I see a lot of fans bemoan what they perceive to be a shift in focus for anime. Apparently, anime used to be about robots, and space, and fighting, and war, and men, but now it’s all about romance and cute girls, as if this is something new.

The fact is, the roots of the moé phenomenon (Put simply, the word “moé” describes an affectionate reaction to an anime character and the tropes and aesthetics that bring about that reaction) run very deep, deeper than those who assert that it’s a paradigm only a decade or so old are willing to admit.

“Proto-moé,” they call it. Moé before moé.