Philosophy of adaption

Well, I think Kyoani and its creative minds were surely in a syncretic state – they had to balance viewer satisfaction with satisfying their own artistic minds. They had to balance – what Cuchlann and I fight about – the meaningless of art and the superimposed politics of art, entertainment. [This would probably apply to everyone who's ever had to publish something.]

So then let us say, “to excise, or not to excise, that is the question.” In order to provide the viewer with a narrative that avoids resets Kyoani would have needed to remove arcs, ends, and possibly rewrite some material. Yet they decided to include all the original material in the adaptation. The relationship between these two choices – that of “chastity” or “adulteration” – is not hierarchical. This is not a political question, it is a philosophical question¹, and as such, the significance is not in the result of the deed (higher or lower viewer ratings, more or less money) but in the inseparable morality of the deed itself – the two are merely artistic choices devoid of any intrinsic meaning, therefore, both having no meaning, they are equal to one another.

So for some reason I don’t like bringing up talk about the VN and aspects of adapting material. Yeah, Clannad is an adaptation, yeah, aspects of linearity fail sometimes, that’s inevitable. I’ve been working under the presumption that it is literally impossible to encapsulate the aspect of VN replayability in anime, therefore it’s rather silly to compare an anime to something it is intrinsically incapable of doing because, remember, we’re operating under the philosophy that, basically, the means justify the ends (not a typo). Even if you were to reverse the position, say that Kyoani alters source material, rewrites a few endings, there would still be things that version would be intrinsically incapable of doing, like providing those very reset ends you removed and so forth. [hear hear!]

Psychology of time

Valsiner (2005) writes that

[t]he co-existence of different bases for time measurement in human cultural practices reflects the historical complexity of measuring time. Efforts have been made to turn time into reversible units, similar to measures of length, weight etc. These static depictions of time can be seen as examples of “reversible time”. Surely such units are convenient cognitive illusions, yet they have their practical utility. Thanks to that, continuous events can be turned discrete (for example, there can be specifiable “end points” to experiences such as sitting in a lecture hall…). By trying to measure time, the duration notion is lost and time becomes represented in ways similar to space. Practical needs for social organization of life activities in societies guide the thinking of persons about time in the direction of overlooking the irreversibility of the duration.

In sum – time is irreversible as it flows, intricately linked with our experiencing our relations with our worlds. As a result of human cultural history, we have attempted to describe it in terms of stable units, which have served practical purposes. For the understanding of development, units of time that are used in science need to retain some features of irreversibility.

The take-away message is that in our viewing of Clannad (or any sort of time travel) we have to separate psychological time from narrative time.

fig1

[There are some epistemological nuances here - the narrative as a whole doesn't "regress" because the progression of the narrative is tantamount to a developing human psychology within irreversible time, but the narrative does indeed return to events that happened within a past that was established within the framework of relative events of the holistic narrative.]

Previously, Pontifus had written:

I’m having a hard time convincing myself that Clannad is tragic at all, ultimately, when all its tragedy is erased by magic.

But this is a reductive view which equates constant psychological time with narrative time. If we were to say truly that specific events onto which we have attached personal meaning were erased it be tantamount to memory loss of the viewer. Thus we can expand our graph:

fig2

Here, because excel sucks for 3-axis graphs, psychological time = ∆0 because it is always constant. For every instance of psychological time we establish a narrative event, that ratio is 1:1. But narrative events can regress, so even in a ∆0 of psychological time there can be a +/-∆x narrative time. Finally, emotion is always situated in irreversible time (psychologies cannot transverse time) and thus, for the sake of this study², we can set up some syllogisms:

∆emotion = ∆0psychological time
∆narrative time = ∆0psychological time
+/-∆emotion ≠ +/-∆narrative time

A change in emotion equals no change in constant psychological time.
A change in narrative time equals no change in constant psychological time.
A +/- change in emotion does not always equal a +/- change in narrative time.

Figure 2 is a hypothetical calculation of Pontifus’ psychology of Clannad. His psychological time is constant, yet as narrative time regresses his emotional level drops drastically. This is because, as he stated, “tragedy is erased”, which is just to say that narrative time regressed within a constant psychological time. But, as opposed to an Aristotelian notion of tragedy as an end product, it is clear that even a regression in emotion is a process that cannot disregard one’s history.

Even Nazarielle said:

…after what happened, it’s hard for me not to think that they were just trying to hit us as hard as they could, knowing that they could later reverse the sadness and make us all happy at the end. In hindsight, I can’t help but feel that it’s all rather artificial or fabricated. [emphasis added]

But for Nazarielle to explain his discontent, he must first explain the process by which this discontent arose. The process of emotion-building is invaluable because irrespective of what these emotions entail, they are always the basis for a developing psychology. And to explain more fully the process model within this developmental psychology, a fourth data series is need: reflexivity.

fig3

For someone like Pontifus or Nazarielle, or nearly everyone in the ’sphere, reflexivity is crucial – it’s writing, blogging. If there is one thing that is not altered by emotion in irreversible time nor narrative time it is reflexivity – it is cumulative, you cannot erase it (unless you perform a frontal lobotomy or something).³

notes

Same rating criteria too.

Fashion Sense – My personal grading system for the style; whether its original, stylish or just plain weird. [A scale from 1 to 10 where the higher the better]

Styling – The level of difficulty in achieving that intended hairstyle in real life. [Insanely

Difficult/ Difficult/ Normal/ Easy/ Piece of Cake]

Mobility – The level of difficulty in maintaining that hairstyle when moving around in real life. [Insanely Difficult/ Difficult/ Normal/ Easy/ Piece of Cake]

Upkeep – The level of difficulty in keeping the hairstyle the way it in real life. (e.g. whether water ruins the style, the amount of gel, how long the style lasts, upkeep, etc) [Insanely Difficult/ Difficult/ Normal/ Easy/ Piece of cake]

Comments – My personal inputs.

Hairstyle #1

Fashion Sense – 5/10

Styling – Piece of cake.

Mobility – Piece of cake.

Upkeep – Piece of cake.

