What and how can the anime industry in Japan get out of the moe gutter

My feelings when people complain about "too much moe" or "the state of the anime industry nowadays"

edited 14th Feb '14 7:47:20 PM by Ruise

Loves feel-good animation a whole lot.

I'd like that, too (though my wallet does not).

But - really, 99.99% of everything is crud. Just look at the book industry. The biggest book genre is probably (trashy) romance novels.

And yet - when people think of books, they don't think Twilight - they think Leo Tolstoy or Charles Dickens or Harry Potter.

It's similar with movies - people usually think of the best of the best when they think of movies, not the worst of the lot (not porn vids).

What anime has to do is make most people think of Fullmetal Alchemist when they think of anime, not tentacle rape or pedophilic cartoons.

edited 14th Feb '14 7:47:21 PM by probablyinsane

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.

No, that's just your taste for realism. Not all anime has to be like that. Reality is going to be a shitty reference point if you're trying to write a bigger-than-life personality or someone who's not even human, for example. Fuck, there's plenty of both moe and 'ambituous' titles, so I really don't know why you're still complaining.

edited 14th Feb '14 7:47:37 PM by danna45

"And you must be Jonathan Joestar!" - Sue

You're not familiar with media in general, are you?

After reading KSPAM's list, I just have no idea what is and isn't moe anymore.

Girls punching stuff— not moe

girls punching stuff in the occasional presence of a male character — potentially moe?

Character design and name alone is +50 moe points for pretty cure I think.

I'm just confused now.

edited 15th Feb '14 1:52:46 AM by kiukiuclk

Good Moe - if it's mainly there so that you can sympathize with the character - like a Woobie

Bad Moe - shamelessly uses moe to turn characters into pets or objects of fetishism/misogyny/power fantasy, rather than as wholesome characters (that you can just relate with)

From: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Analysis/Moe

Plants are aliens, and fungi are nanomachines.

it's how the girls punch stuff in a Dragon Ball Esque fashion

Sample from an earlier season:

Watch Symphogear

There's also characters like Kintolesky that prevent the series from being completely moe as well

Watch Symphogear

I assume what KSPAM meant is that Precure is a franchise aimed at little girls, so moe otaku are only a periphery demographic for it rather than the primary audience the way it is for something like Nanoha or K-On.

Moe essentially started when the industry noticed the periphery demographic that developed around shows like Sailor Moon and Card Captor Sakura, so aesthetic similarities to shoujo shows is natural. There's really no way to argue that Japan should stop making shows aimed at girls without sounding like a sexist pig, so I assume that the topic creator and people making similar arguments exclude those and concentrate on otaku-aimed shows instead.

How can you tell what a show is aimed at?(and why does it have to be aimed at only one group? Honestly, that makes very little sense). Though Demongodofchaos is the best little girl name ever.

There are some moe shows (Super Sonico, probably the the idol show, maybe a few others), but, due to the omnipresent Generic Cuteness, getting into "degrees of moe" is kinda ill-defined and pretty subjective. I think the number of shows you could get a majority vote as being moe is actually pretty small.

Not sure there is really anything to save anime from.

IMO Sonic isn't moe. But he's a cool dude. Maybe Amy would count though? Apparently Sonic Boom is making her less annoying though, which should be good.

Precure airs at 8:30 AM and has marketing/merchandising targetted towards towards girls. Shows like Nanoha air at late night and are marketed in otaku-oriented magazines like Megami/Nyantype.

Certainly you don't have to aim at one group exclusively, and the most successful anime shows of all stripes have periphery demographics of some sort; Precure/Sailor Moon/Nanoha all had significant numbers of adult male fans that helped inspire the creation of male-targetted magical girl shows like Nanoha, while K-On famously was popular enough with teenage girls that Disney Channel Japan picked up reruns, for instance.

Still, the realities of TV business dictate that you have to pick a primary target audience when making TV shows. Weekend early morning shows are aimed at children and TV stations will cancel shows that don't get sufficient ratings amongst kids (or refuse to air shows that they don't think with appeal to said audience), while TV stations mostly reserve their primetime slots for long running megafranchises (One Piece, Detective Conan, etc.) and live action shows. Late night TV slots can be purchased for a pretty cheap price ala informercials, so this is where most anime end up airing. However, without any funding from a TV station and with very little prospects of ad revenue due to the bad airtimes^note most of the time, the anime production committee don't even bother to sell them and just air ads for their own stuff you're dependent on disc sales to actually break even. Either that, or use the anime as a loss leader for merchandise/manga/novel sales, or in a few rare cases just make a show for prestige with no hope of breaking even.

edited 15th Feb '14 8:15:47 AM by RandomDude

As a side note, does anyone else find the concept of a moe gutter somewhat amusing?

"I'll take all of your rainwater, Roof-onii-chan"

edited 15th Feb '14 8:02:46 AM by Elfive

Aaand now I have an idea for a horrible, horrible hentai.

The list was more or less designed with the criteria of "is the focal point of the show cute girls doing cute things?" DBZ-esque martial arts fights are a big mark against overbearing cuteness, but harem genre often relies on moe to sell when fanservice isn't quite cutting it, so they tend to have at least one or two moe demographic characters. Hence "potentially moe".

I've got new mythological machinery, and very handsome supernatural scenery. Goodfae: a mafia web serial

Why should they? It's not like the whole stereotype of an anime viewer has now been formed into an otaku who devels in watching school girl based animes.

