Noe caught you…

Noe is angry…

Noe is direct and to-the-point…she also seems to think you’re hungry.

Epic battle!

Noe is confused and frustrated. Your indecisiveness confuses Noe.

The majority of the show is dedicated to the developing relationship between Noe and Shinichiro. We get a lot of plot movement and character development throughout the cast, which was a nice bonus. That’s not to say that the previous episodes didn’t move the story along.

I think I was waiting for Shinichiro to discover Noe. I was surprised it took so long. Seriously, that girl gave him chicken feed. Girls don’t go around giving chicken feed to just any random guy, ‘ya know.

Often I wonder about how well these types of post will be taken. In the past, my method of choice was to produce something with labyrinthine logic, as if to hold back some quotient of the meaning. These types of writings were on the order of On Perspective and Interpretation and ef - a tale of memories - more than the sum of our parts.

I’ve mentioned many times that writing in that manner is very freeing. Perhaps, they come off as a bit pretentious. More often than not, those appear nonsensical. Maybe they are nonsensical. Could I be enjoying myself too much? Then again, maybe I simply fear flying too high. After all, the sun has a way of melting wax wings.

I see what you did there:

No matter what is written or who is writing it the author of any work expects their readers to already hold a certain subset of knowledge. This knowledge is acquired from simply living in their shared culture. If an author of a blog were to make reference to Greek mythology at the beginning of a post, without explanation, the implication is that the reader will understand the references. Utilizing those references allows the author to borrow the already derived meaning. It exist, so the author uses it to express thoughts and emotions in fewer words but with much more impact. It goes without saying that all of this does not work if the reader does not share the knowledge necessary to decipher the meaning.

There is an excellent–inadvertently accurate–quote, with respect to cultural literacy, from Eisner Award judge Robin Brenner in “Understanding Manga: An Interview with Robin Brenner.”

To my mind manga cannot be separated from their country and culture of origin. Everything about them, from the way creators tell stories to the symbols and gestures involved are created with a Japanese audience in mind. Those outside Japan can learn all of the sound effects and references, but most readers will not instinctively understand every joke or implied meaning simply because the story comes from an environment we didn’t grow up in.

The obvious question is, “What do we see?” It is natural for a human to draw conclusions from the apparent evidence. For that matter, most people’s world view is very centric. After all, the only information we have about the world is what can be gained from our senses. It is largely our first leap-of-faith to believe that what we see, hear, smell, touch, and taste is, in a word, real. The individual only knows what it has been taught, and we see the world through the colored lenses of our own cultures.

Example:

It seems appropriate that Shin Seiki Evangelion should be used for this example because I believe many if not most of those reading this will have viewed it. If there exist a body of anime that can be consider canon then this series would be one of them.

By simply making a correspondence of characters we can present a stunningly plausible association of plot to the biblical narratives describing the final days of Jesus Christ, commonly call The Passion.

• Shinji / Jesus
• Unit 01 / Virgin Mary
• Asuka / Mary Magdalene
• Gendo / Judas Iscariot
• Kaworu / Satan (but not in a bad way)
• Kensuke and Toji / Apostles
• Rei / knowledge or The Word

Is this what was intended? No, it was most likely not. For one thing, there are simply too many events and characters that prevent this from being intentional. It was mentioned in Cultural Literacy: Part 1 that sometimes a person sees things in a story because of cultural conditioning.

However, there are blatant allusions and symbolisms in NEG that cannot be coincidence. These are the result of cultural diffusion of ideas, myths, and history. This can largely be attributed to European colonization and exploration of the world, with regard to the spread of religious ideas. More recently, it can be attributed to the spread of various forms of pop culture.

To be, or not to be…an otaku:

I’m forced to ask myself if the average non-Japanese anime viewer is being cheated. Perhaps, we should simply give up. Does our lack of historical and literary knowledge of the Japanese variety make us a second class of anime fan? It is clear that there are some things that anime fans of our ilk will never truly understand.

