In the weeks following the Kill La Kill (KLK) finale, I’ve seen a lot of people weighing in on the show. Given it’s popularity, over-the-top theatrics, and symbol-heavy plus textually-dense narrative, this isn’t anything too surprising. I really liked the show, and it’s inspired a lot of really cool discussion around the anisphere. People generally have a wide range of opinions on any given show, and it’s been fun seeing all the different ways people have experienced KLK.

That said, I’ve heard a lot of refrains that have been bothering me a little bit, which go like:

• “Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann (TTGL) was just done better…”
• “I couldn’t really relate to the characters, so I just never got into the story…”
• “The show was thematically incoherent, so I’m not sure what was the point…”
• “It was really entertaining, but I didn’t feel emotionally invested…”

And so on. All of these are taken as criticisms of the show and are viewed as negative qualities. Now, I’m not going to debate that they can’t be taken as (very valid) criticisms of the show, because they can. However, criticisms have to come from somewhere, and it is my belief that there is a big difference between critiquing a show from what you want it to be vs. what it wants to be. And, in my opinion, this difference is key in teasing out how exactly we should be looking at KLK. I feel like many people have been viewing the show colored by beliefs that this was supposed to be similar to FLCL or TTGL, with a central, tight narrative centered around a “coming of age” story that deals with all the issues of growing up (through high school fights and saving the world from total destruction, of course), when in reality this is not what the show intends.

Instead, I think the show is trying for something different, and thus should be viewed quite differently. Instead of being thematically centered around the “coming of age” narrative, it instead uses the coming of age story as a vehicle for other ideas and social commentary. Instead, KLK should be viewed as more like a superhero movie that is a cross between TTGL, FLCL, and some of Imaishi‘s more recent works like Dead Leaves and Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt (PSG). This key distinction, which I believe KLK actually tries to make clear, then fundamentally changes how we should be viewing (and consequently judging) the show.

So: what is KLK, and what is it trying to say?

Note: This is by far my longest post, clocking in at ~8500 words. I’ve tried to keep everything clear and coherent, but as you can imagine with anything this length things can get messy.

Before I get to KLK though, let’s talk a little bit about criticism, since it really matters here.

Note: I might use the terms {show, story, text} and {interpretation, reading, criticism} interchangeably. Hopefully it’s not too confusing.

Critiquing Criticism

From what I’ve seen so far, I’d say most criticism can be divided into two categories: “subjective” and “objective”. “Subjective” criticism is when people interpret (and consequently critique) a show based on what they want to view it as, regardless of what the show seems to be trying to portray itself as. You throw away unnecessary information and focus on the reading that is most relevant to you. As an example, let’s take Naruto. To one person, the story be a narrative about social acceptance; to another, it’s really about the difficulty of dealing with talent; to another, it’s the difficulties of becoming an adult; to another, it’s a story about overcoming loss; to another, it’s a story about the meaning and value of friendship; to another, it’s about ancestry and familial/societal duties. Although it’s a typical “coming of age” story, many dedicated fans come away with very different viewpoints on what the story actually means.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with viewing a show this way, because this is how people derive meaning from what they consume: we feel connected to the narrative, get in touch with ourselves, and explore new ideas. In the process, we continually try to incorporate what we’ve learned and “better” ourselves as individuals. This is a beautiful thing that everyone does. However, when critiquing something from this viewpoint (or, alternately, trying to recommend a story to someone else), this type of reading can pose problems. What if someone feels differently than you about how to view a show? Then maybe the elements you thought worked really well and that make a lot of sense to him were wasteful and annoying. Maybe you even had polar opposite readings, which can often happen when dealing with themes like “effort vs. talent”: is X element a defense of hard work and persistence in the face of adversity, or a cynical commentary on how to get used to the fact that there will always be people better than you? Or was the real point that you should attempt to go beyond this simple dichotomy in the first place and start looking somewhere else? While this type of reading is fine for personal fulfillment, it tends to pose problems when discussing stories with others.

This inherent problem with subjectivity motivates a move towards “finding common ground”, and is the basis for “objective” criticism. Objective criticism, in it’s most basic form, assumes that this ground must exist somewhere. It moves the discussion from reading shows based on how you want them to be viewed and tries to view shows based on how they should be viewed. These two viewpoints are not mutually opposed to each other. Since we each exhibit biases in how we view things, true objectivity is a myth; on the other hand, there is usually some basis in the show for how people tend to view them (people tend to latch onto things rather than fabricating whole narratives outright), and so you can’t disregard those either. Objective criticism then seeks a way to combine these two elements together, taking the small “snippets” that people latch onto and build them up into some overarching consistent framework. The project of building this framework then starts to become more systematic: look at all the elements in a show and how they work together and try to use them to build up a model for how we should be looking at things. After you’ve established this common ground that people can agree upon (because anyone can do this and argue about how it’s done), you’ve established some grounds for objectivity.

The question, however, then becomes how to view such a project. Or, in other words, how much information you should be using to build up this “objective” reading. Are you limited to information about the internal story, such as the events that take place and the characters themselves? Or can you broaden your purview to include the “text” itself (aesthetics, dialogue/writing, etc.)? How does symbolism and imagery relate to “themes” or overarching motifs? And can/should you try and incorporate authorial “intent” into this framework? And so on.

How people answer these questions determine how they wish to construct such a framework. For some, these questions are fundamentally answerable, and really come down to questions of “taste”. As you can’t really “draw a line” between what should inform a reading and what shouldn’t (including emotional engagement and other personal biases!), you shouldn’t try to. According to this “subjectively objective” view of criticism, since we can’t really come up with an ultimate objective set of values to inform these “objective” frameworks, all readings and critiques become somewhat equally valid.

However, most don’t see this fundamental failure to construct an objective set of values as a fundamental failing of criticism that makes all readings equal. Instead, this is just another manifestation of the inherent unattainable nature of objectivity — we can still forge forward by doing our best to be objective, which just means we just have to establish some set of values that we can all agree upon as “fair” interpretation. Unfortunately for these “strictly objective” critics, establishing such a set of values is far from easy, as we each have our set set of biases that tends to color our judgments (for instance, I tend to be biased towards the “abstract” in media, which affects how I perceive shows).

This failure to come to a consensus on values — on how much “the consumer”, “the producer”, and “the text” play into any given reading and how they all work together — is by far the biggest source of disagreement between criticisms of the same show. Often, critics fully agree on the elements actually present in each show and what they’re meant to be interpreted as — the problem is ultimately judging how well the show does at delivering on these things.

Besides a failure to agree on a core set of values, there are other pitfalls to this type of methodology. The biggest one is the risk of over-interpreting things: once it becomes permissible to use outside information to try and put a show in context (as well as a wider array of elements within a show), you run the risk of again reading your own narratives into the show. For (somewhat) recent examples where anime bloggers might be guilty of this sort of thing, we can look to discussions on the new Eva 3.0 movie, light novel (LN) adaptations, and Nisekoi. This type of thing becomes particularly problematic in a show as textually complex as KLK, which will come up later.

Before continuing, I want to point out one thing: these types of interpretive stances are more than just abstract theories, but also ways in which fans interact with media. This whole discussion about what quantifies criticism is both important as an abstract debate, but also because it determines how much you enjoy shows. As fans, our viewpoints and tastes color what we watch and how we receive it. And if a show seems to be in conflict with some of our personal biases, we don’t really like it. There are two ways around this sort of dilemma: go the route of the “subjective” critic so that the show becomes what you want, or change your point of view so you can watch the show on its own terms. I’m not advocating for either (because everyone is somewhat entitled to feel how they want about what they consume), but just pointing out that these types of thinking can have major impacts on how we view things. For me personally, I’ve found that following the latter piece of advice has led me to enjoy more media (as a “fan”) while also becoming more critical of it (as an “critic”).

I also really want to emphasize that I’m not telling you how to watch anime. Everyone is entitled to consume media however they want, and there is no intrinsic “better” way to do things when it comes to trying to watch anime. As Froggykun has recently argued, there is no such thing as an “elitist” anime – it’s an entirely a socially constructed ideal. Similarly, when looking at and criticizing shows, you’re justified in having whatever opinion you want, because it all depends on what you actually want when you’re criticizing a show. This isn’t meant to be a “STAHP GUYZ UR DOING IT WRONG” type of post, even though it could easily be read that way. Instead, what I’m saying is that if you believe in some idea like “objectivity” in criticism, you should try and do your best to make sure enough people can understand where you’re coming from. And hopefully, even though everyone has their own biases, you can come up with a framework that people can agree on so you can look at shows from a similar perspective: at least getting a consensus on the elements present in a show and how they work together, even if you end up disagreeing with someone else how you feel about them. That’s always a good thing to strive for, right?

In ∑: Even though you can’t really be completely objective when you critique something, if you like the idea then you should still try because it matters.

Advocating for a “Fair” Way to Criticize

All this aside, however, I think that there is a way forward for the strictly objective critics – there, in essence, a “best” (or “fairest”, whichever you prefer) interpretation for any given text. Here’s my attempt to define this:

An interpretation that incorporates the most information from/about a text into a coherent, falsifiable narrative using the fewest assumptions (relative to other interpretations) is the “best” interpretation.

There are several elements to this definition that are important:

1. Coherency: the interpretation has to make sense, even if that “making sense” is “the themes are meant to be disparate and unrelated to each other”. If it doesn’t, then it doesn’t qualify as a useful interpretation.
2. Falsifiability: the interpretation needs to have an inherent possibility to be proven false. It is first and foremost an argument, whose details can be argued for or against and which can ultimately be disproved given more evidence.
   1. For instance, if I use psychoanalysis to claim that Neon Genesis Evangelion (Eva) is really all about sex by turning most of the show into phallic symbols, that’s a reading that is actually non-falsifiable: as the Oedipus complex is seeks to deny itself, any refutation of this reading in fact proves the existence of the Oedipus complex and henceforth actually supports it (wait what?).
   2. Or if I use historical materialism to construct a narrative about how TTGL is really about the subjugation of the proletariat and the revolution of the working class against the bourgeoisie, you can’t really falsify that either: it’s a meta-narrative that can read itself into almost any story.
   3. Heavy usage of Christian symbolism in readings frequently are also non-falsifiable because of the ubiquity of certain symbols/elements (OMG JESUS FIGURE) across many narratives and cultures and the wide assortment of themes with some sort of Biblical ties. Note that this isn’t meant to discredit the use of religious symbols in any readings (I’m going to be using some later, for instance), but rather to point out that you need to be really careful when using really broad symbols to interpret texts.
3. Simplicity: the interpretation needs to incorporate all the information together with the fewest assumptions and logical leaps, much like Occam’s razor. While some are always a given when interpreting texts, all logical progressions that exist should be well argued and supported by the text as much as possible. The best interpretation will do this better than any other competing interpretation.
4. Nowhere here do is there a limit on what information surrounding the text you can bring in – I believe that the best interpretation should be able to include as much information as possible, regardless of direct relevance. Interviews, historical events, symbolism, characters, dialogue, color scheme: the best interpretation should be able to include them all in some way, shape, or form (or at least deal with them).
   1. In other words, this is just another way of saying that criticism should include all available elements, including form, content, and things that can inform that content. This definition thus inherently takes a stance on how we can answer those questions above: rather than retreating from their subjectivity, as the subjectively objective critics do, this view instead embraces it, and requires our interpretation to take this into account.
   2. This then leads into another point about falsifiability: the whole system upon which this “best” interpretation is structured can (and should) also be debated. By doing so, we can improve both the methodology and interpretation itself!

All these definitions work together and enable each other to create the “best” interpretation. Now, I’m not going to deny that there’s a lot of “bleed-over” in this definition from similar ideas in physics and the sciences on what in general classifies the “best” working theory (and which I am heavily influenced by), and there are problems with it there too (like debates surrounding the anthropic principle). However, I think that it’s a pretty good place to start if you want to treat criticism and interpretation a little bit more objectively and and establish some sort of “fair” criticism.

In ∑: My idea of what constitutes the “fairest” critique is one that most easily makes the most sense out of the most things without being impenetrable bullshit.

Building Up a Mindset for How to Go About Viewing Kill La Kill

Alright. So now that I’ve built that up, let’s talk about KLK, because there’s a lot going on that we need to make sense of, including but not limited to:

• Puns and wordplay. which characterize everything from the main plot points and naming scheme to Mako’s antics.
• Very good use of visuals, such as creative uses of still frames and associating characters with visual gags/elements, such as Nui.
• Extremely reference heavy, with a lot of visual gags referring to older shows and past work.
• Extensive amounts of nudity, which seem to be associated with female empowerment and/or exploitation.
• Strong ties to a “coming of age” narrative.
• Heavy use of thematic symbols, including stars, wedding dresses, blood, etc.
• Subversion of a lot of things: of the shounen paradigm, of high/low art, of hierarchies, etc.
• By the same token, a heavy emphasis of those very hierarchies through things like environments.
• Intensely “over-the-top”, ridiculous, and all over the place.
• Extensive references to/re-purposing of history and mythology. (I will elaborate on these later.)
• Numerous points of social commentary.

And I’m almost certain I’ve missed a lot of stuff. As the links show, these wide variety of elements have led to very different readings of the show. Many of them aren’t mutually contradictory, but many of them seem disconnected, instead focusing on specific elements in the show rather than trying to incorporate many of them as a whole.

But I didn’t intend to come into this debate to pick a side. Instead, I want to ask the question:

What is Kill La Kill actually trying to say? How does the show want to be read?

I think the answer to this question finally leads to a resolution to two of the biggest problems I’ve had with most readings of the show:

1. They don’t incorporate many of the historical/mythological/religious references. Why are they in the show in the first place? The anime references can be chalked up to self-parody and/or genre subversion, but it’s difficult to justify the use of these other elements that aren’t explicitly grounded in the anime industry. (Again, I will get into more of these later.)
2. Nui. In almost every reading I’ve seen (minus the feminist ones), she is a non-entity. Why the hell is she a character in the show? Ragyo is plenty scary enough and already had a willing aid (Hououmaru), so why did they include the Grand Courtier? And why portray her as they did, as a hyper-feminine, super-cartoony version of essentially chaos incarnate?

For both of these, I’m assuming there’s some deeper meaning besides “Let’s use some mythology!” or “Ryuko and Satsuki need an antagonist their age and let’s make her terrifying!” type of argument. Imaishi, Nakashima, and company have almost free reign to do what they want in these episodes. Given that evidence seems to point to them planning ahead, I’m tempted to give them the benefit of the doubt.

In ∑: People have a lot of different ideas about what KLK means since it has a lot going on, but we should be asking what KLK wants to showcase itself as rather than how exactly it can be read.

What is Kill La Kill Trying to Say About Itself?

Given my long tangent on criticism and trying to figure out what a show wants to be seen as (rather than what we are tempted to see it as), how should we be looking at KLK? I think the final episode is a good place to start, because it actually drops most of the shows pretenses (wait the show had pretenses?!) and fires out random nonsense all over the place. In looking at the final episode, I’m going to try and do as little analysis as possible, except bringing in some more obvious concepts from the previous episodes as they are again re-introduced and put on display. By doing so, I want to let the show speak for itself, and do as little analysis as possible. I want to inject as little of my own pre-conceptions into what I’m seeing, except when necessary, and draw conclusions based on what I see rather than what I want to see. It’s a difficult line to draw sometimes, but I’ll try and do the best I can.

Note that most of the conclusions I draw from the show in the finale work when viewed in the rest of the show, but I want to just stick with the finale and see where it takes us…

First, let’s look at Ragyo: how is she portrayed in the final episode?

At first, she looks almost like a God.

She is then shown basking in pleasure – the pleasure of subservience to life fibers.

She then is pretty much Satan.

Ragyo is repeated related to Christian imagery, and  in addition is displayed as an absolute authority figure who promises pleasure in exchange for freedom (also seen in the whole “Junketsu dominating Ryuko” arc). This has been a running theme throughout the show, and Ryuko and company must resist such a call: they must fight for their emancipation from such a monster.

How about Nui?

Nui looks almost psychotic here as she tries to defend the transmitter, and is literally all over the place both on screen (in how she’s animated) as well as in the show (through her many life fiber copies).

However, she’s also shown as exquisitely feminine and submissive when she willingly takes her own life for her “mother” (notice all the pink and hearts).

So Nui represents a few elements here, including anarchy/chaos (both in the show and on-screen), submission, and femininity (all that French feeds into this “refined” image). Plus she is emphasized again as being exquisitely non-human, as is Ragyo. Notice that Ryuko and company must not only fight off Ragyo, who symbolizes absolute authority, but also Nui, who symbolizes complete anarchy.

How about the other elements in the final episode? First, let’s look at some of the more comic scenes.

Ok – now the show’s just dropping a huge-ass phallic symbol and making sure we know it.

At this point, I’m pretty sure it’s ridiculing psychoanalysis.

Ok – now it’s REALLY just making fun of itself.

And now the whole phallic thing turns out to be a total gag. Well done Trigger!

So we have a show that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

I have no idea where I’ve seen this before…

Second, we can look at scenes that reference other anime. The final episode’s chock-full of references to previous shows, most notably to TTGL, Eva, Gunbuster, and Dragonball. (Although there are a lot of others here as well.)

So this looks a lot like a drill to me. Good TTGL reference.

Why does she have golden hair like a Super Saiyan again?

This reminds me of a certain scene from a certain Eva movie…

And the final episode from Gunbuster that wasn’t colored…

So again we have this collage of previous stuff that’s archetypical of both previous Gainax work as well as shounen in general.

But there’s one more element to note here, and that’s the meta-awareness the show embodies by breaking the fourth wall.

Well, that sounds pretty meta.

As does that.

So, in sum, we have a show that is chock full of references smashed together into a cohesive whole, constantly ribs itself, and also is very meta about everything it’s doing. Given that almost every main event in the show has been a repurposed archetype from the shounen genre or a smorgasbord of other influences, I’m hesitant to take any element of the show at face value at this point!

But wait: I’ve skated past our main duo! How do Senketsu and Ryuko fit into all of this?

As mentioned above, this looks like a pretty blatant TTGL reference.

And look at those themes of evolution!

And nonsense – that too.

We have Ryuko and Senketsu standing as substitutes for mankind’s ability to evolve and take on new challenges, in an almost exact repeat of TTGL. Ryuko and Senketsu take their places among the ranks of Simon and friends as they fight for the human race, essentially fulfilling shounen archetypes (but in re-purposeful way!). 

But what else do they do?

Creating those dichotomies.

Tearing them down!

Again, we have two things at work. First, is the standard “ridiculous speech stating the obvious” that occurs in most shounen showdowns. But it’s been re-purposed for more than that here. Instead, we’re coming back to a big theme of the show: tearing down dichotomies and barriers by subverting them. It’s also a great way of stating that we are both what we appear to be and yet more than that, and the ways that clothing both defines and yet does not define us. As clothing has been an important element of the show (most prominently, a symbol of oppression and conformity through wedding dresses, school uniforms, etc., rather than an expression of individualism), this seems to be a pretty big call to again resist such types of oppression. Again, I’m seeing more things related to resisting oppression, which I think is more than just me reading themes into the show…

Speaking of clothing and oppression, the post-fight scene is quite interesting…

Ah, so this is a coming of age story about Ryuko!

Ah, so this is social commentary about femininity!

I think, out of everything in the final episode, here is where KLK finally drops everything and just speaks its mind. This scene is encompasses two of the main features about the show: it’s “coming of age” narrative and its heavy dose of social commentary (especially concerning themes of emancipation and resistance against authority).

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL.

Satsuki expresses her happiness at being freed from the familial duty she had to shoulder.

But she still loves her family.

And Ryuko loves her back.

We see a re-emergence of family as important, even though both Ryuko and Satsuki have been freed from familial duty (remember, Ryuko originally began wanting to avenge the murder of her dad but eventually moves beyond that). We are again shown that the sometimes oppressive nature of legacies and families can be overcome through the search of love and equality. I don’t think that’s too much of a stretch.

There’s also one more element that bears consideration.

Growing up is not all fun and games.

But in fact is taking on a duty to help out others.

There’s not that much explicitly said about growing up through the show — this might actually be the only line. So it bears consideration that it’s a statement about duty and responsibility given power. It’s a cliche (like everything in the show), but it’s a good one: with power comes responsibility. And that responsibility is to not to be a dick and oppress people but instead do your best to help others as equals. Because everyone’s equal when they’re naked!

Combining this, we get a reading like this:

(In a meta-aware, non-serious yet somehow authentic way) Ryuko/Senketsu (as reference-filled reincarnations of TTGL protagonists) defeat Ragyo (God/Satan/oppression/promise of pleasure in exchange for subservience) and Nui (chaos/anarchy/femininity/submission) while delivering social commentary about the desire for resistance/emancipation (through the oppressive nature of clothes/femininity and familial duties), the duties of adults/growing up (through nudity), and the desire to love one another in spite of everything (through Ryuko and Satsuki’s reunion).

This is a pretty cool thing that simultaneously fits in with a lot of other readings (destroying hierarchies, power of friendship, female empowerment, etc.). Note though what we don’t get out of this. We don’t get a lot of discussion about growing up: indeed, that doesn’t even seem to be the focus of the show, unlike TTGL. Instead, we see that the majority of the final episode as used as a vehicle for other means. This is a fundamental shift in how we are viewing the show: unlike TTGL or FLCL, where the coming of age story is seen as the primary focus that everything is built up around, in KLK it is instead a vehicle for other ideas!

In ∑: Looking at KLK more closely, a combination of elements seem to indicate that we should shift our focus: the show should be viewed as a coming of age story that serves as a vehicle for other ideas rather than ideas becoming synthesized into a coming of age story.

De-Emphasizing the “Coming of Age” Narrative: Broadening Our Scope

In the beginning, I pointed out several problems I had with current readings of KLK. The first couple concerned difficulties in incorporating historical/mythical information as well as Nui’s character into the readings, while the rest mostly involved me feeling uncomfortable that some of the critiques of KLK were justified (like not being able to “relate” to the characters). How does this new focus outside of the coming of age narrative solve some of these problems?

First, a lot of the discussion around KLK‘s heritage has noted that it pays homage to a lot of Gainax’s stuff. And most of these references are to Gainax’s really well known (and extremely well-done) “coming of age” stories, from Eva to FLCL to TTGL. Given that Imaishi and Nakashima were also the main duo behind much of TTGL (and the former’s heavy involvement in/influence from much of the former), and the fact that KLK also spends a lot of time making references to elements from these shows, this comparison is quite apt. However, by focusing on the Gainax-influenced aspects of the show, we miss a good chunk of other material that might be important to viewing KLK. Such as what Imaishi has done outside of TTGL.

Once we look at Imaishi’s other directorial work where he’s been given a lot of free reign to go wild, we start getting a different picture. Look at the craziness of Dead Leaves - is there anything relateable about the characters there (or the essentially nonsensical plot)? How about the OVA’s obsession with these two rogues demolishing everything to the ground?

Or PSG, which has a lot of parallels to Dead Leaves. Like the main duo’s names, Panty/Stocking vs. Pandy/Retro, or it’s intensely “crass” nature, or it’s crazy antics. Are Panty or Stocking “relateable” (and is that even a downside to this show)? Isn’t there an entire episode segment dedicated to song where the chorus is “ANARCHY“? Aren’t those also the surnames of the main characters?! How about the fact that, like TTGL (and KLK), it’s stuffed to the brim with references to other works? Doesn’t it actually deliver a decent amount of incisive commentary on pop culture and anime in general?

Or how about Inferno Cop? There’s a lot of crudeness there too, which also seems to work towards the series benefit. And a lot of “bringing together tropes to lampoon them but also make a ridiculous over-the-top story”. And a lot of craziness. And themes of anarchism.

There’s definitely a trend here, and it’s one that others also have noticed: Imaishi loves making shows which prominently feature “anarchy” as a leading refrain, for better or for worse. Many of these shows are themselves pastiche, honoring the genre(s) by cramming in as many references and styles as it can while at the same time poking fun at itself. And, in their most recent incarnation, you see these themes reappear in shows like PSG coupled with signs of social commentary and impulses towards ideas of emancipation.

This gives us a new way of looking at KLK: as the latest incarnation of Imaishi’s emphasis on motifs of resistance/emancipation that begins with something like Dead Leaves and ends with PSG and KLK. Hell, this also gives us a new way of looking at the overriding conflict in TTGL, which actually echoes these very same things.

So what does this have to do with KLK‘s “unrelateable” characters or “scattershot” themes?

Let’s go back and look at some of Imaishi’s recent work like Inferno Cop and PSG. While both of these include a lot of references, it’s important to note where these references are coming from: Western media, ranging from children’s cartoons to superhero stories. Why is this relevant? Because look at the main characters of many of these stories, from The Powerpuff Girls to Superman: are they relatable? NO – many protagonists of Western cartoons are in fact not relatable at all! We can’t really connect with Superman, invincible superhero, or Batman, ultra-rich billionaire vigilante. While the movies go to great lengths to humanize these heroes so we understand that they’re people and can root for them, we’re oftentimes there to watch the spectacle. This situation is even more prevalent in children’s cartoons or old-fashioned comics (think like pre-Watchmen type stuff), where the whole point is to enjoy the spectacle. Are these all points against them being good? For me at least, they aren’t necessarily, although preferences might change.

However, this does give a way that we might want to be looking at the protagonists: more akin to “gods” or “superheroes” (modern mythology in action!). If we’re supposed to be viewing the show as more of a superhero series, then the fact that we can’t really relate to the characters isn’t really a bad thing. The show tries to make us see them as people, but that’s really the only important bit. We don’t need to empathize with the characters, but instead the conflicts they represent. This is at the core of most superhero movies I see today, and probably is a big way that Western influence might have had a hand in KLK.

If we now look at this central conflict, we also gain a new way of looking at the “themes” of the show and understanding why they appear to be so “scattershot”. Normally, in traditional narratives, themes are like arguments who are given their strength through the story itself. For instance, a resounding theme in most “coming of age” stories is the “loss of innocence“. This is often articulated in ways where the main character must learn to comprehend and face the difficulties of the world around them. These are illustrated by breaking down simple black/white formulations of morality, having characters encounter failure, and a host of other influences. As experience is always a better “argument” than something written down, stories help showcase these ideas by “bringing them to life” so we can experience them for ourselves. Looking at themes this way frames the question in terms of an argument: how well does a story get across it’s main message? Are the conclusions justified from the experiences? Is it nuanced enough? Did they resonate with me on an emotional level? And so on and so forth.

But what happens when this idea breaks down — when the “coming of age” narrative is no longer meant to illustrate these themes, but instead serves as a vehicle to deliver a host of separate ones? Themes then no longer can be arguments illustrated by the story, but rather should be seen as argumentative thrusts, ideological impulses characterized by overriding mentality. Indeed, fleshing them out isn’t even the point (although it can be if the piece of media is centered around specific social critiques). In this view, themes in and of themselves are less important than the impulses that drive them. They become stabs at society, commentary meant to raise awareness and exemplify an attitude or “call to action” rather than a fully-formed argument. And they should be evaluated on how well they do that (if that is their main intention), rather than how well they are argued!

In ∑: By shifting our focus from that of a typical “coming of age” story, KLK looks a lot more like a mix of PSG/TTGL than older Gainax shows: the characters are more like Western superheroes (that we often can’t relate to) and the themes are social commentary, both of which are united by ideas of resistance against authority that we do empathize with. Common critiques thus seem to come from a viewpoint contrary to how the show wants to be viewed.

The Drive for Emancipation against Oppression and Anarchy

So we now know what the overriding theme of KLK looks to be: emancipation. Resistance against structure, against duty, against history, against society, against self-imposed constraints (very reminiscent of critical theory). In my first real attempt to integrate things together in the show, for instance, I noticed many of these themes but tried to subsume them under the “coming of age” narrative. In short, I was guilty of reading KLK in the way I just described above (although I was a little bit less critical about it as others have since been)!

However, given this new idea that the main driving force of the show is not the “coming of age” narrative but instead this impulse for emancipation, what can we say about our original two issues (myth/historical motifs, placing Nui in the story)? Nui actually turns out to be pretty easy – the key is the fact that she fits into a “the evil specter of feminism that Ryuko must defeat!” really well. This reading — one of the only ones that actually uses Nui’s character properly — works because Nui is transformed into a symbolic/ideological oppressor that must be defeated. Let’s take this idea and apply it to her whole character.

In most of Imaishi’s work, there’s this active chorus of anarchism as a way to resist oppression, and we see that present in KLK in spades. Given what we know from the final episode, I’d say it isn’t too much of a stretch to associate Ragyo with the specter of absolute dominance and authority. But is the natural opposition to authority anarchism? The answer is probably no, because complete anarchy is about the same as complete dominance: no order at all is in fact another form of submission that gives up on any hope of order in the first place and submitting yourself to utter chaos. Although it is a tempting choice in the fight against authority, it is not actually the one you should take. Nui’s character then can be framed in a context where she is the other end of the dichotomy that must be opposed: you must resist both absolute authority and absolute non-authority because they are both rob you of your agency. In the quest for emancipation, one must constantly fight against both extremes, and so Nui’s character is both a symbol of feminism and anarchy that must be actively opposed.

In ∑: By focusing on the underlying push for emancipation, we can extend Nui’s symbolic role as oppressive femininity to oppressive anarchy that must be opposed along with oppressive authority.

Unification, State Shinto, WWII, and Oni: Overtures to Historical/Mythical Japan

But how exactly can you do this? How can you fight against both authority and anarchy? Well, here’s where a little bit of history enters into the picture.

Note that large swaths of this section were informed by a panel at Anime Boston 2014 by Charles Dunbar and Katriel (Kit), so most of these ideas were originally theirs and they deserve full credit!

