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2009 has been a crazy year for anime, with ups and downs and all-arounds, but amidst a weakened global economy and an industry going through some serious growing (or shrinking) pains, I find there is still plenty to be thankful about.
I am thankful for…
Great shows being licensed or made available streaming so that when I say Glass Mask is a FANTASTIC SHOW, you can now go and watch it. And Monster is on TV!
Some stellar guests at anime conventions. Between Ishiguro, Tomino, and a whole bunch of others, this has been a highly informative and unforgettable year of conventions. Thanks to Ishiguro and Tomino as well, for telling me all about Nagahama Tadao.
An explosion of new blogs. As the years pass, they just keep coming and coming. Keep it up, the only way to improve your writing is to keep writing.
An industry which is still trying, despite what others might claim. There may be some “safe” shows out there, but we’re also continuing to see the mediums that are anime and manga being challenged and made better as a result.
An Eureka Seven Movie. Sure, it might not be quite what I’d like from an E7 movie, and it didn’t capture what made the TV series great, but I am still grateful that such a thing could be made 3 years after the original finished.
Genshiken 2 out on DVD! Get it as soon as possible. Ogiue is waiting.
The friends I’ve made and the people I’ve met through the fandom. Truly you have made this an unforgettable year.
It seems like I have a tendency lately to forget important dates, even those of the things I care about most. November 20, 2009 came and went, though drawing something after having not done so in a while might have been an adequate way of marking the second anniversary of Ogiue Maniax. Still it’s no Genshiken Review, and I think I should celebrate two years of writing and analyzing and making terrible puns with some panache. Seeing as how tomorrow is Stuff Your Face with Food All Day… Day… I’ll save the Thank You’s for the next post. Instead, I’ll talk about how I’ve felt the blog has changed and changed me since I began working on it.
It was over two years ago that I began to realize that I enjoyed writing, and not just any writing but the kind that is meant to inform and enlighten and to encourage others to think. I was given opportunities on both Heisei Democracy and Towards Our Memories to write a little, and from there I decided to just dive in and start my own blog. I named it after the Genshiken character Ogiue Chika, who I believe to be the most deeply complex, emotionally moving, and overall amazing character to ever appear. I intended to use the blog to record my thoughts on the mediums that I love, even if it was just a brief inkling, and to help not only others to learn but myself as well.
Being able to accurately convey my thoughts while also challenging myself to think beyond my own point of view gave me a new and different sense of confidence that what I’d experienced previously, especially when I began to see others respond, and to weigh in with their own words. This in turn would motivate my desire to write even more, and before I knew it, I had improved as both a writer and as an anime fan.
And to you my readers, though I said I would not give thanks, I have to make an exception here. Thank you for respecting my words as much as I respect yours. The comment philosophy at Ogiue Maniax is to allow all comments as long as they are relevant, as it encourages everyone to engage in dialogue and to better understand each other. And if you’re a troll you’re all the more welcome, as it gives me the opportunity to further clarify my points. At that point, it’s up to every individual reader to decide if they agree with me or not.
Ogiue Maniax, two years old. Get ready, because this baby’s starting to walk.
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.
Yesterday, I made a post about how the “issue” of moe basically came down to whether or not it was personally offensive to someone. I didn’t go into what “is” or “is not” moe, as what was important there was not to get people to agree to any one definition but to point out the fundamentals of why moe can make for such heated debates and arguments. Today though, I want to talk about one of the possible reasons why discussions regarding moe can often seem like the two sides are arguing two entirely different topics. Keep in mind that my goal is not to show one side being right and another wrong, but to help you better understand why it is you, I, or anyone have developed our respective opinions on the topic of moe.
In the past, I’ve defined moe as a strong empathy for a character’s weaknesses, but knew that not everyone would necessarily agree with my interpretation. The more I studied my own definition and others’ however, the more I realized that there was some mix-up as to what different people considered the most important element in defining moe. From there, I thought up two general categories: static moe and active moe.
Static moe is where a character’s design and basic attributes are moe. The character’s voice, personality, unique physical traits, etc. all contribute to static moe. The idea is not to pull a character completely out of their context, but to see them in a stilled moment and gain moe from that.
Active moe is achieved through a character’s actions or what happens to them in the context of an animation. It is in the way they change or interact with their world that creates moe. In a way, this moe lacks concrete evidence, and is built into how the character grows on the viewer.
