But perhaps you might like to know what sorts of things I’ve been doing in my internet absence (still ongoing, at the moment). Yes, this is one of those posts, wherein the blogger simply provides a list of recent activities, but I’ll try to strain myself a bit and include some assorted thoughtful observations.

Let’s see, then. In recent weeks, I have:

• Finished Parasyte. Holy shit. Setting aside the plot itself, I’m beyond impressed with the technical aspects of this one, the pacing in particular.
• Continued to collaborate with Otouto-kun and OGT to put an Otakon panel together, said panel bearing the provocative title of “You Don’t Like Moe — And Here’s Why!” But I don’t suppose it will end up as combative as it sounds (consider again the list of participants). When I know where we fit into the Otakon panel schedule, you shall know as well. And if you can’t make it out (if you happen to live on another continent, for example), fear not; I intend to record the thing and make the video available to the masses.
• Moderated (with OGT) audio reactions to a certain infamous novel, though I wasn’t able to participate in the latest.
• Recorded and edited, at long last, my reading of Cuchlann, with Cuchlann’s aid. You’ll see this soon; look to his blog.
• Re-read Dune, which is still as fun as ever, but I always have to laugh at how much of a caricature Baron Harkonnen is.
• Read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which isn’t bad, but, in my opinion, suffers whenever Chabon succumbs to certain tiring lit-genre conventions. I expected a novel that is essentially Bakuman set during the American golden age of comics to be a little more innovative, I suppose.
• Re-read the first Shakugan no Shana novel, for some reason, and thereafter had some ideas on light novel illustrations versus the sorts of illustrations that show up from time to time in western young adult novels. Namely, light novel illustrations seem focused, by and large, on characters; when backgrounds appear, they’re more or less subsumed by dynamic personages. In western illustrated novels, however, scenery remains a significant concern — see this bit by Scott Westerfeld, for example. Perhaps this has to do with the artistic traditions at work, but I’m certain that there are literary ramifications to drawing attention to particular narrative facets by way of illustration. Light novels, after all, tend to be heavy on dialogue and physical activity, and keep lengthy exposition to a minimum as a result; they probably aren’t relying on their illustrations to get setting across, all things considered, so perhaps they’re the result of the fusion of prose fiction with a particular anime/manga tradition that prioritizes human dynamics over pretty pictures (that being a contrast to another anime/manga tradition, one in which pretty pictures are very important).
• Started reading Tigana, about which I’ve never heard an unkind word. I suppose it’s not bad so far, but I’m disappointed to find that, in some ways, both the writing style and the narrative itself are somehow “loose,” as if the editor half-assed it. And Tigana has reminded me of how bored I am with sex in fiction. I mean, we’re talking about something as fundamental to our being organisms as eating and breathing. In fact, eating, breathing, and sex can all be interesting, but it’s not so easy to render them so in prose. Perhaps this serves as a measure of the depth of my nerddom, but I’m generally much more interested in all the awkward business leading up to sex — that awkward business can make the terminal sex all the more satisfying, when it doesn’t drag on too long.
• On a whim, rewatched the first few episodes of Toradora!, which I suppose became a proper rewatch about two minutes in. My God is this show fantastic. I had forgotten how much I love these characters. But now I’m remembering. Remembering love. Yeah, you know.

Though I’ve not been idle in my absence, I suppose I’d better hurry up and get this internet thing resolved. After all, it’s about time that we dove back into Strike Witches…

Ogiue’s appearance marks a shift in Genshiken from loosely organized slice of otaku life to something a little more like a recognizable romance plot — but, I emphasize, only a little more like a recognizable romance plot, as Genshiken has that fantastic way of maintaining absolute subtlety, subverting every trope in the book, and hitting a little too close to home all at once. Genshiken has a generally interesting structure, in fact, involving the buildup of overlapping styles, and I can only adequately represent it with one of those enigmatic graphics I so enjoy.

