N
HA, I
to the private. What I am saying
SO
IDE
is that there is no grand narra-
© S
tive that is shared by everyone and
holds society together. The decline
of that grand narrative coincides
with postmodernity. Until the 1970s,
Japan was unifi ed by shared expe-
riences of the Second World War,
Top: Fukashina mono no sekai;
bottom: Mojo genron f-kai
the destruction of the nation, and
APPLYING PRESSURE TO THE MOE
´ POINTS
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172
its rebuilding. People
were interested in the
PRESS
TAO
same social phenom-
ena. By the 1970s, the
MINNESF
O
process had run its
TY
ERSI
course, and people
V
UNI
began to lose interest
Y
EST
in the grand narrative,
UROC
or splinter off to pur-
Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals
sue other narratives.
Those who started to pursue fi ctional grand narratives through the medium of anime were known as otaku.
PG: In your book, Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals, you talk about the ways in which otaku consume media. Can you explain what you mean?
AH: I argue in my book that otaku don’t approach a work just as a narrative; they also break the work down and focus on its elements. These can be elements of the production such as characters and settings, or aspects of the design, or the artwork in key frames. As consumers, they want to know how the work is produced, so that they can break it down and reconstruct something else. This phenomenon is postmodern, and it’s not unique to otaku—it happens everywhere in the world. What otaku are doing can also be seen in the remixing culture of hip-hop music, for example. But otaku comprise the only subculture born in postwar Japan. While many other trends come from abroad, manga and anime inspired a unique fan culture in Japan.
PG: What does moé mean to you?
AH: When I published my book in 2001, the word moé was extremely minor in Japan. It has since spread and is used widely. In the original meaning, it was something only used when talking about characters—you didn’t say you felt moé for a human being.
Moé referred to a sort of perverse way of experiencing feelings of love—loving a fi ctional character as though it was a real person.
AZUMA HIROKI
MOE_19_170-177.indd 172
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173
But when the word spread into the mainstream it lost a lot of its original meaning.
PG: How does moé relate to otaku consumption of media?
AH: Feeling moé for a character has little to do with your feelings for the work the character appears in. The extreme example is the manga and anime series Lucky Star (2007). I get the impression that most of its fans have never seen the original work. And actually Lucky Star doesn’t even have an overarching narrative that ties the episodes together. There are just many, many cute characters. People refer to Lucky Star as moé media because it is all about how much the fans love the characters. The characters are designed in such a way as to draw people in; they are amal-gamations of elements of design that fans respond to as moé.
This is different from a novel, for example, where the characters NETOH
A SWAKO
AD
2004 / K
MIAG
KA
SHIMIZU
O Y
©R
TA SY
Lucky Star
CKUL
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´ POINTS
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174
are important because of their role in the story, and the story is what makes the characters interesting. Moé media is the opposite, because the characters themselves are interesting and do not require a story. If you look at this phenomenon through the lens of what I call database consumption, you can observe that stories can be broken down into characters, and characters can be broken down into elements of design, and this can all be remixed endlessly to create feelings of moé. The original work and whatever narrative it might have had matters less than fans’ response to the characters. It is possible in the Japanese market to like a character without having any interest in the original work.
PG: To demonstrate this point in your book, you use the example of the character Di Gi Charat, the mascot of the store Gamers.
She is an assemblage of elements of character design that fans g
like, and though she was in the
he
beginning not attached to a
manga or anime narrative, Di
i
Gi Charat became very popu--
lar. The Toho Project series of
games and the Hetalia: Axis
Powers web comics (2006–
present) have also become
mega successful franchises
because so many fans love
the characters. What do you
think of such phenomena?
