/jp/ - Otaku Culture

>>12856614
>moe is about as abstract as you can get now
>we can always trace it back to these core narrative patterns
I believe it was fundamentally abstract and intermediary from the outset. To such an extent, I can't except the moe essentialist argument. Your position is defensible and well articulated, as well as being of great utility for documentational and theoretic purposes.

>Everything ties back to something involving bishoujo games
What do these games aim to represent? Do visual elements of these games signify, distort or influence existing conceptions? If the forms investigated in these works do not purport to represent anything material, how do interpreters ultimately comprehend them? It's easy to invoke an orthodox cultural relativist position at this point.

>I would argue that people who don't get the implied narratives DO NOT feel moe toward a moe image
Agreed. Does someone feel moe towards a more "essential" moe image if they don't posses the requisite cultural lens? Is moe comprehensible in an environment that fosters unrelatable social/gender identities?

>a notion of abstract feminine weakness
Many people have offered an interpretation of their personal relationship towards the moe sensation. Recurring elements of these outlines tend to include gender, social roles/symbols and a striking act that connects the two. If we treat moe as memetic, it can be assumed that the sensation appeals to some latent biological process that predisposes individuals to susceptibility under certain cultural conditions. I speculate that there are analogues to moe mental phenomena that have nothing to do with otaku media - these may be playing off similar physiological mechanisms.

The argument effectively relegates your bishoujo to a form of signifier itself. It resembles and inherently references nothing, yet it still produces a mental effect - why? Stimulation of that underlying neurological mechanism is contingent upon the cultural forces that shaped it.