Category Archives: moe

I’ll Be Waiting for My Check, Japan

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Anime and its fandom have managed to create personifications out of everything, from computer operating systems to charcoal to cans of soda, applying many of the popular character tropes to them and creating a fun logic exercise you can also get your rocks off to. At this point, you might ask, what’s left to capture the hearts of moe otaku everywhere? But I have the answer.

Imagine, if you will, a world where toilets are transformed into cute, beautiful girls. Modern toilets are a triumph of civilization, carrying with them notions of human progress and indoor plumbing, but at the same time also have quite a bit of variety to them. The division between the different characters could be along brand names, or along type. Personally, I think the latter would be more favorable for the purposes of creating a show/franchise.

The squat toilet could be the traditional yamato nadeshiko-type, while the high-tech toilet with the self-warming seat and such could be the enthusiastic computer geek. The french bidet would be the really classy one. And of course, the urinal would be a total tsundere tomboy.

And I don’t need to say anything about how the doujin community would utilize this fertile ground.

All in all, I think this is what you’d call money down the drain.

(By the way, I’m open to ideas for the title.)

Getting to Like You, Getting to Hope You Like Me

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What is a MILF?

The correct answer, of course, is a Mother You Would Like to Meet Between the Sheets. It is a fetish towards older, more mature women. But while a million things could be said about the concept of the MILF and its appeal, I want to point your attention to one in particular: what the word “mother” in this context really means.

The “mother” in MILF does not refer to the stretchmarks or the fact that they have a five year old sitting at home. Rather, it is very much a visual ideal. The MILF looks more mature and is therefore attractive in a way younger girls are not, and while it has a conceptual side to it, the idea that the MILF is also far more experienced in them in bedside manners, this is also achieved through visual signifiers, such as the clothes they wear and the hairstyles they favor.

While I’m no scientist, I think it’s safe to say that our minds are built to connect ideas and images, to associate one thing with another. This is evident in art, as symbolism abounded in works throughout history, changing depending on the culture. There, we find increasing levels of abstraction, wherein the “symbol” itself may potentially have the power to supplant the original itself, or at least to carry significant weight. So when it comes to anime and manga, the mental association of visual attributes to other physical traits as well as personality and sexuality isn’t that surprising.

Anime fans are encouraged, for better or worse, by possibly the shows or fellow fans, to grow and cultivate a visual vocabulary in this manner, creating a two-way street where looks imply personality and vice versa. Girls with large breasts either tend to be hyper-sexual (Anybody in Ikkitousen, but especially Ryofu Housen) or reluctantly so (Asahina Mikuru from Haruhi). Tsundere can often be found with twintails, due to their potential implication of guarded innocence.

At their most extreme,  these visual signifiers can describe not just personality and background but the entirety of their characters. It’s like instant ramen. It tastes “enough” like the real deal, and it doesn’t require the time and preparation of a real deal. You might consider it shallow, efficient, or both, but it makes sense. Anime fans new and old and from every generation have loved anime partly because of the connections they make to the characters. They want their characters to have personalities attached to their looks, even if those personalities might be one-dimensionally simplistic. This is what a lot of the successful Visual Novel companies have realized. While the characters’ story arcs are just as important, the companies know that they can set the stage with the appealing character designs and hint at their personalities through those deisgn aspects.

They can have players experience love at first sight. Or first moe or whatever.

(Oh, and in regards to MILFs and taking things too far…)

What is the Most Moe Kickboxing Tournament?

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K-On! World Grand Prix

To Understand Nazuna

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There are characters out there who are accused of being overly bland. They’re decried as dragging the quality of a series down below where it should be, and not contributing as much to their respective series as other characters. More recently, this accusation has been leveled at the new girl Nazuna in Hidamari Sketch Hoshimittsu.

While I believe it is possible for characters’ blandness to hurt a series (see a large number of harem shows), and I also understand the desire for characters that aren’t wishy-washy, I feel that in many cases, particularly with Nazuna, these criticisms do not do these characters justice.

