Category Archives: thought exercise

The “Real Fan”

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Though I don’t talk about it often here, I enjoy watching Starcraft, be it Brood War or the current Starcraft 2. Currently, competitive Starcraft 2 is enjoying something of a boom, with tournaments and teams popping up all over the world, from Korea to Ukraine to Las Vegas. This past weekend, one organization tried their hand at a new tournament broadcast format: pay per view.

Typically, Starcraft 2 tournaments are free to view online in some capacity, with additional content available at a cost, such as higher quality video, additional video streams, or recorded match videos you can watch after the live event is over. Major League Gaming, known as having the most exciting Starcraft 2 tournaments in North America, decided that they would have a supplemental event called the “MLG Winter Arena” and that it would require $20 to view live. This barrier to entry in turn caused a large amount of discussion, whether or not $20 was simply too much, business models for eSports organizations, etc. I personally did not pay to watch MLG Winter Arena, especially given that there was a second big tournament going on at the time.

One comment I saw cropping up repeatedly had to do with being a “real fan.” The idea was that if Starcraft 2 tournaments were so important to you, why wouldn’t you prioritize them? For those who can’t afford it at all, there’s no choice, but for those who can, isn’t the product worth its value (tons of big names, very good production values, promises of extremely intense competition). I had the money, but I didn’t use it. For me, as much as I love spectating, Starcraft is not my primary passion or hobby, and if given a choice between spending money on something anime/manga-related and spending money on SC2, I’ll typically lean towards the Japanese comics.

That’s not to say I’m not willing to spend money on Starcraft at all. I felt that the convenience of being able to watch matches any time instead of adhering myself to the Korean time zone was reason enough for me to subscribe to GOMTV’s Global Starcraft 2 League. But I didn’t get the premium package, I got the light one. All of those nice perks offered for the extra money weren’t worth it for me, and I’m glad they gave me the choice. That’s one thing that GOMTV correctly recognized that seemed to get lost in this flurry of discussion: Starcraft fandom (or any fandom in general) does not exist in a binary setting where it’s either one or the other. People can like something, but there may be a limit to how much they like it, especially if money is involved.

Manga and Women in Refrigerators

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Introduction

If you were to ask an avid and informed fan of superhero comics about controversies surrounding the portrayal of women in the cape-and-mask genre, you might get answers having to do with the male gaze, or the number of female protagonists, or perhaps even whether or not comics need to do more to attract female readers. In every case though, the focus can potentially lead to the phenomenon known as “Women in Refrigerators.”

Coined in 1999 by comics writer Gail Simone (probably most famous for her work on Birds of Prey, a series starring a team of female superheroes), “Women in Refrigerators” refers to a tendency for female characters in superhero comics to be either killed, abused, raped, or depowered in what seems to frequently be a move to anger or inspire a male superhero into action, or to intensify the hatred between the hero and his nemesis. Named after the Green Lantern character Kyle Rayner depicted above (who not only literally finds one of his girlfriends in a fridge but has also lost a number of significant others in his career), WiR has been an on-going discussion among comic fans for the past 12 years. In spite of the age and scope of the topic though, the conversation has not really penetrated the realm of anime and manga.

Given arguments over things like moe and lolicon and how Japanese society treats women, what of “Women in Refrigerators in Manga?” Furthermore, whether they’re informed or ignorant, with the number of people who have spoken or written about WiR in the superhero comics community, what would happen if they all focused their attention more towards manga?

Casca from Berserk, a strong female character horribly traumatized by brutal rape

When initially thinking about the topic, a number of questions came to mind. Would they look at manga and find it to be more sexist than superhero comics? Is the lack of a similar phrase or concept in manga a potential problem for it and any movements towards improving manga? However, I soon realized that WiR and its surrounding discourse are very much shaped by the superhero genre itself; evidence of this includes the whole idea of being “depowered,” something which holds a lot more weight in a setting where super powers are the x-factor in the story.

