When you hear the wordyou normally think of thosesituations with panty shoots, wardrobe malfunctions and girls taking baths or something. However, there's also another, less known, type of
As the name says, fanservice is a service (shot, scene) to the fans. So moe fanservice is a moe (shot, scene) that's jarringly shoved up in the middle of nowhere just to pander fans of moe.
Any scene that makes characters cuter than normal, that's meant to make the audience attached to the characters, and so on, that just serves no other purpose, really, is moe fanservice.
Common examples of moe fanservice include:
If you have ever wondered why the stuff above keeps happening despite it making zero sense, now you know: it's because of moe.
Just like ecchi fanservice doesn't exist in a purely ecchi anime, moe fanservice doesn't exist in a purely moe anime. The idea is that it's inserted into an anime that's not really moe, for fans who're missing some moe in the anime. Such fanservice might be unwelcome by fans that were not missing the moe.
(honestly, I have never seen the above terms being used, only presented the same way I'm presenting them, but I'm reusing them here for convenience.)
Too much moe makes the story lean toward selling characters instead of plots. This means the characters become too detailed, diverse and unique, while the plot is garbage that's not thought well enough or perhaps completely irrelevant.
Besides the random moe fanservice inserted in the middle of any anime, a fear people who hatehave is that fewer anime have deep, thought-provoking stories because the shallow ones with cute characters are more popular and make more money.
While a valid concern and some people are legitimately worried about the lack of good stories in anime, it's important to note that some of the people who claim this are, in fact, hypocrites.
They'll say anything without moe has a good plot, even when it doesn't. Then they'll try to justify the fact that that anime isn't popular because it's not moe and the average fan can't appreciate a good story. In reality the anime is garbage, the story is bad. It's just not cute garbage, it's ugly garbage. What motivates these people isn't the love for good stories, it's the hate for moe.
Cosplay can be moe.
When real people, not characters, real people, deliberately wear cute, colorful costumes, fantasies, in order to just be cute in a way that's not normally acceptable, because society would look at you weird for wearing such outfits, that's moe at work.
Of course, just like anime characters, not all cosplay is moe, but some sorts of cosplay can be moe.
And, also, if a character, who is already moe, cosplays, in a moe outfit, they get twice as moe.
Moe Idols
Similar in countless ways to moe is the idol culture of Japan. Although there's not much to say about it, since idols are 3D and anime is superior 2D.In Japan, cute girls, voice actors, singers, get to become idols idolized by countless fans, who are also called otaku. These girls, too, have their cuteness become a product of capitalism. The fans pay too much cash to watch them, it's no wonder they've been turned into products.
The arms race to weaponize cuteness and create cuter, more popular idols is exactly the same as the one to design cuter, more popular anime characters. The spirit of adoring, protecting or fantasizing about idols is the same as moe. (and your chances of getting laid with an idol are pretty much the same as with your waifu)
2D Idols > 3D Idols
If 2D girls are moe and idols are moe, what if we combined both?! - So thought a man of culture once.
Who was the first otaku to think this, nobody knows. What people do know is that franchises such as Idolmaster which is about 2D characters who are also idols. Like, in the story, they are idols, who sing, and have fans. Like real idols would.
But the rabbit hole goes even deeper than this.
3D 2D Idols > 2D Idols > 3D Idols
Vocaloid is a voice synthesis software. It lets you type the lyrics and then an artificial voice sings it. To make it more popular: moe! They slapped moe characters on the brand, and associated each character with a voice. So the virtual voices were to be considered the voices of the characters, just because they said so.
And it worked. People actually associated the made-up sounds result of algorithms were actually the voice of characters. They imagined it was the characters singing for them whatever they asked them to sing.
It worked so well that, in a what's to be one of the greatest "are you fucking kidding me?" of all times, these 2D characters associated with the synthetic voices have real, actual live concerts, with real people in the audience, there to hear they sing and see dance in holograms , as if they were idols.
Because they are idols. They aren't real people, but they're singing in a live concert to a bunch of otaku. They are idols. The power of moe is so great it made 2D characters into real singing idols!
Moe Maid Café
You might have noticed already how popular maid cafés are in Japan, and how popular maids are within the otaku culture. This popularity is due to moe.
A maid café, in Japanese meido cafe メイドカフェ or meido kissa メイド喫茶, is a café like any other, expect for the fact the waitresses cosplay as french maids, and they act like your servants part of your household, not like employees of the establishment.
Where an employee would call you okyakusama お客様, "guest," "costumer," such maid would call you goshujinsama ご主人様, which means "master [of a household]" in this case, but in normal, real-life non-anime cases it'd mean "husband." (because the husband in a family is, historically, the master of the household)
Besides the direct moe appeal of maid cosplaying, the french maid outfit is considered cute, there's also the moe appeal of this isolated fantasy inside the café. A physical part of the world set apart from reality.
In anime, lords own mansions, are made of money, and have these maids willing to look cute for them, serve them and devote themselves. An average guy would be crazy to think he could have the life of such anime character, but the maid cafés allow them, real people, to experience the 2D fantasy even if for a brief moment.
