The Great Blue Archive Character Tag Debate (2025 ver.)

Related topics:
topic #23653 and topic #25567: Aliasing the full names to the on-screen names
forum #188863: The admin decision that defined our current system for BA char names
forum #195768: The admin's opinion regarding standardization of series chartags
topic #18912: Dealiasing for optimization of the search bar autocomplete
topic #33746: Konosuba qualifiers (since BA got mentioned there wrt to the use of full names)

I'll be the one to start (yet another) dumpster fire regarding how we tackle Blue Archive's character tags. Hopefully, we can put this never-ending debate to rest given the realities outside this site and optimizations happening within this site.

As someone who once played BA for shits and giggles (as well as having to deal with fanarts of it all the time), typing them on the search bar does give out a glaring issue: if you try to search by their full names, it gives you the alias treatment, not to mention that thanks to how our autocomplete works, it kinda adds more results to the dropdown. For example, someone searching Noa by their full name would get something like "Ushio Noa -> Noa (Blue Archive)", and note Noa has around 6.2k ups, second place to Kancolle's Ushio at 7.3k. I was always of the opinion that we're better off using the full names.

My point is that these aliases pollute our autocomplete that's been optimized to hell and back.
And my proposal, as radical as it can be, would be to reverse the aliases to full names instead of screen names. Or maybe even just throw away every BA chartag alias and let autocomplete and the copyright's sheer post count handle the searching.

To quote Unb in forum #396346 from the Konosuba thread:

There has actually been some talk about reversing the aliases for Blue Archive characters, it's just that no one has made a BUR to try.

Well, here we are.
Reigniting the convo in its proper place.

Any BURs we can think of, we'll consider after opinions are raised.

To quote Evaz in forum #188863 from the issue of Genshin charas wrt their full names (after he himself caved in and gave this miHoYo cash cow the ol' college try for clearer judgment):

Overall, apparently the only time most of these full names even come up in-game is in character profile text locked behind a bunch of level grinding. I'm actually kind of mad I had to play the game this far just to find out this much.

Wikipedia calls this the "Use commonly recognizable names" or "common names" rule (WP:COMMONNAME). This is something I very much agree with. Too many times we get caught up trying to use the "most official" or "most correct" name, and end up with a name nobody recognizes.

"Nobody" outside the anime/manga/game fanbases.

In BA's case, the full names already appear on their individual profiles, so regardless of the gacha/recruit results only showing you their given name, it doesn't change the fact that majority of the sites outside of our own bubble use the full names as-is on their tags and profiles. Including pixiv. And merchandise manufacturers like Good Smile Company (which makes the nendoroid line) use full names in their PR posts. Our search system + autocomplete complicates matters if all we want is to search them by their full names or their given names only. Also, thanks to the efforts of our "devoted" users, BA has so much arts on the site that their characters, for the most part, would be among the top 5 results in searches. Such aliases would be pointless from both technical and user standpoints, then.

We can just search for someone like Shiroko or Wakamo simply by typing their full names and it'll still be among the top results. IMHO we shouldn't have to be an outlier amid many who stick to full names (just ask our previous discussion regarding renaming "otoko no ko" into trap). Oh, but we'd run into issues regarding BA charas that only have one name (e.g. Arona and Plana), and here's what Evaz had to say in forum #195768:

My stance is that if most characters in a copyright need to be qualified, then they all should be qualified. We gain very little by dropping qualifiers on two characters out of over a hundred *_(xenoblade) characters.

If there's concerns regarding that, mihoyo made us break convention in their games with the debate vis-a-vis what's shown in-game. Certain charas like Kamisato Ayaka and Von Lycaon can attest, among others. We can keep Arona and Plana's qualifiers and just trash the rest if we do switch over to full name use.

BUR #50162 is pending approval.

Character name BUR (1/2), so people have a place to vote.

BUR #50163 is pending approval.

Character name BUR (2/2)

BUR #50164 is pending approval.

Costume BUR.

Thanks to ANON TOKYO (user #480070) for parsing all the text

If we decide to do this, we also need to check if we're missing any character or costume whose tag was only made in firstname<_(costume)>_(blue_archive) form and not lastname_firstname<_(costume)>.

My alternate option that I would have presented was to alias the existing names to qualified versions of the full names as a compromise. But the submitted ones work too.

Something like this for example:

alias karin_(blue_archive) -> kakudate_karin_(blue_archive)

I personally don't care about this discussion in specific, as someone who doesn't play or care about Blue Archive, so I won't comment on it whatsoever. However, I will comment on this from the OP:

ArcieA said:

IMHO we shouldn't have to be an outlier amid many who stick to full names (just ask our previous discussion regarding renaming "otoko no ko" into trap).

I think it's crazy that that discussion is being invoked in a context like this, given its contentiousness. You already had forum #365020 and forum #377043 from that topic, using the change to justify a similar change elsewhere online, and now you've got this discussion using it as an example of 'avoiding being outliers' when forum #168056 and topic #17011, concerning Danbooru's romanization system, were right there as examples to use.

ArcieA said:

My alternate option that I would have presented was to alias the existing names to qualified versions of the full names as a compromise. But the submitted ones work too.

Something like this for example:

alias karin_(blue_archive) -> kakudate_karin_(blue_archive)

That sounds like the worst option of both worlds. All the downsides of using qualified names (long to type, visually cluttered) together with all the anger of not using the codenames in the first place.

I think it's nice to be consistent in your naming. So, if you typically use the full names when available, I don't see why a different exception would be made for this copyright.

