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To be honest, I think the percentage of good moe vs. bad moe is the same as the percentage of good harem vs. bad harem or good yuri vs. bad yuri, so I don't really see anything worth celebrating here personally. Personally, I feel as long as all of the genres are represented equally, it's all good.

I have always been a moe fan but I do think the industry went overboard pandering to it Not that I was personally complaining.
I've bought moe style anime long before it was the fad though so dont blame me for it Smile

Geez, what are some of you guys getting so mad at him for? He's just making observations... and they make sense!

The male lead tends to do better with both genders of anime fans, particularly if it's a strong male lead. There are exception shows lke Haruhi or K-On, or back in the day it was Escaflowne which will do well and garner fans based on the cast of characters and virtues of the main character and the overall appeal of the show.

As an older guy who's typically into sci fi and more serious themed and action anime, I enjoyed K-On, and even stuff like Strawberry Marshmallow. It was cute and different, and maybe as a guy growing up I imagine what it's like to have a family of my own and having children, especially a cute daughter... so maybe these shows appeal to me for recalling my own childhood escapades and also imagining what it would be like to experience watching my own children grow up and the precocious things they'd do. Perhaps the majority of male fans of such shows can also relate. Not all of us watch these things because we're supposed closet pedophiles.

Thanks for your words Ken.

Confused

Hmmm...

I saw Moe and 'harem" in the same thread. I thought it was the same, or they often meld storyline wise? Or is it just an art style? So I looked up the word and...I guess I know what Ken is talking about.

Honestly, I don't have a problem with lady leads. Wink

(CLAYMORE!) Cause in many shows, when male are leads, sometime the heroines are annoying.And my sensei needs more awesome work. I also liked Maria-sama for some strange reason. The Yuri element? How it was composed? The music? Because I didn't find it over the top cute, but touching.

Things like LUCKY STAR and its style seems to pervade across anime/manga.

Also, I seem to associate Moe with a lot of Pop music.

If indeed this does signify the end of particular character types and scenarios being frequently employed within anime, I can only express my gratitude to those who crafted the numerous delightful titles that showed these traits.
Whilst many efforts were wasted in producing the less engaging of series engineered to evoke a moe response, the better of such shows were, I say, a worthy end result of the industrial emphasis placed upon them.

As many have noted however, one can remain reasonably dubious about the accuracy of the claims made in this article. The trend that is set to replace the "moe boom", whatsoever it is, has yet to eclipse the current popularity of a certain show already mentioned within this thread.

Personally there are Moe series I like, But I do agree having the genre/cliche/trope, whatever you want to call it, signifigantly lessened would indeed be a good thing. Now I admit it, I like cute things.....But theres so much bloody moe out there today, its enough to rote your teeth out twice over. I would not mind at all if we only saw 1 or 2 moe shows a year..instead of 200, lol. Laughing

4nBlue wrote:

bahamut623 wrote:

As for point 3, I found Marimite to be oddly compelling. I watched it because it was on Anime Network On Demand, but I wasn't expecting to get as into it as I did. Part of what I like about it is that it's sincere. It doesn't have the ulterior motive I usually associate with moe. It's about a group of girls and their drama, not a group of girls and their drama and hopefully we'll get a brief glimpse of their panties.

Marimite is a shoujo series, it's meant for teenage girls.

Somehow I don't think this can be entirely true, since:

1. Many of Marimite's seasons aired in the late night time slots that only otaku watch.
2. S3, the OVA season, was only released as ￥ 9,240 per single episode DVDs. This sort of distribution doesn't make any sense to sell to teenage girls; this is how you sell anime to otaku.
3. In Toranoana's doujinshi ranking, Marimite had more doujinshi than series like Lucky Star, Fate/Stay Night, Queen's Blade, and Bakemonogatari.

I'm certain that there is a cross-over demographic with girls, but I don't think it's primarily for them. Based on how the show has been aired and distributed, it clearly has a huge otaku focus.

I like Moe but nothing ever really keeps the same level of popularity always.

einhorn303 wrote:

4nBlue wrote:

bahamut623 wrote:

As for point 3, I found Marimite to be oddly compelling. I watched it because it was on Anime Network On Demand, but I wasn't expecting to get as into it as I did. Part of what I like about it is that it's sincere. It doesn't have the ulterior motive I usually associate with moe. It's about a group of girls and their drama, not a group of girls and their drama and hopefully we'll get a brief glimpse of their panties.

Marimite is a shoujo series, it's meant for teenage girls.

Somehow I don't think this can be entirely true, since:

1. Many of Marimite's seasons aired in the late night time slots that only otaku watch.
2. S3, the OVA season, was only released as ￥ 9,240 per single episode DVDs. This sort of distribution doesn't make any sense to sell to teenage girls; this is how you sell anime to otaku.
3. In Toranoana's doujinshi ranking, Marimite had more doujinshi than series like Lucky Star, Fate/Stay Night, Queen's Blade, and Bakemonogatari.

I'm certain that there is a cross-over demographic with girls, but I don't think it's primarily for them. Based on how the show has been aired and distributed, it clearly has a huge otaku focus.

Except for the fact Marimite is published on Shueisha's Cobalt magazine which is CLEARLY a shoujo magazine aimed for girls. It just so happens the Japanese male otaku ate this up in the long run.

Heck, I wouldn't be surprised that a lot of the moe slice-of-life hits its stride when Marimite became popular (which in turn gave birth to lots and lots of new yuri titles and magazines).