The problem is that the level of misunderstanding or simply not understanding is unquantifiable. We don’t know how much we don’t understand. Moreover, we don’t know how much there is for us to not understand. The odd thing is that this makes us unique. We have become a seperate and distinct class of fans. Obvious though it may be, the results are that we have derived our own unique cultures.

My personal view on these issues is that the meaning we derive is valid in the sense that it makes sense to us. This does leave me in the odd position of implying that the author’s intended meaning is not important. This is an implication and not an outright point; I don’t believe that. There is a message that the creator of any work of art wishes to convey. That message is often lost in translation. The parts of a story that either cause misinterpretation or are simply not understood have to be accounted. How we account for the missing information is what makes the story unique for each of us.

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I suppose that wraps things up. It took a while to get this last one out, been a busy week.

I just recently discovered that Reddit has an Anime sub-reddit.

It’s not very active at the moment. At the current time there are 126 subscribers to it. There isn’t much content, and the stuff that’s on it seems to be mostly Anime News Network articles.

Of course, these types of social bookmarking sites thrive when there are a lot of visitors and submitters of content. Let’s get things moving people. I need a distraction from the daily soul devouring content that is the reddit home page.

In the last installment I introduced the basic concept of what I will be more formally presenting here. Basically, there exist a difference in understanding between cultures. This is also the case even within sub-cultures or divided groups amongst geographically close peoples. This much is plainly understood. We know there are differences between people in all manners of ethics, morality, religion, and history among other differing factors. Often these factors are interwoven into the mythos of a people.

E. D. Hirsch, Jr:

As some reading this are, no doubt, aware the term “cultural literacy” has a very specific meaning and use with regard to reading comprehension. The term was coined by Eric Hirsch, a former educator and critic of the United States educational system. He happened upon the concept while giving test on reading comprehension to two groups of students. One group of attended the University of Virgina, and the other group was from a community college. For the most part the two groups scored about the same on comprehension of the material. Specific differences existed between the understanding of specific passages of text. He noticed that there were passages of text that the group at the University seemingly had little trouble comprehending while the community college students struggled with the text’s meaning.

These particular writings dealt with the American Civil War. Hirsch attributed the discrepancy to a basic lack of historical knowledge. They simply didn’t possess the information necessary about those historical figures or events to understand the writing. For Hirsch, it was not that these students were inferior. Their inability to understanding the material was explainable through poor education. In his eyes, it was their prior education that had failed to teach them this basic information.

The historical people and events in those passages showed up as allusion, metaphor, and reference in American literature. In no small way, these things were essential to the mythos of their culture. Yet, they were not given this knowledge. In his own words, “These students had been cheated.”

They may have been cheated out of historical knowledge but there is another type of knowledge that is built into the language. This knowledge may be used or abused by speakers of the language without their realization. Moreover, the use of myth or legend in storytelling is an important part of the way a story conveys its meaning. Authors readily use cultural myths to compress or stylize ideas.

…It isn’t clear whether the myth of George WASHINGTON AND THE CHERRY TREE belongs in a course on history or one on mythology, but from the standpoint of literacy it doesn’t matter. For purposes of communication and solidarity in a CULTURE, myths are just as important as history. And unless history achieves the vividness and memorableness of myth, it will not be very useful to shared culture. We should indeed try to discriminate between history and myth; but true or false, the stories that we share provide us with our values, goals, and traditions. The tales we tell our children define what kind of people we shall be.

The term myth itself implies community. In Greek, it means “what they say.” The origins of most myths are lost in obscurity; they belong to the community. The myths that are shared by literate Americans are worldwide in their origins, and embrace both ancient and modern cultures. The Greek myth of PARIS and the APPLE OF DISCORD belongs to us as much as the myth of Washington and the cherry tree. According to some modern philosophers, notably NIETZSCHE, all stories, even scientific THEORIES and religious teachings, are myths. Nietzsche’s view is probably wrong, but it usefully emphasizes the importance of shared myths in forming our national community and providing us with irreplaceable common points of reference. If we did not inherit myths, we would have to invent them; since we have inherited them, we should learn to use those we have inherited. Our traditional myths are no more true and false, wise and foolish, than those of other cultures. They are not inherently better than those of CHINA or INDIA. But being ours, they are uniquely valuable to us.