Dakota's blog An odd agent of justice

I'm not saying that larger-than-life personalities should not be created; I'm not even saying that all anime has to realistic. I merely stated that writers need to know how humans interact with each other and know their psychologies in order to write characters with genuine emotion for audiences to care about and sympathize with. Mainstream citizens won't care if they can't connect with the characters of an anime they're watching; besides, the point of this thread is to come up with ways for anime to stop relying on sales of otaku-related merchandise and otaku anime DV Ds (I will define otaku in this thread as someone who is a big fan of moe and fanservice anime and wants all the merchandise of that show) and start to earn more money and to make more anime than this.

I have watched media of all types. Also, all the points I made in this post to danna 45 apply to you. What are you talking about? There have been many TV shows with excellent writing, acting and characters. Examples include: Live Action: The Wire, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, House of Cards (US and UK shows), Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock, and early Modern Family. Animated TV shows with the aforementioned characteristics: the DCAU, Samurai Jack, The Spectacular Spider Man, The Simpsons (season 1-8), Ducktales, Archer and the Venture Brothers. There is plenty of well-written and acted media out there.

x6 I agree, there can and should be anime with many demographics in mind and be sucessful, both in Japan and abroad. The problem is that those few moe and fanservice shows make up most of Japanese anime DVD and merchandising sales. If we let these types of anime continue to dominate these sales, and thus have the anime industry overrely only on these types of anime, I believe the industry will crash and burn. If the anime industry relies on a variety of genres, and progressively have the Japanese public care about anime, the anime industry will be in a better place and possibly be in a golden age.

What I meant by moe gutter is that the anime industry is relying so much on otaku based anime that some have made only that genre, thus having the industry fall into a gutter, or a hole.

edited 15th Feb '14 2:29:52 PM by Buzzinator

"You can run, but you can't hide from the Buzzinator!"

Appealing to your target audience is generally considered to be a wise market strategy, you know

I've got new mythological machinery, and very handsome supernatural scenery. Goodfae: a mafia web serial

Yes, for the most part, that is true. However, these otaku-related anime and merchandise are presumably the only things keeping the anime industry afloat. I would rather want a famed animation studios like TMS-Telcom to make many all-ages anime and make up money from international audiences than make a few measly moe and fanservice anime that would collectively earn them profits and stay afloat. I also want to see a wide variety of anime being made. Heck, I even want to see an American animation studios (Warner Bros. Animation) and a Japanese animation animation studios (TMS-Telcom, Studio Ghibli, Bones or even Toei Animation) collaborate on a 26-episode anime series to be aired simultaneously on [adult swim]'s Toonami, HBO, and The CW/ Broadcast Syndication in the United States merely to bring in another anime boom. I would also have that bring in more variety to anime.

edited 15th Feb '14 2:43:29 PM by Buzzinator

"You can run, but you can't hide from the Buzzinator!"

Having an industry make most of their money doing X is a pretty good way to make sure they keep doing it.

The anime industry will get out of the moe gutter when it stops making them money.

edit: Hah! x3

edited 15th Feb '14 2:32:49 PM by kiukiuclk

I know what you meant, I just thought the alternate reading was too funny not to share.

The idea that moe is the only thing that otaku buy has always been had absolutely no basis in reality, unless we're counting things like Attack on Titan and Code Geass and Tiger and Bunny and Jojo's Bizarre Adventue and Initial D and Durarara and Gintama and Sengoku Basara and Darker Than Black as moe now. In which case moe would be so diverse that I don't see what the problem is.

Meanwhile there are lots of "cute girls doing cute things" shows that sell <5000 copies per volume, often way worse.

edited 15th Feb '14 2:45:21 PM by RandomDude

I don't think most writers also majored in psychology

and even psychologists can be easily grating on people and unaware of their effects on others (I've had lots of therapists, they're just as capable of interacting with you as differently as anyone else and they're even more capable of generalizing who you are than others at times because they have the studies to back themselves up)

and even if they did major in psychology a lot of the time your average human won't relate to what's considered the most accurate form of humanity known either simply because of bias/denial + culture

and most importantly basing them off other fictional characters is just easier (and still makes enough money as far as they're concerned)

MMORPGs are serious business.

tl;dr don't expect authors to have done all the research, because if they did they wouldn't be writing books/tv shows/movies, they'd be writing manuals and reference material

edited 15th Feb '14 2:54:54 PM by KSPAM

I've got new mythological machinery, and very handsome supernatural scenery. Goodfae: a mafia web serial

This is something I've never quite understood. People who hate moe seem to think that the majority of anime has become this, while I struggle to find any examples at all. Super Sonico, maybe? Hello Kitty? Slapping unnecessary sex appeal on characters is a common problem (Vividred Operation comes to mind) but such characters usually aren't just sex objects.

Most "moe" characters, in addition to being cute, have personalities and aspirations and relateability. Genuine "moeblobs" or pitifully helpless girls are pretty rare, and shows based entirely around them are almost nonexistent. (At least, they seem to be. I don't exactly seek out the moe-est shows I can find.) But a lot of people have decided that cutesy = misogyny, so even things like K-On!, a favorite of the Japanese Disney Channel, are supposedly creepy moeblob showcases. That's not to say that there aren't a lot of sexist characters in anime, but I think people bark up the wrong tree a lot of the time.

And maybe it's misperception, but women seem much less eager to rant about moe than men, and generally don't write off every single show with cute girls as an exercise in subjugation. The fear of finding things in common with a cute, girly character may be a factor... a lot of men are openly terrified of Axis Powers Hetalia and its fanbase, and seem uncomfortable even discussing it.

Anyway, I think plenty is already being done to avoid a moe takeover (not that it was ever really at risk of one, since those kinds of shows have limited profitability; nobody really wants nothing but moeness). More and more studios are aiming for international appeal and trying new things, and plenty of great shows are still being made.