The National University of Singapore organized a series of paper presentations at the Singapore Toys, Games, and Comics Convention, mostly held in one (very cold) conference room. This was the first time they’re trying something like this, and they think it’s had a fairly good showing, so they’ll be holding another series of talks next year.
The audience for these talks was small, but still respectable: not as packed as the other more popular panels at the “main events”, but not completely empty either. I do get the impression that many of those present were other academics, and they all knew each other well.
Each of these presentations were full of Deep Thoughts, or at least catalysts for Deep Thoughts. Unfortunately these Thoughts take some time to go through to fully digest, so I’ll have to take the talks one at a time. Not all the talks, of course, but mainly the ones I feel I have some knowledge about.
The first, and I think by far the one most relevant to my interests, was Database vs. Narrative: Two Theories on Contemporary Production/Consumption of Toys, Games, and Comics from Japan, presented by Mr. Kam Thiam Huat (National University of Singapore).
TLDR version: People can enjoy anime by focusing on characters or by focusing on setting, and both are equally valid ways of looking at anime fandom.
Here, “database” refers to the idea of database consumption proposed by Hiroki Azuma, and “narrative” to the (less recent) idea of narrative consumption by Eiji Otsuka. Don’t worry about these terms, we’ll get to them in a moment. Mr. Kam’s paper argues that despite Otsuka’s theory of narrative consumption being about twenty years older than Azuma’s theory of database consumption, it still has relevance in today’s study of how fandom can be, well, fans.
Note that this is, in the academic fashion, mainly concerned with observing a phenomenon, rather than expressing approval or otherwise on the phenomenon itself. There may be some parts of this in the source materials, but this was not touched on in the presentation.
Mr. Kam also noted that there is very little practical research in this area, and most of what has been written is theoretical. I can only imagine the difficulties inherent in researching something like this, considering the well-known ornery nature of fandoms in general.
Database Consumption
Azuma’s theory is concerned largely with post-modernism, which boils down to how we think what we think the way we think. There’s a lot in there about social constructs and power relationships and all that, and I know I’m oversimplifying, but not everyone wants to read about the brain-meltingly complicated ideas needed to even understand the language used in the higher tiers.
In essence, database consumption is consumption based primarily around the data, which in this case means the elements of a character or situation. An anime fan who’s been around for a sufficient amount of time to pick up the lingo would probably be familiar with some of these: moe, tsundere, cat ears, twintails, maid costumes, so on and so forth. Presumably there are other aspects not so tied to the moe aesthetic (the hot-bloodedness of shounen male protagonists, for example), but since I’m personally not as familiar with those, my own biased viewpoint has to suffice for now. No doubt readers and commenters can think of more based on their own experiences.
Here, the consumers focus more on the constituent elements of a character, rather than the whole… actually, that’s a little misleading. The interplay between these elements may also be important (eg “twintailed tsundere with thigh-highs”), but the character itself, or the story itself, is given secondary importance.
In this consumption of data, the consumers seek moments of excitement, rather than a long-term investment. Immediate satisfaction of this craving for excitement is emphasized: to make an analogy, compare searching for a subject on Wikipedia rather than learning about it via textbooks and courses and suchlike.
We can apply this to the “prosumer”, which is one of those neologisms to represent A Consumer That Also Produces: think fanart, fanfic, doujins, so on and so forth. (Academia can get kind of ridiculous sometimes with naming stuff, as much as marketing.) Applying database consumption to the prosumer, the creation often does not have any meaning other than to convey intense emotion and excitement. Here we have the Superman Vs Goku fanfics, or the Star Destroyer Vs Enterprise pictures, or ninja pirate zombie robot sharks with laser beams. On the moe fandom side, we have characters that are reduced/distilled (term used dependent on your opinion of the matter) to their specific attributes: Azusa Nakano from K-On starts taking on even more catgirl traits, for instance, or Yuki Nagato from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya goes back to wearing glasses. Why? Because it’s awesome, dammit.
