What Exactly Is Moe? – Part 3: Impact

Continuing on these string of posts, I have noted that moe characters are emotionally defined, thereby limiting how effectively we can create a checklist of traits, as well as citing that they elicit a protective instinct of a person of broken idealistic Japanese femininity.  Now comes the question of “how big is moe character design, exactly?”.  I mean, we could be analyzing an incredibly small portion of anime (which I actually wouldn’t put by me to be honest.  Someday I might do this).  So, is there any way to actually quantify how big this section of anime is, given that we already know it has had some pretty large days in the limelight.

“Moe”conomics

The proper starting point for this question would to first ask “how big is the anime industry as a whole”?  Unfortunately, there’s no consistent or effective measure of industry.  Noted blogger Matt Alt, once attempted to identify this using revenue values.  However, they only quantify this once, with an estimated peak revenue of 241.5 billion yen per year (about 2.5 billion in American dollars (USD) at the time).  This peak value seems to be reasonably consistent, as other industry estimates at the time were generally in the mid to high 200 billion yen mark.  Project Haruhi had found some fairly similar revenue numbers, which I Alt got his numbers from.  Unfortunately, this page seems to have been hit by…something recently and doesn’t consistently show this beautiful graph of its page.  So I’ve screen shot it for you in case it doesn’t show up when you use the link above.  And, if you’re one of the guys running Project Haruhi, please have a fairly strong link to this graph.  It’s amazing for use and I would love it if you could keep it up consistently.  I don’t like stealing your stuff and uploading onto my own image accounts, since it’s almost feels like taking your hard work.

Now, I won’t got into details of the by year valuation of the industry.  The big thing to note here is the approximate size of the anime side of the industry: the worth of the animation and the DVDs that come with it. If there’s any questions of what that actually means, this industrial report, left online by Japan Economic Monthly, purely discusses the value of the animation itself.  The licensing to networks, the DVD sales, the rental value.  This means that these figures remove the stuff that fans tend to buy: feelies, figurines, costumes, etc.   If there is any doubt left, check the numbers and note how they match up to those in the graphic.

With this baseline, how does the rest of the industry, and more importantly to this article, the concept of moe characters, fall in?  Well, let’s start with something that I’ll have an impossible time proving: in terms of actual DVD sales, it’s very, very spread out.  I did a long, long delve into Oricon numbers, nicely put up by various sources including animenewsnetwork, but not a lot of shows typically defined as “moe character heavy” showed up.  Actually, DVD sales in Japan and in North America are reasonably similar: shows considered popular East of the Pacific are generally really popular on the Western side.  There are some small differences (such as shows I think “what?” on and others which I didn’t see pop up), but for the most part this is fairly consistent.  Though this is completely empirical evidence, I think there’s something to be said that moe character shows aren’t a strong influence on the industry.  And I guess this is to be expected to some degree.  I mean, while the characters themselves are used to add love to a show and create something for people to attach to, rarely do you see shows which run on them purely.  I think pointing straight to other flavours of the week would be similar.  Think about harem anime, something that if memory serves was a huge once upon a time.  It’s got a pretty simple premise for a male viewer to buy into, like moe characters – you get your choice of anybody who’d say yes and get to pick.  It ran pretty rampant as a influence once upon a time.  But rarely did shows use that as its selling point.  I can look back and can see lots of shows which used it, but weren’t based on it.  Martian Successor Nadesico, Elfen Lied, Haruhi Suzumiya…in all these shows, you’re given a host of female characters who attract very different crowds and would jump at the chance to be with the generic male lead.  But if you ask what the show is about, it’s simply not the existence of the harem genre.  Does that occur sometimes?  Yes.  I’m sure you could list a bunch on your own.  But I think the number of times it’s invoked without emphasis outweighs the number of shows which use it subtly or as a side note.  Tying this back to moe characters, I think the same applies: most instances of its use will be in small doses while few make a show about it.

