Archetecture x Character Design: Sora no Woto, Qwaser
I wish I can show you pictures, because then I wouldn’t have to try to explain it with only words. Then again it might be easier to just be vague and simple. It’s the strongest!
It occurred to me when Ben over at Anipages mentioned SoraOto, and how the character animation and art “get in the way” of the background animation, that he might have meant it in a literal sense–like subtitles getting in the way of the OP or something. Further on he iterates the same complain you’ve probably heard several times by now about Sora no Woto.
While my position on the complain and the show is “wait and see, I think they’re setting us up,” that sort of first impression shared by Ben has run rampant. It’s gotten to a point where I think the anime is giving off those vibes as designed, and not because they are trying to force some moe down something or another. Why else could so many people agree on this? They are doing it on purpose; the show is setting up some kind of expectation.
It just doesn’t make any sense to think that a high profile Production A-1 production would get “how to do moe” wrong. Consider their prior works. I mean, if you want to do a moe show, you pick the source material that fits. You might also want to use a director who fits the job. Consider both the source material and the director. If we just look at the circumstantial evidence and also the story elements so far, it is almost obvious that Sora no Woto is going to pivot somewhere and “get serious.”
But it goes back to Ben’s point about something getting in the way. I feel that the generic-feeling characters and the character designs, while evoking probably the sort of feeling they were designed to do, makes difficult for people to enjoy the other aspects of the show. Part of it, perhaps, is out of the biases of those who would use the word moe or moeblob as a negative signifier. But at the same time it is a clashing aesthetics, against SoraOto’s beautiful, if lonely background art and setting.
This is where my experience with Seikon no Qwaser kind of make me take a second look. Qwaser is a visually modern and gothic affair. The opening may look generic shounen but the ending took a page out of Don’t Be Lazy with its senseless, music video inspired choreography (not to mention the seiyuu ensemble). The source material itself is dark, brooding, and (non)sensibly Japanese all the while. The character art is arguably moe-inspired, especially in Tomo’s case and the super-deformed segments. Ironically, the fact that it can afford that visual contrast between “normal” and “SD” suggests that there’s some kind of gap between serious and the not-quite-so.
I think the K-ON complaint goes to that point, perhaps unfairly: K-ON has SD mode and normal mode too, but it’s fairly hard to tell between the two. Sora no Woto, however, doesn’t go SD, yet it has all those SD signifier from Shuko the Owl to Kureha’s moments of tsun and dere. The end result, rather than something easy to understand viscerally, we get something that is off our expectation. In contrast, something like Qwaser is totally what we expect, and more.
This is really why I have a tough time faulting SoraOto, simply because as much of the baggage comes from us as it is from the show going against the grain on some of these expected visual cues. On top of the harsh contrast behind its luscious, highly-detailed background and the simple, if overly cute foreground character animation, the end result is probably too jarring for the casual Judge Judys out there.
And lastly, I used the word architecture although I didn’t really talk about it, but I think that is probably a better term than “background design.”
This Just In: The Internet Schemes to Let Everyone Know about K-ON Season 2
The second season of K-ON, a hot Japanese television series about a music club, has been confirmed on December, 30th during a live event at Yokohama, Japan. Little did the attendees of that concert know, it was just the beginning of a massive conspiracy being revealed.
The news of the second season of K-ON spread by word-of-mouth and using Japan’s extensive electronic and internet communication network as concert goers go online to affirmed of what they saw and heard on the show. TBS Japan’s website for the animated sit-com updated its graphic and reaffirmed the news. However, that was a trigger of something worse.
Cyber-investigators world-wide have been studying a newly-discovered botnet, a network of computers that are hijacked by malware or worm. While traditionally botnets are used to send spam messages, this new botnet, named Kado.3, not only send spam messages, but also compose viral marketing news posts about whatever is deemed the latest fad.
“You know all that chatter about Kanye West’s ‘Imma gonna let you finish’? Kado.3 was responsible for about 5-10% of the talk you see out there, mostly in the form of Twitter messages and pointless Tumblr posts,” said internet security expert Dr. Brian Conflick. Dr. Conflick is one of the first researchers who discovered the new bug, and what they saw might mark a new age in internet attacks.
