Social media is a blessing, and I don’t regret a single moment I spend on it. Where else could I go to see cute fanart of Kirino and then suddenly have immediate surroundings at the mercy of Dorontabi? It’s the best thing I have going on, and I’m being serious too. Gone are the days of the college essay about the industrial revolution and its consequences. Gone are the days of the desiccated mentions of “Skärmhjärnan.” I am immune to media designed to attack my brain. Oh, but short form media is lame as hell. TikTok has a slew of problems in and of itself, but I can at least appreciate that my “For You” page is filled to the brim with girly-kei fashioned women dancing to the beats of bitcrushed 808s. But why in the world does Facebook of all platforms have a “reels” section? It’s not even a curated selection of videos; it could be as random as a Hispanic guy talking about bobbit worms or a short by King Bach with what I could only assume is a relatable caption (it’s in Arabic). If you are stealing my data, which Facebook is absolutely doing, at least show me Kigurumis awkwardly recording themselves in front of Akiba strip.
Facebook isn’t all that bad, though. There’s a bunch of Facebook groups with people making fools of themselves online for clout (I used to do this too) and old guys commenting on the sparsely updated pages of idol groups. We also have an entire group dedicated to the never ending Otaku Dream, a romance comedy manga.
The group goes by “Wholesome Manga V5”. It’s a bit odd to point towards a specific group on Facebook of all things, but there are a surprising number of people in this group. 120.1k. Although most of the members are there simply to have the group’s contents on their timelines, I rarely post or comment on anything there myself.
I enjoy reading manga pages out of context and web comics that don’t require any context. But it’s got me thinking about how things are changing ever so slightly. One shots are kind of neat.
nobody’s gonna love me like you!
Occasionally, I find myself revisiting pieces of media that shaped a particular era, or perhaps a phase of my life. More now than before, I’ve felt the need to grasp at my cherished rose tinted memories. I got a new laptop for a fresh start in my journey, and for one reason or another, my immediate thought was to reinstall OSU!mania and a BMS player. I even went as far as buying a Wooting 60E+ keyboard to relive the memories that have since fermented firmly in the right side of my brain. It’s safe to say I’ve been feeling rather nostalgic.
There was this small but memorable event I unfolded while basking in my youth. During high school, I finally got around to rewatching Oregairu because I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more with my seemingly more refined tastes. Surprisingly, it had the opposite effect. For a brief period, I found myself adopting the aloof and detached demeanor of the protagonist, Hachiman, influenced by his monologues and worldview. Even now, I think his way of thinking is at least acceptable, but it occurred to me that I was acting stranger than usual because one of the friends asked me what was up, and I simply replied, “I was watching Oregairu, and Hachiman was kind of relatable.”
I’m sure we all had a time where we idolized him, but I did end up reading it before the end of 2023 and looked back at how disingenious he was being and how I ended up missing the point of the series.
I did plan on writing my thoughts on this series since I read all 15 volumes of it (and the last volume ended up being the longest book I’ve read during the year), but I wasn’t too keen on my analysis and thoughts (maybe they’ll come in handy later). But during my read, I interacted with a few fellows who were also fans of reading light novels, so I updated a chat with some of my findings and opinions periodically to see if anyone caught interest and to have a more intrusive way to take notes. One of these guys made a statement that brought me to my knees. Why couldn’t I have said something this genius? “Oregairu defined the 2010s genre of romance anime, and Angel Next Door probably defines this era too.” The quote isn’t verbatim, but something along those lines. It’s got me thinking a lot. Anime’s method of operation never really seems to distort. Somewhere between the lines, it’s changing somewhere, right? White Album 2 and Oregairu’s grand dramas are a thing of the past.
