There’s a constant kerfluffle in the otaku-rhombus, and everywhere in nerddom, actually, concerning criticism. Specifically, many nerds want it kept out of their entertainment — despite the fact they engage in it constantly. Academics have similar kerfluffles, honestly; many’s the time I’ve heard a professor complain about “jargon.” Inevitably only the schools of thought they dislike use “jargon;” their preferred schools of thought don’t engage in it. Anyway, this is the first in a series of entries meant to extend an olive branch in the best way a scholar knows how: through teaching and learning together. In this series, we’ll be describing different “schools” of critical thought, how they work, where they came from, what they do, how they’re useful, and so on. We’ll even apply a bit of the theory to familiar texts to illustrate how this is supposed to work from a literary point of view — and remember, literature is just entertainment, so criticism is simply thinking about entertainment. Why? To be further entertained! This post specifically is part of that most dreaded (as most [un]familiar) world, the post-something-or-other. This time, post-structuralism.

Carl Sagan once posited that many Americans (he not having a lot of experience being a citizen of any other countries) distrust science because it requires background reading. To engage in science one must do the up-front work. Literary criticism is similar: many people avoid it simply because they don’t want to do the background reading to know which post-structuralist said what and what we people think of it now. Of course, really, criticism is simply careful and loving thought about something you love, but the background reading provides a platform of similarity from which everyone can begin.

That paragraph serves to introduce this paragraph, specifically, structuralism. As the name implies, post-structuralism is a response to structuralism (these names are awkward yes, but at this point they’ve stuck). So. Ferdinand de Saussure was a French linguist who lectured on the nature of language. If you only take one thing away from Saussure, it must be this: language is arbitrary.

For us, in the year of our flying spaghetti monster 2010, that seems obvious, perhaps even trite. We’ve likely all had that moment of realization, that a word only means something because we decided it does. If you’ve studied a language not native to you, you almost certainly understood this at some level. However, back in the early 1900s this was a little revolutionary. Linguistics was a branch of history, studying where a word came from — all the way back to Latin or Greek if it’s a respectable word. Most people thought of language worked in the way that’s sometimes called the “Adam” principle. That is, Adam named the beasts and the bird and the seas. So a thing’s name was a part of the thing. Think of any fantasy you’ve read or seen where someone’s true name is a handle to the person. It’s the same principle. Saussure described the system of thought on language that, which, with modification, rules today.

Specifically, language is arbitrary. But also specific. Language isn’t simply “made up” in the way nonsense words are. Language is arbitrary, but at the same time everyone must agree on the arbitrary decisions. Imagine a game where a move counts for three points in player A’s rules, but five points in player B’s. A and B can’t play a game until they agree on one common system.

Saussure used a famous diagram that, as a whole, represents a sign — a sign is a language unit, basically. The signified is the thing to which the word is applied, like a tree. The signifier is the word applied to it, such as “tree” or “ki” or “arbor.” Both together actually make the sign, because when we hear the word we designate as appropriate, we think of a tree. Not some Platonic ideal tree, but a tree, maybe one we’ve seen every day, or a special tree (maybe the one you climbed in as a child, or the one that was blasted by lightning in your back yard).

That’s how an individual sign works. All of them work in a system, where each one means something because it doesn’t mean anything else.

That’ s a little weird, but think on it for a moment. “Tree” means a plant with bark and leaves because it does not mean an animal with four legs that chases cars. Without contrasting words, a single word would be useless, as it could expand to be everything. In fact, that’s why we have so many binaries. “Everything” itself is what isn’t “nothing.”

Now, the sign is fine, as far as it goes. But poststructuralist theorists focus their magnifying lenses upon the signifier in particular, assuming in part that signifiers are all we can really work with. This may sound like an almost existentialist argument, but, in “…That Dangerous Supplement…” (or, more affectionately, “…That Highbrow Essay About Masturbation…” or “…That Essay Titled Kind Of Like an Aria Episode…”), Derrida turns it into a matter of “mere” linguistic mechanics.

The basic idea here is that, in attaching a signifier to a signified, or a sound-image to a concept, or what have you, we’re doing two things: 1. creating a relationship between ourselves and the signified, which can only exist via the supplementary signifier, and 2. creating another “terminal” signified, to which we can only relate with another signifier. Of course, your mileage may vary regarding how “basic” an idea this is, but it’s really not that wild, and we can apply it to many fandom concepts with which we’re already familiar.

Consider, for example, one binary that anime often approaches: life/death. Many of us have encountered the idea that death gives meaning to life, and while the idea as it shows up in anime probably has more to do with Eastern philosophy than with Derrida, it’s a good example of what Derrida means by supplementation. A deconstructionist might tell you that death gives meaning to life precisely due to the arrangement of the two words-and-or-ideas in the life/death binary: life happens for a while, and then death substitutes for (absent) life.

We might lament death as the absence of life (as we might lament writing as the absence of speech, or masturbation as the absence of sex, or absence as the absence of presence). But death is useful insofar as it allows us to conceive of life as a thing with certain qualities; sans death, life simply is, but, in light of death, life is z, y, z, etc. As Derrida puts it, when presence becomes absence, the quality and worth of the absent presence becomes apparent. We often say that people lead good or bad lives, but we can only make such judgments — we can only conceive of such a thing as “a life” — with death in mind. This, I imagine, has much to do with the explorations of mortality conducted by such things as Casshern Sins and Bokurano.

So far the territory we’ve crossed hasn’t gotten too thorny. In fact, this all seems like an extension of Saussure — i.e. things “mean” relative to one another. But here’s the strange part: as absence fulfills its role as absence, it becomes another presence. Simply put, death describes the state of a thing as does life. The problem with death specifically is that we can’t exactly substitute something for it — there is no “post-death” at the end of death — and so it’s hard to say anything about death as such other than that it simply is.

Fortunately the hypothetical world of fiction gives us such things as undeath; we might say of a zombie that it had a foreshortened or interrupted death, a death that wasn’t peaceful. And there’s always religious afterlife, I guess. But I digress, and I really shouldn’t in a post that will be long enough anyway. What we end up with is a great chain of supplementation:

This convenient model can be applied to all kinds of things, and it gets particularly interesting when there’s more than one person doing the conceptualizing. Consider translation:

And, as implied however many hundred words ago, this process bears upon Saussure’s basic signified/signifier model, which is, in a sense, a variation on the presence/absence binary. The thing signified is our idea of a “presence” in the world, and we discuss these presences-as-conceived via signifiers, symbols that imply the “absence” of the signified in collective discursive space. Working with signifiers may be about all we can do, but that’s not the whole of it; we also have to consider that the very existence of the signifier gives us a sense of the “form” of the signified — hence the poststructuralist interest in the signifier.

Of course, one of Derrida’s strangest ideas is about the space between the signifier and the signified. Derrida, in his “Différance,” described what one could describe as what Saussure didn’t bother with: how signs work. That is, the actual mechanism of them.

Essentially, différance is that line in the signifier/signified diagram. Here’s the deal: the word différance combines the words “differ” and “defer.” All words both differ and defer, and in doing so they create meaning.

A word differs because, as we saw earlier, a dog is a dog because it’s not a cat. We have lots and lots of different words for things because that’s part of how language works — each signifier is different from every other signifier. That’s the simple part.

A word defers as it sends you both away and back. When you hear the word “dog” you think of a dog, but a dog is not actually summoned into the room with you. You are thrown back in your memory and call up an image of a dog — perhaps a particular dog, perhaps an amalgamation of many dogs — that is in the past, because it is a memory. At the same time, save in rare occasions, the dog(s) you’re thinking of were not in the room you’re in when you hear the word “dog,” so you’re also deferred out to somewhere else.

Now. It is a joke among academics that only two people ever understood deconstruction (the literary lens that grew out of Derridian post-structuralism): Derrida and Cixous (his wife). This is a common joke because Deconstruction is pretty wild, and we’re never sure if we’re doing it the way it was originally meant to be done. But really it doesn’t matter. So.