C
AH: The ability of creative
N
HA, I
people in Japan to develop
S
TONE
characters is truly impres-
U / G
sive. The character designs
AZKE
are also excellent. But on
ID
the other hand, the abil-
YA HU
ity to develop narratives
IMAR
Hetalia: Axis Po
is suffering. The manga
wers
© H
AZUMA HIROKI
MOE_19_170-177.indd 174
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175
and anime Lucky Star, which be-
came successful without a story
stor ,
y
,
is symptomatic of the Japanese
nese
market. Japanese manga is
*OB
traditionally built on a foun-
n-
-DON
dation of great stories, be-
E
OG K
ginning with Tezuka Osamu’s
u’
TIONA
manga after the Second World
TRSU
War. In TV anime, we have works
w
LL I /
such as Space Battleship Yamato,
mato Mo-
Mo-
bile Suit Gundam, and Neon Gene-
Gene-
ROCCOLI B
sis Evangelion. Story is important
ortant
©
to the success of these works,
rks,
but this is not the case with
h
Lucky Star. Creators are
focusing more on devel-
oping characters, because
characters are what the
fans want. And if the
fans love the characters,
then they will buy the Blu-ray
ray
Discs, the music CDs, and the
Mascot character Di Gi Charat
fi gurines. Director Kamiyama Kenji
purposefully developed a story for the anime series Eden of the East (2009), but the market is against people like him.
PG: How do fanzines fi t in with your argument?
AH: Fanzines are important as an example of narrativ
es breaking down and fans focusing on characters. Anime characters were the focus of successive booms in fanzines in the 1980s.
I fi rst visited Tokyo’s gathering for producers of fanzines, the Comic Market, in 1984 or 1985, and fanzines devoted to characters from manga and anime series such as Urusei yatsura (1981–86) and Captain Tsubasa (1983–86) were everywhere. The fans were responding to characters, without a doubt. Actually, APPLYING PRESSURE TO THE MOE
´ POINTS
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176
to me, Urusei yatsura is really an ancestor of bishojo games and moé media—a completely useless male character is surrounded by all these cute girl characters, including Lum, an alien girl who wears a bikini and is in love with this male character. The tendency to prefer characters and consume them independently of the story is much more pronounced after 1995 with the massive fan response to the characters of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Fanzines became even more popular in the 1990s.
PG: Do you think that moé has gone global?
AH: Since the early 2000s, people in the government have run out of things to do and have taken to promoting manga and anime under the banner of Cool Japan. They think manga and anime will become part of global popular culture. The people behind the Cool Japan program are a bunch of megalomaniacs with delusions of grandeur. Japanese manga and anime may be popular overseas, but there is a difference in taste. In Japan, otaku are into anime production houses such as Kyoto Animation and Shaft. Overseas, people want to see animation released by Studio Ghibli and Production I.G. Japanese otaku are into anime directors such as Yamamoto Yutaka and Shinbo Akiyuki, but people overseas like Miyazaki Hayao and Oshii Mamoru. And I think it’s true to say that the United States, for example, really only accepts a slightly watered down version of moé. But having audiences with different tastes might encourage creators in Japan to go in new directions, which would be healthy for the anime industry as a whole.
PG: Why do you think that moé is more prevalent in Japan?
AH: Japan has the Comic Market. This is not just a market for fan-produced works, but a system teaching people how to break down anime and manga and create new works. This not only strengthens the tendency to consume characters, but is a mechanism for bringing up a new generation of producers and consumers. The pedagogical function of the Comic Market is incredible. Without this, the otaku consumption pattern wouldn’t AZUMA HIROKI
MOE_19_170-177.indd 176
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177
have progressed so rapidly. Look at the size
size
of the Comic Market [550,000 people at--
tended in three days in 2008]—there is
nothing like it elsewhere. When middle
school students attend this event, they
think that this is what anime and mang
ga
are about. People buy products and they
y
circulate. It is amazing what a central
and important role this market plays.
There is nothing like this elsewhere in
the world.
*
PG: How would you like otaku and moé to be to be
OB
studied?
-DONE
AH: First, we should be aware that the wa
w ys
ays
OG K
of evaluating manga, anime, and games differ
diff
TIONA
TR
from country to country. It is necessary to
o
SU
LL I
understand diversity. We also have to be
/
aware of history. When we examine his-
ROCCOLI
tory, we fi nd that defi nitions are chang-
B©
ing all the time, including defi nitions of
words such as otaku and moé, and this is a political and social process. Defi nitions
are always political. It would be useful to
consider how otaku are seen from abroad,
d,
and for Japanese and non-Japanese to ex--
change their ideas. This would require Jap-
p-
anese to be able to speak in other languages,
es,
and for those interested in studying Japan to
n to
read Japanese and gain a deeper understanding.
anding
.
