Vanilla tag, romance tag.

I noticed that a lot of people, either to avoid bashing, or to trick readers or because they just can't tag, abuse the vanilla tag. There's a bit of confusion going on.

How does fakku describe the tag?

The vanilla tag refers to manga and doujinshi that do not contain anything out of the ordinary or unusual.

There's a second line that means nothing, it should be ignored. Vanilla means you have nothing to worry about visually or contextually during your read, it can be romantic but it is not a necessary condition.

Let's take this

https://www.fakku.net/manga/everything-with-the-two-of-them-english

Main guy gets the girl he likes, it was a misunderstanding so she's not a slut, he also gets to bang the other slutty sister. All consensual, nothing wrong happens from start to finish, no particularly disturbing kinks, none of the partecipants has an external partner. This is vanilla.

https://www.fakku.net/doujinshi/secretly-after-school-english

Harem show, a vanilla fan of the show expects Tsuda and only Tsuda to have his way with one or several of the harem girls.

What does he find? First, he finds Suzu being blackmailed and getting "stockholm syndromed", then Shino with Tsuda. There's no such a thing as a "half vanilla" book.

That brings me to the point: it is either time to bring popular vote removal exclusively for the vanilla tag, or change the conditions for it to appear, and to add the romance tag, so that people see the vanilla tag is missing so something is wrong, but there may be something good in there somewhere. Make it a front page poll, I'm sure the results will confirm my point of view.

True. It would not hurt at least.

Well if you look all the Fakku definition :


That "The majority of stories will be cute and romantic, involving only one boy and one girl falling in love" sentence is a bit ambiguous.

I mean some romantic fetishist should be decieved just because Fakku sorts under the same tag romance as well as ordinary/unusual things.

Plus if you take the trouble to state "involving only one boy and one girl falling in love", then any lack of those two/three conditions :
- falling in love
- a couple whatever the gender
(- or maybe only heterosaxuality ?)
should be "unforgivable".


Or is Vanilla just some mere rag-bag tag ?

That second line is not wrong but it means nothing in the big picture. A harem, unless it involves married women or rape or a situational gangbang or more devious fetishes is vanilla, because you'd have it rough trying to find someone disturbed or inclined to complain. And that's what the tag is mostly about: if you see the potential for large-scale complaints, you know you should not use it.

The girl was gangraped for 36 pages, but hey, at least it got a happy ending!

So basically what you're saying is the Vanilla tag has lost its true definition over time (entirely consensual sex with nothing unusual about it, and may or may not involve romance) and to split the often-associated Romance aspect of it from the Vanilla aspect by introducing a Romance tag.

Sounds good to me, personally.

Another idea would be add a filter system, so maybe people will stop tagging at random or mistagging on purpose.

I concur with op and gravity cat.

Vanilla is a term used for something plain, normal, etc. Boy meets girl and falling in love is as plain as you can get.

https://www.fakku.net/manga/black-community-service-japanese

I don't really see love in here. It's vanilla.

https://www.fakku.net/manga/zangyou-wa-nanno-aji

Same goes for this. She likes sex, he never had sex, they have sex. Vanilla.

So we all agree to at least remove the romance part of the vanilla definition.

And maybe create a romance tag -- it can be suggested here.


In another hand, There are/was examples as Emua who made a lot of mangas with plain sex but not tagged "vanilla".

I guess the vanilla and "non-vanilla" tagged mangas are in a little mess -- because of the actual abiguous definition ?

Fresh off the comments section of this gallery.