Women's magazine An-an features moe

19.01.2010 by Patrick W. Galbraith

This past week, weekly women's magazine "An-an" featured a huge story on moe. We are talking 11 pages, the second largest story in the entire January 20 issue. While "Vogue" did something similar - manga and dolls as fashion - introducing moe into the mainstream domestic fashion vocabulary is an interesting move.

The article attempts to explain moe as experienced by women. The definition is actually good: Not a preference or type, but it a strange feeling you get in response to bearing or clothing. This is not love, because it has nothing to do with any real partner, and it is not fetish, because it is not necessarily sexual. One very funny section has the writers chiding men who imagine that their being the target of moe makes them popular with women. On the contrary, boys, this makes you a fantasy object, moe rather than mote, and women will be content to "gaze from afar." This female moe is consistently described as different from male moe, which tends to conflate the moe response with sexual desire (I personally disagree with this stereotype).

Now, this might sound very familiar to those who know, hang out with or are fujoshi. However, "An-an" makes an interesting move in not once mentioning the word fujoshi in the article. In fact, the Chinese character for "rotten" (腐), which has become so associated with asymmetrical fantasy desire among women, does not appear even once. Further, even though a big part of the article is imagining relationships between, rather than with, beautiful boys, the words "BL" and "yaoi" also never appear. In fact, there is no indication that any of this moe business has anything to do with fujoshi, BL and yaoi. I suppose the subculture edge had to be dropped to mainstream the concept.

Back to the article. The two biggest elements considered moe by women are identified as glasses and suits. No news here, but the article goes the extra mile by breaking down sub-types of glasses and suits, or combination thereof, that have moe potential. These are very creative and at times hilarious, for example “busted-ass suit” (yore yore kei suits) and “poor eyes site (old man) who sometimes wears glasses” (rogan kei tokidoki megane). I seriously doubt seeing a guy in a rumpled, dirty suit he has been wearing for weeks straight would attract any women, but in fantasyland it apparently triggers a desire to nurture this boy with sloppy grooming habits.

The list of types is endless, but one stands out: the Buddha boy (bosatsudanshi). These men have a beautiful face, smooth skin, skim body, but are not too feminine. Theirs is an attractiveness and sensuality beyond mere sex and age. One of the writers comments that these Buddha boys "might be more beautiful than any normal woman." Suddenly the popularity of Buddha in "Saint Onii-san" and the crazed rush to buy limited Kaiyodo figures of Buddha statues at museums in Ueno last year makes more sense. Buddha has a certain moe quality.



Another fascinating section of the article deals with relational politics, or "relationality" (kankeisei). This is a central tenant of fujoshi discussions or uke/seme bottom/top, but it is given a fresh perspective by outside observation. First of all, there are apparently numbers that men gather in that are ideal for moe. These are two, three, five, seven and "swarm" (mure). Two is, for example, manzai stand-up comedians or buddy cops, guys who are so close that it seems adding a woman into the mix would ruin their chemistry. This smacks of fujoshi-ism, but moving on. The example for a group of three is, oddly enough, "Lupin III." The writers believe that the balance in groups of three is absolutely ideal, because the existence of the other two allows for each one to develop a unique personality and place in the group. Groups of five include "Gatchaman" and sentai ranger shows, which are good because it offers the appeal of dynamic shifts between sets of two and three. The archetype for a group of seven is Kurosawa's "Seven Samurai." Hot-blooded Mifune Toshiro getting bullied by cool samurai leader Shimada Takashi? Nuff said. Last is swarm, in which a huge number of good looking boys is enough to trigger moe without any specific relational dynamics. Examples are "Rookies" or "Crows."

How this is different from fujoshi reading yaoi codes into these stories is beyond me, but I suspect they are suggesting that "An-an" readers don't read relationality as homosexual, whereas fujoshi tend to do so. After all, there are endless ways to read moe, as it is a response disconnected from, but perhaps inspired by, reality. Some readings are more prevalent than others, however, and it is interesting how the "An-an" intro to moe for women reproduces exactly the male response to women. In the final section of the article, the authors say that women can feel moe for other women, and posit that this comes from a "longing" (akogare) for a "soft, sparkly, cute time of the pure maiden" (fuwa fuwa, kira kira kawaii sore ni tokimeku pure na otome gokoro). Female moe felt for women is a kind of escape from reality; they project desires and dreams for self onto the idol (this surely seems to be the case among female regulars at idol events and maid cafes). They also suggest that moe idols are always trying hard and want to protect them because they are cute and a little pathetic (roughly analogous to what men call "non-ability," or hijitsuryoku). This is identified as the mothering instinct (bosei honnou). Back in 2005, Akamatsu Ken said something similar about why he as a man liked moe characters.

Women apparently find Perfume, "Pretty Cure" and AKB48 to be moe. Seriously, this may as well be a group of moe otaku in Akihabara, who like the same things for the same reasons. The one I don't get is feeling moe for models. I guess this might make sense for readers of fashion magazines, but I don't see how longing for someone's legs, like wishing you had them, is moe. They tie it to the pure maiden time, saying that looking at models recalls playing with glamorous fashion dolls as a kid and longing to be like them. Maybe there is something specific to female moe after all...