Difference between humanization and personification?

I've been trying to tag Sharuru from Dokidoki! Precure's human form with the personification tag, but lately I've been seeing the humanization tag being used for her which is far less populated than personification. She's not the first mascot with a human form, and yet the humanization tag is being used for her more and more, which makes no sense to me.

I read humanization's wiki, and I was even more confused about the difference between the two. The wikis say the following:

Humanization: A tag referring to images depicting characters that were already humanoid as humans.

Personification: When a non-human or non-humanoid character (usually an animal, or creature, or mecha) is made into a human or humanoid.

If there is a difference, I would like further clarification as to what humanization means and to see some examples.

Imagine barney the dinosaur as a human. Barney walks on two legs, speaks english, and uh, is alive so it's already the personification of a dinosaur. Turning this dinosaur into a straight up human with purple hair and whatever features appropriate is not, strictly speaking, a personification. Humanization is horribly underused so nothing is being singled out intentionally.

This is all (last 3 comments): topic #9575

Log said:
Barney [..] is already the personification of a dinosaur.

Not as far as tags are concerned.
The two tag's main use is to portay anything "turned into a human" (or any race that looks human). I don't think it's important to distinguish between different origin forms.

EB said:
humanization would seem to be androids, monster_girls, furries, and the like being made "fully human".

This sounds like a good definition, except I don't know how far to go with the furry characters.

Judging by the wiki and some of the posts tagged already, humanization would seem to be androids, monster_girls, furries, and the like being made "fully human". In which case, tagging Sharuru as humanization would be wrong, since I would consider Precure fairies to be more of a creature than humanoid and thus personification would be more applicable.

Alright that was a bad example. post #1486270 the left is humanization, the degrees in the middle are personification, and the right is the original.

Would it be like what happens with Pinocchio where

? Or if the Rozen Maiden dolls were turned into humans in an image? Let's take post #1479802 versus post #1477667, both being dakimakuras of Suigintou. The first one has her with doll joints, while the second one has her as a full human. In that case, the second one would be tagged humanization. That would make sense to me.

The Barney example doesn't work for me because he doesn't look human in the first place. Yes, he acts human, but so do magical girl mascots, and I haven't seen humanization for them before now. I think he would be personified because he is being turned from a dinosaur into a human, not from a human-like object like a robot or doll into a full human.

EDIT: Um... I think that's all personification, again for the above reason.

Log said:

Alright that was a bad example. post #1486270 the left is humanization, the degrees in the middle are personification, and the right is the original.

The one on the left is still a personification. Personification is just giving human features to non-humans.

post #1486270

With this setup, if use 2 number X -> Y and assume that X is the character's original design then I would say:

4 -> 5 = humanization
1 -> 5 = personification

I can't say much about anything inbetween such as 3 -> 5 or 1 -> 3
I wouldn't go lower than 3 -> 5 for humanization.

Toks said:

The one on the left is still a personification. Personification is just giving human features to non-humans.

#5 would be tagged humanization if one out of #2-4 was the original character. Otherwise (as it is), it's personification.

The difference between personification and humanization is the difference between a traditionally non-human character or object acting like a human (i.e. dog stands up on back legs and discusses the finer points of investment banking) and a traditionally non-human character being a human (character we know to be dog is shown as a person working at an investment bank).

I think the biggest problem here is how the wording in the wikis leaves ambiguity and incompleteness.

Precisely why I asked here in the forum for more clarification, but it looks like I've caused more confusion. Go figure.

However, I'm hoping that the example I provided above of post #1479802 versus post #1477667 would be what we're looking for here. Another idea for humanization would be a mermaid suddenly having human legs instead of a fish tail, or pretty much any type of monster girl losing her monster parts and being depicted as a full human.

... I might be speaking up way too late, and I hope this doesn't seem presumptuous, but it seems to me that the most reasonable system to use is human/person/entity:

Human: The one is to all visual indications a human being, the kind that might exist in our world.

Person: The one in question is not a human being, but everyone interacts with them as if they were a human being, just one with a different shape and nature.