Comments – A simple cut, looks like a totally average one. Perhaps it’s too average for some of you guys out there though? It’s important to note that his bangs aren’t hyperbolically huge.

Hairstyle #2

Fashion Sense – 9000+/10

Styling – Not For Mortals.

Mobility – Not For Mortals.

Upkeep – Not For Mortals.

Comments – Afro is one stylin’ mutha fuckah. He can probably hide shit in that thing, and he uses it to deceive his opponents into thinking they’ve pierced his skull when really, it’s just his mighty fro…

Hairstyle #3

Fashion Sense – 8/10

Styling – Difficult

Mobility – Difficult

Upkeep – Difficult

Comments – Not like I’ve seen many Asian guys keep up that kind of texture in hair. Seems fairly hard if your hair isn’t that long, but I think the bangs in the eyes would be a pain. (also see Koichi from Kimikiss)

Hairstyle #4

Fashion Sense – 7/10

Styling – Easy

Mobility – Difficult

Upkeep – Normal

Comments – I must admit, Gundam 00 being full of bishies, it’s only reasonable to say that you’re fond of at least one of the guy’s dew. It’d be fairly impossible for an East coast Asian guy to get his hair like that, but I’m not sure about an actual Kurd.

Hairstyle #5

Fashion Sense – 3/10

Styling – Difficult

Mobility -Difficult

Upkeep – Difficult

Comments – I wouldn’t bother with this for more than one reason…

Hairstyle #6

Fashion Sense – 8/10

Styling – Piece of cake

Mobility -Difficult

Upkeep – Piece of cake

Comments – You’d probably think of me as a liar if I said that my hair in real life actually looks like this…only not blonde…and I don’t have bangs. I rarely comb it (oh but knot central…), but I use conditioner, and it end up kinda semi-curly like that. And, Reinhard Does Not Have A Mullet. I think I’ll have to get my hair cut one day…In any case, Reinhard is one dashing Kaiser.

Hairstyle #7

Fashion Sense – 5/10

Styling – Insanely difficult

Mobility – Insanely difficult

Upkeep – Insanely difficult

Comments – Must take either a lot of gel or a lot of days not shampooing to get the back at a 90 degree angle like that. Not likely to be seen in real life – cut your bangs please.

Hairstyle #8

Fashion Sense – 7/10

Styling – Piece of cake

Mobility – Piece of cake

Upkeep – Difficult

Comments – Not that I’ve ever had my head shaved to that extent, but I think keeping it shiny would be hard to maintain. And the goatee, you can’t forget the man’s facial hair, which is a pain if you get a 5 o’clock shadow and need to shave twice a day. Thankfully, like a lot of Asian guys, I have nearly any facial hair so I can by with shaving my less-than-a-mustache once a week; hair on the jaw line….let’s not go there.

Hairstyle #9

Fashion Sense – 5/10

Styling – Piece of cake

Mobility – Piece of cake

Upkeep – Piece of cake

Comments – Poor Ryuuji…found out all that effort into fluffy bangs was in vain. Looks weird in the second picture anyway. Like something out of Happy Days.

Hairstyle #10

Fashion Sense – 9/10

Styling – Difficult

Mobility – Insanely difficult

Upkeep – Difficult

Comments – This is the worst length hair, it’s in the annoying phase when it is always in your face. It can’t be too long or too short…yeah…the worst length, however, it looks good. Dunno how this trap Toboe does it, but…but….but…IT’S CUTE.

Like a jigsaw puzzle, the structure of a cast can conform to rigid patterns. In the first post this was made evident with the brains/brawns dynamic shown by Ichigo-Uryuu and Mugen-Jin. In other action shows, however, the brains/brawn duo isn’t a necessity, and a binary will materialize in a different form, like Goku-Vegeta, who make up an interesting social class binary that is constantly emphasized by a sort of racial liberalism/conservatism (Goku saves humanity while ignoring his Saiyan ancestry while Vegeta always fights for Saiyan pride). In this installment, I’m basically going to look briefly at instances where the drive of a show is produced by the conflict of two lead characters. These two leads constitute the “lead paradigm” which must usually fit a binary, hence lead paradigm binary.

The lead paradigm binary stretches far. Yuji-Marlene, Lelouch-Suzaku, Chikane-Himeko, Haruka-Hayase, Fujiki-Irako, Yang-Reinhard[1], Kira-L, and so forth. In these instances, the progression of the show is fueled mainly by the ideological conflict generated by the lead paradigm binary, with “third party” instigators contributing to other events with which the lead binary must negotiate. Sometimes that ideological conflict is turned on its head or even abolished in a series of massive plot twists that completely reconfigure the ideological motivations of the lead characters or show in general. Geass is interesting in this respect because both Lelouch and Suzaku wanted to change society, the former by revolution and the latter by reformation “within the system”. Then Suzaku went crazy and so he ended up dissenting against the military and political system he originally fought for in favor of Lelouch’s “everyone hate me now” strategy.

While the lead paradigm binary usually takes place between people, other cases that aren’t restricted to lead characters involve split or dual personality or even schizophrenia. These cinematic devices almost always polarize opposing mentalities: Negishi-Krauser, Allelujah-Hallelujah, Marie-Soma, possibly Takumi-Shogun or whatever the mystery turns out to be, Afro-Ninja (imaginary friends count too).[2] Because we love coining jargon all the time, the instance of schizophrenia or related conditions could be labeled intra-paradigmatic since they occur within the same character, or paradigm, within the cast structure.

As per the concepts developed in parts I-III, lead binaries not restricted to one character (inter-paradigmatic!) can be expressed in terms of appearance, personality or, most importantly, ideology:

Yes, those pictures are absolutely appropriate and relevant

Light-dark hair is the salient visual clue here; hair is usually a definitive visual characteristic that is the only way of distinguishing between characters (ie. Key adaptation girls). However, I don’t think that their placement in the anime is dependant entirely upon their appearance – it’s more like an ideological paradigm is required for the drive of the show to function, and so appearance is icing on the cake. It’s largely superfluous, but helps to emphasize, by what you can see, precisely those things you cannot see. This is also buttressed by Chikane’s penitence. The ideology she represents inverts itself yet her appearance remains the same. So in these two cases Chikane ideologically represents adultery (sexual perversion) and Himeko chastity, while Haruka represents romantic loyalty and Hayase treachery (another theme is shy vs. outgoing, respectively).

