Is there An Anime Literature? What About Otaku Literacy?
Is anime a literary phenomenon? Are production materials relevant to the question at hand? Is it sensible to refer to an anime as well-written? Is there a literacy process involved in its consumption — or critique — , and if so how should it be defined? How do fansubbing, official translations, and transcriptions impact anime literacy? If a ritualistic reading isn’t that far from a social one: if an anime literature does indeed exist, would it lead to some of its writers heralded as apostles, and to bans in a figurative Index Librorum Prohibitorum? And to roughly end the outline of this essay-type article, can therehence be inferred an otaku literacy, and could this concept lead to a hierarchy within a subculture often thought of as counter-culture?
The title is ambitious in how it assumes (and assumptions are very much how we go about the world with most representational models) and posits that there indeed may be such things as an anime literature, and an otaku literacy. Because screenplays are a critical part at the core of the preproduction pipeline, and since you can actually find Japanese anime scripts in the wild, an anime literature does technically exist. Some authors are even big names in the game, like the revered Gen Urobuchi, or the more polarizing Jun Maeda. And the typesetting of translated subtitles is often more preferred than dubs, perhaps for the sake not to erase the distinct Japaneseness of anime as an artform.
Literacy has two readings. One merely means to be able to make sense out of scribbles that are the individual characters of a word, whether they be letters or ideograms. The second definition we will make the most use of, is that of an increased understanding of the world thanks to confrontation with literature as a cultural phenomenon, where ideas and concepts and bits of worldviews are communicated. If an anime literature is a thing, then an anime literacy will emerge. And so if an otaku literacy is a thing, it is because of an otaku literature existing. And if one considers the various forms of otaku media in the media mix, there may be: light novels; card games; anime shows; manga works; visual novels; drama CDs; video games; live adaptations and events… Wherein circulate speeches from a shared birthplace, and enforcing the divide between experienced members of the otaku subculture, and those lacking the codes.
As a quick sidenote, it is important to notice something rather important. Almost all of the types of media quoted as making up the landscape of otaku media are actually written at some point: manga with bubbles, card games with indications to what the cards do, drama CDs if a writer was hired for the script, anime shows if there was a script, video games as there is code that is written… Though it is a stretch, perhaps that the narrative value of using one’s hands to mark paper or a surface, for instance drawing a character recognized as a particular narrative individual, has the reifying value of writing. It is about marking down ideas or concepts, at the very least. And perhaps that animators are also participating to the plot when, in the context of a cut, they are given a bit of freedom, for example in breaking up the pacing with a snort, for microdrama is an infinitesimal part of characterization.
This sidenote makes for a good introduction to our second question. Indeed, if a character ends up being a communicative concept with narrative value, then its model sheet, a part of the anime production materials which aims at depicting the consistency of a character design at various angles, or its various facial and corporal expressions, is in itself literature. And there may also be more analytic value to a model sheet compared to other, more available production materials, like the frames of an episode that aired. Indeed, because the polished frames can be collaborative works that can come to assemble the layout, the key frames, the in-between, the corrections and the coloring and visual effects, many more unseen hands have gone through the production. A model sheet has overall more consistency and it may be easier to pinpoint the artist, which increases its value as a primary source.
Though the anime production materials are harder to access for an industry outsider than the aired version, some are out there, and to use them as primary sources may level the discussion by its sheer authority as a source. And this may be why such websites as KeyFrame, Sakuga Blog, Full Frontal, etc. (and though the choice to refer to those websites is a personal decision, to see an increase in the amount of websites analytically referring to production materials would be propitious for the culture as a whole) are using them. If production materials are used as primary sources to ground, and thereby level the speech around anime, then it is clear whether they are relevant to anime literacy. Which is why increasing the literacy of production materials, for instance through the Anime Survival Kit initiative, and preserving them in archives is very relevant to anime literacy — and otaku literacy down the line.
Whether it is sensible to refer to an anime as well-written or not is a whole new knot to untangle. It is a fundamentally judgemental posture, and therefore a subjective and individualistic one. In a relativistic postmodernism where all viewpoints are judged equal, none may hold superiority. But first, one has to understand what well-written means. Does it mean that the show brings satisfaction? Immediate or long-lasting? Is a drama that pulls on your heartstrings and ends on a discordant, bittersweet note always bad? The idea here is that there’s narrative value. But this value in itself is hard to determine: is it the possible ventures into psychology, mythology, anthropology, or even philosophy that are interesting? Or how a show revolutions a genre, or otherwise entertains a distant echo with another earlier, deconstructing work?
