PinkuBentoBox

It appears that Marmot is a member of some kind of underground intarweb secret society who all blog about the same thing on the same day. Anilluminati. Or maybe Moejestic 12. Anyway, the current discussion is interesting so I felt like contributing my own rambling five cents on the subject. Reading through these entries, it really seems that a fair amount of the discussion, when you boil it down, is about the inherent sexism of the ‘moe movement’ which is so heavily represented in the design of this generation’s anime productions.

The entry I was writing ended up morphing into something only peripherally related. The role of archetypes in galge / visual novels and the anime adaptions thereof. Now, I want to preface this by saying that I’m not actually convinced of the concept myself. As I wrote this, one part of me is sitting there telling me that this is utter bullshit. Another part is telling me that it makes a strange amount of sense. I’m really not sure if this is all a huge joke, if I’ve totally overanalysed things and missed the point, or if I’m actually speaking sense.

Now, I really don’t want to turn this into a discussion of moe. History has shown that the term is highly subjective and extremely nebulous. For some people it describes an emotion which the english (and apparently the Japanese) language doesn’t seem to have a name for. For others it’s a term used to describe a certain method of character design. For many it’s just a euphamism for sexual arousal, though I along with a lot of purists would argue that that is a corruption brought about by people who don’t really understand the term. But this is another argument.

In essence, the role of any character archetype in these games is very much a trial. Each character must somehow be ‘mastered’ by the character. So essentially, every archetype you could come up with, be it a discussion of traits (Moe) or something else, will be very much submissive in nature. The reason for that should be instantly obvious, since the eventual goal is sex with the character, which by its very nature usually implies submission at some level. And yes, I realise that the implication in that sentence is enough to have a lot of radical feminists up in arms. But they also get upset at the presence of urinals in men’s toilets. The point is that in these games, the player and the male lead are intended to be one and the same, the player living vicariously through the actions of his in-game avatar. It really wouldn’t make a lot of sense to have a game setup where you pursue a sexual relationship with a moeblob only to be expected to be submissive to her at the critical point. Maybe this is the chauvanist in me, but I suspect that an event like that would feel very much like something was left unfinished or missing, and you’d expect to see the plot continue past there until the opposite was achieved. Alternatively, this is the sort of situation you’d expect to see in a Bad End. Either way, that’s not the point.

At this point, we need to make a distinction between moe archetypes and the traits associated with moe character design. Tsundere and the Yamato Nadeshiko are really traits. Twintails, thighhighs and that wierd little fang that a lot of characters seem to seem incomplete without are traits. The Childhood Friend and the Little Sister are also traits. They may affect the situations in which the lead might encounter the character, but they do not affect her as a character in her own right. The distinction is critical, because I have no interest in talking about moe traits. They’ve been done to death, and if you’ve watched enough modern anime then you already know all about them. They are mixed and matched all over the place. What is critical, however, is that these are generally no more than attractive wrappings around a more important concept, which is the actual roles that the characters play. My somewhat extensive study of the genre leads me to conclude that there are really only a handful of character archetypes, and each is really designed to evoke a different emotional response in the typical male viewer.

The obvious starting point is the Youth. This is a character who is somehow ‘younger’ than the lead character. Note that this is not necessarily a physical thing. Take, for example, Kanon’s Ayu. She is physically the same age as the male lead. However, she is perceived as being younger. The Youth may be somehow younger mentally, or simply in personality or the way she acts. This should also not be confused with simple inexperience, which is yet another trait. This character archetype is designed to embody innocence, purity and youthful exuberance. The intent is that the viewer should feel protective towards her, in this case it is a brotherly or fatherly desire to shield her from the evils of the world. This actually presents an interesting dichotomy, the desire to protect and preserve her innocence juxtaposed with the desire to possess (or in some cases defile) it. Generally the trend I’ve seen is that the player must convince the character to give it freely. If it is given, it is preserved. If it is taken, it is destroyed.