The Unification of Japan

KLK bears some noticeable parallels to the times of Oda Nobunaga, first and foremost with Honnouji Academy.

The names, like most things in the show, are puns using almost exactly the same characters with very different meanings. Note also that Honnouji is the end of Satsuki’s ambition, and where the final showdown takes place that essentially “burns” the building to the ground. Taken from http://art-eater.com/2013/11/kill-la-kill-the-fashion-of-fascism/.

But we also see parallels between Nobunaga’s conquest to unify Japan and Satsuki’s plan to conquer all high schools. Nobunaga, over the course of his lifetime, managed to unify central Japan. His conquests were centered on the Kansai region and marked by intense brutality (especially against religious establishments). His catchphrase was “Tenka Fubu [天下布武]” (tr. “all under heaven through military might”), which symbolizes his use of violence as a tool to unify the continent. In a “I’m pretty sure this is intentional” parallel, Satsuki too aims to conquer this very same region of Japan in her Tri-City Raid campaign.

Notice that Osaka, Kyoto, and Kobe (right where “Settsu” is), are smack dab in the middle of Nobunaga’s conquest.

Both of the main “Unifiers” (Nobunaga and his successor Totoyomi Hideyoshi) undertook large projects to centralize government, and enacted social policies designed to increase their political power. Nobunaga initiated land surveys that were later continued by Hideyoshi, both with the aim of establishing not only a survey of the realm, but more importantly their right and power to tax. Through this system, they established a coherent census and system of income while also flexing their military might. In addition, both Unifiers engaged in so-called “sword hunts,” where they attempted to disarm the peasantry to ensure they had a monopoly on violence. Finally, Hideyoshi actually implement a Neo-Confucian “class” system in Japan and promulgated decrees preventing social mobility between then. These four main classes (samurai -> peasants -> artisans -> merchants) were at the heart of Japanese society, with the Emperor of course on top overseeing the whole shebang (and by “Emperor” we really mean the shogun, because they held all the real power).

But what do we see here?

A 4-level class society…

Where your standing is directly related to your place in life…

Led by “Empress” Satsuki?

There are noticeable differences of course (you can move around in Satsuki’s system, not so much in historical Japan), but the similarities are a little bit uncanny (why did they pick four levels, specifically, after the other historical parallels with Japan’s unification?).

The Rise of State Shinto

There are two interesting things to note here about the previous view:

1. Satsuki is looking quite like a god-like figure who lords it over the school. If we take the “class” system as historical parallel, that seems to support this idea.
2. Satsuki’s system looks really fascist and involves a centralization/monopoly on violence (through her Goku uniforms), very similar to those built up by the great Unifiers.

But Satsuki is more than just a God-like figure. Look at all the symbolic overtones present in the first episode, for example.

When Satsuki is first introduced, she stands as a radiant source of light from on high who shines down on those below.

Even when we zoom in a bit more, we don’t even see her face. She’s essentially the Sun.

Going with the image of a God-like figure in mind, why would Satsuki be so often linked to the Sun? (I’m assuming her dazzling radiance is more than just KLK being ridiculous.) Well, in Japan, there’s one Goddess that actually is literally the Sun in the Shinto pantheon: Amaterasu.

Satsuki re-envisioned as Amaterasu, Goddess of the Sun. Taken from: http://ajmartinsson.tumblr.com/post/80223870607/satsuki-kiryuin-from-kill-la-kill-re-imagined-as

So let’s just assume, as a starting point, that all the god-like overtures and symbols in the show have been pointing to Satsuki as a symbolic representation of Amaterasu. You can actually make a lot of cool parallels with certain events in the story and the “Elite Four” relating a good chunk of their personalities to Shinto deities (Jakazure = Ame-no-uzume; Gamagoori = Hachiman; Sanageyama = Susano-o; Inamuta = Izumo Okuninushi; and Mako is some deity I forget; email Charles or Kit for more info on this), but for my purposes relating Satsuki to Shinto at some level is enough, since it inspires the following question:

• How does Shinto and fascism go together?

The answer? As State Shinto, and ideology developed during the Meiji Restoration that placed the Emperor as descended from the divine (Amaterasu herself) that would bind the state of Japan together as it modernized and centralized. Under this ideology, the state essentially became a pseudo-fascist power.

What (partly) triggered the Meiji Restoration, and why/how did Japan modernize? It was mainly as a response to Western Imperialism, which forced Japan to finally end its long period of isolation from the West. Seeing how the West demolished China, Japan struggled to modernize as quickly as possible to prevent the same thing from happening to itself. Much of this modernization involved taking huge cues from Western powers as Japan essentially mimed the West to prevent being colonized by it, imbibing the ideas of their oppressor in order to resist them.

So now we have an analog for Satsuki and her system at Honnouji Academy as representative Meiji Japan.

The Imperialistic, Christian West

But what is she trying to resist, and who is she taking from? Luckily, the show answers our question for us.

So Satsuki was trying to beat Ragyo by imitating her. Could that make Ragyo…the West? This idea is not actually too far-fetched.

Ragyo is strongly linked to gross capitalism (both in ideology and in position as the head of REVOCS), often a symbol of the West.

Besides being strongly linked to capitalism, she essentially is imposing her own will on Satsuki, who then tries to imitate her to defeat her (much like Meiji Japan does to the West). She’s even more arrogant than Satsuki, looking down upon her daughter and all that she’s accomplished as inferior.

That seems pretty arrogant to me.

And, most importantly, if we make the same sort of claims over how she’s portrayed in the show relative to Satsuki, she’s pretty much God.

For instance, there’s a lot of Christian motifs thrown around by Ragyo.

If you actually pay close attention though, it’s ONLY Ragyo who says these ideas – no one else makes such claims in the entire show. This is something I missed last time around, since it explicitly ties Christianity to her.

If the symbolic relationship is Satsuki = Sun -> Amaterasu, then by extension Ragyo = Rainbow -> God.

As rainbows are symbolic of a covenant between God and mankind, such symbolic language is fitting. Ragyo is making a promise that she reiterates multiple times throughout the show: sacrifice your freedom and I promise you unending pleasure in subservience.

Note: I also like the argument that because God’s so hella-badass he can’t be contained by just one color and so is a fucking rainbow, but the previous one makes more sense as I’m making an argument about symbols rather than colors.

World War II and the Occupation of Japan

Alright, so now we have Ragyo as the oppressive, dickish, imperialistic, Christian West that Satsuki has been trying to overpower. And about 2/3rds of the way through the series, Satsuki finally makes her move. She (i.e. now-unified Meiji Japan) rises up against her mother (i.e. the West).

First, the betrayal.

Look at all those “preparations” Japan made in order to establish an empire to fend off the West!

Of course, this doesn’t end well — Satsuki is utterly demolished and her home fortress (i.e. Japan) is taken over (i.e. occupied) by her mother (i.e. the West) who starts running the show.

Nice try Japan!

I’m just gonna occupy you now have fun.

Again, here’s another overture about trying to use fascism to defeat a “fascist” oppressor. I’m seeing something in common with these historical parallels…

Oni and “Old” Japan

But where does our protagonist fit in? We’ve talked about the symbolic representation of pretty much every single other character except for Ryuko, who is the main protagonist against all this crap! If Satsuki represents modernizing/Shinto/fascist Japan and Ragyo is the imperialistic/Christian West, the most likely contrast is that Ryuko is neither of these: not modern and not foreign. In short, she’s “Old” Japan, the one that loses out in all this fighting.

This reading is not completely crazy though, and it actually has it’s basis in something I’ve been wondering about for quite some time.

During her transformation, why does Ryuko have horns? They’re a completely unnecessary part of the whole outfit and aren’t really tied to the clothes.

This little bit of innocuous information is a puzzle, and I think is the key to making sense of this reading, because there is one other Japanese icon famous for having horns: oni. Oni are yokai often associated with horns and righteous anger. In addition, the common usage is for those of “alien” origin, peripheral troublemakers outside the scope of the Emperor. Given Ryuko’s alien nature and her perpetual isolation throughout the narrative, as well as her righteous anger for the good first half of the show, I’d say she fits the bill quite nicely here.

A New History

So, the history of KLK seems to go something like this:

1. Honnouji’s name and class system along with the Tri-City raid  draw parallels to the unification of Japan and overt references to rising centralization and fascism.
2. Satsuki bears strong resemblances to Amaterasu, which, combined with her connections to fascism at Honnouji place her as a representation of State Shinto and the Western-based modernizing (pseudo-fascist) project of Meiji Japan.
3. Ragyo represents God and the West, which are strengthened through her interactions with Satsuki. She is also modeled as an oppressor.
4. Parallels to WWII and the occupation of Japan are evident after Satsuki’s failed rebellion, another example of attempting to rebel against an oppressor by using the same methods of oppression.
5. Ryuko represents “Old” Japan as an Oni, a member on the periphery filled with righteous anger who has lost out in all of this.
6. At the end of the show, “Old” and “New” Japan realize unite against a common enemy, Ragyo (i.e. absolute oppression), in order to defend their freedom.

Almost all the historical references made in KLK are of eras of centralization and modernization, of government and authority growing larger and more violent as they impose their will on those of the populace, and of how much of this is justified in the face of looming threats. We thus arrive at an answer to our original question: How can you fight against both authority and anarchy? According to KLK, we can’t look towards repeating history — imitating the methods of the oppressor in order to fend them off is not the way to go.

So what can we do? What we’ve always done: love others like family, help them out when necessary, treat everybody as equals, and try and live your life the best you can.

Together, we can support one another.

And I think that’s the message KLK wants to drive home to us. That’s the reading that all the evidence seems to point to. And it might be simple, but I think that’s what makes KLK so great: using such amazing complexity to deliver an impassioned call for all of us to love one another.

Until next time ~

So it seems anime does this thing where new shows come out each season. And then bloggers write up a bunch of first impressions on shows, because we’re all important people with opinions that are important and stuff and like to type up things and LOVE ANIMU, which people read because IMPORTANT REASONS. Of course, since I’m a blogger, I’ve decided to join the club. Given how many of these there are around (from people who are much better at writing about shows than me), and because there’s no way I can ever top this, I’m just going to quickly comment on the slew of shows I’ve seen so far. These’ll be brief, and are meant to be more of a description of interesting things I’ve seen in shows as well as an indirect channel for talking about my excellent taste.

Akuma no Riddle: Continues the trend of “put a bunch of people in a room, lay down rules, and then have them try and kill each other” type of thing in the style of Battle Royale and co. Past that, there’s nothing really “special” about it I’ve seen thusfar other than the fact that all the assassin’s are girls. It feels similar to Danganronpa because the personalities all happen to be pretty distinctive, but no action has happened yet (as of episode 2). Not going to continue.

Black Bullet: A lot of people are probably saying “this had such a great sci-fi/fantasy setting and then it threw in a bunch of anime cliches WHYYYYYYY”, but I think that’s sort of the charm of shows like this. The weird mix of “end of the world” setting with “high school” and “adoring loli” is the type of thing you can only get in a medium like this. Besides lots of action, it also has an interesting thread involving discrimination with the Cursed Children. Interested.

Bokura wa Minna Kawaisou: The color scheme in this is pretty gorgeous (I’m a sucker for bright colors and high contrast). There’s a lot of gag comedy (rapid-fire manzai-esque stuff) going on between Usa and the other residents due to their strange personalities, plus a very intense crush. Still, in the end, I was a little bit bored.  Dropping, but might check back if reception is good.

Captain Earth: The first episode has some great directing and use of temporal cuts, which switches back and forth between flashbacks and the present very naturally. The mecha launch sequence was by far the most realistic thing I’ve seen, and the concept of the “Livlaster” is very intriguing. Pretty sci-fi heavy with a lot of unintelligible terminology and a lot of backstory that has to be filled in. The idea of covering both sides of the conflict between Earth and whatever the Kiltgang are simultaneously is pretty cool so far and an interesting storytelling choice. Curious at where this will go.

Date A Live II: Exactly the same as the first season. Meta-commentary on otaku culture/eroge and an exploration of harem-building and the concept of love (honestly!). Otherwise, it’s pretty dumb. Continuing.

Fuun Ishin Dai Shogun: I liked the idea behind this and the role reversal with the virgin male necessary to pilot the mecha. That said, the animation got to me a bit (especially the mouths). I’m tempted to give this one another shot because I feel like it might be some weird meta-commentary on things (plus it has Dai Sato and J.C. Staff behind it), but at the moment it just came across as…odd (and possibly cheap). Dropped…for now?

Haikyuu!!: The animation on this is really good. Not necessarily original story though – very cliched shounen sports plot so far. Character designs are interesting, and the main duo have a good dynamic that looks like it’ll lead to some good learning experiences. Generally though, the speed of these types of shows are too slow for me (a lot of dialogue and shouting, not very much actual “sports”), but I’ll wait and see. Following for now, but might drop later.

Isshuukan Friends.: The color scheme is super bright — gives off the impression of unreality or idyllic experiences in the same vein as Usagi Drop. Dialogue between the characters is pretty good, and I think captures their age/demeanor quite well. I was impressed by how the show manages to convey a lot of complex expressions/emotions (recognition, coldness, fear) using such limited facial features. Especially good use of the eyes. I was skeptical of this becoming over-dramatic, but the development in the first two episodes was actually very controlled and showed really good character growth. Count me charmed.

JoJo: DIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. WRYYYYYYYYYYYY.

Kanojo ga Flag wo Oraretara: Feels like a weird cross between NouCome and WHO IS IMOUTO (and similar to ImoCho), as in it’s pretty ridiculous and dumb but not so much to really be impressive (in either a good or bad way). Like every LN adaptation, it has a good basis – it’s similar to Date a Live except with a “wouldn’t life be great with flags to show everything but life isn’t that easy and relationships are difficult and managing them and learning about other people is important” type of thing instead of a focus on love. All the characters have complicated/dark pasts which tie into them wanting to be friends with the Hatate. Tropes and meta-commentary everywhere. Dialogue is really fast. Ended up being uninteresting to me, but might be someone else’s thing. Dropped.

Kenzen Robo Daimidaler: This is by far the most immature show I’ve seen for a while. Lot of “front tails” waving around, giant left arms, ejaculation references, porn mags, and other craziness. The show points out multiple times how dumb it is and definitely has drawn Kouichi to look like a creep (and portrays him to be an all around actual horrible immature guy), so I don’t think we should be taking many of the things it’s doing seriously. Might be weird meta-commentary on the state of most of these types of fanservicey things and attitudes? Opening episode is good, second episode is more ridiculous because it involves more Penguin Empire antics. LET THE FRONT TAILS CONTINUE.

Mahouka: MC is clearly meant to be “perfect“. I love imoutos, so this one got me hook, line, and sinker. Production values are high, plot is very anime-esque (in that it’s futuristic/sci-fi, harem-y, wincest, and set in high school). Interesting stuff on class differences between 1st-class and 2nd-class (“weeds”) students. Definite commentaries on education. Worldbuilding almost nonexistant so far, although magic system has been getting indirectly fleshed out. Actually not that impressive to me, but continuing.

Mekaku City Actors: A lot of Shaft-like stuff going on, which I think works well here. Gives off an oppressive atmosphere, intense focus on MCs, lots of eye imagery (they have eye powers), clocks, space, draws attention to animation and narrative quality, etc. I like it and think it’s fitting, although others might not. Snagged my interest.

No Game No Life: Definitely the flashiest opening of the season with really bright colors. Lots of “skewed narrator” commentary a la Oregairu from the POV of the older brother. Interesting parallels between hikikomori and Tet’s ascendance to power in the mythos of the alternate reality they are transported to. Clever camera work that simulates how the duo “cheats” (from the POV of those being cheated) so far. Imouto = win. Main brother is an ass and looks like a sociopath. Sister also might be a sociopath, given her inability to comprehend “illogical” decisions. Clearly unrealistic. Evidence points to interesting discourses on wish fulfillment type narratives, trope inversions, and interesting games in the future. Given it’s only 11 eps, however, I’m curious about how much of this will make it into the season. VERY EXCITED.

Ping Pong The Animation: Regardless of art style, this has by far the best cinematography work I’ve seen in a long time, and does some really cool things with visuals and aesthetics (use of colors, negative space, symbolic repetition, etc.). The story is decently compelling and the character development has been surprisingly good given only one episode. Chinese voice actors were refreshing to hear. Count me in.

Sidonia no Kishi: If we’re talking about really good worldbuilding, this is it — a lot of fantastic “show don’t tell” going on here. It also shows you don’t need to drop a lot of fancy terminology (a la Captain Earth) to give a compelling world/backstory that viewers don’t understand. Small inserted details (like the photosynthesis remark) were perfect. The art style and CG are fascinating choices which I’ll need to see more of to really get a handle on. This looks like it really warranted the initial description I heard of as the sci-fi equivalent of Attack on Titan. SO EXCITED.

Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii: Actually very charming. The humor feels natural, the dialogue flows decently well — there’s some banter, but it’s not as hectic as Kawaisou. Not too much to say at the moment, but I’m at least interested in seeing more. Yay!

Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V: Yugioh has evolved once again, from roller coasters (Zexal) to…arenas? The implementation of “action matter” was a choice that reminds me a lot of the original Yugioh, but the actual opening dual was…weird. The ridiculous deux ex machina of the pendulum summoning at the end made me laugh though. At least I tried, right?

Nisekoi: Still like the best thing.

Tonari no Seki-kun: Still very entertaining. Goes to show that good camerawork, sound, and clever storyboarding can go a long way in a very small setting. The addition of another cast member also has gone quite well, with another unique personality added to the mix. Woohoo!

Overall comments: 

• A lot of shows now making 4th-wall meta-commentary (even Soredemo Sekai wa Utsukushii snuck some in) — not sure how I feel about this trend since it’s become so pervasive.
• Art styles still seem to be progressing in the “no noses” direction.
• Is it just me, or are there a lot of lolis this season?
• Just realized that in this season and the past season there’s been over half a dozen sports anime (holy crap!).
• Surprised at the amount of bright color usage in a decent slew of shows: is this a thing, or just selection bias?

Okay – that’s that. What’re other people’s thoughts on the season? :)

AT LAST, THE AWAKENING IS AT HAND.

CUE BLOOD MOON.

ALL CAPS ENGAGED.

IT BEGINS AGAIN.

QUICK RECAP

CORDELIA TAKES OVER YUI’S BODY AND PREPARES TO BEGIN HER NEW RULE OVER THE SAKAMAKI HOUSEHOLD. HOWEVER, IT TURNS OUT SHE WAS BEING USED BY RICHTER ALL ALONG! ALTHOUGH THE REST OF THE BROTHERS CAN ONLY WATCH AS RICHTER TAUNTS THEM, AYATO BARGES IN TO FIGHT HIM. RICHTER, WITH CORDELIA/YUI IN HAND, THEN ENGAGES AYATO IN A SWORDFIGHT. AYATO PUTS UP A FIGHT, BUT RICHTER OVERPOWERS HIM, STABBING HIM THROUGH THE SHOULDER. AFTER SEEING HER BELOVED WOUNDED, YUI COMES TO HER SENSES AND BREAKS FREE FROM RICHTER. IN ORDER TO SAVE THE SAKAMAKI BROTHERS AND THWART RICHTER’S PLANS, SHE STABS HERSELF WITH SUBARU’S KNIFE. RICHTER, IN SHOCK OVER WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED, TRIES TO RECOVER THE BODY BUT INSTEAD GETS STABBED BY AYATO. BLEEDING PROFUSELY, HE FLEES THE SCENE WHILE AYATO AND THE REST OF THE BROTHERS TRY TO TAKE IN YUI’S SUICIDE.

FINALE

THE FINALE OPENS WITH AN OVERHEAD SHOT OF THE BROTHERS MOURNING YUI’S UNTIMELY DEMISE.

LAITO IS THE FIRST TO SPEAK.

I JUST KNOW HE’S CRYING ON THE INSIDE T_T

EVERYONE ELSE’S GRIEF MUST ALSO BE SHOWCASED, BECAUSE YUI MEANT SO MUCH TO ALL OF THEM.

YUI I’M SO JEALOUS OF YOU!!!!!! >.<

BUT IT’S TOO EARLY TO RELAX JUST YET, BECAUSE RICHTER IS STILL ALIVE.

THE BROTHERS QUICKLY TRANSFER YUI’S BODY OVER TO THE LIVING ROOM AND REST HER ON THE COUCH. THE AWAKENING HAS STARTED!

AYATO IS WORRIED IF YUI WILL BE ALRIGHT.

WAIT, ISN’T  YUI SUPPOSED TO BE THE “BITCH”? I’M GETTING CONFUSED GUYS YOU CAN’T REFER TO BOTH YUI AND CORDELIA AS BITCHES BECAUSE THEY INHABIT THE SAME BODY: HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO TELL THEIR IDENTITIES APART?

WHILE THOSE AROUND HER AGONIZE OVER HER FATE, REIJI GETS TO WORK ON SOMETHING THAT DEFINITELY WILL BE IMPORTANT LATER.

AT THE SAME TIME, SUBARU PARTICIPATES IN A METAPHORICAL DEFLOWERING USING A KNIFE COVERED I BLOOD (MAN THAT’S SOME GOOD IMAGERY THERE). YUI’S INNOCENCE AND YOUTH IS NOW GONE, BUT WHAT IS TO COME?!?!

BEFORE WE CAN FIND OUT, WE CUT BACK TO RICHTER, WHO’S MANAGED TO MAKE HIS WAY UP TO THE HIDDEN SANCTUARY WHERE HE’S HIDDEN CORDELIA’S BLOODSTAINED DRESS. (THIS IS WHERE HE BROUGHT YUI THE FIRST TIME TO AWAKEN CORDELIA A FEW EPISODES AGO.)

HOWEVER, HE’S NOT ALONE — LAITO HAS FOLLOWED HIM!!!

BUT ENOUGH OF THAT — WE NEED MORE ANXIETY ABOUT YUI! SHOW ME MORE OF THOSE BEAUTIFUL CONCERNED FACES.

OK WAIT — THERE’S BEEN MULTIPLE AWAKENINGS? I GUESS THIS PROCESS OF DYING AND BECOMING A…BRIDE CANDIDATE?…HAS HAPPENED SEVERAL TIMES BEFORE, BUT THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THAT IT’S HAPPENED TO SOMEONE POSSESSING CORDELIA’S HEART! I DON’T EVEN UNDERSTAND ANY OF THIS CHRONOLOGY ANYMORE, BUT WHO CARES BECAUSE AYATO HAS THAT LOOK OF CONCERN AND GYAHHHHHHHHHHH HE’S SO ADORABLE AND CUTE AND PLEASE CARE ABOUT ME TOO.

BUT WE CAN’T GET TOO MUCH CARING — BACK TO SERIOUS BUSINESS BECAUSE RICHTER IS STILL AT LARGE.

ALL RIGHT — GOTTA RESTATE THE OBVIOUS WITH MORE SHOTS OF THE RUINED DRESS. AGAIN, SEE ALL THE FLOWERS AND BLOOD AND THE STATE OF THE DRESS. SO MUCH SEXUALLY CHARGED SYMBOLISM YO.

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL. BECAUSE WE NEED MORE OBVIOUS RESTATEMENTS FOR DRAMATIC EFFECT.

(BECAUSE IT’S NOT LIKE RICHTER SAID THESE THINGS IN THE LAST EPISODE OR ANYTHING). AND JUST TO ENSURE WE UNDERSTAND THE GRAVITY OF THE SITUATION, HERE’S A DRAMATIC CLOSEUP.

LAITO, IF YOU COULD JUST LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT I THINK I COULD DIE HAPPY. BUT WAIT — AREN’T I THE CAMERA? SO IN A WAY HE IS LOOKING AT ME AND OMG I CAN PAUSE THIS SCENE AND REWATCH IT AS MANY TIMES AS I WANT HOW WONDERFUL ANIME AND FILM IS SO DEEP YAY VOYEURISTIC CAMERA.

OR I COULD JUST PLAY THE MUCH MORE IN-DEPTH GAME. THAT TOO I GUESS.

BUT WE CAN’T GET TOO EXCITED — LET’S JUMP BACK TO YUI BECAUSE BOTH OF THESE PLOTS MUST BE RESOLVED AT THE SAME TIME FOR BETTER TIMING AND THEMATIC COHERENCE. SO BACK TO WORRYING.

LUCKILY, THAT EARLIER SCENE WITH REIJI WAS IMPORTANT AND HE’S COOKED UP SOMETHING THAT MIGHT SAVE OUR YOUNG HEROINE.

BUT HOW CAN WE MAKE IT COMPLETE REIJI?! HOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW OSHIETE. KUDASAI.

AND THE BIG REVEAL…

O. M. G. THAT THEMATIC RELEVANCE. BUT HOW ARE WE GOING TO GET ANYTHING, REIJI? LAITO HAS ACCESS TO THE DRESS, BUT IS UPSTAIRS DEALING WITH RICHTER. AND CORDELIA’S BEEN DEAD FOR SO LONG. WHAT CAN WE DO?!?!?! IS YUI DOOMED?!?!

WELL THAT WAS EASY. AND A NICE WAY TO MAKE THAT TEDDY BEAR RELEVANT (AND ADDS A NEW DIMENSION TO KANATO’S CHARACTER).

BUT WE CAN’T GET THE RESOLUTION FOR YUI’S AWAKENING YET, BECAUSE RICHTER! SO LET’S CUT BACK TO THAT.

AFTER THIS DECLARATION, LAITO THROWS A LANTERN INTO THE ROOM AND TORCHES THE PLACE.

NO ONE LOOKS BACK AS THEY BURN THEIR FOES ALIVE. LAITO YOU’RE SO KAKKOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII MARRY ME NAO.

THIS WAS A STRANGE TIMING BIT ON THE SHOW’S PART THOUGH. IF YOU LOOK AT WHAT JUST HAPPENED, TO ME IT WOULD’VE MADE MORE SENSE TO HAVE THIS TORCHING THE ROOM SCENE FIRST BEFORE THE RESOLUTION OF THE VIAL, BECAUSE THEN WE WOULD’VE ALL GONE “BUT WAIT LAITO JUST BURNED THAT SHIT!!!!” AND BEEN ALL SAD. INSTEAD, THEY OPTED TO HAVE THE SCENE AFTER SO THAT BOTH SUBPLOTS WERE THEMATICALLY RESOLVED AT AROUND THE SAME TIME. IT WORKS, BUT I THINK LEECHES A BIT OF DRAMATIC CONFLICT FROM BOTH SCENES.

NOW THAT RICHTER’S DEATH IS ENSURED, WE QUICKLY JUMP BACK TO YUI. AFTER YUI IS GIVEN THE POTION, AYATO KISSES HER ON THE LIPS. NICE CALLBACK TO SLEEPING BEAUTY/SNOW WHITE — WHILE PRETTY STANDARD, IT NONETHELESS HELPS TO SITUATE THE SHOWS ROOTS AND SHOWS GOOD CONTRAST/IRONY (CONSIDERING THE PRINCE IS A VAMPIRE AND YUI’S “AWAKENING” TO HER NEW LIFE).

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY. EVERYONE ELSE IS PRETTY HAPPY TOO!

I HAVE NO IDEA HOW LAITO GOT THERE.

THE EPISODE “ENDS” WITH THIS LINE.

NOW, THE FORESHADOWING AND SYMBOLISM AND IMAGERY ALL MAKE SENSE. ALL HAIL THE NEW VAMPIRE MISTRESS, LORD OF HER REVERSE HAREM AND QUEEN OF SM OTOME GAMES!

ROLL OPENING SEQUENCE, BECAUSE THINGS ARE ALWAYS REVERSED IN THE FINAL EPISODE OF THE ANIME.

POST-RESOLUTION, WE CUT BACK TO THE SAME OPENING SCENE, EXCEPT THE MOON’S NOT ALL BLOOD-RED AND SHIT BECAUSE THE DANGER HAS PASSED. WOOHOO!

YUI IS STANDING ON THE BALCONY HOLDING A ROSE. AYATO SOON JOINS HER.

IN A WONDERFULLY IRONIC TURN OF EVENTS, HE GIVES HER THE CHRISTIAN NECKLACE SHE USED TO WEAR.

TO HOLD THE NECKLACE, YUI DROPS THE ROSE, LEADING TO MORE INTENSE IMAGERY TO DRIVE HOME THAT THE DEED HAS BEEN DONE.

AND OF COURSE WE CUT TO THE SANCTUARY, NOW OMINOUSLY LOCKED OFF.

SECOND SEASON NAO PLEASE.

POST-FINALE SCENES

IT OF COURSE IS NOT ENOUGH TO END THE EPISODE ON THAT NOTE. INSTEAD, WE ALSO GET A BUNCH OF ISOLATED SHOTS OF EACH OF THE CHARACTERS DELIVERING THEIR “CLASSIC” LINES SO THAT WE UNDERSTAND JUST HOW UNBELIEVABLY SEXY THEY ARE.

KANATO

I LOVE IT WHEN YOU MAKE THAT FACE TOO KANATO. PLEASE TERRORIZE ME MORE.

LAITO

LAITO, PLEASE SAY MORE ROMANTIC THINGS TO ME WHILE YOU CALL ME A BITCH. I LOVE YOUR SM TSUNDERE CHARACTER.

SHUU

SHUU, PLEASE TELL ME HOW TRAGIC OUR RELATIONSHIP IS AGAIN. PLEASE EMPHASIZE MY IMPULSIVE NATURE MORE AND DOMINATE MY BODY.

REIJI

REIJI, DISCIPLINE ME MORE. BREAK DOWN THOSE WALLS YOU ERECT AROUND YOURSELF AND SHOW ME THE TRUE YOU.