Entity: The one in question isn't human or treated as one.

Humanification: A person who isn't a human being is represented as one, or more like one than they canonically are.

Personification: An entity that isn't a person is represented as one.

So, to back that up with some examples:

Lilith Aensland from Darkstalkers is not a human being. She is a succubus; she has bat-like wings coming from her head and her back. If you draw a version of her where the bat wings coming from her head are actually just hair, and those coming from her back are actually part of her clothing, that's humanification.

Sharuru, or Luna (Sailor Moon) or Artemis (Sailor Moon), are not human beings. They are a rabbit and cats, respectively; however, they all think and talk and act like human beings who just happen to have non-human bodies. If you draw versions of them where they are human beings*, it's humanification. That applies even if they are drawn with non-human ears coming off their humanoid bodies, or with tails coming off their humanoid rears; they're still being depicted as closer to human than they usually are.

Pikachu and the other Pokemon from Pokemon are neither human beings nor people. They're depicted as having some ability to reason and communicate (with other Pokemon) on a level comparable to humans, but they're not on the level of people. If you draw versions of Pokemon as human or humanoid, it's personification; even if they're depicted in the drawing as 100% human, the big difference between that and their canon depiction is from "not a person" to "person".

• To be honest, I'm really not sure whether either humanification or personification is really the right term to use, for characters who have canonical human secondary forms. Wouldn't we just have a secondary character tag, e.g. Luna and Luna (human form)?

I think rather than getting caught up in a philosophical debate here, the question we should be asking is what the useful distinction is, if any, between a personification and a humanization for tagging purposes (i.e. most likely on a purely visual basis.)

Is there a character that could undergo both humanization or personification and would look different depending on which process they undergo? If not, I don't see the purpose of making the distinction, other than that people searching for 'personification' alone are probably not looking for Rozen Maidens without the doll joints if the tag were to be applied to stuff like that.

I don't find the post #1486270 example useful. 5 is a personification and the rest are anthropomorphic to various degrees. Sorry for introducing a new term to the conversation, but if you want to tag that, use 'anthropomorphic' because that's the term everyone else on the internet uses.

7HS said:

Is there a character that could undergo both humanization or personification and would look different depending on which process they undergo?

Sure. Let's use Kyubey as an example, because I'm a horrible person.

• Clearly humanification: post #1294879, post #1005391.
• Images where he's been turned into a person but clearly not human: post #1095106, post #972466, post #1311760
• Ambiguous images in between from more to less human: post #863346, post #1000184, post #1153199, post #966270, post #894309
• Stuff that lies in the territory outside of personification: post #1059870

Or, you can use Charlotte from the same series:

• Full humanization: post #1023451
• Mere personification: post #855491

Carefully searching personification + monster girl will net you a few more examples.

@BCI Temp
Those fall pretty much under what 7HS calls anthropomorphism in his post, and post #1294879, post #1005391 are what is currently defined as personification.

But then again, I would have to ask with what definitions you're working with, because I regard Kyubey as a person.

@LittleFuzzy

With this definition we would run into the situation of having 2 cats. One normal cat and one cat that can talk. And then we would have to use humanization for 1 cat and personification for the other, and that doesn't sound like a very good idea.

LittleFuzzy said:
for characters who have canonical human secondary forms. Wouldn't we just have a secondary character tag, e.g. Luna and Luna (human form)?

Absolutely

Well, the wiki currently says that humanization is 'A tag referring to images depicting characters that were already humanoid as humans.' Kyubey and Charlotte are not humanoid.

That said, I understand the distinction BCI Temp is trying to make, and acknowledge that someone might find it useful while searching. I just don't approve of giving personification, which is already a well established tag, a broader meaning than it already has. I think of it as a translation of the Japanese term 擬人化 and muscle-QB is generally not tagged with that on Pixiv (although post #855491 is, and the recent posts I checked under a "personification monster_girl" search- mostly the Pacific Rim stuff- show no clear pattern of usage or non-usage.)