You may be able to see already how différance is useful when reading a text. A sign in a text, most often a metaphor, symbol, or such-like, works the same way a Derridian sign does. It both differs and defers. I think first of the famous traffic lights and road signs in anime — my favorite examples are from Kare Kano. They are literally things: a traffic light flashing yellow. It is also a representation of a thing, a signifier, as the thing is actually a real traffic light, the thing we’re seeing actually being a series of drawings of a light, and not the light itself. So we’re being sent out and back to traffic lights in our past, and what that meant to us (to slow down). Slowing down, or the need to, is also the import of the sign on the symbolic level, and so we’re being deferred through our deferral into another signified: danger/caution. But the show uses that series of deferments instead of another. We’re constantly sliding back out of the show into our own lives. Coupled with various other elements in the show, such as the shifting art style, the music, the painstakingly realized (and only mildly cliché-ridden) school setting, we can see the show as something that constantly pushes us farther away, with its method, even as it draws us closer with the story and the characters. We’re positioned always as viewers, never as fellows of the characters. There is, in fact, one possible implication in the way the show slides us, defers us, with the sorts of signs and signifiers it chooses: the show could be implying that we are beyond the problems and the timeframe that the characters live in. We can think of other examples of shows that behave as though they’re for one audience and really deal with another (Nanoha springs to mind). Kare Kano acts as though high schoolers are the entire world it deals with, but the signs are both more complex than usual (the art style) and defer us to places that are out of character for high schoolers (traffic lights only mean something that powerful to us when we’re driving, and the typical high schooler hasn’t driven much).

ALL signs, according to Derrida, function with différance within them — fortunately for Roland Barthes, who, for a while, made a living analyzing the signs of day-to-day French life. Barthes did literature, too — he wrote “The Death of the Author,” for one thing — but his Mythologies is founded largely upon such miscellanea as advertising campaigns and strippers. This may be notable in itself, as it demonstrates that (post)structural practices have applicability beyond strictly-defined art; we might analyze as symbols or signs such things as vendor booths at conventions, anime-related clothing, and yes, even anime blogs.

But this notion isn’t particularly poststructural. Barthes is, in fact, something of a transitional figure; he became more poststructural with every essay (which, really, may just mean that his position became more nuanced — if we reduce it to its essence, poststructuralism is more like an extension of structuralism than a radical reaction). The post- begins to come into play when Barthes points out the contradictions inherent to things.

You may have surmised at this point that, thanks in large part to Derrida, poststructuralism concerns itself with contradiction and paradox in ways that structuralism did not. We see this in such concepts as différance, which, again, relies upon levels of separation, but we might also call contradiction the motive of the poststructuralist — in short, if the meaning-values of things come from the ways that binaries function, we may as well reveal and scrutinize relevant binaries.

Barthes, for example, demonstrated that the striptease is a fundamentally chaste act, reinforcing the distance between erotic dancer and viewer. And this isn’t in spite of the particular features of the act — it’s a direct result of them. Everything from the layout of the typical gentlemen’s club to the final article of clothing that the dancer does not remove suggests separation (or suggested as much to Barthes in mid-20th-century France). Such elements as partial nudity and the sexualization of the dancer may imply intimacy, but there’s more to consider beyond what seems most obvious.

We might say that striptease demonstrates a structural contradiction, that it is, perhaps, the binary of intimacy/separation in action. And, if we’re Derridean about it, these contradictions are fundamental to everything — they are, as we’ve seen, the reason things are able to mean, so to speak.

But what good does that do us? The life of the fan is, of course, as rife with contradiction as any other sort of life; these contradictions seem to turn up in practically any sustained examination of the fandom, Azuma’s Otaku being a prime example. Azuma (who, by the way, made a name for himself as a Derrida scholar) deals with how fiction can feel more real than reality; he explains how pornographic visual novels really aren’t about sexual gratification; he investigates different parallel ways of engaging with different parts of texts; he even brings up the topic of otaku sexuality, pointing out the gulf between crazy 2D fetishes and relative 3D conservatism. And yet another contradiction emerges in Otaku that the book doesn’t deal with explicitly: the very idea of the postmodern database seems strange when postmodernism is evidently all about doing away with such all-encompassing structures. We could do this all day, really, but the point is that fandom, as anything, is made of binaries — reality/fiction being perhaps the biggest and most visible — and, in revealing and examining these binaries, we stand to learn something about ourselves.

Well then! With poststructuralism out of the way, we’ve handily dealt with the vagaries of mid-to-late-20th-century literary and cultural theory. Haven’t we?

No. No we haven’t. You know we haven’t. For, alas! there’s another feared and reviled body of critical work to consider, one that may prove even more difficult to wrangle than poststructuralism, insofar as it’s considerably vaguer.

I’m speaking, of course, of postmodernism.

…つづく!

Love Hina can be metafictional, too.

I found Hiroki Azuma’s Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals at the university library — seven or so months ago. And, what do you know, it’s due back. Overdue, probably. So I suppose I should annotate this thing at long last, for your benefit and mine.

It’s a short book, but I won’t be entirely exhaustive here. I’ll omit basic overviews of things many of us would find intuitive anyway, and some of the more extreme postmodern/poststructural business, in the assumption that you’ll read the book yourself if you’re looking for that sort of thing. It must be said, though, that, while Azuma got his start as a Derrida scholar, Otaku is very readable even if you aren’t so familiar with Baudrillard, Lacan, and their ilk — and, that being the case, I suppose I ought to make this post more or less readable, too.

For the sake of getting the “proper” citation out of the way (and thereby making myself feel better), it is thus:

• Azuma, Hiroki. Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals. Trans. Jonathan E. Abel and Shion Kono. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.

Azuma’s thesis here is “that the essence of our era (postmodernity) is extremely well disclosed in the structure of otaku culture” (6). He put this thesis forth during a talk in 2001, the essay-ified version of which he makes available for free on his website; you may want to check that out if you want a more extensive overview of Azuma’s position from the man himself.

…[O]taku, who usually display an air of anti-authoritarianism, distrust any method that is not otaku-like and do not welcome discussion on anime and video games initiated by anyone other than an otaku. … In other words, some people refuse to even recognize otaku, while others believe only a designated group possesses the right to speak about them. It has been extremely difficult to take a position that does not adhere to either of these stances. (5)

Tell me about it, Azuma! I’m not at all surprised that this phenomenon isn’t limited to our English-language sphere of anime blogs, where many of us have encountered it in one form or another. Azuma calls it a “dysfunctionality,” and claims that his work here amounts in part to an effort to circumvent (if not remedy) the factionalism of fans and non-fans (5). The degree to which the book succeeds at this will probably vary somewhat widely from reader to reader, but I didn’t feel at any time that Azuma stacked things entirely in favor of either cultural theory or fandom — he is in turns accepting and critical of both.

The history of otaku culture is one of adaptation — of how to “domesticate” American culture. This process also perfectly epitomizes the ideology of Japan during the period of high economic growth. Therefore, if at this time we perceive a Japanese aesthetic in the composition of anime and special effects, it is also necessary to recall that neither anime nor special effects existed in Japan prior to a few decades ago and that their process of becoming “Japanese” is rather convoluted. Otaku may well be heirs to Edo culture, but the two are by no means connected by a continuous line. Between the otaku and Japan lies the United States. (11)

Japanese history, etc. That otaku artifacts are, on some level, dependent on both technology originally imported from America and “the complex yearning to produce a pseudo-Japan…after the destruction of the ‘good old Japan’ through the defeat in World War II” makes me wonder about the position of the American fan relative to this complex interplay of traditions (13). That is, I don’t think American fans are so interested in the construction of a pseudo-Japan — or, if they are, I doubt it’s out of a desire to “overturn the overwhelmingly inferior status of postwar Japan with respect to the United States,” and more out of an interest in fictitious pseudo-Japan as an object of entertainment (13). It’s likely that postmodern Americans are as likely as postmodern Japanese to turn to narrative fandoms in an effort to make sense of the present world — Azuma notes at several points that his broader theories are not meant to be exclusive to Japanese otaku culture — but certainly the westerner’s relation to the east/west convolution that is anime is distinct, not least because we’re re-importing products dependent to some degree on our cultural exports.