Of course, comparing one genre to the entirety of manga makes things quite unfair, but even when you narrow it down to, say, shounen fighting and action series, or even a single magazine such as Shounen Jump, the setup of superhero comics has particularly unique consequences.

Conceptual Paradox in the Superhero Genre

The basic superhero (of which Superman is probably the most well-known example) is someone who is somehow stronger, faster, and overall better than the average human, and this allows them to right wrongs. Where the regular authorities falter, the superhero-as-vigilante can come in and thrash the bad guys and make the world a better place. These settings rely on an environment fairly close to our own, one grounded in a similar default reality so that we can compare the ideal of the superhero to the everyday, but it also makes for a world that can start to unravel if the concept is pushed too far.

Adding a superhero to an otherwise normal world can transform it entirely, and when you begin to really question the effects a particular superhero can have on his environment,  you wind up with questions like “If Mr. Fantastic is so smart, why hasn’t he found a cure for cancer?” While there are comics which do explore in detail the influence superheroes can have on society (Watchmen, for instance), and the Mr. Fantastic question isn’t some magic contradiction that destroys the superhero genre, it does point to the idea that a typical superhero story has to set its boundaries if it doesn’t want such questions jumping out at its readers.

The idea of boundaries isn’t limited to superheroes, as just about any story which adds something “superhuman” while wishing to maintain a semblance of normalcy has to draw the line somewhere. The tricky thing with superhero comics, however, is that the manner in which they have developed over the years encourages readers to find those limits through the prominent usage of a shared universe. When a comic is just about Batman, you can see how he fights crime and strikes fear into the seedy underbelly of Gotham City. When you cross him over with Superman though, suddenly Batman is put in contrast with a near-omnipotent alien who can outclass him fifty different ways. The reason to join them together is not to just make Batman look bad but rather to afford both heroes sufficient respect, so it requires Batman to have something extra to make up for it.

Where once he could just be a clever and ingenious individual, Batman is now the smartest man on Earth, armed with the most complex contingency plans ever conceived by man, all to make him Superman’s equal. In manga terms, this would be the equivalent of putting Monkey D. Luffy and Son Goku in the same universe and having to find a way for Luffy to be as powerful and influential as the Dragon Ball protagonist, like saying that Luffy’s rubber body makes him more resistant to ki blasts or something. As Marvel and DC actively promote their shared universes, this type of comparison becomes almost inevitable, and when you’re comparing, then the superhero universe comes under at least a certain degree of scrutiny.

If you then add the on-going saga aspect that is “continuity” to that mix, then the world of the hero can be scrutinized not just in terms of space, but also time. Superhero comics encourage a long-term view of its characters, where the events build on top of each other to create a loose history. And given the longevity that some of these characters possess, an action 30 years ago can continue to be associated with that character. In a comic from 1981, Avengers character Hank Pym hit his wife Janet , and it became a recurring topic all the way up until she died a few years ago. If they were to just ignore it and have the two characters act like nothing had ever happened, then it would have been perhaps silently condoning spousal abuse. However, because they kept it, it wound up defining the characters in certain respects. Although one can argue that this enriched their characters, it also meant that once it was done, neither of them could return to what they were prior to it. And while things are re-written or counteracted on a somewhat regular basis in superhero comics, this shared universe setup means that just one bad decision by one creator can potentially define a character to the point that no amount of reboots or retcons can undo its influence.

One Woman, One Refrigerator, One Universe

Let’s go back to manga for a little bit and pick a title that most definitely has female characters that are WiR candidates: Fist of the North Star. Now I love this series and consider it among my all-time favorites, but its female characters range from essentially cheerleaders to useless. Going in the style of the original Women in Refrigerators post, I’m going to list them with a list of ways they’ve been “fridged.”

Yuria (above) abused, forced to become Shin’s lover, kills herself (not really), contracts a fatal illness from long-term radiation exposure

Mamiya turned into a sex slave, her lover Rei dies, stops fighting entirely

Lin almost forced to have Kaioh’s baby, brainwashed into falling in love with another man

And so on and so forth.