Yang = democracy, Reinhard = autocracy. Appearance in LoGH is interesting because Reinhard is always referred to as “the blonde brat”, more so because the Empire is modeled after, probably, 19^th century Prussia. It only makes sense that Prussians look Caucasian. The Free Planets Alliance is more racially diverse. Basically, while LoGH falls into the light/dark hair binary, it is much more “natural” or demanded of by the setting of the anime, whereas the appearance of the girls in KGNE and Kannazuki no Miko have no necessitated connection to their environment other than to emphasize and signify disparate ideology.[3]

hair color predominantly in correlation with personality

ETERNAL gets at this nicely:

This is where I believe conflict lies at the heart of our enjoyment – because conflict, in a love story, is the embodiment of the feelings that the characters share for one another, and these are the feelings that the viewer draws from the story.

She also points out the dissonance between Yuki and Kyo:

Yuki, calm and confident but awkward on the inside; and Kyo, hotheaded and practically tsundere when it comes to his true feelings.

By now it should be evident that tension generates events which drive the show – this is largely if not entirely manifested in the characters.

ETERNAL also says something thought-provoking:

This is where, I believe, conflict comes into play in our rabu-rabu goodness. What would happen if a writer wrote an entire story about the everyday life of a happy couple? It might be interesting, if the writer were a genius, but chances are the plan would backfire and it would be horribly boring…

This is true as well. While her analysis is limited to heterosexual love (I guess that’s what rabu-rabu is), conflict is apparent in homoplatonic sibling love (Sae-Chika), heteroplatonic sibling love (Lelouch-Nunnally), homoplatonic GAR love (Mittermeyer-Reuenthal), hetero-incestuous love (Jun-Noe), homo-incestuous love (uhh, hentai?), lesbianism (Shiznat), and any other funny terminology you can think of.

One thing we haven’t seen yet is the location of conflict. You can have, as was previously stated, conflict within the lead paradigm which is between two lead characters (Renton-Eureka). This type of conflict works from the inside out. You can also have extra-paradigmatic conflict, conflict that comes from a third party with which the lead binary must deal with in unison[4], thus strengthening their bond Renton and Eureka embody this type of conflict towards the end of the anime when they are totally in sync with one another; and this further emphasizes how conflict itself is needed to propel the lead binary – it just depends on the status of the lead binary (is it in tension or harmony?) to “elicit” conflict from a third party (Anemone, the military).

But what happens when there is no conflict involving the lead binary? You could say you end up with slice-of-life, but still, there is conflict in that genre (Hidamari Sketch, Minami-ke, Konata-Kagami). Really, I think that an anime with no conflict reaches a point of stasis. Even an esoteric show like The Diary of Tortov Roddle is probably riddled (sorry, had to) with conflict, albeit in a very confusing and roundabout way. Moreover, rarely is a slice-of-life dominated by a lead binary; but, now that we’ve covered the function of the lead paradigm binary, the next post will deal with larger cast structures and its role in relation to conflict and tension. For now, I leave you with A Graph with which to ponder…

[2] Non anime as well.

[3] Owen gave me that idea.

[4] There is extra-paradigmatic conflict is dealt with by the lead binary when they themselves are in conflict, Goku-Vegeta is a good example (they often take turns fighting).

Now, to clarify a bit, the first post put forth a model of signification, which in itself is fairly problematic (the details thereof I’ll address below):

visual appearance [signifies] personality [signifies] ideology

The second post briefly investigated how visual appearance itself is a structure of signs, so thoughts on the more “micro” elements of the character were developed. In this third post, I hope to look into the act of signification (to fix this model), the processes which glue these seemingly inert, semiotic paradigms together, using glasses, once again, as the main investigative clue.

To start off with, the problem with the previously mentioned linear model is that, in the cases where visual appearance doesn’t signify personality, and in such light I would be tempted, therefore, to draw a diagram wherein all three aspects have reciprocal means of signification, there really isn’t such a hypothesized reciprocity of signification. This statement holds only when we analyze characters from the bottom up, or in other words, in that very order of appearance to personality to ideology. In such a hierarchical ordering of signification, it is literally impossible to say that ideology has the potential to signify before visual appearance simply because we cannot conceive of the object’s ideology until we see and come in contact with the object. This is in contradistinction with a “bottom down” approach to character construction where we are presented with opportunities to imagine characters before we see them – film using, arguably, the most powerful techniques of print media summed up in the hedonistic proverb “more is less”. If we are informed, vaguely or otherwise, of an idiosyncratic “mecha anime”, we are presented with the ideological framework – war, fighting [robots], emo [teenager pilots] – onto which personalities and visual appearances are referred to (ie. Suzaku, Kira, Shinji, etc.). Thus we are left with a hierarchical model with three usages: (1) ideology signifying personality and appearance; (2) appearance signifying personality and ideology; (3) in the rarest case, personality simultaneously signifying ideology and appearance. The third case is a rarity since it implies we have a personality that isn’t necessarily restricted to appearance – perhaps a disembodied voice or a visage continuously obscured in shadows.

For good measure, there isn’t a single anime I can think of that effectively uses personality as a basis for signification and in its entirety. 5cm begins to fictionalize Akari through Takaki’s destinationless texting and her gradual disappearance (though she does return), though we had already seen Akari in the beginning, nullifying any real sense of visually unconcretized personality as the basis of signification. However, and of all things, Charlie’s Angels has the bodiless “Charlie” whose voice is the only kind of signifier available to us. You could make an argument that anime utilizing narrators pose a case (DBZ, LoGH, Hayate), but I would suspect their fictive “being” to serve no function within the story itself.