There is a tendency to focus on images when
whe
h n
discussing otaku culture, but I would to grateful f l
Di Gi Charat
if scholars took more of an interest in the dis-
course, debates, and history surrounding the subject. You can’t study otaku without taking account of environmental factors.
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178
Interview with
Saito Tamaki
Saito Tamaki, born in 1961, is
a psychiatrist specializing in
puberty and adolescence. He
is most famous for his book Sento
bishojo no seishin bunseki (2000), trans-
lated and published in English as
Beautiful Fighting Girl (2011), which
is an exploration of otaku sexuality.
Saito’s work is something of a re-
sponse to a period of otaku bashing in
Japan in the 1990s, when pundits in
the mass media debated whether se-
rial killers such as Miyazaki Tsutomu
or representatives of the apocalyptic
cult Aum Shinrikyo might be otaku
that have lost sight of reality and
social norms. With a sensitivity that
was rare at the time, Saito spoke with
fans of manga, anime, and games,
and came to the conclusion that
these fans are not confused about the
difference between reality and fi ction,
NNA
but rather are attracted to fi ctional
CHUM S
characters as such. In this interview,
ZT
FRI
Saito revisits his book, and explains
Y B
PH
how a love of manga and anime fi c-
RAGO
tion leads to the development of
TO
PH
unique orientations of desire.
SAITO TAMAKI
MOE_20_178-192.indd 178
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179
Otaku Sexuality
Unique Orientations of Desire
Patrick W. Galbraith (PG): How did you
u
become interested in otaku?
Saito Tamaki (ST): As someone infl u-
PRESS
enced by the psychoanalytic theory
TAO
of Jacques Lacan, I take an inter-
MINNES
est in people who are interested in
F
O
TY
something. Otaku are extremely clear
ERSIV
about their desires. They know pre-
UNIY
cisely what they want and, as we
EST
UR
see in discussions of moé, they can
OC
express this in vivid detail. I am in-
terested in the way they talk about
Beautiful Fighting Girl
Beautiful Fighting Gi
their interests.
rl
PG: What is your defi nition of moé?
ST: Moé is quasi-love felt for a fi ctional character. There are those who attempt to analyze it furt
her, but I think that the basic points are that it is something felt for fi ctional characters and that it is something like love.
PG: What do you mean when you talk about otaku sexuality?
ST: Otaku can fulfi ll their desires interacting with fi ctional characters, which exist in what they call the “two-dimensional”
world. When I wrote my book in 2000, it was assumed that drawings of cute girls were a substitute for real girls. The thinking was that those who could not make it with women in reality projected their desires into fantasy. But with otaku that was OTAKU SEXUALITY
MOE_20_178-192.indd 179
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180
never the case. The desires for the three-dimensional and the two-dimensional are separate.
PG: In your book, you say that desire can be asymmetrical. Can you explain?
ST: Desire does not have to be symmetrical—you can desire something in the two-dimensional world that you don’t desire in the three-dimensional world. Let me give you some examples.
There is a truism in otaku culture that those who feel moé for little sister characters in manga and anime don’t have little sisters. If these men actually had sisters, then the reality of that would ruin the fantasy. If the object exists in reality, then it is not moé. So, you can feel moé for maid characters in manga and anime, but
that has noth-
Oreimo: little sister
Kousaka Kirino
ing to do with
actual women who
are paid to work as
housekeepers. These
men don’t have
maids, and if they
did, the fantasy
would be ruined.
You see, the maid
character in manga and
anime is nothing at all like
a real maid, so therefore
IP
desire for her is asymmetri-
O /S
cal. This is not just some-
RKO
thing among male otaku,
WIA
either. The women who
I MEDCIS
read “boys’ love” manga
A /
do not necessarily have gay
friends or an interest in ho-
FUSHIMI
ASA
mosexual men.
KU
© TS
SAITO TAMAKI
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181
PG: Can you explain why desire for fi ctional characters is so pronounced in Japan?
ST: It is my impression that if men come into contact with manga, anime, and games, a certain portion will become otaku.
This has little to do with personal history, and much to do with environmental factors such as encountering the right character at the right time of life and being among people who don’t dis-courage falling in love with a fi ctional character. If you compare American comics and cartoons with Japanese manga and anime, you will notice that the Japanese characters are much cuter.
The Moé Manifesto Page 16
