Bulbapedia:Manual of style/Manga

This article is an official guideline on Bulbapedia. Its contents are a strong recommendation for users and administrators alike.

This is an instruction manual that addresses the conventions adopted by Project Manga in writing, titles, articles, and linking Pokémon manga and its related Articles. If there are any unresolved disputes over what best adheres to the style of this, please contact the Project Leader, Zesty Cactus.

General conventions

• The {{Project Manga notice}} should only go on completed articles. Incomplete articles instead are tagged with {{stub|Manga}}.
• When adding moves used by a Pokémon, please do not add them to either the Pokémon's article or the move's article unless the move was mentioned by name when it appeared in the manga. It is unencyclopedic to guess which move was used, so to avoid this, it is requested that only moves confirmed by name be added. If you are unsure, please contact the project leader or a staff member before adding it to an article.
• Please do not add chapter summaries or synopses unless you have read that chapter or round in a language you comprehensively understand. For example, if the manga was published only in Japanese and Mandarin Chinese, and you do not understand either of these languages, please refrain from adding plot or story information based on the pictures alone as it may result in incorrect or missing information. As Bulbapedia is an encyclopedia, potentially wrong information should never be included.
  • This rule does not prohibit contributing scans or other images, publication information, Pokémon appearances, and the like to complement existing facts.
  • This rule also does not prohibit contributions based on officially licensed translations that are not in English or Japanese, as long as it is indicated that it is based on such a translation. An example would be a chapter summary based on the European French, Italian, Indonesian or Chinese translation of Pokémon Get da ze!, which was not released in English, but was officially licensed in other languages.
• Please do not upload scans to the Bulbagarden Archives that have visible text from scanlations/fan translations.
• It is against Bulbapedia's policy to directly copy a summary from other websites without permission.

Linking to chapter/round titles

Manga chapters/rounds should be linked like anime episodes. The title, when available, should be used rather than just linking to the epicode, e.g. A Glimpse of the Glow as opposed to PS001.

Manga that have been translated into English should be linked by the English name rather than the Japanese name. If it was translated by VIZ Media and Chuang Yi, VIZ Media's title should be used in the link (the Chuang Yi title will still be in the opening sentence alongside VIZ Media's, see below). The same goes for characters with different names in different translations, for example, Aibo will be linked rather than Ataro.

Volumes

Article titles for manga volumes should always be at "[Name of series] volume [x]", even if the volume has a title of its own (for example, the title of Electric Tale of Pikachu volume 2 is "Pikachu Shocks Back", but the article title should still be at "Electric Tale of Pikachu volume 2".

Opening sentence

The opening sentence should always follow the same structure of "Volume X is the xth volume of the Whatever manga series created by 誰か whoever. If the volume has a title, as mentioned above, it should be included in the opening sentence. An example:

Volume 1: A Party with Pikachu is the first of ten volumes of the Magical Pokémon Journey manga created by つきりのゆみ Yumi Tsukirino.

If the series is ongoing, it is not necessary to say "the first of x volumes". Just "the first volume" is sufficient.

If the article is about a Pokémon Adventures volume, the chapter arc which the volume is from should also be included. Example:

Volume 13 is the thirteenth volume of the Pokémon Adventures manga and the sixth of eight volumes in the Gold, Silver & Crystal arc. It is authored by 日下秀憲 Hidenori Kusaka and illustrated by 山本サトシ Satoshi Yamamoto.

Infobox

The {{VolumePrevNext}} template is to be used at the top of the page for manga volumes. It should have all parameters filled if possible.

For the cover image appearing in the main infobox, cover artwork official English translations by VIZ Media or Chuang Yi take priority if available. If both VIZ Media and Chuang Yi have published a translation, VIZ Media's cover should be used over Chuang Yi's if available. If no licensed English translation exists or the cover artwork is unavailable, please use the Japanese cover artwork, if available. Only if the Japanese cover artwork is unavailable should a non-English licensed translation's cover artwork be used in the main infobox.

In cases where there are multiple editions of a particular volume, such as the first seven volumes of the Pokémon Adventures manga, the most recent edition's cover will be used in the main infobox. The old edition cover and ISBN should still be included in the Publications information, however.

Publications

The {{publications}} template must be used for cover artwork, publisher and ISBN information. The Japanese, VIZ Media (when applicable) and Chuang Yi (when applicable) information is required for a complete article and must be listed in that order. Information about international publications, such as in Germany or Italy or other countries, is encouraged to be added as well but not required for an article to be considered complete. International publication information should follow after the Japanese and English (when applicable) information and should be listed in alphabetical order by country (e.g. France, Germany, Italy, then Spain).