In fact, using some numbers, such as those in the web-japan link, it seems the “moe industry” is estimated at about 30% of the market share. This number seems fairly consistent.  Galbraith (I refuse to stop using his article) notes a fairly similar market share, but on a more global level of all games, products, and goods purchased of the entire industry (25%).  That’s a fairly large part of the industry.  For a similar comparison, Firefox holds about the same amount of the browser ownership currently, hovering fairly close to 29%.  As an aside, I really feel old now.  I remember when everybody used Internet Explorer and when, as kids, you’d use “Ask Jeeves” to search for information.

From this we can determine infer a little:

• First, we note that the top 10 DVDs never seem to hold many shows which would be best defined as a “moe character show”.  But at the same time, it holds a pretty strong part of the market.  Putting this together, I read that the sales are distributed fairly widely and sparsely between many different shows.  This means there’s probably a very spread market for shows heavily interacting with moe characters. And this makes intuitive sense to me.  Since moe character attraction is such a personal thing, and people are just so excellent at deciding on what the most attractive female is (for the record, it’s independent, self motivated, and self reliant women with red hair), each character will attract a different crowd.  At least from my view point, this seems to make sense.
• Second, we can see that build as moe character shows don’t dominate.  They don’t have the same driving force as the big name shows.  This is taken directly from the DVD sales numbers.  The reasoning to this seems to be as above: attraction by having attractive characters is a limited opportunity prospect, since we have so many different ideas of what attractive characters look and act like.  It could almost be claimed that moe character shows have built themselves a niche…a small sector of the marketplace which they have called for themselves and dominate fairly well in.  Furthering this, we could claim that these shows also, within their own sector, stake out their own piece of land.  One could be “cute girls sipping tea and playing cards”, while another is “cute girls playing guitar”.  With that in mind, this sector is only a part of the whole and leaves limited room for expanding.  From this, I conclude that there’s unlikely going to be a show purely about moe characters that will rock the sales figures and will become synonymous with anime, as Pokemon or Naruto have.  This is a little distinct from the above as the first statement was that we have a distributed market, while here the statement is that the market has a limited ceiling.

Moe and Anime as a Whole

With a bit of a foundation left in here from the economic side of things, we can do a little discussing as to how moe characters have impacted anime in industry and in production as a whole.  I mean, it should be pretty obvious that it has likely surpassed the influences of, to quote examples above, harem shows at this point.

One realm to consider is the anime series released themselves.  In this regard, I don’t think there has been a strong influence.  As noted above, they have their roots in a large number of moderately successful shows.  For “driving trends”, I don’t see it happening.  There were concerns a few years ago that the phenomenon would swallow anime as a whole due to a slight outbreak of the genre heavily relying on moe characters (more on that later), but it seems to have cooled off.  I think, again they’ve found their niche: specialized shows for specialized tastes.  Not everyone want to watch a show that’s purely about the attraction of the viewer to the characters, to have entire shows just to feel that they have some anime character they want to protect.  And, past that, you’re catering to certain aesthetic tastes.  The group who wants to adore a character from Kanon may not want be drawn towards part of the cast of K-On!, for example.  Through all the turbulence of the economic recession, the biggest drivers of the area seem to be the ones we’ve always expected to lead the area.  Introduction of moe characters seems to have done nothing to that.

A different area that has grown from this though is the huge secondary market.  There seems to be a bulging industry outside of DVDs that have become relevant recently.  Well, I guess it’s slowly become relevant.  Psuedo-sexual objects, such as the harem genre and moe character design, have increasingly led way to the existence of maid cafes, for example.  This is discussed by Galbraith in his section labelled “Moe in relation to reality”.  He has another excellent discussion elsewhere, noting that this industry, which undoubtedly is being aided by anime, “boomed” in the mid-2000s.  And the single genre game changer there is the skyrocket of moe character design.  I know it’s wrong to connect dots without hard evidence, but this seems all to obvious in relation.  It’s not simply noted by Galbraith either.  Others have noted a booming secondary anime market, past the shows themselves.  An (and for good reason – this estimate is insane) analyst seems to peg the the total size of the market, DVDs inclusive, at 2 trillion yen, which is about nine times larger than the entire DVD industry.  While, again I’d take this estimate with a grain (or a glass) of salt, there’s something that needs to be said:  Let’s assume the estimate is even 5 or 6 times off the mark.  This means that there’s still a massive market for non-directly anime goods like figurines.

