Here is my regurgitation about Moe, which will bore you to Moe. Plus, this is personal, so I don’t really want to put it out there, but…
My moetic life. Kiss x Sis is definitely a moetica. Or moerotica. I am a moet, writing a moem. Moetry. Moefy everything I can see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and think. Moefication. Moetalica. Moetalia. Moetan. Moeticism. Moe, moe, kyun!
According to Aristotle’s Poetics, tragedy is the highest form of art, but I will say Moe-Anime is the highest form of art in Moetics.
Moe is based on Saudade (loosely translated “melancholy”). Saudade is a central concept in Bossa Nova. And I thought Otaku and Bossa would be a great synthesis, so I wrote “Otaku Bossa.” How did I get into Bossa Nova? Because of the ED of Evangelion, “Fly Me To The Moon,” the first Bossa song I ever heard. From that song, I felt sorrowful and really wanted to move out of Japan because my Japanese life had been full of sorrows. Fly me to the U.S. And eventually I flew to the states. So, let me review my Saudade life, although it is a very personal stuff to talk about.
The personal is political. But I’ll say “the personal is moetical.” Moetical science. Moetical training. Moeticality is what I seek. The 3-D world (reality) is based on marketability, but the 2-D anime world is based on moeticability. Moe world is a kind of Platonic idea in the allegory of caveman. I’m a moetical refugee moeticalizing anime characters. It’s moeticalizstion. Moeticize. Moeticization. A moeable anime. A moeticable chara, which is a moekko. That leads us to utopia.
Moekko are awesome, since 2-D girls are not a product of the flesh. It is utopic. Moetic. They are purely artistic. 3-D girls are made of the flesh, very carnal. So desiring 3-D girls is carnal. Moekko is totally spiritual. Moekko is our hope. It’s Otaku’s ideal.
Prelude
Anyway, how did I end up being Otaku? Well, it started when I was in middle school. Yes, adolescent years. That’s when I was exposed to the tyranny of Nikushoku-kei danshi (carnivore, unapologetic macho, physically threatening aggressive obnoxious bad guys like Yanki, DQN, goons, and Taiikukai-kei) over Sōshoku-kei danshi (herbivore, peace-loving gentle, sensitive boys like indoor Otaku). Maybe Taiikukai-kei corresponds to Jock in American culture. Surprisingly, this American school structure is very similar to the Japanese school I went to.
I was a little gentle kid. I was a sōshoku-kei (herbivore) since birth. I didn’t like physical activities. My favorite activity was making an art at a sandpit. Designing castles and cakes. I was a sandboy building a castle of love just like Stevie Wonder sings. A sand patissier. Yet, for a sōshoku-kei kid, Japan was a harsh place to live. Macho kids from the jungle gym intruded my peaceful sandbox and trod all over my art pieces. It was a disaster. I really didn’t understand how they could do that. Why didn’t they leave me alone? That is why I can really understand what Osaragi Hazumu from Kashimashi went through as a boy. And high school experience was pretty tough. In Japan, defloration was the norm that we had to achieve in our adolescent years. The peer pressure dictated virginity was simply a shame. Cherry boys were disdained as an sexual inept. They were branded as gay. “Are you a homo?” That’s what they said. And girls joined this peer pressure and treated them like trash. Nobody sided with us.
One day my class had a farewell karaoke party, and since it was a class event, I was also invited. But as I arrived there, girls said, “Why is he here? He is not welcome.” They whispered but they intended to make it listenable to me. It was vicious. Why was I hated that much? That was really hurtful. And one time they wrote down the best boy ranking on the classroom blackboard. My name wasn’t even there. The top boys were always violent Yanki and muscular athletic dudes. There were always girls following around soccer players, basket ball, baseball players, and tennis players too, evident in TeniPuri. Since I was a little skinny kid, I got picked on, beaten in front of the classmates. I didn’t want to be beaten in front of girls, it was an embarrassment. But nikushoku-kei bullies didn’t care. They just wanted to beat the crap out of me. I was hoping some girls would help me by saying, “Hey, stop. Enough is enough!” That would have been the voice of angel. But no girl did. Girls didn’t feel pity for me, but instead fell in love with the bully of the bullies, the alpha male. They loved the most violent dude. I thought their attitude was “First, they came for soshoku-kei…”, I wanted to believe they actually hated the alpha male, but no. They were in love with the most violent one.
A romantic hierarchy was based on violence. Some girls started crying when my teacher assigned me to sit next to them. “I didn’t want to sit close to him.” What did I do? Did they want to kill me with pesticide like a vermin? Were they avoiding me like nuclear waste? My other Sōshoku-kei, non-athletic classmates were also treated like this, despite the fact that we were the least dangerous male in the class. We were the least muscular one. We were the most peaceful one, who deserved the Noble Peace Prize better than Obama. We were told that we were “kimoi, acchi-ike! (You are repulsive, disgusting, get lost!)” Everyday going through physical bullying, and moreover the girls’ attitude toward us, that was psychological bullying, which was the coup de grace. It was simply unbearable. It totally crushed me. These were really painful memories. You see, Yutori education was implemented to tackle school violence, but obviously it didn’t work at all. Our school was violence-dominated like the Lord of the Flies or the Battle Royal. That’s the reason I became overly self-conscious, hard to go outside and face people, so I chose to stay indoor, and then consequently, I have become a Kimo-Ota (kimoi + otaku), self-fulfilling prophesy, becoming really kimoi like these girls told me. These girls were rather three sisters of the Weird than three Magis of Jesus.