If we look at Tsukimiya Ayu from Kanon, her love of Taiyaki, tomboyish personality, lack of cooking skills, and penchant for saying “Uguu~” are all elements of static moe. Ayu’s interactions with Yuuichi, the way the two characters grow closer as friends, and the manner in which we learn about her true identity are what comprise Ayu’s active moe. To generalize, static moe is the stationary character, while active moe is the character in motion.
Now, what contributes most to your perception of moe? Whether you like moe or not, do you view moe as primarily static, where the most vital aspect of it is the design of the character, or do you view it as primarily active, with the greatest emphasis on the path the character takes?
Using myself as an example, when I examined the characters I found to be the most moe (Ogiue, Eureka, Hinata, etc.), I realized that my views on moe were shaped mostly by my own emphasis on what they had done as characters. In other words, I was moved strongly by their active moe. Again though, it’s not as if moe as active will make you like it, or thinking of moe as static will make you dislike it, but I think that the view of moe people have shaped in their mind relative to this dichotomy strongly influences their opinion as a whole, whether they realize it or not.
That’s Part 2 of Another Moe Discussion. Is there going to be a Part 3? A likely possibility, as I do have something in mind.
Hi kids, it’s time to talk about moe again.
There’s two things I want to address here, the first is what is up with the strong feelings towards/against moe. The second topic I’m going to address tomorrow, so hold onto your hats!
We as anime fans on the internet can argue about moe all we want, whether it’s hurting or helping the industry or anime as an art form, whether it’s a boon or a detriment to storytelling, but when you strip away all of the noble back-and-forth posturing and gesturing, it basically comes down to two “yes” or “no” questions.
Does moe creep you out?
If so, are you okay with that?
And this is based on however you yourself interpret moe to be. Of course I’m generalizing, and there can be other reasons to dislike it, but from what I’ve seen this is the origin of the most vehement opposition to it is from the people who just cannot handle the idea that anyone proper of mind would like moe of all things, and its most ardent supporters are the ones who take offense to the idea that they are somehow developmentally insufficient.
Now it’s okay to be creeped out by moe, as that’s totally your prerogative. I may like moe myself, but it’s not like there hasn’t ever been an instance where I was creeped out by a piece of fiction and I was not okay with that. Specifically, I’m talking about that awful Thundercats comic from a few years back where they had Wily Kit and Wily Kat as bondage slaves to Mumm-Ra. Sure, they were adults in the comic but what the hell. That really weird sexualization of two comic side characters from a children’s cartoon bothered the hell out of me, especially because this was not some guy’s fanart but an actual official comic that was supposed to be like canon to the Thundercats story. In many ways I think it’s similar to the reaction that a lot of its opponents have against moe, replacing Thundercats with anime as a whole.
As to what influences perception of moe, that’s for the next post.
Every week or so I find myself reading the latest chapter of Medaka Box. The thing is, I don’t like it all that much. It has a number of fine qualities and moments, like when Medaka pulls a Joseph Joestar and imitates someone to a tee, but something about it just doesn’t jive with me. It just doesn’t have that oomph, aside from that one girl on the track team whose design I like.
Whoo, she’s nice.
The problem isn’t that I’m not fond of it, but rather that I’m not sure why don’t like it that much, and it’s been bothering me since Chapter 0. It’s not the Nisio Isin-ness of it; I like Bakemonogatari just fine. Is it the visuals with the dialogue? This is further complicated by the fact that there’s plenty of mediocre to bad anime and manga that I do like, and none of them seem to have the unique problem I perceive Medaka Box as having.
I feel like I’m continuing to read it either in the vague hope that it’ll get better and all the pieces will start to come together, or that if I continue with it I’ll be able to better figure out just what my problem with Medaka Box might be.
I’ve never been able to pinpoint the exact causes for why drawing “manga” style typically doesn’t look quite right, but there’s some things I’ve noticed that I think point towards why this tends to be the case.
The artists did not grow up in the culture. I had a Japanese teacher who one day as part of a vocabulary exercise brought into class a drawing she made of a “handsome guy.” Now, my teacher was not an artist, but the picture she drew was clearly that of a manga-style character and nothing seemed out of place. It was just, when drawing a cartoon character who’s supposed to look stereotypically handsome, this is how it turns out. While I don’t think not growing up in Japan or Japanese precludes an artist from developing that style, I think you can see how growing up in different environments with different artistic influences can change how even a normal person draws or sees drawings, let alone a professional.
But what then are those stylistic differences? Why is it that a manga artist who draws super realistically can still feel naturally like manga? Why is it that even a lot of the non-Japanese artists who get the basic visuals right (i.e. understanding that it’s not just big eyes and small mouths) still tend to produce works that jar you out of the illusion?