Moe Characters and the Economic Recession

This is where I’ll start driving into my own “reading between the lines”.  One of the largest complaints people have had was that moe characters and, by extension, moe character dominated shows were tearing the market apart in the late 2000’s.  They were dominating the market in terms of raw number of shows and the size of the market in terms of show value was shrinking.  Companies were folding left, right, and centre.  Everyone jumped to the conclusion that moe characters and shows were therefore killing the market.

I think there’s a much more reasonable explanation to this, and why I won’t say one of its impacts has been “killing the market”.

Let me start by repeating what I must have repeated twice by now: moe characters and their shows tend to have stable and loyal, albeit unspectacular, viewer counts.  They don’t wow anybody in their raw sales, but seem to do well enough to hold a good amount of the market.  Let’s call this point 1.  The anime industry isn’t run by idiots, as much as we’d imagine it to be.  There likely was someone, either directly like myself, or indirectly (through pursuit of money) noticing this.  They knew this sort of cause and effect.  This is point 2.   Now, in the time these shows began to dominate and take over the air, the entire developed world was in a huge economic recession.  Anybody watching news probably knew this and probably knows we’re still feeling the aftermath of it.  Point 3.  Finally, let’s make point 4 the fact that companies will pursue the best economic scenario.  Under typical circumstances, this is “maximize profits”.

Now, let’s put this together.  Think of yourself as a director of an anime company.  You’re trying to generate more money for your boss.  You know the people watching are hurting in the wallets, but you still need to get the money from them.  You also know your company is in a world of hurt.  You likely don’t have the resources to have as many failures as you would normally.  So you can’t do anything weird or experimental or the company could go under while you’re on watch.  So, you turn to the safe, stable side of things.  You turn to something that, while it might not be a home run, to use baseball analogies, but is an easy to get single.  You’ll get something.  That is the moe character usage and that is, honestly, why I think shows began driving that direction for a period of time.  Companies all instinctively pulled the same move to go into self preservation mode while the world was being told “we’re in the worst recession since the depression” and a flood of shows with moe characters was the result.

Conclusion

So, what was seen above?  Well, first: we can see that shows with large influence of moe characters have a fairly large part of the market, though they don’t set records.  They aren’t really banner shows, but collectively make money.  Second: these shows have created a fairly large secondary market.  Finally: these shows have impacted anime by being a safe refuge for companies to turn for quick cash (but not the best rates of return.  There aren’t wonders, just some spare change).

Of course, this all ignores the biggest impact that moe characters have had on fans as a whole: their divisiveness.  I honestly can’t remember many arguments that have divided fans as badly as “are moe characters good”?  I mean, we hear all these directors getting into it too.

And that will be the topic for next post: the controversy of moe characters.

What Exactly Is Moe? – Part 2: Appeal

So, some time ago, I posted the first of what I hope to be a few posts long discussion about moe and the intricacies of it.  In that article, I looked at attempting to define moe…what is it since we can’t outright discuss something that we can’t fully understand.  The conclusion through the links searched was that moe is something that we can’t strictly define as we would “pamphlet” or “calculator”.  Due to its origin of being a fan term and relying on subjective points, such as human emotion, there will be no effective way to outline a list of traits that, if you have them all, you’ll qualify as a moe character (the definition I’ll be looking into further now).

One area of thought that is consistent with moe characters is that they are attractive by nature.  So much so that the running gag during the production of Psycho Pass, the term was banned outright.  Going back to articles I had used previously, moe is commonly associated with an attraction or a love of the character.  This is TVtrope’s entire point of their second paragraph.  This is tsurupeta’s first and most common definition of moe.  This is more directly stated by Galbraith when he concludes that there is a strong connection between moe characters and sexualization (more on that later).  Putting this together, we can strongly note that the attraction and appeal of moe characters is something we can work on to identify and possibly consolidate our understanding around.

