ShiroiHikari (post: 1456167) wrote:As has been said before, Fish is "moe" for old dudes in anime. If there's an old dude in the show he's more likely to watch it.
"~Kana kana."Actually, I'm sort of glad this was brought up, as my memetic adoration of awesome old guys is actually a lot closer to the mark than my initial thoughts on what moe was supposed to be. Moe isn't an aesthetic, although it
is aesthetic, and it isn't a genre, or even a genre convention like that show that doesn't go anywhere, or obligatory fanservice.
Moe is, boiled down and distilled, trait appeal. Sometimes physical traits, sometimes personality traits, and occasionally a mix of both. It's the expression of a certain level of immediate affection towards certain characteristics and the characters who possess them (irrespective of the context those characters appear in). If there's a distinction between something being moe and a more regular brand of just finding stuff neat, it's probably in the intensity. For example, I happen to like short-haired girls. I wouldn't watch a show exclusively or especially because it featured a short-haired girl, so it's just something I find attractive. However, if having short hair became a sticking point, to the degree that I started shifting through shows looking for short-haired girls or waiting eagerly for shows that promised short-haired girls among the cast, that would (in my opinion) qualify as moe.
So, really, that whole "Fish thinks old guys are moe" thing is actually eerily accurate, as I do like cool old dudes to the point that I'm measurably more likely to watch a show if it features them prominently, though my critical streak still prevents me from watching bad shows just because they have things I think are good in them.
On a tangential note, I'd imagine this is why certain Shounen Manga with cast surpluses tend to do well in Japan. The pool of character designs and personalities to choose from and attach yourself to is large enough to accommodate a wide audience of people who only read for one or two characters.
Now my problem with moe is twofold. Firstly, I like to enjoy characters as a complete package, not a collection of disassociatable traits. Characters are the lifeblood of a story, and in that context I think of them as real people with their own desires and motivations. Distilling likable characters to simply likable character traits, to me, cheapens the worth of the character. One of the chief reasons I frown on fanfiction (standards of writing notwithstanding) is because of its tendency to be OOC for the sake of the writer's wish fulfillment. Did you know Roy x Envy fanfiction
exists? I'd find that kind of thing unthinkable, but apparently not. So with this "Recent" moe phenomenon, we have an audience prepared to latch onto a character because they fit a predetermined (frequently fetishistic) checklist, not because this character is actually well-written and earns the audience's interest.
Secondly, I dislike the commercialization of moe as a selling point. Now studios are a profit-driven business, so it's understandable that they'd want their product to sell well in the marketplace, and to that end create likable characters because nobody wants to watch a show with unlikable characters. However, there arrives a point past which this prostitution of characters as commodities is both obvious and insulting. You can tell which girl (and it is usually girls) was designed for which demographic, sometimes even down to the voice actress they picked. there's the clumsy, easily lost, frightened kitten (with hair decs!), there's the cold, authoritative tsundere (with glasses!), and so on. As someone who balks at the audience's stripping down fully-realized characters to their simplest, most marketable traits, it's hard for me to complain about that when the studio churns out characters already stripped down for them. And the more prolific and widespread this tactic becomes, the worse the situation gets. It's become something of a vicious cycle by this point.
Yeah, I'm a hater, and haters gonna hate, but those who've talked to me know I take the art of storytelling,
the science of storytelling, very seriously. And when it's become evident that people just aren't trying anymore, that bothers me on an almost philosophical level - doubly so when their perceived lack of effort is generously rewarded nonetheless by the general masses.