By comparison with the other girls in Hidamari Sketch, Nazuna can definitely seem more “bland,” especially because of her passive personality, but I think that passive personality goes a very long way in making her a good character. While the entire rest of the girls in Hidamari Apartments are artists and creative types of all varieties, ranging from a computer graphics specialist to a published writer of short stories, Nazuna is not. Already meek and soft-spoken, this deals a subtle blow to her already wobbly confidence levels. Because she worries about not being “good enough” or “smart enough,” Nazuna is sometimes afraid to speak her mind. The other girls don’t really think any less of her, but in her mind there is a wide chasm separating her from the others. She worries that she might not truly “belong” with the others.

Personally, I think this quality of Nazuna’s makes her a fine character, though I can see why others dislike her. I’m somewhat hesitant to bring out the “moe” argument in all this, but I think it really applies here. Nazuna is a very strong example of a character with a lot of “moe” to her, in that those who like her enjoy the fact that she has such a complex, while those who think she makes the show worse probably think that such “blandness” is the last trait any character should have, especially in a comedy like Hidamari Sketch.

Now you might think that Nazuna is getting a free pass because she’s a girl and that she’s cute, but the idea of having trouble finding some place to belong is a common trait among people both male and female, and this extends to characters as well. To find one, we need go no further than my favorite series, Genshiken, and its main character, Sasahara Kanji.

Sasahara is a somewhat closeted anime fan who in the beginning hasn’t developed his taste in anime anywhere in particular. To some extent he is a reader surrogate, being a newbie to the wild world of PVC figures and doujinshi, but over time his experiences with Genshiken enable  him to mature as both a person and as an otaku. Overall, he is a well-written character.

Moe is not really a factor in real life and when dealing with real people, but it is an abstraction of reality. And so it’s a very real worry to have, to think that you’re just not good enough to hang with your friends and that they might just be humoring you. I once talked to a friend from high school who told me that while hanging out with our group of friends, they were always concerned about not being interesting or quirky enough. I don’t think any of us thought of that friend in that manner, but there it is.

The Fujoshi Files 15: Kimura Takako

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Name: Kimura, Takako (木村貴子)
Alias: N/A
Relationship Status: Single
Origin: Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens

Information:
With a spontaneous personality and a level of energy to match, Kimura Takako heads her high school’s Art Club as its president while also acting as a member of the Nagi-sama Fan Club. As president of the Art Club, Takako’s keen eye for aesthetics is matched by her interest in imagining the possible relationships that could potentially  occur among the male members of her club, particularly that of gentle giant Hibiki Daitetsu and “too pure pure boy” Mikuriya Jin. Her best friend is Ookouchi Fujino, whose calm and even personality acts as a foil to Takako’s exuberance. Takako is very enthusiastic and curious, but is also intelligent and wise when she lets herself be.

Takako has a very mature look about her, and when not wearing her school uniform can easily be mistaken for an office worker. Takako also possesses an extreme talent for karaoke, and is able to deliver blisteringly professional and sugar-laden performances on par with the greatest young idols out there, though her cutesy act combined with her adult appearance can create a mental disparity in those watching that can be difficult to reconcile.

Fujoshi Level:
Kimura Takako is most amazing in that she is a naturally occurring fujoshi, having never even heard of the term before being inadvertently introduced to it by Art Club member Akiba Meguru and yet still exhibiting all of the traits of fujoshi to a very high degree with no outside influence aside from Fujino. It should also be noted that Takako’s fondness for seeing same-sex relationships is not limited to men, as she has expressed a strong desire to see cute girls in cute clothes (and not because she wants to wear them herself).

The Precarious Position of “Seinen Cute”

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I am a man who likes cute things. This is sometimes a problem.

As a general rule in societies around the world, cute often falls into the realm of the feminine and the girly, especially when the ones being cute are girls. This is something I experienced when I was really getting into anime in high school, and people who knew about my interest in anime would sometimes say, “Cardcaptor Sakura? Really?”

