I've grown confused and frustrated with the "moe culture", and I need to vent.
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Moral Panic
Member
Your avatar has "moe" qualities. Oversized head with a cute hat clearly too small. Mixed with a wide unthreatening smile.
pants
Member
Im glad you think Sanya is moe
Holo > Sanya. fight me.
Yeah chibis are generally thought of as 'moe'. He's pretty much got a plush toy chibi as an avatar lol
JordanN
Banned
Also an octopus. We all know how "tentacles" are viewed in anime.
I'm not a fan of moe either. It goes beyond just having little girls. Look at Yotsuba. I don't think many would consider her a "moe" character even though she is a little girl because she does not fall into the typical moe tropes. When you break out the short skirts, eye bandages, "big brother" relationships etc. then you lose me.
I cant fight that. We have to arrive at a truce.
I pretty much agree with OP.
I'm not here to bash anime in general (I used to be quite into it for a while some years back) but the prevalence of Japanese media in recent years (especially in games/anime) oversexualizing what appear to be teenage (or pre-teen) looking girls is quite ridiculous. (Or perhaps it's the amount of stuff being localized.)
We had a thread a little while where I spoke out against the Atelier games because of its character designs and of course, there were a bunch of people coming out of the woodwork defending the games and all this. But to me having young female characters like that presented in tiny skirts and outfits and having panty shots all over the place is really quite indefensible, no matter what excuse people choose to throw out.
I'm not here to bash anime in general (I used to be quite into it for a while some years back) but the prevalence of Japanese media in recent years (especially in games/anime) oversexualizing what appear to be teenage (or pre-teen) looking girls is quite ridiculous. (Or perhaps it's the amount of stuff being localized.)
We had a thread a little while where I spoke out against the Atelier games because of its character designs and of course, there were a bunch of people coming out of the woodwork defending the games and all this. But to me having young female characters like that presented in tiny skirts and outfits and having panty shots all over the place is really quite indefensible, no matter what excuse people choose to throw out.
Snkfanatic
Banned
Parakeetman
No one wants a throne you've been sitting on!
I have nothing else to contribute...
Aztechnology
Member
Anime is potentially some of the coolest fiction out there as it has almost no restrictions when it comes to the way you tell a story. But when fan service begins to detract from your story, like it all too often does, then it's a problem. I don't think it's so much a problem have having a character look really cutesy, the problem is when it's alot of characters for no other reason than the afore mentioned fan service. Trinity Seven for instance is a really popular anime right now, and it has almost nothing going for it other than fan service. That being said I don't live in Japan so I'm only basing the "popularity" of the animes off of things like crunchyroll and the like. I definitely share OP's frustration though.
Slightly off Topic Perhaps but does Chibi sorta count of Moe ? If so I can't stand the Artstyle, silly to be put off certain games with a art style I don't like, but I played the Demo of Bravery Default and don't want to buy the game due to the Chibi style, its just too off putting.
Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
I'm not a huge moe defender or whatever, and I would say that, like all things, there is a range, but if you're speaking in purely general terms toward all of it, you're being intentionally ignorant of something really simple.
Think of all the classic cartoons out there, where the characters are straight up animal characters. The stories of these characters follow anthropomorphized themes, and naturally mankind has sexuality as part of their themes. Before you know it, this is happening:
What the fuck. Are they sexualizing chipmunks?!
Well to answer that question you have different aspects to it:
1) Yes, they are "sexualizing" them in the sense that they are taking sexuality as a theme of humanity and putting it in play.
2) Most people aren't going to consider it "sexualized" because the notion of finding it literally sexually appealing is not even registering with them. If you raise the alarm, suddenly you are the weirdo.
3) A small minority of people do find such things a legitimate sexual stimulus, and the internet helps everyone else learn about this fact.
4) A larger minority finds playing/trolling with that fact and these concepts hilarious and makes the first minority seem bigger than it is.
Now, bringing this back to Japan and moe. Japan loves cute shit. It has simply developed in that direction over time, so eventually they are making loads and loads of cute shit and nobody is thinking twice about it. They are absorbing tons of different stories and thematic explorations with all this cute stuff, and, just as with the chipmunks, sexuality is going to come up in the character designs and themes... while maintaining the base popular concept of cute little girls.
