The filing system
Twelve shelves, one rule
Categories tell you what a text is about. They are useful and they are not how this reference is arranged. Every one of the 447 texts here is filed instead by the number its title reduces to — which turns out to say something about what shape the text has, and puts a glossary entry, a thirty-year-old serialisation and last week's announcement on the same shelf when they are doing the same thing.
How a text is filed
Each letter carries a digit — A is 1, B is 2, on to I at 9, then the alphabet starts over. Sum the letters of the title, then reduce the sum by adding its digits together until one figure remains. The master numbers 11, 22 and 33 are never reduced, which is why they get shelves of their own and why so few texts reach them.
“Weekly Shonen Jump” totals 72, reduces to 9, and is therefore read from The Closing. Nothing about the magazine changes; the shelf only decides what it gets read next to.
Read any title
The same arithmetic, on whatever you type. It is worked in your browser and sent nowhere.
The Telling
craft, voice, and the machinery of putting a story across
The 3 is the number of expression, and its shelf is the craft shelf. Panel grammar, page turns, dialogue, the visual shorthand a medium develops over sixty years so a reader can absorb a fight in four seconds — the texts that reduce to 3 are about technique in the service of being understood. They are the most instructive entries in the reference and the ones most worth rereading.
Heart's desire 6 · Personality 6
One section is filed differently. Numbered sets — the Four Emperors, the Twelve Kizuki, the Gotei 13 — go on the shelf of their own count, because their authors chose a number and a chosen number outranks a calculated one.
The shelves are uneven on purpose. Nothing was moved to balance them, and 2, 22 and 33 are nearly empty because the arithmetic rarely lands there — a sum that reduces to 11 stops at 11 rather than continuing down to 2. What each number means is set out in the numerology guide.