During that period, the shock that fanfiction of Gundam Wing existed that paired men with other men was still fresh, so the idea that Cardcaptor Sakura was capable of appealing to a lolicon crowd didn’t even factor into the equation. It was more a matter of me, a guy (almost an adult at that point!), enjoying something that was made for little girls. It’s a battle I had to fight, and it’s a battle I’m sure many of you out there are familiar with and may even continue to go through. How do you break through societal standards of what is considered “umanly?” It’s a little easier when we’re all nerds and we suck at throwing objects, but even in the realm of geekdom you will find that masculinity plays some sort of role.

So when I see people bothered by how often seinen manga have this girlish, cute, sometimes moe aesthetic, I think back to whenever I’ve run into the problem of being told that I’m not supposed to be enjoying cute things made for girls.

Consider the fact that guys are guys, and while some of us like cute things we all have a tendency to like sexy things, though personal preference affects what “sexy” is. There is cute, there is sexy, and there is cute and sexy. And sometimes they all exist in the same comic, sometimes in the same character, and it can be off-putting for a lot of people while being just as enticing for others. Ask yourself, is it all right that a comic can have both sexualized characters and non-sexualized characters interacting with each other on an equal level? Does having sexualized elements in a character sexualize the entirety of their character?

If I had to take a stab at how Azumanga Daioh creator Azuma Kiyohiko felt about these questions, I think his response would be found in the character of Kimura.

Kimura appears to be a pretty creepy guy. He’s a high school teacher with a thing for high school girls to the point that, for him, age is irrelevant because “high school is high school.” But then you see how the guys in his classes react to him. They consider him a “role model” of sorts because he’s honest with his feelings. Further exploration of Kimura’s character shows that he is both a loving husband and a good father, and that he strongly believes in charity, donating a significant part of his paycheck on a regular basis. At the end of the day, taking all that into account, is he still creepy? Probably, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t a lot of other things too.

Those of you who are creeped out by the state of seinen manga’s more questionable practices have every right to be creeped out, and those of you who enjoy it have every right to enjoy it, and everyone has the right to disagree with each other. To me however, no matter how much questionable material is released and sold, the very fact that cute comics aimed towards adult men are published and manage to be successful is a great triumph that can never be taken away.

Getting to Know the Characters: An Example

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In my look back at the first decade of the 21st century, I talked about the shift towards character and the idea of “getting to know the characters.” While I think I made it pretty clear as to what I meant in the original post, I thought of a good example to explain the idea: the mahjong anime and manga Saki.

Mahjong has been a topic frequently explored in manga for decades now, with even Frederik Schodt’s “Manga! Manga!” pointing out its existence. It’s a favorite topic among salarymen and older audiences, but it wasn’t until the game was paired with moe and a heavy dash of yuri that it began reaching out to the otaku market in the form of Saki.

Anime nerds are playing mahjong in greater numbers now, and it’s not like Hikaru no Go where the manga itself explains the rules to a certain extent; characters in Saki just come in and do their thing and winning magically happens. And yet the otaku still want to play.

The reason that fans of Saki play mahjong, instead of just admiring the girls through fanart and doujinshi (and possibly their own dreams) is that mahjong is the focus of the Saki world, and by playing mahjong a person can feel closer to the characters in the series. I’m sure Miyanaga Saki fans smile every time they get +/-0 in their final scores, while achieving Haitei Raoyue is a wonderful feeling for supporters of Amae Koromo.

Performing an activity that is done by the characters gives a sense of connection, and the characters themselves make you want to connect to them through the power of their cute, moe designs and notions of very close friendship. That is the feeling of being “one” with the characters.

2000-2009 Part 2: Looking Forward

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Make Way for the New Generations

Introduction

Anime and manga continue to change and develop, becoming at times almost unrecognizable from what they once were in the past. Having first taken a broad (but also detailed) look at the significant parts of the decade of anime and manga from 2000-2009, I think it is only appropriate that we also look ahead. As such, I have written out a number of topics pertaining to where I think anime and manga will go in the coming years. They’re half-predictions, half-observations, and all things that I think people should watch out for.

