Brief Overview
Moe is an art style. It's not a genre, it's not a cancer, and it's not something you can arbitrarily throw on just any character like a cat ear headband and call it a day. Just putting this out immediately to get it out of the way.
Makoto Kikuchi of
Idolm@ster fame demonstrated the last point by putting on a magical girl-esque outfit and, well, got nothing but apathetic and disappointed reactions by the audience within in the show. I just couldn't think of an example that would apply towards real life audiences to be honest.
Now, moving past my Makoto fanboyism, moe is a landmine topic that gets a lot of love and hate for reasons I cannot even begin to comprehend. However, the thing I want to look at isn't what moe is or what's good or bad about it, but reasonable ways to defend and attack it. Mostly because doing either badly reflects upon the community as a whole, and I don't think I need to preach about how frustrating it is to acknowledge the existence of a rabid defender or an idiot attacker in your community. Once again, I am no expert, but it's something I'd like to throw out for the chance of preventing people from becoming "that person," or even better, having you read this and prevent someone else from becoming "that person."
As a precaution, I may or may not know what I'm talking about, but the general idea is still there. I hope they can be of some use.
In Defense of Moe - Initial Caution
In defending moe, you really gotta pick the right anime to defend. Just like supreme court cases over hot button issues, you gotta pick your battles. Regardless of what you think about
Ore no Imouto, that show is hard to defend. On face value, it's a show that somewhat parodies the idea of incest before playing -sort of- straight before leaping back and joking about it...While not exactly joking about it. It walks the thin line of uncomfortableness, where it strays from being too serious since it's a comedy first, and it strays away from being too comedic since it tries to entice viewers with the drama and what-ifs. This of course ignores the light novel, since that ending is meh and I haven't actually personally read it.
Still, it's an interesting show that explores the idea of incest within the context of a playful tongue-in-cheek style with a nod to otaku culture. It can be argued that the whole thing is a large nod to that culture, and moe not only assists in that delivery, but enchances it. However, I would never personally defend it because by defending it, we'd also be defending its message of incest being okay to play around with. Even if it never goes full incest, and even if it does, it'll never fully acknowledge it with open arms. There's always that social stigma attached to it, and it's tricky to work around talking about moe and incest in the same argument while keeping them separate.
In Defense of Moe - Finding the Right Case
Anyways, if you're gonna defend an anime that prominately features moe, pick an anime that has merits it can stand on regardless if it had that moe art style or not. Even better, defend an anime that was made better because of moe.
Card Captor Sakura, a classic that works very well to create that magical girl adventure that's cheery and, when dramatic, made you sympathize and hope for the best. Key works such as
Clannad and
Kanon, whose tearful dramatic moments brought forth by that endearing trait that moe so strongly specializes in. Perhaps look at the other side of the spectrum;
Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica, which uses the moe look as a stark contrast to the seriousness of the plot.
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, whose infamy lies in how the moe look juxtaposed with its murder mystery elements created such a compelling, high paranoia, and ultimately heartfelt tale.
These are just examples, and perhaps they are not the best, they are things I believe have some merits and are examples of moe used effectively in the context of these shows. Now, defending things like Ore no Imouto is possible, but I can't imagine it. One would have to not only justify the usage of moe and its merits, but also relate that to the portrayl of incest and what message that tries to convey to the viewers. In the same vein, I liked
Lucky Star legitly, but it's similarly a hard show to defend. It's similar to Seinfeld in respects, but it also exemplifies a lot of the traits that moe gets hate for. In all honesty, this show is a straight comedy, so if the comedy does not appeal to a viewer, the moe will be left hanging like a small shrimp in a sea of cthulu monsters. Again, just an example, but just don't fight losing battles. It's not worth fighting in the first place, but if you need to, especially for something you love, at least fight one you know you have a chance in winning. Stand in your attacker's shoes and think about what they might say. If you can't say anything legit back, then leave it at that. It's not worth it.
The Offence Against Moe - Initial Caution
In attacking moe, I find it effective to show how it was misused or tacked on pointlessly. It's one of the current trends in anime, and it's a style that has been shown to sell. Though, a lot of "moe shows" that sell well are, at least in my opinion, because of underlying reasons that go along side its appearance. Perhaps it was the timing of the show's release. Perhaps it was the hype surrounding the production team or writer. Perhaps it was because it exemplified an idea or a concept so well that it became famous/infamous. In the wake of this popularity, it was probably the inner dialogue of many writers that "well, since moe sells, I just have to make my characters moe as well and I'll be successful!"