In Mitchiko to Hatchin, the similarities are given; the family wears glasses. From this image you can posit “this family of cruel people wear glasses,” but such syllogism does not allow for the predictable “thus, all cruel people wear glasses.”

Michiko herself is undoubtedly the most important visual element since…

…she is the only character that willingly removes her glasses: the police officer never has glasses, and Maria’s are forced off by Hatchin, who even remarks, both literally and metaphorically at that, “do you know who you’re looking at? Look at me!” and…

…Michiko’s face, most importantly eyes, are obscured while in prison, the first time we see them are when…

…she faces off against the helicopter outside the prison with the search light shining on her face.

The important bit here is “the Morenos family”, or, more precisely, the metaphorical and discursive space that constitutes and upon which the ideology of family, house and home is contingent. It’s significant to note that, while Mitchiko is the only one that willingly removes her glasses, she only does so within the household (on the table on her bike), further corroborating the metaphorical space as the typical Plato-esque “cave” out of which the soon-to-be-enlightened crawl. (It’s more of a Matrix-esque “this is what you really see”.) However, in this case, it’s not really about the spatiality that constitutes the binary of in and out, but of self-consciousness, the looking-glass and self-imposed ignorance which are, just as glasses are, imposed or removed from the individual: it’s more of a way of seeing (or not seeing) things. Just as those with glasses cannot comprehend vision outside the lens, the police officer cannot comprehend such vision within those very lenses. It is for this reason that Maria is most frightened after her glasses, her only sense of worldly comprehension, are knocked off of her face.

It is apparent that, while glasses are sometimes removed, the actual, visual appearance doesn’t change; it serves as our control variable here. We’re able to determine the signifying effect of glasses, and, as was stated above, that (for instance) the removal of Maria’s glasses rendered her a helpless girl on the receiving end of Hatchin’s rage, it is the lack of the contextual signified which, at the basis of our pyramid model, alters the visual appearance, subsequently signifying an altered personality (cowardliness) and, furthermore, a different ideology (ie. justice, karma).

The recurring phrase “look at me” also deserves further investigation. It’s used exclusively by Michiko and Hatchin, the protagonists that also conveniently make up the title (by no coincidence, I suspect). Taken both figuratively and literally, the visual relationship between the two women is indicative of the metaphorical power of vision and sight. Michiko’s sunglasses are also meaningful, since they obviously set her apart from the nearsighted, clear lenses; the instance when she removes her lenses situates her within the metaphorical space of the family, she receives clarity of perception and judgment. The visual appearance of the lenses, that they are tinted (pun intended), emphasizes her more conspicuous personality in relation to the rest of the Morenos family, and finally the ideologies – again, [poetic] justice, karma, retribution, penitence, sin (large Christian symbols like the crucifix buttress this, as well as the theme of incarceration) – that engulf her being.

Considering the top-down approach to signification – ideology signifying personality and visual appearance – the prison scene does offer a slight example of this. The institutional incarceration that we are more familiar with is accompanied by, amongst many things, the homogenization of the object of the prison’s function, imprisonment, the prisoner, of course. What are in actuality diverse humans we see as these representations of a faceless mass of people donned in the same drab garments. When faces of prisoners are shown, and rarely at that, they are typically low in detail. The ideology of the prison is oriented towards the signification of people as brash and crude with almost no visual appearance: the lack of appearance only denotes a coarse, unattractive aesthetic with in turn corroborates that very dehumanizing ideology of imprisonment.

There’s one problem here with these kind of thematic studies; it’s how we methodology go about aniblogging, go about analyzing. Since some wordpress dashboards can be so fickle, posting embedded youtube videos proves to be quite the hassle at times, and so we’re forced to resort to representing one medium – video – for a single image. This kind of paradigm shift really limits the breadth of information just a few seconds of video has over a single image. Of course you’re allowed to call me lazy, but if I were to post 25 videos in a visual study instead of 25 images, would you really watch every single one? I obviously wouldn’t want to extract 25 clips; that would be a pain in the ass. It’s an incredibly difficult effort to signify that breadth of time with an inert frame, there’s not enough room for meaning in that 3^rd dimension, it needs the fourth.

But there are two problems at hand here. Concerning the last post, specifically the brief study of glasses as visual, cultural artifacts, we isolate the sign from its larger sign. Essentially, the representation of a character as a whole, in its entirety, is a syntagm, a structure of signs of which we are able to isolate, remove, speculate upon, analyze, deconstruct various paradigms within that structural syntagm. Paradigms are choices: hair, is it short, long or medium? Color, is it white, grey, silver, black, blue etc.? Skin hue, dark, brown, as pale as paper? Eyes, huge, a little less than huge? Glasses, no glasses? What is the ratio¹ of her zettai ryouiki, the grade? A+, C, S-class Rin? All these kinds of choices (there are infinite more) constitute the paradigms that are inherently part the larger character structure. Luckily we are able to perform this very isolation.

There are a plethora of paradigmatic signs here, the syntagmatic sign-structure being the Kallen we are so familiar with. In the left picture² there’s the glasses, an object of primary concern, the finger pattern³, the smile, the hair style which is nicely juxtaposed to the image on the right, the curvature of the eyebrows, once again juxtaposed to pizza-Kallen, the attire, seemingly attempting to emulate the school teacher, and so forth and so on. In the right image⁴, there’s the pizza, the facial expression that consists of the eye brow curvature, mouth, wide eyes, the school uniform, the hair style, the juice box, the finger position, once again contrasting the fingers on the left. We can then isolate these signs…

Even semiotic isolation proves to be difficult since the “invisible” Kallen behind the faceless hair styles pervades into the very essence of these stylizations. Nevertheless, the left, being messy, connotes, well, messyness, unrulyness, perhaps lazyness, rebellion, etc. The straight hair connotes self-order, discipline, hygiene, etc. The odd thing is that, as poignant a series Code Geass was, Kallen simply was a number of things. She was the cold-hearted killer, the indifferent school girl, the moe school girl (clad in thigh highs), the naked girl in an awkward situation, the valiant pilot, the helpless imouto, the Japanese, the Britannian, the rebel, and so forth. Kallen is, at one point or another, represented as all these archetypes. The narrow position of her self cannot, simultaneously, represent all these characteristic structures, so her representation is situational, dependant upon context.

