for online sources. Thus, practice doesn't necessarily line up with the proposed changes.
• The documentation pages are categorized as "how-to", which means that: they "explain concepts or processes used by the Wikipedia community" and are "not one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, and may reflect varying levels of consensus."
• Considering it affects many articles, large-scale changes should be discussed and given approval with wider consensus.

As such, any feedback on whether such changes should be made, and whether it's reasonable to do so for many articles, is appreciated. Crestfalling (talk/contribs) 04:31, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

This has also confused me for a long time, and I once asked an editor who has been on the site longer than me and who usually changes the parameter from 'website' to 'publisher' to know their reasoning, but they never replied. MOS:ITALICWEBCITE states Website titles may or may not be italicized in running text depending on the type of site and what kind of content it features. Online magazines, newspapers, and news sites with original content should generally be italicized (Salon or HuffPost). Online non-user-generated encyclopedias and dictionaries should also be italicized (Scholarpedia or Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary). Other types of websites should be decided on a case-by-case basis. I have no idea why ANN isn't italicized in its article, given that it meets the criteria of being a news site with original content. I usually list it as a website rather than a publisher when I cite it, simply because it is an online news site and is not available in any other medium. For all these reasons, I would say that it should continue to be listed as a website rather than a publisher; it's not that I'm particularly opposed to the latter, but I don't find the reasons for doing so particularly convincing, and it certainly doesn't seem to be a rule carved in stone. Xexerss (talk) 05:04, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

I usually use "website" because Anime News Network is a news website similar to something like IGN and Natalie, both of which are italicized. ANN does host forums and a user-generated encyclopedia, but these sections should not be cited anywhere as they are unreliable for obvious reasons. The only place it makes sense in my opinion to not italicize ANN is in the external links section, where the encyclopedia is linked. Other than that, though, I don't see how it's any different from other news publications. I can't say why it's not italicized on its article, though. Link20XX (talk) 05:37, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Thank you two for your input. I checked the MOS:ITALICWEBCITE link that Xexerss provided, and it actually seems to provide fairly clear guidance, albeit in the notes. Quoting from that page:

• When used by Wikipedia in a reference citation [...] titles of major works (e.g., websites) go in italics, even if they would not be italicized in running text as services, companies, etc."
• "Whether the publisher name is substantially the same as the work name is immaterial; as the citation template documentation instructs, in such a case the publisher (not work) should be omitted as redundant."
• "Do not [use] incorrect template parameters (e.g., by putting the work title in |publisher= or |via=)) in an attempt to avoid italicizing digital sources."

As far as I can tell, it seems to advise italicizing regardless of how the website is normally formatted (though I agree that ANN does seem to meet the criteria of a news site with original content). It also discourages using the publisher parameter when it's the same as the website parameter, both for reasons of redundancy and proper formatting. That being said, I just want to double check that this is correct, since I use AWB to make a lot of changes and it'd be a pain to change them all back. Crestfalling (talk/contribs) 05:58, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Back when I was an active editor, I always used "website" when citing ANN's news articles. It made sense—ANN never had a print edition, so "publisher" didn't fit. At some point, though, someone went through and changed all of those citations to "publisher" without offering any explanation or pointing to any relevant policy or guideline. From my perspective, it looked less like a standards-based correction and more like someone imposing their own personal preference. ~2026-10593-98 (talk) 20:22, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks. Based on this discussion, it seems that "website" is indeed preferred over "publisher" for several reasons. For reference, I'd been working on using AWB and regexes to standardize citations by wikilinking ANN and changing the parameters, such as in this edit. If there are no objections, then I can probably get the rest of the articles in Category:manga series fixed within a few days, starting tomorrow. However, more input would definitely be appreciated, since the last thing I'd want is to have to deal with an overlooked problem after spending hours editing. Crestfalling (talk/contribs) 01:38, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

