Kitsune and Kyuubi

Kitsune literally just means fox in Japanese, as well as Kyuubi means nine tails.
We should think about aliasing to a more user friendly name and a better descriptor of the tag.

Kitsune -> Fox_spirit
Kyuubi -> nine-tailed_fox_spirit

Or something along those lines.

I don't think I've ever seen them referred to as "fox spirits" in anime/manga before. Kitsune is very entry level as far as weeb terms go. Also they're often not spirits, just fox girls with multiple tails.

To me it's like switching from oni to demon, or from nekomata to cat spirit. They're japanese concepts, it makes no sense to have the main tag being in english.

I think I have seen them called "fox spirits" occasionally, but I agree with nnt. They're not always spirits, at least not as far as the english meaning of the word is concerned, and it's a well enough known anime term.

I would like to question how danbooru differentiates kitsune from fox girls though. I assume kitsune is treated as a subset of fox girl, with the number of tails or use of "fox magic" being what sets them apart? None of the three wikis clarify this, though.

Either fox_spirti -> Kitsune for an alias also would suffice. Also kyuubi does not imply kitsune at the moment, should it?

.Dank said:

Either fox_spirti -> Kitsune for an alias also would suffice. Also kyuubi does not imply kitsune at the moment, should it?

There's also kumiho, as @Damian0358 pointed out in the discord. Though I'm not even sure how we can even tell the two tags apart save for some specific reference to korean mythology.

Then why not just using spirit fox for both? do we need them or is there a visible distinction we can make other than the artists saying this is a ____ ?

blindVigil said:

I would like to question how danbooru differentiates kitsune from fox girls though. I assume kitsune is treated as a subset of fox girl, with the number of tails or use of "fox magic" being what sets them apart? None of the three wikis clarify this, though.

I always tagged kitsune on fox girls with between 2 and 8 tails, never with one because that wouldn't make sense.

Also kitsune no_humans.

...btw, we also have inari, which is not defined. Inari are supposed to be another kind of fox youkai, but there's also fox statues called inari statues, like post #2922938.

Unbreakable said:

I always tagged kitsune on fox girls with between 2 and 8 tails, never with one because that wouldn't make sense.

I don't really have a problem with this, but single-tailed kitsune exist, shippou (inuyasha) is one. Any fox is a "kitsune" regardless of their number of tails, but obviously that doesn't really matter to us if we're strictly enforcing twys. Excluding single-tailed kitsune from being tagged just means dealing the usual problem that comes with species tags.

Whatever the case, the wikis need to be updated to actually explain what details to look out for.

.Dank said:

Also kyuubi does not imply kitsune at the moment, should it?

I think it should, unless we wanted the two to be mutually exclusive despite a kyuubi specifically being a nine-tailed kitsune.

I also wanted to add that kitsune and kyuubi don't get used as often as they should. And I believe is due to the name. A simple search of kaga_(azur_lane) -kistune can tell you as much.

.Dank said:

I also wanted to add that kitsune and kyuubi don't get used as often as they should. And I believe is due to the name. A simple search of kaga_(azur_lane) -kistune can tell you as much.

Well I don't think a fox_spirit alias is going to fix that. I'm fairly confident a typical English speaker isn't going to look at any of the Azur Lane fox girls and identify them as "spirits". An alias might make it easier to find when tagging, but it wouldn't necessarily make people more likely to use it.

Fox girl doesn't get used as often as it should either, and that's obviously not an issue with the name.

Yeah, like I mentioned on the OP "or something along those lines". It doesn't necessarily have to be that name. I am also okay with an alias such as: fox_spirit -> kitsune or something to help the tag out, even if just slightly.