Women are kind of a non-factor in Fist of the North Star no matter what they say about love and no matter how many women nobly sacrifice themselves. But at the same time, the fact that Fist of the North Star ran in Shounen Jump doesn’t mean that its portrayal of women exists in the same environment as One Piece or Toriko or City Hunter. Misogyny can exist, and it can even exist in multiple titles from the same publisher in the same magazine to the extent that you could call the whole thing sexist, but there is less of a risk of the comics congealing into an entrenched, constantly self-reinforcing “super misogyny.”

With superhero comics and their long continuity and shared universes, it can be incredibly easy to permanently “poison the well.” In this environment, a single instance of a WiR does not stand alone in its own conceptual space, but ends up existing in a greater universe, and then stays there in the timeline potentially forever. While this is not inherently a bad thing, it means that more innocent and simplistic stories and concepts have a harder time maintaining that innocence. If someone said The Cat in the Hat and Schindler’s List occupied the same continuity, it would be very hard for Dr. Seuss’s characters to be quite the same when the idea of genocide hangs over them.

This can even apply to the degree to which women are sexualized in comics. Somewhat like how “Hollywood Ugly” requires you to believe that the attractive celebrity in baggy clothes and glasses is meant to be homely, if you take a title where the aesthetic portrayal of women is geared primarily towards the sexual gratification of men and put it in the same world as a comic where the attractiveness of women is depicted in a more neutral fashion, then there is bound to be a conceptual clash, especially if the two were to cross over directly. Either the overt “butt and breasts out” poses would have to be acknowledged directly with respect to how a woman would normally pose herself (accounting of course for stylistic flourish), or the more neutral design would have to be subsumed by the overtly erotic aesthetic. If respect is supposedly afforded to both portrayals, then there winds up being a compromise, much like Superman and Batman’s situation, that generates at least a certain degree of schizophrenia.

It can also be easy to poison the well of a shared universe because once that idea takes root in one corner of the world, it becomes easier for it to spread to other parts as well, and I think this is what ends up really shaping Women in Refrigerators in terms of the superhero genre. While I may be assuming things too much, I think it’s far easier to corrupt an innocent idea than it is to make a corrupted idea turn innocent, and so every time another woman gets killed or raped or depowered, it means less and less of a chance for that whole thing to be turned around entirely, which means the rate at which the universe becomes “darker” winds up being far faster than the rate at which it becomes “lighter,” unless deliberate steps are taken to work against it.

Given everything I’ve said about the danger of a shared universe, does this mean that any sort of shared universe will lead to similar problems? Not necessarily, but I think that regardless of which direction that universe goes, compromise is almost inevitable. When Neon Genesis Evangelion with its emphasis on psychological turmoil enters the crossover environment of the Super Robot Wars games, its story and characters end up less traumatized overall. When Lupin III meets Detective Conan, his role is more of a lovable scamp than a hardened thief. Even taking darker series and making them lighter to fit in another work is a form of compromise. However, neither of those bother to maintain their continuities for prolonged periods. Moreover, while a shared universe does not guarantee Women in Refrigerators, the way that superhero comics have turned out means that it is constantly poised to do so, and as far as I can tell, the discussion surrounding WiR is very much about a concerted effort to turn things around, to deal with what may very well be a case of inertia.

Towards Methods for Manga?

A quote from Gail Simone in 1999 clarifies one of the original purposes of Women in Refrigerators:

My simple point has always been: if you demolish most of the characters girls like, then girls won’t read comics. That’s it!