Perhaps that anime literacy, in its contextual awareness of an artform that has decades of history to it, helps to nuance one’s instinctual reaction to the audiovisual storytelling unfolding before one’s eyes. Perhaps even that for some, it is the analytical stance that can be taken in front of such works, or toward the artform, that are pleasurable, and the reason they would watch some shows. And there is also the problem of scales: is it fair to deem an entire show with the same judgemental stance, when many artists have worked on many different stages at the scale of frames or cuts?
As for the literacy process involved in both the consumption and the critique of anime, we have began to address it. To complexify even more the issue, it is more purposeful to divide between the auditory and the visual storytellings. There is of course an interplay in that the lines of characters (written in the screenplay), are also parts of the spectacle as lips are also drawn, sometimes in very interesting ways to grant speech even more symbolic and dramatic values. But there is a difference between an understanding of the Japanese language as it is spoken by various characters, and an understanding of the visual language that poses, facial expressions, perspective, foreshortening, and things belonging more to composition and up to the storyboard or layout. A critical understanding of the Japanese language, voice acting (including singing) and visual arts are different parts that may make up anime literacy.
To go further in depth, we can also mention fansubbing with the iconic translation notes and typesetting quirks, as a phenomenon that pioneered the worldwide proliferation of anime overseas. And the official translations are also a part of that history, with more socioeconomical legitimacy and the establishment of licensing as a source of revenue for studios or production committeees. For transcriptions, they may be more rare as they would require people to speak Japanese, and legally questionable. But they may also be much closer to enlightening the viewer about the original scripting intent. Since subtitles are written, they are a part of anime literacy. By spreading anime on a scale that the spoken Japanese language versions couldn’t possibly reach, subtitles have tremendously impacted anime literacy.
And subtitles can also lead to the issue of a language barrier, which has sparked a paranoia about localization, a part of every attempt at qualitative translation. And, when you consider that people want to access anime works including the cultural literacy within, with notions proper to bodies of knowledge like religion or mythology, it makes sense that the localization process would bring suspicion to its authors. For there is authorialism as well, in the sense that translators are (underpaid, and the sociopolitical around anime is also a core part of its literacy) workers that make artistical choices and, in modern economics, have to show off their qualifications.
As with everything foreign, Japan and Japanese culture are often objects of fantasms for foreigners. The localization of anime may make it familiar, and if the foreignness is the prior condition for the fantasization, it can lead to cognitive dissonance in some viewers. For example if the viewer has prejudices toward Japan as a conservative country, with submissive women and some more of that rightist orientalism, meeting localization that literally translates to political ideologies that have crossed borders, ideologies running counter to this rightist orientalism. A good example is the loan-word for sexual harassment, sekuhara, appearing in Konosuba, though ecologism is also mentioned with eko in Slime 300. Those wasei-eigo (for loan-word has its own translation) may even go on to acquire their own meanings in Japan, isolated from the origin and evolving in a sociopolitical context — and anime literacy just so happens to be an acquisition of the codes of the anime context, with an emphasis on text.
As for apostles and bans, it may be more meaningful to go with classics. As Wikipedia puts it, “In Western civilization, the study of the Greek and Roman classics was traditionally considered to be the foundation of the humanities, and has, therefore, traditionally been the cornerstone of a typical elite European education.”, and to transposition, from Western civilization to otaku culture, elitism would be about getting to know the classics, especially with narrative values that are critically acclaimed, like Mushishi or Serial Experiments Lain. And God knows what catastrophe might occur if you dare mention Ex-Arm.
To end this essay, we have seen through various realities that anime can be considered a literary phenomenon, even going from production materials to subtitles. And the concept of an otaku literacy has already been vaguely defined. But since this article was more so about anime literacy, otaku literacy would be more of an analogical concept that encompasses anime literacy. Though it does good to question whether otaku is a good word for this concept. But the identitary component of otaku culture, in which one belongs, and the personal engagement it takes to learn all the knowledge that being an otaku comes with, may both justify the subjectivity of a monomania, which roughly translates to otaku.
What would one have to do to cultivate more otaku literacy? Can it be the ultimate goal of an otaku elitist? It is possible that the answer resides in consuming evermore otaku content, and stepping across the border between consumption and production, for instance by entering the anime industry for anime literacy, or manga industry for manga literacy, or to spearhead a media mix, or all of the above. And it may even be that to care more closely about the sociopolitical context about anime production and consumption, to participate to the critical speech surrounding it, to build one’s life around the otaku culture, and to work toward making the culture proliferate and being preserved are all valid ways to belong to an otaku elite.
