As the Japanese cute girl anime/manga art style becomes evermore popular overseas, I feel a major cultural clash is unfolding. Anime, manga, and video games from Japan were still a novelty in the 90s in North America in many ways. The Japanese origin of the content slowly started to become a selling point instead of liability in the 1990s in America and Canada. Now many in the West take for granted the ubiquitous presence of Japanese anime, manga, and video games. While the material might be everywhere, people’s perception can be really different.
The controversy regarding different representations in anime/manga are not just about being some people being prudes or people being obnoxious. I would argue that there is a fundamental difference in how people understand of the role of entertainment media including anime/manga.
Some think entertainment media is fanciful fiction, first and foremost.
Others think media representation in entertainment constitutes a graphic reflection of reality and that there is a strong interrelationship between the two.
These are not mutually exclusive views.
Nevertheless, for those who place strong emphasis on the interrelationship between media representation and social realities, there is no such thing as “pure fiction.” All representations in fiction are in some way a reflection of reality in one way or another, and consequently, can influence reality to some degree.
Others, mean while, place a strong emphasis on the cathartic qualities of fiction in general, but in particular how entertainment and be a stress release. In this school of though, the fact that the narrative is totally fabricated and fantastic makes it easy for people to project their fears, hopes and other emotions without worrying about real world consequences.
The pure fiction school need little justification for free speech. Representation needs no justification besides being a representation. So long as no one was harmed in the production of the work, and if it does not pose a unique threat to real people, no regulation is warranted.
The media/reality interrelationship school still seeks freedom of expression, but generally speaking the right for free speech is an ends to a mean—Namely for the sake of social improvement, curtailing authoritarianism, and safeguarding minority voices that may suffer otherwise.
As I said before the pure fiction school vs. the media/reality interrelationship school are not mutually exclusive. Some would argue that certain medias should be held more accountable in certain circumstances, but otherwise should be allowed to be divorced from reality.
Nonetheless, this fundamental difference in belief—fiction is good because it’s fiction vs. fiction is tied to reality and free speech should be an agent of good—alters the perception and expectations that people apply upon anime and manga.
In Japan, the pure fiction school is very strong. One of the reasons why the cute moe art style is so popular is because many people enjoy the aesthetics of this highly refined and distilled form of idealized beauty that most people appreciate as being a complete fabrication.
In some parts of the West, the media/reality interrelationship school is very strong. This is especially the case with locally created narrative works that involve real life actors and creators.
The West has been hard at work trying to redress its history of marginalizing certain groups within the entertainment industry and is encouraging their contribution to take a more prominent role. As such, some feel all media should be held accountable to these standards.
The desire to redress certain groups can extend beyond encouraging certain the participation of certain groups and their narratives, but seek to discourage certain groups from stealing the spot light and limit the creation of narratives that perpetuate socially undesirable attitudes and values.
But from the vantage point of the pure fiction school, projecting real life social issues upon fiction including anime, manga and video games comes across as unwarranted interference, moral imperialism or even blatant authoritarianism.
For those in the pure fiction school, demanding fiction to heed real life social improvement belies the point of fiction. Fiction (anime/manga) is supposed to be an escape from reality and something people can enjoy guilt-free.
I argue that the pure fiction school is particularly strong in Japan because many people appreciate the aesthetic qualities of art as being something beyond the reach of mortals—I’ve dubbed it “Aesthetics of Resignation.” (諦めの美学)
Since no one can possibly actually merry the impossibly beautiful anime, manga and video game female character (a.k.a. waifu,) no one fight over who owns them. While introducing real life qualities to anime, manga and video game characters are not rejected, they are fundamentality treated as different representations.
The cute girl moe art style is good for the specific reason that it is so divorced from reality and people can take solace in their immortality and idealization. But for those in the media/reality interrelationship school, the fact that they are impossibility attractive and abstract can be the very crux of the issue.
From the media/reality interrelationship school of thought, the construction of an impossibly idealized image can be seen as a perpetuation of a socially undesirable stereotype. For that reason, socially undesirable representation should not be tolerated.
From the pure fiction school, the insistence on the part of the media/reality interrelationship school to encourage certain presentations while rejecting others constitute a rejection of diversity and hypocrisy.
But from the standpoint of the media/reality interrelationship school, the aim to regulate undesirable fiction is out of a desire to encourage diversity that is lacking in reality. Not doing this equates to being an accomplice to current social ills and being part of the problem.
For the record, I am in the “pure fiction school” of thought, but it is very important to realize that this debate is raging without fully appreciating how the two schools conceptualize the role of fiction so differently.
(This blog is based on a thread of observations and analysis I conducted on Twitter in April of 2022.)
Dan Kanemitsu's Paper Trail 
It feels nostalgic typing a comment to a blog post, these day we can just send private messages to someone’s social media account. Reading this post remind me that just few days ago I witness with my own eyes two kinds of people from each school of thought responded to a topic (which is the anime adaptation of kuso miso technique) and I found the first word that appear that created split opinion is “representation” and that’s when I thought the root must be somewhere around that word. Your post helped me get a more clearance on this topic. Btw as someone who has enjoyed anime since late showa, I also belong to the pure fiction school. However I also notice that the other school also quite valid opinion that back up their stance, seeing how mainstream Japanese pop culture today, the controversy of cosplaying your kid, the virtual youtuber that changes the perception barrier between 3D and 2D.
Thank you for your feedback!
I think it’s important to present observations like these on a permanent basis. Not only can we learn from one another without worry of service interruption as such, but also it helps us understand where we came from and where we might be going in these times of radical change.
I think studying about how fiction and reality interacts and influences each other is very useful, but I don’t think the relationship is clear cut and the nature of causality tenuous at best (I think other factors play a larger role) and not at all uniform, e.g. different people will react different. That leads me to be very critical on calls of legal regulation of fiction justified on how it can influence real people.
I’m a western/American otaku, I’ve always found myself very firmly in the pure fiction camp, but if pressed, I would say that most westerners that engage in the otaku/anime/manga subculture are in the media/reality interrelationship school group (I’ll refer to these respectively as the “pure fiction group” and “reality group” from here on), and in my view, to be blunt, are very pushy and arrogant. See the recent uproar among westerners about the slave character in Mushoku Tensei for just one example.
As anime and manga have become more popular in the west, this group has grown continuously and become more and more aggressive and intent on imposing their values onto everyone else. As an American born in the late 1990s, anime and manga was an escape from reality that I needed as a kid, because I was always odd, struggled to fit in with normal people, and disliked reality. This group has made it very difficult to find westerners for me to talk about anime/manga with. The otaku subculture, frankly, was my home, it made life bearable when it otherwise might not have been bearable. I won’t go so far as to say the reality group has destroyed my home (the otaku subculture), but they’ve certainly made it worse outside of Japan. It’s more difficult to escape reality now because reality is being shoved into everything constantly. Is it as bad in Japan as it is in the west?
I feel it is important to realize that new people with different expectations are coming into fandom, and with multiple communities being unified together on major Internet platforms, the debates have become more intense. I believe there are still many in the West who gravitate toward the pure fiction school, but the current political climate makes it hard to voice those opinions.
While this is only my opinion, the escapist qualities of anime, manga, and games are still regarded as being highly desirable in Japan. You must take note that Hollywood films that feature Westerners are a form of escapism since they do not feature Japanese people and/or Japanese settings. Even the same work can hold different meanings depending on the context of how something is being negotiated, consumed, and articulated.