Where Does Gap Moe Fit Into Post-Moe?
In a recent article published on We Remember Love, Pontifus considered the confusing contradictions that appear throughout Ookami-san and pondered whether they indicated a statement on moe, or perhaps even a meta-reaction to it. He took it one step further by bringing up the question of whether a moe in conflict with itself (as appears in Ookami-san) is sustainable, and likened the moe genre as a whole to a dodongo who’d just swallowed a bomb. Art movements, as he rightly pointed out, don’t explode though… they shift. The most important question he asked dealt with the future of moe, and he speculated that moe might go through something of an upheaval… maybe now, maybe not til five years time.
Now I don’t consider myself a cultural, literary, or humanities expert by any stretch of the imagination, so if it becomes obvious that I’m fumbling with concepts I don’t fully understand, please point it out. Pontifus, and his partner in crime, Cuuchlan, (the duo who, when their powers combine, form Super Fanicom) wrote in a recent article about post-structuralism (which is only obliquely related to this article… or perhaps it isn’t, maybe I just don’t understand the concept enough, nonetheless, it’s still well-worth reading) that the use of “post-” generally implies a response to whatever concept it’s attached to. In my simplistic understanding, postmodernism, which often manifests itself as the mixing of tropes, is an attempt to democratize art, to take it away from the skilled artists and the elitists who place them on a pedestal, and share it with all. Theodor W. Adorno‘s criticism of postmodernism is that, in a capitalist system, democratization inevitably decays into commercialisation, which cheapens the value of art overall. If art is to succeed among a wide audience, then it must appeal to a lowest common denominator. I find it interesting to look at anime and otaku culture in the context of postmodernism. Japan, in its tendency to isolate and stew/skew cultural concepts until they’re just about unrecognizable to the rest of the world (eg, anime’s style as inspired by Disney‘s style) has possibly created, in otaku-ism, a culture so commercial that it could be viewed as one (of many) logical conclusions of a postmodern art movement. The interesting thing is that, rather than being democratized, anime is now insular and self-internalized.
Whether or not moe is in its death knell, the logical thing to say is that post-moe will come after moe. The inherent assumption, of course, is that otaku will never completely reject moe, but will eventually see a need to respond to it. I think this a fairly safe assumption to make, and it’s why I think superflat, the rejection of moe, will never be a dominantly popular genre among otaku. The question, then, is what will post-moe look like? All I can do is speculate, and hope that, whatever it is, it surprises all of us (to this day, I continue to associate my strongest reactions to anything anime related with “surprise”). Whatever the case, seeing as anime is a postmodern art form, it will be largely up to otaku to decide.
Akira has made the argument that almost all Kugimiya voiced tsunderes are an example of gap moe.
In Pontifus’ description of Ookami-san (both the anime and the character) something struck me. There are at least three alternative ways of interpreting the contradictions that are rife through the show, the first and most obvious one being that they’re accidental. The second is that they’re a response to moe, but one that is still incredibly confused about the statement it wants to make on moe. The third is that Ookami-san is just another example of gap moe.
If we take the second interpretation to its logical conclusion, we could see it as an initial stage of a post-moe movement (art movements must start from somewhere). But perhaps Ookami-san is better understood in the context of gap moe. Now, gap moe is a concept which doesn’t get discussed that often in Western fandom, and I suspect it’s not well understood among Western fans. It has (to my understanding) been recognized among Japanese fans for a while. I won’t claim to be an expert about it, because even I don’t have full confidence in my understanding of it. (It is, as Baka-Raptor points out, always going to be a challenge to understand gap moe when we don’t even completely understand regular moe.) Gap moe, as far as I can tell, is a moe of a character that consists of two contradictory physical or personality traits that, at first glance, simply don’t make sense to exist within one character. Like a loli with big boobs. Or a small girl with huge strength. Or… a sexual abuse victim who is also a virgin. If you’re watching Ookami-san, then alarm bells will be ringing at this point.
Did you know: Asahina Mikuru is actually shorter than Tsukimiya Ayu.