These are, at any rate, the major divisions I make when I read Genshiken. The Madarame/Kasukabe subplot is significant enough to drive the story on some occasions, and sustained enough to warrant mentioning; the Comiket/doujin arc is a leveling-up moment for both the Genshiken and Sasahara (both of whom, lo and behold, actually do something, and continue to do things thereafter); and, for me, the most significant shift occurs when Ogiue brings her quirks to the clubroom table.

In a way, Ogiue is the most “character-like” of all the characters; she’s easily identifiable as both tsundere and a potential love interest with a tragic past. Of course, her co-characters peg her character traits, too, and her “tragic past” involves a yaoi doujin, so the spirit of Genshiken remains intact throughout. But the way things play out for Ogiue isn’t unheard-of — she softens up to the other club members over time (she’s one of those classic-type tsundere characters, I guess), and she learns to live with her past with the help of friends and a love interest.

Here’s something I find interesting, though: why doesn’t Madarame go for Ogiue?

He has every reason to, doesn’t he? Given his lolicon tendencies and his preference for tsundere, Ogiue is precisely the kind of manga character he likes (literally!). When she’s finally talked into cosplay, she even dresses as Madarame’s favorite Kujibiki Unbalance character, who, in terms of broad traits, isn’t all that unlike her.

Wouldn’t Ogiue provide Madarame with a distraction from the girl he loves but can’t have? She might even be able to relate — she liked a guy, once, and suddenly found that he was beyond her reach. The circumstances were different, I know, but that doesn’t mean the two situations don’t contain some seed of commonality that might serve to bring Madarame and Ogiue together. One has to wonder — but, in the end, I can think of a few reasons why things don’t play out like that.

Firstly, maybe Madarame’s just that into Kasukabe. Maybe he’s holding out hope not because he particularly wants to, but because he can’t help it. That’s how it goes, isn’t it? And, anyway, Madarame’s the type to let his circumstances carry him where they will; I suppose this is why the fujoshi girls have him pegged as a sou-uke, a “total receiver” of…well, you know. For anything to develop, the girl in question would probably have to make the first move, and Ogiue certainly wouldn’t go that far.

Secondly, maybe this is a simple case of 2D preferences not making the leap to the 3D world. I, like Madarame, have a thing for flat-chested (albeit not underage) tsundere characters (plus glasses, plus nekomimi, plus forehead…goddammit Shimoku-sensei, get out of my head!), but I don’t require those qualities in my real-life love interests. Hell, it’s not as if “tsundere” is something that applies well to reality; people are, after all, a little too crazy for neat classification, as the social sciences continue to discover. I seriously doubt that Madarame evaluates Ogiue (not to mention Kasukabe) based on his 2D preferences, their actually being manga characters notwithstanding.

And, thirdly, the possibility of an Ogiue/Madarame end may be precluded rather early in Ogiue’s tenure as Genshiken member, as she may fall for Sasahara earlier than is readily obvious. This time through Genshiken, I noticed myself picking up on more of Shimoku’s brilliantly-situated hints, and while I might’ve initially wondered about the abruptness of the Ogiue/Sasahara setup, I have no such complaint now. It’s possible that Ogiue has developed a healthy thing for Sasahara as early as the explosive doujin production crisis control meeting, which occurs only a few chapters after her appearance…

…and it seems likely that her feelings begin to take shape before the end of the doujin arc, given her reaction to Sasahara when she sneaks into the following winter Comiket (or Comic Fest, or whatever they call it).

It’s the resultant carelessness (with a little help from Ouno’s accoutrements) that gives her away, in the end. And I especially love this scene. I mean, check out Ogiue’s expression here; you have to wonder if this is the moment at which she realizes her feelings. It’s panels like that one that completely and utterly justify all the sacrifices made on the altar of fandom.

But I digress. While it may seem somewhat logical that Madarame should at least develop a passing crush on Ogiue, even if he isn’t prepared to date her properly, logic often doesn’t factor into the decisions we make regarding the people around us. The gut acts first, you may recall. And Genshiken is nothing if not authentic — so authentic, in fact, that it can be as difficult to read as it is enjoyable. But, lest I spiral off into another, more personal digression, I’ll end here.

