Defending Moe

Welcome back, everybody!

After a two-month long hiatus, I've decided to make a short return to focus on a topic of much contention within modern anime fandom. And that topic is moe.



No, no, not you, Szyslak. Your dirty secrets are quite safe on this blog.

But the dirty secrets of this kind of moe is what this blog will be delving into.

And what do I mean by "dirty secrets", exactly? Well, 'dirty' might be blowing it out of proportion a bit, because it's nothing particularly scandalous. But they are the sort of secrets that a lot of people would rather not see the light of day. Before getting into what those secrets are, let's put forward some basic facts on anime that serve as important background for our upcoming Detective work!


One such fact is that anime, beyond its own borders of course, is a cultural export of Japan. Arguably Japan's most well-known cultural export, although karate and its teachers were pretty big back in the day too.

What we can easily deduce from this fact, my fellow Jimmy Kudos, is that anime reflects the current cultural norms and values, and hence sociological conditions, of modern Japan. In other words, the rise of moe did not occur in a vacuum. It wasn't simply the exotic brainchild of some powerful corporate executive. Something in the modern Japanese culture and/or society gave rise to it.

Some critics of moe argue that this something is simply sexism, and a culturally ingrained overarching chauvinistic patriarchy that reinforces it. In the eyes of these critics, the prevalence of moe within modern anime reflects a desire within many otakus for weak, submissive female partners.

However, that doesn't really make a great deal of sense to me.

Why?

Well, here's one reason why:

Nobody takes a punch quite like Keitaro does...

Love Hina! is one of the more prominent harem animes, and arguably popularized the genre. Being a harem anime with a large variety of female characters within the cast, it also no doubt contained moe.

If the dirty secret of moe was sexism then one would expect for the male leads of moe-centric shows to be paragons of traditional masculinity. To be real gar guys.

To be more...



And less...


"This. Is. Sexist Sparta!" ?

No, rather...

"I-I'm just the doormat messenger! Nobody kills the doormat messenger!" ;)


Now, don't get me wrong, anime does have it's real gar guys. But it's not often you see them alongside the most moe of females. It's probably fair to say that the target audience for Gurren Lagann is a bit different than the target audience for K-On! Or, at the very least, that the two anime shows are meant to have very different sorts of appeal.

To truly discover what's driving the popularity of moe in recent years, we have to uncover what's happening in Japan that might be giving rise to it. After all, the rise of the internet coupled with Japan's Lost Decade were in turn the catalyst for somewhat dark and philosophical musings on modern technology in the form of animes like Serial Experiments Lain, and Ghost in the Shell.

So what modern issues in Japan could logically give rise to moe?

The key clue is to be found here.

That's a long write-up, but let me sum up the pertinent points here:

• Japan has an aging population
• The nation's fertility rate in 2008 was only 1.37 (a healthy norm is 2.1).
  
• Up to 80 percent of Japanese singles over the age of 30 don't have a partner.
• A "Parasite Singles" lifestyle (i.e. being a NEET) has become more prevalent.
  
• Male temp workers, or those on low salaries, have virtually no chance of finding a marriage partner.

To put it into laymen's terms, this is a growing issue in Japan: Adult males and females in their 20s and 30s that are unable or unwilling to find steady work, are supported by their parents, have not smoothly transitioned into adulthood as their culture and society would have liked, and (here's the key part) have great difficulty in forming lasting romantic bonds.


So, let's break this down to the individual.


You're a Japanese man in his mid-to-late 20s or early-to-mid 30s that has had little to no luck with the opposite sex. You're either just making ends meet, or you're being supported by your parents.

Chances are that you look back quite fondly on your high school days, given how you had fewer cares and less concerns back then, than you do right now.

Or, perhaps you look back on your high school days as a time of missed opportunity. If only you had met that right young woman; the young woman who would actually accept you for you; maybe things would have turned out differently for you.

Yes indeed, you may be very insecure, and shy around women, knowing instinctively that your socioeconomic status does not lend itself to finding female mates in Japan's current society and economy. You may not have had sexual relations with a woman in a very long time, if ever.

You want to find entertainment that offers you some sort of blissful escape from the bleaker aspects of your reality.

What are you likely to turn to? Who are you likely to turn to?

Are you going to turn to entertainment with strong, firmly independent, and very competent female characters who would have no use for a loser like yourself? Are you going to dream about women impossibly out of your league, or at least that's what you think they are?

No, you're going to turn to entertainment featuring NEETs like yourself:



One of my earliest blog entries delved into how K-On!'s popularity probably lay, at part, in its natural appeal to the NEET demographic. Yui's appeal does come in large part because of her airheaded nature, and tendency towards goofing off, and eating cakes instead of practicing her guitar. But it has nothing to do with sexism. Quite the contrary, it has to do with the "Parasite Single", or lowly paid single, male viewer being realistic about the sorts of females he could ever hope to catch in modern Japan. Someone very approachable, cute and cheerful, but a fair bit airheaded and almost wastefully playful, is perhaps as good as it gets.

This even explains high-achieving tsunderes like Haruhi Suzumiya and Shana. The male viewer realizes that to win over a strong young woman like them, the young woman in question would need to be a bit eccentric and/or have a heart that could be won over by appeals other than simple socioeconomic status.


And this is why I defend moe in this blog. A lot of it is wish-fulfillment, but it's innocent wish-fulfillment. It's about anime presenting female characters that the male viewer could feel comfortable approaching; female characters that wouldn't make him feel hopelessly inferior to her or out of his league.


Beyond this straight-forward eroge game-esque romantic appeal, there is another aspect of moe that bears looking at. And that aspect is how perhaps moe is meant to counteract the stiff sociological socioeconomic structure of modern Japan.

Moe girls are often carefree. Innocent. Playful. They are not jaded, or cruel. They are often caring and genuinely nice. They often lack competence but at least they have a good heart.

And perhaps a lesson that comes from moe is that there is value to simply being a good person. That there is value to being a caring person who wants to help out other people, and have real friendships. And that people like this, no matter how airheaded they may be, are deserving of protection, yes.

Personally, this is something I saw a lot of in this anime:


The hatred that Nagisa Furukawa receives from some corners of the online anime community is a bit surprising to me. Perhaps we in the west have become overly accustomed to fictional characters that are ubercompetent. The forensics experts of CSI, the lawyers of Law and Order, and the effective gamesmanship of winning Reality TV contestants.

Competence, intelligence, shrewdness, efficiency, and pride in one's work: these are all highly valued in the western world. And rightly so, they are invaluable to have in a society.

You need all of those aspects to make this possible.

But to make something like that worth it, it helps to have good people with good hearts worth making that effort for. Good people like this:


And that, friends, is the heart of moe.

It's about characters that may be very flawed, but come across as approachable and friendly.

It's about characters that the domestic (and in some cases foreign) NEET audience wouldn't feel are out of their leagues, perhaps even as just friends.

And it's about characters that do in fact cause feelings of protectiveness to arise from within the viewer; not just because they're vulnerable, but also because at their cores they tend to be good people deserving of the effort to protect.


All of that being said, I will certainly concede that moe may be a bit too prevalent in anime today, and I certainly understand criticisms of it under that basis. However, I don't think that moe's very presence is as insidious as some make it out to be. It does reflect on a sad reality in Japan today, but moe itself does not push for a sexist reality.

And with that, I rest my case when it comes to defending moe.


However, I may branch off of this blog entry to discuss fanservice, and one other key point, pertaining to anime today.

But for now, that's all.

Any and all responses are welcomed. :)