The Anxiety of Relevance: A Theory of Modern Anime Adaptations Introduction This essay seeks to elucidate a theory of the modern inter-anime relationship, that is to say, the evolution of one work to another by means of the anxiety of relevance: the inherent criticism and grappling with a predecessor that a work must face in order to overcome it. On one end of the spectrum, this anxiety arises from pure commercialism, where an attempt is made and a work in question hopes to implicitly criticize a predecessor in the hopes of succeeding financially, thereby proving its objective worth as a product. On the other, the anxiety of relevance arises out of an implicit need to revise and improve the artistic merits of the predecessor in the ever perpetual cycle of art. Relevance is gifted only to the few, and we do not remember what has long been improved upon and lost. In a fast paced technological world where seasons pass without a second glance and anime have become increasingly and more obviously commercialized, a work struck by anxiety must deploy a series of critical lenses to prove its worth against a much older vanguard of relevant anime. Is this not obvious, however? Is this not merely the natural order of art; art seeks to improve itself and draw inspiration from prior works. To an extent, yes, but the specificity of the anxiety arises in different ways. One cannot argue that this anxiety manifests itself equally in film, television, literature, or music. I contest that the heavily commercialized aspect in anime, which is different from the much more literary inspired arena of serious film and literature, gives rise to a sort of paradox: where sustained relevance is practically impossible but theoretically aspired to. Thus, this article specifically deals with light novel and manga adaptations which seek to merely market source material. This theory is incompatible with original anime as original anime are not created out of a need to market a source and are not as clearly struck by this inherent paradox of business and artistic interests. One may, at this point, have realized that the phrase “anxiety of relevance” seems eerily similar to the short book of criticism, The Anxiety of Influence, by the famous American literary critic Harold Bloom. One may also soon learn that that the way in which this theory establishes itself shares certain patterns with Bloom’s beliefs with regards to poetry. Pay it no attention. Mere coincidences. The Cycle of Relevance Below is a four part schema which I will use to identify the specific patterns through which the anxiety of relevance takes its form. Anime adaptations face an anxiety on overcoming the relevance of their predecessors, and thus will turn to one of these four methods to fight their anxiousness. 1. Criticism The first attempt at attaining relevance is an implicit criticism of the predecessor. The predecessor work, having obtained either financial or mainstream standing, is implicitly criticized and responded to by the work in question for fundamental flaws in its presentation, representation of its genre, or artistic techniques. 2. Acceptance and Hyperbole When criticism is not an option, the successor work accepts the premise of the original and builds upon the initial formula that crafted its success. In doing so, there is often an element of hyperbole, an exaggeration of a particular element that played a crucial part in the original formula. This acceptance is what gives rise to archetypes, genre norms, expectations, and clichés. 3. Subversion Upon acceptance and hyperbole becoming too predictable and repetitive, the artistic evolution is to subvert the expected formula that has been established by the predecessor, betraying expectations, and attempting to break the mold of the supplanted clichés to create something that uniquely echoes the predecessor. 4. Parody As works continue to try to break free of the anxiety of relevance, the last notable stage attempts to make fun of the attempts of successor works. Rather than approaching the predecessor, the parody adopts a sense of self-awareness and self-critique and criticizes the platform on which both predecessors and successors stand. These works obtain relevance by filling a comedic space that would otherwise go unnoticed. These are the four major ways in which the anxiety of relevance appears to us. In the hopes of becoming both artistically and commercially relevant, there is a notable trend in the progress of anime adaptations to follow these predictable steps. Case Study: A Portal to Virtual Reality Sword Art Online was perhaps one of the biggest, if not the biggest, hits of 2012. At the time, the only notable work that involved characters being translated to a video game was the .Hack series which, while featuring similar hit tracks by Yuki Kajiura and having an enticing concept that would attract a large gamer crowd, was clearly outdated for a new age of anime. One would be correct in pointing out that Accel World was adapted at around the same time as SAO, but SAO’s immediate popularity is what grants it the title of the original predecessor work in this case study. With flashy animation, a thrilling score, and the occasional edgy moment, Sword