Obviously the methodological problem here is attempting to depict a signifier with a complete sign (since I don’t intend to evoke the signified via the contextually incoherent signifier). Nevertheless, it does help to visualize if you have a floating signifier image at hand. So we’re left to equivocate one sign with another; obviously the hand in the left Kallen is not the same as the Nayuki hand here.

You can, if you wish, further divide these signs (syntagms in their own right) into more or less empirical paradigms. These more basic paradigms are things like color, height, length, width, “mass” (if that’s at all quantifiable in two dimensions).

The “first level” is the greater syntagm of Kallen, the entire representation. We can isolate the sign or cultural artifact, the hand, the kind of, so to speak, “semiotic clothing”, then further isolate its constitutive paradigms, one of them being color. Of course this is not to limit the adjustments of color to the effect of only the hand. Obviously if her skin color were different, say she were a greenish tint, that change would affect her entire representation, it would not have to pass through the sign of the hand like a car through a toll booth. The hierarchy of the syntagm does not operate in such a fashion; nevertheless, color is more basic than a portion of a character structure which is, in turn, more basic than the entire character representation, since we cannot signify voice and, generally speaking, personality within the two-dimensional image.

And, of course, pale skin is usually a sign of ambiguous things like grace, elegance, refinement, dare I say “purity“. I am dutifully obliged to note exceptions, this Kallen juxtaposition being one in itself: the pizza-eating school girl is slightly more tanned than our, what I would be inclined to call, seductive teacher model. Within the Geassverse there are exceptions plentiful: orange-kun is dark, and our lovely brown Britannian aren’t depicted as culturally “lower” than the light skinned ones, and this goes to contradict any absolute essentialist position which would posit that since Lelouch is light skinned, all Britannians must therefore be fair. You can, however, notice that a good chunk of the Japanese males are slightly more brown that the counterpart Britannians.

Suzaku seems to be mid hued compared to the darker Tamaki, while Kaguya is pretty pale. Of course it’s not hyperbolized to the point of, say, Honey & Clover (since god forbid a supposed Japanese girl look Japanese, but maybe she’s a foreigner or enjoys colored contacts?).

Take this doujin, for instance.⁵ There are a whole bunch of things going on here: the crying, the jump suite, the boobs, the protective hand, etc. These things I’ve listed are corroborated by the lack of headband and Domon-esque hair, two defining traits of Kallen’s battle-ready image. She does have, however, that jump suit, which might be more a fetishization of anything skin-tight (similar to thigh highs). The fighting girl concept, perhaps, paradoxically, contributes to this by negating itself. If Kallen is, primarily, a fighter, her position here nullifies those historically masculine things – since it was kinda weird seeing Kallen cry in various episodes, noticeably the one where Lelouch came on to her – with the emphasis on femininity. Here, feminine counter hegemony, the fact that she’s usurped the masculine position of ace pilot (juxtaposed by the GAR Knight of One, Suzaku, attested to by Cornelia) is refuted and appropriated by the dominating and traditional hedonistic (doujinshi itself is rather hedonistic) practice of patriarchal ideology. Contrast this to super-awesome, fist-pumping, Suzaku-owning, huge boob-growing-per-episode Kallen in the first image of this post. Totally in ideological contradistinction.

Essentially, since I’m past the 1000 word limit, it’s crucial to, in trying to understand how characters are constructed, analyze the character as structured, as pieced together with various elements – signs – which contribute to the entire image. This could have been developed more, buttressed with more examples, but the gist was sent. In the next post I’ll hopefully be able to expound upon that notion of “reverse closure” a little more, that is to say the relationships between signs which form the glue that holds the syntagm together. On that note, in summary, this post was briefly looking at key components of structures, not necessarily how they are architected and soldered into place.

References

1 http://burogublog.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/the-art-and-science-of-zettai-ryouiki/
2 http://www.animetake.com/
3 http://that.animeblogger.net/2008/08/21/lwc-61-visual-study-in-feminine-finger-positions/
4 http://www.darkmirage.com/
5 http://www.deranged-minds.com/blog/2007/02/16/code-geass/

The main distinction to establish here is the difference between aesthetic personality and conscience. Aesthetic personality is shallow. It’s the surface of the person’s outer quality, how they act, not necessarily why; it’s about the “clothing” of their mind, how their actions look. Conscience is deeper. It’s the ideological motivation for a person’s action – hence why they act. While in actuality there is no (or at least shouldn’t be) causal link between the how and why of actions, anime – especially in the past few years – makes use of repeatedly played-out stereotypes and archetypes which have anchored onto the corpus of representation established by the rearticulation and recycling of character frameworks to signify a generalized type of person.

Now, using only two characters isn’t much of a cross sample, but the similarities here are, nevertheless, undeniable. Glasses. Black hair. Two-sided bangs. Pale. Coincided with stoic, reserved, intelligent, cunning. It’s important to note that they’re juxtaposed to more brawny characters. In terms of aesthetic personality, the archetypal brains/brawns duo is in itself a binary often utilized for cast expansion.

Possibly for a further touch of coincidence, there’s the role of the pseudo-helpless tag-along girl.

Of course the binary of brains/brawns isn’t the only one used, and necessarily there are exceptions. One might be a passive/aggressive combination.

In the DBZ universe, due to the relatively simplistic art style, everyone is inherently categorized within the same visual archetype: ripped as hell. The dire lack of differentiating body types leaves only visual clues such as hair (or lack thereof) and height to distinguish between aesthetic personalities and consciences.

Future Trunks first appears against a mechanized Frieza as our stoic, smooth voiced Eric Vale (who also voiced effeminate Yuki in Fruits Basket). While Trunks is in himself a sign, he retains qualities of aforementioned characters drawn from these anime artifacts as well as constituting meaning from juxtaposed representations vis-à-vis the other DBZ characters: the sword behind the back, while being a trait beholden to both Mugen and Ichigo to indicate GAR, here, it functions to distance Trunks from the others as, primarily, futuristic and exotic since it complements the fact that he actually is from the future. I wouldn’t say that Yajirobi counts here simply because he’s not a Z Warrior. (and his katakana[?] is worn on the side.)

