#moé

[mgdln333]

[shiro-jisan]

From the Iyashikei. Page on Facebook…

Find here… Illustration by contribute_al, posted by the artist at pixiv

[algernoninwonderland]

I think that the presence of male characters in Utena was a significant part of what prevented it from having a significant otaku dudebro fanbase

(also it was Too Fucking Weird for many of them but that's not the point of this post)

The absence of male characters in so many contemporary anime, from K-On to Revue Starlight (arguably Madoka also fits that definition because who even is Kyousuke?), really is a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, not having hetero romance thrown at you can be refreshing, and it may allow for some truly good character writing for these girls, sometimes (not always) it allows for Gender Stuff to happen and that's all well and good.

On the other hand, that absence of male characters allows (predominantly heterosexual) male viewers (and otakus in particular) to be much more possessive of these shows’ characters.

Since there’s no male character standing in the way between them and the characters, that possessiveness is much easier. Of course you also find that in Idol culture and Love Live! and all of these other shows come to mind.

If you ever look for doujins for any of these shows on a site other than Dynasty Reader (and I don’t understand why you’d ever want to do that), the quantity of faceless reader-insert male characters (which makes projecting oneself supposedly easier, I guess) truly is astounding. This is what so many of these fans want.

The people producing these shows, these franchises, are all plenty aware of that absence of male characters and what it implies for its audience. It’s not just a creative decision, it’s a business practice. It makes selling your product to adolescents and adults with disposable income that much easier.

Utena has boys and men. It tells an uneasy and oft uncomfortable story. You, as an audience member, are not really invited to possess these characters, the show has one or two things to say about possessiveness, too. I'm guessing that acted as some sort of repellent for a certain crowd. I am glad that it did.

It's been fascinating, watching people like Naoko Yamada and Tomohiro Furukawa walk that tightrope between selling a product and actually telling an uncompromised story about girls (and the tensions in Furukawa's work are much more salient in that regard).

The Bloom into You anime has a more diverse cast of characters and features plenty of homosociality, but since it is more grounded and some of its characters happen to be male, since Yuu and Touko are in what is explicitly a relationship, since they are not very moé, the BluRay sold well but it never made Bocchi money or RevStar money (which isn't to say that these shows are bad, they are really quite good, but they are also much easier to market to an otaku audience). Also yes, the anime landscape and its market have obviously changed significantly between Utena and K-On, I'll get back to that point in a later post.

[chipstuetenmeer]

„Spür wie sich die Welt um mich verändert, doch ich komm nicht mit.“

- moé, allein im Regen

[mizulynart]

I both like and dislike how this turned out, I need to study more (*´-`)

[dukeofriven]

So one thing basically every Clone Wars fan will tell you is how hard the show worked to make you care about the clones- how they became distinct personalities and individuals whose stories you grew invested in and who transformed into people who really mattered. Except me. I won’t tell you that because... okay, look, I watched that entire show and Rex is the only one whose name I remembered because its the name they said the most! Im sorry! I - I can’t tell any of them apart. They also have the exact same face and the exact same voice and the same job and the same basic soldier-template personality with really fairly minor variations and like moé anime the only difference is the hair - and most of them still just have buzz cuts! And they all wear identical clothing with minor colour variations! I’m sorry! I CAN’T TELL THE GODDAMN CLONES APART AND IT MAKES THEM REALLY HARD TO RETAIN IN THE MEMORY!  “But what about Fives?” Which one was Fives? Was he the guy who looked and sounded identical to a hundred other characters except sometimes you could see he had a small ‘5′ tattoo on his temple? Gonna be honest - not really making him stand out from the crowd! So many of the nicknames sounds the same too - there’s Wolf and Fox and Monkey and Chunk and Rock and Meaty and Crunch and Blast and Hardcrack and its like a goddamn Transformers convention up in here, and so many of the poor buggers get named and gunned down in the same episode, os the same scene, and sometimes only posthumously as Rex goes ‘We lost Flunk and Skunk and then Punk got eaten by a grue” and I’m - I’m sorry. I’m sorry!

I’M SORRY I DON’T MUCH CARE FOR THE CLONES BECAUSE I REALLY GENUINELY STRUGGLE TO TELL THEM APART!

[murs]

French moé partout (Contribution de irresolu.)

[ez3rose]

Voila heu... 2-3 dessins vite fait. Je sais pas.