One of the key examples in the shifting narrative is the advent of “Angel” girls and the structure these series preside over. The most popular example of this subgenre is The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten. To surmise its contents, it’s about a boy and a girl who live next door to one another. They coincidentally both live alone, and they coincidentally have needs that need to be fulfilled. It’s relatively compliant with the tropes, but as with most romances, the most important aspect is the set up. The setting used here is used to have both parties engage with one another in a very “fluffy” and newlywed way. There’s a distance they need to close in order to have certain events transpire, which again is one of the reasons the plot is centered this way. This series in particular isn’t a perpetrator of this, but another tool you can use in structuring a romance series in this fashion is the use of cheap drama.
One of the worst possible examples (the best example) we have is a manga by the name of More Than a Married Couple, But Not Lovers, where the entire plot is centered around being intimate without actual feelings for the sole purpose of both getting more money out of publishers and consumers and trying to pull at readers heartstrings with yet another 2 page spread of our FMC saying something like “cherish me.” Angel Next Door at the very least doesn’t waste our time with that old, non-accelerated, and boorish approach to storytelling. Here it’s simply a slow burn romance series where two parties have a normal, healthy relationship and a normal amount of skin ship.
But alongside the development of traditional romances, we have outliers evolving in their own ways and living on as an extension of the bigger picture. A similar phenomenon is the development of pop music and the emergence of genres like deconstructed club, hyperpop, and bubblegum bass. Their origins lie in low culture, but here they are reconceptualized as something else. They take the genre conventions and all of their associations and saturate them in a sort of CY8ER punk esque way. Go listen to DAI DAI DAI. They are a good example of this approach, but with idols and breakcore, glitch pop, and digital hardcore.
A good example of this in anime is The 100 Girlfriends Who Really, Really, Really, Really, REALLY Love You.
baby, thinkin’ ’bout you!
It concerns itself with our male lead, Rentarou Aijou, a man who embodies the heart of the romance genre. He has confessed his love to 100 different women, none of whom were even remotely interested. Any sensible person would put into question his “love” if that “love” was very recently bore to another woman, but his love goes beyond these cemented ideas of normalcy. Shortly after his 100th rejection in a row, he visits a shrine and wishes for a change in his romantic fortunes. God answers his prayers and tells him that he will be met with 100 different romantic interests. Luckily, this was no lie, and he is routinely introduced.
And that’s all she wrote. Or at least, that’s all you really need to know about this series. There isn’t much past this premise besides what you would already imagine from a glance at the genre tags on AniDB. And we will just keep getting more and more of these kinds of things—well, maybe not on the same level of quality as this show. But more of the never ending concepts—the concepts that conceptualize our fantasies—form the collective wants and things we all want. Of course, I want a girl who dresses in Jirai-kei to vomit all over me during a sloppy drunken confession.
A strange habit I’ve developed over time is watching anime at a speed that wasn’t originally intended for. To preface this insane idea, it wholly depends on the show I’m watching. In the case of something like Gunbuster, I insist on watching it at its normal speed because I think it’s worth the time. On the other hand, Diebuster is something I’d watch at a minimum of 1.5x speed. Diebuster isn’t too interesting past the cool references to the studio’s older works and the flashy animation, so I took in the information at a rate I deemed proper. It’s for works on the precipice of being drop worthy or mildly interesting. I do this for Youtube videos and books occasionally if I think I have the mental capacity to handle a faster flow of information. It’s quite useful, honestly, but I understand completely if you would disregard this tactic for something that’s supposed to be entertainment, but that’s besides the point. As I watched the web rips of Hyakkano, I had to double check if I accidentally placed the show on 3x speed.
The structure of the episodes is mind-bogglingly quick, and the formula the episodes find themselves in exacerbates this concept further. For instance, take a look at my favorite heroine from the anime. He meets Shizuka Yoshimoto at a library and instantly has a love at first sight moment, for the third time in the span of a week. She lovingly offers to let him borrow one of the books she loves, a classic love story about a princess and a royal guard. Rentarou returns the book and talks about how he loves it in his typical burst of passion and emotion, and she takes an interest in him because of said Love (愛.) Alas, Rentarou speaks to her less because he’s so busy with his two lovers. Shizuka sees this and “overflows.” We get a flashback not too dissimilar to the titular bookworm in TWGOK, but with a layer of verbal abuse. But there’s no way our lover boy would forget about one of his fated one(s). He surprises her with a TTS, allowing her to speak through her books with audio. (I forgot to mention she can’t really talk; she points to lines in her books to speak.) She confesses her love to him and gets accepted into his harem by the others at a world record pace of 1 minute and 12 seconds. 36 seconds if you watch the episode at 2x speed.