SUBARU

SUBARU, PLEASE TALK ABOUT YOUR TWISTED, DARK NATURE MORE SO I CAN APPRECIATE THE DARK AFFAIR THAT I’VE GOTTEN MYSELF INTO. I WANT TO SHARE IN THIS DARK, FORBIDDEN, EXOTIC REALM WITH YOU.

AYATO

I LOVE HOW POSSESSIVE YOU ARE AYATO. MAKE ME YOURS!

FINAL THOUGHTS

THESE’LL BE BRIEF, SINCE I WANT TO DO THIS SERIES PROPER JUSTICE WITH AN ACTUAL REVIEW ELSEWHERE (HOPEFULLY):

DIABOLIK LOVERS IS ACTUALLY JUST NOT THAT GOOD. IT’S NOT PRODUCED THAT WELL, THE DIALOGUE FREQUENTLY SOUNDS MORE LIKE ONE-LINERS DELIVERED OUT OF CONTEXT. THE CHARACTERS GET ALMOST NO CHARACTERIZATION (MINUS SOME CHILDHOOD FLASHBACK THAT IS MEANT TO EXPLAIN EVERYTHING ABOUT THEM BUT NOT REALLY), AND THE PLOT IS DISJOINTED. ALL THESE THINGS COMBINED SEEM TO INDICATE THIS WAS MEANT REALLY TO BE AN ANIME TARGETED TOWARDS FANS WHO HAD PLAYED THE GAME, WITH ALL THE PERSONALITIES AND SUCH BROUGHT IN FROM OUTSIDE THE SHOW (I DEFINITELY COULDN’T GET EMOTIONALLY INVESTED). BUT THEN, SINCE IT LITERALLY JUST REPEATS ENCOUNTERS AND DELIVERS A BUNCH OF SIMILAR ONE-LINERS, I DON’T SEE WHY THIS WOULD BE AT ALL APPEALING TO THOSE WHO PLAYED THE GAME. THE LAST SCENE THAT SHOWCASES EACH OF THE CHARACTERS SEPARATELY REALLY DRIVES THIS HOME — WHY DO YOU EVEN NEED THIS, WHEN YOU CAN JUST PLAY THE GAME, LOOK AT FANART, AND PARTICIPATE IN THE WORLD IN SO MANY OTHER DIFFERENT WAYS? DIABOLIK LOVERS JUST REHASHES THE PLOT WITH MOTION, EXCEPT IT DOES IT IN A WAY THAT I THINK LEAVES FANS UNIMPRESSED AND NEWCOMERS ALSO EMOTIONALLY UNINVESTED.

YEP.

SO THATS THAT. I’M MAKING A LOT OF STATEMENTS HERE WITH NO BACKING (LIKE HOW CAN YOU CLAIM NEEDING TO PLAY THE GAME TO BECOME EMOTIONALLY INVESTED IN THE SHOW IS A “DOWNSIDE”? ISN’T THAT JUST EFFECTIVE TRANSMEDIA STORYTELLING?), WHICH I’LL TRY TO DEAL WITH AT SOME LATER POINT.

STILL, IT’S BEEN A HELL OF A JOURNEY, AND I LOVE ALL YOU GUYS FOR BEARING WITH ME! ALSO FOR SURVIVING THIS INCREDIBLY EXCITING ALL-CAPS POST.

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty good about anime right now.

A pretty accurate representation of how I feel about this current season.

Still, doesn’t mean I can’t be a heartless bastard and drop shows left and right, which is what’s happened this week (by those weird coincidences that pop up sometimes, this just happened to fall around the 3-ep mark, which seems to me indicate why such a “rule” exists in the first place). As it looks like my final list has settled down, this’ll also be the last Spring 2014 impressions post I’ll be doing.

How I assume you all must feel at this news.

Akuma no Riddle: After my declaration last week that I wasn’t going to continue this show…I did anyway. Episode 3 rolled around to give us our first big fight, and pretty much there was no huge action scenes. I originally was under the impression this would be quite the action-y show, but instead what it’s opted for is a lot of “OH SNAP HEAVY IMPLICATIONS” dialogue and short bursts of “OH SNAP HARU’S IN TROUBLE” type of thing, rather than a more free-for-all brawl. Plus some sexual tension — that too. There’s obviously some DARK BACKSTORIES involved and each of the characters are quite ridiculous, but it’s a little bit boring to me. Dropped.

Baby Steps: Ei-chan has to be one of the oddest protagonists of a shounen sports manga. A perfectionist straight-A student (almost to the point of OCD I’d say), he transitions over to tennis after he learns just how much he loves hitting the “sweet spot”. It’s a story as much about the odd one out and about discovering yourself and what you’re truly passionate about. It’s a good premise, but for me there’s three main problems that make me not really buy into the show. 1) Ei-chan’s character is not actually portrayed consistently. He sorta does some things really thoroughly, in line with his characterization, but then completely bypasses others. Granted, the situations where he doesn’t do this are those where he’s gotten advice from his crush Natsu (and thus somewhat understandable), but it’s still a little bit jarring. 2) His hair actually bothers me. It’s the strangest thing. 3) The pacing. I’d forgotten the reason why I don’t watch many shounen sports shows: they’re just really really slow. It’s been three episodes, and Ei-chan has yet to play (or even watch) a full game of tennis. While slow pacing or a slow start isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it’s just not my personal preference. Dropped.

Black Bullet: The second episode was this really bizarre thing that does what lots of people hate but that you only really can find in anime: mixing DEEP themes and situations like intense discrimination with completely NOTDEEP anime tropes. Plus just nonsensical situations and odd monologues where no one else talks. It’s still a fine show for me though. Continuing.

Captain Earth: There’s some really cool ideas going on with this show. The double-narrative and the Kil-T-Gang are intriguing, as is much of the backstory and environment which has been left unexplored. But there’s still just too much nonsensical name-dropping with no explanations to keep me interested. For me, this isn’t really an example of a good “show, not tell” type of sci-fi show: it’s just a lot of made-up terms thrown around to try and achieve the same effect without really accomplishing much of anything. Dropped.

Date a Live II: New girls, same boobs plot. Continuing.

Haikyuu!!: Regardless of how beautiful this show is, it just has the same problem as I have with Baby Steps: the pacing is just slow (although it’s still almost an order of magnitude faster here than there), and since not much has happened (I want to see some volleyball!) I’ve lost interest. There’s been some good character development already though, and the cast looks great, so for anyone who likes sports anime, this is probably the show to be watching this season! Dropped.

JoJo: Walk like an Egyptian. Brilliant. Continuing.

Kanojo ga Flag wo Oraretara: Despite intending to drop this, I’ve now picked it back up. Everything I said in the previous week still holds, although I’ve warmed up to the show a little bit. Continuing.

Daimidaler: This show is meant to be dumb by even anime standards, so I find it kind of hilarious (just like this) when people bash this show for doing exactly what it advertised it would do. Continuing.

Mahouka: Tatsuya is Jesus. Continuing.

Mekaku City Actors: I like Kagepro, so I’ve been happy with how things look so far. I did want to chime in here though with a quick concern I’ve recently developed, which is people essentially going “Shinbou’s done this a million times before, now I’m bored because this is nothing new”. In recent months, I’m starting to shift over into the “Shinbou is deconstructing anime and media” camp (is that a camp?), and I think his repeated use of similar shots, movement, sound effects, and aesthetic symbols (among others) is actually an attempt to construct an entire symbolic series of aesthetic practices and associated meanings centered around their very deconstruction. Not sure if this justifies SHAFTing everything that comes his way, although I think it’s a good fit for both Nisekoi and MCA given their nature. Continuing.

No Game No Life: I unabashedly love this show. Everything I said last week remains the same, although I also dropped some comments over at Behind the Nihon Review about how I feel the shows portrays hikikomori/NEETs. In addition, wanted to chime in quickly on a complaint I’ve heard, where because NGNL somehow endorses wish-fulfillment escapism it therefore is a horrible show. Personally, I don’t think wish fulfillment and escapism is all that bad in and of itself (and I don’t think LNs entirely fall prey to this either), although obviously it can become pretty bad. In a similar vein, I don’t think you can really “critique” shows like Mahouka, SAO, or NGNL (and many other LN adaptations, for that matter) for being “escapist” except where it disagrees with some of your personal biases. It’s somewhat related to some of the issues surrounding hero worship in Samumenco and is a complicated issue that I think hits many of the same ideas. Anyways, I’m of the opinion it’s still QUITE EXCELLENT. Continuing.

One Week Friends: It’s nice and fluffy, although the weird almost-forced drama in the last episode left me a bit puzzled. Continuing

Ping Pong: This show is absolutely gorgeous. Unlike Baby Steps and Haikyuu!!, here we really have a dynamic cast of characters who have been amazingly well characterized within the span of only two episodes. Yuasa has really won me over here. Continuing.

Sidonia: My impressions after the first episode were justified — this looks to be great. Not only are we seeing real PTSD symptoms and more great indirect worldbuilding without all the jargon-y nonsense (ahem Captain Earth ahem), but it looks like things won’t be slowing down anytime soon. The CG still perplexes me. Continuing.

Soredemo: Nothing much to say here beyond last week. Continuing.

Still continuing Nisekoi and Seki-kun.

——

Final comments: 

Are there any shows that I should be picking up on this last time around that I’m not watching (e.g. Histugi no Chaika)? Any other thoughts on shows that I’ve either dropped or am continuing?

Concerning Nisekoi, Marika actually terrifies me, which is actually great, because we see all the different types of “love” that are often written about represented here: Chitoge’s tsundere “slowly coming together” affection, Onodera’s “fairy-tale” crush, and Marika’s childhood “I’ve loved you ALL THIS TIME” fixation. Plus the side “I WAS PRAISED” blind adoration from Tsumugi. Not only is the show filling out/checking all the typical boxes, but it’s making sure those boxes really are representative of something. Again, given it’s “false” nature and how it really is deconstructing “love”, I think it’s a great fit for Shinbou, who’s gone to work deconstructing the entire show too!

That shit’s just unnatural. GIVE ME MORE.

Josh likes to complain because I have a bad habit of starting random (highly-rated) shows without telling him and usually right after he has recommended an entirely different show for me to watch. Anyway so this was one of those shows I started watching sort of spur of the moment because I was bored and browsing around on Hulu…it happens. I think that while I definitely can say that overall I enjoyed the show, there were some things that stuck out to me as kind of irritating. Then again, maybe I need to go with Josh’s more laissez faire style of watching shows where he has pretty much mastered watching/accepting shows on their own terms. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ve quite gotten to that point.

Here’s a quick synopsis courtesy of (MyAnimeList)

Sternbild City is home to people called “Next,” who use their special abilities to protect the people as superheroes. These heroes solve cases and save lives so they can wear sponsor logos or acquire “hero points.” Their activities are documented on the popular program “Hero TV,” which picks the “King of Heroes” in a yearly ranking. The veteran hero Wild Tiger has always preferred to work alone, but now he’s been assigned the rookie Barnaby Brooks Jr., who has a different perspective on being a superhero.

Don’t get me wrong, I actually really liked Tiger & Bunny (T&B), I thought it was really amusing and a fun show to watch. The biggest thing was that I had to put aside my skepticism and not take it seriously, or rather go with the flow and enjoy the show on its own terms. I do think that it did some things really well. I particularly enjoyed how it sort of put a new spin on the traditional superhero show paradigm and then the super intense and hilarious bromance between Kotetsu and Barnaby. I usually get annoyed by bromance, but this one sort of worked for me. I also thought that the show had a nice message, a little bit cliched, but it’s heart was in the right place. And then my absolute favorite part of the show had to be the fact that Kotetsu’s 100 power activation time went from 5 minutes down to 1 in a very clear sexual innuendo. Yep. It was pretty hilarious, I laughed a lot and I have no shame. 

However, even though I very much enjoyed watching T&B for pure entertainment value, it was chock full of something that drives me absolutely insane. It is the scourge of young adult novels and the most recent Disney movie. Dun dun dun. That’s right. PLOT HOLES. There is no way to kill something for me quicker than to fill it with gaping plot holes and ends that never seem to get tied up properly. That’s pretty much why I hated Frozen (go ahead stone me, I dare you), that plus the insipid nature of the film and the fact that it was a BIG FAT FAKER. Based on “The Snow Queen” my ass. Anyway that’s neither here nor there. The point is, T&B was also riddled with plot holes that drove me just a little bit crazy. Let’s talk about them shall we?

My feelings on Frozen: “Let it No”

So first off, there was the weird thing going on between Blue Rose and Kotetsu. Am I the only one who thought that was kind of creepy? (Although it was pretty great when she was in the book store looking at books about dating a man with kids.) Josh didn’t think it was creepy, but then again he’s also a fan of saying things like “incest=wincest” so I always take his opinion with a grain of salt. Creepiness aside, it was a weird plot device that sort of existed throughout the show, but kind of popped in and out sporadically, as if the writers couldn’t decide whether or not they wanted to go for it. It was as if they got wet feet at the last minute and then reconsidered and then got wet feet again. Then again I’m glad they didn’t really dive into it hardcore since it was a little bit uncomfortable for them to be shipped. I mean seriously, couldn’t they have made Blue Rose a little bit older or Kotetsu a little bit younger?

I’m pretty sure Kotetsu is 30ish and what is she like 17? Eh, not really my thing.

I guess they decided that they wanted to focus on the bromance between Kotetsu and Barnaby more, but in my opinion that relationship was also really inconsistent. Barnaby tended to blow hot and then cold and I forget which episode it was in, but his attitude had a magical 360 turnaround that really bothered me. I knew just from reading about the show that they were going to end up in a bromance, but the progression of said bromance was unrealistic to me. There was no easing into it, it was more like ‘oh hey we’ve decided to make this a bromance so let’s just go for it full speed ahead’! I would have preferred a more realistic progression of their relationship, which I know is probably asking a lot for a show like this, but hell it would have made me happier. I know I’m a little bit too particular sometimes XD.

Have I mentioned that chibi is the best?

Onto the next issue. This had more to do with the overarching structure of the show than anything else. Blue Rose and a few others got backstories, but the show never did anything with them. Although it was kind of depressing that Rock Bison got totally gipped on the backstory whereas most of the others had backstories that were irrelevant to the overarching plot. Sky High’s backstory was somewhat relevant, but the show could easily have done without it in theory. When I think about it, the only plot that remained consistent throughout the entirety of the show is Barnaby’s story about getting revenge for his parents. However, my biggest question around the main plot is: why the heck did Ouroboros play such a big role in the plot when at the end of the day it was really Maverick who was responsible for the death of his parents? I guess I just wanted some more consistency in terms of villainy. Ouroboros was played up to be such a huge part of the show and then ended up being pretty much a false lead. I understand the function it served, but it seemed like a lot of wasted effort to me. I mean seriously, if the guy could alter memories then why not just convince Barnaby that his parents died in a car crash or something and not give him the chance to develop a revenge complex in the first place? Sometimes super villains are not the sharpest tacks in the box.

Why do evil people always have weird moles?

Next plot hole: Why the heck did Rotwang hate NEXT so much? It would have been awesome to get a little bit of context considering the guy put all the heroes into a Saw-esque confinement and tried to get them to kill each other. If there was a place in the show where a bit of backstory would have been helpful to understanding the plot it would have been here. The way the show portrayed it basically just makes him seem like a motiveless psycho asshole who hates NEXT just because he can. I mean hey, that seems to be a pretty common trope in a lot of poorly executed stories, but the fact that they bothered to give backstory to a bunch of fairly minor characters and not this guy makes me wonder a little bit.

I think the final plot hole worth mentioning is probably the inclusion of Lunatic. I mean what the hell? They set him up to be a super important anti-hero character who is going to be integral to the plot and then he kind of just flakes around and doesn’t really do anything of major importance except for jumping in at the last minute as a beautiful deus ex machina to save Kotetsu.

I love how they always insert some obscure Greek or Latinate reference whenever they’re trying to make someone sound evil or intelligent. (Thanatos is the Greek personification of Death by the way.)

But yea, Lunatic didn’t really do a whole lot except for run around killing random murderers and getting in the way of the superheroes a few times. In all honesty, the show would have functioned perfectly well if they just got rid of him entirely.

So what do you guys think? Was the show ruined a little bit by all the gaping plot holes? Or was it entertaining enough that we can forgive it?

Even though I don’t really watch shoujo that much anymore–I’ve moved on to more shounen type shows–I’m still a sucker for a good romance. However, while that may be the case, I still have some standards. I try not to be too picky I mean something like Kamisama Kiss (Hajimemashita) was kinda meh, but it was ok and it didn’t make me quit in annoyance after the first few episodes. It stuck to the tropes and was a fairly typical shoujo. The World is Still Beautiful (TWSB) was also a fairly typical shoujo, but it annoyed the fuck out of me. Josh and I were actually watching it together and after we finished the clincher episode we both looked at each other and were like, “let’s drop this show”. Here’s the customary synopsis courtesy of MAL: Nike, the fourth princess of the Rain Dukedom and one who holds the power to call forth the rain, travels to the Sun Kingdom to marry Sun King Livius for her country, despite her own reluctance. She soon discovers that the King, who conquered the world in only three years after his ascendance to the throne, is still a child! Furthermore, for trivial reasons, he has demanded that Nike call forth the rain…?!

That would be Nike singing her god awful rain song.

Ok, so I’ll let you guys explain this to me as I bravely let my anime naiveté shine through, but is the male version of lolicon a thing? Do girls actually like that stuff? Because honestly I found it to be a MAJOR turnoff. Josh accused me of being ageist, but heck I’m sorry I found it weird and creepy that she was betrothed and sleeping in the same bed as a NAKED prepubescent boy. Was that supposed to be attractive/enjoyable to watch?

See the look on Nike’s face? Yea that pretty much sums up how I felt about it too.

Anyway what annoys me the most about the show is that for a while it seemed like it was going to be ok. Nike was actually a decent shoujo heroine and Livius was well I mean I never really liked Livius, but Nike was just fine in my book. She had the ability to fend for herself and despite being a princess she wasn’t spoiled or obnoxious or anything. Like I said, Nike was fine–her relatively chill personality was one of the reasons that Josh and I kept watching as long as we did. Although, that stupid rain song she sings almost ruined it for me. In terms of shoujo though, I really can put up with a lot. If you look at my MAL account there’s plenty of proof right there. Not gonna lie I’ve watched some pretty cheesy crap (more than once). So this post got me thinking. Have I changed? Have I become less tolerant of stupidity in shoujo? Or was this show really just horrible? To answer that question, we have to turn our gaze to the kid that Nike’s babysitting engaged to. King Livius. I don’t know about you, but I’m just REALLY, REALLY, REALLY not attracted to twelve year old boys. Also, I don’t care how mature the show tries to make him seem and how much of a freaky mommy complex he has, there is no way in the seven hells that a kid that age is such a competent and effective ruler. They try to go through this whole sequence where he’s super studious and spends all of his time attending to administrative duties, using the bullshit ‘he was forced to grow up too quickly’ excuse as cover. Yea. Right. I don’t buy it. I also don’t buy his relationship with Nike. See the main reason I watch(ed) shoujo is for the super smushy romance between two consenting people who are BOTH of a respectable age. Livius has not gone through puberty. To me there is something very wrong about this, but hey if it’s your kind of thing who am I to judge?

Please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks this is painfully awkward and weird.

The thing that really did it for both Josh and I though was when in the weird engagement ceremony where they’r supposed to be exchanging rings, Livius goes all macho and protective on Nike. It was honestly like watching a Chihuahua pretending to be a German Shepard. It was so comically bad that you couldn’t help but shake your head and laugh. And then all of a sudden he and Nike have this magical connection and are in love with each other. Eesh. It was gross. I mean jumping into romance way too quickly is a common enough and annoying trope, but when the characters are terrible together it makes it even worse. Then to add further insult to injury, add in a random little girl who is actually the right age for Livius and make her a romantic rival because why the fuck not? I don’t actually know who she is since Josh and I only saw her in the episode preview and just shook our heads and vomited a little. Seriously TWSB?! Of all the stupid crap to pull you have to pull the only thing that could possibly make the show even worse! My advice: Nike pack your bags and get the hell out of there, let Livius marry the little blonde twerp since she’s actually the right age for him. You can do so much better! I’ve aired my grievances and strongly advise against watching this show, but if anyone has read the manga/actually finished the anime let me know what you think!

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, anime is filled imoutos, onii-chans, and plenty of incestuous-tinged relationships that naturally follow them. From the more bratty, over-the-top characters like Kirino (OreImo) to the more “realistic”, subdued ones like Rin (Little Busters), imoutos tend to be – for better or worse – one of those things that makes us go “that’s just so anime!” Anime or not though, imoutos also tend to be one of the most polarizing tropes, and their very presence in a show inspires a whole range of responses ranging from declarations of undying support of “wincest” to complete disgust. Whether you like it or not, however, it looks like imoutos are here to stay.

Although the term “imouto” most often seems to be used in the English-speaking fandom to imply connotations of incest, harems, and certain other tropes, imoutos are characters just like any others who have a wide range of personalities and often serve a wide range of functions within shows. And – just like every other character – some imoutos are just better than others.

But which imoutos are the best?

Given our longstanding love of imoutos, wincest, and everything in-between, Froggykun (Fantastic Memes) and I (joshspeagle) have teamed up to try and answer this question once and for all. So, without further ado, we present to you our list of the top 10 imoutos of all time.

10. Mana (Guilty Crown)

Josh: No self-respecting imouto list would be complete without Mana, who is by far the most ridiculous imouto-type character created to this day. In the best way possible, of course.

I mean, here’s how things go down in Guilty Crown. At some point when Mana and her brother Shu are both young children, Mana invites him to a church to talk to him about something. Once he arrives, she reveals that she’s been infected with a virus that will allow for the creation of a new being, and she wants to bang him to kick things off. Shocked, he refuses. Enraged at his refusal, she pretty much EXPLODES, spreading the virus across Japan and killing millions.

Which, if I’m reading this right, means Guilty Crown is really a story about incest gone wrong. If that doesn’t guarantee Mana an entry in this list, I don’t know what does.

Sometimes the carnivorous, insane, world-destroying imouto is Best Imouto.

9. Saaya (Sket Dance)

Froggy: I was pretty meh on Sket Dance overall. The humour is on the repetitive side for the most part and the drama was BS at times. But the scenes involving Saaya and her siscon brother are classic. The extent to which her brother misunderstands everything about Saaya’s love life was the source of one of the most epic imaginary love polygons since, I dunno, School Rumble?

Outside of amusing misunderstandings, Saaya was a great character in her own right. Her tsundere behaviour towards the MC was never obnoxious. It was always clear that her attitude was born out of social awkwardness after being sheltered by her brother for so long. As the story went along, you could see her trying to find independence and trying to move past her unrequited love, which made her an easy character (for me at least) to identify with.

Another one of Saaya’s positive traits is her cup size. She is a rare breed among imoutos.

And she’s not even the Best Girl. (The Best Girl is Tsubaki when crossdressing.)

8. Komachi (Oregairu)

Froggy: I love the way Oregairu handled the classic imouto trope. Komachi never showed many brocon inclinations, which is actually the way I like it. Hachiman and Komachi bicker and tease each other like ordinary siblings. Komachi’s a bit nicer to Hachiman than he probably deserves, but I put this down to Komachi being nice to everyone. Sometimes genki imouto is best imouto.

Komachi’s character wasn’t fleshed out fully in the anime, but it’s a testament to how strong the writing is in that series that Komachi still made it to this list anyway. I think that, despite all her frivolous actions and her overall genki-ness, she’s a lot more perceptive than Hachiman gives her credit for. She understands his cynicism and his persecution complex, and she treats him normally for it. You couldn’t ask for a better little sister for a guy like Hachiman.

7. Last Order (Toaru Majutsu no Index)

Froggy: THE MOST KAWAII MOTHER-EFFER IN ACADEMY CITY

Last Order single-handedly turned Accelerator from an unlikable prick and douchebag into the adorable badass we all know and love (with a hefty dose of tsun!).

Much of what makes Last Order so effective as a genki imouto is the sharp contrast between her and Misaka’s other sisters. Last Order inspires this greater protective urge because she’s not “just” another clone. As much as the point of the Sisters Arc was to show that even clones deserve to live, Last Order’s impending death felt much more urgent because she had a vibrant personality and because the relationship she developed with Accelerator really did feel like the bond between brother and sister.

Last Order is also number one on the list of imoutos whose cheeks I want to squeeze.

6. Yakumo (School Rumble)

Froggy: The only imouto on this list to have an oneechan rather than an oniichan.

Yakumo’s a funny girl. She’s the responsible one while her big sis is a doofus, so there’s a bit of role reversal going on in that relationship. Both sisters look out for each other in their own way, even if they’re never on the same wavelength. It’s what makes their dynamic both funny and heartwarming.

The other thing I love about Yakumo is her voice and gentle personality. She’s the character that got me into Mamiko Noto’s voice. She’s definitely a “perfect waifu” kind of character, although I never appreciated her character that way. I certainly never thought Yakumo was “perfect”. She was too emotionally stunted to ever care for anyone besides her sister, and she always had this air of wistfulness around her that makes me wonder if she ever thought she was missing out on something in life.

Watching Yakumo slowly come out of her shell was one of the best parts about watching School Rumble.

5. Rin (Little Busters!)

Josh: Often in anime, brocon and siscon complexes are played up to be ridiculous things, with the imoutos/onii-chans often genki or tsundere. Rin is where this type of thing breaks down, and you get a chance to see what is one of the most “genuine”/“real” brother-sister relationships in any anime.

Rin’s relationship with Kyousuke is something special: throughout the series all the interactions and flashbacks really show how much he has tried to be there for her…and how much she depends on him to protect her. There’s something both cute and heartbreaking about her shyness and awkwardness around others even as she care for them deeply.

One of the biggest themes of Little Busters was growing up and coming out of your shell, and Rin (and Riki)’s journey become independent of Kyousuke is incredibly moving. In my opinion, what really establishes Rin as an amazing imouto is not just the great relationship dynamic she has with Kyousuke, but the excellent characterization she receives throughout the series as she struggles and evolves.

She’s also just all-around adorable.

4. Kotori (Date A Live)

Josh: ALL ABOARD THE IMOUTO MOTHERSHIP.

Date A Live is one of these bizarre shows that’s ridiculously stupid but at the same time more intelligent than most people give it credit for. Kotori, for instance, starts out as a normal “imouto”-type character. She then turns out to be the commander of a giant floating spaceship trying to get Shiro to romance a bunch of spirits (providing live commentary patterned on eroge), and afterwards gets romanced by Shiro himself for similar reasons except that they both know the whole thing’s a farce. Yet somehow everything ends up working out anyway, exploring the concept of “love” in ways only an anime as ridiculously stupid as this one could do.

With an attitude that’s half-sassy and half-tsundere (depending on what role she’s playing in the show), Kotori comes across as a strong-willed, go-getter imouto that’s a force to be reckoned with. Often the one supposedly pulling the strings behind the events in the story (until each date inevitably goes wrong and Shiro bungles himself into each girl’s heart), she also fills an atypical role among imoutos, serving to try and positively guide her onii-chan’s relationships rather than interfering with them by becoming jealous or possessive. In addition, her relationship with Shiro is actually played straight, much to the show’s credit – while the series often jokes about incestuous vibes, their relationship manages to remain quite tame by most anime standards. This serves as a nice contrast to both the eroge-inspired nature of the show and fits her more assertive personality quite well.

I also must confess that, like Kotori’s second-in-command Kyouhei, I too wouldn’t mind having her step all over me.

3. Mikan (To-Love Ru)

Froggy: I swear, you can actually see the otaku database adding entries every time a new To Love-Ru chapter comes out. Mikan started off strictly as a side character who existed only to make Rito feel more awkward whenever he gets into an ecchi situation. Then, gradually, she made more appearances and her relationship with Rito was fleshed out. Then, finally, she started getting in on the fanservice too. But there’s always some excuse to prevent their relationship from actually being incestuous. Mikan is great.

Notable among imouto characters is how Mikan actually appears to have a life outside of her interactions with her brother. Like with all the To Love-Ru girls, there’s enough face likability to Mikan and context given to her behaviour to give us the sense that there’s a person behind the tits. Her friendship with Yami is super heartwarming. Sure, this all still leads to her being partially unclothed and groped by Rito half the time, but these situations are so overblown and so ridiculous that Mikan’s relationship with her brother achieves a kind of meta-innocence.

As Confucius says, “It’s not incest – it’s wincest!”

2. Karen/Tsukihi (Monogatari Series)

Josh: The fire sisters end up topping this list for a variety of reasons. One is their individual personalities. Outside of their relationship with Araragi, their over-the-top theatrics generally makes them extremely entertaining to watch and establishes them as some of the most memorable imoutos in any anime. They both are well-characterized, with each having their own arcs (and essentially their own show!) that help to establish their personalities. It is heavily implied that both of them live fulfilling lives outside of the events explicitly portrayed in the Monogatari series, and in addition actually have boyfriends! (Although their boyfriends are supposedly just like their brother lol.)

Another is the special relationship they share with Araragi that manages to straddle all sides of the incestuous spectrum. On the one hand, many of the things they do are plainly ridiculous (one prominent scene where Araragi grabs Tsukihi’s boobs and gets spun around comes to mind) and generally are (deliberately) portrayed as incestuous and fetishistic. On the other hand, however, there is a sense that none of the siblings really find their relationships to be romantically tinged, and that they’re just a really close and touchy-feely (if perverted) family.

It’s these two elements together that make them some of the coolest imoutos ever made. Plus toothbrush.