This is not as much of a problem for manga, even titles and magazines designed for boys, as many publishers in Japan have learned ways to court a female audience. Some titles in Shounen Jump are especially known for their sizable female readerships: Saint Seiya, Katekyou Hitman REBORN!, and The Prince of Tennis, to name a few. Granted, most of these titles have primarily male casts and so the portrayal of female characters is not the primary draw, but that is also getting into another more complex issue of gender-based character identification. I’ll leave this as something of an aside for the sake of not going too off-course, but will say that this might mean that it doesn’t take outstanding portrayals of women to attract a female audience, but at the very least ones that won’t make them feel uncomfortable to be women.

As it is, the “Women in Refrigerators” discourse is especially suited for the superhero genre. Its concerns and the manner in which it can quickly spread to other stories are at least partly predicated on the structure set out by decades of development. If WiR is to be applied to manga, or even a certain genre or magazine/publisher, then it likely needs to be modified to fit a very different history, both in terms of manga itself and the Japanese culture surrounding it. Personally, I’m not entirely sure what changes need to be made. It’s probably an endeavor that is too big for one post, but I can throw out some possible directions.

I think the killing, rape, and abuse aspects probably translate adequately as is, but to go back to the “depowered” aspect of WiR as something very particular to superheroes, perhaps it would be a good idea to find something that is not quite so specific. If we’re dealing with a genre like shounen action, your Dragon Ball‘s and Naruto‘s and such, then maybe it’s not so much a matter of depowering as it is being quickly outclassed or made irrelevant. A lot of characters in these works often get some kind of improvement to their abilities, but that is made obsolete by the fact that every other hero gets stronger at a quicker rate. While this is not exclusive to female characters, it may be something worth tracking among female characters to see how they’re made to be functionally useless.

If we’re looking more at sexually-charged (but not necessarily pornographic) titles, maybe it would be wise to keep an eye out for degradation or humiliation. For example, how often are characters made to do something or wear an outfit that not only embarrasses them, but sexualizes them in the process? What of humiliation as a sexual tool, even when it’s meant to be light-hearted prodding and not something more extreme like torture?

Maybe it would also be a good idea to take a look at one popular title and to note where the female characters are mistreated solely to advance the male characters’ stories. After that is done, the next step would be to look at works that may have come about as the result of its popularity, whether it was because there was a clear influence, there was a blatant attempt at riding the wave, it was the next title readers flocked to, or even if there was some kind of editorial mandate to feature more of those stories. Do some of those WiR-esque ideas and portrayals still exist? Are they getting weaker or stronger? This may be a way to track things across one magazine or one genre without having the shared universe of superhero comics.

Of course, this is all assumes that WiR is not an issue when the female readership has been established and sustained sufficiently, but what about the possibility that the phenomenon not only exists in shoujo and josei, but that such events might occur in greater numbers compared to manga geared towards male readers?

What I’ve provided in the ideas above would not comprise a complete framework, but then again neither did the original list of Women in Refrigerators. There is a distinct possibility that with each genre of manga, even if you were to narrow it to titles somehow similar to superhero comics, that it would require its own adjustments be they subtle or broad. It may even be the case that in the end, we find out that WiR cannot be applied to manga no matter how many modifications are made, but I think it would still be a worthwhile endeavor to figure that out in the first place. I’m sure we’d learn something along the way.

Utena via Gurren-Lagann

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This isn’t really anything mind-blowing, but I find that one of the themes of Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann can be used to explain a certain aspect of the ending to Revolutionary Girl Utena in a rather straightforward fashion. As I’ll be discussing the ending to Utena, I think a spoiler warning is more than implied, but I’ll put one here anyway because I think both Utena and Gurren-Lagann have final conclusion that shouldn’t be experienced in the form of a paragraph. I advise you not to read this post unless you’ve seen both.

In the “epilogue” of Revolutionary Girl Utena, we see Ohtori Academy only nearly everyone has forgotten about Utena. At first, it seems like Utena ultimately had no impact on the students there despite everything that happened in the series, but little by little the show reveals subtle differences in the characters’ behavior, such as the fact that Wakaba now has a friend who looks up to her as much as Wakaba herself looked up to Utena. Then we see Anthy with Akio, where Akio is trying to revive the rose duels once more. Anthy, however, ends up walking away and (we presume) permanently out of Akio’s life.