The first big one is the different philosophies in paneling. Traditionally in manga, the flow of panels is very important to the story, with emphasis on the concept of “flow.” That’s not really an official term or anything, but it’s one I like to use. Manga are typically designed to have the readers’ eyes be guided smoothly through the page, from one panel to the next, with everything in the panel, art and word bubbles and all, facilitating this flow. While American comics for example also take care to utilize word bubbles in strategic areas to help move the reader along, traditionally the American comic has been about having self-contained panels, each of which encapsulates everything going on at the time, a perfectly stilled moment. I’m reminded of when Grant Morrison in an interview after Final Crisis said, “We talk about events all the time. Well, why can’t every panel be an event?” In a way, he’s not far off from the tradition of Western-style comics, whether it’s indie, superheroes, or newspaper gag strips. It’s also what I think is the real difference between “compressed” and “decompressed” storytelling.
Basically, think of manga as a river, and American comics as a series of ponds. While of course there’s more to comics than just America and Japan, I’m simplifying for the sake of what little claims to brevity I have left. And while there are exceptions on both sides, take note how a manga with not as much “flow” such as Space Adventure Cobra or Nausicaa do well in the west, particularly Europe where highly illustrative backgrounds tend to be emphasized, or how an American comic with a strong sense of visual “flow” in Little Nemo could be seen fondly in Japan (at least I believe it is, if someone can correct me, please do so).
And then there’s other smaller things. Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics for example talks about how back when romance stories in American comics were more common, they still tended to compose scenes as if all of the characters were figures placed in a room. Contrast this with shoujo manga, which tends to emphasize the emotional over the physical; it’s not as important that you know where characters are standing.
But that only applies to manga, right? What about all those cartoons that try, but don’t quite get it. Your Teen Titans and Totally Spies and what-not. There, I’m not as certain about it, but I think it just has to do with what’s considered common in Japanese Animation to the point of it being ingrained into the system. I think the most prominent example of this might be animating on the 3’s, which means changing the image on every third frame instead of every second one as is common with American cartoons. This was originally one of many necessary money-saving techniques for anime on limited budgets as far back as Astro Boy, and what ended up happening was that stuff like animating on 3’s and using lots of stills and closeups, stuff which had its origins in having scarily low budgets, began to be embraced and improved upon and mastered until it in essence became the style anime is known for. What’s important here is the way in which factors such as these influenced the sense of timing that anime tends to have, and if you don’t understand that sense of timing then it becomes difficult to replicate it. Anime has a unique sense of timing.
To summarize, what makes manga seem like manga and what makes anime seem like anime goes deeper than how the characters or backgrounds look, all the way to how the story is told through the visuals. Another important thing to remember is that this is less about quality, or why one is “better” or “worse” than the other, and more about why things are the way they are from the worst comics to the best ones. If you were to compare X-Men: Misfits, an American comic trying to be manga, and that Japanese X-Men manga I posted about a while back, a Japanese comic trying to be American, you’d see that neither one is able to fully escape their origins. Whether these are the most significant factors, I don’t know, but that’s what I’ve seen.
I’ve never been able to pinpoint the exact causes for why drawing “manga” style typically doesn’t look quite right, but there’s some things I’ve noticed that I think point towards why this tends to be the case.
The artists did not grow up in the culture. I had a Japanese teacher who one day as part of a vocabulary exercise brought into class a drawing she made of a “handsome guy.” Now, my teacher was not an artist, but the picture she drew was clearly that of a manga-style character and nothing seemed out of place. It was just, when drawing a cartoon character who’s supposed to look stereotypically handsome, this is how it turns out. While I don’t think not growing up in Japan or Japanese precludes an artist from developing that style, I think you can see how growing up in different environments with different artistic influences can change how even a normal person draws or sees drawings, let alone a professional.
But what then are those stylistic differences? Why is it that a manga artist who draws super realistically can still feel naturally like manga? Why is it that even a lot of the non-Japanese artists who get the basic visuals right (i.e. understanding that it’s not just big eyes and small mouths) still tend to produce works that jar you out of the illusion?