Art Online achieved massive financial success and has scores of fans who tout its exciting appeal. It was thus easy to see why a legion of adaptations featuring video games became increasingly popular, but what connects these adaptations is the anxiety of relevance, the implicit need to rise above Sword Art Online and fight for dominance as the preeminent anime that represents stories about virtual reality. It is easy to see where SAO’s first major contender fits in the timeline of the anxious cycle. One of the most damning criticisms of Sword Art Online was its inability to cater to a much more hardcore MMO fanbase, despite the fact that its main character, Kirito, was very clearly a hardcore gamer. Kirito represented everything about the obsessive gamer, but the games themselves were incredibly simplistic and the explanations of the video game world were far from being satisfactory to people who extensively played the most competitive online games. Hence, Log Horizon was adapted. The anime that aired in the latter days of 2013 offered a critical response to the shallow virtual reality that was SAO with a much greater emphasis on detail, world building, and a system of political maneuvering that arguably should have been in the Sword Art Online experience. Unlike SAO’s approach of breadth over depth, Log Horizon was intent on explaining the mechanics of the game in rather immense detail, even if it sacrificed the excitement. To Log Horizon, SAO’s excitement was simple and lacked any sophistication. Any true hardcore gamer would scoff at the implications of SAO because of how horribly explained the actual systems within the game operated. But Log Horizon’s main strength became its greatest weakness to its detractors. To many, Log Horizon was utterly and inexcusably boring. One could pay attention to the mechanics of the game, but one could easily be just as informed by reading the guide manual on how to play said game. Log Horizon’s solution to the anxiety of relevance was to criticize SAO’s poorly created world, while ignoring that it was that very same simplistic experience that so enchanted the show’s fans. Hence, in the battle for relevance, it is easy to see how Log Horizon has quickly faded into the archives of an anime that slightly bucks a trend. In early 2014, an anime chose to accept the premise of SAO and hyperbolize one of its greatest criticisms. No Game No Life quickly became the high octane experience of the spring of that year, but what it sets it apart from Sword Art Online is not its criticism of the SAO formula, but rather the acceptance and exaggeration of the elements that made Sword Art Online so popular. In SAO, Kirito was cast as a character that could never be defeated, and the immersive experience was lost when the audience considered that it was impossible for Kirito to ever lose. Rather than criticizing this element, however, NGNL accepted this trope as a fundamental truth of the genre and crafted a wild story featuring a pair of siblings that were utterly undefeatable. It is arguable that of the titles that will be mentioned, NGNL is the only work to escape the anxiety of relevance, because NGNL’s response was such an exaggerated stretch of the SAO formula that it became its own original concept. Few would draw a very clear connection between the shows in the same way that Log Horizon and SAO may be mentioned in the same breath, but NGNL’s situation on the timeline clearly designated it as a successor work given its particular tropes and approach. There are many examples of subversive responses to Sword Art Online, but perhaps the most recent example is the most telling. Hai to Gensou no Grimgar is an example of a work whose anxiety of relevance has taken it to the extremes. The show is not only subversive in its approach to what is now an established genre, but it takes an aesthetic approach with its watercolor backgrounds that feature less saturated colors that adds an extra layer of artistic difference to the type of story it wants to tell. Unlike the overpowered characters we have come to expect in fantastical virtual reality, Grimgar features a rag tag band of misfits who are completely unfit for fighting. In addition, the action packed sequences, mind games, political maneuvers, are all replaced by what appears to be slice of life sequences that attempt to calmer and more settling. It chooses to identify virtual reality as one slightly similar to our own with the same needs and necessities of ordinary life. In prior works, that reality was escapist and empowering. In Grimgar, the world is more truthfully frightening, unknown, and dangerous. Where Grimgar fails to escape the anxiety of relevance is for all its subversive elements, it still ultimately falls prey to the trappings of genre and clichés. The anime is rife with unnecessary fanservice, strange out of place sexist undertones, and missteps that keep it from really escaping the expectations that it is trying to undermine. In the same season, Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku wo demonstrated a parody of the predecessor, opting to juxtapose comedic archetypes against the traditional virtual reality and fantasy setting. What results is an