The reactions of those I’m following on Twitter have thus far proven predictably varied:

OneManga’s shuttering up too. Not sure if there’s any big sites left. I wonder what’ll happen. (canon_chan/CCY)

I don’t read scanlated Manga on the web but this made me sad T_T (UntoldHero)

Whoa, One Manga capitulates… damn (Kabitzin)

So Onemanga is dying…Mangafox/Toshokan then? (seinime)

Here’s hoping you come back legal One Manga, cheers. (chrisbzay)

Hahahhahaha YeS ! no more OneManga ! hahahaha Fuck yeah ! Fuck you onemanga, Fuck you ! Greatest way to start the day ! :D And now to hope that all the motherf*king online readers all fucking die and Never come back ! Learn 2 irc (Kurotsuki)

As for me — well, I’m with those who feel a little upset at how things have turned out. And not just because I have only a few more days now to catch up on some of my manga-reading, inconvenient as that is.

Yes, I resort to illicit fan-translated manga from time to time. I also put money into the industry, when I can…

…so, please, try to resist the urge to denounce me as a pirate or cancer or something.

Recently SDS offered an account relevant to the kind of fan I am:

I once told someone that I pretty much only buy DVDs of things with which I’m already familiar, to which he simply responded, “Why would you buy something you’ve already seen?”

Whereas I saw my ownership of DVDs as a testament of sorts to the shows I felt were good and enjoyable enough for me to have them in my collection, the other person saw DVDs simply as a way to try new things out. In the end, we agreed to disagree. [SDS, "Enter Animefan"]

(For a nice dialogue on the commercial aspects of fandom, see also the posts that led up to the one quoted, one by SDS and another by Omo.)

A purchase of anime or manga means something more to me than the acquisition of story data — it’s a modification of my physical collection, a statement about the kinds of things I like and would want to lend out to friends. And, besides that, money is hard to come by when you’re a graduate student, and with none of my anime-viewing friends nearby, how am I supposed to expose myself to things that I may later buy? And, hell, that’s not to mention that some things just aren’t available in the United States, nor will they ever be.

This is why the online piracy trade is so critical to that thing we do — and, I’d say, to the industry itself. I’m not going to say that online presentation and distribution represent the future of anime and manga, much as that seems a logical outcome, but I will speculate that legal and illegal distribution channels have achieved a kind of balance with one another, and things like the closure of a manga scan site represent shifts in this balance that could affect both sides.

Simply put, a decrease in the number of channels through which budding fans can, easily and at no cost, acquire the fix required of early fandom probably results in a loss of potential consumers somewhere later on. Where would the industry be without those who entered into the fandom, as I did, thanks to the illicit availability of Evangelion, Trigun, Love Hina, and (yes, even) Naruto — a body of fans who aren’t teenagers anymore, who can now afford to pour money into their hobbies? (For me this extends into related industries. My HDTV, Blu-Ray player, and external hard drive all owe their places on my desks and shelves to my having happened upon fansubs on Kazaa and Limewire, back in the day.)

I’m referring here to the process of a fan-via-piracy going legit, so to speak, which of course won’t always happen. But we’ll always have piracy, and I wonder whether, ultimately, the profit doesn’t outweigh the cost. Perhaps filesharing hasn’t been around long enough for us to know.

Mind you, none of this should be construed as an excuse. Watching or reading a licensed franchise illegally deprives the U.S. industry of needed money (assuming, of course, that you’re a U.S. consumer). But my point is that this in itself renders illegal viewing neither morally contemptible nor harmful to the industry in the long run. An illegal download now may mean a fan with a day job five years from now, a fan who may remember that show of five years prior with the kind of fondness that empties bank accounts.

Consider me and Aria, for example.

While not my single favorite franchise, the Aria anime is easily my favorite 52 episodes of animation. I’ve bought all of Aria that’s available in the U.S. — that’s four DVD box sets and seven volumes of manga. I’ve recommended and re-recommended the show. And I’ve blogged about it — here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

But would I have done all that if not for CrystalNova’s fan subtitles? Absolutely not — in fact, it’s Aria that made me a slice of life fan to begin with; it wouldn’t have occurred to me that I’d ever enjoy the thing if I hadn’t seen it for myself.

Maybe the fan translation business acts in some ways similar to how TV broadcasting of anime works in Japan — it’s our basic way of sampling things without having to pay for them — but I won’t go that far. All I mean to say here is that the closure of One Manga could, in fact, be a big deal relative to the U.S. industry as a whole, particularly if similar closures follow. We can only hope that, when the balance of power rights itself, neither the industry nor its consumers suffer terribly for it.

Of course, I’ve handily taken advantage of the situation to express the kinds of views I usually withhold, and so perhaps I’ve misrepresented the scale of things. There remain plenty of other means by which to acquire fan-translated manga. But when things happen as in the case of One Manga, one has to wonder.

I won’t attempt to “account for taste” here, as I doubt there’s much point in doing so. In other words, for the time being, it doesn’t much matter to me why different fans choose their interpretive strategies. I simply wonder whether we can agree, generally speaking, on what some of those interpretive strategies might be.

An “interpretive strategy,” for my purposes here, is the way one chooses to assign meanings to discrete cues, assuming that a discrete cue might be damn near any element of a text, or more than one element in tandem. Thus, I’m not really talking about how we choose what to read/watch/etc., and what among those things to like; I’m talking about how we make sense of particular elements within texts we may like, dislike, or not much care about. In the event that you don’t confuse the two, I’ll admit that I do, somehow, and that this paragraph is more for my own benefit than for yours.

