Forum - View topicREVIEW: The Moe Manifesto
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Kougeru
 Posts: 5527 |
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Only thing that really sounded interesting about this book is the interviews with Japanese staff. Especially Jun Maeda.
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LavenderMintRose
 Posts: 168 |
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That is disappointing that it only talks about male fans/ female characters. As a female fan who likes moe male characters (and some finds some female characters moe too), I think that focus really limits the scope of the discussion though, because it feels like it's saying "There's only two kinds of anime- that or Cowboy Bebop/Princess Mononoke/Akira/etc." It also makes the concept of "moe" seem like it only exists in that one kind of person. If that's where the book's focus is, I find it hard to see how anyone who's bothered by moe, or considers themselves against moe, is going to view it any differently after reading this book. It seems like it would just confirm their views.
Having feelings for fictional characters doesn't just come in this one form. I think it would be particularly interesting - especially in terms of a "breaking gender walls" thing - to look at a male fans reacting to a cutesy moe show and compare it to female fans reacting to things like Attack on Titan and other military shows with fujoshi fandoms. Or to male fans' reactions to female characters in works with a traditionally male-focused style (like Bayonetta, for instance). Or, you know, LGBT fans' reactions to anything. Or you know, non-sexual affection for characters, because that is possible. Quite common, actually, but really, why talk about things if it's not sexual? Who could possibly be interested in that? The things about the earlier origins of proto-moe style designs might be interesting, though. |
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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Tagline's messed up;
This clause is also incomplete in the article itself. |
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Zac
ANN Executive Editor
 Posts: 7912 Location: Anime News Network Technodrome |
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Fixed. Weird. |
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BrianRuh
Posts: 162 Location: West Lafayette, IN, USA |
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Oops. Sorry about that.
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ChibiKangaroo
 Posts: 2941 |
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As long as moe remains a genre that is focused predominantly on older male otaku wanting to "protect and nurture" young, hapless and/or pitiful females, it will always remain a limited and controversial approach to anime, particularly given the sexual undercurrent of so much anime these days. That's not to say I don't like moe. I tend to enjoy cute character designs, so some moe stuff appeals to me, but that being said it is currently a heavily flawed approach and is very often utilized in such a crude manner that it deserves a lot of the criticism that it gets.
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Posts: 2231 Location: San Antonio, USA |
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Quick! Someone write a counter to this book called like "Moe: The Scourge of a New Generation" or "The Cult of Moe and how to protect your children from it!"
Moe literature is too one sided so far! I blame the publishing companies clearly all being biased toward 2d (I.e. Paper) |
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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I've got nothing against moe when it is defined as a feeling. Heck, I often feel moe towards anime characters, which manifests itself as wanting to give them a hug or tell them that everything will be okay. Yes, I know the characters are fictional but the feeling itself is very much real. I don't go seeking it out, but when it comes to me - and it can appear in shows as diverse as Watamote, Witch Hunter Robin and Natsume Yuujinchou - it does feel very nice and warm.
However, what makes me mad is the genre of titles that have cropped up whose existence is predicated on moe. More than cute-girls-doing-cute-things, and not just the feeling of moe as a possibly-important yet always incidental aspect, but a title whose main purpose is to artificially invoke the feeling of moe as often as possible. As Hope Chapman alluded to in a video review of a moe show (I regrettably have forgotten its name, though it might have been Air), moe series offer little else but a fake emotional experience that simply don't work without a deliberate "buy-in" on the part of the audience. Such titles will contort their plot, characters, themes, tone and artistic integrity in the sole pursuit of making the audience feel empowered. It's the "oh, this cute-but-nonthreatening teenage girl has the mental age of a toddler, but if I believe in our bond then I can heeeeal her" nonsense. It's tragedy porn designed so that through, the male insert character, the audience can pretend they not only have (and in the of VNs, pretend they have earned) a genuine emotional connection when it is nothing of the sort. Gack.
He is only applying a strict definition of moe as a feeling. Which is unfortunate - and also strange - given that he's interviewing industry figures who by commercialising moe have made it so much more than just a feeling. Like I said it is also a genre, not to mention a cover-all term for a wide collection of particular traits (i.e. certain character archetypes like glasses-moe, clumsy-moe, imouto-moe, et cetera). |
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Yttrbio
 Posts: 3652 |
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What is a "fake emotional experience"?
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walw6pK4Alo
 Posts: 9322 |
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I guess that because it's intended to be manipulative it doesn't count? Well guess what, all fiction has intent and was contrived because it's not real.
