An Audience of One

Both of the manga I’m reading at the moment, Tune in to the Midnight Heart and Insomniacs After School, feature characters with personal broadcast radio stations via Internet streaming. I’m an avid streamer of podcasts, but that’s a slightly different flavor of online audio content that’s more curated and episodic than spontaneous. So, is this a thing Japanese high schoolers do? The short answer is, “I have no idea.” 

Tune in to the Midnight Heart. Masakuni Igarashi. Kodansha.

What’s interesting is that the protagonists in the aforementioned manga both maintain their closest relationships using streaming broadcasts to an audience of one person. If characters are confessing their feelings, it’s quite indirect when done through the radio. In my day, texting was the thing kids did; I guess radio is the new thing. I feel there’s a material difference in pretending you have an impersonal audience instead of just directly speaking to your friend. The question becomes, “Why do it this way?”

Modern dating is bad because men and women are doing a poor job of communicating or have nothing good to say. Many people blame the internet for creating information silos that breed stupid opinions and false facts, and this means men and women’s interior worlds are more easily exposed (and increasingly appalling to one another). Because much of our human interactions are mediated through text, I'd say that from a communications theory standpoint, the issue is this: sending texts is information-deficient when compared to radio — even an indirect broadcast conversation — because our voices carry messages through tone and volume, clarifying the intention of our speech. Text, as anyone who’s ever sent one can share, is notoriously hard to interpret even when intentions are good. It’s also easier to be an asshole when hiding behind your keyboard or firing off a quick message without thinking twice. I feel like using our voices is an extra level of personal investment and confidence that helps us be judicious with our words. (Unless you're Alex Jones, of course.)

Insomniacs After School. Makoto Ojiro. VIZ Media.

Radio broadcasts to my wife sound like a cute idea, but would quickly grow old because we already live with each other. For high schoolers who want to treat radio as a form of public journaling and indirect confessional, however, the practice seems harmless. If you don’t want your parents to see your call history, it’s certainly one way to avoid getting into trouble for talking late into the night. Ah, the beauty of being young…

Happy Blogiversary!

It’s been a year since the relaunch of this blog! Most of my anime consumption was a blur of late-night delirium while caring for my newborn. I haven’t been blogging as much as I hoped to, so I’ll share my current otaku consumption habits. Get ready for a super post!

CURRENTLY WATCHING: Witch Watch

Basically, each episode boils down to Nico the witch causing mayhem wherever she goes by casting magic spells to impress Moi, her childhood friend. I’m always looking for reasons to justify my OtakuUSA magazine subscription, so when I read about Witch Watch earlier this year, I had to tune in. The feature article promised a slapstick comedy, and the show doesn’t disappoint. My wife certainly likes the show (and she hates anime), so I know it’s good. Some of the jokes don’t land if you’re not super into Japanese media references; it’s just an excuse for me to do research in the future. Recommend.

CURRENTLY WATCHING: Anne Shirley

Remember that post I did on cozy anime? Anne Shirley is that kind of show. I remember my wife watching Anne with an E on Netflix, so she was excited to see this anime adaptation (which itself is a reboot of an older anime, which is ultimately based on a book I haven’t read). I think Anne is adorably melodramatic as a character, and I identify with her need to see wonder wherever she looks in the world. Life isn’t perfect but it is worth celebrating. Recommend.

CURRENTLY WATCHING: Ranma 1/2

Being familiar with Usurei Yatsura, I know that Rumiko Takashi’s style of rom-com is fun and cute. Ranma is enchanted by an ancient pool haunted by a drowned girl, and now he turns into a girl when touched by cold water. The hijinks, however, begin once his fiancee, Akane Tendo, learns about this alter-ego. I wondered about the sensitivity this story would bring to what is literally a transgender tale, but as with many good comedies, the ensuing absurdity and refrain from "punching-down" disarms a lot of potential discourse. Recommend.

