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Answerman - Holiday Madness Edition

Well that's a ball of assumptions, all of which are bogus.

Anyway, enough of that, I still want to get to the actual subject of moe; It's hilarious that someone can find depth and meaning in Hidamari Sketch but thinks K-On's just a waste of time. Sketch is purposely produced out of order just to prove how pointless each day is; A later season had them doing radio calisthetitics as a running gag just because the girls didn't have any else better to do. I don't know if it's a matter of someone not getting the joke or worse, thought it was a serious artistic choice. As for myself, I'll trade the whole Hidamari Sketch series for K-On's second season "summer dream" episode; Kyoto Animation at their Shaftiest {prior to Beyond the Boundary anway...}.

For example, the cuteness of the characters from Hidamari Sketch meshes with the overall light hearted feel of the show and helps me enjoy it just a little more than if they had been drawn more realistically. But with a show like K-On! which I didn't find that enjoyable the generic cuteness that permeates the show didn't appeal to me.

So, how many was that again?

Funny you should say that, considering Urotsukidoji sold more copies in the UK than most anime can ever hope to.

Is moe going away? No but they are running out of straight all girl ensembles 4-koma's to adapt.

It's clearly not when shows like Akazukin Cha Cha and even Card Captor Sakura were produced before the supposed "heydey" of moe.

I'd partly put the blame on this on Adult Swim and Toonami for giving a rather narrow view of the medium by cherry picking anime that aren't cute

Outlaw Star and Eureka Seven had "moeblobs" too.).

This is why the Asian markets outside Japan fare better than the Western counterpart.

And it seems to me that the questioner ignored other overused "genres" in the industry. What about the increasing number of fujoshi pandering shows featuring hyper sexualized boys engaging in suggestive situations (she cited KNK but ignored Free! hmm...) Too PC to hate on that?

Animegomaniac:

Quote:

Is moe going away? No but they are running out of straight all girl ensembles 4-koma's to adapt.

More importantly, casual fans in Japan are sick of it, too. It made money and still makes money for various companies involved, but it's hurting the industry's market share over there, because they got nothing else that most people want. It's like otaku Pokemon, in that sense.

walw6pK4Alo wrote:

Where do people get these silly ideas? Space Dandy isn't anything anti-moe, it appears to just be a rehash of Cobra with even more wackiness added in. It's not going to be your lord and savior of anime: Cowboy Bebop II. Even if it's a success, I kind of doubt it'll be anything that can shape the industry towards a new direction, anime's too interconnected with manga, visual novels, and light novels for those shows you don't like to not also be adapted. As long as semi-popular LNs continue to be published, so will adaptations be made from them.

Space Dandy has some moe characters too.(atleast to me). I think Moe is a feeling like "love".
And kind of fan service too based on the trailers.

Can we create a rule going forward that no-one can use the word "moe" in a non-ironic fashion without also providing a public statement on what they, personally, actually mean when they use the word?

Moe is specific to anime, and denotes the sexualization of young prepubescent characters.

Moe in a certain sense requires kawaii-ness, but kawaii-ness doesn't require moe-ness. Kawaii is a trait of japanese culture. It permeates every cultural expression, from print, to video, to anime, to films etc... I once came across a japanese insurance depliant telling you the reasons to get insurance. And in one of the pages you have a kawaii depection of a tsunami devouring a coastal community. Now tsunamis in real life are phenomenons that bring death and misery when they hit populated areas. And yet japanese like to use "cuteness" as a way to convey a depressing message.

Shiroi Hane wrote:

Can we create a rule going forward that no-one can use the word "moe" in a non-ironic fashion without also providing a public statement on what they, personally, actually mean when they use the word?

Most of the time anime fans confuse the terms kawaii and moe as if they were one and the same. Moe is specific to anime, and denotes the sexualization of young prepubescent characters. Moe in a certain sense requires kawaii-ness, but kawaii-ness doesn't require moe-ness. Kawaii is a trait of japanese culture. It permeates every cultural expression, from print, to video, to anime, to films etc... I once came across a japanese insurance depliant telling you the reasons to get insurance. And in one of the pages you have a kawaii depection of a tsunami devouring a coastal community. Now tsunamis in real life are phenomenons that bring death and misery when they hit populated areas. And yet japanese like to use "cuteness" as a way to convey a depressing message.

Uhh...no? Where the hell did you even get that?

please stop using "kawaii". Kawaii just means "cute", its not a term with any particularly special, hard to convey meaning.

Uhh...yes. 1000% yes. Moe is about the sexualization of young characters.
If you deny this, I have to think that you're either blind or watch anime with dark sunglasses on.

Please enhance your reading comprehension. I said kawaii (cuteness) is a trait of japanese culture in that it permeates all aspects of japanese culture. It is not something anchored to a cultural niche like moe is. And I cited an example of kawaii being used in printed material that had nothing to do with anime. Do you understand ? It's not that difficult.
Moe on the other hand is specific to anime, in that it builds upon characters that are kawaii but goes further by sexualizing them (mostly prepubescent characters expressed through the puni plush style). It doesn't matter wether the characters are 20, 30 or 40 years old. When they are being depicted as young prepubescent characters and the main object of these characters is to sexualize then you've got moe. Moe captures the fantasy of the viewer by sexualizing the character. Of course the viewer is going to feel all fuzzy and warm and feeling a need to protect this young innocent (really ?) character from the wrongdoings of other characters. But this feeling is a consequence of the sexualizing, it is not the cause.