While they definitely can easily be counted as superheroes, in practice no one I'm aware of in anime and manga fandom as it currently exists would classify them that way, not even series like Dragonball Z that are deliberately inspired by American superheroes. It's a theoretical overlap, but one that no user I'm aware of would have difficulty with. So it's really a question of whether in this case we're looking for a user-driven set of categories, or an archive-driven one that makes clearer distinctions. Both are totally valid organizational schemas.
Also, I should note that I'm not aware of any classification system that eliminates ambiguity. Both Library of Congress and Dewey cataloguing allow for significant variation based on individual decisions by librarians, and I wouldn't expect the AO3 not to either. To some extent, you're always going to have judgement calls that require decisions by your staff, and it's just a question of where you want those to happen most often -- we've already raised the question of whether imprints owned by DC and Marvel that are traditionally mostly or entirely separate from their main universes belong in those categories as things currently stand.
Comment on Call for Feedback on Category Change Proposal
undomielregina Thu 19 Sep 2013 11:54PM UTC
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