The First Digital Generation

In the previous part, I discussed how the advent of digital animation is one of the biggest markers of the current decade of anime and that anime is affected by this switch. One vital point to consider is the likelihood of a generational shift. In about 20 years or so we are going to see an entire generation of adults in Japan (and around the world) who have grown up primarily on digital animation. When you consider the level to which nearly all people in and out of the industry still look fondly back towards the anime of their youth (or from the time they discovered anime), the style that has begun to grow out of digital animation is likely going to have a profound impact on where anime goes, especially as that first digital generation grows older and the cel generations die off.

Over time, I think that the peculiarities of digital animation, such as the computer-based shortcuts, will become part of the style itself, but less direct about it than, say, Studio SHAFT’s current output, and not necessarily influenced by Shinbo’s work either. But if there are any, they will be making in-jokes and references about the early, nostalgic days of digital animation and not light boxes and such.


SHAFT’s Bakemonogatari is a hint of where anime may go in 20 years.

For better or worse, as a new range of ideas and techniques emerge, parts of animation technique and philosophy born out of cel-based anime will fade away, perhaps forever. After all, Miyazaki can’t live forever.

Flash Animation

In this decade the US animation industry has embraced Flash Animation as a way to reduce cost, particularly by eliminating the need for animation teams in South Korea and other places to do everything for you, as well as being able to create works domestically without incurring the exorbitant costs required to animate things traditionally in the US. The results have been mixed, as Flash as a program lends itself to “flat” animation.

In light of the anime industry’s history of low budgets, I think that more companies, be they animation studios, broadcasters, or otherwise, will start to look at Flash as a viable method to keep things low-cost and at-home. Now I don’t think it will eliminate today’s more “traditional” animation, especially when it comes to bigger-name, bigger-budget works, but it will be an appealing tool for those middle-of-the-road shows, and shows for kids. We’re already kind of seeing it with something like Shugo Chara Party!, where one of the segments feels very much like a flash animation.

There are two key points here. First, is that I do not think, if Japan starts to use Flash more regularly, that they will utilize the same methods the US does, particularly because US animation is generally characterized by lots of movement and Japanese animation is not. Also, I think that animators will be trying to apply their existing principles to flash, rather than trying to master the “science” of it. Second, this will create another bridge between the industry and the internet, where flash animations come out of 2channel periodically and some achieve terrific success. The main challenge from there will be pushing the limits of flash animation in terms of how successfully the visuals can be used to convey a story, as well as the breadth and depth of the subjects explored.

“How effectively can stories be told in this format?”

Changing Views on Hikikomori and NEETs

The chronic shut-in known as the “hikikomori” is a topic that Japan for the past decade has been in debate over, and as with the “NEETs” and the “Freeters” and so on, the focus has been on the future and fate of Japan, especially when factoring in the shrinking Japanese population and the fear that arises from that scenario. “Why aren’t these people going out and making something of themselves? Why aren’t they growing up?” Essays and news reports and even anime, manga, and light novels have been made of the topic, with Welcome to the NHK providing prominent examples of the last three.

But the reality of the economy is such that not having a good job (or a job at all), living at home, and having your parents’ support will be an increasingly common sight. Some will become hikikomori and try to close themselves off from the world, but there may be a sizable group that is only partially hikikomori, who will not completely lose their ability to interact with others or to engage in meaningful activity, and they will have a cultural and social “pulling” effect on the full-blown hikikomori. In turn, those “full hikikomori” may drag some down with them.


Writings on hikikomori will evolve.

The result may be that Japan’s view on the hikikomori and the NEET, especially in the face of having these groups increase in size, will be a mixture of greater panic and greater relief as they will fret once again that this is potentially very dangerous for Japan, while the internet will provide this larger hikikomori population with the group setting in line with Japanese ideas of “group,” where the interactions between partial hikikomori and full hikikomori will take place.