If we look at Gurren-Lagann, the drill is one of the very overt themes of the series. The titular robot pulls them out of thin-air, the concept of the infinite power source that is “spiral energy” is derived from the same shape, and it appears in the show’s most famous quotes (“Your drill is the drill that will pierce the heavens!”). From that whole drill motif (though I can’t remember if it’s from a production interview or if it’s said in the actual show) comes the following idea: humanity is like a drill in that it moves forward with every revolution.

Now I believe that the Japanese word Gurren-Lagann uses for “revolution” is different from the one that Utena uses (回転 kaiten, revolving vs. 革命 kakumei, life-changing), but I think it explains the ending to Utena quite well. In the end, Utena did not defeat Akio, she did not permanently undo the rose duels, Ohtori Academy still stands, and Utena is gone from the world. However, it’s clear that she did indeed bring forth a revolution, and in that one revolution all of the characters were able to grow a little. All of the characters, that is, except for Akio. While Anthy is able to finally will herself to break free of the cycle that Akio has built up, Akio himself is shown to be a man who can no longer learn, who is doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past. Like the drill of the  Gurren-Lagann, for the revolution that Tenjou Utena induces, (nearly) everyone moves one step forward.

“Broad Appeal?”

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Whenever I see an article or post about how anime is declining because of a focus on an increasingly niche, otaku audience, I’m a little taken aback. This is not only because the most commonly given solution, i.e. “make things with broader appeal” is easier said than done, but that the very idea itself doesn’t actually seem to be what its most adamant proponents truly mean or want.

Take Redline for instance, which is touted by a number of people as a sort of magic bullet that has the potential to blast away years of anime-related stigma. Certainly it’s a fantastic film on a number of different levels, but I have a hard time believing that it qualifies as “broadly appealing,” unless your definition of “broadly appealing” is limited to geeks with a penchant for thrills and visual spectacle, or alternately, anime fans from previous decades, especially from when “anime” was closely tied to “science fiction” in their eyes. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll be the first to argue that the storytelling in Redline is excellent, and that it’s far more than just pretty explosions, but something like Redline will be not judged by a more general audience unfamiliar with anime based on the subtle nuance that exists in its otherwise extreme characters. It’s full of violence and has a sprinkling of nudity, and while that sells for some, it’s also an instant turn-off for others.

“Anime with broader appeal.”

“Anime that the average person will enjoy.”

I believe these to be obtainable goals, but I find that when people talk like this, they don’t necessarily want something for a wider audience, they want anime that is closer to what they enjoy most, that possess the qualities they think are most essential to great anime, or at least acceptable anime. Certainly, wanting more of what you enjoy only makes sense, but it results in conflating “broad appeal” with the tastes of the individual. Rather than something like Redline or Cowboy Bebop, maybe the answer will be the anime equivalent of The Big Bang Theory or Hannah Montana or something else far-removed from the aforementioned anime titles. Which is to say, if anime in whole or in part transformed itself to really aim for that bigger audience around the world, the result may not be what we might be expecting.

This somewhat reminds me of all of the manga creators that have been revisiting their older work. Even putting my beloved Genshiken aside, you have GTO: Shonan 14 Days and Rurouni Kenshin, among others. All of them have certain expectations associated with them because you have the original creators working on them, but when you think about it there’s no guarantee that the work will actually be all that similar. After all, artists can change given time and experience. Macross: The First is a retelling of the first series by the original character designer Mikimoto Haruhiko, who is praised especially by a certain generation of anime fans as being one of the best character designers ever. They might point to his work and say, “There, why can’t anime characters look more like that, instead of what we’re getting today?”

The only problem is, Mikimoto’s own artwork today doesn’t look like his work from the 1980s. For that matter, if you look at his stuff from between the original Macross and now, it also looks quite different.

Expectations shattered?