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dtm42
Posts: 14084 Location: currently stalking my waifu |
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For lack a of a more concise definition that I know of: an emotional experience/reaction you had because you deliberately sought it out and enabled it, and if you hadn't then it wouldn't have moved you. This is opposed to an emotional experience that genuinely moved you without you having to deliberately buy into it. It's way more than just wanting something to happen or being pleased that it did. It's when you are not only receptive towards but actually eager to accept whatever it is being sold to you that you'll feel the intended emotional response, even if what you saw on-screen was normally not sufficient to invoke that response. In other words the show gives you a scenario that is supposed to be funny or tragic or whatever but it's actually not, and yet you experience the intended response anyway because you wanted to. I'll give you a somewhat simple example from Clannad After Story. Minor spoiler, spoiler[Nagisa's illness (sigh) has caused her to miss so much time off school she doesn't have enough days to graduate and has to repeat her final year of high school again. In other words, she has to take a fifth year at a three-year high school. A completely stupid scenario and not how the education system works at all, because normally you'd get an exemption from the school (especially if you had already repeated your senior year once already . . . ). But nevertheless the show dutifully plays it up as this unfortunate and tragic thing that can't be helped, an ordeal that Nagisa will just have to suffer through.] spoiler[Only those people who are determined to experience sadness will actually see it as sad. The show told them that this is a sad event and so they'll project sadness onto a scenario that isn't genuinely sad, hence the fakeness of the emotional response. However, a normal viewer will call Nagisa's double-repeat of her senior year for the BS plot device it really is and not feel sad for something so brazenly artificial. (Not to mention misogynistic as well, but that's beside the point.)]
All stories manipulate their audience, or at least they try to. A romance wants the audience to experience the romantic mood, an adventure story tries to instill a sense of wonder and excitement, while a tragedy wants people to feel sad and contemplative. That said, there's a world of difference between a story that manipulates you into feeling something and a story that tells you to manipulate yourself into feeling something (and completely relies on you doing that for the story to work). Also, good fiction is not as contrived as you think it is. Say a writer can come up with a plausible scenario that spawns an internally-sound/cohesive plot. If they can then populate a fully-realised world with characters who act faithfully according to their characteristics yet can still change and develop, it stands to reason that the resultant story will grow organically from all those elements. Sure, the elements themselves are manufactured, but the actual story the viewer/reader experiences can avoid being contrived and actually be (or appear to be) natural. If however the writer artificially pushes for a desired end that isn't a natural result of the elements and of the earlier story, then we end up with an OreImo 2 situation where it enters "WTF am I watching" territory. |
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mewpudding101
Industry Insider
 Posts: 2206 Location: Tokyo, Japan |
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Mr. Galbraith was my teacher in my manga class last semester, but we mainly focused on older manga, so I might be interested to check this out when I have time. ^^ Good to hear it got a good review.
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Yttrbio
Posts: 3652 |
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It may seem strange to you, but a lot of people simply don't care if a show is "well-written," as you define it, or as anyone else defines it. They don't watch things because they feel an urge to judge a creator's talent, because it doesn't matter. It doesn't add to their life in any way. One group of people want something out of their entertainment consumption, another group provides that entertainment to consume. It is utterly bizarre for a third party to then stroll in and say "There's something wrong here!!! They're not doing it right!" |
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whiskeyii
 Posts: 2245 |
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As far as the Manifesto's definition of moe goes, I don't think I've ever felt moe towards any characters. Reveled in their successes and bummed during their failures? Yes. But I think I'm missing that key nurturing aspect. But whatever.
I'd kind of like to know if there's any interviews done by female creators of moe. I think that'd be really interesting, and I'd be curious if they reach similar conclusions about the nature of moe or not. (Inquiring minds want to know!) That said....that Toru Honda quote makes me a little uneasy. It feels very similar to that PR quote about Tomb Raider, and how they wanted you to "want to protect Lara". :/ I just have mixed feelings about both of those quotes. Though I would like elaboration/context on the "so-called reality" aspect of Honda's interview. The "so-called losers" bit I get; no one's *really* a loser, people just *think* that they are--but the reality part just confuses me. |
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Melanchthon
 Posts: 550 Location: Northwest from Here |
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The thing about moe is the term describes many things. There is the emotion of moe, which I see as a desire to protect, (although others experience it differently, which adds to the confusion), there is the artistic style of moe, which exists separately of moe (e.g. Shana might be drawn moe, I don't feel any moe towards her) and there is the moe plot device, the way story seeks to induce moe. Each off these can be entirely different and exclusionary. And then there is the fandom of moe, which is a group of like-minded individuals that adopt a tribal identity out of their moe-worship (quite similar to the tribal identities adopted by sports fans). And since moe is a very personal emotion, it makes it hard to nail down what creates moe from person to person. And since moe is complex, and this is internet, it's so much easier to strip down moe into a false dichotomy and use it as a baseboard to hurl invectives at each other.
That being said, and with the full discloser that I myself partake and enjoy traditional 'moe' shows, I think the moe emotion in a sexual sense is a regressive one, and often used in a misogynistic fashion. This is not to say moe itself is regressive, but the general application of weak girl that needs to be saved by strong man (or the one asexual man with a harim of cute girls) is.
Sigh. I find this argument completely absurd. There is nothing wrong with liking pulp fiction or harlequin romance, but that doesn't mean you have to accept bad writing. Look, I perfer low-brow beer over wine, but that doesn't mean, given a choice, I'm drinking fracking Bud Light. There are good, well-written harim shows, and slapstick comedies, and moe romances and slice-of-life. You don't have to accept crappy writing just to stick it to some straw man. |
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