1. Kirino (Ore no Imouto)

Josh: Was there any doubt who would be topping this list?

Kirino is the modern icon of everything the “imouto” stands for. Instantly memorable, Kirino’s bratty tsundere personality hits you like the truck from ImoCho…and then just keeps on driving.

But Kirino is more than just a bratty little sister: she’s a full-fledged otaku. Her otaku hobbies, however, don’t just serve as a curious oddity,but a fundamental driving force behind the overall progression of the story, starting with the reconciliation with her brother and the formation of her pseudo-”circle” to her later voyages to Akihabara and the conflicts between her “visible” and “otaku” selves. By incorporating her hobbies as a central element of the story, OreImo allows Kirino to become a much more fleshed-out character (or fakes it, according to some). At the same time, it also turns her into a focal point around which it can ask questions about (and celebrate) otaku and otaku culture.

Still, it’s not Kirino herself which makes her the best imouto character of all time, but rather her controversial relationship with Kyousuke. From the beginning when we learn about her obsession with incestuous-themed eroge, her relationship with her brother becomes colored by odd vibes. At face value, it’s the stilted, odd reconciliation of estranged brother and sister. But underneath it all, there is something much more romantic: from Kyousuke’s first encounter to their eventual marriage, their relationship treads the uncomfortable line between openly incestuous and awkwardly platonic. This left many people conflicted about how they should (or were supposed to) feel about the siblings, leading some to decry it as a shallow mockery of real sibling relationships (I personally thought it was the other way around) and even question (tongue-in-cheek) whether imouto incest love stories can actually be good.

Regardless of the controversy and feelings surrounding the character and her relationship though, Kirino is probably the most memorable (“imouto”-like) imouto out there, and essentially represents everything good and bad about the character archetype. And it’s because of this that we crown her the Queen of Imoutos.

LONG LIVE THE QUEEN.

What Makes a Good Imouto Character?

Any Top 10 list is always subjective, so Froggy and I decided to briefly go through some of traits that make imoutos appealing to us so you guys could see the some of the factors that went into the decisions behind our rankings.

Froggy

For me, the appeal of the imouto isn’t about the fact that they’re like childhood friends whom you don’t have to date to hook up with. Neither is it about how dependant and childish they are. For me, the appeal of the imouto character is really about the appeal of the sibling relationship. When you think of a bad, annoying imouto character, chances are her relationship with her brother was not fleshed out and feels hollow.

Anime tends to romanticise the sibling relationship, even when you take the whole “wincest” angle out of the equation. But that’s not a bad thing. I know I’ve always been drawn to the sibling dynamic in anime because of how deeply siblings care for each other. It’s love that transcends romantic love. Recent anime especially have tended to distort that idea of “pure, platonic love”, but I think this idea that loving one’s sister is somehow more admirable than loving one’s girlfriend still manages to remain intact.

If I’m being really honest with myself, I think I enjoy this dynamic so much because I’m so uncertain about romantic relationships in my own life. I prefer watching siblings over romantic subplots because it feels somehow safer and less “cheap” to me. With the huge imouto craze in the otaku subculture, I suspect I’m not the only one feeling this way.

Josh

For me, imoutos are complicated things that tend to showcase how different ways I (and many others) tend to consume media really “clash” with each other. On some level for me, the appeal of the imouto is as Froggy outlines above (minus the romantic relationship part), and depends heavily on the ways that their relationship with their brother is fleshed out and explored, regardless of the emphasis. All the best imoutos we decided on, for instance, have well-fleshed out relationships with their brothers, and I feel as characters this element is crucial.

But, like harems, I also enjoy many imouto characters because of their function as tropes and their use of tropes. Especially now, when an imouto’s actions/existence is/are often as much about exploring their own role in anime as it is about the sibling dynamic (OreImo and Imocho, for instance – and yes I’m serious about both – try and do this), I often enjoy just watching them act out certain lines/scenarios. This is almost a complete about-face from the emphasis on sibling dynamics, since it actually implies an enjoyment in the “hollowness” of the dynamic.

In addition, there’s something fundamentally exotic about the sibling dynamics portrayed in anime that draws me to them. Or, at least, it probably did at some point, since I’m so used to it now it almost strikes me as normal when I watch anime. Through their romanticization (and perversion), imoutos give you a chance to watch and experience something that usually doesn’t exist in real life. By being something “fake”, imoutos actually have the potential to explore “real” issues that are important, such as social boundaries, the nature of love, and the concept of family (wait – did I just give a summary of the themes of Nisemonogatari?!).

In the end, I think it’s the ways that imoutos blend all these issues together that really determines their appeal (or lack thereof). Imoutos exist in the grey area between the “authentic”, “fake”, and “real”, and how (and why) exactly they end up exploring that space really determines how much I think I like them. Which I guess is just an overly-academic way of saying I like imoutos in general because they encompass a cool intersection between a lot of different issues. The best imoutos then are the ones that explore/encompass one (or more) of these facets most effectively relative to the others – they make me believe in the character and the relationship, even if the whole thing’s actually pretty weird.

Imoutos that Didn’t Make the Cut

Here’s a random smattering of the imoutos we jotted down when initially brainstorming that we later threw out. Feel free to point out any imoutos that aren’t listed in the comments and we’ll try and add them in!

Kobato (Haganai) – relationship with brother not really fleshed out, very static.

Sakura (Card Captor Sakura) – not enough “imouto” like, even though she is one.

Nunnally (Code Geass) – Lelouch steals the show.

Miya (Amagami SS) – cute, but didn’t make the cut.

Kyon’s little sister (Haruhi) – forgettable, but cute.

Yuzu/Karin (Bleach) – Ichigo steals the show.

Mitsuki (Kyoukai no Kanata) – less of a cool imouto, more of a target for siscon bro.

Mero (Sankarea) – forgettable, not special.

Kotomi (Seitokai Yakuindomo) – funny, nice relationship with brother, but didn’t make the cut.

Sora (Yosuga no Sora) – because real incest can’t be beat, but in this case it can.

Shiro (No Game No Life) – Sora steals the show, but she’s pretty adorable. Also still airing.

Chiaki (Minami-ke!) – snarky and all-around awesome, but lost out.

Yuuko (Sakurasou) – forgettable, but cute.

Suguha (SAO) – hahahahaha no. And if it’s a ridiculous sister contest, loses to Mana.

Not that she couldn’t give her a run for her money…

So if you’ve been reading our blog for a while, you probably already know that Josh loves watching incredibly stupid shows and then coming up with bullshit reasons to justify watching them.  I never understood the allure or the thought process until now. Watching Yakitate!! Japan (YJ) made me realize that sometimes it’s ok to watch a show that’s absolutely idiotic and still enjoy it for what it is. Then again I don’t think I will ever be able to stop judging people who like watching Daimidaler (sorry fans) haha. YJ isn’t quite that dumb, I think you would be hard pressed to find another show that is that self-aware about its own stupidity and revels in it as much. That being said, if you don’t have the same interest in baking that I do (you should totally check out my baking blog–look at that shameless self-promotion) or you really just are not a fan of anything super ridiculous, you’re probably going to want to stay away from YJ. Then again, I actually find it really hilarious so you may want to reconsider.

Here’s a synopsis of the show courtesy of MAL:

Yakitate means “fresh baked”, but the word “Japan” is actually a pun – pan means bread in Japanese, so Kazuma is out to make Japan, a unique Japanese bread to compete with the best bread from around the world!
Azuma became obsessed with bread when he was six years old. His sister yelled that their family should start having bread for breakfast sometimes, but their grandfather refused to even consider it, as he would only eat natto, miso soup, and rice for breakfast. Kazuma agreed, saying he didn’t like bread, but his sister kidnaps him and takes him to a bread store to show him the wonders of fresh-baked bread. Not only is Kazuma converted, but the owner discovers that Kazuma has the magical “Hands of the Sun” whose warmth makes them particularly suited to making bread. The owner packs up shop and goes to Tokyo to fulfill his dream of making Japan, but Kazuma continues his bread-baking dream as well, and ends up going to Tokyo himself when he`s sixteen, to compete for a spot at the foremost bread store in Japan – Pantasia!

One of the main reasons that I’m so forgiving about YJ is because it actually makes me laugh out loud. I almost never laugh like that during a show. I’m a pretty stoic media consumer for the most part. Josh thinks I don’t have a heart since I never cry during movies haha. YJ is totally ridiculous, one of the things it’s especially great at doing is coming up with ridiculous reactions when someone tries one of the breads made by Azuma. For example…

You read that correctly. The bread is apparently so good that the contest judge literally tries to whip his dick out. He takes one bite of bread and then decides to strip naked and do…well I think you can use your imagination. Yes. This is a show about baking bread. I promise XD. I think that frame might be one of the best moments I’ve seen in the show so far (I’m only on episode 20/69). The thing is, this moment is not unique–there is a ton of weird and totally inappropriate things that go on in YJ. It’s a show about baking bread, but at the same time it’s also a show that will leave you shaking your head and questioning your life choices.

One thing that a good bad show can’t do without is a god awful protagonist. Azuma is so stupid it hurts sometimes. Really his only abilities lie in his odd genius for baking bread combined with his magical ‘solar hands’ that somehow make the yeast ferment more quickly due to their abnormally warm temperature (it sounds like it would be really unpleasant to hold hands with this guy). This guy is the epitome of stupid, but somehow it actually works. I mean honestly even his character design is intended to make him look dumb. Note the errant antennae, pink headband and vapid facial expression. So why does Azuma work? Probably because there is no pretense about his stupidity–all the other characters are quick to remind him of it–and also because he’s something of an idiot savant. Azuma is a moron, don’t get me wrong, but he is surprisingly brilliant when it comes to baking bread. Somehow, in spite of his empty head, he always rises to the challenge. Don’t ask me how he manages to beat out the rest of the competition when it comes to all these baking contests he somehow enters. And of course you can’t forget those all-important shounen tenets that he embodies. (You know the stuff: friendship, loyalty, bromance, etc. haha.)  I mean yes, let’s not disregard that he’s an idiot, but he’s an idiot whose heart is in the right place.

The supporting characters are pretty great too. I actually really appreciate them, and they’re much more developed than I would have expected for a show that is clearly about bread (and whipping out your dick). Don’t get me wrong, they’re equally ridiculous in their own ways, but not ridiculous enough that it makes me want to tear my hair out and quit the show. Also what can I say, that’s just a really sexy afro. How can I say no to a show with such a sexy afro involved?

The show also has a surprising lack of fanservice (at least so far), something that I found to be so beautiful and miraculous that I almost cried. The two main females in the show are surprisingly respectable, as in I have not seen them in the shower or in a bathing suit, and there have been no cleavage/upskirt shots to speak of! If you’ve read any of my other posts, you’ll know that I am an avid hater of all things fanservice, not because I’m a feminist or anything like that, but simply because I find it distracting and annoying. Not to mention, all the female fanservice out there tends to feature guys who are extremely effeminate looking (aka not my type). Anyway, the fact that this show has yet to make me cringe is a definite plus in my book, if it does include fanservice later on though, which I suspect it might, it’s going to lose brownie points.

Now isn’t it nice to see a girl who’s fully clothed once in a while?

Other things worth noting: this show does have a lot of wordplay in it, the sub I’m watching explains it for me and even though Josh said this is common in anime, I haven’t seen too much of it. Shows how much I know. Anyway I thought it was cool though. Even the title apparently is a wordplay. Yea, I mean baking shows don’t seem to be too common in anime and for someone like me who regularly watches Food Network at the gym (I’m not much of a TV person) I thought it was kind of cool to watch an anime about baking. I’ve also seen Yumeiro Patissiere, but other than that I haven’t heard of any other baking shows worth watching. Any suggestions are much appreciated! Hey if anything I think you’ll probably end up learning something about bread, which is never a bad thing in my opinion :).

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Wendt, Alexander. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 1999. 1. Print.

Yasutomo, Dennis T. The New Multilateralism in Japan’s Foreign Policy. New York: St. Martin’s, 1995. 40-50. Print.

A while back, I spent some time talking about my love of (and often annoyance with) light novel (LN) adaptations. At that point, there was a slew of excellent LN adaptations I had been watching, ranging from the ridiculous NouCome to the super “that’s so anime” Strike the Blood and the very pleasant and endearingly clever Outbreak Company.

For those of you who haven’t seen the show/read the books, Outbreak Company follows Shin’ichi Kanō, a young secluded otaku who is offered a job thanks to his vast knowledge of anime, manga, and video games. After meeting his new employer, he is kidnapped, awakening in an alternate fantasy world in the Holy Eldant Empire. Shin’ichi, it turns out, was in fact selected by the Japanese government to help improve his country’s relations with this new world by establishing a company to spread the unique products of the Japanese (i.e. otaku) culture to this new, unexplored market. In his adventures to promote otaku culture, Shin’ichi meets, befriends, and inadvertently romances a wide range of characters, establishing his own small harem and even founding an actual “otaku school”. The show is actually quite meta, although in a much more constructive and critical (rather than cynical and self-indulging) way.

WHAT A TWIST.

Now, it’s no secret that I’m a bit of an academic when it comes to anime, and my posts tend to get pretty analytical. So it probably comes as no surprise that one of coolest things I thought about Outbreak Company was the way it dealt with the concept of soft power. As I said then,

Cultural influence, soft power, indirect/persuasive power (or whatever you might call it), is fascinating, especially since it has a ton of real relevance to very involved members of the anime community like us. The draw of “otaku culture” is strong, and the idea of Japan using it as a type of real (and universal) force rather than just having it spread naturally (as it sort of does now) has been a big thing in Japan (at least in the government) for quite some time. And, for the most part, has not been a great success story since most of us overseas barely even know about it.

Because of this, the idea of having the government back an “Outbreak Company” (clever clever) in Eldant, headed by an otaku, and helped by the Self Defense Force (JSDF), which is actually successful, is quite the intriguing story idea. I’m still undecided if it’s meant to be sort of an escapist novel (in the vein of LNs as a whole) for those who are entranced by the idea of government-led anime-backed soft power, a critique on the current government’s stance, an actual endorsement of the idea, or even possibly some combination of all of the above (or none of the above – I could just reading too much into it!).

Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about this type of thing — soft power, how it affects us, how it’s discussed, and what it actually is. And, after a lot of thinking, much discussion (including some with Froggykun!), and lots of writing, I think I’ve finally come up with some answers. Surprisingly, many of them lead back to Outbreak Company – it turns out the scenario the show constructs actually is quite clever on a wide variety of fronts, and could easily be seen as the exact type of critique soft power needs right now (both in content and in form — what better way to criticize the valorizing of otaku culture than as a LN filled to the brim with otaku culture?!) or its exact opposite.

What a NOVEL idea.

I generally am a constructive, positive guy, which showcases itself in how I interpret shows. Most recently, for instance, I’ve found myself one of the lone defenders (or at least, I feel that way) of the philosophy at the heart of popular LN adaptation No Game No Life. The debate here parallels the dichotomy above: while I feel as if the show is constructive, critical, and nuanced in the ways in represents otaku and their worldview (many of which, like geekdom, can be negative), many feel the opposite. While the show might be “clever”, maybe it’s not actually clever in all the right ways.

Is it just being meta-aware? Or is it more than that?

Or maybe, as shows like Oregairu might tell us, passing such a judgment is difficult and profoundly personal when we are shown the world exclusively from the protagonists point of view yet try and extrapolate to something more “objective”.

Edit: Soon after this was posted, there was a discussion on Twitter which expands on this idea.

If this meant to be the world through Sora’s eyes, is the reader supposed to receive this as irony or truth?

This point — the fact that viewers aren’t just empty vessels, but have the freedom to interpret things and ultimately decide how they feel about them — is I think the key to understanding soft power (yes, back to that!), how it works, and ultimately why it has failed. Or at least why it seems to have failed so far.

Note: This is an entry in a series of more academic posts all about soft power. While it is technically related to anime (one of the main motivations for exploring the issue), the actual posts themselves are a little bit removed. Since I’m pulling from a lot of sources in these posts, I’m including citations in case anyone is interested in following up on some of them here.

Introduction: Understanding Power

With all this talk of soft power, let’s move to a more basic question. Most simply:

What is power?

In my opinion, power, distilled into in its most basic form, is the ability to get others to behave in ways beneficial to oneself. Or, more basically, the ability to get people to do what you want.

“But wait!” you might cry. “What about strength? Or military capacity? Or economic might?”

Symbols of power that encompass all of the above suggestions.

Those are perfectly reasonable definitions: you could easily equate power to some type of physical or mental concept associated in some way with capacity. Here, the nature of power changes from a relationship to a resource, one that can be exerted or used.

While some component of power is usually physical, much of what actually constitutes power is precisely the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed. Or, in other words, the main reason the things above function as stand-in’s for power is because they can get people do stuff. Don’t get me wrong: there is power in the ability to destroy things and make people’s lives horrible (which is why there is some credence that military or economic might constitutes a form of power), but much of the reason countries with powerful militaries are seen as powerful is more because of the implied threat (and thus bargaining ability, influence, etc.) that gets people to do things than the actual military itself.

“Power” is a common part of our lexicon, and is used liberally to refer to situations that occur at almost every level of society, from the interactions that take place among individuals (e.g., the workplace) to those that take place between nations. This wide range of uses (and associated concepts) makes defining the general-purpose term extremely difficult. So, to make things easier (and make my definition useful), I’ll do what all academics do and simply deal with power as it relates to a given field or topic. In this case, since we want to talk about soft power, I’ll limit it to international relations.

Power and International Relations

In international relations (IR), power (well, political power) was originally tied to relations between nations. As political theorist Hans Morgenthau stated, for instance, political power is a “relation between those who exercise authority over those whom it is exercised [upon]” (Morgenthau 1985). As with the definition I proposed above (which I actually came up with completely independently – go figure), power involves two sets of actors, and it is the relationship between the two that defined a nation’s “power”.

Power defined by (and within) the relationship between two nations. It cannot exist outside of this relationship and, to a large extent, outside the context of actual events through which the relationship is established.

More recently, however, power in IR has often been used to refer to a nation’s strength or influence in the abstract, where a nation’s power is equated with the capacity or ability to exercise power, much in the same way as I discussed above (Waltz 1979). Seen this way, “power” is not a relationship or descriptor but a resource that countries can possess and deploy as they see fit.

Power defined by capacity. Here, power can exist outside the context of other events or actors. Instead of being expressed within a relationship, power is instead expressed through them.

Hard Power and Soft Power

This type of modern political power comes in two basic forms. The first, hard power, lies in the ability of one actor (usually a nation) to coerce another through force or threats of force such as military invasions or economic sanctions (Nye 1990). This type of power was most exemplified during the Cold War era through systems such as the US’s policy of “containment”. Typical expressions of hard power do not need to be limited to negative incentives (i.e. “sticks”) though — it can also be expressed through positive incentives (i.e. “carrots”), which function in similar ways.

The second, soft power, is traditionally defined in opposition to hard power as the ability of one actor to instead attract and co-opt another by, for example, projecting a positive national image through mass media, international trade, or foreign policy (Nye 2004). The underlying implication that a nation can achieve its goals without resorting to force has led soft power to become a relatively popular concept since the Cold War era, with many nations becoming actively involved in trying to cultivate their soft power and win the hearts and minds of those abroad. If you’re not absolutely convinced at it’s importance (like so many politicians are), it’s actually become enough of a big idea to get its own set of international rankings.

A quick table summarizing the differences between hard and soft power as defined by Nye.

Japan is a fitting example of a nation that has fully embraced this soft power approach. As a nation without significant military presence in the midst of the decade-long economic recession (i.e. the “Lost Decade”), the concept of soft power has proved particularly attractive to Japan as a method to project its influence outside the “typical” channels mentioned beforehand. Inspired by Douglas McGray’s 2002 Foreign Policy article “Gross National Cool” describing the popularity of Japanese pop culture abroad, Japan has since begun an entire “Cool Japan” initiative to try and capitalize on its pop culture to increase its soft power abroad (Nagata 2012). By doing so, the Japanese government hopes to further national interests ranging from increased tourism and economic investment to overcoming historical postcolonial tensions in the East Asian region (The Japan Times 2012; Kelts 2013).

Note: For some reason, Japan is often seen as “a nation without a standing army”. In fact, Japan’s Self Defense Force (SDF) is one of the most powerful/technologically advanced militaries in the world both in absolute terms and relative to its current size. Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution has generally restricted its offensive military capabilities and hamstrung its ability to engage in bilateral military activities with other countries though, which is probably what leads to this impression.

Yet for all this, soft power remains an elusive and ill-defined concept (since the definition above is actually quite lacking, albeit profoundly influential). The precise method by which Japan and other countries can “increase” their soft power — let alone control it – has proven difficult to pin down by both casual observers and academics. In addition, the exact role soft power plays in IR remains unclear. While it clearly has utility in accomplishing national goals (like increasing tourism), it will remain an unhelpful and possibly misleading concept until these issues are resolved and soft power’s role in IR is firmly grounded.

Note: For more discussion of many of these issues in the context of East Asia, see also Black, Epstein, and Tokita (2010) (link).

Soft Power’s Role in International Relations

So, before I go on and talk about exactly what soft power is supposed to be, I want to talk a little bit about some of the role soft power is supposed to play in the context of IR. Or, more precisely, different IR theories, since academics don’t actually understand fully how lots of what goes down actually works and the forces that drive them.

Realism

Realism is a tradition of IR theory that grew out of the Cold War era centered upon several central premises (see, e.g., Donnelly 2008):

1. The international system under which nations operate and interact is inherently “anarchic”, with no (meaningful) universal government that “polices” national entities.
2. Nations within this anarchic system are unitary, rational actors that tend to pursue self-interest and resources (i.e. power) with the primary focus of survival.
3. Nations are the most important actors in IR, and are always in a state of constant antagonism.

From this viewpoint, power is almost universally seen as coercive in nature. As a result, hard power – especially military power – tends to be the most popular among realist-focused IR theorists who view IR as nations attempting to re-center the balance of power to suit their own interests and ensure their security (see, e.g., Friedberg 1993).

Under this framework, Japan’s lack of a “real” military (despite obvious facts to the contrary) and growing passivity after WWII have been presented as signs of its lack of power in IR (Yasutomo 1995). In addition, China’s growing economic and military might have even led some to decry a “power shift” in the East Asian region (Hagstrom 2012). From such a realist viewpoint, Japanese pop culture’s popularity abroad is almost meaningless in the face of real capacity and hard power.

While it may seem over-simplistic at first, this point does have its merits. It is most easily demonstrated using a simple thought experiment: assuming China decided to go to war with Japan in the near future, would Chinese anime fans (or other members active in consuming Japanese popular culture) protest their government’s decision? Probably not.

A quick graphic summarizing realism.

Liberalism

The tradition of liberalism in IR theories, on the other hand, arose in the post-WWI era and developed in response to the difficulty nations experienced in controlling and limiting war via IR. Unlike realism, liberalism contends that it is possible to reduce the likelihood of conflicts and violence in world politics through international institutions, democracy, and trade (and so is in general much more positive!).

While both theories hold that nations are central actors in an otherwise anarchic international system, in liberal IR theories the emphasis shifts away from nations as unitary actors and interactions on a strictly national level. Instead, economic interdependence, institutions and actors both above (e.g., the United Nations) and below the national level (e.g, non-governmental organizations), and national preferences are emphasized as the most important factors to understanding IR (Moravcsik 1997). Power still arises through typical hard power channels (e.g., military might and economic sanctions), but it becomes decentralized and less subject to the direct control of the state. This decentralization and focus on economic and institutional power beyond simply the national level, liberalists argue, is key to understanding why, for instance, the East Asian region has actually been so peaceful (one of the most peaceful places in the world, in fact) in the post-Cold War era (see, e.g., Drysdale 2012 or Armstrong 2012).

A quick graphic summary of liberalism. Note that many organizations can straddle all levels, and the relationships among each of them (and the countries they might be associated with) can be highly complex.

Constructivism

Constructivism emerged in the mid-1990s as a challenge to dominant realist and liberalist paradigms, such as the focus on materialism and capacity (through, e.g., military and economic power) and the anarchic nature of the international system. Instead, as political theorist Alexander Wendt put it, the “structures of human association are determined primarily by shared ideas rather than material forces, and…the identities and interests of purposive actors are constructed by these shared ideals rather than given by nature” (Wendt 1999). Because of this, rather than military capacity or economic strength actually driving IR, nations only behave in certain ways because they have assigned certain priorities to material objects such as cash flow and military capacity. In addition, the “anarchic” nature of the international system is instead a cultural, subjective concept rather than a fixed, objective reality, with differing perceptions of the international system affecting how individual actors behave in the context of IR (e.g., the behavior of the US vs. North Korea).

Due to this shift away from the determining effects of anarchy and materialism, constructivists instead attempts to analyze IR by looking at national interests, identities, and symbols of power, such as the projection and construction of state sovereignty (Biersteker and Weber 1996). This view of power provides room for soft power to operate, and is arguably key to understanding territorial disputes such as those between China and Japan over the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands (Suganuma 2000; Deans 2000).

Note: I always find it ironic that these are called “islands”, since they’re all actually pretty tiny and collectively (including all the water between them) take up only 7 square kilometers (~2.5 square miles). The Senkaku Rocks is probably a better and more accurate name for them.

A graphical representation of a sample interaction within constructivism. Here, actors don’t necessarily obey the same set of assumptions (as in realism or liberalism), but rather construct their own based how they interpret and/or perceive events. It also emphasizes how power can be expressed through symbolic, rather than strictly material, means.

Note: I just realized this post is pretty timely considering what’s currently going on in Ukraine/Crimea.

Soft Power’s Role within Different IR Theories

Obviously each framework for IR is oversimplified and incomplete. Nations are not completely unitary nor are they fully rational, and differing perceptions of “anarchy” in IR play a role in determining how nations behave and interact. While physical institutions and material forces also influence how nations interact on a variety of different levels, they are not the only reasons nations behave the way they do. Furthermore, the role of the unitary state and of material entities has a real impact and should not be ignored in favor of abstract ideals — although threats of military invasion or economic sanctions might not cause all nations to behave the same way or otherwise respond as expected, this does not mean they do not have real power to wreak havoc on the lives of those who inhabit that nation.

Soft power, then, can be seen as the simultaneous interaction of all three IR theories, where nations attempt to project realist notions (e.g., the unity of the state) through more liberalist means (e.g., economics via many disparate actors below the national level) in a constructivist manner (e.g., turning objects into symbols of national power) to achieve goals that are a combination of all three (e.g., increased “prestige” and power in IR). It thus serves as a good way not only to analyze different IR theories, but also to investigate how nations tend to try and express their very ideas about these theories! And, of course, allows us to try and understand how anime fans like us fit into the whole scheme of things :).

A venn diagram illustrating the last point, with a couple examples of where different theories (and their underlying motivations) intersect.

To be continued in Part 2…

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As always, I love to hear what all of you guys think of my ideas! What are your thoughts so far? Interesting? Overly academic? Missing anything? Angry about my lack of coverage over anime that are currently airing? (Rebecca and I are actually thinking of doing a joint NGNL post, so stay tuned…)

Back in Part 1, I talked a little bit about the motivations for talking about soft power, how it relates to some of the things I’ve learned from watching (and studying!) anime, and what role it serves in the context of international relations (IR). In this second post, I’ll try and redefine what exactly soft power means (because the original definition leaves much to be desired), explore exactly what a more rigorous look at soft power implies. In the end, I feel this process shows is that it is not – and really has never been – enough to just “brand” things so that consumers make associations between different ideas, which is what much of the attempts at “promoting” soft power have been focusing on. Instead, the key relation is the nature of the relationship, and what exactly is being linked together.

Note: This is an entry in a series of more academic posts all about soft power, and relies somewhat on knowledge taken from earlier posts in the series. While it is technically related to anime (one of the main motivations for exploring the issue), the actual posts themselves are a little bit removed. Since I’m pulling from a lot of sources in these posts, I’m including citations in case anyone is interested in following up on some of them here.

Redefining What People Mean By Soft Power

The current imaginings of soft power discussed previously help shed light on debates surrounding the nature of IR because they simultaneously incorporate all three main IR theoretical assumptions (realism, liberalism, and constructivism) into a physically meaningful and increasingly relevant concept.

Putting soft power in context, however, is only the first step. The next step is to take the previous discussions on IR and, more importantly, the nature of power and use them to try and re-define soft power. So, in a long-running tradition (has it really been more than a year and a half or so since I started blogging?!) of trying to define things on this blog, I’m going to attempt to redefine soft power.

After a lot of thinking (the proto-definition of this can be seen in my Germanic Influence in Anime post), I’d say that the way people think about soft power is something like this:

A “successful use” of soft power occurs when “nation” [X] possesses some relation to “object” (x) that leads another actor [Y] to engage with [X] in a way that [X] deems beneficial to its own self-interest.  If [X] maintains control over either the object (x) or its relationship to it, then [X] can most broadly be seen as “expressing” its soft power effectively.

The part of the above definition in black is what I feel soft power (or, more aptly, positive cultural flows) should be defined as. Or at least limited to. The parts in red are the extra stipulations that I think many nations subsequently impose on top of these cultural flows. Indeed, it’s this addendum that gives soft power it’s, well, power: it grants a nation the ability to control, direct, and project soft “power”, rather than just possess soft “influence”. It’s also the stipulation which generates pretty much all of the problems with soft power, since (implicitly) imposing a requirement associated with controlling how other people view you (or react to things you do) usually ends badly. I’m actually surprised people haven’t been raising this objection all over the place, because once you reformulate soft power into its more fundamental assumptions and procedures this problem is pretty obvious.