Extent of Fandom

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I’ve recently been watching the new season of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic as I also watch the on-going The Idolm@ster anime, and it has me thinking about the upper limits of my own fandom and what effect that might have on how I identify as a fan.

I think My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is quite a good show. It’s funny and charming and it has remarkably good characters. Whenever I see people praising the show or expressing their love for it and its ponies, I know where they’re coming from. I’ve seen it, and I think it’s worthy of praise. I even have a favorite character, Twilight Sparkle. The Idolm@ster I was less immediately fond of, and kept watching primarily to understand this franchise which I had heard about for so long but never knew anything about. In time, I grew to like the show well enough, and like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, I gained a favorite character within the show. In this case, it’s Akizuki Ritsuko.

However, I’m not sure how much I can call myself a fan of the show. I like it to be sure, and I think it’s excellent, but something about it keeps me from identifying as an MLP fan, and it’s not because the “bronies” are so outspoken. That’s not a problem at all. If there is something “amiss,” it might be that I have experienced greater passion for other shows, and so by comparison, as highly as I think of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, I know my capacity to love a cartoon can be much greater.

This makes me wonder, if I hadn’t come to MLP: FiM or The Idolm@ster as the person I am now, Ogiue Maniax blogger and academic of dorkish things with plenty of experience in geekdom and a propensity for expressing in writing that which I cherish, would I have more readily considered myself a fan of that series and devoted more of my time and energy to it?

The Barrier to Mahjong is the Self

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I haven’t been playing as much mahjong lately, due to a combination of lack of time and a desire to distance myself from it for a little bit, but every so often I decide to sit down for a couple games. When I do, I inevitably get clobbered, unable to handle the assault of my fellow tile slingers. To some extent, I know that this is due to rust on my already meager skills, but I think that there is another factor involved. When I stop playing mahjong for a while, my mind becomes unaccustomed to some of the psychological rigors of the game, and it takes a while to adjust back to normal. In this period, I’m especially vulnerable, so if I just come back to the game every few weeks I end up never quite leaving that mindset.

“So why not just keep playing until you get back to where you were?” you might be asking. I ask myself this too. The “problem” however, is that mahjong can be an incredibly nerve-wracking game in a way that few others are. The combination of luck and skill, where everyone is planning something and you can’t quite tell where luck ends and decisions begin, and the fact that the difference between winning and losing can come down to one unfortunate dealing of a tile, makes for an intense and mentally exhausting game, especially when you’re playing on the competitive Tenhou ladder and people mean serious business.

That tense do-or-die feeling is also why mahjong is fun in the first place, so the dilemma at hand is simply this: do I devote that amount of energy to playing it, knowing that while it’s a great way to really challenge myself and test my ability to handle luck and the machinations of others, it can also be a very powerful source of frustration?

The Potentially Positive Influence of Public Relationships in the Starcraft 2 Pro Scene

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The release of Starcraft 2 last year has caused something of a boom in competitive video gaming, referred to in the community as “ESPORTS.” More and more, professional gamers around the world are becoming stars, and along the way the fact (or impression) that they’re “nerds” is celebrated; to be a nerd is to be smart and talented and even handsome. Made prominent is the idea that nerds can be attractive to the opposite sex, that these (mostly male) keyboard athletes have an appeal attached to their passion and drive for victory.  This is not a new concept, as is evident in the gigantic Korean Brood War scene and the fact that based on the screams of the audience you might assume that it’s John Lennon playing from that soundproof booth. However, a major difference is that while Brood War shows its players as owners of large female fanbases, competitive Starcraft 2 is showcasing couples far more prominently, both inside and outside of Korea.