Thematic Responses to the Economy

The anime industry, much like every other industry, is feeling the sting of the poor economy but also has the sting of disappointment and high expectations from the US and other markets. The result is that production of anime is feeling the squeeze, with reduced budget and staff and less wiggle room for creativity. All in all, anime is being affected on a technical level by the world economy. In a certain sense however, this is only the beginning.

In about three to five years, I predict that we will begin to see both anime and manga which address the idea of global recession itself and incorporate it into the themes and settings in these works, to have it become a concept that is to be explored, whether directly or indirectly. Evangelion and other shows were responses to the recession that befell Japan starting in the early 90s, and I don’t think it would be unusual for an international economic downturn to have a similar effect.

Money will matter on more than a practical level.

Some works will be more explicit about the topic, and probably mention governments and businessmen who played roulette with the world’s economy, or businesses which had too much hubris, while others will be Silent Service-style “what ifs” but for the economy. There will also be shows which are more subtle about these elements or will have them as part of the background.

The New Escapes

Fiction, even realistic fiction, is often an escape, and over the course of anime and manga’s histories we have seen the idea of the “escape” take on many forms. More recently, escape has been manifested through the idea of “moe” and all that it entails. Moe however, like every other genre of anime, cannot last at the forefront forever, and in time new escapes will appear. Some of them may resemble older trends, but they will all ultimately still be ways to not approach reality head-on.

There are two basic forms to “escapism.” The first is a type of introverted escapism, that is, to become increasingly insular. The second is an extroverted escapism, where you want to project outwards, to go beyond yourself. Almost all genres have both to some extent in different ratios. Moe for example is very insular in the sense that it seems to want to keep characters and emotions isolated in time, but is also somewhat extroverted in that these shows are generally trying to portray the strong emotions of other characters and the ideal of being able to see these qualities at the forefront.

In that sense, I think that in the near future the escapism for anime and manga will be increasingly introverted, but will soon give way to a more extroverted form as a response to the desires of more and more fans who want to be released into other worlds. Though I don’t think that anime and manga will be reaching that early period where stories tended to feel very “epic,” I think we will see a lot of stories about worlds with wide scope focused through the lens of personal characterization, and in a way in which the former affects the latter significantly and vice versa.


Many series will try to balance daily life with a greater world.

Increased International Integration in Collaborative Efforts

Like all companies, manga publishers want to increase profit every year, and at some point a decade or three ago, Japan began to realize that one direction they had not gone was to appeal to people outside of their fanbase and readership. The classic example at this point is Shounen Jump, which noticed that it had developed a sizable female audience, and so made the move to start releasing series that are designed for female readers (without driving the boys away, of course). The result is Jump‘s approximately 50% female readership.

But then I recalled something Ed Chavez, currently of Vertical Inc. and formally of Kodansha, has said on multiple occasions: The “problem” with the Japanese manga industry today is that it has no room to grow in the nation itself. For all intents and purposes, the Japanese market has been saturated, as manga selling a million copies is completely normal and the fact that there’s pretty much something for everyone.

The only way to go then is outside of Japan, but the problem facing the industry there is that it’s difficult to pinpoint the manga-reading audience for different cultures and nationalities around the world. The same thing applies to the anime industry, which has been trying to really grow outwards for a while but lost its footing along the way. The tricky part in all this is that anime and manga have to achieve a certain level of distinctness, but still have to be familiar enough that people are comfortable with the material, and this is something that is even more of a challenge to achieve when the people making the work are unfamiliar with the culture they’re trying to attract. Naruto, Bleach, and Dragon Ball Z are pretty much the most popular things out there for boys in the US, and when you think about it they’re not that different from American superheroes.