It’s hard not to draw parallels to another series with a comparably off-kilter premise. The World God Only Knows, which I just happened to rewatch recently, follows a similar harem focused concept. One thing that I came to appreciate in TWGOK is the tongue-in-check references to the anime subconscious we are all implicitly partaking in. It’s a guide into the world of romance anime and eroge. But instead of the passion being directed towards the girls of the cast, as with the case of Rentarou, Keima is instead interested in our heroine’s “routes.” It is affection for substituting the real for the real itself.
It’s structure is largely the same as Hyakkano, or I suppose Hyakkano might have taken some influence from TWGOK. Although there is one major difference between the two and how they both handle their respective subject matters, TWGOK takes its time, or at least appears to on the surface. Each of the episodes handles one troubled, demon possessed heroine at a time. A problem arises, Keima steels his resolve to talk to real women, and he completes her route. Instead of the bright, vibrant colors and youthful sparkle, the colors here are far more subdued. Instead of the blinding love from Rentarou, Keima is a selfish womanizer who hates women. These differences are representative of the zeitgeist of their eras. TWGOK is self indulgent with bouts of irony and heightened self awareness about the incestuous “moe” tropes we find in our beloved echo chambers. Hyakkano plays around with our common truths and removes the fluff. The backpack strap clutching, flannel-dressing, and glasses adorned otaku of the early 2008s have evolved into habitual creatures. The essence remains intact, but instead of wearing their otakuhood on their sleeves and laughing at their own folly, they turn the notches as far as they can with a calm smile.
Kimi no Koto ga Daidaidaidaidaisuki na 100-nin no Kanojo or Hyakkano is the natural evolution of the romance/harem genre. A response born from the sufferings of the postmodernist worldview. The oversaturation transcends pure necessity and becomes a subversion of a trope through inundation with said trope. Authors ceaselessly write about gimmicks through the lens of loner MCs with persecution complexes. Twitter artists contribute to this idea with Fanbox-baiting single page series with virgin Vixens taking 60% of the page’s surface area. How long could sekai-kei slowburn romances keep us consumers interested? This anime was always going to exist.
它会消失
Short-form content’s allure lies in its accessibility. It’s fast paced in order to keep your adrenaline high so you get caught up in their torrent. It’s THE lowest common denominator content, fire up Youtube and click a single Blue Archive MMD Reel and suddenly you are watching someone cook a steak in Dry Aged Butter (it’s oddly specific because I am a victim to this waste of time occasionally.) While I may not always appreciate the attention-span damaging battlefield a single click puts you in, there’s something inherently charming about it when it involves an anime girl.
I’ve spent my not-so-valuable time doing market analysis on Twitter web comics. I keep a little spreadsheet full of random information, interesting information, and colorful vocabulary that’s so beyond me that the sentence it resides in was built for the sole purpose of trying out a cool word like “microcosm”.
Anyways, through my ceaseless adventure into reading pointless comics about what was and what would be, I found this to be a microcosm of otaku culture in the most 2020s way it could ever be. An era characterized by productivity gurus and devious wastes of time created this strange paradox of short form manga; well, it’s been around for a while.
The movements of the modern age are a lot harder to track down than they were before, and I don’t consider myself much of a history buff as I am someone who enjoys the present day and present time, though I can’t say I really enjoy much of anything. But the history is there, or at least the tropes and dealings of pretty much everything are trapped in this insular, incestous medium where everything takes inspiration from everything to the point where it’s almost impossible to point towards a singular end point as the origin.
