wat u say

Well, I was intending to write this as a comment to CCY’s Shiori campaigning post, but it was getting pretty long, so I figured I’d just put it here instead.

In the post, he referenced another post concerning moe, which is mainly what I was responding to in this comment turned blog post.

First, Saimoe tournaments really are just a popularity contest, no matter how you want to dress it up. I don’t really believe that’s going to change. That’s partially because the meaning of ‘moe’ has been blurred, but also because it’s somewhat person specific. I also think it’s fair to say that it changes for each person, as they age and are exposed to new and different characters and situations.

For instance, I really used to go crazy for that super shy type of girl that is designed to evoke the mamoruism reflex in guys. But that was probably more than 5 years ago. Now, I realize I don’t find them really all that attractive. I wouldn’t want to have to spend all my time tending to a weak girl. That’s not to say I wouldn’t like a girl who has her problems or that I don’t want to have to support her, but not to that extent. I don’t want someone who’s so shy and lacking in confidence that they can’t do anything without help. Not to say all characters designed to be ‘moe’ are like that, in fact that’s probably just a small subset.

When I recently got back into anime, I thought it was tsunderes that really pushed my buttons, but that’s not entirely the case either. It’s just that the characters I liked tended to have some tsundere characteristics. What I’ve grown to like is witty, cunning, and sarcastic characters. Someone with which to match wits. Not someone who’s absurdly intelligent and arrogant, but someone who is a bit above the rest and uses it to her advantage.

What’s the point in me explaining what I find attractive in anime characters? Well, it’s to show that tastes will change over time. Whether people get tired of seeing the same thing, or whether they find something new to enjoy, tastes change.

Now, to get back to the topic of moe, I’m going to take a quote out of the post referenced by CCY:

If [it] is rather difficult to try to define a word such as “trust”, or “peace”, or “good” or “love”, then why do we take such extremes arguing on how to define the word “moe”?

And therein lies the problem. If we want the word ‘moe’ to be such an abstract term, then how can we have a tournament for the most ‘moe’ girl? It’s like trying to have a contest for the most lovable, good, trustworthy, or peaceful girl. If you want to have a tournament trying to determine something as vague as that, ultimately, it’s left up to the people to decide who they think defines ‘moe.’ And to each person, the word ‘moe’ can mean a different thing. So we end up with a popularity contest.

But that’s not exactly such a bad thing. It’s like a beauty pageant. The closer to the ‘ideal’ a person is, the more likely they are to win. That’s not to say the ideal is right, or even good, but it does give you an idea of what the ‘ideal’ is.

I’m going to quote from one more post, one that was quote from in the above post:

Moe, sensu stricto, describes a certain type of stylized illustration of a young, cute, innocent, most often female human

While I’d say that this is a pretty good definition of moe, the definition itself is extremely abstract and very open to interpretation. Young could cover a wide variety of ages and cute could mean pretty much anything to any given person. Innocent is the only part of it (other than the bit about being female) that isn’t extremely abstract. But even innocent could mean many different things, depending on people’s views and beliefs.

…if we were to choose an image that would represent the word “moe”, it would be the one candidate that is sitting at the end of the rainbow wearing that tiara.

This is the thing we would end up with, in any given Saimoe contest. That’s not to say that the person who wins is your definition of moe, or my definition of moe, but it’s the most popular definition of moe. And isn’t that how you would define any word? Ask one thousand people to rank a bunch of people based on who is ‘cutest’ and I’m sure you wouldn’t have everyone ranking every person in the exact same manner. The meaning of the word is the meaning that is used by a majority of those who use it. It’s not perfect, but with something this abstract, it’s hard to be perfect.

Whether this will eventually make the word ‘moe’ meaningless, I’ll leave for another time.