The disparate elements that exist within a character with gap moe invite further investigation, which is part of its appeal. Gap moe often promises that the gap will make sense eventually if you just persist with the story, so there’s this “mystery” element to its characters. The use of moe to explore characters at a deeper level is not unique to gap moe… Key has made an empire out of doing this. But neither is gap moe a new or obscure concept, even if it is one that Western fandom is just now waking up to.
Whether you believe that an upheaval of moe is imminent might depend on how frequently you think such upheavals should happen. Is moe currently stagnant? Well, it’s certainly not as volatile and dynamic as it was during 2006-7, which is when I believe moe went through its most recent shake-up. At the centre of this shake-up was Suzumiya Haruhi, and the shock-waves were felt in many different genres. The harem genre was deconstructed by Suzumiya Haruhi, and further deconstructed again by Kannagi, before being reconstructed in a new and previously unrecognizable form by Bakemonogatari. Suzumiya Haruhi also changed to tone of moe in the slice-of-life comedy anime which was built upon by Lucky Star and has since lead to K-On!. The show also provided a new take on meta-self-aware comedies which branched out in several different directions… one course following Hayate no Gotoku to Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, and another off-branch leading to Seitokai no Ichizon and Baka-Test.
Gap moe. Any questions?
Another smaller tremor happened, coincidentally, at the same time (even though it was unrelated), and that was Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. Its impact was slightly smaller, but its legacy was a mixture of moe and horror that worked significantly better than previous attempts like Elfen Lied and Narutaru. The influence of Higurashi can be seen in works like Shiki, among others, but perhaps it is around this time that gap moe started to become really prominent. It’s hard to think of a more quintessential example of gap moe than Higurashi.
Gap moe itself can, in a rather technical way, be seen as a primitive form of post-moe, since the existence of a gap evidences a statement or response to the disparate moe elements that strafe that gap. It’s implicitly accepted that anime must go through an upheaval before post-moe replaces moe as the dominant form. But maybe anime has gone through that upheaval already, and moe has been replaced by gap moe… just, that we Western fans were asleep to it while it was happening and simply didn’t notice. The question I want to ask now is, if we accept that the contradictions so apparent in Ookami-san and that define modern moe can be understood within the context of gap moe, when exactly did the upheaval that lead to this (ie, gap moe becoming modern moe) happen? Perhaps if we can figure out the answer to this question, we might have a better idea what will happen to moe after its next evolution.
Back in 2007, I mentioned gap moe in an article I wrote on moe, which I had based on the Japanese Wikipedia entry. I’m not sure if I understood the term back then–I have a hunch I suspected it might have had something to do with character contradictions–but I think gap moe is a stupidity on the part of Japanese fans and creators. I firmly believe the establishment of gap-skipping tsundere as opposed to gap-crossing tsundere was a mistake that cost much of what fans on the whole thought of moe at the time. I am disheartened to see influential authors such as Akamatsu Ken taking up contemporary definition conventions on moe, even though his 2005 definition still makes complete sense to me. I don’t feel moe for characters like Ookami-san or the majority of female characters that appeal to me–my thoughts on them fall somewhere in between interesting, cool, cute and sexy–but I’ll never forget the feeling when I got what Shana was all about, or Inami Mahiru as one recent example. Sometimes, the moe feeling makes me sick from all the shivers, and I can’t see how any definition or attempts of framing the term can identify with that. The way these terms reflect off characters and stories of our times shouldn’t be indexed to fit into history books, because then we get Space Adventure Cobras, titles that are from the perspective of today’s fans all about space hunting womanizers, one-liner classifieds that get ignored completely. I doubt we’ll ever learn, and moe anime are going to be another victim to our need for classification. Even Akira had laid good ground work in one recent article; I think he said “Moe is the art of perfection.”
And all this talk about post-moe anime, you guys are getting way ahead of times.