For soft power to work in the more traditional sense, nation [X] must possess some relationship to object (x). The exact nature of this relationship is ultimately unimportant – what matters is that it exists within the mind of a third part and that it means something to them.

Then, another actor [Y] must engage with object (x). Note that it can’t be to [X] directly – that would be too easy, and wouldn’t really satisfy the definition of soft power that makes it “special”. Again, how exactly this happens is ultimately irrelevant.

Now comes the most crucial step: this engagement with (x) must go beyond just the object itself and extend to the nation [X] with which (x) is related to. If this fails, then you really haven’t exercised any real “power”. Most “standard” usages of soft power seem to imply that the nature of this engagement with [X] has to be positive (hence the thumbs-up).

Finally, and here’s the real kicker, most traditional usages of soft power require, well, POWER. Which means an implicit requirement that nation [X] is actually in control of the whole thing at some level – it can just “express” its soft power and people will react as they are supposed to!

Note: In my opinion, this is a key point of these posts: it is important to be aware of this weird obsession with national branding and many of the assumptions that go into it, since it influences a lot of the ways we think, talk, and act around those with different backgrounds from us. At its core, it’s a very reductionist philosophy, grouping and homogenizing people into associations that frequently are only somewhat true at best and offensive at worst. Recognizing where things like this are happening – and being critical about how much this process is “real” vs. “imposed” – will make you a much better consumer of foreign media (in any form). You also wouldn’t believe how many assumptions like these go into debates about cultural appropriation, “check your privilege” style arguments, colonialism, feminism, etc., so being aware of these types of assumptions does wonders for engaging with these issues on a personal level by allowing you to better target the institutional power structures that enable/perpetuate these issues rather than the individuals directly involved. See, for instance, this type of thing.

Soft Power, Cultural Flows, and the “Feeling-Association-Pull” Dynamic

While soft power is frequently used in the media and by national governments in a wide range of contexts (see, e.g. Fallows 2013 and Panda 2013 <– what a name), it is often improperly defined. In fact, it is not only improperly defined: most of the time the definition is implied! To remedy this situation (one academic blog post at a time…), the term and associated concept(s) must first be rigorously analyzed. And who better to do it than me, right? Because what else would I do in my free time ;).

The putative definition of soft power given above is useful in the context of describing what nations wish to achieve using sources of soft power in specific contexts. However, it fails to describe the precise mechanisms by which soft power operates, nor can it gauge the effectiveness of its execution. In addition, unlike with hard power, which can be related to capacity (e.g. size of army, overall military budget, GDP), an abstract equivalent for soft power as a “resource” doesn’t really exist as far as I can tell. So you really don’t want to link those two terms together, since they seem to operate in fundamentally different ways.

So, in order to understand exactly how soft power operates in the context of consumption (because it’s usually through economic stuff/consumption of media), uneven cultural flows (because the US clearly influences nations as much as they influence the US), and national expression (because woo national pride! and possibly more power in IR), I propose an additional functional definition for “soft power” below. While different from how the term normally is used (as illustrated above), I think slight modifications to previous definition would be useful to showcase some of the problems that come with the way many people currently think about the issue.

Soft power, in the way I think people should be thinking about it, is actually based on a combination of three separate conditions, all of which should function simultaneously:

1. Positive Feelings: the strength and prevalence of impressions, images, feelings, etc. associated with a certain “good” or “text”. For example, an avid anime viewer will likely harbor positive sentiments towards engaging with anime. There are two things to note here. First, while the term “positive” is used when referring to some of these conditions (and many of the implied associations are positive ones), they need not strictly be “positive” -negative feelings can accomplish the same result. Second, the usage of “good” or “text” is pretty general, and can refer to pretty much any unit, whether abstract or physical, that an actor can partake in (i.e. consume). For instance, while ping pong is a sport and anime is a classification of a certain class of goods, both function equivalently here.
2. Positive Associations: the strength and/or belief these impressions are associated with/can be “mapped” to ideas concerning another actor. Using the same example as above, anime is associated with being a Japanese good (regardless of whether or not the good somehow “intrinsically” possesses such an association) and so enjoys a set of (strong) positive associations. One important thing to note (again) is that these are abstract, not nationalistic, associations (e.g., “China” as place of origin rather than political nation-state). This distinction is key to many of the problems that plague soft power.
3. Pull: the consequential impact/influence that a good has on those who “consume” it related to the association. In the case of anime, this could be through inspiring the consumer to enroll in Japanese classes or inspiring tourism to the (perceived) country of origin.

This feeling-association-pull (FAP) dynamic (AW YEA), where feelings associated with a good are “mapped” onto those concerning another actor and inspire related activities, is at the core of what soft power actually is. And it enables the traditional definition of the way soft power is supposed to operate, as illustrated above.

A visual representation of the FAP dynamic in action. (I’m a horrible person for ruining this scene, I know.)

In addition, the term “soft” now serves two purposes. Instead of only being used as contrast with typical uses of “hard” power, it now also indicates the lack of physicality where most of this power is expressed. The entire discourse actually takes place in the realm of feelings, associations, and impressions conveyed through physical goods rather than the physical goods themselves. This fundamental shift in how exactly these different types of power are expressed (one more physical, the other more abstract) is better captured through this more functional definition of soft power.

It is important to note what connotations and other pre-conditions are missing from this definition, by the way, which at first glance seems more relevant to analyzing uneven inter-national (national branding makes it increasingly nationalistic, hence the emphasis) cultural flows rather than the expression of soft power.

1. There are no indications here of any questions of actor intent. Instead, much like cultural scholar Henry Jenkins notes, the consumer can make associations regardless of what the initial source of the good is or the context surrounding its consumption (Jenkins 1992).
2. Directionality, both from the source of a good or outwards from the consumer, is ambiguous here: consumer associations may be constructed by any actor involved.
3. By extension, the type of involvement for any given actor (i.e. passive vs. active) is left unspecified.
4. So too is the actual type of association (positive or negative).

While many of these missing elements are unnecessary when viewing soft power as a measure of the power of inter-national cultural flows, they are in fact the very things that nations envision when they conceive of soft power.

National Branding and Nationalistic Persuasion

I now modify my definition above to develop a concept of what I term political soft power. Unlike cultural soft power, this new political soft power (which I’ll just refer to with “soft power”, since all the connotations are pretty much there) is characterized by several stipulations in addition to the previous definition. Most crucially, it introduces a new element to the FAP dynamic, Politicization: the strength with which ideas about a nation can be associated with their physical counterpart. If we use the previous example, it is now not enough just to brand anime as a Japanese product – it often must become associated with the relevant nation-state (Japan) to further national agendas. Thus political soft power relies on the interdependence between 1. positive feelings, 2. positive associations, 3. politicization, and 4. pull (FAPP), with special emphasis placed on the latter two where most of the real “power” is expressed. Examples of this include things like attempting to increase international “prestige” and improving IR, encouraging larger foreign economic investment, and attracting foreign talent.

In addition, actor intent and directionality - two terms I explicitly left out of the earlier definition – are now seen as important: soft power becomes a force exerted by one actor to influence another for the purpose of achieving certain goals. As such, it must be cultivated through active involvement by the respective nation (and actors within said nation, of course) and often is meant to engender positive associations in other actors. While none of these conditions are technically requirements for the “successful use” of soft power described in the first part of this post, they often arise in the context of soft power debates (such as those discussed in Kingston 2009 and mentioned earlier in the essay; see also this).

Seen in this context, political soft power is tied up in two separate processes. The first, national branding, involves the process of mapping positive associations onto ideas related to a nation. The second, nationalistic persuasion, involves politicizing these associations and engendering the desired responses.

As mentioned before, these two processes extend everywhere from goods a nation produces to the actual “image” a nation tries to project through different media channels. Unfortunately, when most nations discuss soft power, this distinction isn’t really made: national branding and nationalistic persuasion are seen as naturally following one another, with positive feelings towards the nationally branded product translating naturally into positive feelings towards the state and subsequent actions in accordance with national interests.

Anime is clearly SERIOUS BUSINESS, and gets many fans in touch with “Japan” (especially those most actively involved, like myself!). However, I doubt many would say that anime really improves their image of “Japan, the country that makes anime and also was involved with WWII and does politics and stuff”. Instead, it sorta just is a link to some abstract, fuzzy “Japan” – which means there isn’t too much “carryover” from the anime realm to the physical one. Or, at least, not in the ways the Japanese government necessarily wants.

Note: This logic actually becomes much stronger once when examining corporate brands. As corporations frequently control both the brand and the product (and many things in-between, like advertising, marketing, cash flow, etc.), they can coordinate these two elements much more effectively to express their (political) soft power. However, there is still some level of disconnect present. For instance, when consumers  drink a bottle of Coke, it is likely that they naturally associate positive feelings connected with the beverage to ideas about Coca-Cola the company. That said though, it is unlikely that they automatically link this feeling to Coca-Cola, the corporate conglomerate that owns Minute Maid and other wide swaths of the beverage industry, or to its actual practices and policies as a multinational corporation.

As I’m sure you can say based on personal experience, this is definitely not the case. In fact, for the reasons I mentioned above, this assumption is actually quite dangerous, and political soft power most often fails because nations focus too much on national branding without actually considering its relationship to nationalistic persuasion.

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So, all in all, actually thinking about what soft power means (or is supposed to mean), trying to define it in terms of in terms of the more relevant “power” rather than more relative “hard power”, and then trying to figure out how exactly it works leads to a place where we can pinpoint exactly how and why soft power often fails today. So all this (re)defining things is actually useful!

So that’s it for Part 2. In Part 3, I’ll explore some of these ideas more thoroughly using two actual case studies involving K-pop and anime fans. I KNOW, REAL EXAMPLES, NOT COMPLETE ACADEMIC BULLSHIT. GET HYPED.

In Parts 1 and 2, I talked a little bit about the role soft power serves in the context of international relations (IR), how attempting to redefine it in a useful way highlights the problematic ways the term is used today, and how I think people should be talking about it (in what I affectionately called the FAP dynamic).

In this third post, I’ll actually do some real analysis beyond just theorizing and putting things in perspective by applying the concepts I developed last time to look at K-pop and anime fans. Both fan groups are often used as shining examples of Korean and Japanese “soft power”, and so I thought it was only appropriate to examine both of them a little more in depth to see if things match up to expectations. In the end, what I find is that, while they can be helpful in the context of IR, most often they really just…aren’t.

The reasons why aren’t too surprising, to be honest. First, as you might expect, historical tensions and other issues don’t just vanish when you throw some pretty boys/girls on a screen and have them sing beautiful Engrish. So expecting pop culture and other things like that to solve problems without doing all the hard work is being (way) overly optimistic.

Omg, now that I’ve seen those abs, I totally would support Korea’s claim to the Liancourt Rocks! And the way their pop idol industry works. And just Korea in general.

In addition, I find that there’s a big problem of focus among the fan groups: namely, fans spend their effort primarily engaging with the medium, rather than with the country through the medium. And, whenever hardcore fans decide to go do things like learn about things related to Japan/Korea/other places, more often then not it’s for the purpose of understanding the medium better. While some fans will inevitably go on to develop much more broad-ranging interests in the countries of origin, most often the actual engagement with, say, the nation-state like Japan is extremely limited.

Note: This is an entry in a series of more academic posts all about soft power, and relies somewhat on knowledge taken from earlier posts in the series. While it is technically related to anime (one of the main motivations for exploring the issue), the actual posts themselves are a little bit removed. Since I’m pulling from a lot of sources in these posts, I’m including citations in case anyone is interested in following up on some of them here. Also be aware this post is 4000+ words.

The Korean Wave and the Failure of Politicization

To examine the role soft power plays in East Asia (especially South Korea and Japan) and further point out some of the problems with current (mis)conceptions of political soft power, I first look at the “Korean Wave”. For those who haven’t heard it before, the term is used to refer to the increasing popularity of South Korean (I’ll just use Korean from now on) pop culture since the late 1990s, which has spread across Asia and more recently has become more popular in the West (Farrar 2010; Seoul 2010).

And this isn’t just me drumming up some small niche interest, because the industry is actually pretty big. In 2011, for instance, Korean pop culture comprised $137 million in Korean exports (Russell 2012)! In addition, it is broadly seen as influential in increasing foreign consumption of Korean goods by both consumers and producers (KCCI 2012; KITA 2011) as well as increasing Korean brand acceptance (Russell 2012). So it’s a thing.

Since it is important enough to get its own cool title, it likely would be insightful to investigate the impact that the Korean Wave has had in getting foreign fans to engage with Korea and in what way. To this end, one of my friends at school (and huge K-Pop and anime fan) attempted to ask K-pop fans directly about how their involvement of K-pop has influenced their perceptions and interaction with Korea and Korean goods. To reach as many fans as possible, a survey consisting of 14 questions (although this is not public data, if you’re more interested in the seeing some of the actual responses, feel free to ask!) delivered through two different survey sites and popularized through several large K-pop blogs in Spring 2013. It received 45 and ~300 responses for each of the survey sites, respectively.

Unfortunately, at the time I started asking around about data to be used for this project, most of the latter (~300) responses had been lost due to site issues, reducing the total sample to 45. If it means anything though, my friend confirmed that the data from the reduced sample I was forced to use (45) displayed similar trends to the overall combined sample (she had used them for an assignment last year). So, although it’s not really “rigorous”, I think it should be safe to at least draw some general conclusions about K-pop fans from the results.

Because the survey was pubbed through popular K-pop blogs, and generally only the most passionate fans even take the time to answer these things, we’re dealing with some pretty heavy selection effects here. Most prominently, the sample I’ll be looking at is likely to be heavily biased towards more active K-pop fans. However, this actually serves as a large benefit to this analysis, as the respondents are the most likely people to be “affected” by Korean soft power!

So, let’s get to it.

First, in question six of the survey, my friend asked respondents “How has K-Pop influenced your view of Korea as a whole?” These were the answers she got.

Approximately 80% of respondents answered that “I feel that I regard Korea more positively because of K-pop”, while the remaining 20% answered “I don’t think it’s had an effect on how I view the country overall”. And that third option got 0 responses.

In addition, when asked “Has K-pop caused you to develop an interest in/desire to learn about other aspects of Korean culture or the country as a whole?” and given the choices of Korean language, history, food, and dramas/general Korean television, many of the applicants also listed that K-pop had led them to a greater interest in Korea.

Approximately 60% expressed that it had led to interests in “all of the above”. In individual cases, about 50% of respondents reported developing an interest in the Korean language, 30% in food and K-dramas/general Korean television, and 15% in Korean history. We thus see that K-pop not only engenders positive feelings towards Korea, but also promotes significant engagement with other aspects of Korean culture. So, if we were being lazy, we would just say “KOREAN WAVE PROVES SOFT POWER POSITIVE FEELINGS KK BUHBYE” and leave right about now.

 Note: Judging by the percentages, some respondents indicated both “all of the above” and the individual categories themselves in their answer. As the proportion adds up to ~110%, this is conservatively taken this as a 10% over-response bias and treated as a lower bound in later percentage estimates.

As always, however, there is a catch. First off, when respondents were asked how old they were, approximately 75% of respondents indicated being between the ages of 16-25. In addition, the majority (60%) identified as being between the ages of 16 and 20, while ~90% (!!!) identified as being female. In addition, 90% of respondents when asked identified themselves as students. This implies the majority of respondents (I estimate approximately 50% or more) are college students.

Given that approximately 65-75% of respondents expressed interest in Korean history, it is particularly surprising that when asked “Have you ever taken a class on Korean history?”, only 2% (i.e. 1 respondent) answered “Yes”.

While knowledge of Korean history may very well be obtained through other means outside of a typical classroom setting, and Korean classes are not available at all universities, the fact that the majority of these college-age students have not pursued their purported interest in Korean history indicates a lack of systematic engagement with Korea as a nation rather than just as a cultural entity. Thus the Korean Wave, in even the most “hardcore” fans, fails to generate the prerequisite politicization of Korean goods in order to bridge the gap between national branding and nationalistic persuasion.

Note: This conclusion contains several possible caveats. First, interest in K-Pop is a more recent phenomenon in the West than Japanese pop culture (~70% of respondents lived in the US), and so it is possible many of the fans surveyed were relatively recent converts who did not yet have a chance to act on their interest in Korean culture/history through actual coursework. Second, many people tend to view cultural “history” (as seen through K-Pop, etc.) and formal “history” (as seen in textbooks, etc.) as fundamentally separate entities – as a result, they might feel no need to study Korean history to appreciate (and consume) contemporary Korean culture/”history”, which might contribute to the extremely low engagement of K-pop fans with “real” Korean history in a formal setting. In my opinion, such a viewpoint is exactly the kind of thing that makes political soft power difficult to manifest, and actually supports the overall argument I’m making here.

The Japanese Korean Wave and the Failure to Reconcile Postcolonial History

In many Western nations, the Korean Wave is more like a nice interest or fad, much like anime. In East Asia, however, it is seen in a much more political light, since it offers up (supposedly) the possibility that (political) soft power can help South Korea and Japan resolve historical postcolonial tensions (“Korea” still hasn’t really forgiven “Japan” for occupying them 70+ years ago!). Following the massive positive Japanese response to the K-drama Winter Sonata, regional tourism by Japanese to Korea has boomed (Iwabuchi 2008).

In addition, the large positive reaction has led many fans to learn the Korean language and even study the history of Japanese colonialism (Iwabuchi 2010), and has further enabled many prominent ethnically Korean Japanese (zainichi) to disclose their heritage (Iwabuchi 2008; Lie 2009). These reactions suggest the possibility that the Korean Wave (i.e. Korean “soft power”) has helped to establish a discourse on Japan’s colonial history that may alter Japanese perceptions of Japan and Korea.

While these are all GREAT THINGS, it turns out that the influence of these activities on multicultural and postcolonial issues within Japan is more mixed. By examining audience responses to the first prime-time Japanese TV drama to deal with socio-historical issues surrounding zainichi, for instance, cultural scholar Koichi Iwabuchi (who’s a badass and all-around powerhouse in cultural and fandom studies) finds that while the social recognition and perceptions of zainichi have improved greatly as a result of the Korean Wave, the “historically embedded experiences of resident Koreans have tended to be ignored…[instead] effortlessly associated with the culture and people of South Korea in a way that subsumes postcolonial and multicultural issues under the rubric of inter-national relations” (Iwabuchi 2010).

Now that I’ve seen the Winter Sonata anime (cultural flows BUZZWORD), I just have developed this newfound tolerance and acceptance of Koreans and leaned more about Japan’s colonial history. NOW I UNDERSTAND THOSE KOREAN ZAINICHI SO MUCH BETTER. Because it’s not like they’ve lived their whole lives for multiple generations in Japan or anything.

In other words, the Korean Wave – at least in the context of zainichi – thus tends to subsume pre-existing internal issues by externalizing them under the banner of Korean pop culture and inter-national cultural flows. This example showcases some of the limits of (political) soft power and its inability to control the reactions of its audience. (See, for instance, the anti-Korean manga Kenkanryu, which makes me really sad.) While it does seem to possess the potential to improve foreign relations and increase foreign economic consumption of Korean goods, its ability to quickly and easily resolve long and complex historical tensions seems much more limited.

Note: This idea, which can alternatively be expressed through Korea as a reified “Other”, is formed mostly through K-dramas and can cause problems when other sources of Korean pop culture arrive in Japan. For instance, although PSY became an international celebrity through his hit single “Gangnam Style”, he never really became all that popular in Japan. This might be attributed to his non-conformity to the Japanese’s typically held tragic, heartthrob, “pretty boy”-esque image of the “Korean man” popularized through K-dramas and Korean boy bands.

Second note: If you want to hear more about these issues – and how I haven’t treated them nearly as rigorously as I should – you should get in touch with Froggykun, who’s written quite a bit about this type of thing besides just his blog post.

So now let’s move on to anime!

Anime Fans, Subcultural Capital, and the Failure to “Focus” Interest

Arguably the most prominent example of “successful” soft power is the global popularity of Japanese pop culture like manga and anime (although I’ll be mostly focusing on the latter) around the world. According to government figures, Japan’s cultural exports are valued at approximately $50 billion dollars, approximately 300 (!) times as much as Korea pop culture. Sales of anime videos and DVDs in the US alone are even estimated at $500 million (Kelts 2006)!

Beyond just economic exports, however, these numbers are matched by intense engagement with Japanese culture by fans. For instance, in 1990, the peak of Japanese economic strength, 981,407 foreigners were recorded as studying the Japanese language; in 2003, after around a decade of economic stagnation, the total had leapt to 2,356,745 (Lam 2007)! More recently, Leeds University in the UK reported that applicants to study Japanese recorded the second-highest jump in university applications in 2007, up 40.9% from 2006 to a total of 1,126 students (THE 2007). Fans are also visiting Japan in large numbers: the country drew over 10 million foreign visitors in 2013, up 23.9% over 2012 (Nippon.com 2014). (This still pales in comparison to the tourism other nations get though.)

Anime fans in particular have been extremely active in engaging with their hobby in America through things like animeconventions: in 2012 alone, 449 conventions listed on AnimeCons.com featured anime programming (Delahanty 2012). Of these, the most popular, Anime Expo (which I will be attending this year! :D), drew approximately 50,000 visitors, and the top 10 combined – ranging from locations in Los Angeles to Chicago to Boston – drew almost 250,000 people in total (Delahanty 2012).

Besides bringing in many members from the Japanese anime industry such as directors, seiyuu, and scriptwriters, conventions also frequently host large dealer rooms and a large collection of panels run by fans for fans interested in exploring everything from the politics of Studio Ghibli’s works to the influence of Japanese folktales and yōkai in anime. And, of course, many fans also engage in cosplay, dressing up as their favorite animecharacters to showcase their appreciation and broadcast their interests.

Note: Cosplay is actually a fascinating topic in its own right, and one I won’t be getting into here. If you’re interested in reading up on how people feel it fits in with concepts of performative identity, fan culture, consumerism, and pretty much everything else (it tends to be a pretty popular topic), feel free to look around since there’s a lot of stuff out there!

For the most part, fans at these conventions give every indication that their interest in anime has led to an increased engagement with Japanese culture. According to Susan Napier, Professor of the Japanese Program at Tufts University, her interviews and questionnaires at conventions over a series of years indicate that a majority (65-75%) of respondents reported that an interest in anime had led students to develop an interest in Japan, with at least 50% reporting having “positive feelings” towards the country (Napier 2007 <– note that I actually review Napier’s book here). Many of her respondents additionally reported having studied or were currently studying the Japanese language at the time of the interview, as well as having visited or wishing to visit Japan.

BUT, BUT, BUT – I’M IN IT FOR THE PLOT I SWEAR!

For all this interest in visiting Japan and learning things about Japanese culture, however, not many of the fans actually wished to live there. In other words, anime doesn’t really seem to be bringing Japan any solid, long-term gains (like drawing in talent, which is something the US, for instance, still manages to do quite well). Instead, you get a lot of people engaging with Japan in order to understand anime better…and not much else. Like K-pop, these statistics seem to indicate that anime is another instance of successful national branding (everyone knows anime is Japanese…even when it sorta kinda isn’t) but unsuccessful nationalistic persuasion (interest in anime isn’t leading people to develop positive feelings towards Japan the country – or at least not in the “right” ways).

So why is anime failing to generate nationalistic persuasion? The reason is likely twofold:

1. The popularity of anime and other aspects of Japanese pop culture is often attributed to its “culturally odorless” nature: they are successful because they are “neutral” products without inherent value-based properties that mainly generate a positive image of Japan (Iwabuchi 2002; Groot 2006; Norris 2010). As such, attempts at politicization might undermine the very thing that makes animepopular in the first place, weakening their reach and areas of influence even while strengthening their ability as political soft power tools. The same holds true for Korean pop culture as well, which can be viewed through a similar lens. Note: Although the extent to which the “Japaneseness” of anime (or the idea that it is Japanese in origin if not in some internal aesthetic sense) influences its reception today is difficult to pin down, the “culturally odorless” argument is often used even today to explain Japanese (and also Korean) pop culture abroad. In particular, arguments about the “odorless” nature of K-Pop in light of its heavily emphasized Korean nature are actually quite common. Regardless of its origins, however, the term “culturally odorless” tends to more or less refer to K-Pop’s pop cultural aesthetic and the (often argued) essentially universal appeal of K-Dramas. This is discussed in more detail at the end of the post.
2. The issue of focus. In the discussion of a “successful use” of soft power discussed in the previous post, one of the key conditions I talked about was that an “object” (x) leads another actor [Y] to engage with [X] in a way that [X] deems beneficial to its own self-interest. As views associated with political soft power tend to view these self-interests in ways that [Y] somehow benefits [X] directly and materialistically, the ways that [Y] can engage with [X] tend to be somewhat limited. As a result, this position often only includes things that can improve foreign policy, encourage larger foreign economic investment, or attracting foreign talent (or similar outcomes). Most importantly though, these mostly involve (x) serving as a vehicle for [Y] to engage with [X]. If (x) becomes the primary object of focus instead of [X], and the subsequent interactions [Y] has with [X] are only viewed as necessary to better understand/interact with (x), then many of the aims of political soft power will likely be significantly mitigated.

This issue of “focus” tends to be the main problem with anime: rather than Japan being engaged with through anime, it instead is accessed for anime. Modern anime fans treat the medium as another form of entertainment, an end unto itself that facilitates the construction of its own “fantasyscape” that is centered on anime and related media products that both encompasses and yet extends beyond Japan (Napier 2007). In fact, one might even argue such a fantasyscape, rather than encompassing Japan, is in fact entirely constructed, divorced from the physical country in almost every way except for the presence of Akihabara and other anime landmarks!

Sorry Kirino. (For realz though, Akihabara is a pretty cool place.)

In addition, cosplay, which (most often) identifies explicitly with anime rather than Japanese culture at large, further indicates the anime-centric (or at least Japanese media-centric), rather than Japan-centric, view of anime fans.

Such fan pride.

Finally, Napier notes that interests in Japan among convention-going anime fans frequently are viewed in terms of accruing “(sub)cultural capital” within the fan base - gaining an improved understanding of anime simultaneously leads to elevated social standings among fellow fans - and so again are best viewed as anime-centric activities (Napier 2007). Together, these observations seem to indicate a “focus” problem for Japan’s political soft power, where the goods through which the soft power of the Japanese state is supposed to be conveyed instead themselves become the main objects of focus. Whoops.

Now onto a not-so-small digression.

What Does it Mean to be “Culturally Odorless”?

Since Koichi Iwabuchi introduced the term “culturally odorless” to describe the popularity and universal appeal of Japanese pop culture, there has been much debate surrounding both the concept as well as its application. Many features of products can contain “odors”, ranging from context (e.g. anime’s general Japanese origins) to content (e.g. the setting of a film) to form (e.g. art style) and everything in-between. Which aspects of products qualify as “culturally odorless” - and what the term itself even means - is an issue that for the most part remains unresolved. So, keeping in line with my penchant for redefining things and then doing addtional research on them, I’ve included a whole discussion about the term (and its applications) below.

First off, the art style common to many anime and manga today, for instance, finds its roots in many foreign art movements – most prominently Soviet montage theory and Disney cartoons, as well as certain aspects of more historical Japanese art products such as ukiyo-e – and can be argued (quite effectively) to be “culturally odorless” (Ōtsuka 2013). Their context and content, however, frequently are not: for every big international hit like the more Western-influenced/culturally ambiguous Cowboy Bebop, Fullmetal Alchemist, or (more recently) Attack on Titan, there are also very “Japanese” hits like The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and (more recently) Kill La Kill. Nevertheless, with many contexts becoming nationally/culturally “branded” in an increasingly glocalized (i.e. globalized in market while simultaneously localized in context) and hybridized (i.e. the “mixing” of cultures and influences) world, it is likely that consumers have/will become somewhat “numb” to the effect entirely. Because once everything becomes a nationally branded good, branding ceases to have much of an impact (or much meaning in general). Most likely, this “numbing” effect would be yet another barrier against politicization and the effective expression of (political) soft power.

While the immediate contexts surrounding content might not be seen as “culturally odorless”, consumers might not perceive many of the overarching themes, morals, conflicts, etc. to be “cultural”. In Napier’s interviews with fans, for instance, she finds that the overwhelming reason most fans began watching anime/reading manga (or at least, why they think they began watching anime/reading manga) was because of the high quality and universal appeal of the stories (Napier 2007).

Obviously, most stories by their very nature contain elements that are of universal appeal, sharing common themes, structural elements, and character archetypes (Campbell 1968). However, the main strength of “culturally odorless” products is that they allow these universal elements to become the main focus of consumption, even when delivered through a non-odorless medium. This is likely the reason why more political anime such as The Irregular at Magic High School manage to remain popular (even when it is – quite frankly – mind-numbingly boring): the central themes (e.g. desire for acceptance, difficulty of achieving equality) of these shows become the object of focus rather than any explicit politics and/or  philosophical frameworks.

For all these positive elements, however, the “culturally odorless” argument tends to overlook the attraction of foreign goods due in some part to exoticism-driven (i.e. somewhat Orientalist) impulses. A significant fraction of the broad appeal of many Japanese goods and culture to the West during the early Meiji period, for instance, was likely due to this type of impulse (Napier 2007; Benfey 2003). Such a viewpoint might also help to explain why certain aspects of the Korean Wave, which could be seen as quite a bit more strongly Korean-tinged and are thus not as “culturally odorless” as much of the J(apanese)-Wave, are attractive to many Westerners.