Endlessly creating categories to justify exceptions isn’t logically digestible – as the visual ambiguity between Goten and a younger Goku attests to (is that supposed to mean anything? Doubtful, thus the irony of talking about things like causality) – but I think the examples here are concrete and within the limits of authorial predictability. For good measure, a counter example is the abundance of characters in LoGH that don’t readily conform to the previous visual norms but still demonstrate healthy amounts of GAR or similar aspects of aesthetic personality (LoGH is not without “flaws,” however).

While cultural artifacts – like swords – are deployed to complement the generalization of an archetype, these artifacts, signs in themselves, have no meaning until they enter the process of representation. Basically, the artifact needs the person to acquire concrete meaning – it is transitive. Until artifacts acquire a context, they are mostly floating signifiers, able to mean a large number of things, having no definite meaning.

Without context, glasses alone have no implicit meaning. What is the image supposed to mean? Nothing and everything. It can imply geeks, nerds, nerdom, otaku, intelligence, eyesight, ophthalmology, the looking glass, abstract psycho-sociological ideas. Hell, this specific image could be an artsy photograph if you wanted it to be. But then when you add the context…

I don’t think any of these depictions have much an effect on the character. They’re added for the occasion, the rhetoric of the character’s aesthetic personality. Cultural artifacts – we can probably consider them tropes in themselves – like glasses, are added as weapons to increase the rhetorical armament of the character’s superficiality. The character’s shallow aesthetic personality is subsequently able to attack directly the floating, unanchored conscience which the animator wishes to latch onto the concrete character. Without images, aesthetics, without stereotypes, archetypes, idiosyncrasies, the animator has an increasingly difficult time attempting to falsely justify the basis for a character’s actions. What if Sanae looked like this?

Surely, based on convention, her glasses don’t signify the same meaning as Sanae’s! But don’t fret too much about appearances, since hypothetically, a person that looks like this is totally capable of acting similarly to Sanae and on a identical ideological basis. This is the three-step establishment of visual and mental causality that animators develop in order to concretize recycled character archetypes:

visual appearance [signifies] personality [signifies] ideology

in other words…

cuteness [signifies] good-natured, loving, compassionate [signifies] human lives and emotions are paramount, motherhood is essential to the state of the family

Of course there are exceptions. Also take note of the girl from FLCL (since I don’t have any screenshots available and I don’t remember her name). In these exceptions, it’s much harder to discern the effect that glasses emphasize. In True Tears the glasses might be metaphorical – ie. attempting to say something not even about Hiromi herself. I don’t know.

Essentially, this process of non sequitur signification based on idiosyncratic artifacts is not dissimilar to what Scott McCloud calls closure:

Closure as a psychological notion from the Gestalts is largely about “image constancy,” which means that you can have a single image with pieces missing and still understand the whole. In daily perception, we experience this anytime one object covers up parts of another one. Despite that part is covered up, we still understand that there is a whole object beneath it.¹

Using closure to address the parts of a character is much different because they all exist simultaneously. Moreover, I’m using it in a rather reversed way: we view the characters as a whole in terms of levels of depth (visual, personality, ideology) – ie. we “flatten” the image – yet cannot realize that many characters are constructed through highly repetitive signifying practices that link these three disparate pieces and make them seem naturally, inextricably bound to one another when, in reality, there isn’t such a thing as causality and indexicality between appearance, personality and ideology and values. It doesn’t exist, it’s discursive. We, as viewers and consumers, have been inculcated in the logic that appearance somehow points to a “corresponding” ideology when the truth is that these things have no relation to one another, they exist autonomously and it’s the huge reserve of representational power that anime and media holds which is able to make such statements without us, for the most part, realizing it.

It’s no secret; I love anime. I mean, if I didn’t love it, I damn sure wouldn’t be here, right? But sometimes I need to take a step back and ask myself why I love it so much. More specifically, why is anime so frigging addictive? What is it about Japanese animation, compared to Chinese animation, or United States animation, or German animation, that compels legions of fans to publicly masquerade as their favorite characters, outfitted in painstakingly constructed cosplay (with accessories to match!) How is it that anime has become a worldwide obsession, spanning countless social demographics and national boundaries? Isn’t ‘anime’ simply the Japanese loanword for ‘animation’?

A Cultural Experience

Yes and no. Linguistically, ‘anime’ means nothing more than ‘animation’ and connotes no special significance or meaning beyond that of its Western counterpart. ‘Anime’ may sound more chic (and less childish) than ‘cartoon’, but when you get right down to it, there really isn’t a substantial difference between the two.

As a technique, the earliest Japanese animation has its roots in Western animation, with greats like Osamu Tezuka producing imitative works that adhered rather strictly to canonical animation standards (those established by its pioneers) long before putting their own twist on things. Animation took root in Japan as a markedly non-ethnocentric art form, and the very first Japanese-animated films share little resemblance with the modern style we have gathered to exalt. (In fact, for those of you who may be wondering why a monstrous animator like Masao Maruyama would agree to produce Sutichi (the Japanese version of ‘Lilo & Stitch’) with such alacrity, Maruyama-sensei shamelessly admits that it is because Tezuka is one of his major, major influences.)

Nevertheless, ‘anime’ is not a term to be taken lightly. From a modern standpoint it implies much more than ‘cartoon’ or ‘animation’. Enormous eyes and bombastic hairdos are the trappings of a 70 year-old confluence of Japanese filming, cinematography, voice acting, comic art, storytelling, theatrics, and history—a panorama of cultural traditions.

The Japanese have mastered the as-yet-nameless science of deconstructing, rebuilding, improving and assimilating alien technology into their own legacy. Hence, not one modicum of foreign culture that has earned the veneration of the Japanese people will remain completely free of their eccentricities. Like any other apparatus of foreign origin, animation is simply another medium for the expression and propagation of the Japanese mythos. It has been ‘Japanified’ to satisfy their ends. So is anime just animation? Not by a long shot.