At what point do the cultural distinctions inherent to anime break down? At what point does anime become something akin to what Timothy S. Murphy identifies as a “literature of globalization?”¹ Azuma seems to suggest that the otaku arts aren’t quite there yet, but, insofar as “the impact of otaku culture now reaches far beyond Japan” — a fact of day-to-day life for me and, if you’re reading this, probably you, too — the germination of a truly global genre within anime and manga seems at least remotely possible.

We also have to wonder what will happen when American creators claim significant stake in anime projects, as in the case of Heroman and the other Marvel collaborations. If anime is to some extent and in some cases a reaction to the American cultural elements it appropriates, who is appropriating and reacting to whom in Heroman? Is this an example of the smoothing-over of cultural boundaries, or — in the most extreme case — evidence of American capitalistic imperialism?

At any rate, the notion that acts of adaptation mark the beginning of otaku culture seems significant, given the multimedia adaptation processes at work in the anime/manga industry. Azuma attributes the proliferation of adaptations and derivative works to the postmodern fall of the metanarrative and the death of definitive authority, but if the birth of anime was, in a sense, an act of adaptation to begin with, perhaps a culture of derivation was simply a likely technical and logistical outcome.

[The] prominence of derivative works is considered a postmodern characteristic because the high value otaku place on such products is extremely close to the future of the culture industry as envisioned by French sociologist Jean Baudrillard. Baudrillard predicts that in postmodern society the distinction between original products and commodities and their copies weakens, while an interim form called the simulacrum, which is neither original nor copy, becomes dominant. The discernment of value by otaku, who consume the original and the parody with equal vigor, certainly seems to move at the level of simulacra where there are no originals and no copies. (26)

In other words, Vocaloid and Touhou. Azuma’s prime example of this is Di Gi Charat, that franchise born of a store mascot when “the stories and settings that form its world were created collectively and anonymously as a response to the market, after the character design of Digiko alone gained support” (40). And I suppose it’s very revealing of my “brand” of fandom that I can’t really get into those sprawling franchises (I mistyped that “fanchises,” and maybe I shouldn’t have corrected it) without much in the way of authorial frames of reference. I’m not hostile toward or dismissive of fan work at all, nor do I dislike Touhou and Vocaloid; I suppose I have thus far simply failed to understand those fandoms, having cut my fanboy chops on western literature and film.

In otaku culture ruled by narrative consumption, products have no independent value; they are judged by the quality of the database in the background. …

…[O]taku consumers, who are extremely sensitive to the double-layer structure of postmodernity, clearly distinguish between the surface outer layer within which dwell simulacra, i.e., the works, and the deep inner layer within which dwells the database, i.e., settings. (33)

Azuma posits the “database” of story elements — character attributes, fragments of plot, and so on — as a replacement for the “deep inner layer” that presumably guided the reading of modern (i.e. pre-postmodern) literature (32). I’m not sure to what degree I buy that; part of me asks whether we haven’t simply done away with deep layers to begin with, given how poststructuralism rendered the semiotic signified inert, absent, or simply another signifier in disguise. But it is the case that fans of anime and manga concern themselves with very specific traits disconnected from any one character or story, and that creators both professional and amateur draw from an array of these traits — we can probably agree that the database exists, whether or not we grant its status as “grand nonnarrative” or replacement metanarrative (38).

Compared with the 1980s otaku, those of the 1990s generally adhered to the data and facts of the fictional worlds and were altogether unconcerned with a meaning and message that might have been communicated. Independently and without relation to an original narrative, consumers in the 1990s consumed only such fragmentary illustrations or settings; and this different type of consumption appeared when the individual consumer empathy toward these fragments strengthened. The otaku themselves called this new consumer behavior “chara-moe” — the feeling of moe toward characters and their alluring characteristics. (36)

Here, Azuma posits the birth of moe as we know it — that’s some srs bsns, isn’t it? While “moe” as a term evidently came about in the 1980s, Azuma locates the turn away from “fictitious grand narrative” such as that constructed by UC Gundam and toward stories that served as vehicles for the data that were the true foci of fandom in the mid-90s (37). And what franchise do you suppose he suggests is the crux of this shift? That’s right, it’s Evangelion — the very show that, in the U.S., convinced a generation of casual viewers of Dragonball Z and Sailor Moon (myself included) that they were actually fans of a storytelling method capable of conveying deep, meaningful, and consistent narrative experiences. And while we were trying to explain Christian symbolism in the context of Shinji’s journey, Japanese fans were dissecting Rei Ayanami into component parts to be recomposed later (by enterprising, market-conscious creators) into Ruri Hoshino and others (42, 49). Funny how that worked out.

It’s easy to see how contemporary “cute girls doing cute things cutely” shows came to be. People may accuse K-ON! of being “empty” — but, at the end of the day, emptiness is kind of the point. K-ON! represents a distillation of narrative into a pure vehicle for characters, who are themselves constructs of tried-and-true moe elements (moe-golems, if you will), which is what new-school fans sign on for in the first place, or so Azuma claims. The author of the linked Japanator article suggests that perhaps “emptiness” is an invitation to bring one’s personal experience to the viewing (which is inevitable anyway, she says, and I agree), but, if Azuma is to be believed, emptiness as such is practically irrelevant to the target Japanese demographic, whose members aren’t really interested in metaphoricity, cultural relevance, and so on, and whose primary concerns are the core components of cuteness, the manifestations of the database they know and love, which might be disassembled and reconstructed ad infinitum.

Which is not to say that a moe show is doomed to what we might identify as shallowness. Azuma is all about Saber Marionette J as an allegory for the late-90s otaku condition (20). And I can’t help wondering what he’d think of Strike Witches, whose regard for World War II history may be more than superficial. As long as moe shows encourage creativity by making their moe elements readily available to viewers, they can’t be all bad, I figure.

All that considered, can we really hold Chinka (which I guess is for real now?) against Danny Choo? Well, maybe — but if we do, we’re probably delving into the realm of broader issues with moe itself. Should we go after Choo’s studio for being manipulative, or should we take it up with those fans who want to be fed pure, unadulterated moe elements? And if we do, are we really doing nothing more than revealing our cultural bias?

The modern Japanese novel is said to reflect reality vividly (shasei); the otaku novel reflects fiction vividly. The characters and stories that [Ryuusui Seiryouin] depict are never realistic, but they are possible in the world of comics and anime already published, and therefore the reader accepts them as real. (56)

Even the novel is subject to database modes of consumption and production, evidently because otaku readers seek consistency with previous fiction (by way of the database) rather than with reality; “the moe-elements extracted from the subculture database seem far more real than the imitation of the real world for the emergent group of consumers in the 1990s” (78). To some degree I suspect that this has always been the case for all readers; however, Azuma speaks of an extreme, a situation in which “[o]taku print culture as a whole is beginning to obey a different kind of logic, one oriented toward characters rather than individual works” (57). The otaku novel is “[n]either literature nor entertainment,” to the extent to which such a thing is possible; it concerns itself, like anime, with serving as a vehicle for database elements (58). I couldn’t tell you how staunchly I’d stand by this notion, but I can tell you that, as a fiction writer influenced by the storytelling methods of otaku media, I find myself highly conscious of character traits as elements that might anchor readers based on previous fiction consumption.

Games produced by Key are designed not to give erotic satisfaction to consumers but to provide an ideal vehicle for otaku to efficiently cry and feel moe, by a thorough combination of the moe-elements popular among otaku. For example, in Air, pornographic illustrations of all sorts are concentrated in the first half, as if to reject the premise that the goal of girl games is erotic satisfaction. The latter half of the ten-plus hours of playing time does not even contain substantial choices; the player only follows the texts as a melodrama unfolds about a heroine. Even this melodrama is rather typical and abstract, created out of a combination of moe-elements such as “incurable disease,” “fate from previous lives,” and “a lonely girl without a friend.” …

…[T]his kind of game…masterfully grasps all of the fundamentals of moe, from the types of narrative to the details of design. …

Therefore, in most cases when they say “it’s deep” or they “can cry,” the otaku are merely making a judgment on the excellence in the combination of moe-elements. In this sense, the rising interest in drama that occurred in the 1990s is not essentially different from the rising interest in cat ears and maid costumes. What is sought here is not the narrative dynamism of old, but a formula, without a worldview or a message, that effectively manipulates emotion. (78-79)

What we have here is a loaded block of text, and I’d like to tackle it from the bottom up.