Whereas Brood War pros will avoid answering the question of significant others (or will mention girls they once dated), Starcraft 2 pros seem much more willing to admit that they are seeing someone. Moreover, Starcraft 2‘s has what can be described as “power couples,” well-publicized relationships where both individuals are a part of the scene. Evil Geniuses captain Geoff “iNcontroL” Robinson and Miss Oregon 2011 Anna Prosser, Startale captain Kim “RainBOw” Sung Je and his fellow teammate Kim “aphrodite” Ga Young, player/caster Trevor “TorcH” Housten and WCG Ultimate Gamer Rachel “SeltzerPlease” Quirico, Terran Emperor Lim “SlayerSBoxeR” Yo Hwan and actress Kim “Jessica” Ga Yeon, all are major examples of the public relationships that populate the Starcraft 2 community.

Part of this may simply have to do with the higher average age of Starcraft 2 pros vs. their Brood War counterparts. Where 20 might be considered an aged veteran in Brood War, some of the most talented and well-known Starcraft 2 players are approaching or even past their 30s, and with that comes possibly a sense of maturity and stability. It is also well-known that dating is frowned upon for Brood War pros for fear that it might distract them too much from the game, and no such taboo exists for Starcraft 2. While there are prominent married figures in Brood War such as Choi “iloveoov” Yun Sung, BoxeR’s former teammate and one of the most dominant players of all time, and Kim “January” Ga Eul, manager of the team Samsung KHAN, neither of them were active players when their significant others were made public. The “sex appeal” of the young Brood War player seems to be more along the lines of a K-Pop star whose relationship status is intentionally ambiguous to draw in more fans.

The reason that I am pointing all of this out is not to foster gossip about who’s dating who or to draw attention away from the games themselves, but to posit the idea that perhaps that seeing these relationships can potentially promote a different kind of lifestyle image for the nerds of the world. Rather than being a hit with the ladies, the professional nerd can be a hit with the woman of his life. You, yes you, can find a woman who will not only condone your geek lifestyle but will understand and actively support it. More than just an aspiration, the power couples of Starcraft 2 provide concrete examples that this is an attainable goal.  What is also clear, especially from the examples given above, is that these couples are not together solely because of an individual’s skill when it comes to their game of choice, but because of their character. In this way, progamers may act as role models in more ways than one.

Year 4 of the Blogging Experiment

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Today marks the 4-year anniversary of Ogiue Maniax, and I thought I’d use this opportunity to reflect on a topic that’s been on the back of my mind for a while.

As those of you who keep up with this blog probably know, I began an academic career focusing on manga last year, and part of the reason I was able to do so is that I’ve honed my ability to talk about anime and manga through my blogging. Now though, the question I have for myself is, has my time in academia affected my blog posts in a way that shows an academic influence?

Seeing as I’ve never tried to write a full-on scholarly essay on Ogiue Maniax with footnotes and elaborations on methodology and the like, I don’t think I’ve changed my fundamental posting style in that regard, but I have to wonder if there are any more subtle changes that have to do directly with academia. The fact that I post much less than I used to and make longer posts in general is probably more attributable to my desire to avoid mental fatigue, but I don’t think it really bleeds into the writing itself. I can’t really think of anything major. At the same time, I’ve found myself less willing to make posts with incomplete thoughts like I used to, which may be a sign.

From my own admittedly biased self-examination (as if there is any other kind), I wonder if I don’t let my academic influences enter into my blogging enough. Sometimes I argue things primarily out of passion, and I find myself making assumptions every so often that would probably get hit with a flurry of criticisms in a more rigid setting, which makes me ask if I shouldn’t be reining it in a little bit, researching more vigorously for my blog posts. That’s not to say that every post should be that way (the Fujoshi Files for instance wouldn’t work in that regard), but maybe I should be holding myself to a higher standard.

So I want to ask my readers who’ve been with me for a while, do you find my writing has changed in a manner which reveals my increased academic leanings? If so, do you think it’s something to watch out for, or perhaps something worth encouraging? Is there something about the blog that you like more now, or perhaps something you miss and would like to see more of?

In any case, thank you for these four years. It’s been great walking with you.

