Category: Editorials

The thin line between moe and masturbation.

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Talking about moe was the third article we ever did for the blog. Moe is, for a wide variety of reasons, a topic that Narutaki is forced to discuss and debate with me on a regular basis. So this is an article that has been fermenting in our minds for quite awhile. A small discussion about the nature of moe and sexuality broke out on twitter. Scott VonSchilling was arguing that moe and sexuality are separate traits and should not be considered connected. I then used one example that turned the whole conversation into a fire storm of debate, Mikuru Asahina. She is a character who is famous for being extremely moe and extremely sexualized but more importantly sexualized for and by her moe. The conversation quickly spiraled out of anyone’s control.

It has been many moons since we last discussed this growing term and I don’t even remember what spurned on our first article. I honestly try to avoid such discussions when I can, it’s true but it still comes up pretty often whether I see it on Twitter or on a bus ride to Otakon. Sometimes I participate and sometimes I just take in the discussion going on around me. Moe, everyone’s got an opinion about it so what we are adding here is not just our overall perspective on the genre/term/thing, but rather a specific instance of it.

As I mentioned in our Otakon 2009 report I am still not sure people in the anime business in Japan comprehend the full meaning of moe let alone anyone else. I am better at defining what moe is and detecting it when it exists in a show but on the other hand I am still light years away from a perfect understanding or acceptance of the term. As far as I can tell moe has maintained its bizarre dual meaning. In a general sense it means an attraction and devotion to any trait. You can be moe for maids with glasses, blond boys who are in gangs, or curry joints that serve their dishes on trains. In a more specific, pure, and otaku sense it means the desire to protect weak characters that cannot protect themselves. In its ideal and stated definition there is no sexuality in moe. You want to protect the moe character and have a chaste love for them. Some describe it as a fatherly need to protect and nurture someone weaker. This more specific definition is the one that causes the most problems and is the focus of the discussion.

Up until a couple of years ago I had no idea this word even existed or held a place in fandom. Obviously, since then a lot of anime watching has happened, a lot of reading has gone on, and numerous discussion have taken place and still there is no consensus on what exactly moe is. Luckily, we are telling you which popular theory of the word is up for debate. Moe is about security and affection given through supporting and protecting a character who for some reason can’t do so on their own. There are a myriad of reasons why characters exude this need. Despite the many things I could say about this scenario (and the many problems that arise), they aren’t all relevant to this particular discussion. It’s worth noting that while some moe characters are very young, many fall into the high school age so always equating moe and lolicon is a stretch even though that is a popular assumption. And by extension moe does appeal to the lolicon crowd. However, what is important for the current theory we are undertaking is that the characters aren’t supposed to elicit eroticism but rather endearment.

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Keepin’ it REAL!

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There is a belief most people have even if they do not realize it: The grittier and more hopeless something is the more representative of life it is. Stories that are happy and bright are fake because the world is full of pain and suffering. While only the delusional believe that the world is always a cheery place, it does not mean that bright and cheery stories can’t be realistic. However, for some stories tortured characters who have horrible lives filled with misery ring more true to many people. This topic came up when Narutaki and I were discussing Genshiken. We both agreed that most people liked Genshiken. I mentioned that a major qualm people had was they felt it became increasingly unrealistic. Essentially people who did not like Genshiken accused it of being a candy-coated otaku pandering fantasy. Why can’t people accept a positive image of otaku? Why do people more readily accept a negative image of life than a positive one?

Being an optimist by choice (nature?), I often get into conversations about the state of the world and people’s view of it. When discussing Genshiken I was floored to hear that some found it wildly unrealistic. It has become some sort of life trope that the important and memorable moments are all made up of drama. If you look at the news, at celebrities gossip, or so-called reality television this is what it is chock-full of. More importantly people seem to emphasize the tragedies in lives as the pinnacle and that a happy ending is fictional. As I see it, most of our lives are made up of hilarious incidents rather than never-ending hopelessness. That is not to say nothing heartbreaking happens to people, we all have those times in our lives, but I’d argue for most it is not the common part of their everyday existence. My philosophy aside, the major qualm here is whether or not something sad is more true to life than something happy.

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NYCC 2009 ICv2 Conference

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Having a few free vacation days I decided to check out the ICv2 conference on Thursday before the NYCC proper. Since I was going to NYCC as press, ICv2 was allowing those same people into their conference for free. Two major themes popped up again and again. One was obviously the economy and the other was how the internet is affecting comics.

Every panel touched on the economy and its ramifications on comics without fail. It was an unavoidable cloud over the whole conference. Everyone mentioned that while the entertainment business is often thought of as recession proof, it is anything but. No one was telling tales of apocalyptic visions but it seems like everyone was bracing for impact. The assumption is that best-selling titles will see little to no drawback but everything that is not A-list will be hit hard. Smaller publishers could be in trouble and small titles might start dropping like flies. Everyone also expects to see a lot less experimentation this year.

The other major theme was how was the Internet is going to affect the comic industry. Everyone agreed that it is was an excellent tool for promoting comic sales, getting out information, and developing comic communities. However, everyone also agreed that they need to develop a greater Internet presence. The major problem is still not having fully figured out how to use unique features of the Internet. No one has successfully created a way of selling comics for download and companies have yet to truly realize the potential of web exclusive content. If there was a universal portable book reader this would change quickly but so far the iPod of book-readers has not appeared yet.

I noticed two major things on the manga side of the equation. The first was the big news that everyone has been taking about. The manga bubble has clearly burst. Manga sales were down approximately 17% in 2008. Despite the fact that most companies kept insisting that the growth would only level out it has in fact gone down. I predict we are going to see a bunch of manga companies disappear in the next couple of years. Those who stay around are going to start to being more conservative about their licenses. Unless they are VIZ and have crazy amounts of Naruto money to back up their lesser titles. Another thing I noticed was an increasing amount of resentment for scanlations within the manga industry. This struck me because I feel the anime industry did the same exact thing. They started out seeing fan-subs as a necessary evil. People were using them to watch stuff for free but it gave the companies a good idea of what to license and was publicity for the commercial product. But as time went on and fan-subs improved, anime companies began to take an increasingly negative view of them. The same thing is starting to happen with fan-scans. While they are different industries and there are different factors that weigh into their markets, I am sure that we will see an increased number of people in the manga industry complaining and possibly going after fan-scans sites.

The highlight of ICv2 was Art Spiegelman’s keynote address. He is obviously a very knowledgeable man and his lecture of the history of comics was both fascinating and well researched. He starts with the earliest proto-comics and works his way to the present while hitting most of the major milestones including the popularity of newspaper comics, the Comics Code Authority, the rise of manga, all the way to web-comics and the Internet. He examined the unique nature of comics as an art style and means of expression with its own language. He was a little too insistent in a comic equivalent of the Auteur theory. He seemed to push the theory that all the great works are produced by individual artists over long periods of time. I think that is a narrow perspective. I can’t say I agreed with everything he said but it was a well informed opinion from an expert in the field. Heck, he even knew what yaoi was.

If anything was obvious from this conference it was that 2009 will be an important year for comics in general but manga specifically. A bad economy, an increase in pirated materials, and the challenges of adapting comics to new media are all important issues. I am sure that we will see the death or shrinking of several manga companies this year. I also see many B and C-list manga titles being dropped, put on slower release schedules, or put on hiatus. These are not really radical predictions. It is obvious that these things are going to occur just by looking at 2008. But every year has major challenges that have to be overcome. I am curious to see which companies are going to rise to the challenge and which are going to fall behind.