entertaining and amusing experience, but unlike a work that harbored similar aspirations, Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka, it lacks the sort of flair and poster characters to drive it out of anxiety. Broadly, it is clear to see a progression where anime adaptations responded to Sword Art Online in unique ways, trying to triumph over it through a variety of methods to battle their anxiety of relevance. Ultimately, few works ever obtained any real individualistic relevance. Many works that spawned in the aftermath of the fantasy and virtual reality wave are still named clones of Sword Art Online, and SAO’s continued sequels demonstrates its superiority as the relevant predecessor. Conclusion: The Implications of Anxiety This case study can be applied to a wide spectrum of light novel and manga adaptations. From K-On to Joshiraku, one could make a case that the moe phenomenon has been afflicted by an anxiety of relevance to rise above the likes of Haruhi, Lucky Star, and K-On. The adaptations of Parasyte, Tokyo Ghoul, and Akame ga Kiru demonstrated a need to respond to the dark and grim world of Shingeki no Kyojin, while One Punch Man’s massive success speaks to its ability to use parody to rise above this recent wave of shounen adaptations and escape the anxiety of relevance. One notices that the anxiety of relevance, specifically in anime where there are clear trends of what is commercially viable in the industry, has perpetuated a state where there is a large volume of homogenous anime that merely respond to a successful predecessor. When one anime breaks from the pack, however, and rises above a predecessor work to establish a new norm, then the cycle of anxiety begins anew. One may predict that the success of One Punch Man’s exaggerated comedy may surely beckon a stream of adaptations of similar hyperbolic nature. This anxiety can be explained due to a number of factors, from light novelists not being published unless they write along the lines of a financially successful predecessor, or perhaps the novelists themselves write with the intent of trying to produce a better formula than the original work. Forces of inspiration, homage, and parody can be just as likely as lack of inspiration, plagiarism, and satire. Whatever the reason is, there is a clear anxious cloud over the world of adaptations, one that produces very distinct patterns and artistic proclivities as those involved in the industry think not of the new, but of ways of battling the old. |
MonetaFeb 25, 2016 7:56 AM
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| Great article, I enjoyed reading it a lot. |
| I probably regret this post by now. |
| Very interesting read! I really liked it, too. |
密室殺人はなぜ美しいのか。 |
| Actually, I find this very interesting because I was thinking along very similar tones when watching something completely unrelated. I recently went to see the Deadpool movie, and one of the things I thought about the most was how it fit so perfectly into the natural progression of a genre. First you get the early forerunners, then your mega-hits, then your subversions, and finally it falls into parody--a curve the superhero genre has replicated almost step-for-step. Anyway, this was an excellent piece. Keep it up. |
Moneta said: Sword Art Online was its inability to cater to a much more hardcore MMO fanbase In fact people who have a problem with sao is because it seemed to disregard a bit too much its own big survival setting, you would want to directly see the whole community's life and struggles , you believed it would be Game Of Throne the death game with fancy warcraft stuff. but the games themselves were incredibly simplistic and the explanations of the video game world were far from being satisfactory to people who extensively played the most competitive online games. Games were incredibly simplistic? Yes...? I'm curious to know what more you think it needed? Log horizon offered a critical response to the shallow virtual reality. ugh i spasmed. Only Hack and sao are worthy of being adressed as virtual reality anime. The rest is Isekai with fancy rpg magic and gameplay. LH have at least some kind of political deals and warcraft-like battles. with a much greater emphasis on detail, world building, and a system of political maneuvering Good, good, so where was the emphasis on in sao? Seems like to the disappointment of many it wasn't much in political conflicts or that much in some kind of survival despair to have to win to live. Any true hardcore gamer would scoff at the implications of SAO because of how horribly explained the actual systems within the game operated. Uguh~ Stop i'll have a stroke. Will wait for what you explaination~ Log Horizon’s solution to the anxiety of relevance was to criticize SAO’s poorly created world, while ignoring that it was that very same simplistic experience that so enchanted the show’s fans. Hence, in the battle for relevance, it is easy to see how Log Horizon has quickly faded into the archives of an anime that slightly bucks a trend. Ah ok, so that was the point of your stuff, to justify LH lameness, that it's due to it being the 'second rpg game'. Oh that's kwute~ You also still insulted both LH's author and