The Common Traits of Moe

So, when we first think about moe characters, we should consider that moe characters, while not always holding a consistent definition, hold specific traits in common.  This is commented on quite regularly, enough so that some blogs have created rule of thumb laws of moe.  There were a myriad of sources I used to compile this, but the key points can be distilled with the following:

• The most notable identification is that the moe character is “cute”.  Anime is a realm where most characters, unless intentionally drawn ugly, are attractive, but this seems to stand out.  The status of “cute” is different from “sexually attractive”, but not entirely separated.  The character should be appealing to one’s visual senses, but doesn’t activate the traditional centres of feminine appeal for sexual attraction.  In this sense, traditional revealing outfits and the typical hourglass figure associated in western culture don’t necessarily apply.  But I do note that they aren’t entirely separated either.  Characters normally defined as being moe are sexually attractive, but are so through cuteness.  This part is fairly obvious I think..  We can separate what people would, crudely stated, define as “smoking hot” over “really, really cute”: the former conforms to the traditional definitions of attraction…again, easy visualization of the body shape in line with the ideal feminine body shape. While this isn’t to say that the latter can’t contain these traits (see likely the most commonly stated name for analysis: Mikuru Asahina), the identified cuteness isn’t the method that they are eliciting their attraction.
• The character frequently adheres to much of the traditional submissiveness and innocence of Japanese femininity.  A separate character type often translated as yamato nadeshiko, which is seen as a traditional form of femininity, is was the traditional ideal in Japanese culture.  The points can vary depending on source, but the key notes are that a character (always female) is feminine, is devoted to her husband and is chaste before then, and, while outwardly looking weak, can cope with day-to-day household activity.  While ultimately danced around quite frequently, these strike to the core of moe characters in what they aim to create.  Which makes sense in all honesty.  Anime is a Japanese art and the appeal systems are most likely going to be based on ones that the Japanese writers know well.  Now, that isn’t to say that this is a hard and fast rule that a moe character hit all these traits, but this is the core and the characters are built around these values, though not perfectly.  A perfect alignment to the yamato nadeshiko character type is Cherche from Fire Emblem Awakening, who was admittedly designed to focus around being “a good wife and mother”.
• Based on that…extremely frequent, to the point of parody I may imagine, is the use of traditional virtues…one of the “maiden”.  I love TVtropes for describing such things…I won’t deny it.  An easy page to look at for this is one known as the ingenue…this page kept popping up in my head as I read through definition after definition.  They don’t always have the same form, but a sense of innocence is formed around the character.  Often, this was historically shown with being an inexperienced character in romance, almost invariably being a virgin.
• The character has a quirk which either makes her vulnerable.  I’m sure there are some teeth grinding using that definition, but I can’t think of a better way to say it.  The typical moe character is odd because of the way they act.  This nurtures the commonly associated “big brother syndrome” when people describe that they want to protect and nurture their favourite moe character…the seed to the attraction perhaps if I may be so bold.  In the traditional ideal image of Japanese femininity is perfectly capable of taking herself and invokes no such emotion.  A character who’s in need of protection because some aspect of them is either not ideal (ex – general weird mentality) or just isn’t comfortable with herself in society (ex – your favourite breast-related angst) creates a sense of “someone needs to protect them”.  And this is where that instinct kicks in…the older brother/sister in each of us wants to protect that character from the mean, nasty outside world.  A piece of me thinks that this is what drives the internet popularity contests for moe characters further than, let’s say, the oft used “tsundere” characters: people take in their moe character as something closer to their heart than other character types.

Synthesis of Traits

So, the traits listed above, I feel (and seem to be reflected in searches), are ones that are commonly associated with moe characters.  But what do those traits imply and mean?

