Moe Archetypes and the Organizational Man
Describe these five girls.
Archetypes dominate anime— so much that when critics find shows and characters which defy classification, they are hailed as revolutionary. The focus of today’s article is not on those revolutionary shows. It’s about everything else— the vast majority of anime which seeks to articulate themselves within a tired niche.
Often times, we use words like “cookie-cutter”, “stereotypical” and “flat” to describe characters that we find boring. Yet, despite our contempt for archetypes and characters which conform to archetypes, we find ourselves unable to articulate our preferences in anything other than the already-established vocabulary of moé and moé tropes. This is a puzzling conundrum, and one which merits analysis.
It’s very easy for a lazy cynic to casually remark that tropes stem fundamentally from laziness. Animation studios need to make a quick buck, and tsunderes and lolis are tried and true cash cows. However, this analysis is lacking. While it may explain the continued persistence of moé tropes, it does not adequately explain their origin.
Ultimately, we are all creatures of history. It is very difficult for us to conceive of experiences and concepts which are completely alien to us. This leads one to suspect that the phenomenon of moé is the product of a historical process. It may be true that studios are simply lazy and unwilling to invest time and effort in conceiving of new, label-defying characters, but the problem runs much deeper. Cultural workers within the anime industry have, in some sense, lost the capacity to think of and articulate characters in a vocabulary which is different from the current industry standard of moé archetypes, and are therefore unable to conceive of characters which do not fall, at least somewhat, into one category or the other.
The same is true of fans. We too have lost the ability to articulate characters in anything other than stereotypes. Japanese fans typically refer to characters as “something-kei”, meaning, very literally, that the character they are describing is of a certain type. This illustrates that the classification of characters into types has become linguistically ingrained within the mind of the fan, a clear illustration of the power of archetypes over the way we think and articulate ourselves when speaking about characters.
The rise of archetypical domination goes hand-in-hand with the rise of the post-industrial “organizational man.” The term “organizational man” was first employed by sociologist William Whyte Jr. to describe 1950s Americans, but I find it to be an apt metaphor for otaku:
The corporation man is the most conspicuous example [of the organizational man], but he is only one, for the collectivization is so visible in the corporation has affected almost every field… listen to them [organizational men] talk to each other over the front lawns of their suburbia and you cannot help but be struck by how well they grasp the common denominators which bind them… the word collective most of them can’t bring themselves to use… but they are keenly aware of how much more deeply beholden they are to organization.
One of the defining characteristics of the organizational man is his inability to articulate himself on his own terms. As described above, he is much more adept at grasping the commonalities between him and his fellow men. As time progresses, organizational men develop a mass-mediated consciousness, one which is defined, in part, by the actions of the collective. His thought processes are not strictly his own— they are borrowed, and he owes his ability to articulate his own thoughts to the organization.
In Japan’s oppressive corporate culture, the notion of cultural workers being organizational men is not at all implausible. The anime industry is a well-oiled machine, churning out goods and products in an unending stream. In order to expedite this process, cultural workers have developed a comprehensive lexicon for understanding their own production. Tropes such as tsundere most likely began as innovations, but quickly became hackneyed and tired as the collective consciousness of the anime industry assimilated the trope within its growing corpus of stock characters.
Fans are also organizational men, especially in Japan, where most anime fans tend to stick together in cliques and online communities. By grouping themselves with like-minded individuals, fans create mass-mediated group consciousnesses. It comes to no surprise, then, that fans are also unable to articulate themselves in terms other than the ones which the anime industry has pre-defined for them.
Thus, in a world in which both cultural workers and consumers are organizational men, there is no incentive to deviate from established cultural norms. What we are seeing here is much more than simple economics— it is an example of cultural hegemony, or spontaneous allegiance to dominant cultural trends and ideologies. The ideology of anime involves the use of tropes, and our acquiescence and use of terms like “tsundere” and “loli” to describe characters denotes our unchallenged allegiance to the rhetoric of anime.
I am not arguing that this is inherently undesirable. I am making an observation, not a critique. In a post-industrial society filled with mass media and instantaneous information transfer, it is perhaps impossible to be anything other than an organizational man. Finding new space for growth and radical departure from established norms is incredibly difficult— hence our lauding of the few who do manage to depart from established norms as visionaries.
