As much as I begin to unintentionally obscure my roots in the United States through my pursuit of foreign culture, sometimes I find myself having a distinctly American approach to things regardless.

And while I may not be chewing down on countless hamburgers or invading foriegn nations or driving pick-up trucks or however the wildly offensive stereotype goes, I do exhibit more than one trait in common with our most popular American, George W. Bush (or at least his government), in wanting to mess around with things that are distinctly not mine.

While perhaps the stage of anime is not quite as important as the global one, I was reminded of this way of thinking of “no, I want it THIS way” while watching some recent popular shoujo shows.

Maybe it’s not just an American way of thinking, but rather a fallacy of all humans, to want more than what is currently presented, but either way, I’m finding the topic of shipping to be one that’s sent me, as usual, on a variety of tangents; some serious, some sarcastic, some squeal-y, but all entertaining.

So put on your Cologne of Rabid Fanboy Protection +1 and let’s take a dive into one of the more divisive ways that a fandom manifests itself, into a lair typically more well frequented by the opposite sex (y’know, the kind that doesn’t exist on the internet … er … women), that of shipping.

Shipping, while probably only the second-most popular otakusphere buzzword involving aquatic vessels (thanks to School Days), is still a force to be reckoned with every time you delve into the fanbase of, really, any work of fiction, especially if you frequent the wrong (or perhaps, right).

If you’ve been living under a rock or have developed a sort of allergy to rabid fans over the last few years, the term ’shipping’ describes the act of, one way or another, showing support for a particular couple in a work of fiction. Sometimes it manifests in simple conversations although these things tend to run off the deep end into entire shrines, websites, and dirty fanfiction devoted to a single pairing.

One typically imagines the concept of ’shipping’, at least as applied in anime, most prevalent in those works aimed at the female side of the fandom; you’ve all heard and seen the endless mocking of the ‘fat yaoi fangirl’ stereotype and as true as it is or is not you’ll notice that a large amount of pairings do involve shows more popular with women. Or, sometimes, just more popular shows.

But really you’ll find that such a trend is evident in any show with a large cast, one way or another, and not just in the shoujo works.

School Rumble, while a generally gender-neutral school-life comedy, is awash in pairing terminology that would make one’s head (such as mine, picking up the manga more than 200 chapters late) spin like a bad special effect in a horror movie.

And while you generally don’t see term it as such in the harem-style romances, ’shipping’ is definitely prevalent. Who hasn’t ever wanted to see a particular girl win the guy?

Shuffle was the battleground for one of the most famous and perhaps infamous firefights, with Kaede and Asa supporters clashing both on and off the canon. (While, of course, anyone who likes, perhaps, Sia or Mayumi, cries in the background).

Da Capo got vicious as well between the Kotori fanclub and the siscon squad. Clannad burnt a lot of people when it shot down the hopes of two of it’s girls in a particularly blunt manner. And really, any show worth its salt will have at least two immensely popular characters which all have a meritable right to the male protagonist, one way or another.

But shipping remains a bit of a curious thing to me. What happened to just letting things be, to letting the rightful winner claim their spoils?

Of course, it’s never that simple, as quite often the non-canon shippings - the ones I feel are most prevalent, barring the fanclubs that sprout up as a defense against these, supporting the ‘true’ pairing - are a result of believing that the ‘rightful winner’ is anything but.

And I can’t complain and go on moral tangents because I’ve been there, been standing on my soapbox shouting about how so-and-so is a dirty whore and doesn’t deserve X while what’s-her-face is a goddess that should be praised for just existing. It’s all relative, I suppose. One person’s right is another’s wrong and one person’s moe is another’s annoyance.

Of course, stopping here at the ‘different beliefs for different people’ card would be not only horribly typical of the overly-neutral way of which I write, but also it would be skipping over a large portion of the ’shipping’ crowd. There’s a certain point, a line in the sand somewhere where you enter the Twilight Zone of character pairing, where normal rules of science and sanity fail to apply.