Understanding Moe
With everything that's been said about moe, it might be difficult to figure out moe is really about. To summarize, everything there is to know about moe can be summed up in the maxim:- kawaii wa seigi! かわいいは正義！
Cute is justice!
But I feel like this doesn't do enough justice to it, so here's a longer, more detailed analysis by me.
(this section is long, lacks images, and may be meaningless, skip to
(for a proper-sourced, cited, nice and tidy study instead, please read:
The Essence of Moe
Basically, moe is about creating cute characters, attractive characters, visually pleasant characters. Characters the audience can become endeared to or enamored with.The hardcore fans of 2D, the otaku オタク, are people who read a lot of manga and light novels, watch anime, play video-games, and so on. They hop around from fantasy to fantasy, fiction to fiction. Every story is different, but every story has characters. Since fictional characters are a normal part of an otaku's life, it's no wonder they've become an important part of their lives too.
Thus the moe culture is born: a culture built upon the adoration of fictional characters.
That's not to say all people who are fans of moe have some sort of disturbing, mentally-ill attraction to moe. It's a much more subtle thing. Fans of moe have come to the realization cute characters, depictions of cuteness, elicit a pleasant feeling (the moe feeling). In order to make their lives more pleasant, they surround themselves by cuter characters.
They are now everywhere.
Gendered Moe
Normally, authors only try to make characters of the gender opposite to the audience moe.
This means that, for a male audience, female characters are made moe, while male characters are stylized similarly but not given the same treatment. This is because men would rather see cute girls, not cute guys.
Conversely, when it's a female audience, it's cute guys that matter, not cute girls, so male characters are made moe. (note: see section male moe for differences between male and female moe)
Sexual vs. Asexual Moe
The concept of moe is neither sexual nor asexual. It simply refers to a attraction, attachment toward characters.
There are people who innocently become attached to characters. They think of the characters as friends, family, idols, heroes, inspirations, etc. They're pleased by the characters, emotionally attached to them. This is moe.
There are people who become sexually attracted to characters. They think of characters as love interests, partners, lovers, spouses, etc. Or even simply as targets of lust. This is also moe.
Your Moe May Differ
What's moe and what's not moe depends on personal preferences, rather than on dictionary definitions. Be it the mere idea that moe means "cute, young girls," or the more convoluted concept of the "moe feeling" towards characters' cuteness, what is cute and what is not cute ends up being just a matter of taste.
There are people who find certain attributes cuter than others. Larger breasts, flat chests, short characters, tall characters, younger characters, older characters, outfits, hair colors, eye colors, mannerisms, even situations and relationships can be considered cute and lead to moe. It all depends.
Given this myriad of possibilities, it might sound like it's hard to pin down what type of character is deliberately trying to please the audience and what type isn't. What anime is trying to be moe, and which is just moe by accident. But it's actually very easy to tell.
Flat-chested characters often make a point in pointing out how flat-chested they are. Large-breasted characters bounce. In general, an inordinate amount of effort goes into shining light on attributes deliberately chosen because of that attribute's audience.
Generic Moe
Standards of beauty exist. Standards of cuteness exist. Therefore, standards of moe exist. What moe is associated to is clearly the most standard, generic moe possible. The most common moe, the popular moe, etc. The consensus on what is cute is what made moe look like what it looks like today.
So, for most, moe is:
- A cute, young high-school girl
- Adorable, sympathetic, docile, sweet
- Caring, devoted, hard-working, in love
- Innocent, clumsy, childish
- Fragile, defenseless, in need of protection
So that's the consensus. The perfect fictional girl is as fictive as it gets. They're created in a way that's one hundred percent cuteness, zero percent anything else. It's a girl that would never disagree with you and lives for your purpose. A girl that somehow needs your protection.
Basically, the ideal moe is about a character written to make people fantasize about being a white-knight that saves a girl who then becomes their devoted lover forever, living only to make your life happier. Someone that's naturally cute and will act cute to please you. (you know, literally exactly like in Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon.)
Reality, Fantasy & Moe
Many people who watch anime for the first time will find themselves unknowingly disgusted by moe. They won't know it is moe they're disgusted about, but they'll be disgusted about it.
This is because anime is realistic. Fine, sure, not really realistic, but try to see it from the point of someone who has never watched anime.
They see the anime. It takes place in a high-school, a very real place, students talking to each other, there's even a teacher. The location, it looks real. There's a great deal of effort done in recreating real life locations for backgrounds in anime. The proportions, they look real. Not exactly realistic, but they're pretty close to real life proportions, it's not a cartoon. The characters, they aren't wearing capes and fighting crime, most of the time. They're just hanging around. Bantering. It looks real.
So, given all this information, the uninitiated are mislead to expect that anime is trying to mimic reality. And they will be very weirded out because of this expectation.
That's because, when you have these moe characters, young, girl characters, constructed to please a male audience, to look like defenseless children, sometimes written as victims of tragedies, made act in such an... unrealistic, fake way. Just to pander men. It would be immoral not to be repulsed.