sao fans, that's something~ How respectable of you. You know, a main character is a main character because of some reasons, he always serves the serie or incarnates it's main thematic. So why Shiro is the mc? Might be because his analytical mind is both the need and the way for going through LH, this what fits this serie, the good POV, shiro will explain you this good POV. So can you tell me why kirito is the mc? Well there is some others that could, you can somehow switch with Haruyuki-kun or Simon(ttgl), i see noone else though. How does he serve the point of the show? Is he supposed to carry something relative to the thematic of the serie or something? It would need you to first understand Sword Art Online though. NGNL formula: fantasy, colorful-ness, straightforward-ness to the top. Non-serious show are easily affordable, everyone know what he's watching, an epic comedy show. So conclusion, straightforward-ness wins? In SAO, Kirito was cast as a character that could never be defeated Got trashed in every arc though. and the immersive experience was lost ...when the audience got confused by what they called 'fillers'. Rather than criticizing this element, however, NGNL accepted this trope as a fundamental truth of the genre and crafted a wild story featuring a pair of siblings that were utterly undefeatable. Waw g3nius, whats the moral? You should analyze a comedy As a comedy? because NGNL’s response was such an exaggerated stretch of my xoO-SAO formula-xOo46 (understanding yolo badassery) that it became its own original concept. In fact it is Alfheim Online.Few would draw a very clear connection between the shows in the same way that Log Horizon and SAO may be mentioned in the same breath, but NGNL’s situation on the timeline clearly designated it as a successor work given its particular tropes and approach. Ok, if you want, btw what would be the particularity of sao compared to hack? minus the survival setting ofc. Hai to Gensou no Grimgar Ah, here i understand better where your hypothesis did come from. Well, effectively, this one is a pure survival rpg, newbies in hostile territory and still no one bought it, even me, that's to say~ Perhaps somethign to do with writting, stakes, world building~ Too bad it looked quite promising, it try to do some nice thing, there was those fights, nicely 'disgusting', those desesperate and afraid dudes fighting in a gruesome and akward way, some nice calm moment, the crew altogether, the big dude crafting his cute stuff was something sweet. At the very least Grimgar is cute. A bit like youwink~ In prior works, that reality was escapist and empowering. Oh so it was still obvious afterall? Seems like it was so obvious that you didn't cogitate and linger on enough.What results is an entertaining and amusing experience, but unlike a work that harbored similar aspirations, Dungeon ni Deai wo Motomeru no wa Machigatteiru Darou ka, it lacks the sort of flair and poster characters to drive it out of anxiety. Whatever how i take this sentence, it is a No. There is no comparing Dungeon and Subarashii.Ultimately, few works ever obtained any real individualistic relevance. They are all different, those challengers as you like to call them use rpg elements to build their own view on an Isekai world that would work like a rpg (imo them being *wannabe-critic of a 'elder'* is a bit too bold as a statement). But you know like i said, none of them are Virtual Reality, *Tada no rpg games*. Many works that spawned in the aftermath of the fantasy and virtual reality wave are still named clones of Sword Art Online, and SAO’s continued sequels demonstrates its superiority as the relevant predecessor. So the popularity of one is harmful for the recognition of another? hm dunno, Kill la kill?( plus kill la kill and ttgl are basically a synthesis of their predecessors). the big 3? Well it works for snk and kabaneri since kabaneri failed too much. Niky larson and cobra? OPM and boku no hero? Not that much. Everything will be related to a somewhat similar 'predecessor', for sure if you're not your own thing you will end up as a bland inferior copy, it depends of your way of doing things, the point of your story and mastery and handle of the setting and themes.Not like it poses any problem to many to make their own LN story which brings absolutely nothing except some sligtly waifu with different eyes colors sometimes. For sure no matter how you look at it Overwatch is an absurd copycat of TF2, but it nailed it freakingly well, let's think that anime > cartoon /o/ I'm butthurt-desu~ Whatever the reason is, there is a clear anxious cloud over the world of adaptations, one that produces very distinct patterns and artistic proclivities as those involved in the industry think not of the new, but of ways of battling the old. Ain't wrong, this can also end as writers yearning to be fancyly original before anything. But i'm sure that waifu can save any anime from anything~ It might just sligtly be a bit soon for those futur sao/snk/opm to see the impact today though, they may have yet to be created with that anxiety in mind. I'm not even sure about that this anxiety is that significative, seems like they are more akin to recycle everythin, trying to ride along the sucess of a similar work could be the thing and more precisely riding on a liked trend. Still using common liked genre like over the top action/comedy, survival, edge/gore, zombies, mystery is still not enough, there is an art in how to embroider everything and create the immersion/ the caring wished. The Cycle of Relevance, shall be rename as [Differentiates yourself The Tutorial: How to step up your game apart from the rest] |