“Kado.3 is smart enough to act completely autonomously and meaningfully compared to older botnets. Rather than just indiscriminately target its victims when spamming by generating email addresses randomly, Kado.3’s new design allows it to target specific individuals and access a wide variety of network types.” Dr. Conflict showed a real-life example in which a particular Twitter account was suddenly gaining thousands of followers within the matter of several hours. The Twitter account, undisclosed here to protect the privacy of the individual, was a musician who was already on Twitter for many months prior to the attack, and had only a few hundred followers at the time of the attack.
According to experts, like most modern botnets, Kado.3 will dial into pre-determined internet addresses to get software updates and instructions for further activities. Many of these internet addresses, as researchers have determined through reverse-engineering the botnet worm, originates from Japan. Further reverse engineering have revealed even more shocking effects.
“What makes Kado.3 incredible is that it can behave via triggers on the web, and they don’t have to be tied to these pre-determined update sites.” Dr. Conflick said. “We’ve discovered that certain fragments of code that passes through the infected computers’ web browsers can trigger a new set of behavior in Kado.3. It could be used to orchestrate a cascading attack in which the internet in general picks up these stray triggers innocuously, spread them around, but computers infected that consequently downloads the trigger will execute a new set of instructions, further spreading these triggers along the same transmission method that the infected computer was first infected. These triggers could be images. The first one we’ve found was a curious logo of some club that called itself ‘SOS.’ Thankfully from what we can tell, it did not trigger Kado.3 to become anything different, as if it was a test of some sort.”
What does this have to do with a Japanese TV show? Internet researchers discovered that a combination of the words and images of K-ON and its protagonist, Yui Hirasawa, as used by TBS’s website to announce the new season of the television show, is the next trigger of the Kado.3 worm. As expected, upon the first hours of the news breaking online, researchers detected a burst of activity of the Kado.3 botnet, causing an undetermined numbers of suspect blogs to suddenly parrot the news. Investigators are currently working on determining as to who could be behind this latest attack, even if it seems relatively innocuous.
“This is the biggest break we’ve had since discovering Kado.3,” James Torpi, a federal investigator working with various internet security institutions, described the developing situation. “Traditionally botnets are controlled via IRC or in the later cases, Twitter and other social networking sites. This is the first botnet that could be controlled from any plain website. It is of utmost importance that we get to the root of it and put an end to this new threat.”
[The above is fabricated, if you didn’t know.]
Year In Review: N-Squared List
Just like last year, I guess some things have not changed. This could be a reference.
Year In Review: Track List 2009 from #MALKeionbu
One thing I did recently was compile eighteen tracks cherry-picked anime music, and it results in a bunch of files that you can download (at your own peril). It represents a successful and experimental 26 weeks worth of activity for zzeroparticle’s MyAnimeList club, in which the participants discuss anime music. As I write, the club is on its merry way to week 33.
If you know me well enough you’d know music is my favorite niche within the fandom that is related to anime. Some cosplay, others fap to games, I attend Yoko Kanno’s concerts. In fact this may very well be why I am not big on manga: no music! And I go beyond that J-Pop or J-Rock stuff–I care also about anime songs and BGM.
The actual name that #MALKeionbu stands for is “Anime Music Piece of the Week club.” As you can see it isn’t really all that of a name, so the nickname is preferable IMO. It’s also no surprise it coincided with K-ON’s airing. I’ve already talked at some length about K-ON’s appeal from the strength of its source material, so I will not repeat it here. From another perspective, what we do at #MALKeionbu is precisely what Yui and the girls do at their club meets. It’s not serious business.
Still, it is like joining a club. I have to check the club site on a regular basis and listen to the entries when they are posted. I also opt to write and post my opinion each week, but that is optional. It’s another social circle, except these people shares this anisong fetish, and that’s always fun just being able to chat about things nobody pay attention to while watching anime.
Short of turning this into yet another recruit post, I will just tell you about the “best of” collection. Methodologically it is composed of the winning entries we’ve had from weeks 1 to 26. Members then can opt to rank the list, and I compile everyone’s preferences into a finalized track list by trimming it down to less than 80 minutes and arranging the ordering of the tracks. The gang helped put together a liner note file with the track names and credits, plus some notes.
Not bad for 3 weeks’ worth of work. I hope you enjoy it; it might very well be the weirdest set of 18 anisongs that you only know ~30-70% of. And I mean everybody would know 30-70% of it, regardless how unfamiliar or how expert you are with anisong! It’s the oddest thing. If you care to give it a spin, make sure you read the liner notes for some randomness!