The first big one is the different philosophies in paneling. Traditionally in manga, the flow of panels is very important to the story, with emphasis on the concept of “flow.” That’s not really an official term or anything, but it’s one I like to use. Manga are typically designed to have the readers’ eyes be guided smoothly through the page, from one panel to the next, with everything in the panel, art and word bubbles and all, facilitating this flow. While American comics for example also take care to utilize word bubbles in strategic areas to help move the reader along, traditionally the American comic has been about having self-contained panels, each of which encapsulates everything going on at the time, a perfectly stilled moment. I’m reminded of when Grant Morrison in an interview after Final Crisis said, “We talk about events all the time. Well, why can’t every panel be an event?” In a way, he’s not far off from the tradition of Western-style comics, whether it’s indie, superheroes, or newspaper gag strips. It’s also what I think is the real difference between “compressed” and “decompressed” storytelling.
Basically, think of manga as a river, and American comics as a series of ponds. While of course there’s more to comics than just America and Japan, I’m simplifying for the sake of what little claims to brevity I have left. And while there are exceptions on both sides, take note how a manga with not as much “flow” such as Space Adventure Cobra or Nausicaa do well in the west, particularly Europe where highly illustrative backgrounds tend to be emphasized, or how an American comic with a strong sense of visual “flow” in Little Nemo could be seen fondly in Japan (at least I believe it is, if someone can correct me, please do so).
And then there’s other smaller things. Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics for example talks about how back when romance stories in American comics were more common, they still tended to compose scenes as if all of the characters were figures placed in a room. Contrast this with shoujo manga, which tends to emphasize the emotional over the physical; it’s not as important that you know where characters are standing.
But that only applies to manga, right? What about all those cartoons that try, but don’t quite get it. Your Teen Titans and Totally Spies and what-not. There, I’m not as certain about it, but I think it just has to do with what’s considered common in Japanese Animation to the point of it being ingrained into the system. I think the most prominent example of this might be animating on the 3’s, which means changing the image on every third frame instead of every second one as is common with American cartoons. This was originally one of many necessary money-saving techniques for anime on limited budgets as far back as Astro Boy, and what ended up happening was that stuff like animating on 3’s and using lots of stills and closeups, stuff which had its origins in having scarily low budgets, began to be embraced and improved upon and mastered until it in essence became the style anime is known for. What’s important here is the way in which factors such as these influenced the sense of timing that anime tends to have, and if you don’t understand that sense of timing then it becomes difficult to replicate it. Anime has a unique sense of timing.
To summarize, what makes manga seem like manga and what makes anime seem like anime goes deeper than how the characters or backgrounds look, all the way to how the story is told through the visuals. Another important thing to remember is that this is less about quality, or why one is “better” or “worse” than the other, and more about why things are the way they are from the worst comics to the best ones. If you were to compare X-Men: Misfits, an American comic trying to be manga, and that Japanese X-Men manga I posted, a Japanese comic trying to be American, you’d see that neither one is able to fully escape their origins. Whether these are the most significant factors, I don’t know, but that’s what I’ve seen.
Though this post is being made one week after the event, it’s better late than never as they say, and I’d like to commemorate the life and times of the New York City branch of Asahiya Bookstores, which saw its last day on October 31st, 2009.
I did not become aware of Asahiya until many years after it opened, and even then I didn’t visit it very often, but for me it was a very special store. After I came back from Japan, the story in Genshiken was at its absolute climax with Ogiue at the forefront, and it was through Asahiya that I would buy issues of Monthly Afternoon so I could continue to keep up with the story, and it was also through them that I bought the remaining collected volumes that were not out when I was in Japan, namely volumes 7, 8, and 9. Since then, while I would also buy from Kinokuniya occasionally and Book Off especially, Asahiya was my go-to place for Genshiken-related goods, which included the first volume of Jigopuri that I reviewed. From a rational point of view, I know that Kinokuniya would have served the same function had I ordered from them, but that was not the choice I made, and call me silly or sentimental, but I had grown attached to Asahiya for that reason. It also didn’t hurt that they tended to have better prices on items compared to Kinokuniya.
So despite the paucity of hamburger and hamburger-related materials on Halloween, I made one last stop at Asahiya, where most of the manga had already been bought out, and everything remaining was either $1 or $2. I picked up a ton of manga, including another title about fujoshi.
It’s always a funny feeling when you’re at a Going Out of Business sale at a store you frequented (earlier in the year geeks in NYC saw the demise of gaming store Neutral Ground). You’re enjoying the really good deals you’re getting, but you’re doing so at the cost of having the store fold in the first place. I got a similar feeling from scooping up sweet DVD deals from the ashes of Geneon USA, and while the savings are nice I can’t help but feel we lose much more as a result.
The end of Asahiya NYC. The end of Geocities. It really does feel like the end of an era.