This is why I predict that over the next decade and beyond, we will be seeing collaborations on animation and comics where the staff producing these works will be much more closely integrated. International collaboration isn’t new to manga and especially not to anime, but the work is usually cleanly divided between the countries involved. So it’ll be less Gurihiru drawing for Marvel’s Power Pack and more Oban Star Racers. This way they have a better chance of hitting that cultural sweet spot, though nothing is guaranteed and there’s going to be some serious misses as a result of trying to mix two cultures together at the base level of production.


French and Japanese Collaboration Oban Star Racers

Incidentally, by necessity translators will have to be more closely involved in the process as well.

Age Demographics in Japan vs Age Demographics Abroad

Anime and manga in the US has had a contradictory reputation for the longest time, being viewed both as “cartoons for children” and “raunchy pornography.” These days however, if we were to look at the fandom we would know the truth: In the US, anime and manga are primarily for teenagers with both childish and adult elements in different proportions, and it’s been this way for a number of years now. One concern I’ve seen from people is that they fear that a lot of these works, particularly in manga, will never get brought over here because they will simply never have an audience. And to an extent they’re right, but I believe that in time the manga audience in the US will slowly mature and eventually reach a point where they want something that is more in-line with how they feel about entertainment, their lives, and the world at large.

The key however will be whether or not Japan realizes that age demographics do not map one-to-one between Japan and the US. Not all “seinen” works will appeal to an older audience, and they will have to somehow find a way to understand just what this slightly more matured manga-seeking audience is looking for, possibly through the greater international collaboration I mentioned earlier.


Seinen may become more “shounen-friendly.”

Josei in Japan went through a similar growing pain in that it tried to be more “adult” in certain ways until creators and editors realized that older women still want the shoujo series trappings of their youth, but with more mature concerns and characterizations. In time, I think Japan and the US will get a better handle on it, but it won’t come without some serious bumps in the road capable of taking a company or three under.

Multimedia Customization

When it comes to streaming anime, you can’t please everyone, and methods of distribution and how to turn those view counts into sales is a mystery which eludes even big sites like Hulu, let alone smaller players like Funimation or Crunchyroll. While streaming anime is a step in the right direction, anime finds itself to some extent in the same bind as scanlations: sometimes people want to actually own a hard copy for themselves. However, the cost of printing DVDs for a series that won’t sell can be prohibitively expensive, meaning even if you really like Saki, unless someone decides to pick up the license to produce a box set you’re not going to have it sitting pretty on your bookshelf.


People outside of Japan will be able to own Saki however they want.

I think that starting in the next few years this is all going to start changing until we reach a point of personal customization in our anime and manga: You will be able to make exactly the purchase you want with exactly the things that you want, on-demand. As an example, let’s say it’s 2015 and you’re watching a streaming video of the latest series New Mobile Fighter G Gundam: Second Generation. Sadly the show has no box set you can buy in stores, but you still really want to own it. What you’ll be able to do is specify just how you want to have it in your possession, and you will get that package. Do you want it on blu-ray or DVD? Do you want to shove all the episodes onto fewer discs, cutting out the extras and possibility some of the quality? Do you want to just download the episodes so you can watch them without relying on internet access? Do you want to also purchase merchandise for Neo-Japan’s “Typhoon Gundam?” You will be able to get what you want, weighing cost versus extras, and in a way that doesn’t just limit you to “Normal,” “Super Deluxe,” and “Bare Bones” packs.

Choice is the future.

New Paths for New Talent to Appear

Shinkai Makoto made a big splash on the anime industry when he released Voices of a Distant Star, a science fiction-themed OVA which he wrote, directed, and animated all by himself on his Macintosh back in 2002. More recently, Aniplex has introduced the world to Cencoroll, by another independent writer/director/animator named Uki Atsuya. The idea of the Anime Renaissance Man is appealing, but it’s something that people cannot expect all the time. Skilled creators can be born independently, but it’s clear from Shinkai’s example that, given proper resources and experience, even a genius has room to improve.

Works like Cencoroll will continue to be rare, but lessons can be learned.