I’m going to outline a few interpretive strategies here, breaking things down into particular “kinds” of fan that really shouldn’t be taken as blanket assumptions. Maybe one of these will apply to you, or maybe not. It’s a start, anyway.

The Focused Fan

I assume most people are the “focused” sort of fan: they make interpretations based on personal relevance, and don’t pay a great deal of attention to other interpretations — indeed, a focused fan may come up with the most personally relevant interpretation possible, and not bother with bringing their interpretive powers to bear upon a particular element any further.

The Christian allows Shinji Ikari kinship with a Biblical personage, the troubled teenager focuses on his crises of self-worth, and so on. The image above illustrates a single interpretation chosen over others which are likely not considered, but the focused fan may well stand by more than one interpretation of a given element. The notion of focus reflects this fan’s tendency to interpret through the lens of the self — which may well streamline the whole process of consumption, and prevent the pursuit of enjoyment from being confounded.

Complaints against focused fans probably amount largely to accusations of “not trying hard enough,” which, I imagine, come mostly from the discerning fan contingent. Omnifans may respect the “purity” of what focused fans do, or they may consider focused fans too narrow-minded — too focused, as it were.

The Discerning Fan

The discerning fan’s strategy is cursorily similar to that of the focused fan, as both result in the selection of a rather limited number of interpretations of one element from the pool of all possible. Where the discerning fan differs is, of course, in “discernment:” this fan considers many interpretations at some length, and rejects most in favor of a few.

These are the fans who stand by particular well-worn means by which to reach conclusions about the texts they consume. Some prefer the Word of God, granting truth to all authorial explanations and biographical circumstances; some cross-reference everything they read with history and artistic tradition; some attempt to reach conclusions based on the internal consistency of the text. Whatever the case may be, one thing is certain (to the discerning fan): the discerning fan’s way of making meaning is The Right Way — and perhaps, depending upon who you ask, The One Way.

Focused fans might accuse discerning fans of taking things far too seriously, and omnifans might call them out on their willingness to judge and their assumption that one interpretation could ever be better than any other, but discerning fans do seem to have one advantage over other sorts of fan: they can often explain precisely why they reach their conclusions, and in great detail. These are the active forum users, the skilled reviewers, and, as often as not, the popular anime bloggers.

The Omnifan

While other varieties of fan may allow a textual element more than one interpretation, omnifans prefer to saturate their elements with every meaning that comes to mind — and, when nothing further comes to mind, the omnifan will seek out other people’s interpretations, and throw those on the pile as well.

Omnifans aren’t especially interested in the “right” way of doing things, perhaps because the very concept of “rightness” doesn’t apply to the pursuit of meaning-making, or because right and wrong are simply irrelevant when it’s all make-believe anyway. The staunchest omnifans might even suggest that, insofar as interpretation is a mechanism not unlike gut reaction, sound logic isn’t a requirement; an interpretation founded upon faulty reasoning or incorrect assumptions is still practically a “valid” interpretation, as interpretations can’t be judged in terms of validity anyway, and all are potentially useful for the insight they may provide into their devisers’ states of mind.

This approach to things causes boundless grief among discerning fans, who accuse omnifans of militant apathy; focused fans may not try hard enough, but omnifans are egregious offenders in that they refuse to try hard enough. Furthermore, the omnifan’s tendency to play with texts excessively may appear to be nothing more than pedantry, particularly to inward-looking focused fans. But if you’re looking for reasoned comparison and reconciliation, you’re best off seeking out an omnifan.

Maybe this goes without saying, given the nature of this post and others, but I am most assuredly an omnifan.

The Triangle

I don’t think these “types” are mutually exclusive; while their most serious practitioners may have grievances with other kinds of fan, I imagine that most people will exhibit traits of two or even three. But, if we like, we can arrange the three types into a kind of — dare I say it — love triangle:

Or maybe a hate triangle. I don’t suppose I’m helping here; it is a little troubling that we feel inclined to fire arrows over our walls at all the other forts, from time to time. But maybe there isn’t any avoiding this, unless we all agree to make meaning the same way, and that seems neither feasible nor desirable.

I’ve been stewing over these questions for some time, but I’ve devoted more time to the second than to the first. And, wouldn’t you know it, once I took a step toward answering the first, the answer to the second seemed rather obvious: Hikaru has feelings for Minmay because she’s hard to get, and he’s into that.

I could be wrong, of course, but this feels like the right answer — for the original Macross TV series, at least. The setup in Do You Remember Love? is rather different, and, lo and behold, I don’t really have any issues with the DYRL? Minmay, so I’ll mostly leave her out of this.

We’ll have to begin with the first realization that led to the second. It occurred to me, all of a sudden, after certain facts conspired to make it more apparent than ever it has been (to me), that I’m not attracted to reasonably obtainable women. I’m only attracted to women who would, for me, prove hard to get.

Yes, I know this sounds juvenile; my only excuse is that Genshiken says it’s okay not to have finished growing up when you’re in your mid-twenties, and so does Solanin, and so I’m not going to worry about it too much because, really, what good would that do? Things happen when they happen, maturation included. In lieu of worry, however, I’m a bit fascinated by this little hangup of mine, as I think it bears upon my fandom.