(Because I failed to namedrop him anywhere else: SDS is, of course, the undisputed king of Ogi fandom in the English-speaking world. He has written about her at length on his blog, aptly titled Ogiue Maniax. But of course you know about SDS already if you even know about someone like me.)

I picked up Genshiken for the first time back when I had only just gotten back into anime, manga, and all related accoutrements after a few years of Japanese pop-cultural drought. And it left quite an impression on me, to be sure, but my experience this time around is a bit different. Consider, for example, that, in terms of sheer hours watched, I’ve seen about twice as much anime now as I had when I finished Genshiken the first time — not to mention that the amount of manga I’ve consumed by now renders the amount I’d read at that point positively pitiful, and, in the greater scheme of things, I still haven’t read nearly as much as quite a lot of people.

While the character I admire most, for various reasons, is probably Madarame, I’m undoubtedly most like Sasahara. He’s the professional That Guy of the group, and I share his talent for leaving no impression at all on anyone without putting forth sustained effort. But, more than that, I, like Sasahara, have always been something of a multiclass nerd, with some experience in a variety of frowned-upon pursuits.

Presently my level distribution probably looks something like this:

• Level 3 gamer (favored enemies: CRPG, puzzle, strategy)
• Level 1 role-player
• Level 2 computer nerd
• Level 4 otaku (subclass: weeaboo)
• Level 6 litterateur (schools: speculomancy, canonism)

This would’ve looked different the first time I read Genshiken. I was still figuring out what it really meant to be an anime fan, and while I had been to conventions at that point (two Otakons, even), and I’d stumbled haphazardly into blogging, I was still firmly rooted in the American fandom of the mid to late 90s. I had yet to really puzzle through moe, I hadn’t seen Gundam or Macross, and things like Touhou and Vocaloid made no sense to me at all.

So I think it’s safe to say that certain of Genshiken’s self-referential moments were simply beyond me. And I rated it 10/10 on MAL (MML?) anyway. You can imagine how much fun I’m having with it this time through.

For one thing, those between-chapter bits, which usually amount to in-universe fanboying about Kujibiki Unbalance, ring truer to me now. Consider this one, from the second volume:

… Shinobu’s glasses symbolize her attempt to cut herself off from the outside world. And when she removes them her personality changes. Similarly, when Maori-san takes out her braids, it symbolizes the release of a repressed part of her personality. … [Del-Rey trans.]

Madarame laments the descent of the innocent choosing of favorite characters into “an examination of the most minute and meaningless details.” And maybe I would’ve agreed with him in early 2008 — but come on! This is important stuff, I say; we need to tease out these little details. But that opinion is probably part of why I’m still a relatively obscure blogger despite having been at it for two years, so I suppose it’s debatable.

I’m also getting more out of those chapters which are especially heavy on the fan culture. The thirteenth chapter, in which the club builds Gunpla models, is a good example. I always understood what was going on there, on some level — I mean, if you’ve been an anime fan for longer than three minutes, you don’t have to have seen Gundam to recognize the RX-78 and the Zaku II. But this time I went about it a little differently; I saw this panel…

…and thought, “Hey, it’s a GM, and a Za — no, wait, this is no Zaku, boy!” and figured that, yeah, now I’m probably much better equipped to enjoy this thing than I was before. But it isn’t just the meta-references; now I can more or less understand why the Genshiken devotes so much time to the assembly of cheap little pieces of plastic.

Consider Smithy’s adventures with his Dollfie Yoko. Upon glancing through those pictures, two things occurred to me at once:

• This is a piece of plastic lying in the grass.
• This is something more than a piece of plastic lying in the grass.

