Last week’s entry about The Tatami Galaxy proved to be unexpectedly fruitful. Thanks to the people who have linked back to me; you’re wonderful.
What's a Madarame-related entry without this? Screenshot shamelessly filched from Fuzakenna!.
In the discussion that followed, Radiant left me a comment with a link to an interesting video, called “Imagining the 10th Dimension.” It takes a bit of imagination to wrap one’s head around, especially once the narrator starts discussing the sixth dimension and beyond, but it’s still remarkably accessible. Anyway, what really got me thinking was the second dimension.
If you’ve read Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, it’s nothing terribly novel. A three-dimensional object passing through two-dimensional space would appear to two-dimensional residents like something that suddenly appears, erratically changes shape, then disappears. Because they can’t perceive us in whole, beings without depth would only see infinitely thin, cross-section slices of us as we enter their axis.
So, basically, if we magically had our dreams of living in an anime world come true, without ANY other stipulations given to the demon/genie/goddess granting this wish, it’s quite possible that to anime characters we would end up looking like this:
So much for starting that harem.
But the fascinating thing to me, as a 2-D enthusiast, is the ensuing realization that we’re actually playing “Mr. Sphere looking down on Flatland” every time we watch anime. What’s more, a great number of us are sexually attracted to these objects, these sexy squares to our horny cubes. Why? Hiroki Azuma says it’s simple Pavlovian training, and I suppose there’s no arguing with that. Get turned on by a dakimakura enough times and it’ll get to be a habit, and I’ve met enough people who claimed to “not understand” anime sexiness that I guess it must be at least slightly unusual.
But surely! Surely, we should also be impressed with our visual abilities, as people who partake in visual culture. Just think: We impose depth and human proportion on an object which has none, as if everyone else goes around with one eye closed, and we simply have the instinct to look with both.
This entry was inspired by Ichiban Ushiro no Daimaoh episode 5, but this really isn't what it looks like.
There’s a bit more to be said about this subject. For example: Where a non-anime fan will see characters with giant sweat drops and pink ovals on their faces, an anime fan will process those cues as embarrassment and nervousness. We understand such visual language naturally, and that in itself is pretty interesting. But I’ll leave that for another time.
Further Reading:
A Day Without Me is understandably baffled.
May 29, 2010 at 6:54 am
I was always of the school of thought that the Roger Rabbit principle would apply in a situation like that. Learn from Western examples and your Japanese anime knowhow is more rounded. Literally, when speaking of dimensions.
Of course I’m talking about Who Framed Roger Rabbit here – the bedrock of 2D fetishists ever since 1988. Anime’s never had the Who Framed Roger Rabbit idea done with anime, and if it happened in real life I suspect 2D sexual preference would become a subset of the interracial dating debate rather than a concept of psychological delusion.
Seriously, watch Roger Rabbit. It’s Western but in terms of this dimensional thing it will explain everything to you about how 2D and 3D living beings would work in an existing parallel universe.
May 29, 2010 at 6:57 am
I was originally going to reference Jessica Rabbit here. But this is an anime blog, after all.
You’re right, though. I don’t think there’s been anything quite like that movie in Japan. Interesting to think about.
May 29, 2010 at 7:11 am
That’s no excuse 2DT – what a cop out. You seriously did a post on this issue without keeping in mind that Who Framed Roger Rabbit already shows you how a universe with 3D and 2D people would work?
It answers so many questions your post leaves unanswered. In Roger Rabbit, your anatomical pic you posted as how they see us would be a fallacy. I know this is just spectacularly nerdy speculation, but in terms of actual dimensions – the only way 2D and 3D could coexist with each other in this world is if both existed in the same universe, otherwise they’d be made of matter and anti-matter.
Also, in Roger Rabbit land it’s equally feasible that eventually anime characters would exist in that world – but the film is set in the 1930s – 1940s and thus the post-war Japanese animation boom hasn’t occurred yet.
Roger Rabbit is still relevant in an anime blog, especially when discussing this issue. The implications it raises about what the otaku dream of the 2D world coexisting with the 3D one is enough for consideration.
That’s it, I’m gonna do a post of my own!
May 29, 2010 at 7:24 am
Mmm… Well, Roger Rabbit is more of a case of 2-D characters being upscaled into a 3-D universe, rather than the reverse. And I really wanted to talk about our perception of the two-dimensional more than anything else.