I think this first part is obvious, but these traits point to the fact that moe is an appeal to the viewer in the form of emotional attraction…to project something onto the viewer that they can connect and feel attached to.  This is almost always exemplified by the feeling of love.  This concept is almost always noted as the building blocks of interaction when discussing moe.  From previous links, Galbraith notes that there is a “mild sexual attraction” and later on calls the characters “clearly eroticized”.  Some other people take this even further.  Another blog, now defunct “The Thoughtscream”, notes in their analysis of moe that they feel it’s more of a power fantasy.  In some ways, they’re right; the traditional moe characters are often submissive, a trait that is heavily ingrained in the image of ideal Japanese femininity.  While they may lash out on rare occasion or hold their ground, the defining point will often come down to the fact that the aren’t going to provide much resistance.  Of course, this deals primarily with the traditional concepts of moe.  The alternative is often a “nutbar” personality.  Someone who doesn’t exactly fit in with society.  This can also be consolidated within the notion of moe being a power fantasy since the character, again, just isn’t going to be part of society.  This automatically limits the field of possible opposition, assuming traditional romantic feelings.  You’re almost stuck on your own social island with the local quirky girl.  And with that, you have some power, or at least a shot.  That isn’t to say though that such romantic fantasies are limited to moe characters: tsundere characters are sometimes accused of being a childhood fantasy, that the girl you’re fawning over who’s acting mean to you could actually secretly love you.  That’s all a long aside though – the key point I wanted to make is that moe characters create emotional attachment, not unlike love, and that this emotion is created from their innocent, submissive nature and personality quick.

This leads directly into the second point that I observed, something that is less agreed upon…which is that moe characters are written to elicit emotional, loving attachment in the form of feelings of protection.  Flat out.  Searching all these articles, the one topic that I think is danced around a bit is that the emotion is a bit of a bodyguard to target relationship more than anything else.  And this is something that integrates well into our sketchy definitions.  Moe characters often are felt through a love of a 2D character.  This is exactly what this trait I’m defining here is exactly: love of an animated character.  Another common definition is that moe character give you “big brother” feelings.  This relationship in this situation is fairly similar: a moe character to the viewer is someone who can’t fit in.  They have a mental block of some type, but are cute and have a child-like innocence to them, something people typically find appealing.  Like I describe in the previous section, this makes you want to protect them from the dangers of the outside.  Because of this sort of emotion, people (such as The Thoughtscream) can sometimes claim it begins heading down the route of power fantasy, since you (typically the male) want to act out being the dominant personality, the one who acts to protect something else, in this case the moe character in question.  If I may even borrow a word from them, this can sound a bit chauvinistic at times due to my inability to word properly at 2 AM.

Another concept that seems to stand out is that traditional moe characters are an imperfection, where we focus on the quirks and the oddities that don’t conform with ideal concepts.  In this case, we look at how moe characters don’t conform to the ideals of Japanese femininity…a poor man’s version, if you will.  They hold many of the basic concepts: submissiven, outward weakness, chaste.  And from there, we add on some things that don’t exactly conform to that, which make them weaker than the ideals.  Innocence is often used, for example.  An innocent moe character almost becomes child-like.  In this situation, the emotional entanglement is that of a father figure, with the feeling of wanting to guide her through life.  A moe character with self-esteem issues causes viewers to want to throw themselves to them and act as an emotional crutch.  You become the piece that makes her life complete: the support and the caring.  Finally, with the eccentric moe characters, the attraction is that of being salvation.  Regular society frowns on such weirdness, something that goes double in more rigid societies.  And the emotional drawing is to be someone who’s along for the ride, who won’t get off or turn on them despite their unusual ways and thought processes. And this is ultimately what sparks the almost territorial feelings associated with moe characters.  You invest so much, you want to protect them so badly that you feel hurt when someone else comes along.  This could be for many reasons dependant on situation, but the fact that the emotion attached to these characters is the act of protection, it seems odd and uncomfortable when someone else decides to partake in it or attacks it.

With all that though, we ask: why throw in the traditional Japanese femininity?  The answer is fairly plain: they’re inoffensive.  When you want to attract someone and offend nobody, you use inoffensive traits.  A common example I give is harem anime protagonists.  They’re almost never quirky, though they may be unusually perverted or socially awkward (which never seems to impact their ability to connect with their female co-stars).  And, that’s about it.  They almost become viewer surrogates for that reason.  Here, it is used so the highlight of the personality is that their traits are imperfections that you want to protect.