I think anime is heading in a direction where people won’t have to be skilled at every aspect of animation production to be considered a Big Deal. One possibiliy I’ve thought of is “anime festivals” for amateur creators, be they industry-sponsored or independent, with competitions and awards for categories such as storyboarding and writing in addition to full-on animations. More importantly however, these anime festivals could take place entirely online.

The primary advantage of having festivals be online would be low overhead costs, and in this age of streaming video (which will only get more efficient over time) people will be able to see each others’ works and comment on them, possibly through chat rooms or Nico-style scrolling text. This will also encourage people to send in works from abroad, as they would be on an equal footing of sorts with those living in Japan, and would be able to enjoy seeing the results all the same. Of course this is not to say that online animation festivals would replace actual ones, but the ease of setting one up would make it an attractive prospect, and it would give amateurs opportunities to be noticed.

Manga too will start to have online festivals. There is already the International Manga Competition, but these will be a little more like Comic Market on the Internet, and will have a lot less pornography. The same idea applies however, in that people will be able to enter in a variety of categories and not just “Overall Excellent Manga Creator.” It’s not so much specialization as it is realizing again that not everyone talented is multi-talented.

Conclusion

Although I have written all of these ideas of the future of anime and manga, I of course do not pretend to be a soothsayer and cannot guarantee that any of my predictions will come true. I’ve always been better at observing the past than predicting the future, and I know my views on anime and manga are tinged by a certain degree of optimism, so in time we will all see  just what I was able to sense correctly and what was just my wishful thinking.

Still, I think that even if I get everything concrete wrong, every single item I’ve written about is something to consider and analyze further as anime and manga reach into the next decade.The main themes I’ve discussed are the ways in which the industry and the fans will handle the significant changes to the economy that have occurred, shifts in philosophy on the creation of anime itself, and new steps towards customizing and tailoring for audiences. Taken all together along with the advancement of technology in society, and even if I’m wrong I think that my ideas all have more than a few kernels of relevance to them.

So let’s approach 2010 with open arms, not so much to simply accept whatever anime and manga may come, but to give the same consideration of the past that we do the future, and to know that no matter how it might change they are still capable of inspiring.

The Lolicon of 1982

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Kransom recently showed me this image from a 1982 issue of Animage Magazine. The image is a chart which is designed for you the reader to figure out your lolicon level. The further down the list your preferences go, the more of a lolicon you are.

I don’t expect people to recognize every character. I certainly didn’t, which is why I’m including this handy guide. From left to right:

Top Row (You’re Normal): Fiolina (Dagli Appennini alle Ande), Clara (Heidi), Monsley (Future Boy Conan), Hilda (Hols: Prince of the Sun), Lana (Future Boy Conan), Clarisse (Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro)
Middle Row (Serious Symptoms): Aloise (A Dog of Flanders), Diana (Anne of Green Gables), Megu (Majokko Megu-chan), Becky (Tom Sawyer), Angie (Her Majesty’s Petite Angie), Heidi (Heidi)
Bottom Row (Already Sick): Lighthouse Keeper Girl (Wanwan Chuushingura), Princess of the Purple Star (Gulliver’s Space Travels), Shizuka (Doraemon), Makiko (Tetsujin 28 (1980)), Ulala (Robokko Beaton), Mayu (Space Pirate Captain Harlock)

Though it might seem unnecessary for me to repeat it, I have to restate that this comes from 1982 and a very different era of anime. This is not the modern-age pandering lolicon of Kodomo no Jikan and other similar shows. Looking at this list, the majority includes characters from shows that were produced by future Studio Ghibli staff such as Miyazaki and Takahata, as well as characters from famous children’s literature around the world such as Tom Sawyer and Anne of Green Gables, and I don’t think anyone would accuse Diana Barry of being a one-dimensional character.

