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SPLATTER_DEATH

                                             November 18, 2013


There are genre conventions imposed from
without that are nevertheless necessary
for the genre to function.

Classic "horror" writers like Robert Bloch (who
sometimes joked about changing his name to
Robert-Bloch-Author-of-Psycho) often complain
about the advent of the splatter flick-- once
Warhol's combine broke the ice on blood-on-screen,
it turned into the death of an entire style of
film-- it's no longer necessary to dance around
the edges of the horrible, you don't need to just
hint at things. An artwork that approaches such
things with any delicacy now just seems very
quaint in conception: a film like that would be
difficult to get made in a post-Tarrantino world.


   It strikes me that Japanese anime is in a similar
   very precarious state at the moment-- the audience
   is composed of porn-fried post-internet otaku,
   but the conventions of broadcast television
   still rule.  That tension is what actually makes
   the current form of kawaii/moe not-quite-sex-comedy
   work...

                                                   MYSTERIOUS_GIRLFRIEND_X

   There are things you're allowed to talk about
   fairly openly in these stories-- female characters
   regularly accuse the male of being hentai,
   cross-dressing and queer relationships are
   not unusual, one character may blatantly offer
   themselves to another... but it is very important
   that none of them actually have sex with each
   other, not even off-stage by implication. 

       There was an old Hollywood dodge of letting the
       camera drift over to the doorknob, leaving the main
       characters in a clinch, followed by a cut to a
       later scene-- something like that would *not* be
       allowed in anime: the audience is not presumed to
       be so innocent that they're completely ignorant of
       sex, no one in the audience would be put off the
       scent by such this obvious elision.

       Instead, one or the other character is expected
       to balk, and stall the other once again, no
       matter how flimsy and unbelievable the excuse
       is that they contrive for doing this.

                                           OTAKU_DUSK

             I don't see how this genre can possibly
             survive for long-- eventually the barrier
             shoring up this wall of the genre will
             give way, and something else will take
             it's place...



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