Frank Kogan

One of the problems I have with scholarly articles about Japanese culture (pop most likely), is that they use a series of concepts to examine a culture that is, at least lately, immersed in feedback with their own references, creating micro-niches and micro-variations on themes and riffs already overexploited for decades, and that those concepts are so general as to feel like empty containers or a bit like using dated slang to refer maybe the same things the younger generation are doing, but with new traditions, memes, senses, etc. (Another problem I have with them is how most of them doesn’t value at all the cultures they are talking about (skips the idols, they are empty, let’s talk about mainstream artists with real contents that I happen to like!). Oh, and another one: everyone in Japan is a pervert, so if there are examples of cultural trends that are quite extreme (like shotakon or eleven-years old gravure DVDs), everything that could be identified with those extreme examples are softer expressions of the dark truth).

There is manga, “Bakuman” about a couple of guys that want to become mangakas and each time that they are pitching a new idea, they explain how the conventions of every genre are used (like when they explain the love story that triggers all the plot the manga is going to have, like “Bakuman”). If anybody is interested on that, I can put some examples from there. If not, you only need to check some conventions from this video. I don’t really know why they do this, but when I tried to learn the writing, maybe had some glimpse of how they are accustomed to think that way (different “drawings” combine themselves to form new meanings, new words (always with the same sounds)).



I only heard once before the term burikko. It was in a quite repellent moe-oriented website that usually publishes polls about what boys hate girls doing or the reverse one. Usually they are mortifying, narrow minded and are mere excuses for quite colourful commentary about gender, the country and the rest. So one of the things guys hated was that the girl pretended to be cute, that she was burikko. Having in mind that as mentioned, that website is quite found on a very particular form of cuteness (moe), that usually derives in all sort of sexual fantasies about moe characters, maybe is a misuse of the term “burikko” and what is acceptable for them is not so much for society. The most known example of moe anime right now.





These girls are Onyanko Club. They are acting like teenagers but the lyrics are talking about having sex and taking off their school uniforms. So there is a divergence between the presentation and the contents.