Because they assume this is a message. They think, if anime mimics reality, and this is in anime, it must mean that this is what anime considers reality. In other words, their repulsion is by what anime expects a girl to be like. Not a person, an object of cuteness designed to be appreciated.
Fortunately, they are wrong.
The idea of moe is not about demeaning women. It'd be ridiculous to think that after understanding what moe is really about. This is because a moe girl is not portraying a real life girl. The fictional society inside an anime that allows moe girls to act cute all the time without nobody calling her out for how silly she looks is not the same society that exists in real world.
Yes, it's true: moe girls are technically toys. Dolls. Literally entertainment. That's their point. But that's not saying real women are toys.
A man wishing they had a wife who was always cute, devoted for him, and which he wish he could protect, sounds demeaning to you? Maybe. You may argue you can't expect a woman to waste her time degrading herself trying to look cute for men, or devote herself to men. You may argue this dream of protecting says he thinks women can't take care of themselves and he has to be there.
But in the end, that's what the guy wishes happened. That's not saying he will impose women to his dreams of patriarchy or anything. He might find a woman who's okay with it, he might not, but he can't demand, and in modern times he can barely expect. So, instead, why not just create a fantasy where that does happen?
So moe is not a disrespect toward real women, to the contrary, it's because men respect real women that they believe their impossible fantasies will never come true in real life, so they make it sorta come true in 2D life.
It's not just about women, either. When it comes to male characters being, and the way women fantasize with male characters, you could say it demeans men. With things likeand, you could saydemeans gays and lesbians. It does not. It doesn't demean anyone, becauseis not a social commentary, it's not real, it's escapism, it's fantasy.
When an otaku watches anime, he expects it to be in a completely isolated reality where people see a girl with pink hair and they don't even make a remark. (thanks Saiki!) It's a fantasy world where nobody minds cuteness and moe cancels the laws of physics, that lets the creative mind of authors to go at its full potential and create types of cuteness that wouldn't even possible in a world ruled by atoms instead of pixels. It's not real, it's surreal.
Past, Modern, Future & Moe
Like all things, moe changes with time.
What was considered moe in the past was much different from the moe we have now. It was far less blatant. It was subtle. Elegant, even.
The moe we have now is the outcome of moe acceptance. Every day, some new way of making characters cuter is tried, pushing moe farther and father from reality, and deeper into its own secluded cultural fantasy.
The tested-and-true moe remain. What doesn't work is forgotten. Then people get sick and tired of the tested-and-true moe, after seeing it repeated dozens and dozens of times. And so the demand for a new type of moe arises. And of course, this cycle will continue in the future too.
Neoteny, Children & Moe
The term neoteny refers to "child-like features in adult bodies." It is not exclusive to art, when it is employed in art it equates to making adult characters look like children.
Animals are hard-wired to think the children of their species are cute. When you think something is cute, you feel endeared to it, and you want to protect that which you're endeared to. This mechanism allows animals to instinctively protect their children.
The process above is used in art, specially in moe, in order artificially make characters cuter by making them look younger. You see a character that looks more like a child than like an adult, you instinctively become endeared to them. You think they're cute.
The most obvious way this is done is by using the head-to-body ratios of a child in an older character. An adult's body total length is 7 to 8 times the length of their heads. If you're 180cm tall, your head is about 24cm. What manga, anime, moe, does is making that measure 6 heads tall or less by increasing the size of the head while keeping the height of the body constant. So a 180cm tall character would have a head with 30cm of diameter or more, a 25% increase of the size of the head.
Because the head becomes so much larger, the necks of the characters usually look thin by comparison.
Eyes and foreheads larger than normal are also normally employed. This, in turn, makes the mouth, nose, and chin become smaller than normal, and much smaller by comparison. The space the eyes occupy grew, so there's less space for the mouth, which must become smaller to fit.
Hands are sometimes made smaller, too. While a normal hand could span across more than half of your face, moe hands, in extreme cases, can't even cover one third of their faces.
The behavior of the characters are also made deliberately childish for their ages. Such mannerisms which would be considered socially unacceptable are common in moe. They're employed as they made it easier to associate an older character with the notion child, easing endearment. This aspect is usually ignored when it comes to discussion about moe and neoteny, because the physical, visual neoteny takes all the attention.
Tragedy, White-Knights & Moe
Characters are sometimes made moe not by their appearance but by their story. This often happens when the character falls victim of a tragedy, becoming fragile physically or emotionally and in need of protection.
The infamous "hospital bed scene" is normally associated with this type of moe.
This happens when a character either had their family brutally murdered in front of their eyes by some mysterious criminal organization, or lost their memories, or were part of a horrifying laboratory experiment, or maybe a child trained to be a cold-blooded assassin, or maybe they just feel ill with cancer or something that would ultimately lead to their demise.
Anyway. The point of such sad character is that there must be somoene to give her aid when she's in so much need. And that someone is, obviously, not the audience, but the audience wish it were them.