Of course, that produces crap. Those are the things we don't need. Anime costs money and man power to make, and having such talent wasted on subpar anime is a tragedy. Though, it's the current trend, and it's hard to fight against a tital wave. It's not so much the death of anime is it's a death in variety. Certainly moe is an art style, but with moe comes a whole baggage of preconcieved notions about what the anime should be about: endearing drama, characters that fall under familiar archetypes, cute characters doing cute things, cute characters doing Jack the Ripper things, and so forth. It becomes less of an art style and it's used more as a formula for what should an anime be like in order to be successful, and no one wants that. If the recent Shingeki no Kyojin is evidence of anything, is that we're pretty damn starved for variety. Regardless of what you think of the anime, I think anyone can see that people are jumping on that show like starved wolves at an elephant's corpse. These types of shows may cause a pendulum swing in the other direction, mostly because there's also evidence of dark and gritty shows being popular, but only time will tell.
The Offence Against Moe - Picking the Right Targets
Anyways, it's often times it's easy to point out how something was moe only to pander to the stereotypical otaku fanbase. I don't need to prattle on about how one shouldn't hate an art style and judge a whole myraid of shows based on that, but I feel that it needs to be at least pointed out. Beyond that, moe shows fall flat on their faces when they try too hard to get the viewer to "feel for them," whether if it's by some cutesy way of talking or by the character's own actions. I recall
Hayao Miyazaki's criticism of moe, where he berates cutesy anime for being "unbearable." He stated that they're necessary at times, "but, of course, at times it can be frustrating in some respects." For example, as Miyazaki explained, when instead of seeing a character being fleshed out, all you can hear is a voice actor/actress trying to garner attention for their character, or worse, themselves. "Especially the young women's voices," as he states, "It seems like they're all speaking with an 'Aren't-I-so-cute?' voice. That's unbearable. I always want to do something about that" (
Kotaku).
It's an art style, so obviously a show can't rely completely on an art style to succeed. Aria the Animation has its art and atmosphere.
Sora no Woto had its music and environment. Shows can live without much character, have a moe art style, and still succeed provided that it has something backing it up.
Shows like your standard romance comedy harem, like
Asu no Yoichi, are unable to provide anything past surface-level comedy and drama. A flat male character is introduced to a couple of hair-color-coded sisters, live in the same house as them, and antics ensue. This explores nothing in terms of character or plot, this does not provide anything special in terms of entertainment, and this attemps nothing truly new or even an attempt to refine the existing genre. Comedy ecchi shows, such as
Strike Witches, have a hard time being defended since, even if proves successful, it only makes the fanbase seem worse. You can't make girls flying around in panties look classy or seem to have something that's of significance.
Stay away from things like
Panty & Stocking and
To Love-Ru Darkness, because they were most likely made to screw with audiences or to test how far they could get before going full hentai, so ranting on them would be like pointing out that the sky is blue. Actually, I'll probably talk about ecchi shows in detail some other time, so hold off on that.
Anyways, as far as shows go that sexualize their characters, yes the pandering exists, but try not to focus too hard on that pandering aspect. It's one thing to say that a show is bad because it's just a bunch of breasts and panties. It's another thing if that show also failed to pander, in the case of falling into familiar comedic or erotic patterns, or perhaps doing so distastefully. For example, the ill-placed fan service in
Hanasaku Iroha, where convenient censors and a yuri fantasy was situated amidst an otherwise clean shoujo-esque slice of life. I enjoyed these shows for various reasons, but they serve here as examples of things that would be good to attack.
The Resulting Dialogue
To summarize, moe has a harsh stigma attached to it, and for good reason. A lot of people are tired of it. It's an easy target for the apparent "decline" in anime. Whether that's right or wrong is hard to say, especially since the generalization is hard to make. Every show has its own merits, but with regards to moe at least, there are at least some shows that just don't do moe justice, to put it nicely. To put it bluntly, some moe shows truly suck and they they don't help the argument to defend against attack, and they give attackers the false idea on what to attack and how. Moe fans and moe attackers alike, as far as I've seen, probably can't stand each other and there probably wouldn't be as so many problems if they picked their battles.
Moe fans, defend things that you can use as your Pillars of Great Shows. Even if you love moe to death, realize that sometimes, you just can't defend moe. Accept it and wait until you have an opportunity to overthrow all those arguments.
Moe attackers, understand that it's an art style, but also realize what your targets should be. Shows that follow a formula, with no underlying motives, setups, plans, or schemes, are fair game and deserve contempt, if not the sheer lack of attention. Don't give bad things attention pretty much, but at the same time, make sure they don't rise up and give the good moe shows a bad name.
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tl;dr - It's a long, dragged out dialogue of how to improve on anime, so it's necessary for anime, its creators, and its fans to undergo some fire in order to become more refined and hardened, ready for anything that comes in the future. Criticising the things we love is just as important as defending them. But we can handle it. We're anime fans, we're used to taking crap and giving it back. Plus, by doing so, we'll make anime better for everyone. We just have to be aware of blind favoritism and anger without direction. At least, that's what I feel. They're my own thoughts, so all that I've said are from my own narrow perspective of the broad topic. Any and all examples I used don't necessarily reflect my own thoughts, but they were the easiest anime I could think of to make arguments for or against, so please, don't take my words and quote me in an argument or something. I'm not smart enough for that.
