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What do you think of moe?

abunai wrote:

I see it more as a post-war phenomenon. I have seen "cute" items that are at least 40 years old.

Yeah, of course - the question is whether or not, prior to the 1980s, "cute" was more predominant in Japan than in, say, the US, Germany or France. I was taking it as a given that there were cute pop cultural elements in Japan during that time, just as there were everywhere else in the developed world.

Quote:

Yes and no. The few older Japanese fans I've spoken with who don't "do moe" tend to express a certain irritation with the moe shows -- based not on their content in any way, but on the fact that they have displaced the "real anime" (by which, if questioned, they usually mean Gundam).

I hear different things from different people (i.e. you and Tempest) so I can't really make a judgement. Certainly Miyazaki and Kon seem less than impressed with the phenomenon.

My point was that cute and moe are not synonymous and neither is the reaction to them. Do you disagree?

Quote:

I simply don't see how you can rubric Yotsubato! as a moe title in any way. You might as well argue using Calvin and Hobbes as a moe title. If you want to argue this line of thought, you'll have to come up with a better example.

Well, you're certainly more in the know about such matters than I am but I have seen Yotsuba&! (and AzuDai) called moe on more than one occasion. Jason Thompson, for example, refers to both titles as moe in his book. It would appear that informed people can disagree about such things.

You started out in this thread by hectoring and verbally bullying anybody who took the discussion in directions you didn't wish it to go, regardless of whether or not their posts violated any rule.

Later, you began to threaten pretty much anybody who crossed your path with a ban, even when their posts were mild enough that they would have attracted no mod attention whatsoever in a thread on pretty much any other subject (whilst simultaneously ignoring decidedly uncivil posts from at least one pro-moe poster).

Finally, you moved on to outlining rules that you must know full well would be unworkable if applied across these boards and that seem to have been quite deliberately designed to stifle the voice of anybody with a view contrary to your own - as Goodpenguin has so eloquently detailed in earlier posts.

The problem is, of course, that you have an active interest in the direction of the thread and a desire to participate in the conversation but, unlike Tony K. and Zalis116, you refuse to take off your moderator hat whilst so participating.
Essentially you want to be Team Moe's centre forward whilst simultaneously reserving the right to be the referee of the match.

I am an anime fan. I watch pretty much everything in the medium that I can lay hands on, and I enjoy most of it -- including moe. In general, I find most moe shows to be shallow and superficial, for the simple reason that moe is the "flavour of the month" in recent anime production, and the many moe fans out there are eager (and largely uncritical) consumers of anything that falls within this ambit (as is the case with other highly-focussed fan groups, like mecha fans, shounen fans, shoujo fans, etc.). However, this market-driven dynamic does not in any way invalidate moe as a part of the total anime experience. The same dynamic has affected other parts of the anime spectrum before, and will apply to others in years to come.

All of it, bad or good. Squeaky-clean or sexually-charged. Sugary kid stuff or dark adult nastiness.

Doesn't that conflict with what you said first?

Oh and by the way I didn't just mean female moe when I started this. What are your thoughts on male moe? I guess it would be shota most of the time right.

ikillchicken wrote:

Quote: The works of Keith Haring are not to everyone's taste, nor does everyone think "I love Lucy" is worth remembering -- but they have their individual merits and fighting over their relative "worth" is absurd. You might as well declare a hatred for pears and people who eat them, because you happen to like apples. OK but you can only stretch the whole "to each his own" and "everything has it's own merits" so far. There is plenty of things that I don't personally care for but can still recognize their merits. I don't really enjoy classical music, it's just not for me. I still see where some of it is excellent. There are objective standards of quality through which something can be recognized as good or not regardless of personal taste.

"Objective" standards of quality, eh? By the "objective" standards of quality of the 1300s, counterpoint (the mainstay of what we now call "classical" music) was the "music of the Devil", and something that good Christians would never mess with. Is that the "objective" standard you want me to apply?

"Objectivity" does not mean what you obviously think it means. The way you apply the word, you seem to think it means the same as "society's consensus".

To say that something is "objective", it must be measurable and (to a reasonable extent) invariant. You can measure hours of sunlight per year according to a standard of measurement, and that's an objective value, but speaking of "objectivity" in the context of art is absurd.

By all means, speak of "societal consensus" (being careful to make it clear which society you are establishing as your baseline), or of "commonly-held subjective opinions" (again, making it clear which population holds these opinions in common), but don't abuse poor old "objectivity" in this way.

Yeah but you added that "to a reasonable extent". You had to because nothing can truly be proven definitively invariant and factual. Whether something is objective simply depends on what standard of reasonableness you want to apply. Essentially, true objectivity is an impossibility. The only possible way to still use the term is in a relative manner.

Within the context of a conversation about anime, I think it is reasonable to describe the general standards of quality in writing, storytelling, character development, animation, music, etc. as "objective" because it is relatively certain compared to to the alternative of what specific genres of anime one personally enjoys.

I thought that was clearly enough implied that I didn't need to clarify it by explaining all this. Moving past these semantics, it comes back to my original point. The merits of traditional anime such as writing, storytelling, character development, animation, music, etc. are apparent enough. Regardless of personal taste or preferences, what is the merit of moe?

I am an anime fan. I watch pretty much everything in the medium that I can lay hands on, and I enjoy most of it -- including moe. In general, I find most moe shows to be shallow and superficial, for the simple reason that moe is the "flavour of the month" in recent anime production, and the many moe fans out there are eager (and largely uncritical) consumers of anything that falls within this ambit (as is the case with other highly-focussed fan groups, like mecha fans, shounen fans, shoujo fans, etc.)

The more problematic question is whether the title is moe. I find that it is. -in relationship to Gunslinger Girls

A major part of the story element for this series asks the viewer if these girls are still even human or not (as opposed to nothing more then trained expendable killers) , and explores if even the handlers themselves can see these girls as nothing more then tools, or if they still some how manage to see them as human beings.

If a girl is unable to do her duties to a satisfactory level, which includes working with and protecting her handler, they are deemed a failure and scrapped.

We are shown two cyborgs who fit the description you provided. spoiler[Claes, whose handler was killed and who can't be bonded to another handler, ] and spoiler[Angelica, whose memory loss indisputably affects her ability to perform a mission in the later episodes.] Neither was scrapped. The former was used as an experimental subject in testing limitations of cyborg parts, and the latter is hospitalized for long periods of time. They are otherwise treated exactly the same as the functional cyborgs.

So much for factual corrections. Now, unto the extrapolations.