I’ve been going on an interesting, almost existential-type tangent in my anime fandom of recently. Perhaps it’s a slow time waiting week-to-week on all the latest shows, or an over-saturation in pink happy-happy fluffiness, but I’ve been challenging my mentality (and perhaps sanity) recently with some new material.

Those who recognize the two works (or at least one) in the title should already know the common link bonding them and that is that they take realistic, sometimes disturbing close shots at the lifestyle of the manic anime fan.

It’s an eye-opener in the sense that they are mirrors into your own life - if you’re reading this blog, you probably have, or have felt at one point, at least some degree of similarity with the characters in these works. You might not be as grossly distanced from reality, or as disillusioned with real people, but certainly it’s a thought that has crossed your mind. “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice for life to be like anime.” “Oh, wouldn’t it be nice if real girls were like that.”

Well, think again.

The tones of these two shows are markedly different so far, at least with just one episode of NHK under the belt versus 25 chapters of Ressentiment, but both of them do have at least some power to inspire inner reflection, with a almost black-humor tone coating them a la a Zetsubou Sensei with less random imagery and comedy and more close-to-home hits.

I’ve enjoyed them a lot, for the same reason I enjoyed an anime like Kaiji or a visual novel conversion like H2O, and that is because they are unmistakably different from whatever you’ve seen before. And ironically, this concept of ‘being different’ is what they are all about.

Otaku, or maybe people in general, like to think they are different. I’ve gone over this once before.

Perhaps this is a result of how far the anime fad has evolved. From the actual anime itself, with content unlike anything you’ll see on American airwaves and an art-style distinugishable anywhere, to the fandom itself, which has self-bred internet fads and in-jokes to no end and purchased endless amounts of sometimes strange, sometimes awe-inspiring, sometimes downright creepy merchandise.

A hardcore anime fan is easily distinugishable, one might say. Even if he doesn’t parade around in his anime T-shirt all the time, or talk about it 24-7, one look at their room should confirm everything. I can vouch for it myself, sporting six Megami posters and a couple artbooks. Maybe they’re distinguishable by the fact that you never really get the chance to distinguish them anyway, since they spend so much time being introverted.

And these are the types of people that Ressentiment and Welcome to the NHK really both talk about and target.

I know that there are well-adjusted anime fans out there. People who can live lives that satisfy the concept of normal. Or just people who accept that they don’t run by society’s means, but recognize the need to commune with it. But far and away there is a legion of anime fans who run away from the normal. Who shun society, picturing it to shun them.

Ressentiment takes the harder look on this. It focuses on a 30-year-old man living with his mother still. Not an anime nerd. Just a general down-on-life ‘failure’ who has a dead-end job and few real friends. He drowns himself in liquor every night, and women don’t give him the time of day. Truly, he is the outcast.

But he still feels the urge for acceptance, so a friend gives him an intriguing option: virtual reality.

In the future, virtual reality technology has evolved to such a point that one can embed themselves completely in a full-motion body suit and live in a virtual world with virtual (and real) people, as their idealized self.

The ‘hero’ of this story purchases a game nicknamed ‘Moon’, a simple visual-novel-time love story about a woman alone on an island, and places himself in it. In his game he finds companionship, with one of the most stunning pieces of imagery I’ve seen, the main hero in real life hugging mid-air, whispering “You’re not alone anymore”.

But as even virtual reality begins to shun him, the story takes on a science-fiction turn, revealing the past of the game developer as well in a compelling work that is gruesomely, grossly stark.

This is apparent in the art style of the manga. The characters aren’t lookers. In fact, they’re downright ugly. And why shouldn’t they be? Stuck in dead-end jobs, with no future and no money, why should they be pretty boys and girls?

Ressentiment works very well with this imagery to paint, perhaps a slightly unrealistic picture, but one that should scare some people straight, or at least into thinking a bit about their life. You hear the quotes that many fans have shouted all their lives, how the virtual world “is the only one left for them”, how they “gave up on real women”, but this time you hear them from an socially-apocalyptic setting. Maybe it’s scare tactics, but it’s good scare tactics, one that counter all the soothing messages that more “escapist” anime may provide. Neither is particularly bad, per se, but too much of one or the other and you’ll go crazy.