Finally, this paradigm of “cultural odorless”-ness has changed in recent years as things have become increasingly glocalised. As such, older animated movies like My Neighbor Totoro or more recent anime series such as Waiting in the Summer - both of which are set in/based on realistic locations within Japan - might now be seen as increasingly able to engender more “useful” positive feelings towards both the land being depicted as well as the land in which they were produced.

———-

So that’s it for my long spiel there. The next post in the series will be the last. I’ll be talking about some of the broader implications of these results, summarizing the problems with political soft power outlined in the last couple posts, and then talking about some of the implications for how we should be thinking about soft power going forward! :)

In the earlier posts (1, 2, 3) in this series, I’ve tried to lay out the foundations for how soft power is discussed today and contrast it with how it actually works. In doing so, I’ve (re-)defined a bunch of things and looked at data and other observations of K-pop and anime fans, most of which has led me to conclude that cultural flows tend to be much more limited, a-political, and quite a bit more “fuzzy” (both conceptually and physically) than is often assumed within typical soft power arguments. K-pop and anime fans aren’t some “cultural resource” that increases Japan’s prestige abroad in a very meaningful way, but instead are mostly just…K-pop and anime fans. 

In this last post, I’ll summarize most of the main problems I’ve found with political (as opposed to cultural) soft power that I’ve discussed in earlier posts. I’ll then go on to look at some of the more blatant “failures” of soft power, with a little bit of discussion on what exactly “failure” could (and should) mean. Finally, I’ll actually do some constructive thinking (!), and put forward some suggestions for how we should probably be thinking about soft power going forward, and some of the (generally positive) implications.

THE END IS NEAR. GET HYPED.

Also, it turns out this is my 100th post on the blog! Yay! 1.5+ years strong and still going! :)

Note: This is the last entry in a series of more academic posts all about soft power, and relies somewhat on knowledge taken from earlier posts in the series. While it is technically related to anime (one of the main motivations for exploring the issue), the actual posts themselves are a little bit removed. Since I’m pulling from a lot of sources in these posts, I’m including citations in case anyone is interested in following up on some of them here.

The Limits of Soft Power

First, based on the issues seen in my examination of K-pop and anime fans, I can pretty confidently say political soft power is subject to several issues that make it difficult to build up or use successfully:

1. National branding: by failing to realize that nationalistic persuasion does not directly follow from (positive) national branding, nations fail to politicize their goods and achieve the types of reactions they desire. In addition, by nationally “branding” goods such as anime, nations intrinsically promote a type of “reductionist” ideology, such as that witnessed in the Japanese Korean Wave. To make matters worse, countries like Japan often don’t really “make” the goods they so espouse (e.g. anime or other forms of Japanese pop culture) – it’s private companies, subject to their own (capitalist) logic, who actually make the products. So attempts at turning national branding into nationalistic persuasion would actually very likely run into a bunch of logistical problems, not to mention strong corporate resistance!
2. Limited engagement, both in terms of demographic (e.g. K-Pop tends to be biased heavily towards young women instead of a general audience) and (heavy) time investment (watching K-Dramas and anime can be time-consuming!). As nations want to broaden their political soft power on a national level but are mainly reaching individual actors, such limitations should be taken into account when considering future political soft power projects. While the time-intensive nature of watching, say, K-dramas might actually encourage more active fan engagement, it still tends to (considerably) limit the size of the audience. And this isn’t even counting certain features of said products that often tend to make them niche foreign products almost by default.
3. Determining “focus”, which is in essence the inability of a nation to control how other actors respond to certain goods and incentives. As with anime fans, this inability can rob certain aspects of political soft power of much of its potency or influence.
4. The “marketing” problem: since there are economics involved, and soft power by design is usually built up through desirable goods, the lines between constructivist, liberalist, and realist notions (see part 1) of (hard) power is thin. Ask most soft power advocates what the final goal of soft power programs are supposed to be, and most will probably answer with some along the lines of “soft power has a very real potential to translate into hard power!” I mean, why else would government institutions such as Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) pledge $500 million to support the promotion of “Cool Japan” abroad (Kelts 2013)? So the dividing line between “soft power” and “hard power” gets pretty thin. For instance:
   1. While actions like funnelling tons of cash into exporting “cultural products” can easily be seen as just a benign attempt to promote a country’s (political) soft power, it also contains government sentiments to control certain aspects of trade and policy with other nations (which could be viewed as a type of hard power).
   2. Alternately, if Japan decides to try and instead preventthe export of “Cool Japan” and establish a monopoly on the production of, say, anime, with the intent of achieving certain political goals that would normally be accomplished by hard power, does this still remain a source of political soft power only? (Wait a minute, isn’t this the exact train of thought explored in Outbreak Company?!?!?! O.o)
   3. As you can tell, both the situations above involve some element of government economic influence over certain goods, but blur the lines between promoting symbolic expressions of power and exploiting/creating consumer demand. Even worse, this can also work in reverse: symbolic expressions of power, such as the (supposed) popularity of certain goods in countries like the US, can be used to try and create domestic consumer demand within the country of “origin”! In both cases, the connection between symbolic meaning and purely economic results remains strong and difficult to disentangle.

All these issues, coupled with issues about the ways in which hard power both enhances and enables (political) soft power (see, e.g., Watanabe and McConnell 2008), showcases the difficulty both in conceptualizing and implementing political soft power.

WHO KNEW OUTBREAK COMPANY COULD BE SO DEEP MAN LIGHT NOVELS JUST 3DEEP5ME SOMETIMES

Examining the Failures (and Successes) of Soft Power

Failure

So, at this point, I’ve discussed the theoretical basis behind soft power and examined how (and why) it works. But while the deconstruction of the simple conceptions of political soft power through Korean and Japanese pop culture’s influence both abroad and at home has been helpful, they don’t actually showcase solid results (or lack thereof). So, to deal with that side of things, I now briefly turn my attention towards more concrete instances where political soft power has seemed pretty ineffective at strengthening national interests.

The most prominent example of soft power’s failure in East Asia was the emergence of widespread anti-Japanese demonstrations that took place in China in 2012, which were in response to heightened tensions surrounding the Sino-Japanese territorial dispute of the Senkaku Islands. And by demonstrations, I really mean full-out riots: they were so intense that they forced the temporary closure of a wide swath of Japanese-owned business and factories in China (Kurtenbach 2012; IBTimes Staff Reporter 2012).

Given the intensity of the anti-Japanese response at the time, the extent to which Japanese (political) soft power played in easing tension between the two nations is…questionable at best. Although Japanese pop culture has been present in the region of decades (indeed, the study of the history of manga and anime in the region is a fantastic example of the ability of media to cross borders and create shared experiences) and many animeare widely consumed there (indeed, the shows themselves are largely produced in China; Mōri 2011), their popularity failed to prevent the majority of Chinese citizens from expressing strong anti-Japanese sentiment. Or the Chinese government from taking strong anti-Japanese stances (see the Wikipedia article linked earlier).

In short, it was a complete political soft power failure not only to engender positive feelings towards the Japanese state but also to help “paper over” Japan’s colonial history, and one took place in the heart of the very type of situation that political soft power was supposed to prevent. 

Note: In fact, this failure of soft power to undercut/subvert historical tensions or longstanding problems is actually very similar to the ones that Joseph Nye (the guy who coined the term) argues was at the heart of China’s ultimate soft power “failure” during the Beijing 2008 Olympics (Nye 2008) or that Koichi Iwabuchi (the cultural scholastic badass) contends is one of the main problems with the Korean Wave (Iwabuchi 2008).

Clearly just Evangelion fanboys waiting to happen.

Success?

However, if we relax some of the preconditions of political soft power, cultural soft power (the more general definition I like, first described in part 2) does seem to have its share of success. One example includes the proliferation of Nazis in popular culture. By being recast many times in a wide variety of circumstances, their continuous (re-)usage seems to make this era of history almost a trope, a fact or artifact of history rather than real events that are directly passed down from the Germany then to the Germany today (and is something I talked about in an earlier post). By doing so, it indirectly helps to increase the sense abroad that a divide exists between the Nazi state and the current one.

One important thing to note about this “success” was that this movement was pioneered by a broad set of individuals in a wide array of circumstances, ranging from Jewish comedians such as Mel Brooks (e.g., The Producers) to mangaka such as Hirohiko Araki (e.g., Stroheim in JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure), and is perpetuated in popular culture through movies such as Iron Sky. Although this proliferation could be seen as German “soft power” and has led to positive consequences for modern Germany (both the country and its image), Germany itself likely has had little influence in this process.

Note: In my opinion, misattribution of these types of results to (political) soft power is one of the biggest dangers of soft power as it is often discussed today!

Second note: A more arguably successful instance of German political soft power could be Japan’s adoption of many Prussian/German governmental institutions during the early years of the Meiji Era. Although Britain was arguably the most powerful nation at the time, and the US was the country that forced Japan to finally open its borders, Japan’s decision to adopt/mimic German institutional structures is striking.

Don’t doubt the power of NAZI GERMAN SCIENCE. Although honestly the fact that we can laugh and joke about this is actually quite amazing.

Re-Examining the Role of Soft Power

Both in terms of concept and implementation, soft power as it currently stands is just too simple a concept to be useful in political discourse or national policy. If it is to become a useful policy tool in the future, increased attention must be paid to the politicization of goods (both as concept and as practice) coupled with an increased emphasis nationalistic persuasion rather than just simply national branding.

In addition, soft power is often phrased as something that nations can simply objectively “express”. However, as K-Pop and anime fans can show (and probably would attest themselves!), consumers must be taken into account. Consumers are the ones who ultimately must draw associations, and if soft power is to become a viable policy tool increased emphasis should be placed on how to get consumers to assign/make associations in such a way as to serve a given nation’s best interests. As a result, nations would probably do well to try and learn from corporate content producers, who grapple with similar problems in order to increase consumer engagement (and their consumption in general) and better predict consumer response.

Ultimately, however, I think the purpose of these posts is to help shed light on what role a nation might wish to fundamentally play in the context of soft power. The most popular belief at present seems to be that nations should try and “direct” soft power flows to accomplish their own interest. This is at the heart of what I defined as “political soft power”, which leads to troublesome issues such as those related to national branding, the politicization of goods that are popular precisely because they are “culturally odorless”/value-less, and problematic definitions and conceptions of “culture” (see also Iwabuchi 2010).

Pretty much how “soft power” actually works today.

This viewpoint treats soft power like a good or commodity that can be used without questioning its ability to engender attraction. As such, it seems natural to ask whether nations should instead be focusing on establishing conditions where soft power will naturally manifest itself, since these conditions are likely to be those under which goods gain the ability to carry soft power in the first place (Norris 2010; Smith 2013). In this viewpoint, nations should function less like directors of cultural flows and more as caretakers of national interests. This difference is akin to viewing Hollywood as an industry that enables popular movies to flourish (which ensures its prominence and subsequent consumer engagement) rather than a corporate conglomerate with an agenda that it tries to channel/express through its films. The distinction seems pretty clear in Hollywood (unless you’re just super-paranoid about the CAPITALIST ESTABLISHMENT in which case there’s not too much I can say), so why can’t it also be the same with respect to nations?

This difference is crucial, because it suggests several ways that nations can avoid many of the problems that plague political soft power:

1. It allows soft power to be founded on vague notions outside of “coolness”, and is one that is based in improving conditions within the nation as well as its actions abroad. This naturally connects the relationship between soft power and hard power. For instance, Japan’s soft power in this view is arguably based on its stable democracy, generally positive foreign policy, overall economic well-being, and vibrant civil society rather than some subjective notion of “cool”. In addition, it also links soft power projection abroad to improving conditions at home, enabling soft power to become more than just a foreign policy tool and shifting the focus away from the simple export of goods. I don’t know about you, but these all seem to me like pretty good things!
2. By creating such an environment, nations have the possibility of “short-circuiting” the process of politicization by directly trying to improve upon the ideals and values intrinsically associated with the overall image of the nation. If the concepts surrounding Japan become progressively more positive, and those concepts better match political (and physical) reality, then the gap between “Japan-as-abstract-fuzzy-idea” and “Japan-as-physical-concrete-nation” will be reduced. As a result, goods would not need to be inherently politicized because they would already carry certain values with them while likely remaining “culturally odorless”. While what exactly could be classified as “culturally odorless” in such a framework remains an open question (some possible values include things like political/economic stability and well-being, thriving civil societies, and public safety), that’s not so much a big deal – in my opinion, it is exactly this type of question that we really should be asking in the first place!

This effect of “blurring” the abstract and the real is not that innovative of a concept, really. In fact, a similar type of effect (except as it applies to our perception of Japanese “history” rather than the modern Japanese state) plays out in Samurai Champloo, and is one of the main reasons the show works so well.

Wrapping Things Up

While soft power remains a popular concept, it is useful to reassess what exactly the concept is thought to (and should!) mean. Inter-national cultural flows are a byproduct of our increasingly glocalized (what a term) society that can carry power – power which many nations now hope to utilize. However, attempting to control these flows is at best difficult, at worst misguided, and often ineffective. In the future, each nation should take a hard look (harhar) at both its role in promoting soft power as well as what role it plays (and should play) in international relations as well as domestic policy. Once policymakers begin to think about soft power more critically, hopefully slogans like “Gross National Cool” will come to encompass more than just pop culture.

In ∑: No matter how you look at it, soft power is pretty much bullshit. If you think long and hard about why it’s bullshit though, you’ll get a lot out of it.

So that’s that! :D

As always happens, a new season of anime is upon us. That means a lot of new shows and the tedious (or exciting!) process of figuring out what’s worthwhile to watch. YAY! And, if you’re lazy like me, this becomes a contest of “let’s see just how quickly I can decide on a list of shows with minimal effort and information”. Or, in other words, trying to judge anime by it’s cover.

QUALITY RIGHT HERE.

The 3 Episode Rule

In general, people recommend watching at least 3 episodes of any particular show you might be interested following before you drop it. This “3 episode rule” mostly comes about as a compromise: people generally don’t want to watch a bunch of crap, but also don’t want to miss a potentially great show just because it’s slow to really get going. If a show’s crap or a show’s great, 3 episodes is more than enough to solidify this. If a show’s  sorta iffy, however, 3 episodes gives you some time to understand the premise, get to know the characters, figure out some of the themes, and in general better figure out the show so you know more or less what exactly you’re going to be dropping.

While this type of compromise is a good idea in principle, in practice it’s a huge time sink. There are about 3 dozen shows airing next season, and following even 50% of them for 3 weeks on end is taxing. In addition, as many anime tend to be around ~11-13 episodes, the 3 episode rule essentially means you’re watching at least 25% of a show before you decide whether or not its worth following.

I don’t know about you, but to me that actually seems a little bit excessive/conservative as a standard. If we’re comparing it to books, the 3 episode rule would be like saying to a friend not to drop a 350-page fantasy or sci-fi novel until they’re at least ~100 pages in. Still, it’s not necessarily a bad thing in and of itself, especially if you place a big emphasis on making sure you’ve made the “right” choices each season. For people like me, however, this tends to be a little too much effort just to determine which shows are worth your time.

BLASPHEMY

So, what are the possible solutions? The easiest – and the most obvious – is to just follow people who will do this type of thing. If you understand each of their biases and preferences, you can essentially outsource all the work to them and pick up whichever shows seem the most promising to you. Of course, this means you might not be “up to date” with shows each week, but if you’re considering this option in the first place, it’s not a huge price to pay.

Another option is to just arbitrarily pick what shows look good based on the season preview, and just watch the ones that look interesting to you. Since most of the previews can be read within an hour (and if you’re skimming within minutes, most likely), you essentially can pick all your shows in the span it takes others to decide on one. Plus if you drop the shows you don’t like as you go along, you’ve really just minimized time spent watching crap.

The third (and in my opinion best) option, of course, is a combination of the above two. If you just follow a couple people who’re watching different shows than you (or just watching all of them), and their thoughts suggest you’d like a show you haven’t picked up, then you can just go back and start it. You watch what you like, stay (mostly) up to date, and avoid missing out on stuff completely.

SUCCESS. Fawning anime girl not included.

Being Lazy

Inspired by Rym and Scott’s panel “Judge Anime by its Cover” at Anime Boston these past two years, I’m going to attempt to judge an entire season’s worth of anime as quickly and dirtily as possible. This will involve three steps:

1. Trying to judge/predict a show’s elements based on nothing but the preview picture. This means no outside knowledge.
2. #1, but also including the title, which can tell us a surprising amount about its content.
3. #2, but also including the description, which can tell you about the target audience and enable you to quickly judge the setting. Does not include source material or genre classification.
4. Including sparse outside information, like director, writer, voice actors, etc. I have not done any research for this, so this is all just “top of my head” type stuff and generally a crapshoot.

The goal here is twofold. First, I’m curious to see how well I actually do at predicting the content of each individual show, and how much information I actually need to do it somewhat accurately. Rym and Scott actually did a scarily good job using #3 both times I’ve seen their panel, but I’m pretty sure you can do well enough given just a picture.

Second, I’m hoping this process will actually allow me to peg decently well what shows I’ll likely be interested in following without much wasted effort. If I don’t drop or pick up any shows outside of the ones I pick here, that would be pretty awesome.

JOIN ME. LET US BE LAZY TOGETHER.

Quick Preamble

To avoid posting a ton of pictures (and because I’m lazy), I’m just going to go off the Summer 2014 Anichart from anichart.net. I’ll go through each of the shows in the chart from left-to-right and top-to-bottom (sorted alphabetically), and will refer to each of them by number before I list their title. Feel free to pull up the chart and follow along if you want to see the pictures I’m judging before you get the name. I’m also looking at the pictures side-by-side while I write this post, so they’re not even all that big (AKA I can’t see fine details).

Shows are divided into 3 categories based on whether I’m thinking of watching them (will follow, might follow, and won’t follow) and how I think I’ll like them based on my snap judgments (will like, might like, and won’t like). I’ll be doing 3 posts to avoid a massive list, each time with about a dozen shows.

Anyways, that’s enough rambling. Let’s get started with Part 1!

#1

1. Ok. Most visible thing in the picture is the giant sword, and she’s holding another weapon. Hair is ridiculous. Definitely going to be a show all about violence. Probably hyper-violent. Likely gory. Long hair, clothing, and framing of the shot suggest “male gaze” anime type stuff though. So possibly a harem?

Initial opinion: Will follow. / Will like.

2. Akame ga Kill!. Ok. So hyperviolent for sure.

3. I see assassin, and pretty girl referenced twice in the first two sentences. So this’ll definitely be some type of harem/romance type thing, and is likely told from a male perspective with a male (probably without much presence) MC.

4. N/A

Final opinion: Will follow. / Will like.

———-

#2

1. This is going to be a hard-core sci-fi mecha show. Includes a ridiculous title in the picture, so probably a lot of jargon. Judging by imposing stature of mecha, likely going to involve fighting or war. Machines are mass produced in picture, so likely the latter. This will be much less like a “special mecha” show and much more a political/space opera type stuff. Machines also not in space: likely going to be a ground-based conflict? Only way that would happen would be if this was colonization of another planet, or some future Earth. So definitely some political drama, ideological issues, ethical stuff, loyalty, friendships, ties, etc.

Initial opinion: Won’t follow. / Might like.

2. Aldnoah.Zero. No surprise there. Nice and technical.

3. Oh man: reads like Mass Effect. And the colonization of Mars. And seeds of war. Good stuff.

4. N/A

Final opinion: Won’t follow. / Might like.

———-

#3

1. This is definitely a shoujo romance. Judging by the colors and art style, this is going to be a very “pure” show. I’m getting Sukinayo type vibes for some reason. There are flowers in the background, which suggests nature. The guy looks fairly typical “pretty boy”, girl is “shy, embarrassed”. They’ll come together, there’ll be drama, etc. The way it’s marketed though suggests it might be a simpler romance/drama story, without as many convoluted plot twists and alternate love interests.

Initial opinion: Won’t follow. / Won’t like.

2. Ao Haru Ride. Guessing this is either the name of the girl or the boy, or both.

3. Pretty much hit all the checkboxes: isolated, embarrassed, lonely. I didn’t see the “distance” aspect in it, although maybe the white hands in the picture should’ve informed me they had some boundary keeping them apart.

4. N/A

Final opinion: Won’t follow. / Won’t like.

———-

#4

1. Is that a guy or a girl? Ok – looks like a bishounen. Right – this is probably a show target towards fujoshi, with a hot guy. Look at the way he holds that microphone stand. Mhmm. Probably just going to involve him being a rock star in some strange time and place, forming a band (with other hot guys), and singing songs while girls swoon at his feet.

Initial opinion: Won’t follow. / Might like.

2. Bakamatsu Rock. What the hell is “Bakamatsu”? Probably should know.

3. Wow. Singing Heaven Songs controls the population, and these guys are going to rise up and challenge the establishment! That’s a bit of a twist on things – sort of like the visual kei version of AKB048 or something?

4. N/A

Final opinion: Won’t follow. / Won’t like.

———-

#5

1. This is going to be a cute show about flowers. The guy’s probably some vendor at a flower shop or something, or a botanist, and he travels around with the little girl doing things that’ll be nice and adorable. She’s going to be all the spunk in this show, while the guy will be bland and cynical (or just not very talkative).

Initial opinion: Won’t follow. / Might like.

2. Barakamon. Well, that gives me no help.

3. Ok – I was totally off. This is an exile story, and this famous (handsome) young calligrapher gets sent to an island. So it’ll be an iyashikei (healing anime) type thing, where the guy where learn to be at peace with himself or some similar shit.

4. N/A

Final opinion: Won’t follow. / Won’t like.

———-

#6

1. Ok – this is going to be a magical girl show. It’ll involve transformations, probably using that crystal, and the main heroine pictures will fight bad guys. In a simultaneously empowering but also sexual way, or course. Given how there’s only one girl picture, I’m guessing it’ll be a “monster of the week” type thing. She’s also along, and maybe looks lonely, so she’ll make friends and stuff. And wtf is up with that hair!

Initial opinion: Won’t follow. / Won’t like.

2. Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon: Crystal. Well, something like “young female sailor” doesn’t seem to suggest anything.

3. Ok - looks like she’s searching for the crystal, not using it to transform. And there’s the contract stuff, the evil enemy, etc. Plus she’s finding friends! Yay for good guessing!

4. This is obviously the Sailor Moon reboot. Seeing as I haven’t watched the original, I probably should watch some of these as they air. It might also be a nice show to watch together with Rebecca.

Final opinion: Will follow. / Might like.

———-

#7

1. Man, look at all the characters in this picture. Color scheme suggests something exciting and upbeat, plus lots of the poses look like action-y stuff. People are holding weapons and dressed in crazy outfits, so likely a type of DEATH GAME style show. Yea, and there’s a crystal ball, so this’ll be likely something where a bunch of people have to kill each other with some overlord and a bunch of rules. Doesn’t look like it’ll be a depressing show though – so probably just more one the ridiculous side than the serious one. Characters are likely going to be wacky.

Initial opinion: Might follow. / Might like.

2. DRAMAtical Murder. If that doesn’t scream ridiculous death game, I don’t know what does. On the flipside, it also might be a murder mystery type thing. Which would make sense, given the crystal ball.

3. Ok – murder mystery type stuff. And the color scheme is wack because this is all inside a game and things of that sort of nature. So now this’ll be a ridiculous SOLVE THE MYSTERY PLAY THE GAME type thing.

4. N/A

Final opinion: Might follow. / Might like.

———-

#8

1. Ok. Clearly a magical girl show. Clearly target at men, and probably men okay with more lolicon-type stuff. Judging by the picture framing, we’ll follow center girl in pink, who’s not the best magical girl and furthermore is likely a clutz and relatively cynical about the whole thing. That smile says a lot. The girl on the right is likely her much more able sidekick, although she’ll be relatively deadpan and emotionless. The one of the left will either be the mentor or the evil villain. This show will be relatively upbeat, judging by the background. So probably just a fanservice-heavy show with nothing special about it.

Initial opinion: Won’t follow. / Won’t like.

2. Fate/kaleid line Prisma Illya 2wei!. Yep, definitely a show targeted at hardcore lolicon otaku. Plus it’s a sequel, which means the original probably was much of the same and must’ve done decently well.

3. OH MAN SUBDUING THOSE PULSATIONS THAT DOESN’T SOUND OMINOUS AND POSSIBLY SEXUAL OR ANYTHING

4. I love the Fate franchise (and Type-Moon in general), so I’ve seen the first season. I didn’t like it all that much then, but I’m a fanboy so count me in again.

Final opinion: Will follow. / Won’t like.

———-

#9

1. This show is clearly marketed towards women. It’s going to involve swimming, judging by the clothes. All the guys are going to be friends, and they’ll swim and do things together, and the situations are going to be pretty sexual. They all will have slightly different personalities to allow for maximal uke x seme pairings. This will thus be unlike a typical shounen sports show, which ends up that way because fujoushi are clever. This’ll be much less sports porn and much more relationship-focused.

Initial opinion: Won’t follow. / Might like.

2. Free! Eternal Summer. Oh god that sounds like it could be a hot and juicy otome game.

3. Ok – this is a second season. So the first season must have been sufficiently high quality to guarantee this. Either insane fujoushi bait, or decently good. Probably the former.

4. I actually love Free!, so count me in!

Final opinion: Will follow. / Will like.

———-

#10

1. Cute girls doing cute things. Judging by the garterbelts, slightly sexual while still innocent, and marketed towards men. Guessing by the fish, these girls probably try and sell fish or something. They’re wearing similar outfits and jumping while waving and smiling, so likely idols for something

Initial opinion: Won’t follow. / Won’t like.

2. Futsuu no Joshikousei ga [Locodol] Yatte Mita. Ok, so normal female high school students do something. Definitely idol-based.

3. So boohoo idol life is not actually that great in this town. Misadventures while we do weird things while being idols YAY.

4. N/A

Final opinion: Won’t follow. / Won’t like.

———-

#11

1. Ok. So we have something related to drawing. The guy’s probably some prodigy, and the girl’s a love interest or assistant. He’s using ink, so it’s probably manga. They can’t be past high school judging by the uniforms. Judging by the white background and her smile and his confident pose, this’ll probably be lighthearted. Best guess is that this is some sort of romcom or lighthearted club-type show.

Initial opinion: Might follow. / Might like.

2. Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun. So not just a mangaka (or aspiring mangaka), but a shoujo mangaka. Definitely a romcom.

3. “The romantic comedy story begins” NAILED IT. And ok – dense man, feelings of affection, simple setup.

4. N/A

Final opinion: Might follow. / Will like.

———-

#12

1. Speaking of club-type stuff, THIS is a show that’s club type stuff. 3 girls, 3 guys: this might have some drama, but probably will be lighthearted. Judging by their location (green background), this’ll be set in some more rural area rather than a big city. They’re all high school students. And the club they’re in is…my first guess is photography, but then wouldn’t it be easier to have them with cameras? Something to do with lenses then, I guess. So a club based around some oddball thing, where they’ll do things and relationships will develop and stuff will happen.

Initial opinion: Might follow. / Might like.

2. Glasslip. So is this a glass club or something?

3. Ok, so not a club, but rather the MC wants to be a glass artisan and these people all meet during the summer, which explains the background. So now there’s definitely the possibility of drama here, although it might just be a coming-of-age type thing.

4. N/A

Final opinion: Might follow. / Might like.

———-

So, at the end of the day, it looks like I’ll definitely be following:

• Akame ga Kill!
• Sailor Moon reboot
• Free! S2
• Fate/kaleid S2

and I might be following:

• DRAMAtical Murder
• Nozaki-kun

One interesting thing I noticed at the end of this was that without additional background info, I only would’ve followed 1 show rather than 4 out of these 12. Which seems to imply, at least for me, that background info is important to avoid missing “good” shows that just might not have the pictures to match.

Another thing I noticed is what Rym & Scott called “the gun”. The “gun” is the place in every image that has the most detail, or is the most emphasized, and which generally gives information on the type of show (the example came from several images with girls holding guns, where the guns were by far much more detailed than the girls, indicating the show was for gun otaku). For Akame ga Kill, for instance, this turned out to be the blade, which clued me in on the fact that it likely is hyper-violent. Other pictures held similar clues. In all cases, if a picture has one, finding the “gun” seems like the best indicator of target audience as well as subject matter.

Finally, in no case did background information take a show that looked good and make it less appealing, which makes it seem that just judging shows based on appearance is a good way of essentially cutting out anything that is likely to be crap. Also, most often my opinion of a show based on picture alone came quite close to the final opinion once I added in more information (and my predictions looks pretty decent as well!). If my suspicions are correct, just glancing over the anime preview chart and picking out shows which look good to you or that you’ve heard things about probably is good enough when deciding what shows to watch each season. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself just yet – I still have 2 dozen more shows to go through…

So what do you guys think? Any shows you’re really looking forward to? Is anime worth more effort than this? (Noting that normally you’d not type all of these things out, so it’d be much quicker :p.) How about your own guidelines about picking up/dropping shows? Any elements that are deal-makers/deal-breakers? And just thoughts in general?

Hey guys! So Josh and I thought that it was time to put up a new 50 Questions post this time including my answers as well! Hope you get a kick out of reading some more personal stuff about weirdos like us haha.

Because Josh made me pick a picture and I like this picture. That’s why this picture haha. Plus it represents our height difference pretty accurately XD.

1. Who is your favorite male anime character?

R: RIDER (Fate/Zero) all day. I want to marry him and have his babies. I feel like I’ve mentioned this on the blog before.

J: I’d have to say it’s a three-way tie, depending on the circumstances: Kamina (TTGL), Light (Death Note), and Shinji (Evangelion). Araragi (Bakemonogatari) comes in close second though, and might eventually become one of my favorites depending on how the Monogatari series plays out.