In direct contrast to the Youth is the Mother. Now, before you start nodding your heads sagely and throwing the term MILF around, that is not what I’m talking about. The Mother character may not actually be a mother herself. However, she will fit into a similar sort of role. Generally more mature than the male lead, she will generally show concern towards him in some way. Often this will be the character who has a deep desire to cook and clean for the character. Sometimes she will be someone that the character goes to for advice. In other words, she occupies a sort of maternal position in the character’s life. Generally this character tends to have some sort of connection to the lead. You might even wish to categorize the Mother as an ‘Older Sister’ (and consequently the Youth as a ‘Younger Sister’). I think that Mother conveys the meaning better, however, despite the fact that it ends up being a little Freudian. The maternal female is important as for many of the lonely otaku of the world, she may be the only woman that he feels somewhat comfortable interacting with, in other words a reasonably ’safe’ figure. Once he ‘knows’ and possesses her he is one step closer to ultimate fulfillment.

The third in my list is that of the Mystic. This is a female character who somehow epitomizes the magical aspects of the feminine, and that women think and act in ways that can be indecipherable and incomprehensible to men. She is viewed as being strange or different, in other words she does not seem to completely fit in to the carefully constructed fantasy world in which the player, through his avatar, is exploring. She may have strange quirks, have a mercurial personality, or even not be human. Regardless, she is representative of the mysterious, magical and strange aspects of the feminine which the player cannot hope to ever truly understand. Eventually the player must accept and take pleasure in these differences, and acknowledge that it will never be possible to fully comprehend her.

In contrast again to the Mystic is the Recluse. This is a character who is socially withdrawn. The classic example will be a bookworm, often a member of the library club or something similar. She is shy and may lack social graces, or there may be some other reasons behind her character, but the end result is that she holds herself aloof from the rest of the characters. This may be a character who is very quiet, though equally a quiet girl could be a Mystic, as technically social withdrawal would class the character as ’strange’ or ‘different’ to normal society. However this character is really representative of the player himself, someone who does not fit comfortably into the social norms expected of him. In other words, where the Mystic represents the unknown and incomprehensible, the Nerd represents the known and predictable.

The final archetype in my list is that of the Maiden. This is the female figure who characterizes the aspects of the feminine which the player does know. Where the Mystic is a force that is dangerous because of how different they appear, the Maiden is dangerous because she is typically an average, everyday girl. She is the standard, wholesome girl next door. Unassuming and straightforward, she is usually a character that the male lead is very familiar with. A childhood friend, a classmate, perhaps a relative or a neighbour, someone he sees every day. In other words, this is the average girl that the typical socially inept otaku would have been surrounded with at school. And what makes her challenging enough to become a major archetype in these games is that she is exactly the sort of girl that those socially inept otaku would have loved to have had the courage to have been able to interact with. It’s interesting that in a lot of galge this character can be the easiest to score, but in many others she will be the hardest.

In order to complete the game, the player must somehow understand each of these five archetypes and how they fit together in the world as it relates to him. Each of them sets forth a challenge. He must somehow determine the correct path to choose in order to gain knowledge of that archetype. Once all knowledge has been gained, the character has achieved ‘mastery’ of that character, completing her storyline or plot arc and being rewarded by her submission to his superior knowledge of what she represents. Once he has this, he has ‘completed’ that girl. However to truly complete the game, he must repeat this process with each of the other archetypes, because he cannot truly be considered to have truly gained mastery of the entirety of the game until he has reconciled himself the youthful and nurturing, the known, the unknown, and the feared aspects of the feminine.

It’s worth noting that these archetypes aren’t necessarily each going to be their own character. The two contrasts (Youth and Mother, Mystic and Recluse) are likely to be pretty rare combinations, but in a smaller cast there is no reason why others could not be found mixed. The other thing is that the archetypes don’t fit perfectly with everything - for example, Kanon tends to be a little problematic as the definitions don’t fit precisely. Kanon, for example, is a little problematic, because both Ayu and Makoto are Youths, both Mai and Makoto are Mystics, Shiori is a Recluse, and Nayuki a Maiden. Nayuki also fits the Mother description (as does her mother).

Of course, it’s also worth noting that this doesn’t hold together nearly as well in the subset of games which generally revolve around wall-to-wall sex. That sort of visual novel will often not have much beyond a paper-thin plot to string the sex scenes together. It’s possible that some of the same ideas are behind the characters, but generally they operate around a different principle (take her, use her, break her, get a new one.) and generally can’t be seen as anything other than mastubatory aids or power fantasies. Instead, I prefer to think that these apply to the games that get TV anime adaptions, and will often have completely clean versions made available on consoles in addition to or even instead of the explicit PC game. I’m also completely unsure whether these (or similar) archetypes would also apply to reverse-harem style games (I’m not sure what the technical term for these are, as I’ve really got no interest in hot men).