But before I reveal to you all my dark secrets, let’s consider Hikaru for a moment. (This requires that I abandon any attempt to avoid spoiling Macross, so prepare yourself.)

My point may depend upon whether Minmay is even technically hard to get in the early episodes, but this seems to me to be the case, if only because she’s young and flighty, and thus not so quick to settle on Hikaru. His advances never prove especially effective, and when Kaifun enters the picture, Hikaru is effectively locked out — but this doesn’t stop him.

I’m guessing that Hikaru’s preference for the hard-to-get ladies (or lady, as it were) has something to do with his being the kind of person who likes to challenge himself. Competitive as he is, the cockblock prospects represented by Kaifun may just make him try all the harder; after all, the two years that pass between episodes 27 and 28 don’t do much to diminish his desire. If anything, he’s all the more willing to reject poor Misa Hayase and run off with Minmay post-time skip.

I’m also willing to entertain the idea that Hikaru was into Minmay because she was vivacious and attractive, and his ultimate recognition of Misa’s merits represents growth on his part, but bear with me here. I’m trying to give Minmay the benefit of the doubt for once.

If we grant that Hikaru’s romantic “philosophy” sends him after challenging situations, he comes to occupy a distinct position among the show’s cast of amorous males:

• Hikaru: Challenge/thrill
• Focker: Insecurity/fear of (breaking) commitment
• Max: Respect for talent and beauty
• Kakizaki: Cute girls are cute (everyman angle)
• Kaifun: Control

Otherwise Hikaru might just be a more proactive Kakizaki, and Minmay would effectively have him by the pants. But somehow that seems too easy.

And, anyway, as a fellow man in pursuit of implausible relationships, I feel a kind of camaraderie with Hikaru. I can’t get too frustrated with him for acting like a tool in Minmay’s presence, as that would require that I be frustrated at myself.

For my part, there’s practically a one-to-one correlation between the obtainability of a woman and my attraction to her. And, in a way, it’s as if I’m devoted to the continuation of a vicious cycle. I make myself available to people who aren’t that interested, and I shut out those whose interest is obvious — I play the hard-to-get role, in other words. And so it is with Minmay, Hikaru, and Misa.

How does Hikaru end up choosing Misa in the end? I feel as though I have a personal investment in this question. Is it because he learned enough about people to appreciate what she had to offer? Did he come to appreciate her persistence, a quality he himself displays? Did he simply grow tired of Minmay’s indecision, or did Minmay cease to fascinate him when she became obtainable? Did he, after all, get over an almost compulsive need to challenge himself, even in romantic situations? Does this represent “growth” on his part, or simply change?

Any of these could be true; more than one could be true. And, given that I seem to be afflicted by some of the same idiosyncrasies as the Hikaru who pines pitifully after Minmay, I may not be in a position to suggest an answer. Hikaru seems to have found his own answer, in the end. But, once, I found myself involved in a “love triangle” of roughly the sort diagrammed above, and it didn’t end particularly well for all involved. It may be that the Misa would have been better for me than the Minmay, but such a thing didn’t occur to me at the time.

It may not do me much good to scrutinize a cartoon character as a means of self-improvement — in fact, if I have anything to learn from Hikaru, it’s probably that I’ll have to figure things out on my own. But, as I see it, he has two advantages over me. The first is that Misa hangs on for as long as she does — rather longer than Hikaru warrants, I figure. And the second is that, while Hikaru probably approaches romance as he does partly because of his challenge-seeking nature, I do so because…why?

Maybe I’m just self-destructive. But I don’t know. I’ll get back to you on that.

I’m really trying to get at a broader question here: is it possible that my desire for the unobtainable led me to the 2D world in the first place? I’m not suggesting that my fandom for the latter is wholly dependent upon the former; I simply wonder whether, at some point, one was connected to the other, and I crossed the divide between them via that connection. It may not even be possible to answer such a question, but I do at least feel the need to bear such things in mind as I go about the business of fandom.

Martin never claims that his way of valuing art applies or should apply to anyone other than himself (in a way, he actively disclaims as much). I am to blame for the degree to which this post makes such an assumption. And it may be a mistaken assumption, but it’s probably necessary if I hope to examine certain of Martin’s claims as such.

Let’s start by sketching out some of the values Martin’s post seems to imply.

As difficult as it is, I have to admit that I’m enjoying K-On. Not because it’s intelligent, thought-provoking, original or a work of art. I’m enjoying it despite it not really being any of these things, mainly because something that’s so intentionally dumb is undemanding and therefore the perfect thing for unwinding with at the end of a long day.

Yes, it’s shallow, commercialised and derivative but truthfully as long as it makes you smile, who the heck cares? I’ve done at least three drafts of this post before wiping the whole lot off the screen and starting over; this is by its very nature a show that’s difficult to write about because there’s not much to it beyond the obvious observation that it’s cute, undemanding fun.

Thus, good anime might be:

• Intelligent (caveat: “intentionally dumb” is not strictly bad)
• Thought-provoking (caveat: “undemanding” is not strictly bad)
• Original
• Art
• Cute
• Fun

Whereas bad anime might be:

• Shallow
• Commercialized
• Derivative

I’ll leave the arguments about how shows of its ilk are having a negative effect on the quality of the anime industry’s output as a whole for those who know more about it – there’s still enough stuff made that appeals to me and I don’t know enough about the Industry and its issues to speculate on that. But I am a music fan so I can’t help but (over-)think about how it fares as a show about music.