Moe Loading
I have a few hypotheses about moe that I want to toss out there. They’re fun to think about so maybe this will be entertaining.
Throughout this post I will talk about Bayonetta as an example. Bayonetta is a relatively new video game out in Japan and soon in America, Europe and Australia. The title character (of same) is this tall, model-figure European(?) woman, with ankle-length black hair. She is a witch and she fights her enemies with guns akimbo (and more). If you ever played Devil May Cry you might find the concept familiar.
Moe is misunderstanding. I think before we do anything about moe we have to define it. But what is it? Before most of us were aware of the term, and definitely before almost all the bandwagoners, the Japanese were already debating hotly about what it is, and what attributes are associated with moe. Maybe we should take a clue from them…
Well, let’s take Yamakan’s answer for example. We can probably all agree to infer that the man had given it thought. He is both instrumental in creating what some call “moe” anime, and as someone who seems to fall into that kind of otaku demographic. If not, at the very least, he knows what makes otaku tick. It may be fair to say that his contribution to anime fandom both help to define moe and his works are also influenced by what is considered as moe, since they tend to be popular.
The man was unabashed during his Otakon 2009 visit a nary 5 months ago. Nonetheless, his answer to the question “what is moe” is basically the defensive answer given by many other creator-types for the press–it’s whatever you’re into.
Well, “if you like it it’s moe to you” is a fairly vague and broad answer, but let’s take a step further. Assume for a second it is an honest answer and not a PR “no comment” kind of answer, this must mean that the substantive descriptions of moe will run a gamut. Would it be fair to classify Shin Mazinger as a moe show using that definition? It certainly isn’t out of the question. How about Moetan? I think we all can agree. Hajime no Ippo? Sure. In fact, <insert your favorite thing> can be a moe show/thing/element/etc., for you. That is the kind of answer that Yamakan gave.
Of course, my favorite things are going to be different than your favorite things. So when I say Bayonetta the character is moe, you might think I’m talking out of my rear end, because what is moe to me is different than what is moe to you.
Moe is an aesthetic. Is Bayonetta moe to some people? Absolutely. As a game, it’s a stylish arcade beat-them-up/platformer. Students of John Woo’s school of cinematography might enjoy it. In fact, if we compare it to Devil May Cry, it is basically the “next version” to that line of games. People into DMC will enjoy it, I would safely guess. And surely you can safely guess that I am going to talk about Bayonetta the character right about now.
I don’t know if you know, but Japanese people’s sexual mores are different than many other cultural groups. I don’t know too many kind of giantess films (then again why would I?), but Japan is definitely a cultural outlet for that. In fact they made video games, anime, manga, and models(!) based on the idea of giant girls rampaging around in some city. Sometimes they only wear just a bikini, if that. It’s stuff of some people’s nightmares…and some people’s fantasies. It’s really odd, and it can also be really funny at times.
Here is where I mention that Bayonetta, the character, is ZOMGWTH tall. She’s not the height of apartment buildings, but some eager internet folks noticed how tall she seemed before the game’s release in Japan, and measured that she’s about, like, 10 feet tall, using promotional artwork. Japan is known for its cute visual aesthetics, but it is generally expressed through some kind of an ephebophilic appeal (for example). You know how it is, some cute girl that can be mistaken for a 8 to 14 year-old, but can be between a few days old to 100,000 years old (plot hole pending). But there is no 10-foot-tall Caucasian, adult woman that could channel that sort of aesthetic, 2D or 3D.
So let us move on to the other commonly known mode of defining what is moe–the aesthetic. I sort of described it as what is NOT Bayonetta, from above. It will definitely create a misunderstanding to talk about moe without separating these two ways of looking at the concept. When you read about moe as someone being innocent or worthy of being protected or asexual, you’re reading about the aesthetic side of it. On the other hand, it’s more confusing when you read about people talking condescendingly about moe, because they could be criticizing the aesthetic or the notion of anime that pander to specific groups of fans (the Yamakan definition).
