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Brain Diving - Ace of Database

Azuma claims that in recent years, the emphasis on narratives in otaku anime has decreased in favor of an increased emphasis on characters.

It does cause the anime/manga industry to shift their focus from narrative to characterization, even if it's bad characterization.

“We should have wives, children, property and, above all, good health … if we can; but we should not become so attached to them that our happiness depends on them. We should set aside a room, just for ourselves, at the back of the shop, keeping it entirely free and establishing there our true liberty, our principle solitude and asylum.”

Now when it comes to the database, Mr. Azuma is wholly correct. For example, take K-On (please). K-On was so brazenly built by the database that even the untrained eye can see the puppet strings. The entire show is nothing more than an attempt to create moe and to push product. And they succeeded marvelously. The problem lies in the fact that the database is a dead end, since it is unable to attract new viewers. Without new and creative works, the less fanatical will begin to drop off and there will be no new blood to replace them. So while Mr. Azuma's philosophy is flawed, his conclusion about the database is not. I guess we will have to wait and see if he can force any changes.

I've also read that in Azuma's later book "The Birth of Metafictional Reality: Animalizing Postmodernity 2", he comes up with a new dichtomy: narrative-oriented vs. communication-oriented. Apparently (being thirdhanded info, this isn't a reliable expression of his idea) today's database otaku works can be read as coming from not a desire to tell a story, but rather a way to communicate to likeminded people.

If our happiness comes from others, then we are lost if those people leave or die. But if we are able to generate our own happiness, then we can remain happy regardless of the state of things that surrounds us.

Oh yes. The "happiness comes from within!" argument. It's nice to note how most of the philosophers who've advocated this sort of thing are rich. See, the reality is that we can only attain happiness from within if we are in certain social situations that allow us to be less dependent on others. If you're part of the underclass who has to work every day or needs government or family assistance, then our happiness is of necessity dependent on others.

I'm sure my synopsis doesn't do enough justice to his overall case, since in the course of discussing databases and animalization he brings up many other topics like psychoanalysis, philosophy, and Japanese history.

vashfanatic wrote:

Oh yes. The "happiness comes from within!" argument. It's nice to note how most of the philosophers who've advocated this sort of thing are rich. See, the reality is that we can only attain happiness from within if we are in certain social situations that allow us to be less dependent on others. If you're part of the underclass who has to work every day or needs government or family assistance, then our happiness is of necessity dependent on others.

I imagine Socrates, Spinoza, Boethius, or Diogenes - to name only a few - would dislike your dismissal of the argument's advocates as being rich.

A good example of why I dislike so much of continental thought - oh, you're just saying that from a bourgeois perspective! a male perspective! a privileged Western perspective! As if such accusations ever yielded valuable observations that could not have been reached through the usual tools of logic and science.

Though you do yourself clarify upon this in the sentences which follow, I want to make it extra clear that Azuma is not actually stating that "characters" are supplanting "narrative." Rather, Azuma puts forth the notion that emphasis upon "character traits" is taking the place of narrative.

Okay, you're right, I shouldn't have said "rich" -- but every single one of those people you just named came from an elite class. None of them were slaves, none of them were poor, none of them were women. Which brings us to...

The fact that thinkers are privileged and male does not in and of itself disqualify them from having good ideas. But if any perspective does not take into account the lives of people outside that category as well as within it, then it is a only flawed and partial perspective.

But seriously, that meant I never meant this to go any further into philosophical debates. I'd be very curious to see if this book touches on any of the issues we've been discussing here: how much happiness can really be derived "from yourself" vs from human interconnection?

I was wondering about that, because otherwise the concept of "databases" doesn't sound so different from "writing by the numbers", which is a very old idea.

Then one should be able to easily point out the flaws without discussing who thought of the incomplete perspective.