Nothing much to add here, but keep up these articles. =)
@cyth
I’ve actually never agreed with the Akamatsu definition of moe, since the idea that moe characters are something you, as a viewer, wish to protect while watching them has never really resonated with me. That’s why I’ve always tried to look elsewhere for definitions of moe (and why I think there’s so much confusion and disagreement about the definition). “Moe is the art of perfection” is something that I’m more likely to subscribe to, since it’s a very “Japanese” idea, and, as we know, moe is an incredibly Japanese concept.
I’m kinda indifferent to this idea that our need to classify things makes moe (or anything else) a victim. Categorization is (often) a necessary part along the process of understanding. I’ve never been one to think that understanding entertainment lessens its impact in any way. If anything, it’s the opposite. Coming to a universal understanding of moe is probably one of, if not the greatest challenge the anime community has ever faced (ignoring the whole difficultly of making anime profitable, but it’s not something I have a huge amount of interest in, myself). In fact, it’s so difficult, it’ll probably never be overcome. Perhaps this makes all the debates and discussion about moe completely redundant. But I’m adamant that they aren’t. Even if we can’t reach a common understanding, those debates and discussions, of themselves, are still valuable. You know, sharing ideas, etc, and all that jazz.
@Applehat
Thanks for the kind words.
If you know Adorno, you shouldn’t worry too much about theoretical fumbling; the Marxists/post-Marxists vex me :p
This is a useful post for me, as I haven’t read or thought much about gap moe, and it’s a fascinating idea. Maybe that has always been the core appeal of the tsundere (tsun/dere) character. But it’d certainly come up often in these meta shows, too, where we have to deal with the difference between appreciating a character as a whole and appreciating an obvious, totally unambiguous collection of inner workings.
I’d absolutely agree that the transition into the post-moe, whatever concrete form it takes eventually, didn’t start yesterday. You identify Haruhi as a moment of turbulence, and I also find myself wondering if that was around the time that moe began its transition. This may be something that won’t become clear for a few years.
To be honest, the whole “gap moe” concept never really meant much to me since the “gap” phenomen has existed since the beginning of time. Virtually every pitch in modern entertainment starts with some inane idea followed by “but” and concluded with an off-the-wall contradiction to the said inane idea. Observing that the same thing is happening to moe just shows that the genre is in such dire straights that it’s ripping off standard cable.
I do agree that virtually every moe anime has become “gap moe” (that’s not a trivial observation you’ve made), but I think it’s a result of the genre completely exploring every aspect of itself over the past few years that it’s finally resorted to simple gimmicks to remain interesting.
Speaking of Post-Moe, I think moe (gap and otherwise) will always live on the way the super giant robot, real robot and shounen action genres always have: a seasonal show that rehashes a tales from moe’s “golden years,” and more importantly, a pool of ideas and tropes the genre has been created that will be tapped by countless other anime that are not necessarily focused on moe. So five years from now if your shoujo melodrama has a cute girl with a speech impediment or your science fiction action series has a younger sister character with AIDS, you know what to blame.
@cyth: A quick look a the fall season list should prove that moe is quickly fading away. I won’t be surprised if I can soon count the number of moe shows with one hand.
@Shadowmage: I count 6-7 moe shows for women, 16 moe shows for men, and 10 shows that are either for children, “non-moe” or hard to classify. I think we’ll be OK.
Pardon, that’s 13 for men. That was an unfortunate type.
I think I mentioned this before when Akira brought up gap moe, but I really think it’s just a logical conclusion to the random swapping of traits that we’ve come close to exhaustion of. It signifies nothing but the ailing condition of moe in its current form. Shows like Higurashi are the exception, not the norm.
It is interesting to note, however, that while we’ve come to the logical extreme of moe in the short span of 4 years (or so we’d like to think of K-on), the same block didn’t happen between the span of NGE and Haruhi, which I can safely say are landmarks in the development and shifts of moe. This time, the change will either be a gradual rejection of current norms, or an upheaval that comes surprisingly early in the lifespan of current moe trends. If nothing else, I’d be willing to bet that the term post-moe will be inaccurate, as its new incarnation will simply be a new approach at what is already established. That’s how it seems to be in the past, and otaku desires don’t fluctuate so drastically.