In a recent article published on We Remember Love, Pontifus considered the confusing contradictions that appear throughout Ookami-san and pondered whether they indicated a statement on moe, or perhaps even a meta-reaction to it. He took it one step further by bringing up the question of whether a moe in conflict with itself (as appears in Ookami-san) is sustainable, and likened the moe genre as a whole to a dodongo who’d just swallowed a bomb. Art movements, as he rightly pointed out, don’t explode though… they shift. The most important question he asked dealt with the future of moe, and he speculated that moe might go through something of an upheaval… maybe now, maybe not til five years time.

Now I don’t consider myself a cultural, literary, or humanities expert by any stretch of the imagination, so if it becomes obvious that I’m fumbling with concepts I don’t fully understand, please point it out. Pontifus, and his partner in crime, Cuuchlan, (the duo who, when their powers combine, form Super Fanicom) wrote in a recent article about post-structuralism (which is only obliquely related to this article… or perhaps it isn’t, maybe I just don’t understand the concept enough, nonetheless, it’s still well-worth reading) that the use of “post-” generally implies a response to whatever concept it’s attached to. In my simplistic understanding, postmodernism, which often manifests itself as the mixing of tropes, is an attempt to democratize art, to take it away from the skilled artists and the elitists who place them on a pedestal, and share it with all. Theodor W. Adorno‘s criticism of postmodernism is that, in a capitalist system, democratization inevitably decays into commercialisation, which cheapens the value of art overall. If art is to succeed among a wide audience, then it must appeal to a lowest common denominator. I find it interesting to look at anime and otaku culture in the context of postmodernism. Japan, in its tendency to isolate and stew/skew cultural concepts until they’re just about unrecognizable to the rest of the world (eg, anime’s style as inspired by Disney‘s style) has possibly created, in otaku-ism, a culture so commercial that it could be viewed as one (of many) logical conclusions of a postmodern art movement. The interesting thing is that, rather than being democratized, anime is now insular and self-internalized.

Whether or not moe is in its death knell, the logical thing to say is that post-moe will come after moe. The inherent assumption, of course, is that otaku will never completely reject moe, but will eventually see a need to respond to it. I think this a fairly safe assumption to make, and it’s why I think superflat, the rejection of moe, will never be a dominantly popular genre among otaku. The question, then, is what will post-moe look like? All I can do is speculate, and hope that, whatever it is, it surprises all of us (to this day, I continue to associate my strongest reactions to anything anime related with “surprise”). Whatever the case, seeing as anime is a postmodern art form, it will be largely up to otaku to decide.

In Pontifus’ description of Ookami-san (both the anime and the character) something struck me. There are at least three alternative ways of interpreting the contradictions that are rife through the show, the first and most obvious one being that they’re accidental. The second is that they’re a response to moe, but one that is still incredibly confused about the statement it wants to make on moe. The third is that Ookami-san is just another example of gap moe.

If we take the second interpretation to its logical conclusion, we could see it as an initial stage of a post-moe movement (art movements must start from somewhere). But perhaps Ookami-san is better understood in the context of gap moe. Now, gap moe is a concept which doesn’t get discussed that often in Western fandom, and I suspect it’s not well understood among Western fans. It has (to my understanding) been recognized among Japanese fans for a while. I won’t claim to be an expert about it, because even I don’t have full confidence in my understanding of it. (It is, as Baka-Raptor points out, always going to be a challenge to understand gap moe when we don’t even completely understand regular moe.) Gap moe, as far as I can tell, is a moe of a character that consists of two contradictory physical or personality traits that, at first glance, simply don’t make sense to exist within one character. Like a loli with big boobs. Or a small girl with huge strength. Or… a sexual abuse victim who is also a virgin. If you’re watching Ookami-san, then alarm bells will be ringing at this point.

The disparate elements that exist within a character with gap moe invite further investigation, which is part of its appeal. Gap moe often promises that the gap will make sense eventually if you just persist with the story, so there’s this “mystery” element to its characters. The use of moe to explore characters at a deeper level is not unique to gap moe… Key has made an empire out of doing this. But neither is gap moe a new or obscure concept, even if it is one that Western fandom is just now waking up to.

Whether you believe that an upheaval of moe is imminent might depend on how frequently you think such upheavals should happen. Is moe currently stagnant? Well, it’s certainly not as volatile and dynamic as it was during 2006-7, which is when I believe moe went through its most recent shake-up. At the centre of this shake-up was Suzumiya Haruhi, and the shock-waves were felt in many different genres. The harem genre was deconstructed by Suzumiya Haruhi, and further deconstructed again by Kannagi, before being reconstructed in a new and previously unrecognizable form by Bakemonogatari. Suzumiya Haruhi also changed to tone of moe in the slice-of-life comedy anime which was built upon by Lucky Star and has since lead to K-On!. The show also provided a new take on meta-self-aware comedies which branched out in several different directions… one course following Hayate no Gotoku to Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, and another off-branch leading to Seitokai no Ichizon and Baka-Test.

Another smaller tremor happened, coincidentally, at the same time (even though it was unrelated), and that was Higurashi no Naku Koro ni. Its impact was slightly smaller, but its legacy was a mixture of moe and horror that worked significantly better than previous attempts like Elfen Lied and Narutaru. The influence of Higurashi can be seen in works like Shiki, among others, but perhaps it is around this time that gap moe started to become really prominent. It’s hard to think of a more quintessential example of gap moe than Higurashi.

Gap moe itself can, in a rather technical way, be seen as a primitive form of post-moe, since the existence of a gap evidences a statement or response to the disparate moe elements that strafe that gap. It’s implicitly accepted that anime must go through an upheaval before post-moe replaces moe as the dominant form. But maybe anime has gone through that upheaval already, and moe has been replaced by gap moe… just, that we Western fans were asleep to it while it was happening and simply didn’t notice. The question I want to ask now is, if we accept that the contradictions so apparent in Ookami-san and that define modern moe can be understood within the context of gap moe, when exactly did the upheaval that lead to this (ie, gap moe becoming modern moe) happen? Perhaps if we can figure out the answer to this question, we might have a better idea what will happen to moe after its next evolution.