Because how could a human being not want to protect a cold-blooded assassin, who is a child. Or more normally, some poor sick girl on her deathbed who is too weak and falls unconscious if she walks around too much. Who wouldn't want to take them away from this life of sadness and give them happiness?
Whether it's pity or empathy, it creates a kind of endearment from the audience toward the character, and that's part of what moe is about.
Notably: some anime which employ this moe tactic happen to look not as generically cute as you'd expect. For example: Gunslinger Girl. It doesn't look moe by modern standards, but the plot is based on this tragedy device.
Plot, Characters & Moe
When people talk about character development, what do they mean?
Do they mean a character developed themselves, changing from what they were into something new? Or do they mean a story spent time developing a character, showing what they are, without changing what them?
Honestly, I have no idea. Maybe either.
The point is, in moe, it's the latter.
There are a number of works where characters do something amazing. Like saving the world. Saving humanity. Saving the universe. And so on. And maybe in order to achieve such amazing feat, they had to change from what they were at the start of the story, from their mediocre selves, and rise above, to become heroes.
But that doesn't mean we get to know a lot about them. In fact, what we knew about them changed. For many characters, you have just a vague idea of who they are supposed to be, because stories won't waste time showing their normal selves doing things you can relate with, they'll show their frustrated selves trying to overcome obstacles beyond what the average person can imagine. All the time.
And that is not moe.
Because with this, you can't feel attached to a character. You know their feat. You know their fight. You know their story. But you don't know them. It's harder to feel attached to a vague concept of hero with so little identity.
So what does moe do?
It chooses a different route. Instead of focusing on the plot, it focuses on the characters.
It's a common case in moe to have utterly boringly, mundane scenes where literally, absolutely nothing interesting happens. I mean, seriously, it can be about working, yes, working, actually working, a job, can you believe it? Or even farming, like pulling weeds and planting seeds. Does that sound like fun to you? WHY WOULD ANYONE EVER WATCH THIS BORING GARBAGEEEEE!!?!?!?
Because moe.
By having mundane, down-to-earth scenes instead of constant drama and action, the story allows the audience to grow closer, more intimate to the character. Because the audience feels like they live with the character, that they're part of the character's life. Even if it's less like a friend and more like a fly on the wall. Or a plant.
Furthermore, by having these mundane scenes, the story allows characters to show a side of them that would never appear in battle. A moe side that can only be seen in normal life.
More Girls = More Moe
So, one moe girl is good, but why stop at one?
Generally, it's a good idea to have 50% male characters and 50% female characters. A healthy, balanced gender ratio. But why stop at that?
Seeking to weaponize moe further, the manga and anime industry bet their chips on what has come to be greatest anime monster of all times: the "harem" genre.
In this disgusting genre filled with works rated from "godawful" to "ugh, I can't believe I liked this," there is ONE, just ONE, okay, maybe two, male characters and the rest are girls. And moe girls, too, obviously.
Now, you don't need to be a youtuber that keep reviewing the same anime to know that one guy, the main character, plus his trusty token male friend, a girl that likes to boss him around, a girl that is made out of pure cuteness, a girl that is usually quiet, a girl that's his little sister, and a girl that's out to kill him, is a combination of few guys and too many girls. And that's not even a really harem example, it's just sort-of harem.
In this genre, the female characters all have incredibly distinct banquet one-for-everybody types of personality, attributes, etc. None of the girls are normal. Ever. They are all designed to pander one type of moe or another. The most normal it gets is "too cute to be real but not weird at least." They all get a lot of screen time. A lot of development. A lot of sides. A lot of a lot.
Meanwhile, the male characters' character sheet was left partially in blank. They filled the names, put the luck stat on max (or zero), and that was it. The infamous blank slate self-insert harem MC. No opinions, feelings, nothing. He's just there because a male main character was needed. Nobody cares about him anyway.
If a male character gets any development, it's not the MC, it's (one of) his token male friends, who. Must. Be. A trap. If the character isn't a trap (not effeminate), he is not made to please the male audience, therefore nobody gives a shit about him, and he gets no screen time, because why would a harem anime waste time with a non-trap male character when there's like 6 girls waiting to say a line?
With this ingenious strategy, harem anime manages to have a dozen of moe characters for diverse moe audiences and thus harvest all that popularity granted to them by the fans. And then they hold these popularity contests which hints what kind of moe is more popular, so that type can be copied to death in the next 20 harem anime.
But it didn't stop here.
Because these popularity polls revealed something truly terrifying.
The popularity of diverse types of moe fluctuated, tastes varied, times changed, but, alas, one thing remained constant. One type of character was always the least popular character. The main character.
HE IS A GUY WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!?!?
Cornered, authors devised the following bold strategies to remediate the problem:
- Make the guy look like a girl. (trap MC)
- Make the guy become a girl. (gender bender MC)
- Make the guy a girl. (female MC)
In the first case, although it's not an anime for men, but for women, so the moe gender is reversed, we have Ouran High School Host Club, where the main character is a reverse-trap (a girl that looks like a guy) and everyone else with a name is a guy.
