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Wow, I was really impressed by Perfect Blue; it was so well made. I liked the feeling that I got when I didn’t know whether what I was seeing was reality or imagined (or somewhere in between). It kind of speaks to the world of celebrities and idols, where the line between reality and “manufactured reality” is blurred. Our ideas of “what celebrities are like” are fantasies created in our mind based what we see from pop media. Celebrities, like all other people, are complex, but we tend to reduce them to simple, one-dimensional essences. Really, in our heads, we’re creating an entirely new person, merely based on the original. And in Perfect Blue, a simulacrum is reached; a second Mima, a simulation of the public’s perception of Mima, takes on a life of her own. Suddenly, the real Mima is unecessary, or rather, totally independent from this second Mima.

Going in a completely different direction (or maybe not), I thought this movie was really insightful in how it portrayed an actress being pressured by her staff into doing things that she didn’t want to do. I have to be honest: I’ve never thought about that before. I’ve always assumed that whenever an actor or actress acts in a scene, they’re totally comfortable with whatever they’re doing. I’ve never considered that maybe they’ve been pressured into doing whatever they’re doing by other people, and they just don’t want to cause trouble for anyone by standing up for themselves. This kinda changes how I think about pop media now. (And it’s so weird to think that an anime could change how I think about stuff, but here I am.)

I watched the first episode of death parade a few years ago and I kind of abandoned it after that because it didn’t intrigue me in the first place. And honestly this time around I couldn’t really say that my mind has completely changed. I still think one of the only things that I really enjoy about this anime is the opening because it is so damn catchy. 

As far as I knew, Violet Evergarden was a series I knew to be influenced by the World War II era. Much of the aesthetics of the scenes seem to be a very idealized version of a post-war period. Medical technology seems to be rather advanced, as she is able to survive literal fatal wounds and have her arms replaced with functionable prosthetics. But, with the forms of military wear, standard technology, outfits, and architecture, it is hard not to compare this world to the past of our own. Violet Evergarden seems to deal with her trauma that she had carried through the war and the inability to understand love she never had growing up.

It is not uncommon for veterans have trouble reconnecting to society after a war has ended. Whether they find themselves mentally or physically harmed from their service, in a sense, they have to restart a life that is very different from the ones they’ve faced. Violet seems to have survived a rather violent ending to the war, where she loses touch with her Major, someone she considered her closest person. Shortly after her recovery, Violet Evergarden is drafted to work as an Auto Memories Doll to write and deliver letters. She keeps busy and does the only thing she can understand to do well, which is to follow orders. Yet she waits for the return of her Major and his instructions. It is an unspoken understanding that the Major will not return from war, yet Violet holds onto that hope until she finds it in herself to let go.

I’ve read a lot of manga, but none have really taken such an inflammatory tone as Kobayashi’s Sensoron. Not just manga, but this is one of the most controversial texts that I’ve read on the subject. Kobayashi holds views that would be heavily frowned upon today, or even when he wrote this manga. It challenges a status quo of “peace” and it seems to want to recite the Japanese national sentiment that led to their imperial conquest pre WWII. 

I was introduced to Hetalia: Axis Powers as a sixth grader and found a series that was enjoyable to me, as the content was short but no short of supply. I found it easier to keep up with and later pursued the actual webcomics. Seeing Hidekaz Himaruya’s improvement of his art throughout Hetalia drove me to see him as a model of my own interest in art.

Certainly as a younger person, I was aware of the controversial aspects of Hetalia, but I wasn’t as receptive of it as I could have been due to my lack of contextual understanding. I dropped out briefly after Himaruya’s World Stars serialization slowed to a hiatus. Looking back seven years later, I am able to discern the critiques made by others on Himaruya’s work. His objectification of certain nations may seem harmlessly stereotypical, though the English dub can very well be taken with offense as voice actors may go interesting lengths to sound Asian. There is also a concerning lack of countries that isn’t Eurocentric, America, or East Asia. The majority of other cultures from South America, Central America, Africa, and the Middle East are either ignored or represented with several undeveloped characters (Egypt, Cuba, Cameroon). There also the depiction of South Korea that has caused major backlash for insensitivity of war affairs.