I came here from one of these edits. I don't think we should be linking the term in citations en masse. Lots of articles (including anything I work on) don't link parameters in references. I think it makes it harder to actually find the thing you are citing. I think it's likely adding the link is happening on articles where there is no other links to the website/publisher parameter. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:10, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you for the perspective. My reasoning for adding wikilinks was as follows:

• All eleven FAs in this project as well as the vast majority of GAs wikilink Anime News Network. Most active contributors to this project that I've encountered do the same. When I use semi-automated tools, I'm conscious of avoiding imposing personal preferences that don't reflect existing consensus, so that's something I checked.
• It adds contextual information, since Anime News Network isn't a website that many readers are expected to be familiar with. Additionally, because references are unique in their usage, there's no way of knowing which reference that a reader will check first, unlike prose (something noted at WP:LINK).
• According to the documentation at WP:Citation templates, "It is expected that a reference citation includes wikilinks to the relevant article for the source, such as The New York Times, rather than The New York Times", which is also acceptable per the guideline WP:LINK.

I think that at face value, making an article more consistent in its style shouldn't be an issue. However, I understand your point about linking in articles where it's not done for the other citations; I mostly felt that something is better than nothing in this regard (i.e. partially improving reader understanding is still good). It shouldn't be too hard to modify my script or try to pre-filter articles, but I'd like to hear your opinion on the above as well. Anyone else is of course free to chime in as well. Thanks, Crestfalling (talk/contribs) 22:03, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Another thing to briefly note is that at FAC, which essentially mandates source reviews, it's the standard to wikilink sources whenever possible (e.g. here and here, among others), and not doing so is generally seen as a barrier to a support. Obviously, no article should be expected to meet FAC standards, but it seems like a reasonable metric for whether a change is an improvement. Crestfalling (talk/contribs) 22:41, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

Interesting, I've never seen that piece at WP:Citation templates (probably cause I always check on CS1 templates). If we are checking to see if the article doesn't link these on the page already, then I have no issue, it's just that AWB can be used to force a specific setting without much oversight. I see it as a WP:CITESTYLE/WP:CITEVAR thing.

If we ARE supposed to be linking this, and it's not a CITEVAR thing, then maybe we need to clarify that. I'll start a discussion about this. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:13, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

After noticing @Link20XX's discussion about how a lot of animanga articles lack a plot section entirely, I made a script to automatically search for keywords (plot, synopsis, summary, story, premise) in headings and then tag the article with the {{no plot}} template if none are found.

I tested the script (without saving my edits) on a sample of 100 random articles from Category:Manga series (excluding ones already in Link20XX's list), and it correctly tagged 24 of them. If this category is completely processed, it'll probably involve tagging around 1400 articles and adding them to a maintenance category, which is way more than I expected when I made the script. For comparison, Link20XX's list currently has about 390.

Since I don't want to embark on mass tagging without consensus that it'd be of use to this project, input on whether to proceed would be appreciated. Courtesy pinging Link20XX, who started the original discussion, as well as @Tebus19, @Ajheindel, @SimonLagann, and @Venom5122, who contributed to the existing list. Crestfalling (talk/contribs) 01:52, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

Creating a maintenance category is certainly more efficient than what we have been doing now, as long as we were confident it was accurate. I am not sure how much this would help, but I don't think it would cause any issues. So far there hasn't been much of an effort to add plots to articles, just the shows airing soon since they have more traffic. For adding plots to pages with shows airing soon, I don’t think the category would help, the list Link20XX made will be easier to coordinate which shows are coming out that still need summaries. Ajheindel (talk) 02:24, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

That makes sense - it's great to see everyone making progress at filling the list, but this would be an efficient way to do it (it would take an estimated 5 hours), since once I finish tagging the articles, I could generate a list of articles from the category and then add it to Link20XX's list. I'm fairly confident the script accurate, since I manually reviewed the 100-article sample and there weren't any false negatives or positives. What Link20XX is doing with shows coming out soon is very useful (since it allows them to be prioritized), so this is really just meant to supplement this. Crestfalling (talk/contribs) 03:24, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