Of course the latter is more relevant. I’m still not really into figures, but they make sense to me now as means by which fans can interface with both the art they appreciate and the fandom itself. I suppose this is how I use DVD box sets; I buy them not for the “hard copy” of the show in question so much as for the physical object, the proof of my support for the artistic work the DVDs represent. Box sets can be displayed, discussed, and lent to friends; they’re foci of fan activity. And while a figure and a DVD are fundamentally different sorts of thing — there’s a case to be made for figures and models as sculpture, I’m guessing — I don’t think the analogy is wholly misguided.

At any rate, I get why Ouno reacts as she does when Kasukabe breaks the leg off of her poor high-grade Gouf, the result of a week’s worth of effort, each second of which brought her closer to other Gundam fans, and to Gundam, and to Ramba Ral — and who doesn’t want to be closer to Ramba Ral? Monetary value is one thing; value accrued through time and effort spent or through aesthetic and social use is quite another.

If put to the knife or something, I suppose I’d conclude that I appreciate Genshiken most for the sheer depth of its relevance to the lives of anime fans, something I understand now more than ever. But let’s not forget that the intertextual stuff is also pretty great.

But what might that be?

This panel is a good place to start. It’s not as if public communication is entirely prudish; our media give us stories about sex, we have to put up with shady periodicals whose writers devote their lives to unearthing the sex lives of celebrities, and so on. This is usually glamorous, idealized sex. But what we don’t want to know is what it’s like when the married couple next door gets it on, or what our friends did with their significant others last night. This isn’t glamorous. This is real people screwing, and it isn’t interesting so much as embarrassing and awkward insofar as it’s private. I’m assuming that most of us live in a place where it isn’t generally acceptable to go around explaining how you did x to y last night.

This is what Octave does. It gives us characters who are remarkable in their mundanity, who aren’t even especially likable in and of themselves, and makes us watch them fuck. And “make love,” too, but we see the fucking first.

It feels like picking someone at random from a crowd, following them home, and watching from the closet while they (re-)consummate the relationship of their choice. It feels like voyeurism; it feels like you, the reader, really shouldn’t be present through all this. Hell, it feels that way when the characters aren’t screwing, when they’re just fretting over the problem of how to carve a niche for oneself in a society that doesn’t care much about You the Individual. These are the kinds of things we deliberately don’t tell people about.

Octave is about a former teen idol struggling to make a living in Tokyo who, by chance, meets a freelance composer in a laundromat. Freelance composer uses former teen idol for sex. Relationship ensues. And of course this is an atypical love story in that this is the kind of thing that actually happens, in many cases.

The delivery is all over the place, too, throughout the first few chapters. Disorientation seems to be the dominant narrative philosophy. It doesn’t feel good, no, but it’s actually executed rather well, I think; as the manga progresses, things pan out, begin to flow and cohere and make more sense. It may be the nearest thing to literary stream of consciousness I’ve seen in manga (whether by design or creative accident matters little to me).

What we’re given, then, amounts to a series of private moments in the life of a rather neurotic protagonist. It’s really terrible to watch; it’s the kind of thing we’re likely to read manga to escape. But there’s something about it…something that keeps me reading, anyway.

It certainly isn’t any particular affection on my part for the characters; while I don’t hate any of them, I wouldn’t exactly want to befriend most of them, either. I’m probably fascinated by the narrative technique, to a degree; you may know how easily I’m won over by that sort of thing. But it must be said that, uncomfortable as it is, I do consider the story genuinely good. Happy moments occur throughout, and these are made all the more satisfying by what the characters (and the reader!) have to endure to reach them — and for all of Yukino’s infuriating qualities, I find it difficult not to care about her many, varied problems. If Octave makes you squirm (and, who knows, it may not), at least it makes an effort at rewarding your perseverance.

And, anyway, if we find ourselves trapped among the sexual artifices of the mass media, and unable to discuss sex in the most real terms — well, maybe that’s where fiction comes in.

One of my high school English teachers once said that good literature doesn’t make things easy for you; good literature disorients, confuses, and otherwise makes the reader uncomfortable. And, while I’ve always been skeptical of statements that take the form “good literature does [x/not x]” (even if I, er, make such claims), somehow that notion has stuck with me. So I suppose that, at the end of the day, I have to respect Octave for troubling the waters a little.