An anime about a rock band is doubly Relevant To My Interests really. …

Of significance here are Martin’s finding stories about music particularly relevant to himself, and his (wise, in my estimation) refusal to engage in doomsaying about the state of the industry as a result of moe et cetera. Again, it’s evident that Martin isn’t trying to push his art-consuming apparatus on anyone. He’s simply explicating — which is in all likelihood what makes his post so useful to me.

I’m interested in several of the modes of valuation listed above (particularly the notion that K-ON! is not especially a “work of art,” given my definition of “art” as a way in which an object is used rather than something an object is). But I’d like to focus on one of these modes in particular: originality is good; derivation is bad.

In this case, at least, I’m positive that such an approach is not unique to Martin. Here’s part of a comment by Kaioshin:

…I simply cannot relate to this school of thought that I’ve noticed cropping up…one that seems apologetic (something I agree should be unnecessary as ghostlightning points out [here]) of shows that are just mindless fluff because they are “relaxing”. I typically don’t find these school slice of life shows especially relaxing simply for the fact that I can’t stop noticing ways in which they are derivative of their predecessors in episode to episode plot lines. Derivative almost as rule.

…I also happen to agree that it won’t be around or remembered once the next school slice of life with moe girls show comes around unless it pushes the boundaries of the genre to define itself in a way that isn’t so easily emulatable. Part of the frustration I think a lot of people (myself included) feel with K-On is that it has a way in which it could be breaking from the pack in it’s music club plot-line, but rarely uses it and almost seems to want to avoid using it. Why?

Anyway I think it’s possible for a show to be relaxing without having to be derivative and commercialized…

Kaioshin is, by his own admission, literally distracted by the derivative nature of the K-ON! sort of moe show. This is not something for which he should be “blamed,” so to speak, as it isn’t something he can help. In the English-speaking world, at least, we’re riding in the wake of several literary movements which brought originality in vogue; the Romantics and high modernism come to mind. Even postmodern works, with their pastiches of cut-and-pasted elements, are expected to arrange these elements in refreshing ways. Compare Shakespeare, who (to simplify a little) ripped off as many old stories and lives of English royalty as he could manage, and appealed to his audiences by way of the familiarity of these stories and the fanservice and meta-references he inserted. Why don’t we hound Shakespeare for being derivative? Because he was influential, and he became influential by mastering the dramatic trends (i.e. market demands) of his time. Could an animation studio make waves in the industry without giving the people what they want?

Or are studios simply giving the wrong people what they want? Because, of course, producers aren’t producing moe shows to piss off a certain kind of fan. They’re catering to another kind of fan, a kind of fan regarding which Hiroki Azuma has much to say — and this fandom is as precedented by historical development as Kaioshin’s brand of fandom. Judging by recent trends, these moe fans seem to be the ones with the money, or at least the ones most willing to spend it. I’m hesitant to make any absolute claims here. But at the very least moe fandom provides an answer to Kaioshin’s question. Why does K-ON! almost insist upon not “breaking from the pack?” Because the pack is the point. The pack — the moe database, as it were — is as much an object of aesthetic appreciation as K-ON! itself. Perhaps it even eclipses the individual show. From a certain standpoint, K-ON’s derivative nature, its level of engagement with the database, is not a fault; it’s an accomplishment.

Perhaps unfortunately, then, I won’t end with some sensationalist appeal to one side over another. All sides are “right,” insofar as they can be — or at least all sides are justified in their preferences by the particularities of their life experience. You may consider this point of view symptomatic of that crippling passivity which, like so much else, happens to be the cancer that’s killing anime — and that’s fine, because you, too, are shaped by your experience, and how can I hold that against you?

Today’s quotational magic comes from a 1980 article by the intriguingly-named Robert Zajonc:

• Zajonc, R. B. (1980). Feeling and thinking: Preferences need no inferences. American Psychologist, 35, 151-175.

Zajonc argues against an information-processing model that places cognition before affect (reason before feeling, in other words), positing that, regardless of whether affect literally, temporally precedes cognition, “affect is always present as a companion to thought, whereas the converse is not true for cognition” (154). That is, emotion and subjective judgment confound everything. While Zajonc is concerned mostly with decision-making and interaction, you might rightly assume that such a model (which, as far as I know, has more or less survived the thirty years since the article’s publication) has certain implications for the consumption of art — and for people who write about the consumption of art, i.e. you and I.

Quite often “I decided in favor of X” is no more than “I liked X.” Most of the time, information collected about alternatives serves us less for making a decision than for justifying it afterward. Dissonance is prevalent just because complete and thorough computation is not performed before the decision… (155)

It’s as if he peered into the future and saw the aniblogothing! Beneath oceans of vitriol lies the truth: ultimately we’re writing about how we choose what we like, and not about why what we like is better than what other people like.

But that’s a given, and not really worth going on about at length. What catches my attention here is the idea of dissonance. Certainly we’ve all struggled with shows we find meritorious but not fun, or vice versa. The terms I’ve been using lately are “impressive” and “enjoyable;” others have distinguished between “works one likes” and “works one enjoys” (recent bloggery by Ghostlightning and Digitalboy comes to mind). And this excites my interests in mechanisms and methods — how do we navigate the gulf between impressive and enjoyable? “Differently” would be the short answer, I suppose.