I personally don't mind creating a maintenance category or something like that, I just opted for the list so I could visually see which ones had an upcoming anime, which I am generally more interested in working on personally. Unfortunately, the backlog of pages is so great that I fear that the few people we have working on this are unable to make any real difference in the total amount, though we have now written one for all of the upcoming anime aside from the media franchises, which is good to see. Link20XX (talk) 06:47, 21 February 2026 (UTC)

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Sonic the Hedgehog in film and television#Requested move 17 February 2026 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Vestrian24Bio 08:04, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Hello, HorseBro the hemionus here and I require assistance of creation of Draft:Dog Ningen as it is a notable comedy manga. However, I am completely inexperienced as I only create Military History related articles and no prior experience on Anime and Manga so could you guys please offer me support to the creation of the page? Thanks. The Khan of the universe and the Hoofed animals (Please don't click this) 11:47, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

@HorseBro the hemionus: What evidence is there that it is notable (notable under Wikipedia standards)? This is a self-published comic, and there does not appear to be much coverage from independent sources. Also, as far as I know, this work was created by two non-Japanese authors, so it is not manga. Therefore, this is not the appropriate place to seek help regarding the draft. Xexerss (talk) 11:56, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Is there anyone help me to add the plots of Chiruran: Shinsengumi Requiem, The Death Mage, Isekai Executioner: The Serial Killer in Another World, Record of Wortenia War, Biblia Koshodō no Jiken Techō, Hollow Regalia, Battlefront of the Great Powers and Vlad Drăculea (manga)? Venom5122 (talk) 15:35, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Surely important. Just piggybacking off previous efforts, I checked the User:Link20XX/Plot summaries page and all of those are already listed there. So, I'm sure there will be someone to help. Historyday01 (talk) 17:21, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, unfortunately, that page has gotten so long I think we're going to need more help to work through it. If there are any editors with free time, please help us. Link20XX (talk) 20:54, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

I can try to do some more, but some on the list are quite hard to find any info on, many don't even have summaries on the japan wiki. Ajheindel (talk) 02:15, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

How should we handle the situation of television series that premiere online first? At least for series where the difference in days is not so great (say, no more than a week), I feel it would be fine to indicate the television premiere rather than the online premiere, but with Do You Like Big Girls?, the series will premiere online on March 13 and on television on April 6, almost a month apart. What I did was adding a note in the infobox reflecting this, but I don't know if it should be the other way around, prioritizing the first release date in the 'first' parameter, or listing the television premiere date. Xexerss (talk) 14:35, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

I would think the earliest date should be prioritized, and the note can mention the later television premiere since it is a bit non-standard. I know for films they put the earliest premiere date in the infobox (which is usually a festival or something like that), which is earlier than the larger release date. Ajheindel (talk) 15:33, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

Have you asked WP:WPTV if they had similar situations and how they handled it? ~2026-14501-33 (talk) 21:34, 6 March 2026 (UTC)

I've been working on Draft:MangaOne scandal about the recent scandal involving Shogakukan's MangaOne service, which has gotten a lot of coverage in Japanese. It seems to meet WP:NEVENT, but I admit that I am not too familiar with that because I don't usually write this kind of article. If another editor more experienced in this area could give some feedback on whether the draft meets the threshold for mainspacing, that would be helpful. Link20XX (talk) 19:12, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

@Link20XX: I think there's enough coverage and supplementary parts (like the effect of various mangaka pulling their manga from the publisher) for it to probably be fine. Sarca sc (talk) 11:48, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