From this we will find similar aspects:
1) Sexualized designs of characters that under "normal" stylization would not be targeted for having sexual expressiveness or roles.
2) People who have adapted to this style not thinking anything of it, and being disturbed that an outsider would think it is meant to be literally sexual.
3) A demographic of people who legitimately have serious social/sexuality issues and are attracted to cartoon little girls, and the internet making larger awareness of this a simple matter.
4) A larger demographic of people who enjoy simply messing around with these concepts or trolling in awareness of the former demographic, altogether making it seem larger than it is.
But then two additional aspects...
5) Japan's lower concern about thematic content of shows having any implication upon or impactful rather than interpretive correlation to things in real life.
6) Western society's hyper-paranoia that every thematic content of a sexual nature (yet not violence) must be an implication upon its creators and hold a strong influence/correlation with real-life sexual deviance and abuse.
That seems to be the basic gist of it to me. I would personally say you are disturbing yourself by presuming so much based on the content of extremely widespread and popular genres of media without any evidence that it does in fact stem from a sexually predatory nature in its creators or instill/encourage one in its fans. Of course, like I said, there is a range with everything. There is Rescue Rangers, and there is furry porn. There is Cardcaptor Sakura, and there is moe hentai. And for both, there is all the in between range and some things get into hard-to-call yet concerning zones.
Yet... even concerning the weird porn, I think there is a case to be made for some manifestations of sexuality in porn as an active deviation from ones normal desires as a rebellion against the persistent restraints put on the irrational and impulsive id for sake of social order, and as a release of this stress of reasonableness and self control, it serves curiosity in an intentional exploration of all conceptual possibility since it is done within a safe zone of fantasy, and the extreme and variant natures of sexuality displayed in those fantasy zones may not reflect the true desires of many who consume them, even though clearly there are some who lose grip of this separation of realms and fall into various forms of degeneracy.
BUT that is just some psychoanalysis of porn I have made to try and understand the overwhelming masses of weird shit the internet has made known to me while overall seeing mankind demonstrating the capacity to function normally in contradiction to it. I can either fear something like 40% of the world is sexually bonkers, at that point redefining how "normal" sexuality should even be defined, or I can use a little bit of observation about common practices of imagination and psychology in less sensitive contexts to bring insight to the more controversial and not be too bothered by it existing. I recommend you do the same with moe.
Edit: Actually, in some ways the more of an open "pervert" someone is, so long as they also demonstrate capacity for normal social awareness, interaction, and control, the more comfortable I would feel about such a person, since their "playing" with sexual concepts demonstrates awareness and control over those inclinations. It's when people let instincts/intuition guide their standards unquestioned or keep things hidden out of sight that I am concerned they will go awry.
Think of all the classic cartoons out there, where the characters are straight up animal characters. The stories of these characters follow anthropomorphized themes, and naturally mankind has sexuality as part of their themes. Before you know it, this is happening:
What the fuck. Are they sexualizing chipmunks?!
Well to answer that question you have different aspects to it:
1) Yes, they are "sexualizing" them in the sense that they are taking sexuality as a theme of humanity and putting it in play.
2) Most people aren't going to consider it "sexualized" because the notion of finding it literally sexually appealing is not even registering with them. If you raise the alarm, suddenly you are the weirdo.
3) A small minority of people do find such things a legitimate sexual stimulus, and the internet helps everyone else learn about this fact.
4) A larger minority finds playing/trolling with that fact and these concepts hilarious and makes the first minority seem bigger than it is.
Now, bringing this back to Japan and moe. Japan loves cute shit. It has simply developed in that direction over time, so eventually they are making loads and loads of cute shit and nobody is thinking twice about it. They are absorbing tons of different stories and thematic explorations with all this cute stuff, and, just as with the chipmunks, sexuality is going to come up in the character designs and themes... while maintaining the base popular concept of cute little girls.
From this we will find similar aspects:
1) Sexualized designs of characters that under "normal" stylization would not be targeted for having sexual expressiveness or roles.
2) People who have adapted to this style not thinking anything of it, and being disturbed that an outsider would think it is meant to be literally sexual.
3) A demographic of people who legitimately have serious social/sexuality issues and are attracted to cartoon little girls, and the internet making larger awareness of this a simple matter.