You’ll notice, toward the end, that Azuma reveals his priorities as a reader here — or he finishes the revelation that began with his early consideration of Nadesico and Saber Marionette J. Azuma and his otaku subjects evidently disagree on what is “deep;” to the otaku, depth means extensive engagement with the database, while to Azuma, depth seems to amount to engagement with some set of cultural or historical conditions — which makes sense, given that Azuma is a cultural critic by trade. Perhaps Azuma is claiming that, in the database-driven world, such a thing as “depth” no longer exists, but this notion relies on a particular definition of “depth,” and depth of experience is, practically speaking, something that varies from consumer to consumer, from product to product, and from individual consumptive act to consumptive act. What I’m trying to say is that I’m a little wary about how Azuma has framed this section — but, alright, I’ll grant that what he’s ultimately saying (i.e. otaku tend to read for emotion-invoking structural elements rather than metanarrative-based meaning) makes sense.

Essentially, Azuma takes very seriously the conception of Key games as “emotion porn.” And, yeah, I doubt there’s much room for debate over whether Key takes advantage of story elements proven effective at making consumers cry. Of interest here is Azuma’s identification of such elements as components of the database, and the implication that otaku use the database to achieve emotional states or to invoke emotive effects. What “is felt as most real” to the otaku consumer is neither “reality” nor “earlier fiction,” but “the database of moe-elements” — Azuma always seems to liken the movement toward otaku culture to a search for authentic feeling (58). Perhaps needless to say, the database consists of elements that make consumers feel certain ways. As such, database-derivative art focuses not on intellectualizing and explicating metanarratives, but on bringing about emotion in its consumers.

The idea that Air discounts sex as a satisfactory or worthwhile goal may even give us some insight into the tangled mess that is otaku sexuality. But we’ll get into that a bit more momentarily.

…[C]onsumers of novel games can be characterized as having two completely different inclinations toward the surface outer layer (the drama) and toward the deep inner layer (the system) of a work. In the former they look for an effective emotional satisfaction through combinations of moe-elements. In contrast, in the latter they want to dissolve the very unit of the work that gives them such satisfaction, reduce it to a database, and create new simulacra. In other words, in otaku the desire for small narratives and the desire for database coexist separately from each other.

…[P]ostmodern individuals let the two levels, small narratives and a grand nonnarrative, coexist separately without necessarily connecting them. To put it more clearly, they learn the technique of living without connecting the deeply emotional experience of a work (a small narrative) to a worldview (a grand narrative). Borrowing from psychoanalysis, I call this schism dissociative. (84)

I’m not sure I follow Azuma here. That is, I get that consumers have moved beyond the need to connect small narratives (individual works) with some underlying metanarrative. But, again, I don’t know how much I buy that the database occupies the space left empty when metanarrative went away. Wouldn’t small narratives inevitably be connected to the database? Its elements “prove” themselves in small narratives; small narratives are picked apart, and their effective elements are entered into the database. Wouldn’t enjoyment of small narratives and enjoyment of the database have everything to do with one another? Or is Azuma just reinforcing his point that “narrative” as such isn’t really important?

Specifically, Azuma’s talking about the disconnect between the enjoyment of a visual novel for the narrative experience it provides, and the enjoyment of a VN as a collection of images, sounds, and divergent, sometimes contradictory narrative bits. The former is what allows us to enjoy Fate’s three routes as discrete stories, and to compare them in those terms, while the latter is what compels us to play through all three arcs and achieve every possible ending systematically. Azuma gives the hypothetical example of the game that allows the player to choose to pursue a relationship with multiple women, but frames each possible relationship, in its turn, as destined: “although the protagonist is depicted as someone who experiences pure love at each juncture and encounters his ‘woman of destiny,’ actually each of the different encounters that results from the player’s choices is called ‘destiny’” (84-85). Perhaps “there is a vast discrepancy between the drama required by the characteristics of the system and the drama prepared in each scene,” but the discrepancy doesn’t result in a jarring, disjointed experience for the otaku player (85). In this sense I suppose I get where Azuma is going.

Psychiatrist Saitou Tamaki raises the following question in several occasions: Why are there very few actual perverts amongst otaku, even though the icons of otaku culture are filled with all sorts of sexual perversions? … (88)

Just as animal needs and human desires differ, so do genital needs and subjective “sexuality” differ. Many of the otaku today who consume adult comics and “girl games” probably separate these two; and their genitals simply and animalistically grew accustomed to being stimulated by perverted images. Since they were teenagers, they had been exposed to innumerable otaku sexual expressions: at some point, they were trained to be sexually stimulated by looking at illustrations of girls, cat ears, and maid outfits. However, anyone can grasp that kind of stimulation if they are similarly trained, since it is essentially a matter of nerves. In contrast, it takes an entirely different motive and opportunity to undertake pedophilia, homosexuality, or a fetish for particular attire as one’s own sexuality. … (89)

Thus, according to Azuma, getting off to hentai is something one learns. That may seem counter to the more intuitive Madaramean Principle at first, but it’s probably true, to some extent. We know at this point that gender is learned, that it is by no means wholly related to biological sex. And I don’t suppose a hentai picture would trigger sexual arousal in someone whose mind took longer to do with it what the otaku mind is trained to do in mere moments. Obviously I’m way out of my league here (and I get the impression that Azuma is, too) — have there been any psychological studies on this sort of thing?

And regarding Azuma’s pointing out the disconnect between enjoying hentai and being a pedophile — well, what can I say? I just wish people would pay more attention to professional cultural critics and less to fear-mongering news outlets (CNN, I am disappoint) and conservative commentators.

In postmodernity, the deep inner layer of the world is represented as the database, and the signs on the surface outer layer are all grasped as an interpretation (combination) of it. (103)

No, no, wait a minute. You can’t overthrow the Platonic cave only to replace it with the Platonic cave. Just saying.

…[I]n the world of simulacra, a parallel relationship (in which A, B, C, and D are all grasped as a “reading” from the same information) is preferred over a tree-like, hierarchical relationship (in which A defines B, B, defines C, and C defines D, etc.)

…For example, in otaku culture…the reality is that information belonging to different layers exists side by side, such as the individual units of work like an anime or a novel, and behind those the settings and characters in their background, and in turn behind them the moe-elements. All such information is consumed in parallel, as equivalents, as if to open different “windows.” So today’s Graphical User Interface…is a marvelous apparatus in which the world image of our time is encapsulated. (103-104)

Azuma calls this parallel mode of consumption “hyperflatness” (102). And it’s a concept that resonates with me personally — I delve into a franchise expecting to be entertained by blog posts, Twitter reactions, and things like TV Tropes as well as by the franchise’s individual works. A work consists of structural elements (in its text iterations) and readings (socially), and I like being privy to all that at the same time. Maybe that’s why I do this blogging thing in the first place.

Still, I have to wonder about how the parallel small narratives interact. Azuma describes a process of “slipping sideways” that occurs when a consumer, seeking final authority or agency (the “invisible”), brings potential candidates for this agency into view, thereby rendering them “visible” — and, in becoming visible, they become yet more small narratives lacking in authority (105-106). But that’s not really what I mean; what I’m curious about is how consumers organize small narratives. To use Azuma’s earlier example of Rei Ayanami and her many derivatives, do consumers create a “group” or “category” for quiet girls endowed with mysterious power? Does Rei hold relative authority in this group because she provided the database with those elements in a substantial way?