Other Realms of Thought

A paper I’ll continually refer to is Galbraith.  He does a great job of summarizing many key points.  His paper came to a different conclusion and for completeness’ sake, I have posted it as well.  In his discussions, he compiles a series of quotes, which all highlight the focus of moe being on loyalty to someone, in this case, the viewer.  They won’t go around and betray them…they’ll always be there.  The quotes he lists include examples of maids and of animals.  Which raises an excellent point in that I feel that the attachment to moe characters, when you hear about it, almost sounds like the same love people have for dogs.  But that’s an aside.  Galbraith’s discussions identify moe characters as a sanctuary…and escape.  And from here, he points that moe characters must be flat in personality.  Their loyalty and inability to betray is compounded by the fact that they won’t change and won’t surrender their personality type to their surroundings.  This ties extremely well with many character traits, from the unique mentalities (who really don’t listen to their surroundings anyways) to the innocent (whose surroundings won’t really impact anyways), and is a thought that I’d give a lot of weight to.  I highly suggest a read over the “Otaku discussions of moe” when you get the chance.

As mentioned earlier too, The Thoughtscream also suggests that this comes much further down the lines of a power fantasy, that everything done is an attempt to emphasize cuteness and feminine vulnerability as sex appeal.  It goes as far as to also point to traditional Japanese patriarchy as part of the reasoning behind this.  They have a very good, lengthy discussion as the realms of moe characters as well, so I’d give the link above a good read over.

Wrap Up

This post looked at the intricacies of moe: why are we attracted to these characters?  From an analysis of common traits, the interpretation I’ve got is that the core of attraction to moe characters is the interaction of being the protector of a broken image of idealized femininity.  In this sense of acting as the protector, emotions of love are created.  Because one wants to protect the character so badly from the outside world, they develop a sense of territory as well, that they are there to protect them and that any incoming attacks, such as insult, instantly takes on a little more personal of a relationship.  I realize that this can sound a little controversial, so if you have any opinions on this (since I’m by no means an expert…just someone who reads into things too much and posts far past midnight), feel free to post them.  I think such a topic is a great realm of discussion.

Now that I’ve looked at this area however, the next step in looking at this phenomenon is exactly how big it is.  How far has moe gone and how much has in impacted anime as a whole?

What Exactly Is Moe? – Part 1: Definition

Moe.  Three simple letters.  It’s a term that has become synonymous with anime.  “Oh, [x] is so moe” or “This scene is moe”.  It’s a term thrown around early and often.  It sometimes feels like a verbal tic in dialogue.  The fame of this term has become so large that there are huge popularity contests designed to find the most “moe” character.  There are endless derivations on the term; moeblob describes a character who acts moe and nothing else (often used with negative connotation) and moe anthropomorphism is an increasing trend where we, as with any personification, turn something into a human form…in this case, with moe characteristics.  Just ask Trope-tan.  We get even more terms coined by other sites…see TVtropes’ Moe Couplet and Moe Stare.  As a fan, we can use it as an adjective or a genre.  Oh, and let’s not forget that moe has become the topic of serious debate…up there with harem and fan service as components of a show that are debated on as either a sexual outlet for a viewer or a legitimate tactic for ensuring decent viewer base and allowing for serious money to be spent on what really matter while selling out a small part of the show.

Despite all this information, I’m not sure we really know a great way to define moe.  In hard strict definitions, it’s tough to come up with a simple, hard and fast rule for what exactly the term means.  There are many reasons for this, including and not limited to the widespread usage, impossibility to translate the term effectively, and the act that it is at heart a fan term.  Really, the short way to look at is that if a friend of yours, who had no experience in watching anime, asked you “So…what is a “moe” character?”, it’d be tough to describe a character that perfectly inscribes all that.  And this is really something I’d like to explore and discuss in detail…what exactly are we talking about when we say “moe”?  Do bear in mind though that I’m no expert on these things.  There are entire semi-academic articles out there which do describe the topic in excruciating length.  I may post some at the end of this, but those are strictly a little above where I’d like to go.  I’m simply someone who has written up an article after a few too many late nights.  Heck, I’m writing this article well past midnight.

What Do We Know?