Is there anyone able to create two manga series Pumpkin Night and Mikazuki no Kuni: Osman Senya Ichiya (or maybe this manga name is Land of the Crescent Moon: Ottoman's Thousand and One Nights)? Because i have noticed that both became more popular on social media (first manga about many homages from horror media works like Halloween, The Shining, Friday the 13th and more multi horror franchises, while the second manga became popular about featuring Islam Cultures set in Ottoman Empire that Turkish and Muslim people like this from famous author who cares about Islam religion like ramadan and other works that need to check out about author official account from Twitter/X) Venom5122 (talk) 10:40, 9 March 2026 (UTC)

Normally, whenever I browse several articles pertaining to manga, the volume table usually contains the info on its ISBN and release date. However, for cases like Dandadan's manga chapters page and the volume table of Witch Hat Atelier, there's some detailed plot summaries covering what happens within a certain volume. Is that being done by the editor's initiative or are there any guidelines to such? I mostly ask this out of interest, thank you! JT0219 (talk) 05:19, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

@JT0219: Each volume of a series in this kind of list should have its own summary. If they're missing, it's simply because they're usually filled in with just the basic information you mentioned, but ideally they should be more detailed. Xexerss (talk) 16:35, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

So it's sort of encouraged for editors to write up volume summaries, but it's not generally and strictly enforced? Based on how I inferred your answer, it does seem like it should be commonplace within anime/manga articles though it's only relegated to a minority. JT0219 (talk) 23:42, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

It is the same as general article and episode summaries, many articles are missing them because no one has put in the effort to add them. I would imagine more people watch the anime than read the manga, hence why volume summaries are less common. Adding missing summaries would certainly be encouraged. Ajheindel (talk) 00:10, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

As long as the series meets guidelines for notability (or splitting, in the case of a separate article), there's technically nothing wrong with just a list of volumes. However, like how Xexerss and Ajheindel mentioned, it's helpful information and should be added if you're able to do so. Crestfalling (talk/contribs) 01:22, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Exactly. It’s the same with other sections, such as plot summaries or character descriptions, where it would be ideal for them to be included in the article, but for various reasons (time constraints, lack of familiarity with the work, among others) they are omitted, and a significant number of editors limit themselves to including only the minimum required information. Xexerss (talk) 01:28, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

I made a custom search engine (linked) to help search for reviews for Reception sections. This was inspired by WP:A&M/RS's existing search engine, which is a great effort but has problems due to its lack of filtering for unreliable sources even after custom search queries.

To address this, the new custom search engine has the following features:

• Inclusion of only whitelisted websites
• Regex search to filter out unusable domains, e.g. ANN's encyclopedia
• Search weighting to prioritize reviews
• A tab to exclude common news sites

Comparison between old vs new engine on Girls' Last Tour:

Old: Search results, 3 of the first page's results are usable.

New: Search results, All 10 of the first page's results are usable.

I'm still working on tweaking the settings, but any feedback is appreciated, since I hope to eventually add this to projectspace. Whitelisted sites are mostly taken from the project's reliable sources page; if there are any that you think should be included, please let me know. Crestfalling (talk/contribs) 03:52, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

It's been wonderful on my end, found lots of new sources for Flip Flappers! Kamakou (talk) 14:52, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

How should we handle the infobox for television series articles when the franchise consists of more than one series rather than just seasons? There is currently a disagreement regarding the Gintama (TV series) article, where the TV infobox is being used and it is listed with ten seasons. The thing is, the first series has 201 episodes, and in the home video release, they were split into four seasons. On Crunchyroll, however, the series is split in four seasons, where the first series is split in four parts; Gintama' is considered the second season and split in two parts; Gintama° is considered the third season; and Gintama. is considered the fourth season. I assume that the division of the episode list article across ten seasons is purely for practical reasons, but my question is whether we should use the TV infobox in all articles that focus on television series, regardless of whether they have multiple seasons or multiple series, or whether we should use the animanga infobox to indicate that each series is separate and not simply a season. It’s worth noting that on the Bandai Namco website, the episodes are numbered from 1 to 367, and each series does not start with episode 1. Personally, I also think that in these cases we could simply omit the season parameter or include a note if necessary. Xexerss (talk) 00:03, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