2. Who is your favorite female anime character?

R: Hmm this one is a little bit harder. I think I’d have to go with Rosette Christopher from Chrno Crusade. Not only is she a total badass, but she’s also extremely likable and her plus Chrno are one of my favorite anime couples ever.

J: Definitely Holo (Spice and Wolf). She’s just all-around great.

3. What is your favorite anime soundtrack?

R: I actually really like the Psycho-Pass soundtrack.

J: Really tough. Probably would have to go with anything by Shinichiro Watanabe (Samurai Champloo, Kids on the Slope, Cowboy Bebop, Space Dandy). Otherwise, I’ve grown really fond of some of the songs from the newer JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OST. I’ve also fallen in love with Ling Tosite Sigure’s stuff (from Psycho-Pass).

4. What is your favorite anime opening?

R: White Destiny (Pretear).

J: Tada Hitori (Ping Pong the Animation) and Aoi Shiori (Anohana) come in tied for this.

 5. What is your favorite anime closing?

R: Probably the closing from Kemono no Souja Erin.

J: Kimi ni Matsuwaru Mystery (Hyouka) and Days of Dash (Sakurasou). Roundabout (JoJo) comes in as a close second.

6. What is your favorite anime scene?

R: My favorite anime scene is from the ending of Blood+ where you think that Haji has died, but then it turns out he managed to survive and had been visiting Saya in her sleep. (As evidenced by the ribbon he leaves behind tied to a pink rose.)

J: Probably the ending of TTGL (the new Lagann-hen version), where Simon is fighting the anti-spiral and just MATERIALIZES A DRILL OUT OF HIS OWN BLOOD. Plus the entire 12-minute leadup to that.

7. If you could meet any anime character, who would it be?

R: Rider (Fate/Zero). Definitely Rider. I want to marry him and have his babies.

J: Holo (Spice and Wolf) – she’d be fascinating to talk to. Maybe Senjougahara (Bakemonogatari) if I was feeling masochistic.

8. What anime character is most similar to you in terms of personality?

R: I don’t know, but Josh said I should “pick a character who is indecisive and dumb :p”.

J: It depends a lot on where I am at the time. Araragi (Bakemonogatari) is probably the closest in terms of overall bearing, and Bolin (Legend of Korra, if that’s allowed to count) in terms of mannerisms. I also see a lot of myself – both good and bad – in Sora (No Game No Life).

9. What is your favorite thing about anime?

R: Hmm probably the variety of story lines that you don’t typically see in Western shows.

J: Wincest – all day every day. Although in all seriousness, probably the diversity of the medium. Anime covers a lot of stuff.

10. What is your least favorite thing about anime

R: Fanservice. It is so stupid and annoying and often ruins shows for me.

J: I have a love-hate relationship with the heavy emphasis on tropes, which can serve either as a debilitating crutch or as a fascinating point of entry that allows anime to explore a wide range of other issues.

11. Who is your favorite anime couple?

R: Rosette x Chrno (Chrno Crusade) all day.

J: Holo x Lawrence (Spice and Wolf) and Urabe x Tsubaki (Mysterious Girlfriend X).

12. Who is your favorite anime animal?

R: Mokona! (Not sure if he counts, but I think he does.)

J: Catgirls.

13. What anime would make a good game?

R: Don’t know enough about video games to comment.

J: Probably one of Miyazaki’s movies. I could easily imagine a JRPG-like version of Spirited Away working really well.

14. What game would make a good anime?

R: See above.

J: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. I’d love to see that shit. Also, Black Lagoon would make a really interesting game I think.

15. What was the first anime you ever watched?

R: I think it was Chobits, although I did watch bits and pieces of Sailor Moon before that.

J: Excluding things like Pokemon, Death Note.

16. Do you think you’ll ever stop watching anime?

R: Probably once I have kids. Not sure I want to expose them to that XD.

J: I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon!

17. What is your favorite genre of anime?

R: Right now? Probably shounen.

J: Always hard to tell. Probably things that are the “DEEP and MEANINGFUL” type.

18. What is your least favorite genre of anime?

R: Does Yuri/Yaoi count?

J: Shoujo. Extremely manufactured drama tends to bug me.

19. Are you open about watching anime with people you know?

R: Eh. Not so much. No one really suspects that I would watch it so it never comes up.

J: Completely! My room is also decorated in merchandise, so the secret’s out as soon as anyone drops by.

20. Have you ever been to Japan?

R: Nope. I’d really like to though! Josh and I have talked about going together some time soonish.

J: Yes! I was there last summer doing astronomy research.

21. What anime was the biggest let down for you?

R: Seirei no Moribito definitely. I wrote an entire post about how I really wanted to like the show and just couldn’t.

J: Tsuritama. I came in expecting something really excellent and came away feeling like I just watched a show screaming “FRIENDSHIP IS GREAT” superimposed on a fantastic setting and color palette.

22. What anime was better than expected?

R: Yakitate Japan!! surprised me a lot actually. I thought it was going to be idiotic, and it is, but in a good way haha.

J: Tiger & Bunny. I expected it to really suck based on the descriptions and artwork, and ended up really enjoying it.

23. What is the best anime fight scene?

R: actually thought the fight scenes in Kill La Kill were pretty cool, can’t pinpoint which was the best though.

J: TTGL‘s ending scenes, probably. If we’re talking in general, I’d also throw in stuff from Kill La Kill and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

24. Who is your anime husbando/waifu?

R: As I mentioned before, Rider and I are a thing and I’m going to have his gorgeous ginger babies.

J: I’m not as rabid as I used to be, so I don’t really have a waifu at the moment. In the past, however, my waifus have been (in approximate order): Haruhi (Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya), Yuki (same), Mizore (Rosario + Vampire), Ami (Toradora!), Saber (Fate/Stay), Rin (same), Subaru (Mayo Chiki!), Horo (Spice and Wolf), Toph (Avatar: The Last Airbender), Kuroneko (OreImo), Urabe (Mysterious Girlfriend X), Yuno (Future Diary), Nobuna (Oda Nobuna), Rika (Chu2koi), Asuka (Evangelion), Charlotte (Infinite Stratos), Laura (same), and Ayase (OreImo). While not nearly as intense, more recently I’ve gotten into Morgiana (Magi) and Onodera (Nisekoi).

25. What was your favorite video game as a child?

R: Does The Sims count? I was totally obsessed with that game until my sister destroyed my 7 generation family.

J: Pokemon Blue. Team Blastoise all day.

26. Most embarrassing moment?

R: Only one? XD. Oh jeez, so I was having a conversation with a classmate in high school Latin class and the teacher chimed in all of a sudden. Without thinking, I accidentally told him to shut up–like I would if another classmate had interrupted the conversation. It was only after a few moments that I realized who I had just told to shut up. I was mortified. Luckily I apologized profusely and didn’t actually get into any serious trouble (I’d had the teacher for 3 years already at that point, which probably helped).  Then there was the time I agreed to start dating some loser named Josh…

J: Back in middle school, some girl made fun of me in gym class (for good reason - I was being dumb). I got angry and tried to get back at her by insulting her grades (my logic was a “she was good at sports and therefore probably got bad grades” type of thing). Turns out she had straight A’s. I also ended up saying this within earshot of the teacher, who scolded us. I was absolutely ashamed of myself afterwards, but by the time I mustered up the courage to apologize (a few weeks later), she actually ended up moving. I never saw her again. It was a huge formative experience: the shame afterwards led to me really cracking down on the entire idea of stereotypes, making assumptions, judging people, etc., and is something that’s stuck with me since.

27. Can you drive?

R: Indeed! My mom made me get my license asap so I could drive my sisters around.

J: Yes.

28. Are you mature?

R: Umm I’d say so, but I think Josh would disagree.

J: In general, I’d probably say so.

29. What year were you born?

R: 1994

J: 1993. Fun fact: Rebecca and I actually have the same birthday, one year apart. It made for an interesting revelation on our first date.

30. Do you prefer cats or dogs?

R: Definitely cats. Dogs are too slobbery and smelly for me.

J: Cats.

31. Describe yourself physically.

R: I’m quite short–about 5’1–and I have messy brown curly hair, I’m white, but you probably could have guessed that. There are a few pictures of me on my other blog if you’re actually curious.

J: Half-Asian half-Caucasian. Around 6′ 0″ and quite thin (118±5 lbs. or so). I have black hair and brown eyes and wear glasses. I always wear this thing orange jacket around (even during the summer), which tends to make me quite recognizable.

32. What would you name your first child?

R: Oh jeez. I’m SO not ready to think about children yet, let alone naming them. Ask me this again when I’m pregnant.

J: I’ll think about it when it comes up. Maybe something astronomy, anime, and/or video game-related.

33. What is the worst injury you have ever had?

R: Broke my arm a few years back.

J: Had a collapsed lung a few years back. It refused to heal on its own, and I ended up being hospitalized for about a week and getting surgery. Not the best experience.

34. What is your worst habit?

R: My worst habit is apologizing all the time. I’m always worried that I’ve said or done something wrong and tend to apologize profusely even when it isn’t necessary.

J: I have two here. I have horrible posture, and I’ll probably end up with back problems if I keep sitting the way I do all the time (think L, but more contorted). The second is my tendency to stare off into the distance when I talk to people rather than making any sort of eye contact, which tends to unsettle a lot of people until they get used to it.

35. Do you drink or smoke?

R: Nope.

J: No.

36. Do you have a tattoo?

R: Nope.

J: No, although I really like the idea of a squirrel on my inner thigh reaching upwards towards my…

37. Are you a morning person or a night person?

R: I’m actually more of an afternoon person, but night works if I have to choose between the two.

J: Night owl, 100%.

38. Have you ever slept past midday?

R: Yep! It doesn’t happen often though.

J: Often.

39. Do you regret anything?

R: Many, many things. Too many to count or name. I try not to dwell on them too much though.

J: Not a lot, actually. I’m generally pretty constructive, so most things that are “negative” I try and view more positively as a learning experience. I also am a hermit, and tend not to make many decisions I feel I’d regret. If there’s anything I’d regret though, it’s probably my general lifestyle. I tend to be pretty introverted, so I don’t meet, befriend, and/or keep in contact with many people. Although I don’t think I will, there’s a chance I might regret that in the future.

40. Can you count the number of friends you have on one hand?

R: Hmm in terms of close friends, yes. In terms of more casual acquaintance-y friends, no.

J: Close friends? No – although they do fit on two.

41. Do you wear glasses?

R: Nope.

J: Yep!

42. Are you a picky eater?

R: Very picky. Josh always makes fun of me because of how limited my diet is. In my ideal world I would be able to gain all my nutrients from sour gummy worms and cereal.

J: Used to be, but now I’m actually quite open about most food.

43. Would you die for someone?

R: Not sure. I wouldn’t know unless the situation came up–hopefully it never does.

J: I really have absolutely no idea until I have to make that choice.

44. If you could have any super¬power, what would it be?

R: Hmm, how about regeneration/rapid healing? I’m such a spazz it would be nice to have all my various cuts and scrapes heal up instantaneously.

J: Since I don’t want to list things that are clearly overpowered, I’d probably go for immortality in the form of control over your own body. Or essentially the ability to live forever and in whatever form you choose, so long as you will it.

45. Do you believe in the supernatural?

R: Nope.

J: No.

46. Would you rather be rich or famous?

R: Definitely rich. I’m quite shy so the limelight holds no appeal for me.

J: Rich. Having money is always is nice.

47. Have you ever committed a crime?

R: Hmm I accidentally stole a pair of earrings once. They actually got caught on the hood of my jacket and I found them when I got home. I call it stealing since I never returned them.

J: I stole Yu-Gi-Oh! cards once (although I felt so guilty I returned them the next day). And there’s online piracy. But nothing more serious.

48. Time traveller or ghost?

R: Time traveler definitely.

J: Time traveler.

49. Does someone have a crush on you?

R: Not that I know of. There definitely have been people in the past, although that usually ended once they found out I have a boyfriend.

J: Nope.

50. Are you in a relationship?

R: Yep! I’m actually in a polyamorous relationship with Netflix, Pinterest, sushi, and Josh.

J: What she said. Except my other relationships are with astronomy and anime.

Wait, the summer season has started? Good thing I don’t have to watch any anime to know how they’ll all be! After my more thorough attempt last time, I came to the realization that all you pretty much need to attempt to gauge an anime is the preview picture and a title. So that’s pretty much all I’ll do here.

If anyone missed my last post, I’ll just quickly summarize the idea here. There’s a lot of anime airing each season, and trying to keep up with a bunch of shows for several episodes just to give them a chance takes way too much effort for douchebags like me. So, instead, I’m going to go ahead and completely judge the Summer 2014 anime season using (nominally) no more information than just the preview art and the picture. With just those two pieces of information, I’ll attempt to completely predict the plot of each of the shows, their respective genres, and comment about whether they’re probably worth watching. If this actually works reasonably well, expect to see this kind of segment continued every season.

Oh – it also seems like Rebecca wants in on this judgmental anime action. ALRIGHT THEN – THIS IS A JOINT POST NOW BITCHES.

READY TO HEAR SOME OPINIONS? LET’S DO THIS.

ALSO, WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE SHITTY PICTURE QUALITY BUT WE DON’T REALLY CARE ENOUGH TO LOOK HARDER THAN ANICHART.

We also list our opinions of the show (including background knowledge) and whether or not we’ll watch it underneath each impression. No specials or anything included, which means Sailor Moon (which is grouped there) wasn’t included, although we plan to watch it.

Akame ga Kill! 

This show will probably be hyper violent and due to all the boobs probably a harem show. The setting suggests that the characters are going to be fighting some sort of ‘ancient evil’ and that they are possibly part of an organization that has spent centuries trying to fight this evil. The man on the right is clearly the leader or some sort of mentor figure and his super sexy hairstyle suggests a ridiculous nature to the show. There will probably be battle girls with clothes being ripped off and well timed partial nudity. The artwork suggests high production quality, which means whatever it’s being adapted from probably was pretty successful.

Josh: Will watch. This looks like fun!

Rebecca: Not watching. Boobs are boring.

Aldnoah.Zero

The mass produced homogenous mechas suggest that this is some sort of futuristic military drama. The title is probably some sort of code name for either an organization or an important figure. This doesn’t seem to take place in space, which indicates that it is likely terrestrial-based and takes place on Earth or some other planet in the midst of war or political turmoil.

Josh:  Not watching another boring political mecha drama.

Rebecca: Not watching. Mecha’s boring.

Ao Haru Ride

Definitely a shoujo about the relationship between the two. The girl is probably kind of awkward and average and through a chance encounter she meets up with the boy who seems like somewhat of an outcast. They are an unlikely coupling, but they manage to fall in love in spite of coming from different social circles. It’s obviously a drama doesn’t look like any love triangles will be involved. The ‘first love’ theme will be a presence.

Josh: Maybe I’ll give shoujo another shot, but probably not going to watch.

Rebecca: Not watching. Shoujo’s boring.

Bakumatsu Rock

This is going to be about sexy guys playing rock music. Seems to be a weird juxtaposition between modern and and a weird 70s or 80s vibe. The main plot is probably going to follow a group of hot guys trying to make it as a rock band.

Josh: Probably will watch the first episode. I have a weird soft spot for hot guys.

Rebecca: Not watching. BL is boring.

DRAMAtical Murder

Judging by the art style and color scheme, this show appears to be game-based and probably targeted toward women. (Note the fluffy mascot.) Clearly there is some murder aspect combined with the paranormal central angel figure (he has a subtle halo). Josh also suggested that there could be a time travel element since all the characters look like they come from different eras. The show probably revolves around some sort of survival competition or action packed battle sequences. Undoubtedly there will be lots of DRAMA.

Josh: This looks like a good combination of BL + action so I’ll probably follow this.

Rebecca: Not watching. Fluffy mascots are boring.

Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya 2wei!

Clearly targeted toward men–a show about cute magical girls doing cute, stupid things. This is a second season so the first must have been relatively successful. The characters look fairly cliched–the blonde dumb one, the black haired stoic one, and the silver haired troublemaker. There’s going to be a lot of fanservice  for all the creepy lolicons out there. The girls will probably have to save the world from some evil thing, but there won’t be much plot past that.

Josh: Ok  I am a fan of the Fate franchise so I’ll have to subject myself to this monstrosity.

Rebecca: Not watching. Little girls are boring.

Free! Eternal Summer

A bunch of hot guys swimming. They fill all the basic bishonen stereotypes. Four guys will be on the same swim team and then there’s the obvious odd one out in a different swim jacket. They’ll probably compete in a really melodramatic swimming competition filled with bromance and subtle BL overtones.

Josh: Free second season? Sign me up!

Rebecca: Not watching. Swimming is boring.

Futsuu no Joshikousei ga [Locodol] Yatte Mita

Another show targeted toward men with clear garter belt fanservice. Looks like an idol type show detailing the misadventures of cute girls doing cute things. Maybe idols for some town associated with fishing. This will probably be about the two girls trying to cheer on and represent the town rather than being part of an idol group and performing.

Josh: This’ll probably be a lackluster show. Not watching.

Rebecca: Not watching. Fish are boring.

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun

Aspiring/existing manga artist in high school ends up in several awkward situations with the featured girl and eventually they fall in love. Definitely a rom-com. The girl will be standard go-getter type–the active part of the romance will be on her end. The guy will probably respond to her antics, but will mainly be dense as a brick or always rejects the girl in some witty manner.

Josh: I like rom coms! I’ll probably watch this.

Rebecca: Not watching. People are boring.

Glasslip

Show about a bunch of people who meet and all join a club or organization together. This has to take place in spring or early summer judging by the green background. This has to take place during some vacation or weekends. Standard three guy and three girl configuration with ensuing relationship drama. Girls from left to right: Innocent, Intelligent, Bubble brain. Guys from left to right: Overseer, Active/Annoying, Nice guy. This has something to do with glass, maybe glassblowing?

Josh: Oh god, I don’t know if I can take another club melodrama. I might pick it up if other people find it good, otherwise not watching.

Rebecca: Not watching. Clubs are boring.

Hanamonogatari

Definitely targeted toward men with plenty of fanservice. The girl on the cover is teasing the viewer, suggesting a coy personality. Her arm is bandaged, which indicates some sort of accident or fight. A snarky romcom most likely where the guy is led on and teased by the girl.

Josh: I love SHAFT. Sign me up for more head tilts!

Rebecca: Not watching. Josh is boring.

Hanayamata

This is going to be cute girls doing cute things involving flowers. Looks like three school girls meet up with two flower spirits who teach them things about flowers…or something. The girl in the middle will be the main character with her two school friends. The girls in front are probably flower spirits. Slice of life type show.

Josh: I don’t want to watch a bunch of cute girls with flowers.

Rebecca: Not watching. Colors are boring.

Jinsei

Romantic show centered around the girl. Probably targeted toward men. Fanservice is likely. Not much else to say the cover is pretty bland.

Josh: There is nothing I can peg about this show. Not gonna watch it.

Rebecca: Not watching. Boring is boring.

Kuroshitsuji: Book of Circus

This is going to be weird. Involves a circus, but that will probably be more of theme/aesthetic if anything. Definitely something supernatural going on. A lot of characters–a big cast indicates an extensive overarching plot. There will be a lot of enemies with magical powers that the protag et al will have to fight. It looks creepy.

Josh: Haven’t seen the first season, not going to start with the second.

Rebecca: Eh. I’ll have to look at the reviews first.

Love Stage!!

Going to be a full on BL show. Very clear uke and seme. Not an in school romance, but they could be school-aged.

Josh: I love cute guys, but probably won’t watch this.

Rebecca: Not watching. Gender bending is boring.

Majimoji Rurumo

Witch/magical girl show. The guy in the background is some sort of friend or older sibling. The girl is causing trouble for the guy in the background, leading to humorous situations. The style of the title indicates that this show will be aimed at a normal audience, but will be more comedic rather than fanservice based.

Josh: Not feeling like watching slapstick comedy right now so probably not going to pick this up unless it’s really good.

Rebecca: Not watching. Witches are boring.

Minarai Diva

A show about little girl performers that is probably targeted toward kids.

Josh: Yea, no.

Rebecca: Not watching. Boots are boring.

Momo Kyun Sword

Fighter chicks, big boobs on opposing sides of a cliched conflict. Looks like there are a bunch of characters most of whom probably are well endowed or super buff.

Josh: Fuck it, I’m probably going to watch at least the first episode.

Rebecca: Not watching. Cliches are boring.

Nobunaga Concerto

Another historical adaptation where Nobunaga is a composer. Looks like it’s going to be a drama aimed at an older female audience. (Josei) The drama will probably stem from parallels with Nobunaga’s life including intrigue and betrayal.

Josh: I generally am pretty nice about these adaptations, but this doesn’t look like it’s my thing.

Rebecca: Not watching. Concertos are boring.

Persona 4 The Golden Animation

Video game adaptation. A lot of characters are involved. The game must be popular enough that they need to highlight the title instead of the characters. Decently good plot. Looks shiny I want to touch it.

Josh: I haven’t played the video game so probably not.

Rebecca: Not watching. Feet are boring.

Psycho-Pass New Edit Version

This is easy. Dark, futuristic, crime thriller. Strong female protag who is probably some sort of law enforcement. There will be dark philosophical/ethical questions surrounding our relationship with technology and crime. There is going to be hope here since the city doesn’t look intimidating and dystopian.

Josh: I’ll probably watch the remake.

Rebecca: Not re-watching. Too much effort.

PuriPara

Another idol show. Cute girls doing cute things on stage. Targeted toward hardcore idol fans. Probably based on some mascot characters.

Josh: Idols are not totally my thing. Probably not.

Rebecca: Josh is not totally my thing. Probably not.

Rail Wars!

It’ll probably be a bunch of crazy antics revolving around railroad police. The guy in front will be the main love interest for both girls and the guy in the back will be the pervy best friend who makes boob jokes all the time. The show looks like there will be some thematic story arcs, but it’ll be generally lighthearted.

Josh: Fuck yes.

Rebecca: I don’t have a train fetish.

Re: Hamatora 

Some sort of dark actiony show. The two in the front are probably siblings with the guy in the middle as a sort of rebel or outcast. The guy with white hair is the leader and the little girl suffers from icy rage. Maybe they’re superheroes or have something that the antagonist wants. The white shadows are either stylistic or thematic. Overall this show will be cynical and dramatic.

Josh: I might pick it up if I hear good things, but at the moment, no.

Rebecca: If I want angst I’ll go spend time in a high school bathroom.

Rokujouma no Shinryakusha!?

Look it’s a harem! Probably a LN adaptation. Looks like our protag is going to find some sort of alien artifact that connects him with a bunch of girls. He will then have to work with them to save the world or something. Girls cover all the trope bases.

Josh: Yes.

Rebecca: …too many boobs.

Sabagebu!

This show will probably be a ridiculous action show. Strange combination of slice of life and action in a bizarre setting. The girl and her platypus? sidekick will defeat baddies who will all be crazy. She’s probably got a screw missing somewhere.

Josh: This looks crazy enough to be interesting. Will watch.

Rebecca: My freshman roommate had a weird thing about platypuses. Too much PTSD.

Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dance

Warrior girls with huge boobs! FANSERVICE. ECCHI. Main protag will be in a harem with all the girls.

Josh: Fuck it, I’m also gonna watch the first episode of this show. I’m such a sucker.

Rebecca: I’m not a sucker.

Sengoku Basara Judge End

SO MUCH TESTOSTERONE. A really manly version of the Warring States period. A lot of muscles and shirtless guys shouting inane things at each other while wielding massive weapons.

Josh: Please give me more manliness in my manly war.

Rebecca: Please give me more manliness in my bed.

Shirogane no Ishi: Argevollen

Dramatic mecha show. Love triangle between cover characters. The mecha will probably be individualized and the show will be heavy on the melodrama rather than politically charged. Girl in the middle will end up in damsel in distress situations on several occasions, probably has a secret power that an enemy organization wants to abuse.

Josh: I might as well watch Valvrave.

Rebecca: Nope.

Shounen Hollywood- Holly Stage for 49

Pretty boys sing songs.

Josh: I like pretty boys so this gets the first episode.

Rebecca: Snore.

Space Dandy 2

This show is going to be ridiculous. Definitely a retro manliness to the main character. Gigantic cast, but not a serious show. Seems to take place in outer space in a futuristic world that doesn’t take itself seriously. Main character probably has a knack for getting into trouble. Weird, episodic slice of life comedy with some overarching arcs and a few recurring characters. Also a second season so characters are probably carried over. Show based on character interactions rather than plot.

Josh: Space Dandy is a dandy guy in space.

Rebecca: If he opens his mouth any wider his brain might fall out.

Sword Art Online II

This is an action show with guns and shooting as an integral part of the world. Takes place in some sort of scifi cyber world. The two girls will be assistants/love interests to the main character. Male targeted show due to female presence/poses on cover. The two girls and the protag will be part of some specialized unit designed to defeat the main boss. A followup to a successful first season although this doesn’t look like swords, indicating a change in setting, with the same main characters.

Josh: I actually unironically like SAO (parts of it) so I’m excited for this season.

Rebecca: I actually unironically like shows that don’t suck.

Tokyo ESP

The girl has magical superpowers, probably targeted toward men judging by boob prominence and short-shorts. She will go around Tokyo and protect people using her psychic abilities. She will have an eclectic group of allies/followers who will assist her in her mission.

Josh: This just looks weird. Maybe one episode?

Rebecca: One episode if Josh’ll give me a back massage.

Tokyo Ghoul

Super grimdark–comically dark. The main protag is either half ghoul or he summons and forms a contract/bond with one. He is going to be defeating some nebulous group of supernatural enemies. Probably vampires or demons. Tokyo is going to be overrun with evil creatures and demolished. The main protag will attempt to restore order there will probably be ethical questions about his being or his contract. The show will be bloody and violent, but probably not too gory.

Josh: Grimdark and paranormal? Sign me up!

Rebecca: Hmm. Maybe. Depends on if the plot (I DO NOT MEAN BOOBS)  is good.

Zankyou no Terror

This is either post apocalyptic or post disaster. This is going to be a drama with a possible love triangle. The show probably centers on escaping from the wreckage. The guy on the right is smiling, which indicates possible involvement in the disaster. Thriller/melodrama about surviving the aftermath and figuring out what happened.

Josh: Definitely interested, especially considering I watched the first two episodes already.

Rebecca: Meh. Probably not.

IN SUMMATION:

Josh will be watching: Zankyou no Terror, Tokyo Ghoul, SAO II, Space Dandy 2, Sengoku Basara Judge End, Sabagebu!, Rokujouma no Shinryakusha!?, Rail Wars, Psycho Pass,  Hanamonogatari, Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun, Free! Eternal Summer, Fate/Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya 2wei!, DRAMAtical murder, Akame ga Kill! 

Rebecca will be watching: Nothing. I hate everything. Only kidding. Tokyo Ghoul, Sailor Moon Reboot, and maybe Kuroshitsuji: Book of Circus.

Hey guys so Josh and I just finished watching No Game No Life (NGNL) a few weeks back. Not gonna lie it’s my fault for taking forever to finish it haha. It also took me forever to actually start this post, but we’re not going to talk about it.

Anyway, Josh and I decided that since we both watched the show we’d do something a little bit different than us just giving our individual impressions in cordoned off little sections. Instead, we thought that having a dialogue about some of the points we wanted to cover would work better. Josh’s is very academic and mine is snarky–you know the drill. :)

Also, Josh is the one putting in the pictures, so if they end up being ironic or stupid or attempt to be SYMBOLIC, DEEP, AND MEANINGFUL (his words!) responses to our conversation that’s not my fault.

R: So I know I’m super picky about anime, but I surprisingly didn’t hate this show (that much). How about you?

J: Well, you know that I tend to like these things, so it should be no surprise I really enjoyed the show. Personally, I’m surprised you actually liked it enough to actually finish it.

R: Hah - barely. It was surprisingly benign for a harem show.

J: So what makes it different from other harems that you’ve seen? I mean Sora was doing things like taking nudes in the bath and having people climb all over him.

R: I mean I think the difference was the lack of romance and lack of romantic competition. Basically no squealing girls all fighting for one guy’s attention kind of thing. The nude pics were still stupid though.

J: Is it really just the idea that all these women are sort of fighting over this guy for no reason that bugs you? It doesn’t have to do with objectification of women or their reduction to purely “love interests”?

R: My problem isn’t really with the objectification. I just hate annoying fawning girls.

J: So you’re fine with the love interests.

R: I used to watch a hell of a lot of shoujo. What do you think?

J: Shoujo usually portrays the guy as the love interest though. Are you saying you’re fine with love interests in general?

R: Meh. As long as they aren’t obnoxious or too dumb then it doesn’t generally bother me.

J: Ok. So for you it isn’t necessarily that the characters need to be fully fleshed out entities, more that they don’t annoy you too much lol.

R: Sounds about right.

J: So I guess that sorta explains how you managed to make it through, but why did you actually want to watch it all the way to the end?

R: I guess I liked the creativity and ingenuity in regards to how Sora and Shiro managed to win all their games. It was interesting to see what they’d come up with next, although I have to admit that by the end it was getting sort of lackluster.

J: Why lackluster? A lot of people criticized the show for being a power fantasy and how Sora and Shiro seemed invincible. Did you feel like that took the excitement out of things?

R: Yea. I mean I know the show tried to make it seem like things were at stake, but I found it hard to feel that way since you pretty much know that they’re going to win anyway.

J: But isn’t there a different type of pleasure in seeing how they pull things off? I mean it’s just like in the old Sherlock Holmes novels (or the new show)–you know he’s going to solve the mystery, but the joy in it comes from how he does it.

R: Eh I guess I felt by the end their solutions were getting a bit contrived.