As you probably visualized since the start of this article when I mentioned the word ’shipping’, there are some character pairings that are … out there. Whether it be the pairing together of obscure-at-best characters, or more infamously the coupling of characters previously straight and/or abstinent, certainly, like most other gritty underbellies of the anime community, eyebrows can definitely be raised to new heights.

Sometimes one just has to wonder (or perhaps, shout) why, and so another analytical post about the unanalyzable was born.

Romance always seems to be the end goal, at least in part, of works of fiction. Certainly every mainstream movie will have a random warm-’n-fuzzy subplot to it (when it is not composed entirely of such as substance) and quite a lot of anime like to be the same as well.

For those that aren’t, though, it’s up to the fans to solve it. Sometimes this is easily fixed, in stories where there happen to be both guys and girls, but no actual relationships - I can’t name a lot in this column, but Haruhi is vague enough to qualify.

Of course, at other times, wringing romance from a show is like shoving a square block into a round hole - oddly fitting for some of the pairings that result from nearly homogenously-gendered shows like Azumanga Daioh or Kaiji.

Sometimes you can stretch to reach for a rational reason to this kind of stuff. Just like many creators of art (fiction, film, music, etc) themselves, some fans tend to be not in the best romantic state, perhaps disillusioned with life or three-dimensional people. Escapism is a perfect fit (not to mention, a Pandora’s Box) for these types; but sometimes it fails them.

Since the authors did not write what they wanted to see, they have to take matters into their own hands and rewrite canon. It’s not all in all a bad thing in itself - although the writing is, for the most part, a bad thing in itself - it’s just that it tends to clash with the standard views of a character that a person tends to hold.

One person who’s less blunt would call it “destroying the true personality of a character”. You know, the thought that they would never do that and that would never go there.

Perhaps it’s true. Still, I can’t bring myself to condemn it.

It’s just another end of the escapist means. Sure, maybe the escapist alley is an even darker one to be tackled in an even darker editorial, but really, there’s very little fundamental difference between the escapism provided to you by some anime, and the escapism people create from it.

One might be better planned out, better drawn, and better done than the other, but as they say, whatever works. If it puts you in your happy place, more power to you. It’s why we still enjoy simple fluff alongside our moving epics.

The one plausible argument I could have is when one tries to invent escapism in something more mature, that tries to supersede escapism. I mean, having the Kanokon cast make out in one giant lovefest isn’t a far stretch from the true nature of the show, but when you demean a complex character to something simple and fantasy-fulfilling, that’s when I take offense.

And I think that’s the extent of my view on the situation. You can do whatever you want with your fantasies … just keep them to yourself (or your kind). A lot of this kind of stuff isn’t for me, but that doesn’t mean I need to be stamping it off the face of the earth any time soon.

Basically, person who dreams at night of odd couplings = okay, person who dreams at night of odd couplings and promptly posts about it to twenty tangentially related message boards = bad.

I mean, sometimes it almost seems like a good thing to be involved in shipping sometimes, least because it’s another way to get involved and invested in the show; and things can only get better from there. It almost seems a logical extension of the basic human urge for constant improvement - if not for something more - because as they say, you want what you - or perhaps, your favorite character - can’t have.

-CCY

(Incidentally, this entry was inspired by Special A - yes, someone is still watching it - and Shugo Chara. The former, I’m suddenly impressed with Tadashi, and the latter, well, everyone is superior to Tadase, and Ikuto’s not the best in the rankings once you consider factors other than flirtiness.)

If you liked this post, try...

• August 14, 2008 -- Lost my Magic: Why I suddenly went missing from ItaKiss and the shoujo scene
• July 9, 2008 -- [Rapidfire] The Touhou Conspiracy, Part I: Analyze it slowly! Yukkuri
• July 3, 2008 -- Memorializing Makoto: School Days, one year later
• June 15, 2008 -- [Rapidfire] Shuffle! returns, selling out, Howl’s Moving Castle and emotional connection
• June 8, 2008 -- Otaku Paranoia: Ressentiment and the NHK Conspiracy

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