With words such as “postmodernity” or “otaku culture” many readers might imagine the play of simulacra cut off from social reality and self-contained in fiction, but this kind of engaged work [Yu-No] also exists. This book was written to create a moment in which great works such as this can be freely analyzed and critiqued, without distinctions such as high culture versus subculture, academism versus otaku, for adults versus for children, and art versus entertainment. (116)

Does the book succeed? Well, I don’t know; I’m not the best person to ask. I already analyze porn games and canonical literature on the same plane, using the techniques of both theory and fandom; in my case, Azuma is preaching to the converted. But I do consider the book a success insofar as it might prove useful to readers on each side of the binaries he mentions — and if the common experience of Otaku allows inter-faction discussion (something I’m hopeful but not unrealistic about), I suspect that’d be just as planned.

Endnotes

¹Murphy, Timothy S. “To Have Done with Postmodernism: A Plea (or Provocation) for Globalization Studies.” Symploke 12.1-2 (2004): 20-34. Project MUSE. Web. 30 November 2009.

Also, if you can come up with a better title than “Life and its Slices,” please do so.

That’s about enough administrative business, I think. You’ll be surprised (and thrilled, no doubt) to know that I actually have a few legitimate posts planned for the near future.

Second, I have this project in mind, and I need you (yes, you) to let me know how viable it is.

I’m envisioning a series of free ebooks of essays on various topics in fandom. The goal would be to produce something more “professional-looking” than blog work — that is, the things would be copy edited proper-like, and made to conform with some style manual or another, to a degree. But I’d want the “kinds” of essays present in each collection to vary quite a bit. That is, a theoretical analysis paper on franchise x might be followed by a personal account of franchise x’s impact on the writer’s viewing habits — the point being that, as we’re free of the constraints of what approaches are in vogue in the popular press and academia and so on, we should take advantage of the opportunity to present a tremendous variety of angles on the things we enjoy in one mighty document.

What I need to know is, would anyone — bloggers, commenters, readers, or otherwise — be interested in contributing articles/essays/papers (I’m thinking 2000 words and up) to such a thing? As it’d be offered for free, there’d be no monetary compensation involved, of course. But I think the effort at letting ourselves run with a topic and compiling the results in a nice-looking package could prove worthwhile.

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou

Somehow I can't call YKK out on its anthropocentrism.

YKK is, in a manner of speaking, Aria at the end of the world. It isn’t some grand and glorious apocalypse — there are simply less people than there used to be, and though humanity lingers on, who knows how much longer it’ll be around? Otou-san explains:

What’s pervasive in your mind throughout YKK is an almost-overwhelming sense of melancholy, of sad nostalgia. The earth itself seems to long for the glory days of humanity, even as it’s in the last phase of reclaiming itself from them. As 2DT mentions [here], it seems very Japanese to quietly accept the end of the world like this; after all, we don’t see what anyone’s doing elsewhere on earth, but something in YKK does give the impression that this is… just how it is. After all, what can you do? Nothing. It’s over. This is the twilight of humanity, and I only hope that we go with such grace and poise. [Otou-san, "Twelve Thingies: A whimper, not a bang"]

In one sense, humanity is charged with dying well. But in another, it needn’t concern itself too much with death, as it has produced successors — humanoid robots, one of whom is the story’s central character. Are they effectively successors, or are they a plot convenience, allowing us to witness longer periods of time in more consistent settings than might have been practical with a human narrator? I’m not sure it matters, as YKK makes the end of the world — or, because the world will certainly carry on without us, the end of the reign of humanity — seem like an okay thing at any rate. We have to wonder if we’d be better off if there were fewer of us.

I can’t really specify a single moment of note here, as YKK is too…fluid, maybe. It feels more than anything like a coherent and consistent whole. And that is by no means a bad thing.

Clannad ~After Story~

I stand by my final verdict on Clannad’s second season (mostly). Your mileage may vary, obviously, but I found the ending downright annoying — it made the whole thing feel disjointed. But still, I have to give it some credit for a few great moments.

All conflict should be resolved like this.

I liked the entire Sunohara arc, but the ending was especially good. I mean specifically the part where Tomoya and Sunohara lay everything out on the table while punching the hell out of each other, then laugh about it the next day. This kind of resolution — total honesty, total retribution, total forgiveness — strikes me as very brotherly. And that’s how I wanted to see the two, ultimately. I couldn’t help feeling a little let down when Sunohara barely showed up again after the graduation.

Don't hesitate too long, Tomoya; you only have 22 minutes.

And how about that Kyou Chapter OVA? This and the Tomoyo OVA were both executed brilliantly, I think, especially considering the constraints of a 22-minute episode. And anyway, a focus on Kyou is pretty much an instant win.

Haruhi 2009

Kyon-kun, denwa~

I really enjoyed Endless Eight. Yes, honestly.

Is it because so many people didn’t? Maybe, insofar as E8 gave us all something to talk about, and I can’t fault it for that. Or maybe it’s because E8 was a pretentious move on KyoAni’s part. I can’t deny my admiration for the size, shape, and luster of the balls of whomever greenlighted the thing, and I certainly enjoy it as an experiment in episodic story structure. I’ll admit that I, too, felt the tedium during those uneventful eight weeks, but I suspect it’s the sort of thing that’s best enjoyed in retrospect. I realize that’s arguably more a fault than a virtue, but what can I say? One of my favorite novels is Ulysses.

And you have to admit that the ending is pretty satisfying.

At that, I can now call it a year. Don’t hesitate to check out other bloggers who have paid homage to the highest and lowest points of 2009 — including Otou-san, Schneider, doctordazza, Gargron, Scamp, zaon47, kevo, rabbitpoets, drmchsr0, ghostlightning, 53RG10, Vii, Seinime, Eternal, FuyuMaiden, Eater-of-All, Shinmaru, calaggie, yumeka, Nazarielle, Cuchlann, Jinx, Janette, stringedsonata, animewriter, prototype27, and probably others.

Before you can remember love, you have to feel it for the first time. Such was my motivation when, early in the year, I decided to watch as much of Macross as I could manage — which, in the end, meant pretty much all of it.

You may wonder, given my preferences, why I didn’t give Aria the number one spot again. After all, last year I had seen only the first season; this year I watched the latter two and read half the manga (that is, two volumes of Aqua and five of Aria). Surely I’m much better equipped now to praise the hell out of the thing. But, after the first season, Aria’s effect on my preferences, or on me as a fan, had already run its course. I was guaranteed to like the rest of it.

On the other hand, I did watch something this year with as profound an effect on my fan-hood as Aria had in 2008 — Macross. It’s hard to pin down precisely what it did for me, though. It probably did several things: it demonstrated the power of the franchise as both an artistic and marketing apparatus; it added to my foundation of Important Anime or Anime One Must See; it served as a gateway into older and longer shows; it was just pretty damn cool all around, equal parts humorous and serious, with its commingled themes of love, war, coming of age, and music. I can never claim to be one of those people who have been fans of Macross (perhaps by way of Robotech) practically forever, but I think I get what they’re on about, to some extent, when they profess their love of the franchise from on high. I rated none of the individual installments in the series higher than 9 on MAL, but if I could rate the whole thing cumulatively, it’d easily earn a 10. It’s about the combined experience, I think.

The SDF Macross opening isn’t my chosen moment, but it seemed an appropriate opener to this post insofar as it encapsulates all the things that make the series great. It’s got music as great as it is ridiculous, it’s got transforming plane-mecha and spacefaring capital ships, it’s got bridge bunnies and staid captains and even a hint of tenuous romance. It’s easily one of my favorite openings — how much better could it be? (Well, alright, a little, but not much.)

To choose one moment from all of Macross would be to slight its component parts, in a way. What I’ll do here, then, is choose a moment from each major installment in the franchise. Well, each installment except Macross Zero, which wasn’t bad, but left me vaguely dissatisfied. Maybe someday I’ll be able to remember love for that one, too.

SDF Macross: Pinpoint barrier + Daedalus = ?

