The Moé Manifesto
Page 14
PG: How would you respond to people who say that moé is just about ogling cute girls?
SM: I think that’s a misconception. There are many cute girl characters in manga, anime, and games, but that really isn’t the point. In many popular bishojo games, for example those produced by Key [see page 98], moé is evoked in the emotional scenes where we see the human aspects of the character. So is it just about the cute girls? No, I don’t think so. That’s a really impoverished way to think about moé. It’s certainly not my experience watching Gundam Seed or Noir or any of the other anime series that moved me.
PG: What do you think the future holds for moé?
SM: There has been some decline in the sales of manga and anime generally, but I don’t think bishojo manga, anime, and games will disappear, nor will the feeling of moé. As a buzzword among marketers and politicians, however, moé has lost its purchase.
Moé has been analyzed and used so much that there’s really no need to say the word out loud anymore. The legacy of the moé boom is that we are all more aware of the powerful attraction of characters from manga, anime, and games. Spaces have opened up for discussing and sharing feelings for characters, and those spaces will remain open and allow for continued fan activities.
THE PHILOMOE
ÁSSOCIATION
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Interview with
Morikawa Ka’ichiro
Morikawa Ka’ichiro, born
in 1971, is a design
theorist and professor
at the School of Global Japanese
Studies at Meiji University. He is
best known for his book Shuto no
tanjo: moeru toshi Akihabara (Learn-
ing from Akihabara: the birth of a
personapolis), published in 2003,
in which Morikawa shows how
the Akihabara district of Tokyo has
been taken over by the hardcore
fans of manga and anime known
as otaku and has come to refl ect
their tastes. Morikawa trans-
lated this concept into his Otaku:
Persona=Space=City exhibition
at the Venice Biennale in 2004.
He is the driving force behind the
plan to construct the Tokyo Inter-
national Manga Library, which will
N
permanently house not only his
MAN
work from the Venice Biennale, but
CHU S
also archives of early anime maga-
Z ITZR
zines and fanzines. In this inter-
Y F B
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view, Morikawa gives an analysis
AR
OG
of the transformation of Akihabara
TO
PHP
into an otaku neighborhood.
MORIKAWA KA’ICHIRO
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153
Learning from Akihabara
How Moé Transformed a Neighborhood
Patrick W. Galbraith (PG):
TIONADN
In your book, Shuto no tanjo,
OU FN
you call Akihabara a “moeru”
APA JE
neighborhood. Can you ex-
TH /
plain what you mean?
NC IA
Morikawa Ka’ichiro (MK):
H
OS
When Shuto no tanjo was
NTE
G©
published in 2003, the term
moé was not widely under-
Morikawa’s exhibit in b
Morikawa’s exhibit in book form
ok form
stood among the general
public in Japan. Most people only knew and used moé in the classic sense
sic
, a nominalization of the verb
moeru
mo
, meaning “to sprout” or “burst
into bud.
in
” So, when I called Akihabara
a
a moeru
m
neighborhood, it had a double
meaning.
m
For those who weren’t ac-
quainted with
qu
otaku culture, it meant
C N
something like a neighborhood that
so
HA I S
was coming into its o
w
wn. For otaku, it
OTNE
meant a neighborhood wher
m
e people
© G
pursue
p
moé through manga, anime,
and g
a
ames. In the fi rst chapter of the
book,
b
I explain how you can separate
people into those who know what
moé means and those who don’t. It’s
like an otaku litmus test. Even among
Shuto no tanjo: moeru
Shuto no tanjo: moeru
otaku, not everyone understands
toshi Akihabara
LEARNING FROM AKIHABARA
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154
Artist John Hathway imagines Akihabara as a place of magic and mystery MORIKAWA KA’ICHIRO
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155
© JOHNHATHWAY
what moé means. For those
who are interested in manga,
anime, and game characters,
the description of something
as moé conveys a lot of infor-
mation. Saying something is
moé is an indirect way of ex-
pressing feelings.
PG: How do you defi ne moé?
MK: It’s an expression of af-
fection for fi ctional characters,
especially the characters of
manga, anime, and games.