Lap1Jul 2, 2016 8:38 PM
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| Very interesting article. I chanced upon it through a link in a recent post of Pullman's. I likely do not have as much experience as you do in the arts, perhaps even far less, but because of that I feel it helps in my giving of an outside perspective and an allowance for you to (hopefully) make yourself understood by a larger audience. Your initial dismissal of any potential literary merit in the animanga mediums opens up the question of what relevance is in the first place. You seem to allude that is what the greater fandom "remembers" in the long term, yet at the same time you state that it is nearly impossible for any work to hold relevance in perpetuity. If what is relevant is what is remembered, and nothing is ever permanently remembered, can anything be said to be relevant in the truest sense? If we attempted to simplify it and say that commercial viability is the determination of relevance, we are given no real insight into the origin of relevance. The relevance of SAO is a freak occurance since said relevance is tied to the fact that it "happened" to sell very well rather than the ideas it brought to the medium. On the inverse, if we simplify by holding artistic merit as the determination of relevance, we can assuredly trace the relevance to its source, but we cannot necessarily explain why the idea is (or is not) perpetuated. In reality it is most likely that a combination of artistic merit and commercial viability make up what we call "relevance", with both the origins of ideas and the popularizers of ideas being important, but that brings us back to "memory", which neither of the former necessarily directly relate to. What was immensely popular ten or fifteen years ago may be only vaguely remembered now, and what originated an idea never had to be remembered well in the first place-- at least not by the fandom at large. This brings me to the crux of my point: relevance in and of itself is not what propels the formation and evolution of genres. Rather, a specific goal does (whether that goal is commercial success or artistic merit), with the relevance being filled in afterwards. To say a work is trying to overcome the anxiety of relevance is a wording misdirection because no work is trying to be "relevant". It is trying to make money or it is trying to be remembered. Relevance is the aftereffect of genre development rather than the driver of it. The reason I consider this an issue is because you seem to be suggesting that the way works perpetuate through anime adaptations is inherently different from how works perpetuate in other media simply because the form it takes is different. In all forms of media there are "followers" that try to reproduce the commercial success of a "predecessor" in one way or another, but this doesn't mean the biggest commercial successes are necessarily the most "relevent", since even they take the ideas that make them commercially successful from somewhere-- somewhere that was not necessarily commercially successful itself yet perhaps even more "relevent" to the formation or development of a genre. As a bit of a side note, none of that is to say originators can't also be popularizers of genre conventions. It's only to say that they aren't necessarily the same and both can have substantial impacts on the development of a genre. |
| I chanced upon this article from a recent post of Pullman's too. While the central idea seems correct, I have a feeling the rest of the article is a bit off. 1) First of all, SAO the game is complicated enough for its players - the intricacies of swordsmanship replacing the skill/spell use complexity you've seen in Log Horizon. The problem lies in the absence of well-developed metagame characteristic of long-lived MMORPGs. That is the thing Log Horizon delivers. And in SAO the game explicitly not being a classic MMORPG. That is something Log Horizon delivers too. 2) I agree with @Lap1 that declaring all RPG Mechanic Verses (like Danmachi) to be related to SAO is wrong. These kinds of settings have existed for a long time. For example, Druaga was aired in 2008. And claiming NGNL to be related to SAO is probably even more wrong. Really, the only similarity is in the word "game", and in the characters being relatively powerful. Now, card games and MMORPGs might seem to be the same thing to an outsider, but they're completely different things, and most fans of one will not play the other. 3) But most importantly, I feel this overview lacks the appreciation of the fact most anime claimed to be "SAO clones" are of completely different genres. SAO has more in common with an anime like Hundred than with KonoSuba or Overlord. |
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