I was tempted to write about the show’s ending here, but if I did it’d mostly be out of spite for Minmay, and she isn’t that bad — she’s a teenager, and much of what she does can be attributed to youth. So instead, I’ll write about the most awesome thing that has ever happened.

Just to clarify, the Macross itself is pretty much the most awesome thing that has ever happened. It’s a capital ship (check) that can transform into vaguely humanoid form (check) with smaller capital ships for arms (check). Of course, if you happen to find yourself vastly outnumbered by aliens you’ve accidentally pissed off and whose motivations you aren’t entirely sure of, there’s only one thing to do with all this. Executive officer (or something) Misa Hayase knows what that one thing is.

If that doesn’t simultaneously melt your face, blow your mind, and cream your jeans, I can’t imagine what would.

Macross Plus: Reversal

One of my complaints about Macross Zero is that it doesn’t feel much like Macross, and I suppose one could field the same complaint about Macross Plus. For my part, I think it’s great; it darkens and distorts the conventions of Macross without rendering them unrecognizable. Everything — the love triangle, the music (Yoko Kanno!), the pilots, everything — is more sinister somehow. Even the SDF-1 itself.

The powers that be tend to thwart our (anti-)heroes as often as they provide aid, if not more often, and the protagonists find themselves facing monumental odds with few allies. This becomes most chillingly clear when the Macross, damaged as it is by the events of the first show and some thirty years of weather, is commandeered and turned against Isamu Dyson, who, in the end, stands alone between it and Macross City (though the real conflict is much more local, you may know).

Under other circumstances, such a “resurrection” would’ve been fist-pumpingly epic. Here, it’s horrifying. Or, no, it’s probably both. That tendency to throw your emotions into disarray is what makes Macross Plus my favorite individual stretch of the franchise.

Macross 7: And still Basara sings

Macross 7 was first described to me as a show in which people fight space vampires with the power of their rock, and by God that’s what it is. If you happen to enjoy the “tangible power of rock” theme as it appears in, say, metal mythology or anything by Tenacious D, you’ll probably like Macross 7. It’s ridiculous, yeah, but it has a lot going for it — Nekki Basara is easily my favorite of Macross’s dense but skilled pilot protagonists, and Mylene Jenius is probably my favorite Minmay.

My moment of choice comes from the 27th episode, and, in a way, it marks the upturn of the show — not that it starts out terrible, but it is somewhat repetitive until about halfway through. In the previous episode, Basara launched a giant speaker into the enemy bridge…

…and rocked the commander so hard that his space-vampirism went wild and stole Basara’s voice. And yes, this is exactly as cool as it sounds, and by the time you’ve seen 26 episodes of Macross 7 it’ll seem perfectly reasonable.

The villainous Protodeviln strike again in episode 27, and the Macross 7 fleet’s most effective defense, Basara’s voice, remains out of commission. Now, in accordance with Macross 7 logic, there’s only one solution to a problem like this — namely, rock at it until it gets better. And that’s exactly what happens.

What’s the first thing Basara says when he gets his voice back? Nothing — he rock-screams a beam of song energy.

This is crazy and ridiculous and everything that makes Macross 7 great. And it is by no means the only scene of its kind; it’s simply the one I most remember.

Macross Frontier: Sheryl/Ranka

My kneejerk reaction to Macross Frontier is that it introduced into the franchise two things that Macross really could’ve done without — Alto Saotome and Ranka Lee. Now, let me qualify that — I don’t hate either character by any means. Ranka is fine, and Alto is…tolerable, anyway. In fact, I think Frontier does a fairly good job of making its characters feel like people. It’s more about what these characters represent. It’s strange seeing 21st-century moe in Macross (as opposed to late 20th-century moe, admittedly), and I’ve never liked the brooding emo kid protagonist mold into which Alto fits quite nicely. But again, this is just a kneejerk reaction, and I can’t fault Macross for changing with the times.

Now that I’m done being a curmudgeon, I’ll say that Frontier does have its high points. For one thing, the interaction between the show’s two pop idols is always enjoyable. And I’m fascinated by Sheryl Nome, or by how the show handled her — I was ready to hate her the moment I saw her, and before the end she had captured my heart in that way she’s so famous for. Generally fiction isn’t able to do that for me, and I keep on disliking those characters I peg as unsavory in the beginning, and so I have to give Frontier credit on that account.

The concerts are good (especially when they coincide with battles), and the many little interactions between Sheryl and Ranka are good, but my favorite scene with the two is this one — the pop-off. And for this, it’ll have to be video.

(Yes, the conversion process did something terrible to the subtitles — sorry about that.)

Check Alto out. He looks terrified — as if he doesn’t know what’s going on here! But then the Macross protagonist usually doesn’t, does he?

Oh, and for the record, Sheryl is great, but I still think Ranka is better for Alto. Or that Alto is better for Ranka. Either way, Alto/Ranka.

So! We’ve done My Neighbor Totoro, Hoshi no Samidare, Casshern Sins, Bokurano, Onani Master Kurosawa, Mahou Sensei Negima!, Yotsuba&!, Mushishi, Gunbuster and Diebuster, Toradora!, Aria –and here, at the pinnacle of my twelve moments of 2009, the venerable Macross. From where I’m sitting, it’s been a good year for anime and manga; I hope it’s been the same for you.

Charming, really.

By the time you read this, I’ll be on a plane to Texas. I’ll be out of town until the 30th, and mostly absent from the internet, so if I fail to address your comments in a timely fashion, that would be why. But keep an eye on this blog and pontif.us; I’ll have posts scheduled through the end of December.

With that said, today’s title references one of Schneider’s moments, which, if you’ve read it, may act as a kind of complement to this post. Though, as a Minori fan, he may not be too thrilled that I’m pointing to his moment as complementary to this one.

I always liked Minori, actually. I was prepared to like her from the beginning. Yui Horie had something to do with it, granted, but Minori was generally just a fun character. And that thirteenth episode — I mean damn. I watched it last Christmas, in the late morning or early afternoon, and I remember thinking that Japan and its media-producing machinery had given me a fine gift, and being annoyed that I hadn’t seen it early enough to include it among my twelve moments of 2008.

But this post isn’t about that episode. This post is about Ami.

You may recall the cadre of bloggers who threw their support behind Ami nearly as soon as the show introduced her. I was not among them. Toradora! seemed to posit her as a wrench in everyone’s gears, a generally not-very-nice person, and I bought it wholesale. But as the show progressed, something happened. Ami changed — either the “real” Ami began to emerge from behind her stalwart shield of bitchery, or her two personalities, the public and the private, began to merge into a more “complete” Ami. Possibly I changed, too. I finally began to get a sense of her depth. I realized at some point that her criticisms of her friends’ romantic foibles were my criticisms. She was my voice personified as a high school girl.

And when, during the eventful twenty-first episode, she just couldn’t stand for Minori’s bullshit anymore…

Goddamn this scene is uncomfortable.

Someone should make a Toradora fighting game.

…her fist was my fist.

But by the same token, Minori’s face was my face, her chest was my chest. I didn’t realize this until it occurred to me how much this scene hurt.

Minori’s tactic for dealing with Ryuuji’s feelings is simple: “If I ignore it, maybe it’ll go away.” It’s rough, being on the receiving end of that. I get how Ami feels; I tend to be a little upset, too, when I see my friends being jerked around by people they have feelings for. Ami’s way of dealing with her frustration here is not exceedingly mature, no. But to her credit, Minori hit her first. And it’s not as if she hasn’t been embroiled in this tangled and sometimes melodramatic web of teenage romance all along — she just succumbs to a moment of exceptional weakness here.

But I get how Minori feels, too. In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve employed her tactic. Oh, have I employed it — my talent for avoiding telling people how I really feel about them has become legendary. I’m not proud of myself, but it is what it is, and so I think I understand Minori’s reasoning. As long as she’s able to ignore it, things don’t have to change; everyone can remain friends, and everything can carry on as it always has. What’s more, she doesn’t want to cause problems for Ryuuji and Taiga, regardless of what form their relationship takes in the end. Minori certainly isn’t acting out of ill will; if anything, it’s the opposite. I’d guess that she simply doesn’t know what else she should do.