I’m a science major (Engineering to be exact).  When I don’t have enough information, I start looking for a base to work off of.  Something concrete I can work with and make logical connections as I build upwards from that…actually, first I look through my handbooks for tables about the subject since it’s likely somebody did some calculations on the subject before.  But my handbooks are worthless here so that’s irrelevant.  In this case, we have small facts…simple basic, boring Google searches can yield some basic information about the term, its history, and what people think of it.  The last part may come in handy later, but let’s just focus on what the term means at its root and build up.  Really, this is what this one post is going to be about greatly: a white paper on moe…what do we already know and how can we consolidate the contradictory parts together?

First, let’s look at the history of the word…where did it come from?  Why is it a term we use a lot?  Wikipedia lists some interesting facts aside from the obvious “we can’t really define it” point that sparks the whole discussion.  The primary that I’ll highlight is the nature of the word.  As I mentioned before, the term provides minimal help in giving us character traits or what exactly it means when directly translated over from Japanese.  It notes that the term, at its heart, is a pun.  Therein lies a major problem: as language outsiders, we don’t get the pun.  As such, we start already by having to approximate the term.  Have you ever tried translating a verbal pun into another language?  It just doesn’t really work.  Try explaining the “Why is 6 afraid of 7” joke into another language.  It isn’t a lot of fun.  A very famous case of this came to the forefront of the series Martian Successor Nadesico.  One of the characters, Izumi Maki, spoke in puns plenty of times.  The verbal puns were one of the largest components of her character.  When this couldn’t be translated through effectively, the translation team actually just wrote her a whole new set of jokes, such as ones about Gotham City and the phrase “Got ’em”.  This really highlights how far out of things outsiders to the language can really be.  Also notable on the Wikipedia page is that the origin of the term is up to question as well.  The origin is rarely spoken of with any level of true certainty…it almost ends up being described as something that has been existent for a while, but when or how it came into existence is shrouded in a mystery wrapped in an enigma which was once cared for by the Loch Ness Monster.  This sort of conundrum is fairly common with fan terminology, since there are no real records of who said what first.  We have many theories, but none which can be conclusively proven as of yet.

For those looking for an overview in the history of the word, the long and short of it is that it’s a verbal pun…but what it’s a pun of exactly is up in the air.  Some will claim that its a homonym that led to this term being used (the general translation used is frequently one of “budding” or “blooming”, while yet another homonym is “to burn”).  Another commonly used theory is one of relation to the ever popular Sailor Moon series.  In this series, the character Hotaru Tomoe, Sailor Saturn, was a fairly popular character and fits many of today’s modern definitions for a moe character.  With the verbal obvious similarities in her name and the term, the link can be pretty easy to see.  Of course, this is all just speculative since there is no proof of any of this.  This really leaves the origins in the place of “well, damned if I know”.

Like many other fan terminologies, the fact that it was developed by many people and used by many people for different things makes it hard to pinpoint a single definition or use of the term.  Today, the most frequent usage is generally in the “[x] is moe”, but it should be noted that many other usages of it have existed.  For this, I’ll defer to tsurupeta.info for a better description than I could ever provide.  I might not agree on all their terms or usages, but at the same time, I’m nowhere near active enough to really say that I can confirm or deny that they may have been used in such a manner at one point.  Further support for this spread usage is clearly evident on visiting a site I’ll quote early and often, TVtropes.  On its page defining moe, we can first see a concerning factor in that it’s a YMMV page.  For those unfamiliar with the cite, YMMV is “Your Mileage May Vary” and is reserved for pages which refer to tropes which are debated in nature.  This, in relevance to moe, hints to me that it’s an opinion based on one’s intrinsic perception.  There’s never going to be a hard check list of “meet these requirements, qualify as moe”.  This likely means that the result is something that is emotionally driven given the nature of what is being described.  In other words, what exactly moe is defined as will be subject to the perception of the viewer…what I may deem moe may not be the same as what you see it as.