Blue Archive character names are not obscure in the slightest, they are used in-game and in promotional material. The only way you would not know their full names is if you don't play/follow the games and only hear a passing mention of the characters, but the same would apply to any character really.

I have heard it being an unwritten rule that gacha game characters only use the first name. But if this is truly the case, I think you should flip the aliases on Zenless Zone Zero otherwise it looks like a rule being applied arbitrarily.

Moebits said:

I have heard it being an unwritten rule that gacha game characters only use the first name. But if this is truly the case, I think you should flip the aliases on Zenless Zone Zero otherwise it looks like a rule being applied arbitrarily.

It's more that the majority of gacha games uses the first name in the majority of places and the full name being relegated to the profile/about section or some odd parts of dialogue, and we usually go with the name that is most commonly used since that's what most people are gonna be searching for.

ArcieA said:

In BA's case, the full names already appear on their individual profiles, so regardless of the gacha/recruit results only showing you their given name, it doesn't change the fact that majority of the sites outside of our own bubble use the full names as-is on their tags and profiles. Including pixiv. And merchandise manufacturers like Good Smile Company (which makes the nendoroid line) use full names in their PR posts. Our search system + autocomplete complicates matters if all we want is to search them by their full names or their given names only.

Their full names are only used in one place in game, which is rather difficult to find (on multiple occasions I've had people who do play the game be surprised when I show them the full profiles). Basically everywhere else in game they're referred to by their given name only. This also applies in conversation. Nobody's saying their full names, only given names. People are also likely primarily searching by given names. This is similar to how the communities of other gacha games such as Genshin operate. IMO the full names are used in tags on other sites because otherwise they'd have to qualify them. As an example pixivs KanColle tags are qualified though there are like 3-4 tags per character with different qualifiers. That also applies to BA, there's plenty of BA works with tags for the given name. And also tags with the qualifier.

Unbreakable said:

...and we usually go with the name that is most commonly used since that's what most people are gonna be searching for.

This basically. It is just easier.

Moebits said:

...The only way you would not know their full names is if you don't play/follow the games and only hear a passing mention of the characters...

As above. I don't believe that's really true.

ArcieA said:

Also, thanks to the efforts of our "devoted" users, BA has so much arts on the site that their characters, for the most part, would be among the top 5 results in searches. Such aliases would be pointless from both technical and user standpoints, then.

This obviously doesn't apply to new characters or less popular ones. As with the more popular characters, most people will primarily know their given names.

Moebits said:
Blue Archive character names are not obscure in the slightest, they are used in-game and in promotional material. The only way you would not know their full names is if you don't play/follow the games and only hear a passing mention of the characters, but the same would apply to any character really.

Even when I was playing Blue Archive I never knew most of the characters' last names, if I did know them it was usually only because of e-hentai tagging them by their full name

Moebits said:

Blue Archive character names are not obscure in the slightest, they are used in-game and in promotional material. The only way you would not know their full names is if you don't play/follow the games and only hear a passing mention of the characters, but the same would apply to any character really.

I have heard it being an unwritten rule that gacha game characters only use the first name. But if this is truly the case, I think you should flip the aliases on Zenless Zone Zero otherwise it looks like a rule being applied arbitrarily.

Pixiv mostly uses their names and that's the only time I know of their full names, other than that I mostly think of "Karin from Blue Archive", also like I mentioned before in ZZZ's case, their names are always revealed in the full-game once released, unless a character doesn't have a surname, like Seed just to name an example, also going by your route we would have another Alice that'll already make the tagging confusing so for ZZZ it's best we keep the tags (and leave the surnames for them) as is.

i don't think anybody actually uses the full names of blue archive characters. What's wrong with the way the tags are now?

CyanData said:

i don't think anybody actually uses the full names of blue archive characters. What's wrong with the way the tags are now?

Literally nothing. Some people just like the idea of them being "more correct", user experience be damned.

Situation: there are 14 competing BA tag standards.

ArcieA said:
Hopefully, we can put this never-ending debate to rest given the realities outside this site and optimizations happening within this site.

Situation: there are 15 competing BA tag standards.

For my 2 cents, while the situation with BA is certainly very different from Genshin, and many characters' last names are mentioned in the story and well known in the community, not all are, and sometimes a character needs a tag before her last name is known, so I'm not opposed to the status quo.

viliml said:

For my 2 cents, while the situation with BA is certainly very different from Genshin, and many characters' last names are mentioned in the story and well known in the community, not all are, and sometimes a character needs a tag before her last name is known, so I'm not opposed to the status quo.

Then you make the tag and then alias it when the last name is known. An alias is happening either way, the only difference is what order it's going in.

What I don't like is how this opens an exception for the current convention. Blue Archive is not the only game to use codename/part of the name instead of full name as the playable name, as mentioned. They usually don't have complete naming consistency (e.g. not all characters have their full name revealed), it's troublesome to have to deal with exceptions. Going with official playable name is just easier to manage for us. If we do this, people are going to start making thread for other games and we will need to revise all of them again too.

While I personally prefer the full names, I wouldn't mind the current status quo. What I will mention, though, is that the announcements of character releases on the JP version's X account show their surnames (and voice actors), while announcements on Global's X account generally omit them. Compare post #9185200 (the JP announcement for Nozomi), which states her name as "Tachibana Nozomi" (and her voice actress as Hoshitani Mio), to post #9981801 (the Global announcement), which only states her given name and omits her voice actress.

The only time I've seen surnames mentioned in announcements for Global were in quotes from the characters themselves, as is the case for post #9981607 (Hikari), where she introduces herself using her full name (not in the image itself, but in the commentary).

As a casual fan, i don't know most of the girls' full name.

Please keep the tag the way it is.