PG: Can moé be used to de-
scribe a response to objects or
real people, too?
MK: It depends on the situa-
tion. If a person uses the word
moé in reaction to an object,
you would have to differenti-
ate if he or she is intrinsically
interested in the object or in
what the object is represent-
ing. If it’s the latter case, this
is certainly moé. It is important
to keep in mind that moé is a
response to fi ctional charac-
ters. If a person is reacting to
a real person, then they might
use the word “cute” ( kawaii)
to describe them. This is not
the same as saying the person
is moé, which means you are
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156
E
ARW
FTO
K SH
© 2003 N
Kyoryu wakusei
yu
: Moé
wakusei: Moé
responding to a fi ctional character represented by the person.
This is a little confusing, and the nuance was lost during the media boom surrounding moé in the mid-2000s, when people basically used moé and kawaii interchangeably. In the beginning, moé was used only in response to fi ctional characters.
PG: How was the word moé fi rst used among otaku?
MK: There were originally two usages of moé. The fi rst usage was to express a burst of affection. So, you would see a character and respond, “Moé!” T
he second usage was to describe your affection for characters to another otaku, for example, “This character is moé.” It was a way to express your taste, which facilitated communication with others. What is important to note is that in both these cases, the communication was computer mediated, before MORIKAWA KA’ICHIRO
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157
the Internet was well established, and therefore the word was never spoken out loud. There have been TV shows in Japan like Densha otoko (2005), where otaku are shown crying out the word moé, for example, and people think this is what really happens.
But this is not at all true, and in fact just makes otaku look silly.
PG: When moé was fi rst used in computer-mediated communication, what was the context?
MK: In the fi rst half of the 1990s, people were using modems and local bulletin-board systems such as Nifty Serve and Tokyo BBS to communicate about manga, anime, and games. In the fi rst chapter of my book, I talk about three characters—Moé from the anime series Kyoryu wakusei (1993–1994), Takatsu Moé from the manga Taiyo ni sumasshu! (1993), and Tomoé Hotaru from the anime series Sailor Moon S (1994–1995)—as central to moé. The importance of these characters is not necessarily that they were archetypes, but rather that they were popular and each had moé as a name or part of their names. When fans would discuss their feelings for these characters online, they would type something like, “Moé-chan, moé moé.” Moé comes from the verb moeru, but this can either mean “to burn”(燃える) or “to burst into bud” (萌え
る). These verbs have the
same pronunciation but
are written with differ-
ent Chinese characters.
So, otaku intended to
type something like “I
am burning with pas-
I
sion for this character
I YUM
YU
named Moé,” but the
computer would con-
TD / A
HA, L
vert the input moé the
S
AND
wrong way and use the
O
© K
verb “to burst into bud”
instead of the verb “to
Takatsu Moé
T
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158
burn.” Everyone was too caught up in the discussion to care, and the meaning was still conveyed. Eventually, the word moé using the Chinese character for “burst into bud” came to be slang among otaku to express affection for a fi ctional character.
PG: The three characters that you mention—Moé, Takatsu Moé, NWO
and Hotaru Tomoé—are all young. Would you say that young LGC
characters are more likely to inspire moé?
MNOM
MK: Not necessarily, no. Affection can be felt for a variety of fi c-RAY
tional characters.
B
PH
RAGOT
PG: Can you share with us your thoughts on the O
PH
moé boom?
MK: It depends on what you mean by
boom. The real peak among otaku
was in the early 2000s. My book,
Shuto no tanjo, in 2003 was in
some ways a summary
of the moé phenomenon
among otaku, and after
that it spread out to the
general public. The wa-
tershed year was 2005,
when the word moé was
used in the popular
television drama Den-
sha otoko and its usage
became widespread.
That was when otaku
sort of abandoned the
word. You could say that
as moé heated up, otaku
cooled down. Otaku still
use the term, but not
Radio Kaikan
MORIKAWA KA’ICHIRO
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159
159
nearly as much as before. Some
me
use it almost as a joke, while
others use it as a way to market
et
products to non- otaku, for ex-
ample souvenirs for tourists to
o
Akihabara.