This manga works because both its setting and its message it conveys to readers is set in a sort of “what-if” future. It’s not just in the canon, wondering ‘what if virtual reality was this realistic?’, but also in the reader’s mind, wondering ‘what if I become like this’, or more interesting, ‘what happens if the virtual world deserts me too’, as is the case in Ressentiment.

This is the almost intangible intrigue of a work like Ressentiment. It makes you ask a lot of questions about reality and yourself, whether this is the person you want to become.

It’s not a bad thing, really. It’s not like you have to stop becoming an anime fan or anything drastic - it just reminds you that you can’t lose yourself in your fandom, like a stereotypical villain in a movie obsessed with victory, or world domination, or a woman, or whatever. It helps counteract that natural defense that otaku have developed, that shell between themselves and the world.

And this natural defense is something that Welcome to the NHK touches on as well, perhaps unwittingly. It all really happened at the appearance of the girl that appears to be the main heroine, Saki, at the lead male’s house.

Incidentally, the male lead happens to be, again, a NEET who shuns the real world, and lives in his apartment all day, and so he is quite startled by the presence of a girl who actually seems to care about him.

Equally startled was I, who instantly went on a mental rant about how “women won’t suddenly like a guy like that”, before I realized … that’s what he thought as well. That’s what the anime wants us to think.

Really, this is the mindset that shows like this speak against, that they try to destroy.

As the title of the post goes, with the mindset of oppression by society that many otaku have comes a mindset of paranoia as well. It’s not just that the real world doesn’t live up to the fake one, it’s that it CAN’T. So, we apply the concept in reverse, when analyzing both the real world and, here, fiction in terms of the real world. If the real world is anything like the fictional world, it can’t be right. It just can’t.

We praise certain works for being realistic, when art imitates life, but when life imitates some of the less ‘real’ forms of art, we attack them mercilessly.

And so we become suspicious of Saki. We wonder what she’s up to, since she can’t just be a kind, friendly person concerned about a fellow member of the human race. That would be impossible.

But is it really?

One of the faults that I want to address while on my (perhaps a bit soapbox-worthy) fandom exploration is this brutal judgment of others, without even allowing them to show their side. The otakusphere as a whole tends to think very harshly and jump to conclusions.

The industry is bad. Dubs are bad. Naruto fans are bad. Naoki (from Itazura na Kiss) is bad.

But really, isn’t that being horribly, horribly stereotypical? Nearly every fictional work has touched on this in one way or the other and yet so many of us haven’t realized what we have become. The anime fan gets locked into a certain frame of mind that they can’t break themselves from.

Whose fault is it, the anime they watch, or the person themselves, I can’t tell, but certainly a work like Ressentiment, or Welcome to the NHK, can help in softening that frame of mind, if they have enough hope left in them to open up their mind.

Am I a better person from experiencing these works? I don’t know. Perhaps I am just the same, since I spawned my whole NHK discussion just five seconds into Saki’s appearance. All this analysis and judging of both anime and fans is just as stereotypical, is it not?

Truly, if I listened to what I said, I wouldn’t need to think that I am right. But I still do, which is why I write long blog posts to tell other people about my way of belief.

But what I can say for certain is that something in the style of these works needs to be viewed by fans, just to provide another perspective on life. I can’t say for certain whether any one way is absolutely right - but with many different views experienced, one can form their own way and their own beliefs that will be stronger than anything someone can tell you.

-CCY

(Ironically, I became obsessed with this form of work decrying people obsessed with things. Perhaps that’s why it’s difficult to talk about it as well, because this genre is hugely, extremely personal - each person will read something different into it.

And, R.I.P. the dead in Akihabara today. I just hope both the fans and the media can reach a reasonable conclusion on this matter, instead of acting immaturely and blaming scapegoats.)

This post is tagged Analysis, Ressentiment, Welcome to the NHK