Reality and Appearance in Anime-Style Media

All art forms are, in a way, a "game" naturally endowed with a certain number of rules and expressive possibilities in which the tendencies of denotation and connotation are opposed, that is, merely implicit suggestion, on the one hand, and explicit and largely unequivocal affirmation on the other. It is, therefore, only in a very unfortunate way that one can assert, as has often been asserted, that as a general principle of art one should not "tell" but only "show" ("show, don't tell"). This stubborn, blind and insensitive maxim presupposes ignorance of one of the most basic foundations of all expressive capacity, namely, the fact that there are different levels of clarity and exactness in communication, that each of these levels is merely a tool at the disposal of the artist and their aesthetic aims (and it is not advantageous to dispense with tools, since each has its own utility and specific excellence), and that each of them – that is, each of the levels – presupposes the other and needs the other because its own communicative virtue depends on the dialectical opposition that is made effective by alternating different ways of saying different things. Thus, a novel, for example, in which nothing was explicitly stated and a myriad of plausible notions and ideas were insinuated would lose all its effect, that is, the power of suggestion would be wasted since these notions and ideas could not be contrasted with the precise facts from which they would derive their expressive power. Alternatively, a novel consisting exclusively of data that is indubitable from the point of view of the narrative would be tedious and hardly a work of exceptional artistic value.

But this principle, which applies to suggestion and explicit statement alike, also applies to "telling" and "showing". A narrative in which everything is "shown" and nothing is "told" gets lost in insignificant phantasmagoria, deprived as it is of a communicative center of gravity, of a solid factual foundation upon which to build the different floors of the communicative edifice, which become more diaphanous and sparse the higher one goes, just as a narrative in which everything is "told" and nothing is "shown" may constitute solid foundations for a good building, but will never reach the lofty heights of the artistic skyscrapers that are humanity's great literary works.

This is how, accordingly, one should analyze the contraposition of reality and appearance in anime-style media, a theme that encompasses this problem although it easily transcends it, and it transcends it because, among other things, it incorporates aspects that do not merely concern aesthetic theory and artistic creation. It is in this way that we encounter, for example, the exuberant, sensual, eye-catching and visually seductive quality of anime-style media which, in promotional art, wallpapers and the many drawings we can find on the web, seems to suggest a desire for escape, a wish for exile from the "real world" and a search for refuge in the boundless flight of imagination as manifested in the distinctive characteristics of the otaku subculture and, more recently, internet culture in general. When we see this art form we are often tempted by impossible architectures, fantastical worlds, supernaturally blue or excessively starry skies, beautiful characters and picturesque scenes, but the apparently all-encompassing dimension of the artistic flight, with its purported profundity, quickly reveals itself to be illusory, especially when we examine the work in detail and more closely, insofar as we notice, for example, that the technique tends to be, in general, "impressionistic", i. e., that it constitutes a good portrait when viewed from afar, but that, when evaluated closely, it is perceived to lack detail, to present many bombastic but statically arranged colors, suffering very few variations and dominating the composition in a simplistic way, that the very stroke, the form and the general manner of portraying objects are simplifications, the result of custom, of previously standardized practice aimed at accelerating the production process and cutting costs.

Liberation in the virtual world is therefore revealed to be a false liberation, and its consciousness a false consciousness. The promised freedom is vain, transparent and insubstantial precisely because the anime style "shows", "shows", "shows" and hardly "tells" anything. It is a two-dimensional illusionism that, through its simplistic yet explosive and attractive colors, provides only an appearance of depth and liberation, merely enough to hook a certain segment of the public and keep them tied to the same clichés and tropes that are repeated tediously with almost no variation whatsoever.

But, as always, mass art spawns, albeit in a very limited way, a remedy for its own defects and deficiencies. Aware of the limitations inherent in this type of animated and drawn picture, the artists behind anime-style media invented what is their most powerful and captivating creation, the supreme product of the sensuality of illusions and illusion-making – which is visual art in its most fallen, subservient and brute form –, that is, the famous eyes. The anime-style eyes attract us and make us momentarily forget the simplicity and bidimensionality of the surrounding pictorial world, such is the effect of their form and their chromatic abyss, and their constant presence in all kinds of anime-style media redeems the sins of the formally and colorically unfaithful reproduction of three-dimensional reality, stabilizes contrasts, mitigates the contradictions of the invented fictional world and always draws our attention to the fact that, beyond the superficial world of animated illustration, there exists another, supposedly deeper world, the reality of the characters' plot, which is as if it resided precisely in those eyes, in that chromatic abyss that is incommunicable, that can only be suggested, never even "shown".

The deepness of the eyes is the most genuine thing anime possesses. It's the anchor and the key element of the entire style. It's thanks to them that the often absurd plots, events and dialogue of anime-style media pass for plausible and descriptively acceptable narratives, occurrences and speeches, but their effect is only enough to mask the illusion, not to completely resolve it. A simple visual element doesn't save a narrative that is inverisimilar, convoluted and emotionally inflated, nor does it intend to. Rather, anime-style media seeks to transform its illusion into reality and its appearance into verisimilitude as much as possible because, the more it manages to convince the audience that its illusion is reality, the more it will persuade it that its pretended liberation is real, that its supposed consciousness is true. Anime-style media thus becomes an instrument of alienation and false consciousness.