There is also the infamous presence of the yaoi community, where the extremities of fetishized gay men is depicted through the numerous choices of attractive male countries. As discussed prior, certain Hetalia content perpetrates negative stereotypes of actual gay relationships and assigns a label to characters that fall under such fetishized roles. A significant thing I noticed was there was an implicit powerplay between nations in such fantasies, where stronger, more developed nations (Germany, Russia, America, at times France and England) would be the dominant side of the relationship. The other side would be either nations that are weaker in nature (North Italy, South Italy, Canada, Austria) would be submissive. Himaruya also has a tendency to portray East Asian nations as the opposite of Western nations, who are confident, large, and masculine. China and Japan are those who are canonically shorter and slimmer than the rest of the Western nations. While China may not be as soft-spoken or shy as Japan, China’s design is explicitly feminine in nature, as well as his love for cute objects. The self-inflicted Orientalism is apparent in Himaruya’s work, which propels the Japanese fanbase’s infatuation with ‘strong, blond foreigners’ to be paired with ‘delicate, timid, or feminine’ characters. 

I think that the otaku subculture in the U.S. is awesome. Despite this, I wasn’t a huge fan of the True Otaku film. This documentary prided itself on the fact that it was made “by otaku, for otaku,” but I think that this fact was the documentary’s greatest weakness. It’s great that the filmmakers were excited about their subject, but their seeming disjointedness and lack of both informational and analytical depth was comparable to a superfan rambling on and on about how great their favorite anime is. The film provided surface-level information about the otaku subculture (explaining common terminology and such), but didn’t go much deeper into really uncovering why this subculture exists and what really makes its members tick. Instead, it felt more like an advertisement for anime conventions. My suspicion is that True Otaku would have been better had it been made by filmmakers totally outside of the otaku subculture, kind of like the documentary Trekkies (about Star Trek fans).

Nevertheless, we can still glean a lot from what True Otaku gives us. To me, the most interesting part of the documentary is when it follows Dust Bunny in her creative process of designing a costume for an upcoming cosplay competition. Maybe it’s because I love the creative process so much, no matter what is actually being created. To be honest, before this documentary, I kind of disregarded cosplay as something stupid. But I really respected Dust Bunny’s craftmanship and artistry in designing her costume. I can almost see her as an “economic unit” in the otaku subculture, but instead of being payed in economic capital, she’s being paid in shadow cultural capital. In addition to being an “economic unit” of sorts, she’s one of many conduits for idea exchange within the otaku subculture (i.e. she’s influenced by other cosplayers, thus creating her own cosplay and contributing specifically to fans’ idea of Kirin while also inspiring other cosplayers in general).

Speaking of economics, one thing that became very clear as I was watching the documentary (that surprised me) was that a lot of people spend a lot of money at anime conventions. When we talked about economic capital and cultural capital in class, we talked about them as if they were two independent axes. However, at anime conventions, it seems like they are somewhat related to each other; if you spend more economic capital on merchandise, you can acquire more shadow cultural capital (”anime clout”). From many of the interviews, I got the impression that people buy a ton of merchandise to kind of prove how much of an anime fan they are. To extend this idea, one might say that Dust Bunny is investing a large amount of her economic capital into acquiring shadow cultural capital when she is designing her cosplay. (However, the creative side of me says that she spends all of this economic capital just because she enjoys her creative process so much.)

Despite all of this, I think that it’s wrong to compare the capital exchange within an anime convention to the capital exchange in the outside world. After all, both consumers of merchandise and cosplayers have to bring economic capital from the outside world inside (in boomer speak, make money in the real world) in order to engage in their activities. Anime conventions aren’t self-sufficient; they rely on economic stimulus from the outside world in order to operate. I guess it’s for these reasons that the otaku subculture is called a subculture, and isn’t a culture unto itself. It’s a dependent fragment of society that has internal capital exchange, but isn’t separated from everything else.

Despite Japan being a very socially conservative society, it is interesting how it can produce many cultural products that are quite socially libral or test the bounds of what is considered socially acceptable. This is kind of akin to our discussion on BL (boy love). Despite the production of cultural products such as Yaoi, there is a clear disconnect between wants in a fantasy world and real world change.