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                                               April 29, 2012
                                     Re-start: May    7, 2012

"Oatku Japan's Database Animals" (2001)
   by Hiroki Azuma
                                                 OTAKU_WAY
English translation:
  Jonathan E. Abel & Shion Kono


As befits a "postmodern" analysis, the
terminology here doesn't really make
much sense, but while "your brain is a
computer" has become a dull cliche,
"your culture is a database" is a new     But then there's the other
one on me, and Azuma deserves credit      puzzle of Azuma's title:
for this alone.                           "Animal"?

  The wonky diagrams explaining               OTAKU_ANIMAL
  the terminology are pretty
  funny as well.

  He begins with the idea that there
  are many small narratives visible to
  any individual, but that they have an
  invisible structure underneath them.

  Back in the good old "modern" world,
  there was supposedly a single underlying      Azuma calls the modern world's
  "grand narrative" beneath them all.           central grand narrative a "tree
                                                view": I gather that the idea
  But now, here in the postmodern world,        is that there's one central
  world that many-to-one relationship           trunk (the "grand narrative"),
  breaks down into a many-to-many.              and all the smaller narratives
                                                branch off from it.
  He calls this the database view,
  where in place of one grand
  narrative, the many small visible
  narratives which map to a series
  of slots that Azuma thinks of as       I might call this a collection
  entries in a database.                 of familiar tropes and "genre
                                         conventions".
      The particular
      case that Azuma                               TROPISM
      is interested in
      is the otaku
      sub-culture, and
      the database of     This restriction does
      moe elements.       not seem implicit in
                          the model.



            This insight was inspired
            by an actual on-line database,          NOUNIFICATION
            a Japanese website created in
            1996: tinami.com




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