CURRENTLY READING: Tune In To the Midnight Heart

I liked Quintessential Quintuplets; my wife was upset by the ending, and I understand why. If you were disappointed by Quints, I think Midnight Heart is for you. Taking the same playbook and adding ten times the humor, Yamabuki joins the Broadcast Club seeking a girl who he confessed to years ago; this girl is among the club's four female members. I can't overstate how much I like this manga. Every girl seems like she could be "the one," and although my favorite pairing is with Nene Himekawa, I don't feel there's a bad choice among them. Did I mention how funny this is? Recommend

CURRENTLY PLAYING: Tsukihime

After playing Fate/Stay Night and all its routes, I thought another Type-Moon production would round out my understanding of this elaborate magical universe. Unfortunately, Tsukihime isn't my jam so far. The charm of Fate was an elaborately designed tournament with central characters who play well off each other and are also interesting themselves. Now, I wouldn't say Tsukihime has boring characters and a dull story...but it does. Fate's Shirou Emiya is compelling and complex in ways I've never seen, a character filled with a pathos that makes him frustrating and fascinating to follow. Maybe I'm impatient, but I'm not seeing that same appeal in this game yet. Can't recommend.

Alright, that's enough post for now. May's a super busy month so far, but I'd like to write more. Stay tuned!

What's Up with Anime Slavery? or The Rising of a Savior Complex

The Rising of the Shield Hero was the first time I recall encountering slavery as a topic in anime. The relationship between Naofumi, a reluctant and rejected hero without a party, and Raphtalia, a young tanuki-girl he buys to aid him in combat, blossoms into a beautiful bond. The fact that Raphtalia is a slave is somewhat corrected after Naofumi releases her from servitude, but then she volunteers to be enslaved anyway as a sign of her loyalty. It's sort of cute...but still slavery? As a result of encountering this institution in modern medieval, fantasy, and isekai genre shows, I thought to look up why people are writing this stuff nowadays.

The Rising of the Shield Hero. Kinema Citrus. 2019. 

My first instinct was to understand Japanese slavery precedents. Chris Kincaid offers a well-researched account in their 2021 article, "Slavery and Japan": A class system allowed for the legal selling of Japanese until the 12th century, when it was no longer a state-sponsored institution. Legitimized slavery briefly made a comeback after the Portuguese and Jesuits wanted women to take abroad in the 1500s, but Toyotomi Hideyoshi squashed that nonsense. The major issue, of course, is that slavery is intimately linked to sex trafficking and prostitution, which are illegal in most places and times, anyway. Kincaid emphasizes that the sexual aspects of Japanese slavery are what persist today, often in the form of "comfort women." Depending on what kind of anime you're watching, this sexual aspect to slavery may get glossed over entirely (e.g. Shield Hero) or becomes part of the plot (e.g. Harem in the Labyrinth of Another World, which is a truly heinous show.)

As to why slavery themes are prevalent in today's otaku culture, Danny Guan points out in "The Problem with Isekai 2: The Slavery Issue" that stories like Shield Hero come from one particular Japanese website, 小説家になろう ("Let's Become a Novelist, or Shōsetsuka ni Narō) and get chosen for novel deals and adaptations. Naturally, stories that are the most popular will get chosen because publishers want to guarantee return on investment; this creates a positive feedback loop of stories featuring slavery and incentivizes more writers to do the same. Danny, as well as people in this kind of useful Reddit thread, attribute this slavery interest to wish-fulfillment for writers and readers, savior complexes for protagonists, and ease of adding new characters to stories. 

The Rising of the Shield Hero. Kinema Citrus. 2019. 

Yet, this still doesn't explain why anyone is obsessed with fictional slavery systems in the year 2025. If, as Kincaid illustrates, legitimized sex slavery existed as recently as World War II--using women from Japanese territories--this is still beyond the memory of most contemporary Japanese writers. (I'll caveat that some of these victims still exist, and that collective memories in society are more persistent.) I assume most otaku writers aren't frequenting brothels or engaging in sex trade. It sounds like an expensive hobby, and the pricier sexual transactions are initiated by old and tired salarymen. 

The isekai genre usually occurs in kingdoms with feudalism and class stratification. In these worlds, slaves exist as part of economic systems, diplomatic tools, and war spoils. Danny Guan's mention of the "good master" allows stories to treat slavery institutions as pillars of society, a system heroes navigate in a self-serving yet beneficent manner rather than toppling it altogether. Without psychoanalyzing isekai writers too deeply, perhaps slavery systems are a way to rationalize real-world evils and fight against them in personal ways while being rewarded. I won't speculate what those real-world evils might be for Japanese writers. 

Or maybe I'm giving people too much credit. That first season of Shield Hero is really good, though. 

The Rising of the Shield Hero. Kinema Citrus. 2019.