In the second case, we have Ranma 1/2.
In the third case, clearly the most daring option that nobody ever hoped would work (/s), we have countless examples. Turns out the guy wasn't necessary after all.
Without a male character perving on the girls, or being hit on while being as clueless as a blank sheet of sudoku, truly mundane moe may be had. Since there's no guys in the anime, it's not about (heterosexual) love, romance, and sexual harassment, it's about girls hanging around together, doing things together, and being together.
The famous cute girls doing cute things anime. The getaway anime genre to harder genres like shoujo-ai 少女愛 and yuri 百合 Without a male character perving on the girls, or being hit on while being as clueless as a blank sheet of sudoku, truly mundanemay be had. Since there's no guys in the anime, it's not about (heterosexual) love, romance, and sexual harassment, it's about girls hanging around together, doing things together, and being together.
You might think this is unfortunate, after all, since there are no guys left to remove, we have reached maximum girl ratio (100%). So we literally can't add more girls... or can we? Turns out we can!
That's right, moe exceeds expectations once more and breaks into new ground. Seven, eight characters? Pfft! That's for anime made for normies! I know at least two 12-episode anime with about fifty different characters, all moe girls, all with unique designs! They really doubled-down on the "a moe for everyone" strategy!
Moe in Kanji
The word moe written with kanji is 萌え, and the 萌 kanji means "sprout," as in, a plant, sprouting.- moeru 萌える
To sprout. - moe 萌え
Sprouting. - moyashi 萌やし
Bean sprouts.
You may notice this doesn't make much sense, moe has nothing to do with sprouting, so why does it mean that?
There's a bit of story to this, but basically: moe is a slang. It has nothing to do with sprouting, that's just a coincidence. I repeat: it has nothing to do with sprouting. You may have heard somewhere that moe is about a "sprouting feeling in your heart" or something, but that's bullshit. It has nothing to do with sprouting!!!
It's like how we say "to ship" in English when we wish for a certain couple of characters to be made. Why to ship? Is it something to do with nautical ships? Shipments of packages? No. It's relationships.
The slang "to ship" had nothing to do with ships crossing the Atlantic, but now we like to associate imagery of embarkations to symbolize "ships" of characters even though the slang being the same as the other word was a mere coincidence. The same thing happens with moe. It has nothing to do with sprouting, that's a mere coincidence.
The Antonym of Moe: Moe 燃え
Are you ready for more Japanese vocabulary clusterfuckery? Good! Coz here it comes!The verb moeru 萌える, "to sprout," is moeru 燃える, "to burn."
- moeru 燃える
To burn. - moe 燃え
Burning.
So there are three moe's: the sprouting, the burning, and the cuteness feeling one.
It's important to note that moe, the anime cuteness/feeling thing, is always written with the kanji for "sprouting," moe 萌え That is, moe 燃え never refers to cute girls, only moe 萌え does.
Confusing, isn't it? But wait! There's more!!!
New Challenger
Because now we have one moe that's a real word and a slang, and one moe that is a real word but not a slang. That sounds a bit unbalanced, so why not make another slang to even things out?! Genius idea, Japan. 10/10. (seriously, wtf were they thinking?!)
So, moe 燃え, not moe 萌え, moe 燃え, is a feeling like moe 萌え, that's usually used in contrast to moe 萌え, toward situations were characters are not mellow and cute, but burning with fire showing how cool and badass they are. Characters you become attracted to because of their vicious play of sports, firing of guns, etc.
This is also related to the non-slang words:
- moeagaru 燃え上がる
To get fired up. To get excited. - moeagari 燃え上がり
Excitement. Enthusiasm (of someone to do something).
Basically:萌え is about cute, feminine, weak characters that need support, while燃え is about cool, strong, powerful characters that are independent. While the firstwarms your heart, the second excites it with fire.This is also related to the non-slang words:
Note, however, that this distinction between moe 萌え and moe 燃え only happens when the kanji are juxtaposed.
That is: both萌え and燃え are considered. So燃え萌え in a sense (the sense of emotional response to a character) despite being its antonym in another sense (it's closer to manliness than femininity). The word燃え is only written with that kanji when it refers to a very different kind offrom the usual cute萌え.
Summary
So, to recap this mess:
- moeru 萌える
To sprout. - moe 萌え
Euphoria because of cuteness of a character.
Warms your heart. - moeru 燃える
To burn. - moe 燃え
Euphoria because of the fervor of a character.
Gets you fired up and ready for battle.
Moe Wordplay With Fire
To make matters worse, there's sometimes a wordplay with moe 萌え and the verb "to burn," moeru 燃える. No, this isn't the same as the other moe 燃え slang. This is literally adding flames around a moe character or around a character who is feeling moe.Notably, in the manga and anime D-Frag, characters were introduced as RPG-esque attribute elements earth, water, thunder, and fire. There was a joke where the fire character was the fire character not because of actual fire, but because she was cute, hence moe 燃え, burning.