If you caught the Aoi Hana anime a few seasons back, you may remember that sense of separation between characters and backgrounds, which lent the whole thing a stage-like feel. This character/background contrast isn’t really present in the manga; quite often Shimura draws panels without much in the way of backgrounds at all. In fact, while the anime gave the impression of a transparent, stage-like fourth wall, the manga opaques our view into the world of its characters. Characters’ thoughts are often presented in otherwise empty panels; without visual context, it can be difficult to determine which thoughts belong to whom. The end result isn’t so much disorienting (oh, we’ll talk about Octave later) as…simply frustrating, maybe, but not in a bad way. Our thwarted attempts to figure the characters out lend a sense of suspense to the thing. And if we have trouble orienting ourselves relative to Aoi Hana’s setting, so do the characters.

The plays-and-books-within-an-anime/manga remain intact — or, I should say that they survived the transition from manga to anime — but they’re probably a bit more prevalent throughout the manga, if only because there’s more plot in the manga than would fit in eleven animated episodes. On one occasion, even Fumi attempts the drama thing — while in the anime that simply would have seemed appropriate, as Fumi’s attempt to seize agency as the main character in the play of her own life, in the manga it comes across as an attempt (incidental or otherwise) to find a background to inhabit in the first place, a potential means of escape from solid white and black panels. But, as you can see above, even stage backdrops are often omitted. Readers and characters are left adrift in uncertainty — or perhaps they’re meant to face the stark, utter certainty of convention, the pervasive foe of alternative sexuality.

The chapter titles, too, are rather literary, often evoking lesbian novelists and poets. There seems to be something of a tradition of those in Japan. And that strikes me as odd not because it’s odd in itself, but because attempts to (re)construct a gay literary tradition in English literature seem to be arduous and uncertain affairs. Most of us know about the gay modernists — Wilde, Woolf, and so on — and about certain isolated “deviants” such as Whitman, and that’s about it, at least prior to the era during which overt homosexuality would no longer result in prompt banning of the offending literature. We talk about potentially gay historical authors in hushed, bemused tones, as if we were their contemporaries trying to incubate a scandal. I’m sure there’s something to be said for the tradition that produces yuri manga versus western traditions of GLBT narratives, but, whatever it is, I don’t suppose I’m properly equipped to say it.

I seem to have digressed a bit (as I’m wont to do). But that’s alright; I’m running out of things to say anyhow. You’ll probably hear more from me on Aoi Hana when I get to Hourou Musuko, which isn’t yuri, exactly, but should fit into the present project quite well regardless.

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.

3.31.2010 2:53:46 “I’ll read one or two chapters of a Kozue Amano manga before bed” = STUPID PONTIFUS, STUPID

Actually I’ve had a strange relationship with Amano’s manga so far. I love it for being the basis of what is probably my favorite anime series in terms of raw enjoyability (which series that would be should be pretty obvious by now) — but, at the same time, I find the Aria anime generally more enjoyable than its manga precursor. So I suppose I have, semi-consciously and based on inadequate evidence, made Amano into a pretty good writer whose writing might benefit from a little editorial intervention (but whose fantastic art, unfortunately, has not been reproduced in the transition to animation).

Being so new, Amanchu! can’t suffer by comparison to an adaptation. But I can and do compare it to the Aria manga, as well as to things like Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou and IO, though the comparison with Aria (and Aqua) is probably more relevant, and not only because of the common authorship.

It barely needs to be mentioned that the art here is similar to Aria’s. But it’s not just a matter of having been drawn by Amano’s hand. Despite being more overtly Japanese, the setting — a seaside town full of enough pretty things to serve as a conduit to the enjoyment of everything — isn’t wholly unlike Neo-Venezia, nor is the focus on a protagonist who serves as a “tour guide” relative to said pretty things much different from Aria’s setup. Which is fine, because, as I said, I always thought Amano’s art was just fine as it was.

