Clever Turtles

All asiaphiles know about Japanese otaku, but people often forget that there are no real limits to the subjects upon which an otaku subculture can attach to. They are often associated with manga, porn, and video games, but there are otaku for pretty much anything than anyone can consider mildly interesting. For example, I once saw a clip on Korean TV where the host went to a Japanese rubber-band gun convention. An entire convention for people who buy, sell, and make guns that shoot rubber bands.

While this usually leads to impenetrable, jargon-filled communities, many manga writers and artists are able to take from these otaku cultures and incorporate them into very accessible, very human stories. This often provides a firm foundation for what would otherwise be dull or cliched plots, allowing the characters to be fleshed out and humanized in a way that is difficult with a generic setting. It creates a well-researched backdrop for stories to really take root.

Off-hand, two anime series I am very fond of are PLANETES and THE VIOLINIST OF HAMELIN. Both are able to take well-researched, inaccessible topics and make them the starting point for great storylines. PLANETES is almost a space opera, but it's painfully realistic and mundane approach deconstructs the space opera genre and creates a very rich, very human story that could not exist without it's unique setting. Taking the other approach, HAMELIN excludes the real and spins a rich fantasy setting out of the technicalities of classical music, creating a new way to access the music that couldn't be expressed in any conventional setting.

WOLF AND SPICE pulls the same trick. The setting is a fantasy, but it gets its basis from the well-documented but often ignored history of commerce in the European Enlightenment period. The story is engagingly real and very novel, and has the gritty seriousness and veracity that only comes from a writer who takes is research seriously.

This is done in outside of Japan, of course. There is a lot of historical fiction, and lately much more historically-inspired fantasy (such as George RR Martin's rain-forest-per-copy series) for one example. But I think Japanese otaku culture gives a cultural advantage to writers wanting to explore novel but well-researched fringe topics.

That said, the one thing that always bothers me with anime set outside of Japan is how all of the characters behave in very Japanese ways, particularly the manner of deference to other characters. This really drove me nuts in the otherwise spectacular series MONSTER, where people spoke Japanese and were practically bowing to each other all over Europe.

Anyways, Blogger needs food badly.

Corporate Whore links to be inserted later.