The light novel and manga versions of the anime Outbreak Company have a subtitle besides the title: Outbreak Company: Moeru Shinryakusha 萌える侵略者, meaning "burning/moe'ing invaders."
Moenai Gomi
The phrase moenai gomi 萌えないゴミ was born from this kind of wordplay. It means, literally, "trash that doesn't make you moe," and comes from the phrase moenai gomi 燃えないゴミ, "non-combustible trash," or "trash that doesn't burn." In Japan, trash is normally separated into combustible and non-combustible.The phrase moenai gomi, as used towards moe, refers to illustrations and characters which are impossible to moe to. This can be because the artist's skill is lacking and it just looks ugly despite trying to go for the moe style, or because the personality of the character is so trash it's impossible to feel endeared to no matter how good it looks, or for any other reason, really.
Note that, since moe is subjective, this phrase is used in the general sense: normally, someone wouldn't moe for this.
Moe Origin
The origin of the term moe is uncertain. It was a word made up around 1980, in the Japanese internet, and nobody is really sure why it exists. There are many theories. Below I'll explain what I think are the two most important ones.Note that, the concept of moe, as a feeling, existed before there was a word to describe it. People already had this mysterious indescribable emotion toward fictional characters, they just didn't have a word to refer to it. They started using moe for this purpose because it sounded good enough, and its spread cemented its status as the proper word.
Moe Typo
The first theory is that the word moe 萌え actually comes from moe 燃え, "burning." This is because it probably referred to a burning sentiment. Your heart, burning, because of cuteness. Sparkling fires of love. Etc.When you type text in Japanese, first you type how the word is pronounced, in this case moe もえ, then you press a key, normally the space-bar, so the computer converts between the Japanese alphabets, turning the kana into kanji when it recognizes a word. So both moe 萌え and moe 燃え can be typed this way. Someone tried to type one, typed the other by accident.
If this is true then it means this goddamn mess just got a whole lot more goddamn messy! We have actually come a full circle. From people who think moe is related to sprouting, despite it being a mere typo, to the creation of an opposite moe using the kanji for burning. There's some JoJo levels of fate going on here.
Tomoe Hotaru
A second theory is that the word comes from a character of the popular Sailor Moon series: Tomoe Hotaru 土萠 ほたる.The kanji of Tomoe's name, 土萠, isn't exactly the same as the one found in the word moe 萌え, but not only is it similar, it also holds the same meaning. You can write "to sprout" with it: moeru 萠える, it's just that it's not normal. So you could say 萠 and 萌 are sort of synonymous kanji.
So the slang moe could have come from a wordplay mixing the verb to sprout, moeru 萌える, with Tomoe's name. Or maybe it was actually a wordplay with "burning" moeru 燃える. Or maybe it came from just shouting her name: Tomoeeeeeee!!! In either case, the point is that the Tomoe character from Sailor Moon could have inspired the someone to create the word.
Besides Tomoe, there are a number of other characters, and even voice actors, whose name have the word moe in them. They may have contributed to the spread of the term moe simply because of this. People saw a cute character or voice, saw moe in the name, and that helped associated one thing to the other.
Moemoe 萌え萌え
The word moemoe 萌え萌え is, obviously, the word moe twice, meaning it's more moe than normal.
That is, moemoe means exaggeratedly moe, or ridiculously moe.
Moemoe 萌え燃え
The word moemoe 萌え燃え, with the opposite moe kanji in a single word, means something is both moe 萌え and moe 燃え at the same time. That is, a character that's extremely adorbs and full of badassery as they obliterate bad guys with the power of unnecessary violence is moemoe 萌え燃え.
Moemoe 燃え燃え
You can probably guess what moemoe 燃え燃え means, but in case you can't: when it's a lot of action, and being fired up, and not much cute, it's moemoe 燃え燃え.
Note that this word can also means "burn burn" as in literally burning with fire.
Kyun キュン
The onomatopoeia kyun キュン, sometimes a more dragged out kyuun キューン, is often associated with moe. It sounds like a beam being shot in a spaceship video-game.This is the sound effect of a heart palpitation. Due to cuteness, the muscles of the heart contract as a reaction, pushing all blood out, and the heart suddenly gets smaller. People imagine kyun is the sound that sudden movement would make.
Moe Moe Kyun 萌え萌えキュン
The phrase moe moe kyuun 萌え萌えキューン is a phrase from the moe anime K-On!, episode 4. During a training camp, on a beach, to sharper their music skills, the band discusses what they're going to do for the school's festival. Ritsu says they'll running a maid café, and Mio will dress in maid clothes and say something like cute like moe moe kyuun. As this was said, the imagination of Mio transforming into a maid and making a heart-shape with her hands was shown.The phrase has basically no meaning besides sounding cute. The word moemoe is just moe twice, a lot of moe. And kyun is the sound of a palpitating heart. If you did a lot of mental gymnastics you could interpret it as "feel moe and make your heart beat!", but there's no point in doing that.