Thoughts On the Pervasiveness of 4chanspeak

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Since its inception, 4chan has generated a peculiar set of vocabulary. The term “weeaboo,” now synonymous with “japanophile” and “wapanese,” was born out of a word filter designed to mitigate usage of the term “wapanese.” Often times extreme and intentionally insulting, 4chan is also known for appending the suffix “-fag” to almost every word possible, to the point that its origin as a homosexual slur almost becomes a generalized slur. How else would you explain the usage of the term “straightfag” to denote someone who is annoyingly heterosexual?

Though it is convenient and perhaps comforting to think of terms such as “weeaboo” and “moralfag” as isolated elements of the 4chan userbase, 4chan-isms have permeated the internet to the extent that people who have never even loaded a 4chan page are using these phrases. I saw one such thread on a reddit video games thread, where after throwing around a bunch of classic 4chan terms, proceeded to ask what /v/ is  (the video games board on 4chan).

Personally, when it comes to my writing and even my online chatting, I prefer to keep the usage of 4chan-isms to a minimum, because I feel that they 1) have too much baggage that requires unpacking and 2) are overly broad when I tend to prefer a bit of precision in my sentences. I also prefer that other people do the same, though I don’t mind seeing it pop up every so often, especially for flavor. On the other hand, overuse of 4chan-isms to the extent that thoughts are conveyed using almost nothing but them can not only be difficult to read but causes my mind to kind of gloss over what they have to say.

However, given the sheer amount of 4chanspeak users out there, I find it increasingly difficult to write off what people have to say solely because of their excessive 4chan-sisms.  After all, if it has become so ubiquitous, if there is an entire generation of internet users who think this to be the normal way to speak online, then it is more than likely that very smart and insightful individuals who communicate primarily through such terms exist. While I can criticize them for using terms which probably have better alternatives, I cannot deny the possibility that smart things can be said in a “inarticulate” fashion. Not only that, but if someone feels most comfortable describing their feelings using 4chanspeak, who am I to judge? If someone says, “I got NTR’d and might become a suicidefag,” and actually means it, then maybe I have to just understand that sentence as being their way of expressing a hurtful situation and to take that seriously.

Burning Out On Quality

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A while back I wrote a post about mitigating burn-out when it comes to consuming anime and manga, advice that had the caveat of me never having actually burned out, which means that I’m either very qualified to talk about it or not qualified at all. Recently though, I was in a situation where I had trouble watching anime, and I feel like I learned a lot from it.

I’ve been watching a lot of science fiction-themed anime, series full of ideas about how the future can/will/should be, not necessarily heady stuff but enough to make a person think a fair amount. However, even though I like everything I’m watching, one day I just suddenly had this strong desire to not continue, like my brain and eyes were telling me that they would refuse to process that information meaningfully if I tried to watch more. I wasn’t sure what to make of it, until I could hear my own thoughts more clearly.

I need to watch something ultra dumb.

And so I did, not knowing how long it would be until I could restore my capacity to watch so much science fiction. In the end, it only took a day away from those shows for me to feel the urge to keep watching, but it taught me a valuable lesson that seems so obvious in hindsight: You can have too much of a good thing.

Often the picture of anime burn-out seems to be that someone who just watched too many bad shows and can no longer handle the bottom-feeding tropes which populate low-tier anime, but I think that a more fundamental aspect of such burn-out is just monotony. Much like eating the same food day in and day out with no variety, even the most delicious of meals can lose their flavor, especially if you’re not naturally predisposed to liking them. Also like food, the level of variation needed to keep things interesting varies from person to person. With anime, I find there are shows that I can become quite fond of with little effort, shows that I can watch just about any time, but for other shows, I find I need to put a bit of myself into the show. As a result, sometimes I find myself unwilling to watch another episode because I can sense that my mind is “exhausted” and will not give me an accurate impression, and just pushing and hoping to power through that mental blockade can end up doing more harm than good.

And so, I have much gratitude for ultra dumb shows. Sometimes they’re just what I need.