4) A larger demographic of people who enjoy simply messing around with these concepts or trolling in awareness of the former demographic, altogether making it seem larger than it is.
But then two additional aspects...
5) Japan's lower concern about thematic content of shows having any implication upon or impactful rather than interpretive correlation to things in real life.
6) Western society's hyper-paranoia that every thematic content of a sexual nature (yet not violence) must be an implication upon its creators and hold a strong influence/correlation with real-life sexual deviance and abuse.
That seems to be the basic gist of it to me. I would personally say you are disturbing yourself by presuming so much based on the content of extremely widespread and popular genres of media without any evidence that it does in fact stem from a sexually predatory nature in its creators or instill/encourage one in its fans. Of course, like I said, there is a range with everything. There is Rescue Rangers, and there is furry porn. There is Cardcaptor Sakura, and there is moe hentai. And for both, there is all the in between range and some things get into hard-to-call yet concerning zones.
Yet... even concerning the weird porn, I think there is a case to be made for some manifestations of sexuality in porn as an active deviation from ones normal desires as a rebellion against the persistent restraints put on the irrational and impulsive id for sake of social order, and as a release of this stress of reasonableness and self control, it serves curiosity in an intentional exploration of all conceptual possibility since it is done within a safe zone of fantasy, and the extreme and variant natures of sexuality displayed in those fantasy zones may not reflect the true desires of many who consume them, even though clearly there are some who lose grip of this separation of realms and fall into various forms of degeneracy.
BUT that is just some psychoanalysis of porn I have made to try and understand the overwhelming masses of weird shit the internet has made known to me while overall seeing mankind demonstrating the capacity to function normally in contradiction to it. I can either fear something like 40% of the world is sexually bonkers, at that point redefining how "normal" sexuality should even be defined, or I can use a little bit of observation about common practices of imagination and psychology in less sensitive contexts to bring insight to the more controversial and not be too bothered by it existing. I recommend you do the same with moe.
Edit: Actually, in some ways the more of an open "pervert" someone is, so long as they also demonstrate capacity for normal social awareness, interaction, and control, the more comfortable I would feel about such a person, since their "playing" with sexual concepts demonstrates awareness and control over those inclinations. It's when people let instincts/intuition guide their standards unquestioned or keep things hidden out of sight that I am concerned they will go awry.
Would that be considered Moe? Kill la Kill is more like a mix of shonen and ecchi.
I guess that makes sense.
My understanding of moe is that its basically feeling something is cute/needs to be protected. Non-anime example: a puppy?
Somewhere along the way it was boiled down into a formula by making a girl younger or with some kind of weakness to try and force that feeling.
Same reason why bandages, illnesses, etc. get added in sometimes.
Moral Panic
Member
I'm not a huge moe defender or whatever, and I would say that, like all things, there is a range, but if you're speaking in purely general terms toward all of it, you're being intentionally ignorant of something really simple.
Think of all the classic cartoons out there, where the characters are straight up animal characters. The stories of these characters follow anthropomorphized themes, and naturally mankind has sexuality as part of their themes. Before you know it, this is happening:
What the fuck. Are they sexualizing chipmunks?!
The chipmunks are stand ins for adult humans. The have features which are suppose to evoke a reaction as if the characters where adults. So the sexuality is directed towards the normal adult human interaction. With moe the characters are stand ins for humans too but they are using extremely neotenized features or personality traits which evoke a reaction as if the characters were young/prepubescent teenagers. For something like K-ON! this is their exact intent but this becomes very disturbing when you add sexuality to the mix, as you are now sexualising what are in essence depictions of children.
You didn't. I didn't mean to imply it, either. Neither did I mention a specific number of years. I just used a small and a large unit to make a point. While there were a lot of great shows in the 80s, 90s and the first decade of this millennium, there were many more shit shows that are (rightfully) forgotten. And there are still great shows these days. Not much changed, really.
Yeeeeeaah. Like when there are threads about a game where you play as an older brother trying to get with his 12 year old sisters, and some members pop up and talk about their favourite "waifu" in the game and defend it whenever someone criticizes it. Like no. Please find Jesus.
Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
I am uncertain about the easy conflation of "cute" and "childlike" in a few different Asian cultures, but especially Japan. With stuff from there, even when the cute is "child-inspired," and even when that comes out in role depictions, I feel like culturally some kind of separation of concepts has taken place on the level of intuition, whereas in the US "cute" is intuitively received as inherently of children and adults are encouraged to be "cool" instead.
Also in general, I feel like Japan wears its heart on its sleeve with its media. It is really fearless in social commentaries coming out through media, even unintentionally (on the part of creators) just in the form of what has become accepted and popular, and all this moe stuff could be expressive reactivity to threatened perceived identity and social dynamics between genders. At that point it all becomes way too nebulous and presumptuous for me to feel comfortable making confident claims about, but if I were to make a claim, I'd feel more comfortable saying it's threatened patriarchy degrading/condescending female sexuality to child status rather than saying it's pedophilia pulling children up into the adult realm.
We had our own oddities come about when popular styles/genres mixed with sentiments coming out of shifting gender rights and roles:
Even so, to me, based on my interactions with Japanese people and fans of moe stuff, it seems to be more like the cutification of all things with no particular intent and no qualms as to where it goes. That is the general trend. In some more specific instances it seems to even hold a similar attitude to trolling/rule 34 kinda stuff where it finds entertainment in being edgy on the themes/content for no reason but being edgy. As I said before, an exploration of socially blocked things in a safe zone just because the freedom is there. For some others, it seems like it may be a way of candy-coating sexuality because they have anxieties with it.
There is definitely a range on it, as it is a huge mass of media at this point.
I avoid anime with little girls or moe styles. I simply don't connect to them which is why I can't stand a show like say Madoka. It may be amazing but I can't stand the creepy shitty designs. Same with the countless harem school shows out there that some anime fans seem to absolutely love (just check Crunchyroll's top list). You may say some of these shows have a merit and that they can be fun but.. I can't stand them
At all.
At all.
teruterubozu
Member
Yeah I tried Madoka Magica with all the suggestions about how "it's different" but I couldn't get past the creepy lolita designs.
Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
I was making a point about social issues weighing on public conscience coming out in expressive reactions through popular genres, even if not directly intended as making a point about it or in why it is mixing it with the genre.
my short opinion on this is that there's moe that plays up for the cute angle and then there's moe or whatever you want to call it that straight up fetishization of characters that intentionally resemble young girls, and that the latter isn't underrepresented or extremely niche
and you can't really discuss it either because one side will always be very defensive about this topic, understandably
and you can't really discuss it either because one side will always be very defensive about this topic, understandably
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
"This community thread is dedicated to everything K-ON! The story of Yui and her high school girlfriends and their time in the light music club. Here you can discuss relevant topics like the anime, the manga, music, etc. Bought a new K-ON! body pillow? Post about it here."
some things are best left unsaid.
Put me down as one of those people that despises this "moe culture". Most of these anime that focus on it are trash anyway.
striferser
Huge Nickleback Fan
Well, to be fair, that design is part of the reason the show premise become successful.
And Umeaoki love making wide face.
This is rich from someone with a Darker than Black avatar
PdotMichael
Banned
Snoopy is moe as fuck.
moe is not a genre
There's some legit shit out there, and some stuff that is definitely over the line for some people, but there is a huge amount of sweeping generalizations going on in this thread based on no more than "I don't like this so everyone who does must be a dirty pervert"
teruterubozu
Member
Yeah I know, it's "ironic" or whatever. Same argument with Kill La Kill - "it's parody!"
Just the fact that you have to be familiar with frequent anime tropes to enjoy them makes them kind of depressing.
PdotMichael
Banned
Would be interesting to know how many people just have a problem with female lead characters because "creepy lolita designs" sounds like nonsense.
Moral Panic
Member
Japan clearly sees cuteness as a childish trait as they are constantly using childish features to emphasise cuteness. The only cultural seperation I see is that in the West you are supposed to outgrow that phase and act your age, whereas it is perhaps culturally permissable to act cute/youthful/childish in Japan. I mean look at Yaeba.
I definitely wouldn't call the anime/light novel/manga industry (the part of the industry I know about and which this discussion concerns) as fearless in any sense. It is reactionary and trend following with an uncanny ability to disregard originality in favour of whatever is the flavour of the month. They are just out for money and will do anything to get it. The only problem is that their audience tends to be a bunch of socially awkward, undersexed man children. Look at all the LN/Manga about Fantasy/MMO/Videogame worlds which suddenly popped off around SAO.