The reason I'm including this single phrase in this post is because it kind of turned into a meme. The phrase moe moe kyun, plus making the shape of a heart with your hands. A number of anime parodied this, artists have drawn the most ridiculous illustrations of this, even real people have used it on TV.
燃え燃えキューン！！！！もえもえきゅ～ん
Examplary fan art
Moe Buta 萌え豚
The term moe buta 萌え豚, literally "moe pig," is a derogatory and often self-depreciating Japanese slang used to refer to a moe.Never forget: moe is a product of capitalism! The anime industry is taking these fat otakus as livestock. Feeding them moe anime and harvesting their money in return.
The term is also used to describe how they squeal like pigs for moe. This is often accompanied by verb buhiru ブヒる, "to oink," because buhi ブヒ. In this case, "to oink," buhiru, is sorta synonymous with "to moe," moeru 萌える.
Moe Towards Real People
In the west, the word moe isn't used towards real people. In Japan, it sorta is.The word moe was once exclusively used by the otaku to refer to fantasy cute. First, towards fictional characters, and their feelings towards fictional characters. Second, towards idols and cosplayers, who are real people.
But then, with the spread of the word moe, it became mainstream. So not only otaku, but also normies other people started using it. And since they are not otaku, they wouldn't use it toward otaku stuff like fictional characters, cosplayers and idols. They used the word moe toward other real people.
Today, Japanese magazines, blogs, etc. will tell women what men feel moe for in a girl. What mannerisms are considered moe, and so on. It's like saying "what do men find cute in a girl?" Of course, the same stuff is also written for men sometimes, "what do women find moe in a guy?"
Similar in countless ways tois the idol culture of Japan. Although there's not much to say about it, since idols are 3D and anime is superior 2D.In Japan, cute girls, voice actors, singers, get to become idols idolized by countless fans, who are also called. These girls, too, have their cuteness become a product of capitalism. The fans pay too much cash to watch them, it's no wonder they've been turned into products.The arms race to weaponize cuteness and create cuter, more popular idols is exactly the same as the one to design cuter, more popular anime characters. The spirit of adoring, protecting or fantasizing about idols is the same as. (and your chances of getting laid with an idol are pretty much the same as with your waifu)In anime, lords own mansions, are made of money, and have these maids willing to look cute for them, serve them and devote themselves. An average guy would be crazy to think he could have the life of such anime character, but the maid cafés allow them, real people, to experience the 2D fantasy even if for a brief moment.With everything that's been said about, it might be difficult to figure outis really about. To summarize, everything there is to know aboutcan be summed up in the maxim:But I feel like this doesn't do enough justice to it, so here's a longer, more detailed analysis by me.(this section is long, lacks images, and may be meaningless, skip to Kanji of Moe if you don't really care about my findings and opinions)(for a proper-sourced, cited, nice and tidy study instead, please read: Moe: Exploring Virtual Potential in Post-Millennial Japan by Patrick W. Galbraith, University of Tokyo)Basically,is about creatingcharacters,characters,characters. Characters the audience can becometo orwith.The hardcore fans of 2D, theオタク, are people who read a lot of manga and light novels, watch anime, play video-games, and so on. They hop around from fantasy to fantasy, fiction to fiction. Every story is different, but every story has characters. Since fictional characters are a normal part of an's life, it's no wonder they've become an important part of their lives too.Thus theculture is born: a culture built uponThat's not to say all people who are fans ofhave some sort of disturbing, mentally-ill attraction to. It's a much more subtle thing. Fans ofhave come to the realization cute characters, depictions of cuteness, elicit a pleasant feeling (thefeeling). In order to make their lives more pleasant, they surround themselves by cuter characters.They are now everywhere.The wordwritten with kanji is 萌え, and the 萌 kanji means "sprout," as in, a plant, sprouting.You may notice this doesn't make much sense,has nothing to do with sprouting, so why does it mean that?There's a bit of story to this, but basically:is a slang. It has nothing to do with sprouting, that's just a coincidence. I repeat: it hasto do with sprouting. You may have heard somewhere thatis about a "sprouting feeling in your heart" or something, but that's bullshit. It has nothing to do with sprouting!!!It's like how we say "to ship" in English when we wish for a certain couple of characters to be made. Why to ship? Is it something to do with nauticals?ments of packages? No. It's relations.The slang "to ship" had nothing to do with ships crossing the Atlantic, but now we like to associate imagery of embarkations to symbolize "ships" of characters even though the slang being the same as the other word was a mere coincidence. The same thing happens with. It has nothing to do with sprouting, that's a mere coincidence.Are you ready for more Japanese vocabulary clusterfuckery? Good! Coz here it comes!The verb萌える, "to sprout," is homonym (same sound) as another word:燃える, "to burn."To make matters worse, there's sometimes a wordplay with萌え and the verb "to burn,"燃える. No, this isn't the same as the other燃え slang. This is literally adding flames around acharacter or around a character who is feelingNotably, in the manga and anime, characters were introduced as RPG-esque attribute elements earth, water, thunder, and fire. There was a joke where the fire character was the fire character not because of actual fire, but because she was cute, hence燃え, burning.The