LAUAN501 : Introduction

What makes subcontinental fictional female character design so effective and visually appealing not just in Japan, but across Asia and even the globe?

For the last couple of decades, Japanese culture has seen a significant rise in influence across the globe, most notable of which is media such as video games, anime and manga. With these new platforms and genres came a whole new set of aesthetic for design that has categorically defined these media, as well as inspiring millions of adoring fans, artists and designers, among which, the most passionate stills lies within the border of the nation of the rising sun itself, and with it, set up new social/cultural understanding, interaction and relationships.

This essay will be diving deep in to that new relationship, in particular, the near-obsession of the Japanese male audience with fictional female character design and in it, seek to answer the question, what makes these designs so effective and visually appealing not just in Japan, but across Asia and even the globe. To do this, we will tackle abstract concepts such as:

“bishoujo” – The traits of beautiful girls,

“Moe”- the burning passion for a particular character/ aspect of media

and how these two concepts intertwine with each other to create appealing characters.

With theoretical examples from works like miss Masami Toku’s International perspective on shojo and shojo manga, Patrick Galbrait’s Moe manifesto, or Sabine Fruhstuck and Anne Wathall’s Recreating Japanese men, where we can see how “moe” is both considered “pure and innocent” yet centered around “the inappropriate desire by relatively grown men for immature girls”- a controversial paradox, as well as looking at real case study for this obsession such as the Vocaloids – digital divas.

Finally, understanding these theories would then contribute to our answer for the question stated above, through a practical of attempt of designing the most mass-appealing female character possible, supported by practical knowledge from Laura Miller’s Beauty Up: Exploring contemporary Japanese body aesthetics.

 Whether our not the outcome is considered “successful” is up to your judgement.