Once formed, an evaluation is not revoked. Experiments on the perseverance effect, the strong primacy effects in impression formation, and the fact that attitudes are virtually impervious to persuasion by communication all attest to the robust strength and permanence of affect. Affect often persists after a complete invalidation of its original cognitive basis… (157)

Hence, visceral enjoyment and nostalgia/love-remembering are serious business. I tend to rate those works I associate with a particular “moment” or “movement” in my fandom — Love Hina, Rozen Maiden, Last Exile, Elfen Lied, Haibane Renmei, Macross, even (dare I say it) Aria — higher than I might otherwise, even after repeated viewings. I suspect some of you might do the same.

When we evaluate an object or an event, we are describing not so much what is in the object or in the event, but something that is in ourselves. …Thus, affective judgments are always about the self. They identify the state of the judge in relation to the object of judgment. (157)

We may think that, in our close-reading or sociohistorical interpretation of Pokemon, we’re uncovering the depth inherent to Pokemon. What we’re doing, really, is giving Pokemon depth. It’s worth remembering that textual depth comes from the reader’s depth of experience with the text. But now I’m just using Zajonc as yet more evidence in support of something I’ve been saying for a long time, so I’ll come at this a different way: why do we read anime blogs? I don’t know why you read anime blogs, but I don’t read them for their explications of art; I read them for their explications of their writers, as means by which to experience brief glimpses into how other people do anime, which is something that matters to me.

…[Liking] varies with the objective history of stimulus exposure. With recognition reduced nearly to the chance level, differential affective reaction to the stimuli is obtained as a consequence of mere repeated exposure. Random melodies presented five times were liked better than melodies never heard, even though the subjects could not discriminate the former from the latter for familiarity. (162-163)

This suggests something that makes a kind of sense, but that we don’t really think about: fandom is learned. If I sat my grandmother down in front of Gurren Lagann, she wouldn’t get it — and “getting it” here refers not to intellectual understanding, but to the simple ability to enjoy a thing. We don’t become anime fans overnight — or at least I didn’t. I’ve had to pass through a long series of gateway shows, starting with the Record of Lodoss War OVA, which I liked not because it was anime, but because it was high fantasy. I’d be interested to see how other bloggers evaluate their own acquisitions of fandom; some of that comes through in more nostalgic sorts of posts, but it isn’t always apparent when we look primarily forward.

I have this proposition, though. I don’t claim that it’s true; I don’t even claim it’s plausible, or that it has any foundation in logic or data; all I claim is that it’s something I’ve been thinking about, and it may seem relevant to you or it may not. Accept, reject, or modify it at your discretion.

I propose that:

1. The “sufficiently advanced” anime/manga fan, immersed in a culture whose underground art scene holds nothing back when it comes to exploring nonstandard sexuality, has both a practical sexual self-identity (i.e. who s/he sleeps with in “real life,” which gender roles s/he enacts, etc.) and an interior sexual self-identity.
2. The interior self-identity is amorphous; it can adapt to accommodate a variety of situations.
3. Both self-identities influence the enjoyment of art, but do not necessarily or even commonly influence one another.

Now that I’ve given you more context than you asked for, here’s the real point of this post: I’ve decided to become a yuri fan. Which is not to say I haven’t always had a healthy respect for fictional antics involving two biologically female homo sapiens. I’ve simply decided to make a conscious effort to read more yuri/shoujo-ai manga than I have thus far (and to watch more yuri anime, I guess, though my anime consumption has dwindled lately; Marimite is on the agenda, at least).

No, it isn’t because I have a sudden craving for girl-on-girl action. In fact, I haven’t even been especially impressed with shoujo-ai franchises, traditionally. I tend to rate them in the 6-7 range on the MAL, which isn’t fabulous, but at least I usually finish them; the only exception I can think of right now is Strawberry Panic, whose characters I loathed almost unequivocally.

Then why delve into a genre whose products I largely deem high-mediocre/low-good? Honestly, because, while it may not regularly excite my critical tendencies or my eye for structural complexity, shoujo-ai makes me feel good — and that’s the important thing.

But why does it make me feel good? Sans that question, there isn’t much point in blogging, is there?

Today’s manga exemplar is Girl Friends, the discovery of which I blame on Smithy’s post. True to form, I find it enjoyable albeit not so impressive, which renders it somewhat generalizable as an example.

What do I like? Well, let’s see:

• Women are allowed (by society, manga artists, or what have you) to express emotion more overtly than men. When this applies to both parties, I find the romantic situation more satisfying.
• While the social deviance of the lesbian relationship is not usually ignored, the relationship creates a sub-space in which gender is relatively homogeneous — i.e. no pointless misunderstandings or awkwardness as a result of man vs. woman. Complications within this sub-space result from more neutral (and thus more universally relatable) character traits.
• Quite simply, I find women more aesthetically appealing than men.

You may infer from this that I fall under a certain purview:

It is not inaccurate to state that an otaku would both like to become one of the characters in these shows as well as bone one of them, or be boned by one of them. I would make the case that with Strike Witches, it is true that many male otaku want to be a young girl, but still like girls. It appeals to a man’s desire to be more pure, open, and emotional. A lot of guys feel that they cannot be that way as a man, but are totally comfortable with their heterosexuality – hence the desire to become a lesbian woman. [Digitalboy, "Strike Witches and Sengoku Basara - the Nudity of Concept - Don't F This Up (2)"]

Digiboy brings up the notion that it’s possible to respond to a (female, gay) character in terms of both sexual arousal and identification, and I’d agree. But I contend that I don’t want to be a gay woman, that I don’t need to want to be a gay woman, that the amorphous internal self-identity I mentioned earlier takes on the gay woman persona when it needs to.