One of my problems with the Aria anime (problems? With Aria!?) — and it’s probably not something that could’ve been helped — is the loss of the dynamism that makes Amano’s character art as enjoyable as it is. There’s always a sense of movement about these characters, even when they do nothing more than stand around and talk, which, for me, adds a level of engagement to the reading experience that not many artists achieve (though Bakuman comes to mind here). I suppose I do, in the end, think Amano’s characters look more kinetic on the page than in their moving picture iterations — which may sound strange, but I take it as a testament to Amano’s mastery of her craft.

I suppose it’s possible that, for some readers, Amanchu! will be a little too evocative of Aria. I mean, those school uniforms look the slightest bit familiar. And what’s that Mars cat doing here? But the differences between the two series are notable. Amanchu! is altogether more suburban, for one thing — which I like, as suburbia is something that often comes up in things I read (not to mention things I write). It’s probably a bit less girl-centric than Aria in terms of character demographics; the core band of tight compadres — the “girl band” as it were — includes one guy, as of the fifteenth chapter. And the characters here are generally less benign than Aria’s. For example:

Yeah, I’m pretty much sold on this character. Aria needed someone like this — like Akira, just a little more unhinged. Or maybe it didn’t, but I don’t care. Ai knows what it means to be a badass elder sibling (Otouto-kun might disagree, but he would, wouldn’t he?).

All in all, I think I’m enjoying the early chapters of Amanchu! more than I enjoyed the beginning of Aria/Aqua, which I suppose is a good thing. But the difference in “enjoyment level” between the two isn’t phenomenal — say, one point on a ten-point scale — and I like both quite a bit. At this point I’m curious to see whether Amano will take Amanchu! in a more “serious” direction, which would certainly be possible, or whether we’ll get what amounts basically to Aria in a contemporary setting, though I don’t suppose that would be altogether a bad thing.

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.

(P.S. I have been posting here frequently. If for whatever reason this excites you, I’ll warn you not to get your hopes up. Semester two of grad school is just beginning…)

(P.P.S. Though I guess it would be nice if I could pull out 500 words or so at least once a week. We’ll see.)

IO’s tricky when it comes to the harem bit. It’s rather more than harem, but the transition between harem and everything else is remarkably smooth, if indeed the manga transitions from harem; at no point does the harem become invisible, so to speak. Better to say that IO begins predominantly harem-genred, and stacks on a new genre every half-dozen chapters or so, until we end up with a Frankenstein monster composed of slice of life, supernatural mystery, political thriller, family drama, psychological horror, and diving equipment instruction manual, among other things.

The result is that IO is about many things. Ostensibly, though, it’s about this dude.

He being Taiyo Nakahara (or Nakabaru, or something, nobody seems to know for sure), that lecherous high school guy whose exploits form the core of any respectable harem romance. But only at first glance.

He isn’t that lecherous, for one thing. He just has a healthy respect for certain attributes of the sex in which he’s interested. Yeah, he has much to say on the topic of picking up women, but he never really harasses anyone. And, yeah, he’s a fan of porno. But so were you, in high school. Don’t lie to me. At any rate Taiyo isn’t anything like that obnoxious Urusei Yatsura guy, and that makes him alright, as far as I’m concerned.

Even his accidental lechery is remarkably rare — one or two (in)convenient falls, and one or two unintended gropes, as far as I remember. Give or take, anyway; suffice to say that he isn’t as clumsy as, say, Keitaro Urashima. And he’s generally more respectable than Keitaro in that his successes, those incidents of his being a decent human being, tend to be neither accidental nor incidental. He succeeds because he really, genuinely cares about people with a fiery passion. So fiery, in fact, that he’s practically hot-blooded. His great-great-great-grandchildren will be super robot pilots, probably.