You can see how problematic this scene is for me when I relate to both characters involved. Ami, my more jaded, self-aware, reasonable side, attacks Minori, my well-intentioned but cowardly side. Who do I side with? Well, neither, ultimately, because I’m both. It was a little shocking to see one of my internal conflicts represented in animation like this. And it’s still difficult to watch; I never know whether I should laugh or cry.

[Read the next moment here]

Chia Pet scroll: do want.

If asked to identify the most enjoyable character I read about in the past year, I may not settle on Ginko, but he’d at least put up a hell of a fight.

Let’s talk about the D&D alignment system for a minute — not the oversimplified gradient of fourth edition (what the hell is “unaligned,” anyway?), but the 3×3 grid that came into being with AD&D. Or, because a lot of you are aware of the D&D alignment system already, let’s talk about my relationship with it. As a teenager I fancied myself a rebel — this was no more true of me than it is of any suburban American teenager, but that’s what I wanted to be, and so I liked to think I was chaotic good, champion of the people in spite of the law. But as I grew older, I grew more moderate, or at least I realized I was more lawful than I had admitted to myself. Chaos was overrated anyway. Thenceforth I was neutral good, an opponent of villainy above all else. Neutral good seemed a reasonable place to be, for a while.

I’ve changed quite a bit in the past few years, however, and though I still tend to get neutral good on the alignment test, I’ve developed a healthy respect for true neutrality. Perhaps this is my way of acknowledging that the world wouldn’t be what it is without good things and bad, that balance is paramount, or perhaps it indicates my awareness that such a thing as an alignment “system” could never adequately describe human inclinations (though I like to think I knew as much all along). Whatever the case may be, I’ve come to enjoy characters who are equal parts order and chaos, good and evil, characters who seek to understand things as they are. Kino of Kino’s Journey is one such character. Mushishi’s Ginko is another.

Yes, I know Ginko makes his living as a traveling healer, of sorts. I don’t think he’s unconcerned with the lives of people; that isn’t really what true neutrality is all about. But he values equally the lives of Mushi, it seems, or he simply doesn’t judge life in terms of worth at all.

When I think of Ginko’s approach to things, I think firstly of the manga’s tenth chapter, Ginko’s encounter with the Watahaki. What we have here is a bad situation all around: a woman who desperately wants a child is infected by a mushi that gestates in her womb, emerges, secrets itself away under the house, and produces “limbs,” of sorts, which take the form of the child the woman would have borne. (Again, I have to scan my own manga here, so the quality won’t be great.)

Maybe it'll grow up to be a perfectly handsome gelatinous cube.

Kill it with fire?

Ginko is called in when the false children begin to die. They have short lifespans, he explains, and, upon death, they will disseminate countless Watahaki seeds; it’s best to do away with them before that happens, or else more families could suffer the same fate. But Aki has come to identify the things as her children.

First rule of Mushishi: always listen to Ginko.

At the behest of Aki and her husband, Ginko leaves the situation alone for the time being, urging the couple not to neglect to kill the children before they release their seeds. But before that becomes necessary, things take a strange turn, one Ginko could not have predicted — the Watahaki becomes self-aware, or it learns enough language to demonstrate that it has been self-aware all along. It’s clearly too dangerous to leave alive. But Ginko holds no malice against it; he does away with it because that’s the only thing he can do.

Makes sense.

The mushi want to live; humanity wants to live; when the two end up at odds with one another, one side will live and the other will die. That’s nature.

But, again, Ginko doesn’t especially want to kill the Watahaki, and in the end he allows it to live as long as it can in a diminished form.

That thing is still pretty creepy.

I suppose I respect Ginko for his ability to do what needs to be done. And I have to give him credit for not reveling in it, even if his victory is a victory for the human race. He’s about as impartial and logical as he can be while upholding his responsibility to his species and his general respect for life of all kinds. I doubt I could ever manage such a balance; perhaps that’s why I’m fascinated by Ginko’s having done so.

[Read the next moment here]

Says the girl in the bunny suit.

I haven’t exactly neglected to mention Negima! in the past year. I’ve written about Nodoka and Yue, my favorite members of Negi’s unwieldy harem, and Ako, who starts out as a bit player, but comes into her own, and with a vengeance. What’s left to write about?

“What’s left to write about?” Ha!

I thought of continuing what I began with my Ako post, which just scrapes the surface of her character and then promptly ends. But let’s save that for later. Instead, because you asked for it, let’s talk a little about Chisame. And I do mean a little; we’re talking about a manga that’s currently over 270 chapters long here, and Chisame plays into quite a bit of it. But we can at least try to get a handle on what she’s about — which, I think, is probably the tallest hurdle a blogger writing about Chisame would need to jump.

(And yeah, I know this isn’t a “moment,” per se. If I were to choose one moment, it’d be something from my Nodoka/Yue post, but I don’t want to repeat myself. Still, I have to give Negima! credit for being generally momentous somehow.)

Negima! handles most things rather metafictionally. Characters are established within archetypal (or perhaps stereotypical) frames only so that they might comment upon or subvert these frames as they develop. Ako is the generic minor character; Nodoka is the timid one; Yue is the quiet and strange one; Asuna is the tsundere and the magic-canceling swordsperson, the dense fighter — the list goes on. Here we run into our first problem. What type or trope is Chisame supposed to represent?

When we’re first made privy to her thoughts (in chapter twelve), we might assume she’s another kind of tsundere — that quality has been bestowed upon Asuna already, but it’s hardly homogeneous.

They, uh, need the exercise?

Tsundere is old enough and prevalent enough that it takes a number of forms. There’s romance-tsundere and friend-tsundere; there’s oldschool tsundere (the character warms up over time, with relative permanence) and new-school tsundere (the character switches from cold to warm and back throughout); there’s local tsundere (which applies mostly to the character’s relationship with one other character) and global tsundere (applying more generally to the character’s interactions with others). And of course there are all sorts of things in between, since absolute extremes are rare in any case. Asuna’s tsundere is more local, while Chisame’s is more global; Asuna is more representative of the new school and Chisame the old; Asuna’s tsundere is more about romance (I’d say, though I guess that’s debatable) while Chisame’s is not so specific. The difference here is that Chisame’s tsundere is mostly played straight (so far), and that sets her apart, in a way, from the heavily self-referential cast. For comparison, Asuna’s is undercut by the fact that the object of her conflicted feelings is ten years old, and it’s complicated to some degree by her relationship with Takahata. The former might be true of Chisame, but not until quite late in the story.

So I suppose Chisame might provide for tsundere fans who aren’t buying what Asuna is selling. But she’s hardly the tsundere character of the cast insofar as she doesn’t really act as a nexus of commentary thereupon. But then what is she?

srs bsns is srs

She usually has her serious face on, at least in public. She’s not one for nonsense, and this renders her contrary, most of the time, to most of the class; her potential allies in this regard (Evangeline?) are themselves loners, for whatever reason. And she’s an impressive skeptic with impressive powers of deduction — well, no, her deductive abilities may not be that impressive, but she’s allowed by the narrative to figure things out on her own when most characters aren’t, as the festival arc demonstrates.

Seriously, she can't be the only one able to work this out.

Negima! isn’t hesitant to poke fun at itself for its conceits. Chisame may be one of the ways it does so; while most are willing to attribute the veritable miracles of the school festival’s tournament to “special effects,” Chisame essentially uses them as evidence to figure Negi out. Perhaps this is less impressive, so to speak, than the fact that nobody else can do so — but then, if I remember correctly, Chisame becomes instrumental in ensuring that the secrets of the magi aren’t revealed to the world. The point is that she’s no idiot. She may be a little genre-savvy, even, albeit not as much so as Haruna — or perhaps not about the same things.

But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Returning to chapter twelve, we find that Chisame also values normalcy.

If you want 'normal,' you may want to try another manga.