Of course I don’t “become” a gay woman in any practically meaningful way, which would entail the acquisition of life experience I do not and cannot have. But, given sufficient textual prompting, I can relate to the yuri relationship on the level of yuri relationship. While my identification with the characters in a shoujo-ai scenario is probably of the usual kind — I relate to characters because that’s just what people do when they read — my identification with the scenario itself is mediated by a pseudo-me, a feminine, homosexual, usually younger construct (perhaps a byproduct of my relating to the characters in the first place).

Ergo: I can get a raging stiffy at things in fiction that probably wouldn’t, for various logistical reasons, faze me in reality. No, I won’t make you a list.

I foresee at least three objections:

1. I’ve overcomplicated what might be a fairly simple mechanism of reading, i.e. the ability to relate to characters and situations.
2. I’ve been dishonest: either I’m lying about my disinterest in real-life teenage lesbians, or I’m trying to cover my ass by demonstrating that I can enjoy all sorts of strange things (my model would apply to things much stranger than yuri, which really isn’t that strange) with my normative sexuality intact.
3. I’ve simply misjudged myself, and I really am in it for whatever appeal physical girl-on-girl action has for a straight man.

Well, fine; I also have doubts. But allow me to rebut:

1. Fair enough, but all I’m really doing is proposing a mechanism for something plenty of people have observed already: a fan’s porn consumption doesn’t necessarily influence his sexual practices. In other words, someone aroused by loli porn isn’t destined to become a pedophile, and so on.
2. At the very least, I’m not knowingly dishonest here, though I suppose it’d be difficult for me to know all my subconscious motives.
3. If I’ve made a mistake, it’s probably my confounding common straight male inclinations with some magical process by which people relate to alternate scenarios. But I submit that both can operate at the same time.

(In retrospect, this post may include a few too many lists.)

This isn’t the last you’ll hear of me on the topic of yuri; I managed to avoid talking about Girl Friends, for the most part, and there are certainly a few things to be said about Aoi Hana. Think of this post as a glimpse at my early assumptions — rough, untested assumptions that will inevitably change.

That being: pornography is “violent” media.

As the article in question deals with the effects of violent media generally upon consumer aggression, let’s get this out of the way: mass media affect consumers. They affect different consumers differently, and the most dramatic effects require consistent long-term exposure, and no social scientist worth his or her weight in grant money would claim that media consumption alone is likely to turn your kids into mass murderers…

…[T]he weight of the evidence indicates that violent actions seldom result from a single cause; rather, multiple factors converging over time contribute to such behavior. Accordingly, the influence of the violent mass media is best viewed as one of the many potential factors that influence the risk for violence. No reputable researcher is suggesting that media violence is “the” cause of violent behavior. [Huesmann, L. R., & Taylor, L. D. (2006). The role of media violence in violent behavior. Annual Review of Public Health, 27, 393-415.]

…And, anyway, given that “violent media” includes such necessities as newscasts, and encompasses countless artistic works, it’s better that we adjust to it, rather than impeding our own free expression…

If you accept — and I do — that freedom of speech is important, then you are going to have to defend the indefensible. That means you are going to be defending the right of people to read, or to write, or to say, what you don’t say or like or want said.

The Law is a huge blunt weapon that does not and will not make distinctions between what you find acceptable and what you don’t. This is how the Law is made. [Neil Gaiman, "Why defend freedom of icky speech?"]

…But we can at least say, with the weight of decades of evidence, that media have effects. As such, figuring out what those effects might be may prove worthwhile. Social scientists agree, and, as you may know, media violence is a pet project of many of those types.

Of course, “media violence” (or “violent media”) is about as vague a term as it could possibly be, and nearly every experimental study and literature review defines it differently. Some, it would seem, define it more loosely than others.

To quantify and analyze mass media reports of the effect of violent media on aggression and violence, we coded every newspaper and magazine article we could find on the topic. All forms of mass media were considered (e.g., television, film, music, video games, pornographic magazines, comic books). [Bushman, B. J., & Anderson, C. A. (2001). Media violence and the American public: Scientific facts versus media misinformation. American Psychologist, 56, 477-489.]

You have to wonder how poor, delicate Drs. Bushman and Anderson would feel if they encountered, by chance or fate, an issue of Comic LO. But I digress (or do I?).

The authors take care to distinguish “pornographic magazines” as a mass medium distinct from other kinds of visual print media — “comic books,” for example, or newspapers, or non-pornographic magazines — and they make sure, via opportune parenthesis and an e.g., that we’re aware that the “medium” of porn belongs beneath that most convenient of blanket terms, “violent media.” Now, I may be pulling a bit of quotational trickery here; maybe I’ve misrepresented the authors’ intentions. Maybe they’re saying that porn is potentially a violent medium, and thus worth researching for that reason. But why distinguish it so thoroughly? Why make a point of searching news databases with the queries “pornograph*” and “erotic*” if those aren’t the sorts of things that fall particularly beneath your definition of violent media, at least for the purposes of your study?

