Otaku: Japan's Database Animals

Anime has never been a genre (style?) that I've been particularly interested in. My experience with it is about as shallow as it gets as I can count the number of actual shows I've seen on one hand, not counting the scattered reruns of Cowboy Bebop thanks to Adult Swim, and from what little exposure I've had to other popular shows hasn't exactly grabbed me. In particular I've always felt a bit weirded out by the "idiosyncrasies" of the style (high pitched shrieking female voice acting, the V sign thing, sweat drop/angry indicators, etc.) and I always kind of wondered why I didn't feel the same way about Western shows/movies and their own tropes and recurring elements, and I Hiroki Azuma's brilliant book Otaku: Japan's Database Animals has helped illuminate that for me.

Hiroki Azuma is a social critic, philosopher, and PhD at the Tokyo Institute of Technology who focuses on postmodern and other topics of "new" criticism (my term, not his). I was made aware of him through a link to both a short profile of him as well as a link to his most well known book, titled Otaku: Japan's Database Animals. Written originally in 2001 it is a fascinating examination of not just the Otaku subculture of modern day Japan but our postmodern society in general and the increasingly "nonnarrative" direction culture is going in. The main thrust of the book is that Otaku culture and the products (both physical and cultural) they consume are increasingly lacking in what Azumi terms a "grand narrative", instead moving more and more towards hollow combinations of attractive elements. In terms of the general anime style this means easily identifiable traits Azumi refers to as "moe-elements" constructed to encourage certain emotional reactions - cat ears, maid uniforms, etc. The reason Otaku are drawn to these products is not the appeal of some "grand narrative" that attempts to grapple with the human condition or any other similarly lofty goal, but because they assemble disparate combinations of these "moe-elements" into easily categorize-able entities, hence the "database". Each individual work is therefore not meant to be enjoyed on its own but rather as an endless game of musical chairs with characters, settings, and designs from other works as part of the "database" of "moe-elements". It's kind of abstract so if this explanation doesn't make any sense... just read the book.

While Azumi focuses on Otaku culture in particular, I think that his ideas on the trend of cultures moving towards postmodernism "nonnarrative" seeking and "database" attraction isn't something unique to Japan. Many subcultures raised around small niches probably show signs of this slide towards postmodernity and one that immediately comes to mind for me is the metal community, especially internet hubs like r/metal. The focus has always seemed to be on quantity above quality, with members competing to see who can rattle off a more impressive list of underground post-rock-doom-sludge-prog-shoegaze-whatever bands than engaging with the actual musical product produced by these acts in a critical way. This trend of engaging with products and culture on a "database" level can probably be seen in the modern video game community as well as films, which have long been the subject of diligent categorization by devoted "buffs". Whatever you think of Western culture's trajectory in the coming years, you could do much, much worse than Otaku: Japan's Database Animals as a thoroughly educating and entertaining piece of work.