Though moe is not lolicon, the generally youthful look of moe characters means that the two ideas are often associated with each other. And aside from the idea that Miyazaki and children’s literature created the lolita complex in anime fans, accusations which are not new, I think the real implication is that as much as we decry lolicon and the like for being shallow, vapid, and creepy, this shows that it came from a real source consisting of strong storytelling and visual quality. Though I might be reaching a little, I really think that the people who realized their own lolicon-ness as the result of these shows were taken in by the excellent characterization of the young girl characters present in these anime, and not because these characters hit any specific buttons. This sentiment was then carried over, becoming reduced and simplified in the same manner that resulted in the current understanding of moe, and also in a fashion to how the people who fell in love with Gundam would go on to work on their own giant robot anime years later.

It’s not my goal to defend or condemn lolicon, but rather to say that this aspect of anime fandom, like it or not, appears to be born from high-quality Japanese Animation from some of the greatest masters in the industry. In other words, even though there are shows that pander to lolicon, it was not lolicon-pandering shows which created the market in the first place.

Cliff Notes Characterization: Another Moe Discussion Part 3

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In my previous two entries in the Another Moe Discussion series, I may have generated some confusion on the topic, particularly because my own choices for characters I find to be particularly moe may seem somewhat unusual. In addition, reading the comments I received,  a question popped up in my head: does the “moe” label imply a certain character depth or a lack thereof? The answer I’ve come up with is that it is both and neither. A seeming cop-out response, but allow me to explain.

Let’s say there’s an anime series you absolutely love, and in it is a character with strong characterization who goes through some trauma, and in the process resonates with you emotionally, possibly sexually, and you want to tell other people how great the character is and how powerfully attractive they are. The best way to try and make them understand would be to get them to watch the series, but if that is an impossibility, the best you can do is summarize the character and try to describe in fewer words just what made the character move you so. If you have to summarize your complex feelings towards the character in a few sentences, you’re going to have to either pick very specific moments or generalize greatly to give a broader view.

Now then, what happens if all copies of the original work fell into the ocean without any chance of salvaging them, and all the world had left was that summary you wrote? To be sure, your summation has its own merits, as does your intent to really get to the core of what makes you love that character so dearly, but what you’re left with now is a record of that depth. It would be like if nearly every book in the world on a subject was destroyed and the only ones left unharmed were Cliff Notes, and then everyone assumed that this is the way things are and also begin to write their own original stories in the Cliff Notes format. The summary becomes the entirety of the work.

Let’s use a famous character who is often argued as both moe and not-moe: Evangelion’s Ayanami Rei. Having watched the entirety of the original Evangelion series, I can say that there is a lot to Rei’s character to the extent that it’s somewhat difficult to summarize her character and do her justice, but if I had to, I would describe her as an expressionless girl who is fully aware of the fact that she is not unlike a human doll, and has to live while being unsure as to whether or not her emotions are real or just facsimiles. Rei often puts herself into danger as she does not regard her own life as more special or important than the task at hand. To abridge that once more, “Rei is a seemingly emotionless human doll who has little regard for her own well-being.”

But what happens if you take that Cliff Notes version and were to simplify it even further? A Spark Notes of the Cliff Notes one might say. What if you were to reduce the element of time down to zero, and attempt to express those aspects of Rei purely in her visual design? Blue hair and pale skin make her appear more doll-like. An expressionless face implies a seeming lack of emotion. The frequent appearance of bandages on her body implies that she often gets injured. These visual elements become symbols with their own power, which then can be isolated, codified, and even fetishized. Rather than looking for a character by their description as a conflicted human doll who struggles with understanding emotion, you can instead look for a character with pale features. And then you can play off of that trope by making a pale character who acts unlike the stereotype. That leads us to where we are now.

Depending on the extent to which you simplify and distill the attributes of a character, moe can be something with plenty of depth or very little, be it an emotional depth, a storytelling depth, or some other kind. I think this also explains why some people can have such a bad reaction towards moe, because it can be seen as a reduction of what should be there, a quick-and-dirty facsimile of storytelling and characterization. However we must also keep in mind that art and fiction itself is often an exercise in summarizing and simplifying ideas and emotions to transmit them more easily.