But this:
I’m looking forward to this!
May 29, 2010 at 7:58 am
More than just perceive using one’s imagination, anime characters actually become 3-D all the time through the sale and manufacturing of plastic figures. While I’m not going to go into sexual attraction to plastic models, it does say that sometimes the 2-D to 3-D work has already been done.
I think of anime viewing as a glance through a window, a look into a 2-D world from a 3-D one. It makes me wonder how it would be the other way around, as in a 2-D world watching our 3-D one through a window of some sort, or maybe we’re not watching a 2-D world at all, maybe it’s a 3-D world that we see as 2-D because of the limitations of the window! Wishful thinking I suppose.
May 29, 2010 at 9:48 am
In many cases the window is quite literal, too– Most of us watch fansubbed files on Windows Media Player Classic, after all.
Great point re: Figurines. Makes me wonder about the impetus behind that particular industry, and the sheer devotion many collectors have toward their prize items.
May 29, 2010 at 8:14 am
I had the longest discussion (argument) with my dad after watching this excerpt from Cosmos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnURElCzGc0 where Carl Sagan explains the 4th dimension. My dad didn’t understand how the inhabitants of flatland can perceive anything at all. If it had eyes at all, he argued, they should be flat on top of the 2D creatures body. Which means it could only see up. They couldn’t even perceive each other much less themselves. Obviously my dad doesn’t exactly have the proper mindset for understanding theoretical models. Funny thing is I couldn’t really give him a good explanation other than to say “just take that they can see for granted”. Still it’s fun to think about.
May 29, 2010 at 10:00 am
I suppose flatlanders would have some kind of ambient sense that lets them know the position of objects, without having to “see” them in the sense that we see things. Maybe your dad will find that more agreeable?
Having watched that video, though, now I know that anime characters will hear my voice inside them if I decide to start talking to the screen. Thanks, Carl Sagan!
May 29, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Seek out AK Dewdney’s The Planiverse, a 20th Century folly inspired by Flatland, which explores Flatlander anatomy and mechanics (e.g., how to make a Flatlander motor or lock).
Dewdney was one of the people who tried to fill Martin Gardner’s shoes at Scientific American.
As to your main point, surely pheromones enter into it. Maybe when ebook readers have scratch-and-sniff screens will we enter into a 2d sexual rennaisance.
May 30, 2010 at 7:16 am
Anime Smell-O-Vision.
I love it. We can still have that future of VR visors and thick gloves, if we want it bad enough!
May 29, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Bah. Taka, you stole the link I wanted to post. I think that Carl Sagan describes the dimensions far more eloquently than the 10 dimension video, but that’s neither here nor there.
Interpreting 2D constructs in 3D terms isn’t really a new concept. It’s very much akin to interpreting the words you’re reading right now into ideas, shapes, and whatever I or any writer wants you to imagine. However, reading itself is a matter of training; one’s ability to parse words grows as one reads more, and while we fall into that routine of interpreting characters and stories as we watch more anime, we give them that lifelike quality. Such is imagination.
May 30, 2010 at 7:19 am
That’s interesting, because we start getting into the realm of reader-response theory and why comic art works the way it does. We are terribly imaginative creatures, I guess.
Sexuality, though. I can’t help but think of those erotic shunga prints from the Edo period, puzzling over how anyone could have been turned on by those, then happily turning to a mountain of doujinshi and diving in like Scrooge McDuck into his gold.
May 29, 2010 at 11:06 am
Makes sense. If I think back, I got into anime almost exactly as I was hitting puberty. I was HUGE into anime, and therefor the first ‘girls’ I really had to wank to were anime girls. At first I did so rather indiscriminately, basically just thinking that anything with boobs was automatically hot, though back then I think I had the average man’s ‘bigger>better’ sort of rule.
At some point, I felt like I was building a sort of odd complex in some way, though I didn’t know that word yet. I still found real women attractive, but they were almost like a ‘different thing.’ By 14 I was writing Tales of Symphonia fanfiction porn… and that’s when I became obsessed with lesbians (having written lesbian scenes and liked them the best, and going through the usual early teenger gender identity crisis.)