I’ll note that this article was written in the Year of Our Lord Two Thousand and One, and not by some radical Christian lobby. These are, as far as I’m aware, legitimate researchers. Though, granted, they’re legitimate researchers with an agenda, legitimate researchers who make a point of testifying before government panels and so on. They aren’t wholly without zeal.

Why is porn specifically violent, or, in being porn, rife with violent potential? What is it about we Americans that makes us quake in our boots whenever sex looms on the horizon? Because, whatever it is, I imagine it’s related to that impulse of ours that sends us into a panic when an innocuous nerd looks at cartoon depictions of the deed.

By “Madaramean Principle” I mean that argument made by Harunobu Madarame in the fourth chapter of Genshiken in defense of 2D porn: the human mind can make quite a lot out of very little.

Perhaps the rather simplistic character designs of Strike Witches demonstrate this in themselves. The selectively-censored disrobed Witches, with their overlarge heads and implausible builds, aren’t strictly, technically what we’d probably think of as human-looking — but they’re evocative enough of human beings that we can “read” them as such without much trouble, especially if we’re trained to do so by years of anime consumption. And, to be fair, better they look like caricatures than fall into the uncanny valley.

But there’s a particular example of how significant an impression very minor details might make on us in Strike Witches’ first episode. I’m talking about that character I’ve been calling the “moe grandma” not because she arouses those moe feelings in me, necessarily, but simply because of her character design.

It occurred to me, during this scene, that, aside from coloring and clothing (relatively ambiguous factors, in my opinion, particularly when we’re new to a show and the fictitious or fictionalized people and cultures it presents), there really wasn’t much about these characters that suggested age. Four lines, in fact. So I removed them just to see what would happen.

Not much has changed with Miyafuji’s mom, who is more “comprehensively” aged, I suppose. But I seem to have done the grandma quite a favor.

Is this an example of artistic laziness at work in contemporary moe anime? Maybe, but what does it matter, as long as those four lines work? And they do work, I’d say; perhaps surprisingly so. Rather than bemoan such art for its laziness, perhaps we should praise it for a simplicity that allows a large degree of viewer agency — if indeed it does, but it would seem to me that four well-placed lines can be as authoritative as four hundred.

So, if I may, I’ll make an effort at clearing things up a bit.

Let’s take a look at a few choice morsels from a post by Anime Vice writer Boddington.

In this writer’s opinion, I believe that though the aforementioned titles [Kodomo no Jikan, Strike Witches, Chu-Bra!!] are well beyond the limits of good taste and skirting the edge of being morally repugnant they are not criminal.

I respect Boddington’s admission of his artistic preferences here. Bias is always, always a factor — as Neil Gaiman puts it, “one person’s obscenity is another person’s art” — though obviously there’s more at work in the Handley case than what one finds fappable.

Now, while no children are exploited in the production of hardcore lolicon manga I feel the situation is more complicated than just immediate harm to children who are used in such a way. I apologize if this comes off sounding condescending, but people often forget that all things operate on complex systems. Good and evil, black and white, toast and jam are all just far too simplistic ways to meaningfully view the world. My point here is that in the short term, while no children were victimized to make these titles, lolicon porn manga still promotes the practice of pedophilia and it’s not an immense leap to see how these titles can set the gears in motion leading to the real molestation of children. [emphasis mine]

I’ve hacked this bit into three major claims that, in my estimation, need to be addressed.

Should we consider anything more than whether children were harmed in the making of the doujins in question? Well, yes, I’d say — not that this renders irrelevant the fact that no children were harmed in the making of the doujins in question. Whether Handley’s money went into an immediately exploitative industry (or, as seems to have been the case, didn’t) makes a difference — if nothing else, we can establish with some certainty that the guy isn’t knowingly supporting child abuse. But, as Boddington observes, there are a few more things to consider.

Now, does lolicon manga “promote” the practice of pedophilia? Not really — or, I should say, not by itself.

I doubt I need to explain the degree to which opinions on media effects can be mixed, even in the fields of media studies and communications — you’ve all run across studies of varying repute on the effects of video games on children, I’m sure, some demonstrating that Grand Theft Auto will be the downfall of human civilization, others showing that violent video games don’t make much difference on child development at all. But, as I understand it, experts tend toward a more moderate position. Violent or pornographic material renders consumers more likely to think about violence and pornography. Does it prompt consumers to commit violent acts in spite of the societal norms that have shaped them since birth? No — but if the consumers in question are already predisposed toward violence, the issue becomes less clear.

Here we come to that leap, immense or no, required to demonstrate that loli doujins can result in child abuse. It’s a leap that, to my knowledge, those who sentenced Handley never bothered to make. At no point was it demonstrated that, given Handley’s psychology and background, drawings of girls under the U.S. age of consent engaged in sex acts might prompt Handley to try the depicted acts himself. Perhaps potential harm to children supersedes free speech, but, in Handley’s case, it never seemed clear that there was ever any real threat of children being harmed.

There is, I’d imagine, viable territory yet to be explored by the anti-Handleyites — the territory of the subtle effects of long-term exposure, and of psychological predispositions and their implications, and of relevant studies published in reputable communications and psychology journals — and I’d like to see these explorations, rather than the reduction of lolicon into sex offender fuel, into the unsavory side of the black/white, good/evil binaries to which Boddington objects.

Anyway, I’ve been reading Bakuman — I’ve read all that’s currently available, actually. It is, in a word, good, and it stands out in its self-referentiality in terms of art itself more than fandom. I could talk about that, but I won’t, as it’s plain enough to any reader, and you really should read it. I will, however, talk about the following segment.