Moe is more than an aesthetic. Here is where it gets interesting. We can take a poll at any given time, and see which anime or manga girls Japan’s otaku love best. For results, we will get a range of characters, each character with a set of attributes. Let’s say if you want to make a best-selling anime or manga, wouldn’t it be prudent to include some characters in your story that has these popular attributes? (Especially if the author him/herself also likes these things?) If you take that to the next logical leap, it means that the Japanese otaku-market will be filled with anime/manga/games with characters with these attributes. The actual methodology to determine what is popular can vary (I used a poll for example, reality is probably more crude), but in order to make stuff people like, creators will tend to stack the odds, so to speak, by loading on characteristics that please a specific demographic. It becomes some kind of feedback cycle that gets increasing specific as to how a work can cater to a specific category of fans.
[Thinking it through, it makes one thing clear about “harem” style stories (probably best typified by Love Hina). Late 90/early 2000 shows stack for odds by spreading out the odds instead of putting it in a focus category. This is why for about half of the decade we got shows that were “harem-feely” because you have all these characters that are quite different, and generally missing a lot of interpersonal chemistry once removed from the context of the protagonist. I think it’s a fair observation, maybe worth investigating.]
What does this mean? It means that the stuff a lot of otaku are into (ie., what is moe for them) are becoming a movement as seen in actual works (ie., moe anime). While it’s unclear if we can draw a line to define what the moe aesthetic is, a large category of shows that are similar share a large number of similar characteristics! It may not be a very rigorous similarity or overlap between all these shows that are aiming at the same otaku fanbase, but there is a similar vibe that many people can pick up, otaku or not.
Now, real criticism against “moe” to me means a criticism against this particular creation/marketing methodology. It’s not against the aesthetic. That’s silly–free speech and all, right? But at the same time, if we understand how this moe anime thing comes about, the term “fad” comes to mind because ultimately, what drives moe anime is the market. As long as there are people buying your favorite show to poop on, more of that kind of show will get made. But more importantly, as long as people are NOT making and buying the next best thing, there will be nothing to replace what is already proven popular. Thankfully, history shows that the next best thing will always come along, sooner or later.
And think about it. Bayonetta is DMC, the next generation. DMC originally is a fairly novel game, as it is first of its kind, in that very specific niche of 3D, style-based, platformer/beat-them-up. Now they slap some gun-touting, gorgeous babe on it and make it run on the next-generation consoles (and of course, making it better than ever in the process)… It’s only fitting of the times, right? Take what the market segment likes (in this case, as much as it is westerners as it is the Famitsu-4.0-hometown crowd) and slap it on a formula that we know that worked before. I just find it amusing that, being a fully Japanese game, Bayonetta (the character) is still carved out of well-known attributes that we can match from otaku shows. The Euro-giantess dark-haired goth-loli-ish witch. It’s both a compromise and a subversion, isn’t it?
So what is moe? It’s what the marketing gives to the fan, and the fan gives back in return something that’s kind of tangible, kind of not, more like something in the middle of a teleportation spell, Star Trek style. The marketing calls it that, labels things with it, and the rest of us accept it as a label, not sure what it means other than how it conjures meaning like what’s found within some bizarre Bermuda Triangle of otaku interests. It’s no wonder people debate it to no end and the likes of Yamakan retreat to some safe answer to make better use of his time.
[Thanks, SDS]
Corollaries:
Let’s take a side tour of casualties. The reason why you and I even care for the moe aesthetic is because it is popular, and it has become iconic. We see it pretty often. It’s gotten to the point that shows that aren’t concerned about moe would insert these things for one reason or another. Heck, it’s gotten to the point that you have an anime about moe, not just using what commonly classified as moe to sell, nor just referring to it on the 4th wall. Moe has got some kind of meaning, even if we might disagree on what it means.
But in the process there are some victims. I feel this is definitely the case for K-ON simply because it is strongly associated with that moe aesthetic, even when K-ON doesn’t particularly care for it. If you like cute teenage girls doing cute things and discovering the joy of playing in their first band, making music together, what’s wrong with that? Yet now it’s going to be associated with some market-generated popularity complex that unnecessarily adds to the overall context of the show. It’s probably not to K-ON or Kakifly’s benefits.
It’s probably a good lesson on avoiding unintentional social contexts? While I think K-ON does exist and makes the most sense in the context of 21st century moe-filled anime and manga scene, ultimately it’s still just a 4-koma manga and a matching adaptation about some high school girls. Maybe it lay on things too thickly.