For ISBN numbers, ISBN-10 is preferred over ISBN-13 when available, however, if only the ISBN-13 is known, it is acceptable to be added to the article.

Content

Summaries are not necessary for volume articles, this information belongs in the chapter/round articles. Volume articles should have a list of included chapters/rounds, which link to the appropriate pages. In addition, there should be a small point form list of major events in all chapters of the volume, i.e., "Protagonist beats Gym Leader", "Protagonist captures this Pokémon", etc. Finally, a list of party changes (additions, evolutions, etc) and Gym Leaders battled should be included (only when applicable).

When a volume article contains a reasonable amount of the above content, it is no longer considered a stub.

Chapters/rounds

Each and every chapter/round and bonus chapter of a Pokémon manga is to be given its own seperate article, even short chapters like Valentine Heartbeats. The exception to this rule is adaptations of the Pokémon movies. Please refer to the #Movie manga adaptations section below for policy regarding movie adaptations.

Following Bulbapedia policy for anime episodes, all manga chapter/round titles are named by epicodes. For information, policy and guidelines for manga epicodes, see Bulbapedia:Epicode.

Opening sentence

The opening sentence structure of a chapter/round article should be something like the following:

Valentine Heartbeats (Japanese: バレンタインでドッキドキ Excitement of the Valentine) is the second bonus chapter of the second volume of Magical Pokémon Journey.

In the case of Pokémon Adventures rounds from PS091 onward, where both VIZ Media and Chuang Yi have separate translations, both names are to be included, with the VIZ Media name listed first. The same treatment of the titles should also be done in the {{Chapterinfobox}}, with the VIZ Media title listed first. Example:

Murkrow Row or Murkrow Flies (Japanese: VS ヤミカラス VS. Yamikarasu) is the 91st round of the Pokémon Adventures manga and the first round of the Gold, Silver & Crystal arc.

In the case of chapters/rounds that have not been translated into English at all, should be done as:

(Japanese: 脱出!! Escape!!) is the 268th round of the Pokémon Adventures manga and also the first one in the FireRed & LeafGreen arc.

For chapters/rounds in romanized Japanese, when proper names are used, the name should be the Japanese name, with a {{Tt}} template showing the English translated name, if applicable. For example, see GDZ02 as (Japanese: 強敵・フシギバナ! Fierce Foe - Fushigibana!). When linking to these titles, however, for simplicity, at this time it is okay to switch the proper name to the English one (so this example would be linked as Fierce Foe - Venusaur).

Infobox

Each chapter/round should have the {{Chapterinfobox}} template, with as many parameters as possible filled in. The chapter/round's image should be the title page of the chapter, preferably uploaded in .png format if possible. Generally, chapter/round scans are in English when available, though a high-quality Japanese (or other language) scan is also acceptable. It is not neccessary to replace a high-quality Japanese (or other language) scan with an English one, as the quality of the image and artwork is the most important, not the language.

Content

The chapter summary should be complete but not too lengthy or not too detailed. A panel-by-panel explanation is not needed, nor are detailed quotations from the characters, a general summary of what is going on is fine. Remember, Bulbapedia is not meant to replace reading the book. Additionally, copying summaries from other websites is not acceptable and such contributions will be removed and deleted from the history.

Other content needed for chapter articles includes a bulleted list of major events (e.g. Protagonist captures whatever Pokémon), a list of the most important characters and Pokémon in the chapter. Pokémon belonging to main characters of the manga should appear at the top of the list in the order they were obtained/revealed. Wild Pokémon should appear in National Dex order, with recurring wild Pokémon topping the list (it is not necessary to list every Pokémon or human that appears, just important ones). Other required information is a list of characters introduced in the chapter and any errors or translation edits (when applicable).

If a chapter/round article meets all this criteria, it is no longer considered a stub.

Notability of Pokémon

Main article: User:CoolPikachu!/Manga Pokémon Notability Policy

Movie manga adaptations

Movie manga adaptations do not follow the same conventions as regular manga, as a lot of the information is covered elsewhere on the wiki. As such, a movie manga adaptation article should only include the following information:

• Opening paragraph
• Publications
• Chapter titles
• Differences between the anime and the manga (this is the most important)
• Related articles

All this information is required for the article to be complete and not a stub.

In addition, moves used by main characters's Pokémon in movie adaptations should go on the ==In the manga== sections of their respective main articles.

Japanese text

Kanji

See Bulbapedia:Manual of style/Kanji

Romanization

See Bulbapedia:Manual of style/Romanization