Long story short: Nobody honestly really knows what moe is or how it came to be.  People, even academics have theories and that’s about it.  Since it’s a fan term, we can’t conclusively prove anything except that it’s a widespread, coverall term.  In this sense, we can see commonalities to some more comfortable English words.  For example, “feminist” can mean a wide variety of things, so much so that it’s much easier to break the term up into schools of thought.  Yet we use the term feminist to explain a wide variety of different opinions and beliefs from equal pay for equal work and qualifications to “insane nutbar down the street wanting to chop your nuts off”.  And, as such, we’ll never really get a strict, effective definition.  This may seem kind of silly to point out, since the post here is “What Exactly is Moe”…but this really leads to an argument that moe isn’t an exact thing.  There’s no science or perfect way to describe it since it, by nature, was never perfect in definition by virtue of being a fan term.  As one open to interpretation, it’s going to be unfair to say that someone is incorrect in saying that [x] isn’t moe.  It’s subjective and the matter of interpretation is left to the individual.  A similar example can be written into a science.  How safe do we need to make a bridge?  Is 1% chance of it breaking in a year safe?  Is 0.1%?  0.01%?  We have regulations on such things, but there’s no real good way to decide on a safety factor since the concept of 100% safe never actually exists outside the realm of thought.

Short long story short: Honestly, we know nothing about the term “moe”, other than it’s a widely spread term which, by nature of being originated as a fan term, is near impossible to describe and one in which we don’t have a way to identify how it got here…it just did at some point.  Again, this may seem weird that my “what exactly is…?” post ends up with a bit of a “it’s not exactly anything” answer…but fan terms are an oddity.

Extra Credit – Actual Trends

In all this chaos and madness, there is but a couple interesting points which refuse to die down.  The lesser is that the show Neon Genesis Evangelion was a huge factor in all this and the greater being that the character of Rei Ayanami in specific was the catalyst. One has to take into consideration the nature of the industry at the time.  Neon Genesis Evangelion was part of a fairly big genre at the time: an “after the end” show.  Apocalyptic shows ran rampant in the years leading up to the airing of Evangelion.  An extremely famous example, if needed for assistance in visualization, is Fist of the North Star.  Leading up to this, Evangelion was more of the same.  However, the character of Rei Ayanami was something unaccounted for.  Director Hideaki Anno had attempted to form a creepy individual, one which we couldn’t possibly relate to.  And that was Rei.  What ended up happening was impossible to predict in my mind…Rei became a popular character. Someone many people liked.  In a show full of easy to hate characters, she was the one we took into our arms.  Why this is has become an interesting area of debate.  A roundtable discussion once pointed to the rise of apocalyptic works and their sudden decline after the Aum Subway bombing.  In this theory, the bleak contrast of Evangelion’s hopeless world scenario, in which we see exactly how horribly things go when we leave the world in the hands of angst-ridden kids broke the back of this entire genre.  Before, these shows were an escape…you could stand up and say “The world needs saving?  Well, I can save it!” and replaced it with a void of nothingness due in no small part to the real world events occurring around them and how badly Evangelion broke basically everything.  This discussion furthered this point by suggesting that the final two episodes of Evangelion hurt things even worse since Anno, famous for his hatred of the otaku lifestyle, seemingly prepared a parody of the inevitable parody of a normal life for the Evangelion cast (which, and I’m not familiar with this enough, is suggested to be an event that had already started).  Regardless, it should be noted that Rei Ayanami will forever be a turning point and will probably be considered the harbinger of a shift towards moe trends, a point highlighted by Galbraith.   A common line of thought was that Rei’s presence brought about a new trend.  Why is questionable, but the need to see their fan favourites in positions where they aren’t being mentally and physically put through the wringer, seems to become the prevailing trend.

Wrap Up

So, for the speculative “can we create a hard definition to moe” part, it turns out there’s really no good way to define moe.  No simple formula to apply, no simple definition.  We get a general idea of what it’s supposed to be…but nothing concrete or anything that can’t be described greatly without learning by examples.  Terms like “generic cuteness” or “elicits the big brother instinct in all of us” are about as close as we get.  If you need to explain it to the friend mentioned at the beginning, just keep sticking to spinning your wheels until it gets through.

From here on out, I’ll be focusing on the character definition of moe, such as the must be have been said a million times “Mikuru is so moe” (emphasis theirs) type of statement.  This is probably the most relevant term, since the usage of moe as a term period has died out in recent years.

From here, the next step is to approach and understand the appeal of such a character.  Why are they so appealing anyways?  What makes a character with this incoherent blob of moe traits so popular?