J: How so? I felt like they were pretty contrived from the beginning lol.

R: Yea I guess they kind of were haha, but it seemed like by the end they were somehow controlling for a lot more factors in the last game and just assuming that they would all magically fall into place (which they did) as opposed to some of the less complicated strategies in earlier games.

J: Essentially they crossed some line where they were no longer sort of believable superhumans and became game gods?

R: Pretty much. Not sure if I’m going to end up watching the next season or not. I also thought the mythology was really stupid, which was a big turn off.

J: Really? I thought it wasn’t too bad, but then you’re like a mythology snob.

R: You got it. I mean there wasn’t that much of it, but what I saw I didn’t like. So what did you think? Any gripes on your end?

J: Not really – I enjoyed it pretty solidly all the way through. I actually have more gripes with how some other people have tended to view and interpret the show rather than the show itself.

R: Is that supposed to be a jab at me haha?

J: No. More just us aniblogging snobs.

R: Ok. So what did you think then? Why do you have gripes with them?

J: It’s mostly with trying to extrapolate the underlying philosophy of the show. A lot of commentary seems to be centered around its toxic nature and sort of the ideas  it subtly perpetuates.

R: Elaborate.

J: Well it’s just mainly that a lot of the show can be seen as sort of subscribing to a lot of the views of the otaku community. You know there is female objectification, and in one episode there’s even one prominent subplot where Sora forces Steph to fall in love with him like she’s some sort of object. I mean, there are tons of other examples in the same vein, but it all can be seen as adding up to a show that tends to perpetuate some of the more negative aspects of the fandom (even if in a self-aware way) rather than confront them.

R: What a glowing review. Why did you like the show so much then?

J: It’s mainly because I don’t think that this viewpoint can be taken at face value. These types of shows are deliberately given extremely skewed narratives told through the eyes of their protagonist. Separating out the true underlying philosophy of the show vs. that of the main protagonist is difficult. Sora is sort of a psychopath and also an intense otaku, so it shouldn’t be surprising lots of things in the show fall in line with how he would see them.

R: So he’s like you? Haha.

J: Somewhat. I think I’m a little bit more of a douchebag and a little bit less of a sociopath though. :p

R: So you still didn’t tell me specifically what you liked about the show or why you thought it was worthwhile.

J: Whoops – guess I’m just rambling again.

R: It’s okay – I’m used to it now.

J: Lol thanks. So, anyways…what I think it comes down to is that there is–and this is a point that people have brought up–is whether the show is self-deprecating, in which case you just sort of joke about things without changing them, or self-critical of otaku culture, where these issues are actually brought up and addressed in some sort. And if you take the narrative at face value it seems to be the former.

R: But I’m guessing that’s not your viewpoint.

J: Yes, since I think there’s lots of evidence that you shouldn’t be taking the narrative at face value.

R: Okay…like?

J: Well, mostly in sort of the fundamental hypocrisy that is preached by the protagonists, most notably Sora.

R: Hypocrisy in what? Their worldview? Their beliefs?

J: The worldview, yea. Most prominently, in the first episode they go through a long monologue to set the tone of the show and the fact that it’s narrated by Sora. You know, right away they talk about life as being a shitty game where you don’t know the rules and there’s no endpoint, but somehow you’re expected to play. And then they go to a world where literally all the games function exactly like this and they’re totally fine.

R: I remember them saying something in the last episode as well about the world being a game and whatnot.

J: I mean, after Sora and Shiro (plus Jibril and Steph) defeat the warbeasts, Sora is pretty much like “jeez people stop whining IT’S JUST A GAME”. But for Imanity and others it isn’t “just a game”–their lives depended on the outcome and Sora and Shiro had just bet them!

R: Yea, that bothered me a bit too.

J: Right? This indicates a fundamental disconnect between the duo and what’s going on, and is sort of at the heart of the hypocrisy of their characters and more or less the show in general.

R: Well I mean Tet sort of sets the tone for this even before Sora and Shiro come around.

J: Exactly. He pretty much becomes God by being a hikikomori. If that’s not a cue that this is a very self-aware show that should not be taken at face value I don’t know what is.

R: I mean he basically constructed a world where it’s hard to tell where life ends and the game begins.

J: Well, maybe one of the points is that they should be seen as one in the same, in a very similar vein to something like SAO (Sword Art Online) but told from a different point of view–less focused on the immersion and more on the fundamental interaction that takes place when we play games. You know, on the back and forth.

R: Hmm. I mean I definitely see the connection between at least the settings of NGNL and SAO. I think the shows also both received a fair amount of criticism.

J: I mean, whether you decide to look past the atmosphere of NGNL or, like me, think it might be quite a bit self-critical, there’s a lot of positive aspects to the show (this goes for SAO too) I think have generally gotten overlooked. Like the main underlying themes, for instance.

R: You mean the whole “strength in weakness” type of thing?

J: Along with humanity’s (or Imanity, whatever) potential, yea. Those two, along with the emphasis on friendship in gaming and learning to understand each other. Strength in coming together, like with Blank. I mean, the show devoted a significant amount of time (like, an entire episode) those ideas, so it seems unfair to overlook them.

R: Eh I’m not sure how much I agree with the coming together thing–it seemed like the only people who legitimately banded together were Sora and Shiro. Ironically enough I find myself disliking the main protags more and more as we talk about the show haha. I think the strength in weakness thing was a legitimate theme though.

J: What about them did you dislike?

R: I mean if you think about it, Sora and Shiro were REALLY unlikeable characters. If I were in the same room as them I’d probably want to sock Sora in the face for being such a jerk. I’m usually down with the whole underdog thing and I’m pretty sure I’m dating a hikikomori, but damn was he an asshole.

J: Thanks the those kind words of praise :p. With Sora though, I can definitely understand why a character like him would be popular though, or at least what he represents.

R: You mean the nerd power fantasy wet dream?

J: Pretty much. The whole “the weak are really the strong guys!” type of themes are appealing to, well, most anime fans, who I’d say tend to fall into the “weak and ostracized” category which pretty much pervades geeky subcultures. Which leads me to think that you could easily see them in a much less positive light.

R: Eh I guess. I can’t really speak from experience.

J: I mean, although you might not have similar types of feelings, I can definitely say this type of “persecution/inferiority complex” isn’t all that uncommon among fans. And, going from this point of view, NGNL just ends up as a thematic extension – which makes it all the more toxic – of the power fantasy.

R: I guess…?

J: I mean, just take SAO, for instance. One of the main messages of that show (which they also spent a whole episode plus lots extra to hammer home) was that time spent in-game is equivalent to time spent in RL. Now, who’s the target audience for this type of show? The exact type of people who that message would tend to appeal to. So SAO kind of becomes a power fantasy in not just story but also implication: an escapist story that also justifies real-life habits.

R: I guess I can relate to the escapism. I see that as more of a reason to possibly like this show–in a way it lets otaku or hikikomori (are they really separate?) escape to a world where their actions (or lack thereof)  are validated. You know like “it’s ok to stay inside and play video games all day because in this world that sort of behavior is rewarded.”

J: Pretty much. You could easily take the themes to mean something like, “Don’t worry guys – games are important and meaningful, and your weakness is actually a strength! YAY!”. On the other hand though, it could also easily be read as a message to hikikomori–and otaku at large–to take a chance, reach out, and step into the world, using their online presence as a springboard to make friends and forge connections. So it could go both ways. Also, this is totally unrelated to what we were just discussing, but I just wanted to again point out the hypocrisy that Sora/Shiro can’t function in the final arc when they think it’s Tokyo, and then miraculously recover when they find out it’s just an illusion. That’s some deep shit right there, and shows NGNL isn’t trivializing hikikomori but actually taking them seriously.

R: Woohoo encouraging gamers to seek sunlight and real (not 2D) romantic partners!

J: Yea yea lol. Anyways, the point of my whole spiel (even with your attempts to derail me :p), I guess, is that the show is inherently difficult to read straight-up. It’s important to ask questions like, you know, where does Sora’s POV end and the author’s begin? How much does that influence what exactly we take out of the show? Is the obvious message more important than the possibly more nuanced one, because it’s more likely to be the one people take from the show? And–most interesting for me personally–is NGNL more similar to other LN adaptations like OreShura, OreImo, or Oregairu–which generally fell somewhere along the self-deprecating to self-critical spectrum–or somewhere in-between/outside of this dichotomy? Because what I get out of NGNL is something that’s much more complicated–and much more ambivalent–than a simple power fantasy.

R: That your rant for the day?

J: Yea…

R: Haha. You love to go on and on, don’t worry I agree with you anyway ;). I still think I want to break Sora’s nose though XD.

Be honest, how many of you clicked on this post because of the picture?

Why do people always look up porn on our blog? Seriously though. These are some of our best search terms:

-Oniai Hentai
-Plot boobs
-Crotch boobs (I don’t even want to know)
-Amagami nipple
-Hentai Ikaros
-Anime cats having sex (apparently this is a reference)
-RWBY boobie
-Avatar the Last Airbender boobs.com
-Motorboating soft boobs
-RWBY breast expansion

These were all terms that were searched MULTIPLE TIMES so either the same weirdos keep coming back to our site (no pun intended) for some imaginary pornographic images or there are multiple people searching the same things…not sure how I feel about that.

*This post was inspired by me looking at our search terms and laughing uproariously at what brought people to our site.

[End Questioning]

Late as always since research ended up getting in the way, but I finally finished writing these up! :)

Note: Just a warning, but this post ended up being much longer than anticipated by the time I was done with it.

I’ve attended anime cons for a while, but since I was spending the summer at Caltech doing research, I sort of realized at the last minute that Anime Expo (AX) was just a (not so) short train ride away. And so I bought some tickets and headed on down to AX! I only managed to make it for two days (July 4-5, Fri-Sat) out of 4, but on the whole I felt like I got a lot out of the experience. I managed to attend most of the panels I felt were interesting, ranging from a more academic discussion on fandom to Q&A sessions with several Japanese guests (sadly, I missed seeing Eir Aoi in concert because I got my tickets so late), and also managed to explore a decent chunk of the dealer room and artist alley.

Most importantly, however, I got a chance to meet up with Appropriant! We spent a good portion of Saturday together (he also had a kickass Danbo cosplay) and also got a chance to watch the first two episodes of Terror in Resonance together at the Funimation world premiere!

And watch as the first episode cut to a “File is corrupted.” screen three times before the Funimation people got it working properly. Good times.

Anyways, as with my commentary on Anime Boston (AB) earlier this year, I’ve tried to write up my notes (because I’m weird and take notes like that) and summarize my thoughts about the convention. This originally started as a sort of a “stream of consciousness” thing working off notes I jotted down on my iPhone, but ended up getting very heavily edited by Rebecca so that it was actually readable. :) [Thanks Rebecca!]

Overall Thoughts

AX has a very different vibe from AB. On the one hand, I sort of wasn’t ready for how huge this convention would be. Maybe it was just that everyone was packed into one central convention center rather than distributed across other buildings (as with AB), but it definitely felt pretty packed, regardless of the numbers. Because it was so packed, the AX event staff were incredibly organized and very strict with the rules. But I can understand – with lots of big names and rabid fans involved, preventing people from cutting in line or something similar becomes a pretty big concern.

Check out the lines!

On the other hand, I actually felt like there was actually a real difference in terms of what the main draws of the convention were. Compared to AB, AX pulls in a lot more guests and a lot more industry representatives, and many of the panels and events represented that. As a result, the convention felt a lot more…corporate? I mean, it’s definitely a fan con, don’t get me wrong. But I felt like the amount of fans running panels and events was much higher in AB compared to AX. Still, AX was a lot of fun, and I would definitely want to head back at some point in the future.

In spite of the more corporate feel to the panels, I actually really enjoyed them. Maybe it was just the timing and/or panels I was in, but the overall questions by fans to the Japanese guests seemed to be pretty good ones. I mean, most of them were generic and a good portion could have been answered with short google queries, but most were legitimate questions. I did notice, however, that a good majority of the questions concerned inspirations and references for X character or X event, with most fans asking questions to augment their “obscure, premium-content not-available-anywhere-else” type knowledge for generally meaningless things. So, overall, lots of focus on this “obscure knowledge within subculture grants prestige” type thing. I mean, I dunno – maybe its just because I’m (currently) interested in more general features about what makes a person “tick”, rather than simply some obscure knowledge trivia, that makes me less taken with this type of thing. Still, it was an interesting thing to notice, and tends to confirm the idea that fans in general are more of the “Mahouka” detail-oriented type. But more on that in a bit.

One of the great things about AX as opposed to AB was that I actually got to hang out with not-my-immediate-RL-only friends. It was actually awesome meeting up with another aniblogger – it still amazes me just how cool it is that online connections and relationships can spill over into real life like that. And it makes my experience blogging that much more special :).

Right. So, I forget what exactly was on which day, but these should mostly be Friday/Saturday events since that’s when I attended the most stuff.

Tanaka Eiko

First up, I ended up having some time to drop in on the first of these “Q&A/meet people from Japan” sort of events. Because most of his events were all too early in the morning and transportation from Caltech to the La convention center was a good 1-1.5 hours, I wasn’t able to attend any of Otsuka Eiji‘s (a well-known manga critic and otaku cultural scholar) panels. Instead, I ended up dropping by one of the first event after I arrived, namely a Q&A panel with Tanaka Eiko of Studio 4C.

The good first half of the panel was a montage of her (and 4C’s) past work, which was a bit disappointing but nice for someone like me who actually hasn’t seen much of their stuff. From what I saw, it seems like 4C has a history of collaborating on projects with colleagues outside of Japan, as well as a history of doing some pretty interesting stuff. Eiko seemed like a pretty cool person, but I didn’t have the chance to stick around for more than a few questions (almost all of which concerned either art style and Tekkonkinkreet) and so didn’t get too much out of this event outside of “now I have a face to put to a name” type of thing.

A History of Visual Novels

The reason I ducked out early of the Eiko panel was to actually attend this one on the history of visual novels. It ended up being very interesting, but less so because the panel had very interesting material and more because of the ways in which the panelist (a fan researcher) presented it…which was not very well. So of course I spent a large portion of the panel thinking about critiques and the like, which ended up being pretty intellectually stimulating0.

Anyways, most of my thoughts about how the panel ended up getting presented ended up coalescing into a broader narrative about fans (and fan research) in general. Since there’s no better place to post such a thing than here, I just decided to throw down most of these thoughts in this post. This’ll get into some opinions I’ve formed about how fans often tend to interact with media and each other, so let’s just get down into it.

Fandom, Prestige, and Perceived Investment

When doing research of any type, there’s sort of three main questions to ask:

1. What am I researching?
2. How do I research this?
3. Why am I researching this?

In general, you really only need to answer (2) (how do I carry out these tasks to do other relevant things) in order to do “research”, and in general it’s actually the process of figuring out (1) (what is the bigger picture here) and (3) (why is the bigger picture – and my piece in it – is actually important and/or cool) that makes a good researcher, academic or not. Researching something is generally cool (in my TOTALLY UNBIASED opinion), but if you can’t really convince me that it’s worth listening to it’s hard for me to remain interested, regardless of how cool the subject matter actually is. While there’s absolutely no problem with answering (3) as “because it’s FUCKING AWESOME“, or being upfront that the motivation is really abstract/esoteric, the most important thing is that you understand at least some semblance of the context surrounding your research (or at least are upfront about not really giving a shit).

As I said above, you don’t need to either know (or care about) the bigger picture or the motivation to do something. It is extremely useful, however, when you want to interpret your findings correctly. And it’s here where I see a lot of fan research really hit a wall. To see the reason why though, let’s first talk about “fandom” more generally.

An example of a so-called “fan”.

Fandom, like most other communities, is not a completely equal playing field. Most importantly, in many fandoms, there is a pecking order. What determines the pecking order is generally pretty simple: whoever is the most “hardcore” fan gets the most respect.

But what does it mean to be hardcore? Generally, it means that you possess a lot of knowledge, goods, etc. – some type of “exclusive good” – around whatever it is the fandom centers around. It could be Doctor Who, anime, video games, comic books, etc. These generally grant respect within the fandom because it shows that you’ve invested a lot of time in the area.

This is actually what I think is the most crucial aspect of prestige within fandom. By themselves, none of these processes of accruing what some scholars call “subcultural capital” mean very much. If the goal was simply to master esoteric knowledge, one could easily try and just go through wiki entries, memorize them, and earn people’s respect that way. But, as I’m sure you know, just the idea of doing that just seems, well, wrong on a kind of fundamental level, and would more than likely not earn you the same type of respect as someone who learned it all “the hard way” by participating and putting effort into the fan goods. In fact, you’d probably be called a phony and get shunned. While using such methods to supplement pre-existing knowledge or interests is fine, using them as a full substitute for them is not.

But why does putting in more effort concerning something that often has no practical application garner this type of respect? I’m not really sure, other than giving an answer that reads a lot like a tautology. Maybe it has something to do with the types of things I discussed in the comments of my geekdom as simulated ethnicity post. Maybe it’s an extension of respecting people for effort (i.e. “experience”) more generally, just ramped up to the next level. Either way, I think this equivalence – where telegraphed past and present investment is more or less equated to prestige within the fandom – is actually is a fundamental aspect of what makes fandom, well, fandom. The more time you’ve put in to being a fan, the “better” fan you are.

Now, the question comes down to how can you distinguish between the “true” fans (who have done all the work) and the “poser” fans (who have tried to “cheat”). Or, to put it another way, for two fans who’ve invested similar amounts of time, which one really loves the material vs. which one just likes it. The best answer I’ve come up with is:

1. To place a lot of emphasis on specific details relevant to the fandom that are difficult to access in just some wiki summary form, and
2. Making sure that interactions with other fans emphasize the participatory aspect.

Both of these essentially are ways to ensure you’ve actually, for example, watched the relevant anime series rather than just reading a couple quick summaries online (no matter how saucy). Because these are really the only way to ensure that perceived investment is closely related to actual investment.

Anyways, to make a long story short, I think this is the culture that tends to encourage the rabid attention to detail. (I’m not going to get into anything related to postmodernism, the Internet, or technology here – that’s another minefield.)

Fans and Research

Anyways, the point is that fandom essentially trains you to buy into a system where you really care about getting every single specific details and you get them right without giving a shit about why. In fact, lots of fandoms actually end up really pounding home this last point: the perceived uselessness of this investment for things outside the fandom is exactly what gives much of this investment value. As a result, most hardcore fans (like, say, otaku) are actually really good at doing detail-oriented research – constructing timelines, collecting facts, etc. – especially if the process involves a bunch of busy-work. In fact, the more painstaking the job, the more likely that a fan will actually do it and do it correctly!

Which actually means I’ve just argued fans are actually great at doing research. Which they are…as long as this research is essentially just adding elements to a database and/or superficially ordering them. However, once it comes to framing the context for why the research collected is valuable, what purpose it serves, and how we should be approaching it (i.e. interpretation), most fans are at a complete loss because they’ve never really considered that question to be valuable: they’ve done the work because they think it’s cool, and trying to justify why is not only a non-issue, but in fact actively looked down upon.

Tomoko disapproves.

Back to Visual Novels

Anyways, that long digression above actually has a point here, because this panel essentially was a perfect example of this type of thing: a fan who had done a lot of work collecting and grouping data without giving much thought to why it was a useful project.

Now onto the actual panel:

In order to set up the background for visual novels, the panelist introduced the idea of narrative art, or art which has the primary function of telling a story as opposed to, just being appreciated for its aesthetic value. He then divided the art of storytelling into four main functions: books, film, television, and comics. At that point I could tell it was going to be bad, mainly because film and television don’t have too many differences in terms of how we experience them – they’re both shot with cameras and are in pretty much the same format/style. The biggest difference between the two is how we consume them: in what environment, under what conditions, and in what form. And, since films are no longer confined to “the big screen” anymore, the difference in terms of how exactly you experience them (i.e. the concept of absolute directorial pacing and a well-defined time frame with which a film is experienced) has changed a lot.

You can also think about it in terms of serialized publications from books in the Victorian era or old Buddhist wall scrolls from Japan.  There are so many interesting possibilities here, all of which weren’t included because he wasn’t thinking about his research in the sense of a broader picture. His underlying point – that each medium is better at doing some things than others – eventually gets lost in his meandering arguments. I understand that television shows give you a better chance to get to know the characters because they take longer and whatnot (which was his main point distinguishing television from film). But if time or length was the only prerequisite for a good story, then something like Ender’s Game has no right to be as successful (and as good) as it is.

An interesting side though is how exactly the type of environment we watch/consume our media through can influence our perception of it. Like, are there certain types of things you’d rather watch on a smartphone vs. a laptop vs. a TV vs. see in theaters?

Anyways, following this grouping, the panelist goes on to explain why all these categories are different, most of which are summarized here. Or, at least, until he hits the comic books section, where the discussion suddenly gets much more abstract about art and media in general. Sadly, this abstraction was essentially a long set of paraphrased arguments from Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics and Alan Moore. And while both are great sources and good collections of arguments, you probably should at least do a little work to try and make these arguments more specific to your medium of interest rather than just using them straight up.

After this, the panelist asks a question: why hasn’t the art of storytelling evolved much since the advent of film? He argues that most of the things that have come out since have often been attempts at getting media onto other platforms: digital books and comics, etc. However, he doesn’t really answer this question, and instead discards most of the progress that has been made on this front with things like Homestuck (which has a huge fandom and is legitimately innovative). He also completely dismisses stories told across multiple media platforms like the Halo franchise or the expanded Star Wars universe.

So, instead of using the panelists framework to discuss this issue (which are discussed in the link above), I’ll actually try to frame the issue in my own words because I feel there’s some real promise in this material. VNs are a unique medium that hasn’t gotten a lot of scholarly attention in the West (that I’m aware of) in this vein, and so a proper framing of why/how they relate to other media should prove really insightful. I can’t promise I’ll do it perfectly, but hopefully this’ll at least be a little bit better than splitting things into little groups and trying to categorize them (which I’ve also been guilty of doing this in the past).

What exactly makes this different from, say, a Japanese wall scroll? Or 4koma manga?

Storytelling and the Art of “Thinking Motion”

First, let’s start very broadly. Storytelling is an art, and one that stretches the confines of any type of boundary imposed upon it. Everyone can tell a story. Sometimes they tell stories because we let them, and sometimes they tell stories because we want them to. In all cases, storytelling is a fluid art that involves both the real and the abstract, and is as much about the reader/listener/viewer/whatever-er as it is about the storyteller.

That said, the medium in which you choose to tell a story is important. To frame things specifically in the context of visuals, there is a wide spectrum of choices. Gestures during an oration or a play, interesting wordplay or font choices within a book, and the camera angles during a film all are aspects that try and make use of our ability to see things to achieve cool effects.

In them, we tend to see a basic progression involving how heavily they use visuals as opposed to relying on our imagination. Within books, for instance, we aren’t really able to see any the action. In movies, we can see all of it. And in orations, plays, and other types of storytelling, we’re somewhere in-between, asked to supplement the things we see with what we think we should see.

Going along with this line of thinking, we notice two things. First, there generally is an apparent trade-off between added visuals and the imaginative component (or, at least, the imaginative component often gets focused elsewhere). Second, most of these seem to have a clear divide in terms of the ways we see motion: either we do (film, theater, speakers), or we don’t (books, photography). This is where comic books come in.

Comic books, manga, and other forms of “static” art occupy the portion of this spectrum where you have images without continuous motion. Instead, motion is displaced throughout the comic, shunted from frame to frame via the divisions between panels often referred to as “the gutter“. Since this is now where the reader is asked to do most of the heavy-lifting with his/her imagination, this is actually the most important part about comics. Comics manage to occupy a space in storytelling between static and continuous by shifting motion to the space between the frames.

Or, in other words, comics think motion spatially.

There is a second point, however, that must not be neglected about comics, which is that while the motion itself is left to the mind of the reader, the actual places the motion must go are fixed. They are grounded by keyframes, which serve to anchor the reader’s imagination. The reader connects the dots, while the author makes sure the dots are in all the right places.

Finally, because comics are all spatial, they also end up using words as text rather than as sound. As a result, they end up competing for space within the keyframes, because both the grounding for the story-as-image and the story-as-text end up being (equally) important. As a result, trying to divide up the text and put it, for example, below the panels doesn’t really work, because now you’ve broken that continuity.

However, this means an entire possibility has been left unexplored: how about thinking motion temporally? What stops you from leaving your storytelling medium as a bunch of static images that anchor motion (and the imagination) between them in time rather than space? It’d be the same concept, but leave room for a wide variety of possibilities, such as the ability to use much more text to tell a story (which can be superimposed and removed on top of the same series of images) and the ability to superimpose images on top of each other to create much smaller gestures by contrast to create some sense of layering, or added realism, etc.

And with that, VNs instantly fit right in as an innovative and interesting medium worthy of study in their own right.

Of course, the quality of the source material is another thing. ;)

In the end, I will gladly admit this is definitely a much more academic framing of the issue (focused on trying to tease out exactly how visual novels fit into the grander scheme of storytelling and art) than most people probably care about. However, there are a wide variety of places to attack this from, including a cultural one (studying otaku, fandom, the Japanese entertainment industry), technology (computers, the Internet), history (in terms of how VNs permeate anime adaptations), etc. You could even use them as a contrast for the American comic book industry and the rise of more “comic book” style indie games (or even the appearance of this Dead Space one). Or even with respect to “limited animation”, which is the main animation techniques used by most TV anime studios. Any of them work. But if you try and claim that VNs are “narrative art” and “hold their own” against other well-established genres, you have to at least do something other than “VNs are unique and a special genre because they’re great and awesome and Jun Maeda and psychology” (which is pretty close to a direct quote) since then you just end up circle-jerking really hard and not really getting anywhere.

Wrapping Up

Anyways, I guess that’s me sort of venting my frustration at a badly run panel, which didn’t offer too much information besides fleshing out what is described in these news articles. Regardless of the quality of the panel though, I still respect Alex Mui (the panelist) a lot for all the work he has clearly put in to this project, since once we got to the actual “here’s the history of VNs” he had his shit much more together. And he seemed like a very nice guy :).

One cool thing I did learn though was that the VN format ended up, as you would anticipate from the framing above, encouraging very interesting narrative structures that played with its ability to, as I put it, “think motion temporally”, via games like Higurashi (time loops), Clannad (non-linear storylines/routes), and Saya no Uta (superposition of images), among others (e.g., Steins;Gate, Little Busters!).

And let’s not forget Katawa Shoujo!

It also really flourished when it came to combining a lot more text with images (because the two no longer compete for space in an exclusively spatial sense): VNs absolutely dominate word counts when comparing longest stories.

tl;dr: Fans can be weird, framing is important, and visual novels occupy a very interesting narrative niche because they “think” about motion between fixed keyframes in time (like anime or movies) rather than in space (like comic books/manga do).

What are your opinions on visual novels, both in terms of the overall format as well as general content? Have any favorites that do some of the cool things I talk about here?

We didn’t fall off the face of the Earth. Hooray!

I remember when Josh told me he donated to the Kickstarter for a new Little Witch Academia a while back I gave him my perfunctory nod and disinterested response. Then, the other day when I was feeling particularly bored, Josh kept bothering me to watch it. I figured, heck it’s only 30 minutes so even if it’s stupid at least it’s not any worse for my brain than spending hours on Pinterest…I have a problem. Anyway, my Pinterest addiction is really not the topic here. I can talk to my Pinners Anonymous group about that XD. Let’s talk about the show!

For all of you people who think that I’m generally misanthropic, prepare to be amazed. I actually really liked this! Sure it picked up on a lot of themes that have already been done, but it was really adorable and I loved the Harry Potter meets Kiki’s Delivery Service vibe. Anything that borrows from Harry Potter, but does it in a classy way gets an A in my book. Don’t even talk to me about My Immortal. (If you don’t know what that is and feel like dying inside a little bit here’s a link).

Little Witch Academia doesn’t try to do anything too fancy–not that it really can in 30 minutes–but I like that it doesn’t try to overextend itself. The story is sweet and Studio Trigger manages to do a surprising amount of character development in a short span of time. Akko, the main protag worried me a little bit at the beginning because she had the potential to turn into one of those really obnoxious whiny protags (in a sort of Usagi-like manner if we’re thinking about Sailor Moon), but the show kept tabs on that and although she had a bit more of the idealistic naivete than I like in my female protags it wasn’t enough to be a turn off. As for her friends, they were pretty great. Especially Sucy who was just freaking awesome. I want to be able to make toxic potions potent enough to waylay a giant monster!

What a badass.

It was also nice that the show tried to keep it pretty light with the rivalry. At the end of the day, all of the characters were pretty decent people. There was no major baddie showing up and laughing wickedly and wreaking havoc. In fact it’s actually, Akko’s ‘nemesis’ (I say nemesis, but she isn’t really that bad) Diana who ends up causing the major source of conflict by accident when she releases the energy sucking dragon. Diana, though, unlike many other rivals is actually a decent person and admits that she made a mistake and wants to help fix it. It also turns out that she and Akko may have more in common than she’s willing to admit.

See? She’s really not that bad. (She’s saving her, not dropping her haha.)

In closing, I want to get back to the idea of the Harry Potter vibe, it was refreshing that Akko came from a normal human family, but was still able to become a witch, unlike most other anime or shows in general where magical power is inherited from a family line or gifted from some powerful entity. The show essentially combines elements from a lot of different mediums and genre (like RPGs and aforementioned novels and longer animated films), but manages to put it together in a way that was unique and enjoyable to watch. Gotta love the fledgling witch coming of age story right? I’ll definitely be down to watch the next episode whenever that comes out!