Narrative Consumption
In contrast, narrative consumption focuses more on the setting of the story. It is not just the story itself, or the plot or whatnot, but it encompasses the entire thing, including the possibilities that are inherent in the setting. The example Mr. Kam gave was the Gundam UC timeline, which someone else more well-versed in the Gundam-verse will have to explain, but the idea is that several Gundam-related stories take place there, and so the Gundam UC timeline is the narrative. Middle-Earth (of The Lord of the Rings fame) was also brought up, considering The Hobbit and obviously The Silmarillion.
Or, possibly one of the more prominent examples, the Touhou games, which consist almost entirely of metatext narrative.
Each work is therefore a part of this narrative, and never the whole of it. So to make sense of this narrative, and to refine the definition, fans accumulate more and more works and stories, in order to fit it into their individual ideas of what the narrative should be like. There is a filtering process going on here: if you like a certain pairing and think it fits your narrative, then every other pairing is excluded (unless you’re a lot more open-minded than the norm). On occasion, even the official canon can be rejected for a personal interpretation of What Is Correct.
More often, the canon is often vague in at least some parts, since it can hardly keep correcting and explaining itself without constant missives from the creator. So the majority of fandom debates are often down to the little details of the narrative, and each person trying to define and redefine them to their own personal satisfaction.
A narrative does not have to be a world setting in specific; general themes also count. For example, one of the recurring themes in Japanese works is the clash and conflict between tradition and modernity (which, to be fair, has been seen in other works from other cultures, eg Fiddler on the Roof). As people have moved from rural Japan to the cities, the narrative about rural Japan has started to collapse: people stop identifying with life in rural Japan as the default. Things begin to be compared to life in the city, rather than simply told as it is.
This can also be a sort of fantasizing wish-fulfilment: fans may wonder what it’s like to be in the fictional world, rather than the current unsatisfactory real one. Be someone there who matters, if only as the observer that makes things happen by being there to see them.
The narrative method of consumption is popular because humans like stories. We like things to make sense within a context we can understand, and we understand best by telling (and hearing) stories. And to have things make sense in a fictional world, we need a lot of details and continuity that the story itself may not actually give us, at least satisfactorily. After all, producers still have to make sure that they’re telling a story, rather than concentrate on what is often known as “scenery porn”.
Putting Them Together
If you’ve gotten through all of that, you might notice that Database Consumption and Narrative Consumption are not actually mutually exclusive. For the most part, though, people tend to focus on one more than the other, even if the difference in levels is only slight.
Taking a series at random, let’s say K-On, the database consumption method would focus on the traits and attributes of the characters, such as Yui’s airheadedness or Nodoka’s level-headed competence or Mugi’s eyebrows, whereas the narrative consumption method would look at the school they’re in, or perhaps what Azusa has in her schoolbag. Many special features in magazines on anime have options for both, often depending on how the feature is written.
Once again, there is nothing to say that one theory is “better” than the other, whether in terms of relevance or the nebulous concept of being a Proper Anime Fan. Mr. Kam specifically intended his paper to argue that Otsuka’s older theory of narrative consumption is still as relevant today, although Azuma’s post-modernist theory of Databse Consumption is more current. (And Mr. Kam took Azuma and Otsuka as his main research focuses for the simple reason that they wrote much more than other theorists on the matter. According to him, “Azuma is very systematic, while Otsuka is less so.”) I had the impression any disapproval implied in the theories was the usual academian disapproval of the hoi polloi, especially considering the strange creatures we fans can be.
Azuma also specifically mentions he is only looking at the male otaku side, even if the studies may have a larger relevance, which I can kind of see for the female yaoi fandom. But that’s another post.
Personally I think the takeaway from this isn’t that there’s a “right way” to be a fan, but that there are different ways to enjoy anime (or the entertainment of your choice), and both of those presented here are equally valid. There’s been this idea passing around that there’s a divide between the “Serious Anime Fan” and the “Moe Anime Fan”, which bears a striking resemblance to these two theories, but dismissing it as merely a sharply-delineated divide in the first place is, I think, robbing the issue of any real discussion value.
Next post, I’ll be covering the talk on More than just boys: A history of the changing images of gender in Weekly Shounen Jump, presented by Kristine Michelle L. Santos.
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