And in Japan, even if a lonely boy goes to Soapland and have sex with a massage girl, he is still a virgin/loser. He will be branded as Shirōto-doutei, “amateur cherry.” Enjo-kousai (Enkou) is a school girl doing sexual service. So, Enkou doesn’t make a boy lose virginity. And high school boys do not have enough money, only Oyaji (middle age men, mostly salaryman) can afford. That’s why Enkou johns are exclusively oyaji. And these girls get a lot of money and spend on expensive classy brand bags from France and Italy. But first, Japan is a party of CEDAW, advocating the eradication of prostitution. So, trading sex with money is regarded as exploitation of women in the international community, which we will not participate. We are very sensitive about it. So prostitution shouldn’t be the option in the first place. Yet, even though we are siding with women’s cause, we are not visible in the eyes of women.
The society dictates that these sensitive boys are makeinu (losers). That is pretty much the same in America since women go for macho men, not sensitive New Age guys (Snag) according to O’Reilly Factor. Only DNA of hunka men are entitled to survive. The survival of the fittest runs the world. Natural selection rules the world. Macho men are marketable, and Snag are not. Snags, uncool to be tapped into by the corporate marketers, are unproductive fellows who cannot find a potential girl to pass down their DNA to the next generations. Well, should I say “un-reproductive” instead of “unproductive”? Productivity and reproductivity are intertwined for men. Even at sperm bank, girls always want Ivy League hunka graduates’ genes. Not the lower bracket men. I bet sperm bank will reject us when we try to donate our genes, just like I’m not qualified to get loans to buy house or car. Our credit score is too low. Who wants subprime sperm? The word “sub” indicates inferiority. No girl wants subhuman gene. Too risky for girl’s selfish gene. And sperm banks surely don’t want to be another Lehman Brothers. I thought people rejected the idea of eugenics because of Nazism, but the truth is that is still going on.
Sexually Japan’s custom is harsher than American puritanism. We don’t see girls and boys shake hand or hug each other as a form of greeting. Thus, Japanese boys get really frustrated because they never get to touch girls. It is the lack of skinship that causes a lot of misery in boyhood. And the Japanese government survey (2005) shows that 24% of unmarried men are romantically inexperienced. That’s 1/4 of them! What an injustice! How is that possible! No wonder there are a lot of Otaku in Japan. 2005 was the year when neo-liberalism peaked in Japan, symbolized by the Privatization of Post Office Act pushed by the then prime minister Koizumi Junichiro. His one-man political style was criticized as “dictatorship.” He was an unapologetic rash macho, a typical overconfident alpha male. He acted like a king instead of premier. His economic policy, requested by the U.S.T.R. under the Bush administration as The U.S.-Japan Regulatory Reform and Competition Policy Initiative (2003) (can’t find an English version), has precipitated the income gap in Japan, and caused many young men to fall into precariat. Thus, unmarketable to date and have sex. They have been rejected simply because of their socioeconomic status. This traumatic experience creates void in their heart and eventually leads to severe social inhibition. And they will withdraw from the world, and become a hermit such as Otaku. So, sexuality is the root of Otaku’s PTSD. Just like Dr. Tamaki Saito, a psychiatrist specialized in Hikikomori, says in his book, we can’t discuss Otaku without sexuality. And coincidentally 2005 was the year the word “Moe” received the 2005 Ryukougo Award. So, there’s a correlation between neoliberalism and moe.
So, here’s the problem. There are too many macho men, and girls are exclusively sōshoku-kei. Girls don’t take the initiative in dating. They don’t need to, because before they take the initiative, macho men are already swarming all over girls. That is why nikushoku-kei girls hardly exist. But why is it like this? Why are there too many macho men despite the fact that we don’t need them since we live in a civilization where there is no imminent threat from the wild beasts? We don’t need hunters to provide food to us since we can shop at Food 4 Less. We don’t live in the wild, so we don’t need macho men to protect us. But they are bossing around the world. It’s disturbing. It’s just mind-boggling.
So, let me dissect this problem first from evolutionary and cultural perspectives since this has to do with evolution and culture, i.e., nature and nurture. And then, I will discuss how Moe will help us overcome this bleak situation. And finally, I will talk about my American life as Otaku.
The contents will follow like this in the next three articles:
- Part 1: Nature vs Nurture
1. Evolution
2. Skinship
- Part 2: Anime Diet
3. Vegetarian
4. Goshin
5. Alcohol & Caffeine
6. Moe
- Part 3: Finale
7. Paradise Lost: USA
8. Paradise Regained