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 as it may be incorrect and as an encyclopedia, potentially wrong information should always be avoided.
  • 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.

Round and Chapter numbering

For the numbering of chapters and rounds, see Epicode.

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. English cover artwork by VIZ Media or Chuang Yi should be displayed if it is available (if both publishers have published the volume, VIZ Media's cover will be used), however, if this is not available or does not exist, the Japanese cover will be used instead. Japanese covers are preferred over other non-English language publications, such as in the case of Pokémon Get da ze!.

In the case of the first seven volumes of the Pokémon Adventures manga, where VIZ Media has published two different editions, the most recent edition's cover will be displayed. The old edition cover should still be included in the Publications information, however.

Publications

The {{publications}} template should 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. Non-English or Japanese countries should be listed on the publications in alphabetical order (e.g. France, Germany, Italy, then Spain).

For ISBN numbers, ISBN-10 is preferred over ISBN-13 when available, however, ISBN-13 is acceptable when there is no other ISBN information.

Content

Summaries are not necessary for volume articles, this information belongs in the chapter articles. Volume articles should have a list of included chapters, 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.

Lists of Pokémon in chapter and round articles

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.

Notability of Pokémon

See Manga Pokémon Notability Policy

Chapters

Each and every chapter and bonus chapter of a Pokémon manga warrants its own seperate article, even short chapters like Valentine Heartbeats. The exception to this rule is adaptations of the Pokémon movies. In this case, the main article for the manga volume should link to the movie's page for plot details while listing differences between the movie and the manga adaptation.

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

Each chapter should have the {{Chapterinfobox}} template, with as many parameters as possible filled in. The chapter's image should be the title page of the chapter, preferably uploaded in .png format if possible. Generally, chapter scans are in English when possible, 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 opening sentence structure of a chapter 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 cases such as Pokémon Adventures from PS091 onwards, where there is both a VIZ Media and Chuang Yi title for the round, both names are to be included, with the VIZ Media name 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.

The same treatment of the titles should also be done in the {{Chapterinfobox}}, with the VIZ Media title listed first.

In the case of series or chapters that do not have a title or 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.

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 (it is not necessary to list every Pokémon or human that appears, just important ones), a list of characters introduced in the chapter, and any errors or translation edits (when applicable).

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

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

Kanji

See Bulbapedia:Manual of style/Kanji

Romanization

See Bulbapedia:Manual of style/Romanization

Integration of content from other websites

It is against Bulbapedia's policy to directly copy a summary from other websites without permission.