This may be a natural extension of her seriousness, granted, but it probably deserves mention on its own. Hers is an impressive shell. I mean, this is the class that got Ako to relax and open up a little, the class in which even Nodoka feels relatively comfortable. And here Chisame keeps herself separate, condemning the lot of her classmates for ruining her “normal school life.”

Also, she’s a net idol.

Er...surprise?

Well that comes out of left field — but does it really? For one thing, there’s been a connection between computers and the supernatural in the Akamatsuverse (if such a thing can be said to exist) since A.I. Love You/Ai ga Tomaranai. It isn’t so surprising that the internet would feature into Negima!, a comic ostensibly about magic, as long as Akamatsu-sensei’s at the helm. And, really, if she can’t express herself in “real life,” or if she doesn’t feel that she can, why wouldn’t Chisame turn to the internet? It’s served as a haven for many who are too disillusioned or too reticent for human interaction in their “normal” lives.

But that she’s skilled with computers and knows a few things about costumes brings us back to her genre savvy. Or perhaps, given her otaku inclinations, we should call it audience awareness. She knows something of moe…

Moe is, after all, part of the basic repertoire of the manga female.

…and is evidently no stranger to cosplay.

Chisame, president of Genshiken, Mahora Branch.

Ah, but she’s no straightforward, brazen otaku.

It's maybe a little late to worry about that.

True colors?

I think I’m finally starting to get a handle on what makes Chisame tick. She’s Negima’s commentary on its audience — and, as commentary, I suspect she hits rather close to home for some of us. Perhaps branding her “tsundere” does her a disservice. She’s simply insecure. She doesn’t know what people will think of her if her hobbies become common knowledge, and she doesn’t want to know; her fear that the “real” Chisame isn’t good enough keeps her from forming meaningful relationships. In all likelihood her insecurity isn’t even tied inexorably to her hobbies. That she’s into things that aren’t “normal” just gives her a convenient focal point for her worries, worries that are in fact more fundamental.

I understand her position (perhaps all too well). And I think I understand why, to Chisame, internet stardom is “what being loved is all about.”

Quite a transformation sequence, this.

But I don’t agree.

Here’s what Ghostlightning has to say about love in Macross and its fandom.

… All these Macross fans who supposedly ‘love’ the Misas and the Sheryls of the franchise talking about ‘loving’ a character who ‘deserves’ it. I like these characters a great deal. But love? PFFFT. That ain’t love. That’s too easy. It’s easy to appreciate excellent qualities such as maturity and strength, decision-making and competence under pressure. Loving a character for those qualities is safe and conservative.

If it fits in the pocket of one’s preferences. That’s not love at all! That’s like saying I love anime and only mentioning Ghibli films, and maybe Legend of the Galactic Heroes. That’s not love! Appreciating such excellence is what you’re supposed to do. [Ghostlightning, "Discovered Deculture: My Fair Minmay ~ Dreaming Prelude"]

And in a reply to my comment on that post, he added:

Rather than overlook, I’d rather choose ‘forgive’ as the operative recourse [regarding the flaws of the object of love]. I’m not into the ‘blind’ kind of love that overlooking may lead us to adopt, not that some amount of overlooking will inevitably occur.

Chisame seeks “love” in a place she knows she’ll find it, and at any rate what she gets from her fans isn’t any kind of love. These people don’t know her. They haven’t accepted her quirks and her flaws for what they are. They’ve never seen a picture of her that hasn’t been doctored in Photoshop, and they don’t know her real name. What Chisame presents isn’t Chisame, but Chiu; the fans love, or think they love, Chiu. Perhaps this love is indeed “real,” but the object of love is not. Chisame remains a spectator, living vicariously through her creation.

Genuine love is not so easy — I don’t doubt that Chisame realizes this on some level. Perhaps this realization is itself the source of her insecurity; perhaps she knows, or thinks she knows, that the greatest threat to her “normal school life” is herself. Or perhaps she has erected her shell to keep in the illusion, or the delusion, that such a thing as normal school life exists at all.

[Read the next moment here]

Who wants to live forever?

Alright, this is the last of my Moments Twelve about death giving meaning to life, or allowing life to mean, or what have you. I’ve just been into that as a theme lately, I guess. And you may know that I can’t put said theme to rest without bringing Bokurano into it.

I mentioned Bokurano during a panel at a convention recently (not my panel — they rejected my panel idea, actually), and got a roomful of blank stares for my trouble. But I suppose that’s not surprising; its American print run doesn’t begin until February of next year. It may also have what OGT identified recently as a tendency toward the “centripetal:”

…[T]here are some works that are more amenable to the vagaries of an individual fan than fandom at large. Again, regardless of the relative quality or popularity of works that possess this trait, they tend to be complex and focused in their appeal. They are the works that are difficult to like or dislike, and more likely to leave a strong, positive impression on the viewer; they are our Serial Experiments: Lains, our Kaibas, our Sky Crawlers-s, our The Girl Who Leapt Through Times. For whatever reason, the centripetal response that manifests as a personal response to the work comes naturally, leaving them to be more subdued when discussed in a social context.

At any rate I have difficulty talking (or writing) about Bokurano for the reason OGT identifies here. Structurally it’s not so complex — it’s structurally interesting, mind you, but not difficult to follow — and so my difficulties with it are not those I have when I throw my patchwork critical theory knowledge at, say, Ulysses. It’s just that Bokurano is so damn personal that it’s difficult to share the experience you’ve had with it with anyone else. I wrote a brief post about it a few months ago, but I didn’t say much beyond “I liked it.” How can I? You have to feel it, and I can’t really convey that adequately, barring simply telling you that you have to feel it.

I suppose you should take all that as a disclaimer. I can’t promise you that I’m skilled enough with words to make you get why this moment hit me so hard (I can’t promise you that I even know for certain). But I think you’ll know where I’m coming from if you’ve read Bokurano. (By the way, if you do indeed get nothing else out of this post, get this: read Bokurano.)

Of all the children chosen to pilot the Zearth, Takami Komoda may be the plainest. She doesn’t seem to have any major complexes. Her dad isn’t so good at expressing affection, but he tries, at least; compared to the parents of some of the other kids, he’s veritably saintly. In fact, her plainness seems to be her biggest problem in life: she’s downright boring.

Like, yawn.

More than that, she has no passion for life. Or, rather, she has no interest in having a passion for life. Life is unreliable. She prefers the dependable world of literature to human interaction — which would have made a lot of sense to me when I was her age, I must admit. Growing up, she’s had a grand total of one good friend.

'Books don't betray you?' I don't know...

But by now, Maki’s turn at the controls of the Zearth has come and gone. Maki is dead. Komoda knows she’s next, and she knows acutely what that means.

And yet she doesn’t fight it. She’s afraid of death, but she’s prepared to die, and to die well, so the sacrifices of those who piloted the life-stealing, world-saving machine before her aren’t rendered meaningless.

She's taking it better than I would, I can tell you that much.

And from within the very depths of tragedy, the beauty of the world is made evident. This, to me, is what Bokurano is all about. This is perhaps what tragedy itself is all about. Tragedy invokes catharsis, that emotional blank slate — but how does that work, exactly? I suspect catharsis is little more complicated than the realization that, if such a thing as “bad” exists, so must such a thing as “good.” Catharsis is perhaps less of a wiping-clean than a balancing, a realignment of something within us, some obscure worldview-related cog that we tend not to think about much of the time. Bokurano scrutinizes this balancing process, going so far as to counter its own bad with good, its ugliness with beauty. And, in the end, it manages to be a very hopeful and even happy story.

And what an exquisite story it is.

This is only the first chapter of the Komoda arc, covering the time between Komoda’s designation as the next pilot and her being whisked away to sacrifice herself for the continued survival of the Earth. But to me it’s easily the most memorable; somehow it manages to affect me more profoundly than even the arc’s conclusion, which is itself rather intense. It’s the simplicity of it, I think, the simplicity of a girl faced with death who finally understands her place in the world. She achieves this understanding without congratulations and without fanfare. And yet it’s such a monumental achievement that, for me, this simple chapter is the emotional high point of a profoundly emotional story.

[Read the next moment here]