Notes:
1. This is the first part of a currently planned series on the phenomenon of moe archetypes and its social implications. I seek to analyze the origins of moe archetypes and its manifestations, as well as ways in which cultural workers seek to subvert them.
2. The western aniblogosphere also has a collective consciousness. We tend to spurn shows which are mainstream, and praise those which depart from the use of archetypes. The outrage surrounding OreImo is one great example of our collective consciousness at work.
3. It’s not at all unlikely to suggest that archetypes were always extant. They are as old as literature itself. As discussed above, archetypes serve as a handy shorthand which serves to allow the reader to make assumptions about characters, which can then be either reinforced or subverted depending on the author’s choice. However, in the post-industrial age, the rise of the organizational man as dominant (especially within the world of anime) has made archetyping the dominant, if not only, form of discourse.
4. Food for thought: Gap moe is one of the most effective subversions of moe archetypes.
5. @Akirascuro for Twitter, irc.rizon.org/#nhrv to chat me up. Seriously, I’m lonely.
Got to agree with you on alot here, espically sonsidering that i know of many fans who simply shoose something to watch just because theres a cute girl on the cover. Then again this sort of thing goes on in America as well, only difference i guess is that kids are attracted to action and comedy rather than cuteness. And then these fandoms evolve into something horrificaly ignorant, such as the twilight and bieber fandom. Then again, dishing out the lolis and the tsundres are probably the fastest way of making money. Oh could you give a def for gap moe, im still not sure what that stands for.
And going far off topic, ufotable is animating fate zero, any expectations?
I don’t think you are honestly pointing out something that novel. At one point or another the concept was innovative and became successful. You can apply this logic to everything in the entertainment industry. The continued persistence of tropes and archetypes stems from it being a popular idea in the first place. So you may say that the analysis that the industry is simply being lazy and looking for easy money is inadequate, but I already feel that this analysis includes such thoughts.
We already know that these things are popular. They are also unique concepts, since we even have a name for them. It’s obvious to conclude that when this concept first burst onto the scene and became popular that it was innovative, or different, because it originally was a rare concept. After it became popular, companies then exploited the recipe for success, and hence why it is the laziness of the industry that allows the concepts to become so ingrained in the collective conscious of the fans and companies.
This doesn’t mean that the fans or companies can’t think in any terms other than the ones they create. The companies will use what is successful, and every once in awhile “might” try something new, intentionally or unintentionally. Whenever something “new” becomes successful, we’ll call it innovative or whatever, and then we can watch the companies attempt to exploit the concept just like any other we see today.
The anime industry is simply like watching fads pass by in middle schools. The kids find it cool and everyone does it at first, but then slowly some people get tired of it, till eventually it becomes completely stagnant (Think mid 90′s before Evangelion), and then another new fad comes along.
I gotta be honest here, I’ve read Azuma and now I feel like I’ve read it again, except that you’ve pointed it out through an American analysis of post-modern structure of thought.
While I’m not going to dispute the idea that the otaku consumers are organizational men, I’m not sure I’d be willing to cover everyone involved in the industry with the same blanket. Most do, sure, but I’d be willing to say Yuasa is a genuine innovator. ABe as well, perhaps. Hell, I’d even contemplate saying the same about Nasu… just not when referring to his characters.
The rejection of Ore no Imouto by the western blogosphere (which is arguably more discriminating than western fans in general) is really bizarre when you think about it. It happened gradually, on an almost linear scale wrt time, but by the end the disappointment and condemnation was almost universal. It was such an exploitative anime, but that exploitation could be split into two forces that pulled people in opposite directions: the moe, and the subversion thereof. So while the Ore no Imouto case might be an example of a group of organizational men arriving at the same conclusion, I think it’s worth pointing out that it took everyone different times to reach that conclusion.
[...] such writing are easy to come by, I will be using a recent and very competent example as a model: Moe Archetypes and the Organizational Man from prominent IA blog Behind The Nihon Review. We encourage readers to search the archives of that [...]
[...] nobody would even bother writing about moe anymore, mt-i goes and does just that in reply to a Behind The Nihon Review post while also nicely referring to the recent sayings of Yamakan and Satou Dai. While I found his post [...]
Oh that’s easy:
Slut.
Slut.
Slut.
Uh… Slut.
Slut.