–E. D. Hirsch Jr, The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Second Edition

History and myth are important parts of a living language. They change as the times change with the addition of new ideas and events. Of most importance, there exist a canonical set of knowledge that Hirsch argued needed to be known to truly understand American literature. In the same way, all cultures exhibit this aspect to their literature and language.

More on E. D. Hirsch

• Core Knowledge essays by E. D. Hirsch, Jr.
• wiki on E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

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Part 3 will elaborate on how this applies to our anime hobby.

The focus of this post is mostly on the US simply because the research and writing was specifically directed toward US citizens and the United States educational system. The implications and applicability are farther reaching.

As with anything, Hirsch has many critics. If you venture into the wilds of the internet don’t be surprised to find them. Although, mostly, people seem to agree. For the most part, Hirsch’s public career has focused on the educational needs of children. That is building a foundation for growth. However, his popularity can be ascribed to the books his has written, among them, Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know.

I don’t consider myself an expert on his work; so, I’m probably not the best person to ask about specifics.

In the past I was unsure if a particular individual watched anime or not. You can’t exactly pick anime fans out based on physical appearance. Even those who may be found with a Gundam t-shirt or some other form of apparel may not be “fans.” As a corollary of sorts to that theorem we can see the same in Hello Kitty and Spider Man clothing as well. One’s exposure to some-thing is not indicative of that person’s acceptance or understanding of that thing, or it doesn’t suggest that they understand or accept it in the way that you do.

Over the last decade (almost two) we have seen a several fold increase in the popularization of Japanese animation. To that end, it would seem that this is largely the result of digital fan-subbing and file sharing networks.

I have seen an increase in the number of casual viewers that cross my path. It is expected given the steady increase in anime popularity among general audiences. These are individuals that don’t read anime blogs but do watch the occasional dubbed show on television. They may also download the occasional fansub but are more likely to get the files from friends. In short, they don’t have several 200GB hard discs filled with anime files downloaded from the internet.

For example, I was recently speaking with a new acquaintance. He was a guy that just came over from Mississippi. He stated that he watched a lot of anime. My usual response is to ask what one watches when presented with that statement. His response, “Have you seen Bible Black?” Well, yes, I have seen Bible Black to paraphrase my response. My actual first thought was the oddity of someone casually admitting that they watched Bible Black, given the prevalence of futanari-nurse and all.

We could make a point here about the increasing instances of finding people who casually watch hentai versus those who casually watch non-porn anime. Although, non-porn anime sometimes verges on porn with the fan services provided. That’s not to say that my friend only watches hentai. I’m sure that he has broader viewing habits.

That wasn’t my point. Casual fans of anime are drawn to things they can readily identify with. A show like Bible Black, while being carnal in nature, doesn’t require knowledge of niche anime references or Japanese culture. For that matter, the story probably unknowingly holds more cultural references for a western audience than a Japanese audience simply because of the way the witchcraft, magic book, and dark-magic angles are portrayed. This is similar to the way Neon Genesis introduces religious symbolism that more than likely added to its appeal to western audiences.

Cultural diffusion of these ideas makes them understandable to many that are foreign to their origins. Still there are differences in their perceived relevance and impact on the story. It has to do with innate understanding due to cultural history and memory. For me and others who were raise in a Judeo-Christian society the aspects of stories that utilize plot devices like those in Bible Black or NGE carry with them an inherent context. We see them a certain way because of cultural conditioning.

The implications are not that others do not “understand” them truly. That’s not the case. As I’ve been fond of pointing out on occasion, other’s perception of a story is just as valid as any other. The key term is the word “valid” with regard to that statement. Instances of the right way and wrong way to interpret something do not come into play. We are speaking of individual interpretations.

Drunk wolf girl, just because.

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This was Part 1. The astute reader will realize that this concept works in both directions.

I’m writing much of this as I think about it. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get a part two out when I get a chance and have a better idea of what it will be about.

In reference to the 200GB hard drives mentioned in the article. You people, just delete those files. It’s not like you’re ever going to watch those again anyway.