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Hiroki Azuma's Database Consumption | Understanding Otaku

If asked the question, "what book would you recommend to those wanting to learn more about anime and manga?", my response would often be Hiroki Azuma's book Otaku: Japan's Database Animals. The book's conception of consumption is still so relevant, helpful and intuitive to those who consume anime and manga regularly that I believe that the book's other shortcomings don't impact my overall recommendation. My hope is that this video will help others become interested in both Azuma's book, but also the wide and expansive literature on anime and otaku that is often overlooked or forgotten, especially within the anime YouTube community. My Twitter:   / translating_jp   ----------------------------------- Extended Notes: [i] The concept of 'moe' refers to the strong sense of emotional attachment viewers feel for their favourite characters. Patrick Galbraith, the explores the concept in his book the Moe Manifesto. I will likely explore this topic in more depth at a later date. [ii] So why is the Otaku a postmodern phenomenon according to Azuma? Azuma believes that Otaku culture reflects the social structure of postmodernity on two points — the omnipresence of simulacra and the dysfunctionality of the grand narrative. Simulacra ー a term taken from French philosopher Jean Baudrillard ー refers to cultural products that do not have an original, but are neither copies of something concrete. This makes simulacrum appear to us as copies without originals. The other concept of the grand narrative, or meta narrative, refers to a totalizing narrative of historical events around a central idea, an example being the Enlightenment and the progress of history with scientific discovery and societies’ apparent demystification of religious ideas. Azuma starts by talking about a shift from consuming Otaku works as a grand narrative of following various authors and their influences directly, to then how this apparent grand narrative of the author broke down into micro narratives, to a “grand non narrative”, and then finally to database consumption. A longer discussion of this is in the book in pages 34-39 and later in the book where there’s a lot of interesting ideas. Both of these two parts, simulacra and the dysfunction of the grand narrative, are pretty easy to see in the discussion of Digi Charat, where chara-moe produces characters that are copies of various database elements and the media mix no longer portrays the anime, novel or manga as a sole work through which merchandise is auxiliary (such as toys or small goods). This isn't to say that nothing has influences anymore, rather that the way we consume anime and manga, and the way it's produced, presents us with a world view that depicts media in this new way. [iii] The reason Azuma mentions that moe is not a fetish object is because he is in direct opposition to Tamaki Saito, the author of Beautiful Fighting Girl, whose book aims to be a Lacanian psychoanalytic approach to Otaku. Beautiful Fighting Girl's English translation has a section that describes Azuma and Saito's debate regarding otaku and sexuality which is very much worth reading. Azuma explains that he does not believe sexuality is important when discussing otaku whereas Saito sees it as fundamental to understanding Otaku. There is also a commentary at the end of Beautiful Fighting Girl where Azuma explains how his book Otaku is a reaction to Saito's work. [iv] Its worth mentioning that Azuma discusses doujinshi and otaku perceptions of authorship that also follow this type of media consumption. I did not go into it for two reasons, firstly because I believe that doujinshi as a topic deserves a longer discussion of its own, and secondly because I believe it would inflate this video outside its main purpose of explaining database consumption. If you are Interested in the information in the book, I implore you to read it when you can. [v] I don’t want to give the impression that the proliferation of character tropes from the 90s to 2000s is simply ‘lazy writing’, because it ignores the reasons why characters are produced and consumed in the way that they are. For instance, when we look to something such as the simulacra of tsundere characters, we should look at them from the perspective of the database consumption and the demand for these characters. Many texts also interact and play with our conceptions of these elements quite often. ----------------------------------- References: [1] Azuma, Hiroki. Otaku: Japan's Database Animals. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Available at: https://mogami.neocities.org/files/ot... [2] Steinberg, Marc. Zahlten, Alexander (eds). Media Theory in Japan. Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2017. Check Chapter 3 by Takeshi Kadobayashi, titled: The Media Theory and Media Strategy of Azuma Hiroki, 1997–2003