light novel and manga versions of the anime Outbreak Company have a subtitle besides the title: Outbreak Company:萌える侵略者, meaning "burning/'ing invaders."The phrase萌えないゴミ was born from this kind of wordplay. It means, literally, "trash that doesn't make you," and comes from the phrase燃えないゴミ, "non-combustible trash," or "trash that doesn't burn." In Japan, trash is normally separated into combustible and non-combustible.The phrase, as used towards, refers to illustrations and characters which are impossible toto. This can be because the artist's skill is lacking and it just looks ugly despite trying to go for thestyle, or because the personality of the character is so trash it's impossible to feel endeared to no matter how good it looks, or for any other reason, really.Note that, sinceis subjective, this phrase is used in the general sense: normally, someone wouldn'tfor this.The origin of the termis uncertain. It was a word made up around 1980, in the Japanese internet, and nobody is really sure why it exists. There are many theories. Below I'll explain what I think are the two most important ones.Note that, the concept of, as a feeling, existed before there was a word to describe it. People already had this mysterious indescribable emotion toward fictional characters, they just didn't have a word to refer to it. They started usingfor this purpose because it sounded good enough, and its spread cemented its status as the proper word.The first theory is that the word萌え actually comes from燃え, "burning." This is because it probably referred to a burning sentiment. Your heart, burning, because of cuteness. Sparkling fires of love. Etc.When you type text in Japanese, first you type how the word is pronounced, in this caseもえ, then you press a key, normally the space-bar, so the computer converts between the Japanese alphabets, turning the kana into kanji when it recognizes a word. So both萌え and燃え can be typed this way. Someone tried to type one, typed the other by accident.If this is true then it means this goddamn mess just got a whole lot more goddamn messy! We have actually come a full circle. From people who thinkis related to sprouting, despite it being a mere typo, to the creation of an oppositeusing the kanji for burning. There's some JoJo levels of fate going on here.A second theory is that the word comes from a character of the popular Sailor Moon series:土萠 ほたる.The kanji of's name, 土萠, isn't exactly the same as the one found in the word萌え, but not only is it similar, it also holds the same meaning. You can write "to sprout" with it:萠える, it's just that it's not normal. So you could say 萠 and 萌 are sort of synonymous kanji.So the slang moe could have come from a wordplay mixing the verb to sprout,萌える, with's name. Or maybe it was actually a wordplay with "burning"燃える. Or maybe it came from just shouting her name:In either case, the point is that thecharacter from Sailor Moon could have inspired the someone to create the word.Besides, there are a number of other characters, and even voice actors, whose name have the wordin them. They may have contributed to the spread of the term moe simply because of this. People saw a cute character or voice, sawin the name, and that helped associated one thing to the other.The onomatopoeiaキュン, sometimes a more dragged outキューン, is often associated with. It sounds like a beam being shot in a spaceship video-game.This is the sound effect of a heart palpitation. Due to cuteness, the muscles of the heart contract as a reaction, pushing all blood out, and the heart suddenly gets smaller. People imagineis the sound that sudden movement would make.The phrase萌え萌えキューン is a phrase from theanime K-On!, episode 4. During a training camp, on a beach, to sharper their music skills, the band discusses what they're going to do for the school's festival. Ritsu says they'll running a maid café, and Mio will dress in maid clothes and say something like cute like. As this was said, the imagination of Mio transforming into a maid and making a heart-shape with her hands was shown.The phrase has basically no meaning besides sounding cute. The wordis justtwice, a lot of. Andis the sound of a palpitating heart. If you did a lot of mental gymnastics you could interpret it as "feeland make your heart beat!", but there's no point in doing that.The reason I'm including this single phrase in this post is because it kind of turned into a meme. The phrase, plus making the shape of a heart with your hands. A number of anime parodied this, artists have drawn the most ridiculous illustrations of this, even real people have used it on TV.The term萌え豚, literally "pig," is a derogatory and often self-depreciating Japanese slang used to refer to a type of otaku who likesNever forget:is a product of capitalism! The anime industry is taking these fats as livestock. Feeding themand harvesting their money in return.The term is also used to describe how they squeal like pigs for. This is often accompanied by verbブヒる, "to oink," because the sound a pig makes , "oink," isブヒ. In this case, "to oink,", is sorta synonymous with "to,"萌える.In the west, the wordisn't used towards real people. In Japan, it sorta is.The wordwas once exclusively used by theto refer to fantasy cute. First, towards fictional characters, and their feelings towards fictional characters. Second, towards idols and cosplayers, who are real people.But then, with the spread of the word, it became mainstream. So not only, but alsoother people started using it. And since they are not, they wouldn't use it towardstuff like fictional characters, cosplayers and idols. They used the wordtoward other real people.Today, Japanese magazines, blogs, etc. will tell women what men feelfor in a girl. What mannerisms are considered, and so on. It's like saying "what do men find cute in a girl?" Of course, the same stuff is also written for men sometimes, "what do women findin a guy?"
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