Again I ask, what makes anime special? Animation, in and of itself (just the technique, hypothetically removed from all regional influences), harbors no significant appeal for the typical fan. After all, just because otaku are obsessed with Japanese animation doesn’t imply that their obsession encompasses other types of animation.

Even imitations don’t quite cut the mustard. Uproot it, export it, edit and dub it, or stylistically emulate it (as we gaijin are so prone to do with our webcomics), and the result is nothing more than a plastic rose—the visage sans the fragrance. *Something* is missing. For better or worse, the reality is that if it’s not from Japan, then it’s not really anime. So let’s assume that neither the technique nor the appearance alone can be credited for anime’s distinctiveness. If neither cannot, then what can?

The answer is culture. Taken in sum, anime is a cultural experience. It’s not just the drawing style or the language. It’s also the cold barley tea, the orange summer sky brimming with the chirps of cicadas, schoolgirls dressed in the standardized, sailoresque uniforms, karaoke, the quirks of conversational Japanese; look closely at any anime and you will find that peculiarities teem. Anime is fecund with cultural expression down to the minutest detail. Some of these tidbits are so deeply embedded in Japan’s historical tradition that they easily assume the function of motifs, transforming brief scenes into cultural microcosms and conveying years upon years of significance in mere seconds. Take the following tune for example:

Tooryanse

Chances are many of you have encountered this song before. I first noticed it in Bugīpoppu wa Warawanai Boogiepop Phantom several years prior, and then heard it again in Bleach and Death Note. Naturally, I thought it was an obscure reference to shinigami (notice the trend in titles), until I heard it a fourth time in Mahou Tsukai: Natsu no Sora, an anime clearly not associated with death gods. Then came the realization that traffic lights, not shinigami, were the common thread linking these incidences. So, I decided to do a bit of research.

The name of the tune is Tooryanse. Its purpose in the aforesaid context is to alert visually impaired pedestrians that it is safe to cross at a traffic stop. The song is actually a warabe-uta (traditional children’s song; nursery rhyme) that belongs to a game rather similar to “London Bridge Is Falling Down.” Two people form an arch with their hands and arms and sing this song while the rest of the players pass under the arch. When the music stops, the person stuck beneath the arch is ‘caught’, and trades places with one of the arch-members. Like that, the game continues, round and round. At a traffic stop, it works much the same way. It is safe for the blind to cross until the music has stopped.

The song’s story is thought to be a depiction of a “civilian and a guard” at a checkpoint; while the kind of checkpoint remains unclear, the historical Japanese tradition of celebrating third, fifth and seventh-year birthdays (Shichi-Go-San) strongly suggests that it portrays a family entering a castle shrine to pray for their child’s good health and longevity. Children of these ages were considered especially prone to calamity, particularly since the child mortality rate was much greater in the past. So, having grand celebrations for children of these ages has become a widely-acknowledged tradition.

The ambiguity of the song’s meaning suits it nicely for symbolic juxtaposition in dramatic context. To dispel any pesky suspicions that Tooryanse is added simply for authenticity, here is a translation of the lyrics:

“Let me pass, let me pass
What is this narrow pathway here?
It’s the narrow pathway of the Tenjin shrine
Please allow me to pass through
Those without good reason shall not pass
To celebrate this child’s 7th birthday
I’ve come to dedicate my offering
Going in may be fine, fine, but returning would be scary
It’s scary but
Let me pass, let me pass

“Let me pass, let me pass
Here is the underworld’s narrow pathway
It’s the narrow pathway of the demon’s shrine
Please allow me to pass through
Those without sacrifice shall not pass
To bury this child at age 7
I’ve come to offer my services
Living may be fine, fine, but going back would be scary
It’s scary but
Let me pass, let me pass”

References in Popular Culture

Tooryanse can be seen and heard in numerous anime and manga. It appears in episode #04 of Boogiepop while Touka Miyashita and Kazuko Suema are having a conversation on a busy street. Outwardly Miyashita appears to be a normal girl, but in reality her alter ego is the Boogiepop shinigami. Throughout the series she carries a duffle bag containing Boogiepop’s robe and staff, and sub-consciously ‘changes’ into Boogiepop as the situation calls for it.

During this scene, although she doesn’t change clothes, her alternate personality briefly bubbles to the surface and offers Suema a bit of a advice about not clinging onto the past, implying that it is a dangerous habit. This is especially apt advice for Suema, whose obsessive fascination with criminology and the paranormal (due to a difficult childhood incident) has led her to meddle with the sinister forces manipulating the city, forces much too powerful for her to handle. Boogiepop’s advice: keep going, and don’t look back.

Tooryanse can be heard near the beginning of episode #30 of Death Note, during a random child’s monologue about how Kira has reduced the crime rate and changed Tokyo (for better or for worse?) The symbolism here is not obvious, but it is forceful. The tune continues to play in the background while scenes of traffic lights are interlaced with images of people walking and fearfully chattering about Kira. An interesting note: judging from his voice, the narrating child could be five or seven years old. Coincidence…?

The tune can also be heard in episode #18 of Black Lagoon (#07 of The Second Barrage.) Here is the a (presumably) exhaustive list of the remaining titles, pulled from the Tooryanse Wiki:

The Animatrix - in the short film “Beyond”
Serial Experiments Lain
Pom Poko
Nocturnal Illusion – mentioned by the main character
Pride(episodes 5 and 8 )
Earth Girl Arjuna
Hand Maid May
Ping Pong Club
Ichigo Mashimaro
Chakushin Ari 2 – sung by the blind lady named Shu-Mei Gao.
Paranoia Agent
Magical Pokaan – 10 seconds worth at 15:11 in episode 12.
Dennō Coil
Amatsuki – Episode 1
Pokemon – Episode 352; a version rewritten to be about the Pokemon Yajiron is sung more than once.