Which brings us to our titular question: who is an otaku?

Takagi vehemently rejects the label. But he is self-admittedly and demonstrably a fan of manga. He writes manga, with the goal of having some work of his animated at some point. It’d be difficult to call him an especially casual manga-reader.

And yet he doesn’t self-identify as an otaku. If anyone around him thinks of him as such, we don’t see it. Do his creative inclinations free him from otaku status? As I understand it, an otaku in the Japanese sense is one who does something obsessively; perhaps Takagi’s manga addiction is permissible insofar as it results in an output. Instead of holing himself up in his room and reading manga at the expense of all else, he produces, and thus his hobby is not entirely self-centered or without broader utility.

Or perhaps Takagi isn’t an otaku because of his success as a manga writer. Money serves as powerful justification. You don’t hear anyone call Stephen King a nerd because of his interest in speculative fiction. Financial success is perhaps yet more evidence of productivity, but it’s evidence that most people can’t ignore.

For what it’s worth, Moritaka seems to have little or no interest in what the general public thinks of him. Perhaps it’s a matter of public denial on Takagi’s part. But neither Takagi nor Moritaka spend much of their time doing the usual things that show up in manga as representative of anime/manga otakudom. It might not have been surprising to see them hone their skills through doujin work, but at no point do they consider that option.

The line between manga-ka and manga otaku seems thin, but at least we can draw it — provisionally — using productivity as our guide. Still, I have to wonder about a case more relevant to my interests. What of an academic? Or a blogger? Is someone who uses anime and manga as catalysts for critical and philosophical inquiry while receiving (and expecting) little or no tangible, measurable reward an otaku?

We could talk about the intellectual rewards of critical thought and writing, but it’s difficult. How would we measure that? If it’s primarily we who benefit from our work — ourselves and our small communities — are we forced to concede that our output is low in social terms? This may not be a concern for blogs with wider appeal, but my perspective is that of one who writes for a very narrow audience. I certainly don’t consider myself a teacher, handing out bits of knowledge for you to do with as you will. I just try to ask questions and contribute to the discourse of the sphere, as the discourse of the sphere entertains me (and I hope it entertains you as well, if you’re immersed in it).

I’m not one to trivialize entertainment; I think entertainment and critical thought are very closely related. We can make readers reflect by entertaining them, and that is, I think, a tangible output — it’s the very output with which Takagi and Moritaka are concerned, in fact. But they’re dealing with a much broader audience. As Wikipedia has it, Jump’s circulation stands at around 2.7 million readers. I doubt I need to clarify that especially analytic anime blogs attract a much smaller crowd, and, in my experience, it’s a crowd consisting mainly of bloggers. And as far as I’m aware, we have no good method for bolstering our ranks. A passion for deep and specific analysis is something one must come to on one’s own terms. We (and I don’t mean anyone specifically, so include or exclude yourself to whatever degree you deem appropriate) are essentially writers writing for an audience of writers, who enjoy a certain kind of rhetoric, and who needn’t worry about the relative unpopularity of that rhetoric in the company of one another.

I suppose I’ve digressed. My question was whether or not we academic-types are otaku in the way Takagi fears. Do we do what we do too exclusively? Most of us try to be as accessible as possible, I think, but there’s only so much we can do beyond varying the specificity of our analyses — and you may know that I tend to be very specific, and thus more exclusive at times than even I might prefer, but I have to write the sort of thing I like to read.

What, then, are the benefits of reading posts that pick through arcane literary devices and rhetoric with a set of precision instruments? If we can figure out what the reader gains, we may be able to establish a level of productivity. Personally I think there’s much to learn of narrative art, and of how and why people appreciate it, from beginning with the minute and moving outward, and from following the records of those who do so. We could at least call it an intellectual exercise. It’s more beneficial than idleness, I’m sure. And each of these utilities suggests criticism as a form of entertainment, at least given my preferences. It almost has to be.

But if we’re entertaining only our little club, if our productive energy isn’t escaping our circle despite our efforts to the contrary…no, there’s a misconception there. It’s not inaccurate to say that we’re entertaining our club. It is, I believe, inaccurate to assume that a blogger like Danny Choo isn’t entertaining his club, too. His happens to be larger, but it’s still a club.

I think I’ve painted too bleak a portrait of our situation. There exist a number of bloggers who pair fairly deep analysis with readable language, those who don’t undertake passionate love affairs with jargon as I do (it’s not because I’m a douchebag, it’s because technical language is useful). I won’t provide a list for fear of excluding anyone, but many of you will know who I mean. And our loosely-defined legion does expand, if slowly. After all, I ended up in it.

I’m really reaching for a point here, believe it or not, that being that we can’t really define an otakudom as a community that doesn’t produce. Every community produces within itself. I’d say something about discourse, but I’m too rusty on Foucault. At any rate it’s not Takagi’s productivity that allows him to deny otaku status; it’s his belonging to a community of considerable size. Manga isn’t an unpopular pursuit, and one who reads (and writes) manga isn’t necessarily involved with all the more obscure accoutrements. In the end it’s about popularity, and though that conclusion may seem too obvious to warrant over a thousand words en route, it never hurts to explore possibilities and make connections, to really know a term or a narrative element.

And anyway, this sort of thing is just what I do. This is my obscure accoutrement. I’m a structural and rhetorical criticism otaku.