I'm not exactly sure of the differences between the infoboxes, but it seems to make more sense to list each series individually in the infobox rather than combining them all together; their articles describe them as sequels, which is also supported by the Bandai Namco website which numbers the episodes sequentially. As such, I would support the use of the animanga infobox in this case, though including a note is probably a good idea regardless. Crestfalling (talk/contribs) 00:36, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

The current page has gotten really long and progress has been slow in cutting down the list, especially when only a few editors have been working on adding plot summaries. Link20XX and I have been discussing about the page and it may now be time for the project to fully adopt the page and take it in-house. This might also help increase visibility and encourage editors to participate. Would others be open to the idea? Link20XX said he is okay with the page being taken off his hands. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 00:04, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

I know there was some discussion of creating a maintenance category, that would probably be the logical next step from what is implemented now. What we have now is also fine I think, until more progress is made at least. I have done a decent number in the past and will probably do more eventually, they are just a bit tedious. Not sure what you have in mind, but I will try to help. Ajheindel (talk) 00:26, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps making it a task force or at least a subpage of Wikipedia:WikiProject Anime and manga instead of Link20XX's userspace. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 00:33, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Moving the list to project space can easily be done, I don't see any reason why it shouldn't. A task force could be formed as well, as long as there are some people willing to help (either with creating/managing the list or adding the summaries themselves). Ajheindel (talk) 01:19, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

The maintenance category can be found at this link, which I've been slowly populating using AWB and templating. I think moving the page into projectspace and creating a dedicated task force would be a good idea - perhaps we could create some sort of drive to encourage editors to help fill out plot summaries for articles that have gotten over a certain number of monthly pageviews. Crestfalling (talk/contribs) 00:46, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

@Crestfalling: Several of the pages listed at the Link20XX subpage still lack the "No plot" template. Could AWB or similar tool be used to add the template and hopefully encourage the issue to be addressed? Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 04:02, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

When I was setting up the AWB run, I excluded pages already in the list since I assumed they had been templated (edit: just checked the maintenance category, and it seems like only a small percentage are, so that's on me for not taking a greater sample size). It should be pretty easy to modify my script to run through those pages while skipping those that already have a template, and I'll try to do that in the next few days. Thanks for the heads up. Crestfalling (talk/contribs) 04:11, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

@Crestfalling: Thank you. Let us know when you'll be working on the AWB stuff again. Narutolovehinata5 (talk · contributions) 04:24, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

• I see Dear Girl: Stories on here and as the article creator, Dear Girl: Stories is a radio program, so it doesn't need a plot summary. lullabying (talk) 06:23, 23 March 2026 (UTC)

Sora Amamiya has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 19:18, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

There is a discussion on Talk:Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch#Rename to Pichi Pichi Pitch? regarding a possible rename of the article. Your input is appreciated. lullabying (talk) 01:05, 21 March 2026 (UTC)

I have reworked Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch and hope to get it reassessed as I feel like it no longer qualifies as a Start-class article. Since I rewrote the article, I do not feel comfortable reassessing it myself. Thanks. lullabying (talk) 08:13, 24 March 2026 (UTC)

Good work on the article, I just assessed it as B-class. I would recommend expanding the Reception section a bit if you're interested in improving it further, since there looks to be enough sources to include more detailed commentary. Crestfalling (talk/contribs) 00:28, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

Thank you. I've expanded on the reception section with as many reviews I could find, specifically about the manga. I don't think there's any way to expand it, as I don't think the section is readable if I do a "they said, they said" and detail every single thing each individual critic has said. Any other suggestions about improvement are appreciated. lullabying (talk) 04:47, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

I've expanded it as much as I could. Do you recommend I try to get it assessed for Good Article status? lullabying (talk) 10:14, 25 March 2026 (UTC)