Perhaps why I’m raising this point is that I think despite the bad rap moe-based show can have, to do well in that space creators still have to satisfy all elements that makes a show do well in just about any other space. In fact, my gut feeling says that the space is overcrowded right now. You can’t make a crappy thing sell just by slapping moe-riffic girls of all kinds on a title. I don’t read Negima, but I think its consistent readership can tell you better than I could why it is as successful as it is. Writing it off only as moe-laden junk is doing you a disservice.
Maybe people are just moe about battle manga, or koshien manga, or murder mysteries. /shrug.
Trying to define moe is a trap. Because you can’t really do it beyond a personal context, so unless you’re planning to do it empirically (would be pretty awesome if you do), it’s just much ado about nothing. It’s partly why I’m against writing about moe myself, and this post is probably written against my better judgment. The subject does make great troll bait however. It’s a much more preferable form of “your favorite anime things suck” if we reduce the formula further.
Database animal sees, database animal does. I think it’s quite the “database animal” behavior to talk about moe in a deconstructive way. Not going to name names, but it’s always laced with irony when I read discussions about this kind of stuff, as an attempt to point-and-laugh through systematic deconstruction. That is the wrong approach. The correct approach is more akin to this as we know nobody is taking it seriously, and those who do are part of the gag. I think if I really cared, I would have written an Onion-style piece. It’s hard because I’m not sure which way you would have to yank the perspective to make it sufficiently absurd for all parties involved, as the matter is not that cut and dry. Well, on second thought, it probably isn’t very difficult. HMMMM.
A part of the ambiguity about moe is that in reality moe hate has nothing to do with otaku. Etymologically, moe refers to a feeling, and last checked most humans have them. It’s only in the context of marketing stuff that panders to otaku that moe makes sense as a criticism, but then it’s a criticism toward the industry, and not to the fans. How can you really put on a straight face while blaming companies for making things people love? Did they miss the memo about the whole “lol animu is a marketing thing etc.”? I mean if I really love honey, nobody is going to call Haagen-Dazs moe pandering POS if they bring back their honey vanilla ice cream next summer, save for the most extreme of purist food snobs. Well, I guess that’s the kind of people that are raising a ruckus here too? That Onion article idea looks better than ever!
But then you have people point and say “Eew look at all the gross things on the internet!” as a way to justify why moe is bad. Wait, is this a valid counterargument? That there are gross people out there? Really? Well I guess I don’t have to write that Onion-style article if it’s already being written by itself! This is almost reminiscent of an exchange I had years ago with good o’ Avatar, about why industry people don’t want to have a big web presence (despite it was commercially foolish not to at the time IMO), because they have to deal with trolls, stupid fans who don’t have a clue how things work, people who have a cause (LOL dub or no sale LOL), and people with an axe to grind. Well, that’s a fair point, but it would be silly to say that everyone on the net falls into one of those categories, or even a large majority of these folks. I mean, for every gaggle that you can put in your log of anecdotes of “Bad Fans” there are probably a dozen more Subs or DotDashes out there, fighting the good fight. (No reasons why I singled those two out besides being level-headed people.) I think ADV/Section23 is relevant here because looking at their catalog, a lot of that stuff is blatantly the kind of shows that perpetrate the moe aesthetic, no matter how you define it. The Avatar man has reasons to fear, perhaps.
I think at some point in the discussion it feels like ultimately, we’re playing elitist on what kind of mind porn people are allowed to watch and like. It just has a bad vibe to it. I guess you could make a good case why (mind) porn is bad for you, but good luck tilting at that windmill.
One thing I always wanted to discuss (and it’s not so much a corollary) is how marketing through moe increase and change the composition of anime adaptations. Far most anime today are some kind of cross-market, media-mixed marketing scheme. “Selling toys” is the simple way to put it, but it’s more so “selling manga and novels and related IP merchandise.” It has all to do with how the print industry is still kind of the base line over in Japan. I think if a particular “moe oriented” title can guarantee an additional x copies sold if an 13 episode anime is produced, presuming it doesn’t become the next Saki and not the next show nobody cares about (ie., an average series), then there’s a gap where it becomes a good “bicycle” to churn out a stable number of anime with similar elements, based on similar titles, and it will give a steady cash flow. Well, even if one or more titles bomb, other titles have a chance to become a hit and recoup those losses. Is the industry overly reliant on these bicycles? Are there other bicycles that may be better or similar, that nobody is riding, because certain allegedly moe-invoking elements were in vogue earlier this decade?