NWO
LGC
PG: Tell us about Akihabara’s
MNOM
transformation into a moeru
RAY
neighborhood.
B
PH
RA
MK: Akihabara is a neighbor-
G
TOO
hood that was transformed
PH
by otaku tastes in the 1990s.
Stores in the area shifted
from selling household ap-
pliances to selling personal
Akihabara maid café
computers, which meant a
shift in customers from families to computer specialists and hobbyists. Stores carrying personal computers also carried games for them, especially bishojo games or so-called dating simulator games, which targeted otaku. So you had otaku coming to Akihabara to buy these games at stores such as Messe Sanoh.
There was a massive boom in bishojo games when Tokimeki Memorial was ported to Sony’s Play Station in 1995. The Comic Market, a gathering in Tokyo for producers of fanzines, was also growing in the 1990s, and there was a shop in Akihabara called Toranoana where they sold fanzines all year round. Finally, the TV anime Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995–1996) was a massive hit, and infused new energy into the market for fi gurines of its main bishojo characters. When the fi gurine maker, Kaiyodo, moved its Tokyo store to the Radio Kaikan in Akihabara in 1997, they began to sell ten times the amount of product they had before.
This inspired other companies selling manga, anime, and games to move to the area, which sealed Akihabara’s transformation into an otaku neighborhood. So Akihabara became a moeru LEARNING FROM AKIHABARA
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160
neighborhood because
e
there were clearly
more stores dealing
in bishojo media and
merchandise. And
this overlaps with
the increasing activ-
ity of otaku online,
who were discussing
moé and spreading
the word about Aki-
habara. The transfor-
mation of Akihabara
was only possible
because of the geo-
graphic concentration of
n of otaku
in the
otaku in the
NW
neighborhood.
OLGC
MNO
PG: And your Venice Biennale exhibit Otaku: Persona=Space=City M
RAY
is in reference to this.
B
PHS
MK: Yes, that’s right. It was an architectural exhibit, showing RAG
Akihabara’s transformation. I wanted to be specifi c, and show OTO
PH
that this was not just a transition from shops specializing in one type of commodity to another. Rather, my argument was that the geographic concentration of otaku, who share personality traits and tastes, came to be refl ected in the urban space of Akihabara. On all the signs—everywhere, actually—you can now see images of bishojo characters of the type preferred by otaku. It’s as if private interests have entered into public space—as if the contents of an otaku’s bedroom have spilled out into an entire neighborhood of Tokyo.
PG: Why did you decide to include an explanation of moé in your exhibitio
n at the Venice Biennale?
MK: Moé is a part of recent otaku culture that I couldn’t overlook.
MORIKAWA KA’ICHIRO
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As a way to introduce otaku, I had panels on the wall explaining the evolution of anime. Basically, I ar
a gued that boys who were interested in sci-fi had become disillusioned a
b
bout the future. These boys
fi
first shifted to sci-fi anime and then to just anime.
Instead of dr
In
eaming of the future, they dreamed of
bishojo
b
characters.
PG
PG: You also included as part of the exhibition a series of panels on the w
rie
all that explained some key
traditional J
tra
apanese aesthetics such as wabi and sabi.
The panels that e
Th
xplained moé and other contempo-
rary words were
placed alongside
them. Can you
tell us what your
intentions were
here?
MK: I had several
motivations for
doing this. First
of all, I received
funding to go to
Otaku tastes refl ected on the streets of Akihabara the Venice Biennale and do this exhibition on otaku and Akihabara and so I needed to make sure I explained the project in a way that would make sense to people whose job it is to fund the promotion of Japan. In addition to that, in using the moé panel I wanted to parody the famous 1978 exhibition Ma: Space-Time in Japan by the architect Isozaki Arata that explored traditional Japanese aesthetics. Finally, I wanted to suggest that we cannot possibly know how the culture of today will be judged in the future, so it is meaningless to make distinctions between high and low culture. We should learn about moé while we can and save the judgments for later.
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Interview with
N
Ito Go
ANMAN
HUHCHUC SSC
TZITZITRFRY F B
I
PH
to Go, born in 1967, is a manga