But... but... but... uguu!!! Laughing

Last edited by Wetall on Wed Aug 25, 2010 3:14 pm; edited 1 time in total

Eh, moe is dying? Male characters are no longer appearing?

He's obviously ignoring all those eroge/bishoujo games that are still being sold in the Japanese market right now.

Additionally, I think he forgets the fact that moe isn't supposed to be about some male character in a title falling in love with one or more of the females, it's supposed to be all about the audience feeling some sort of adoration for or falling in love with one or more of the females. Even if you take the male out of these sorts of titles, you still get all those moe-moe otaku falling head over heels for their female characters. The act of leaving out the male character only takes out the middleman--Instead having the title project its "moe" through scripted events where a female character falls in love with a male character, it leaves it up to the otaku to imagine themselves in situations where they're in love with these sorts of female characters, which then in turn fuels the popularity of such characters, as well as inspiration for all those doujin works.

So what if yuri becomes more prevalent? Even if males aren't in the title per se, since when did guys ever dislike lesbians to begin with? If anything, taking the male out of the equation might discourage females; Not every girl likes the idea of girl-on-girl love, be it imagined or real, you know.

einhorn303 wrote:

4nBlue wrote:

Marimite is a shoujo series, it's meant for teenage girls.

Somehow I don't think this can be entirely true, since:

1. Many of Marimite's seasons aired in the late night time slots that only otaku watch.
2. S3, the OVA season, was only released as ￥ 9,240 per single episode DVDs. This sort of distribution doesn't make any sense to sell to teenage girls; this is how you sell anime to otaku.

I wasn't aware of that. The first series aired early in the morning and I remember reading that the producers were surprised that the show had male viewers.

einhorn303 wrote:

3. In Toranoana's doujinshi ranking, Marimite had more doujinshi than series like Lucky Star, Fate/Stay Night, Queen's Blade, and Bakemonogatari.

I checked Toranoana's doujinshi rankings, only 3% of the Marimite doujinshi in 2008 was porn and in 2009 only 6%. Compared to that 34% of Lucky Star doujinshi was porn, for FSN 39 % was porn, for Queens Blade 94 % was porn and for Bakemonogatari 79 % was porn in the 2009 ranking. You do know that most doujinka are females? The large number of non-pornographic works seems to point at female fanbase, or male fanbase who don't want to see the the characters having sex.

einhorn303 wrote:

I'm certain that there is a cross-over demographic with girls, but I don't think it's primarily for them. Based on how the show has been aired and distributed, it clearly has a huge otaku focus.

It's a shoujo series with cross-over appeal to otaku like Precure, expect Precure was aimed at both demographics from the start, while Marimite existed in book form for five years before the anime brought it a large number of male fans.

Edit: BTW in 2009 ranking 83% of Precure doujinshi were porn.

Dblitzer wrote:

Teriyaki Terrier wrote:

And if Ken really thinks what he has said, maybe (hopefully) moe will eventually disappear or stopped being made all together.

Dang, you don't like a (genre, style, trope, whatever the hell name we want to use for it) so you think it shouldn't exist?, that's pretty self-centered. I mean i don't like shows that have never ending fights but i don't hope for their existence to cease

It's pretty simple really, shows like K-On will show that are quality moe (understand, quality as defined by the typical fanbase for these types of shows) have a niche to sell to, and i don't see that niche disappearing any time soon

on the other hand we'll see a decline in the number of shows that attempted the [genre/style/trope/whatever] and did badly at it and we should see a decline of unrelated genre's who attempt to force moe into their shows as it gets viewed as less and less of a selling point

this should hopefully lead to a diversification of the market as a whole which is at least a start to dealing with some of the problems in the industry (Who am i kidding, they either won't diversify or instead we'll get a bunch of different types of shows that are still generic as hell and not that good xD)

If it's going to stop, it's going to stop no matter what I or anyone else states. But unfortunately, I know it won't go away any time soon. It's not that I have anything against the genre in itself, it's the messages the shows sometimes reinforce.

Such as gender stereotypes and how the show is perceived by media. Frankly, I don't care what others watch, but I rather watch a show that is creative and at least somewhat original. Most of the moe shows I've looked at or later watched weren't that way for the most part.

Of course, if yuri is in and amongst the next big thing, there better be something else alongside it, since it is well established that yuri anime runs in a two-year upswing / downswing, up in odd numbered years, down in even numbered years.

So even if it took up some of the slack next year, there'd have to be something else for 2012.

4nBlue wrote:

The first series aired early in the morning and I remember reading that the producers were surprised that the show had male viewers.

Heh heh, I yeah think einhorn reflexively jumped to explain the standard late-night anime profit system, but the situation with MariMite is a little more complex than the "book with large teenage audience gets cartoon aimed at adults"-type adaptations like Shakugan no Shana and such.

Einhorn's right about the OVAs, though. Not many teenagers can afford to buy those, though I don't know how rental fits into the picture. I'm not sure if he specifically meant male otaku as opposed to female otaku (though his contrasting "otaku" with "teenage girls" rather than just "teenagers" does sound that way).

The general point would be: most late-night anime and OVAs, due to their main profit coming from expensive DVD/BD sales, are aimed at adults who can afford to buy them, even if the source material was aimed at teenagers. (And being an adult in Japan who still likes cartoons outside of prime-time sitcoms makes you an "otaku" to a lot of people. Triply so if you're actually buying them.)

But MariMite isn't the best example of such a property.

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