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OTAKU_WAY

                                               May 7, 2012

I came to this book via         "Oatku Japan's
an odd remark in "Otaku         Database Animals" (2001)
USA" from someone who           by Hiroki Azuma
was of the opinion that
the term "moe" was too               OTAKU_BASE
easily misunderstood by
American audiences, and                         Hiroki Azuma is a guy who
that it was best to use                         was in his teens when the
the term "database".                            postmodernism craze hit
                                                Japan in the 80s.
It's clear that that's
a very strange reading.                         State-side, postmodernism
                                                now seems dated, if not
   European pomo,                               discredited, but he's
   Bouncing off japan,                          still be enthralled with it.
   Coming back to an      DISTORTING_MIRROR
   American anime fan,                          Myself, I have trouble
   making me wonder                             convincing myself there's
   what the hell                                any there, there.
   Azuma could've been
   talking about.                                   CHALKBOARD_TRACES

   There is:                                    So: this is yet
                                                another case where a
     a psuedo-japan in Japan,                   Japanese re-import is
     a psuedo-japan in the US                   more appealing to me
     a psuedo-US in Japan                       than the original
     a psuedo-US in US                          local product...

       And so on, up through any                     A_DREAM_OF_JAPAN
       number of levels of
       pseudo-pseudo you care to
       trace...

         But in cultural
         affairs, recursion is
         never really infinite.
         Once it gets two or three
         levels deep, everyone
         becomes conscious of the
         process, and it short-
         circuits to a general
         "and so on".




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