The greatest proof of this is the pseudo-intellectualism present especially in visual novels, something that aims precisely to achieve the transformation described above, distancing the consumer, at least momentarily, from true knowledge and the true pursuit of wisdom. Add to this the immense catalog of seemingly profound words and phrases in languages ​​such as Latin, German, Greek, French and Italian that adorn the titles of countless visual novels and that have no deep connection to the plot unfolding and the superficiality of the genre will be perfectly understood – a superficiality that is always sought to be masked. Indeed, philosophy and thinking itself have rarely been so outraged and vilified as in the grotesque representations of intellectual activity, such as they appear in certain visual novels, which in the end are nothing more than another way in which anime-style media producers try to mask the kitsch aspect and the commodity nature of their own products for the sake of commercialization, but the visual novel still emerges as a mere object and, for that very reason, as an inferior form of art.

Cat-girls, Alienation and the Logical Impenetrability of the Internet

One thing that has received little attention is, given the need to create animal-girls as a recurring element in contemporary popular culture, why most of these animal-girls are cat-girls, and also why this need for the transformation of the human figure was felt in the first place. One characteristic that immediately stands out in the cat, and which greatly helps us understand this innovation, is the fact that the feline possesses large and expressive eyes just like the female characters conceived in anime style. The size of the eyes also suggests, at the same time, a certain docility and, paradoxically, a degree of cleverness and malice, a mixture that is seductive and interesting and which constitutes precisely the distinctive trait of the domestic cat figure and its appeal to us. Add to this the large, furry ears, which inspire in us the notion that the creature depicted was endowed with great perceptive capacity, auditorily speaking – and therefore, by contiguity, great intelligence –, as well as the bushy tail, which indicates exceptional balance and agility (in addition to, optionally, the whiskers below the snout or nose, which in nature are a kind of sensory organ), and we have the complete portrait of a figure that embodies an ideal of domesticated duplicity and sagacity. There is also an implicit comparison: women are like cats. But, in real life, are women really like cats? Patently not. The comparison only highlights certain characteristics, as perceived by a predominantly male audience, typical of women in general and transforms them into a pacified manifestation of an ideal, now free from its subjectively negative aspects but still feminine and appealing.

The narrative roles played by these characters also reveal a subordinate and attenuated character resulting from their psychological typification. Incapable of being protagonists of grand narratives, they instead become loyal supporting characters or protagonists of saccharine and benign stories.

The emergence of the cat-girl as a recurring type in popular culture is a "compulsory", programmatic and deliberate erasure of everything that women have to offer in terms of resistance to men. It is, so to speak, an alienation carried out on an ideal plane, rather than a material one – but it is also a double alienation insofar as it alienates not only the explicit object of alienation but also, potentially, the subject who participates in it. As a mere symbol, the figure of the cat-girl is entirely harmless; but when associated with the material conditions of alienation, which stem from a deeper substratum, it possibly transforms into an entity whose signification resides not in the characteristics of a harmless ludic-artistic type, but in the more subterranean elements of psychology that, unnoticed by those less exposed to be victimized by this process of alienation (although also present in them), become increasingly clear and manifest in those most at risk of succumbing to alienation.

It is no coincidence that cat-girls have the internet as their backdrop, an environment of maximum exposure of alienation. Sometimes appearing to be a lawless land, the internet becomes, for that very reason, an attraction for all impulses contrary to the law and, therefore, a place where alienation is openly displayed. But the reaction to alienation, which is present on the internet, does not overcome alienation itself – rather, it intensifies alienation insofar as it uncritically seeks to reproduce and redistribute the crisis (division) of alienation as an escape valve on the ideal plane for the tensions and contradictions of the material world. Thus, through the mechanisms of culture itself, alienated subjects, interacting with each other, accentuate their own alienation. The internet then appears as a promoter of alienation and creator of a true culture of alienation.

This culture, which, as can be seen in the deepest parts of the internet (e.g., 4chan), is marked by the infliction of alienation, is itself alienated insofar as promoting the alienation of another human being from their human characteristics is to alienate oneself from what is human in both the subject and the object participating in the alienation process. Undoubtedly, throughout this process of alienation taken to the extreme, in which, as in /pol/, the anger of the frustrated middle classes is unleashed to spread insults against women, foreign workers and minorities of various kinds, the distinctive notes of the deepest psychology, the pre-logical part of the soul that the ancients called impulsive or appetitive, become apparent. Indeed, the cat-girl is also an entity that was created precisely to appeal to this part of our soul, and probably most of the internet and internet culture revolve around satisfying the desires of this part of our soul, so that all (or almost all) of its cultural and artistic developments are subject to the volatility and instability of basic appetites, confused demands and unconscious or malformed desires. The manipulation of the obtuse masses through the voluptuousness of the sensations offered, the seed of fascism, accordingly emerges as a possibility and a prospect that has been warned against many times, but rarely taken seriously.

But the internet, precisely because it is this space for the manifestation and satisfaction of basic appetites, is also perhaps logically impenetrable and mutable in excess for it to be easily manipulated. It is impossible to know what will be successful tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, although one can have an idea, and we are often surprised by a new fashion or trend that seems inexplicable and to have arisen from nowhere. The reason for this is that, contrary to what ancient philosophers advocated, the internet is a device that seems to operate a peculiar psychological transformation in people: it subordinates the rational and naturally dominant part of the soul to its subaltern appetitive and impulsive parts insofar as it performs the function of recreation, relief and escapism. In the real world, therefore (especially in the world of work), reason and discipline; on the internet, permissiveness and indulgence. As long as things continue this way, the virtual world will never realize its full potential.