Taiyo makes mistakes, of course, usually by being bullheaded or imperceptive; he isn’t likable 100% of the time, and that’s the way it should be. He only truly and profoundly screws up once — but it is one hell of a screwup, it must be said, one with lingering effects, one he can never really make right. But it’s the sort of event that might be interpreted differently by each reader, morally speaking, and, for my part, it didn’t make me hate the guy; it just made him seem all the more human. More than that, it’s a mistake caused in large part by Taiyo’s hotbloodedness and willingness to give so much of himself to those in need. His virtues become flaws — or, rather, they’re revealed as simply traits, personality attributes with positive and negative repercussions.

In short, Taiyo is remarkable because he shows a bit of character. He’s sympathetic well beyond the level of reader-surrogate, even when we don’t necessarily agree with him. I’m not trying to condemn harem protagonists generally here, though perhaps that’s what I’ve done; I’ll try to pull away from that by saying that Taiyo’s development from apparent stereotype into complex entity struck me as notable in any of the contexts IO provides.

(If you do indeed decide to seek out and read IO, you may wish to do so with Baka-Raptor’s harem simultaneity requirement in mind. I didn’t consider it at the time, and I wish I had.)

Consider Aria. Food is a popular gift in Neo-Venezia and a significant element of at least a few of the celebrations we see. Old friends gather and catch up around the table; characters separated by physical distance send one another food, or include food in their rare instances of personal interaction (Grandma being the prime example of this). Hell, in the fifth episode of Aria the Natural, food serves a supernatural purpose. But there isn’t exactly a designated Potluck Dinner Day each year, a day when everyone is expected to give and receive. The giving of food is more incidental, more spontaneous, more pointed — and perhaps more meaningful. In the first half of Aria the Natural 19, for example, Akari and Alice bring Aika pudding not because they’re obligated to, but because they know Aika well enough to know it’ll make her feel better (and in Aqua, at least — I can’t remember if it’s true of the show — it’s a doubly good call on Akari and Alice’s part, as Aika wanted pudding anyway, but failed to secure it previously).

We do see the Neo-Venezian Festa del Bòcolo, when women receive roses from their admirers — but, insofar as the nature of the gift is determined by the tradition of the celebration, it’s more akin to Valentine’s Day (or White Day, as it were).

Haibane Renmei has that festival with the colored nuts — I don’t recall any other festival in Haibane Renmei, but it’s been quite a while since I saw it, so I could be wrong. Again, custom determines the nature of the gift, even if it allows for some degree of personalization. Though the nut festival certainly lends something to the show’s ending, other instances of giving — instances not tied to a particular celebration — stand out more clearly in my memory — the wing-warmer things, for example, or the wing ointment (Rakka’s wings get a lot of attention, come to think of it). Wasn’t there an umbrella in there somewhere, too? And some pea soup?

Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou more or less eschews the festival thing entirely. Well, that’s not true; there are little local celebrations, but they’re more spontaneous and less organized than the festival days of Neo-Venezia and Glie. Certainly none of them revolve around buying and giving; material things have a particular significance in YKK insofar as they’re often hard to come by, and, though the setting does seem to include money, to some extent, bartering seems a viable alternative. Things given have tangible and metaphoric weight. Alpha hands out quite a bit of coffee over the course of the manga, but we know just what she has to go through to secure coffee beans and fresh water, a process perhaps reflective of her interpersonal efforts. And when she decides to take a lengthy journey, Alpha leaves her scooter — her means of exploring her place, her home, even her means of transmuting “place” into “home” — to Takahiro, who is quickly growing old enough to inherit place/home from his forebears. Each act of giving — save perhaps the act of giving alcohol to Alpha for the lulz — exists independent of mandatory, customary celebration days, and stands on its own as a uniquely weighty event.

It seems, then, that I’m working toward the idea that a Christmas-like celebration would cheapen the giving in the aforementioned stories, but that’s not really what I mean to say — that is, I didn’t mean to say it when I started this little post. At any rate, if you can think of any counter-examples, examples of speculative slice of life franchises with holidays resembling Christmas in the United States (or any other country where it’s somewhat commercial, for that matter), I’d certainly like to know. Mine are shaping up to be a bit one-sided.