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.