The concept itself is as simple as a self contained story, a book without a sequel, something with a tangible start and a concrete ending. Through my experience in the industry (I watched Shirobako and have NEW GAME!), these are made to garner attention and skim the market to see what catches on. Gintama and Dragon Ball started from these humble roots too, apparently. It functions similarly to a pilot episode of a TV show.
But let’s go even deeper—something that is so underground that it cares very little about making it big or even garnering attention. Something self indulgent. The most poisonous (毒) waters are diluted at the deepest levels too, after all.
There isn’t a lot to talk about in regards to the content they actually hold, but if I may… Most of these are under 5 pages and have decent to good art. They either hold the format of having a single girl take up most of the page or a more traditional 30/30/30 rule abiding panel structure. But the most important aspect of this genre of one-shot comics is that they realize the creator’s wishes. Ever think about the “if” routes in romance series? This is the same thing, but without the publishing power of Dengeki Bunko.
For example, one of the artists I’ve encountered during my journey seems to specialize in a particular set of women. I’ll preface this with an acknowledgement of its vacuousness, Menhera and Jirai-kei girls. This flavor of moe is commonly seen in modern series; a few that come to mind are Liver Diver Lover and Joucho wo Mechakucha ni Shitekuru Onna.
They’re very rarely the main stars of the series for various reasons, but they’re still popular enough to remain a “friend of the FMC” trope. Fans of these kinds of GISHIKI (@gishiki_unc)-inspired girls are stuck to fulfilling our savior fantasies in Needy Girl Overdose. I am using myself as an example, if it wasn’t obvious, but there are many others like me, which is exactly why Kuga Tsuniya makes what he makes. He cuts the fluff and gets to the point in full congruence with the caricatures we hold to mentally ill anime girls, and sometimes they get to the point a bit too fast.
It’s not “one-shot,” but it follows a very similar modus operandi that other artists lend themselves to. I’m Worried About My Classmate Who’s Covered in Bruises is a story about a boy who meets a girl who is comically bruised, to the point where it appears like a poorly disguised fetish. The main character, which is just (You) tries to break the ice with her. She’s cold and has a harsh mouth, but she’s a damsel-in-distress tsundere with bruises and bandages who would die if you even looked at her the wrong way, held together by sticks. Like a lost dog in search of banana peels on the concrete floor.
The vast majority of the comic reads in a strange way; since (You) apparently have dialogue bubbles, she speaks back whatever (You) say to her. Everything she says carries this pick me-esque attitude: “What’s so cute about a girl covered in bruises and cuts and wearing an eyepatch?” It’s very pointed in the direction that most readers would want; let’s feed this poor dog some proper love and nourishment. Eventually, (You) and her escape, but her abusive mother appears and tries to kill her, but Mister Savior steps in and takes the hit. He ends up in the hospital, and 5 years pass. Then they live happily ever after together in what seems like an instant. Oh, and on further inspection, the author DOES have a fetish for women in bruises since he’s drawn quite a lot of pornography of this character.
It’s fast paced and ticks all the boxes you need in a romance without a random secondary love interest showing up for some easy drama. Girl meets boy; girl has a problem; boy chases after her; boy helps with the problem; they end up together. I suppose we have finally figured out what we want out of these stories, and all we really want is to reach the end. The storytelling between the first encounter and the last is hardly interesting. We end up speeding up the process and taking in a vast quantity of information and tropes to satisfy the desire to see a cute girl in gothic clothing and accentuated eyebags drink too much alcohol and confess that she was happy that I was drinking alone because she wanted to play and drink only with me before she vomits the contents of her lunch all over my white button up.
Gone are the days of the grand drama.. We have no need for White Album 2’s tragic romance. No need for Oregairu’s character growth. No need for Myself;Yourself’s exploration into harsher drama. ‘Cause we have everything we need.
Everyone has done everything. You can’t keep a dying star alive through prayers alone. What’s left for authors and visionaries to turn to? The same dead past, if only adorned with the realization that nothing really changes. The medium can be enjoyed through a single page. Nuance is lost; welcome, dopamine. And for that, I am eternally grateful. I accept it with all my heart.
I fucking love mentally ill girls.
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