A better understanding of the Japanese culture would facilitate interpreting Tooryanse’s use as a recurring motif in anime. Nevertheless, I believe it is rather clear that there is something there. Few things are coincidental, unintentional, or unconscious, as far as art is concerned.

↩[LWC 60]

Something about this quintessential fingering in anime has somewhat “pestered me”. It’s an extremely common device to indicate femininity, perhaps mindlessly abused? – but, more specifically, to help signify distinct types of femininity that anime is nearly contingent upon. Its nuanced function depends on the character at hand (no pun intended), so its effect ranges from a typical elicitation of righteous GAR mamoru-ism to a mysterious, exotic, long-legged, clad in revealing Chinese dress, one hand under the wine glass, mole and reddened lips close at hand, exquisiteness.

1. Nagisa (Clannad): Nagisa, perhaps being the epitomic manifestation of the Helpless Key Girl (as coined by Baka-Raptor), or the Perfect Key Heroine, it let alone suffices that she’s the only girl out of five in the OP to display so blatantly this digit posture. She’s doing it in both hands, to boot, and as you can see in the animation her arms are whimsically fluttering around, she being the very Helpless Key Girl that she is. This specific motion and position in the OP also is important, since the OP – perhaps a determining factor in its marketability – must metonymically represent each of its characters, or so I’m inclined to say. Nagisa waves her arms around; Kyou dribbles a basketball with one hand on her hip while a superimposed image displays her hands pointed together – a rather modest image juxtaposed with a more flamboyant one merely indicates the resident tsundere; and so forth and so on.

2. Sora (Natsu no Sora): Again with the mirroring of each hand, maybe it’s just an aesthetic thing to complement the two cups? I think Sora is girly enough to Assume The Position whilst conducting her magic; the ritual of magic performance is probably a representation or sorts of the mage’s self. Thus little cultural artifacts and traditions that accompany greater rituals do a good job of further “customizing” the seemingly monolithic task of magic since in the anime it is an objective job wherein emotions, seemingly, should have little place; Sora gets “scolded” for bringing her personal ethics into everything she does, and if not “scolded” then reprimanded for “taking it too seriously” or “overlooking the priority” – however you wish to articulate.

3. Taiga & Ryuuji (Toradora!): This one is good because it shows The Position as assumed by Taiga yet contrasted by Ryuuji’s rather masculine “Wtf Edward Scissor Hands?” finger arrangement – not dissimilar to flower arrangement, probably. ccI’ve yet to see a boy’s fingers so bluntly set forth in this fashion – it’s reserved for the more formalized conduit of femininity.

4. Sanae (Clannad): This one’s important because she loosens her fingers into a more “normal” (heteogenized gender?) position. While it’s hard to talk about this with the video, spread fingers seems to indicate urgency or desperation as all fingers attempt to grasp and clutch something as an anchor – or, it’s groped at because it isn’t desired to disappear. That’s obvious from the case of Fuko but “the silent plea” via outstretched hand is all too genderless a notion (perhaps); basic human struggle can be evident throughout any sapient character – usually, I guess – and so the spreading of the fingers from the feminine position to the “relaxed” position would indicate such.

5. Reinhard (LoGH): I’d say that this one may barely count – I also wanted some pre-millennial anime in there for heterogeneity (gender and era). I would append a few more words here as an anime such as this merits it, but I haven’t started watching this yet, as weird as it sounds.

6. Ogasawara (MSgM): A rather monolithic representation of femininity, hell it’s a yuri Catholic school. I apologize for the crude photoshopping; it was a panning shot. Sachiko also has some crazy witch finger thing going for her here; the two center fingers are bent towards each other in a seemingly unnatural position. It seems painful, but it’s elegant (lest Key further caters to the foot fetish/eccentric genius niche)! Perhaps beautiful, but definitely not ergonomic: I hadn’t known two fingers were needed for one key.

7. Yoshika (Strike Witches): Just moe.

On other hand (no pun intended), observable are the different positions of the two hands. One spread, one “feminized” (or what verb have you). During this particular scene, I think that Yoshika was experiencing her first (or 2^nd) real battle, so shock and lack of water legs are inevitable obstacles. But using both hands against a wall is just a brace, probably (is it really that effective?)

8. Alicia (Aria): Alicia can be viewed in interesting ways…she’s kind of perfect. You know, just extremely “pure” and heightened, glorified yet modest. While her left hand seems to be in a painful contortion (does your thumb really bend that way?), the right one exudes slenderness. I guess the manicured nails help. Of course, she has to be performing some perfunctory feminine task like hair arranging to present an appropriate time to assume The Position since I haven’t seen their hands like this when rowing gondolas.

9. Nayuki (Kanon 2006): Ok, last Key picture, I swear – but this one is much too hyperbolic to be neglected here (who does this in real life?).

10. Sanada (Kimikiss): Women in control, patriarch down for the count, he assumes The Position.

11. Lancelot (Code Geass): Oddly enough, this picture does resemble the previous one. You’ve got the dominant female (Guren) grabbing hold of the less-than-alpha male. I mean, look how huge Guren’s hand is!

12: Yamie (Kure-nai): I take back what I said about crazy witch fingers.

13: Yamada’s Aunt(?) (Honey & Clover): I don’t really know who this is; it’s the lady that helped Hagu and Yamada try on yukatas. Anyway, this lady seems like a sarcastic-HaHaHa lady, so the ring and the position just accentuate that personality, so it’s tremendously surprising when you see Yamada strike a pose without those split fingers.

Most of these pictures exhibit little sense of subtlety, except for perhaps LoGH, and that’s an iffy one at that. I was thinking that in many of these pictures, could they be displayed any other way with as much ease? Probably not, since semiotically rearranging signs would then change the meaning, but maybe anime has come to “abuse” (perhaps mindlessly? [refer to beginning]) this simple “W” in order to get some message across that would be harder to convey through dialogue or some non-visual medium. Not to say that “abusing” this sign is a bad thing – it can be a convenient thing, a funny thing, an over-excessively moe thing (refer to Nayuki), but deciding whether or not falling back on steadfast signs is “bad” or “good” doesn’t say much.