I wouldn't care if an "anthropomorphic" tag were introduced to apply to in-between situations like these, but I think broadening the definition of an existing tag and introducing a new, more specific one to cover its former use case is a proposal that should have a more sound basis than our subjective opinions.

With this definition we would run into the situation of having 2 cats. One normal cat and one cat that can talk. And then we would have to use humanization for 1 cat and personification for the other, and that doesn't sound like a very good idea.

Well, "this approach leads us to some very weird boundary cases, therefore it's not the right way to go" is a good heuristic for some problems. Not so much, for the problems where every possible approach is going to lead to some weird boundary cases, which I think is what we have here.

I freely admit that it may be too late to change existing practice, but this approach still seems to be the cleanest way to solve a messy problem: "humans" are a sub-category of "people", which is a sub-category of everything. If you're moving from "everything" into the sub-category "people", it's personification; if you're already in "people" but moving further in towards "humans", it's humanification.

It might require some knowledge of the canon (in Kiki's Delivery Service, for most of the movie Jiji the cat is "people" and Lily the cat is not, and one couldn't tell that purely by looking at their outward forms) but there are plenty of tags that require knowledge you couldn't get from outward forms (siblings, mother and son, etc.)

I thought this topic was on its way down, so I didn't post this yesterday.

What makes a human separate from a person is physical vs behavioral traits. If you're human, your genetic markup gives you physical traits that are uniquely and identifiably human. Personality, on the other hand, is determined by our actions and attitudes. People attach personalities to animals and things, thus personifying them, but none of those things will be humanized because they lack the physical traits.

Personification: behaviorally identifiable as human
Humanization: physically identifiable as human

Going to the Suigintou example, her big non-human trait is her doll joints. If she is depicted with actual joints, she gains physical human traits and is thus humanized. Going back to answering the question posed in OP, by those definitions, sharuru_(dokidoki!_precure) personification would make more sense as humanization.

Beyond that, there's the issue of "at what point is 'enough' enough?" I personally don't think either tag should be used to represent canon traits (i.e. most of kantai_collection personification)

Regarding what's "Human":

This is just my personal opinion (and is rather offtopic), but the youkai and fairies of Touhou could probably be classed as homarids (ghosts and tsukumogami are up for debate), since they display clearly human characteristics(For example post #1486268). Obviously they're different species, but one could argue they're in the same genus, perhaps a subgenus, though it depends on how exactly you classify Homo as a genus.

LittleFuzzy said:
for characters who have canonical human secondary forms. Wouldn't we just have a secondary character tag, e.g. Luna and Luna (human form)?

S1eth said:
Absolutely

If that's the case, then other mascots with official human forms would have to be tagged with (mascot)_(human) tags, and that's if they don't already have a canon name for their human form! Falling back on Sailor Moon and Precure for popular examples, Luna, Artemis and Diana have no civilian identities for their human forms, so if we really want to get technical, we'd have to do luna_(sailor_moon)_(human), artemis_(sailor_moon)_(human) and diana_(sailor_moon)_(human) tags for them. Or we could just do luna_(human), yadda yadda.

On the other hand, Precure has some mascots that turn human, and the majority of them use alternate civilian names that are already tagged on Danbooru. Just to write the list:

Yes! Precure 5
Coco: Kokoda Koji
Nuts: Natts
Syrup: Amai Shirou
Milk: Mimino Kurumi

Heartcatch Precure!

Suite Precure
Seiren: Kurokawa Eren

Smile Precure!
Candy: Royal Candy

Dokidoki! Precure
Davi: DB

The only mascots that have human form but not alternate names are Sharuru, Rakeru, and Rance in Dokidoki!. So for them, there would need to be sharuru_(dokidoki!_precure)_(human), rakeru_(dokidoki!_precure)_(human) and rance_(dokidoki!_precure)_(human) tags for them to qualify (or sharuru_(human) and so on).

Wouldn't that be a bit overkill when we can just do a luna_(sailor_moon) personification search for Luna's human form? The result is still the same.