Based on what you just wrote, don’t you think that you people, who arbitrarily brand certain things as bad and certain things as good in your own little groupthink of hate, are also organizational men yourselves?
Whaddya mean “you people”?
Oh, you know, you people. Fan Haters who try to determine for an entire community what is “good” and what is “bad”, with lots of people echoing chorus because the cool guys are hatin’ something. Not understanding that mediocre anime is made by mediocre studios cranking out mediocre content, and blaming it on a so-called “moe” epidemic. Doesn’t that also qualify you to be “organizational men”?
@Starfish on the Brain
You’re way off the mark if you think that’s what we do around here. Perhaps you could read some of our other articles and reviews before forming snap-judgements, rather then just making assumptions based on skewed generalizations written elsewhere on other sites.
Well, “fan hater” describes ME to a tee, at least. And I don’t try to hide it. I hate you fuckers. You people are idiots.
If that makes me an organizational man, then slap another label on me for all the good it will do you. I’m still going to hate you.
@Sorrow-kun: I was simply making an informed inference based on the premises laid out by the author in the article, in addition to your comments branding certain people are “innovators”. And yes, I have been reading your reviews for 2 years now.
Now, then…
The article wants to conclude that the “mediocre anime stems from a culture of ‘organizational men’”. To arrive at that conclusion, you need to tie the “production of mediocre anime” to this idea that “Japan is a culture of ‘organizational men”. In order to even tie those together, you have to make a overlook a good number of assumptions and flawed logic for the connection to work:
- You have to agree to the preconditioned list of qualities and/or material that the author assumes to be the standard of “good anime” (aka the Preaching to the Choir clause).
- You have to assume that the anime industry is responsible for dictating what the tropes and what genres should be popular. Never mind the fact that it’s the fanbase who came up with terminology, that most anime is a serialization of an already-popular manga/light novel series, and that most companies wish to capitalize on what’s popular. In Akira’s world, the industry is some sort of central planning agency that brainwashes fan into liking their material, following their fads, and ultimately buying their merchandise. This isn’t just implied, it’sexplicitly stated in the article above.
- Once you assume that the anime industry is a central planner of what will be popular or not, you will then have to assume that tropes are used to the excessive extent by the industry described by the author, rather than tropes being fan observations of prevalent themes in media. Furthermore, assume that tropes define how characters are made, and are not just mere approximations of some parts of a character’s qualities (“stock characters” manufactured by “tropes”).
- Assume that the anime fanbase has lacked the ability to articulate other than by stereotypes. Furthermore, assume that referring to stereotypes for characters is sufficient to label someone a person who lack articulation, and that lack of articulation is sufficient to label someone an “organizational man”. This is the entire assumption the entire argument hinges on. And each step of the way, it’s got more holes than OJ’s defense.
- Any anime before the post-industrial age, if any, will not conform to a dominant or only form of discourse that was only replaced with the archetypes that followed the assumed rise of “organizational man” in the post-industrial age. In other words, the fads during 70’s through the 90’s, where genres such as real robots, super robots, space operas, magical girls, and sports series became popular for spans of time never happened.
When you combine all the premises together, you’ll realize you’ll have to ignore logic to even get to the conclusion. The most honest statement I’ve seen in this article is the fact that animation studios need a quick buck: that pretty much explains why they would try to “enhance” their crappy work by exploiting a popular series, or a series of a popular genre. If overnight, the super robot archetype replaces the moe archetype, I’m sure we’ll be hearing from anime “experts” about how it will bring about the anime apocalypse through a furious storm of completely absurd HISSATSU WAZA. There’s no “puzzling conundrum” here; it’s just Sturgeon’s Law at work.
@Idiot Fan: I rest my case.
You would have had to have one first.
I’d like to thank you for broadening my vocabulary a whole lot with this post. Since English isn’t my first language I had to look up quite a few words there to understand it exactly and it’s always fun when that happens, it helps me learn =)
This is the first one of your posts that I read and I’m definitely going to be adding this blog to my blogroll after it. It’s a really interesting read, so thanks for that too ^^
[...] Moe Archtypes from Before the Nihon Reviews. Make sure to read the footnotes. [...]
Wow… You, you are a piece of work aren’t you?
http://www.tsurupeta.info/content/how-to-write-your-own-blog-post-on-moe-decadence
’nuff said.