Look at the post K-ON! world where all of a sudden cute girls hanging out anime became en vogue.
Other overused tropes like the childhood friend exist purely because of the target audiences fear and inability to talk to new girls as an adult and therefore their romantic attention turns to a girl you knew when you were a kid. And it's close friend which is the incest anime which takes that childhood friend logic and turns it to overdrive by taking a normal familial relationship, twisting and distorting it to give the Yuuji Everylead who is a stand in for themselves an easy relationship without having to go out and get shot down. I mean the fact that the Harem genre is still popular is baffling, it is literally wish fulfilment to the max.
A huge part of the industry is chasing after Otaku and has become little more than a vehicle to indulge their wish fulfilment fantasies. Which is a shame because the Japanese have a lot that they can say. Nodame Cantabile for example has a unique look at the nature of classical music in Japan and dealing with the entire feeling in that field of study that you must leave for Europe if you want to become someone.
But instead of having more of those shows which talk about Japan and it's role in the world, you have cute girl drops into my lap no2543 and NEET finds himself in an MMO world where finally all the time he wasted playing games is useful no. 56.
Madoka's kind of a bad example since it's deliberately designed to be creepy, or at least kind of off-kilter.
Dice
Pokémon Parentage Conspiracy Theorist
I'll defer to your expertise since my experience with anime is borderline accidental. I was only offering my tentative reasoning for why something such as it would exist based on what I've seen and general trends of sociology and psychology, but you seem rather familiar with the industry and what drives it rather than mere speculations.
I don't know how Madoka's designs are "creepy lolita" honestly. There's nothing sexual about the designs at all. They're just anime girls with big heads.
Yes, the art is cutesy, but it has to be cutesy. The entire premise of the show is to turn the magical girl genre on its head.
Yes, the art is cutesy, but it has to be cutesy. The entire premise of the show is to turn the magical girl genre on its head.
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
^^^
I agree the harem genre is filth and those stereotypical "otaku" shows are embarrassing to watch.
The reason they persist unfortunately is due to a certain audience loves such content.
I agree the harem genre is filth and those stereotypical "otaku" shows are embarrassing to watch.
The reason they persist unfortunately is due to a certain audience loves such content.
teruterubozu
Member
I doubt it. Ghost in the Shell is extremely popular with "casuals" for example.
I wouldn't really call that "shoujo" style though, even though that's the intent.
PdotMichael
AnimeGAF's largest consumer of moe
C'mon now. No one here is vehemently against anime with female leads. Off the top of my head, here are some decent to incredible anime with female leads:
Spirited Away
Nausicaa
Only Yesterday
Kiki's Delivery Service
Whispers from the Heart
My Neighbor Totoro (okay maybe Ghibli is cheating)
Boogiepop Phantom
Moribito
Ghost in the Shell
Kino's Journey
Bubblegum Crisis
Half of Ranma 1/2
Perfect Blue
Paprika
Millenium Actress (ok maybe Kon is cheating too)
Lain
Not to mention many other anime that have females in major roles that don't suffer from the moe archetype.
Again, there is a distinct difference between "female character" and "moe pandering shame blob."
John Kowalski
Banned
I generally agree with your post, especially concerning the popularity of harem romance (a format which doesn't make any sense outside of visual novels where you need more than one romance route), but i'm finding that every year there are more and more shows breaking convention and either subverting or wholly sidestepping the archetypes in question.
PdotMichael
Banned
How is that an argument again, outside of showing that you're full of shit?
teruterubozu
Member
You're the one cursed with the tag. It's pretty hard to ignore when it comes to this thread.
I don't know how much you know about GAF culture (I'm an expert), but taking pot shots about someone's tag is a huge part of it.
I also explained my objection to your statement in that very post. It's all those other words.
Look at the post K-ON! world where all of a sudden cute girls hanging out anime became en vogue.
an interesting choice you have there, i'd say it had a very good example of moe done right, using it to build up an investment in characters that pays off when things go sideways.
edit: goddamnit John Kowalski beat me to the gif! i finally had justified keeping that folder.
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