And when I ‘returned’ to anime in 2007 I completely refused straight porn. I would ONLY look at yuri. Moreover, I had never been a lolicon before that (however indiscriminate I may have been) but soon after gaining some loli favorite characters (HidaSketch and Manabi Straight helped) and then learning the word lolicon from WAH, I instantly became one.
And so for a long time, I would strictly look at loli and yuri and I literally did not find anything else attractive. It wasn’t that I was forcing myself, but that my mind wasn’t actually willing to handle straight porn yet.
After that it was simply all evolution. And luckily, since I’ve been a gonzo blogger for 3 years, a lot of that evolution is chronicled.
http://fuzakenna.com/2008/05/23/this-post-was-written-in-the-nude-if-you-are-uncomfortable-with-that-stop-reading/ <- I claim to only get off on 'women's pleasure'.
http://fuzakenna.com/2008/06/19/i-might-be-more-of-a-man-than-i-thought/ <- I claim to have enjoyed a strictly male-oriented hetero porn for the first time.
Somewhere in early '09 I started watching a lot more anime porn, and began to broaden my horizons a bit. There is no individual post about this, but I posted about a lot of the porn I watched. I still couldn't do the more extreme stuff like rape and monsters and guro, though. By the end of 2009 I could handle most things, and by today, I can get off on guro and rape and anything else no problem (except gangbang, which just strikes me as gay. Why do I want to see so many cocks? Also, old guys. Ew.)
In any case, I started very small and over time just accustomed myself to more and more things, allowing myself to find more and more things attractive. So I certainly support the idea that we train ourselves to find things attractive. Mostly, I think we do it on a subconscious level to whatever extent our reason and morals allow… and then we work on a conscious level if we deliberately want to expand our interest.
May 29, 2010 at 11:41 am
Oh, Digitalboy. I appreciate every comment you write. But I want you to know, I do love it especially when I inspire you to write a really long one.
Timing! That’s an angle I hadn’t considered. What effect must it have on our developing sexualities to be exposed to animated naughty bits, the way so many of us have?
Hmm. Is this really such a common occurence? Truthfully, I went through a period of doubt similar to yours, and now that I think about it, I know a couple of others who have, too… Oh dear, this is a potentially rich subject!
Unfortunately, Azuma’s “animal training” angle was only half a page of the entire book. He seemed to treat it as a given, when in fact I think it’s a rather sharp observation. And then, as you say, there’s a level of deliberate cultivation later on.
May 30, 2010 at 7:42 pm
I think almost everyone has some form of sexual crisis in their teen years. It all depends on what kind of friends they have if this makes them into an ultra-womanizer in compensation or if they become one of those kids who constantly puts their fake bisexuality in everyone’s faces.
Where I live, it’s very common for kids to be gay or bi with little to know public resistance because there wasn’t really any bullying at my school. So there were al these kids who thought they were bi and stuff… but they really just needed a couple more years.
May 29, 2010 at 12:43 pm
The post reminds me a bit of the idea behind 10 dimensions. I’m not sure if you’ve seen this, but it’s pretty interesting. The beginning applies in particular to this post.
Anyways, there are really quite a bit of irrational anime-specific cues that express ideas. This extends even to the basics of anime art style. For example, a small curve is an indication of nose or various expressions hinted by the large eyes.
May 30, 2010 at 7:03 am
I mentioned the video in the second paragraph. It’s the whole reason I’m writing this post.
I’m glad we’re on the same wavelength!
Ooh, nose evolution is an interesting subject in itself. It seems like not having them at all in a frontal view is increasingly common. Thanks for bringing that up!
May 31, 2010 at 1:36 pm
@2DT: Oh wow, that’s embarrassing. I didn’t read this post very carefully…
Skimmed the beginning quickly since it was something I was familiar with. And that anatomy man is quite attention grabbing.
May 29, 2010 at 4:09 pm
“…it’s quite possible that to anime characters we would end up looking like this:”
If this were true, then maybe it’s good that we can’t actually go into the 2-D world and we should just continue to fantasize about it XD
“Where a non-anime fan will see characters with giant sweat drops and pink ovals on their faces, an anime fan will process those cues as embarrassment and nervousness. We understand such visual language naturally, and that in itself is pretty interesting.”
I never thought about how many visual cues like this anime has, many of which would be puzzling to those unfamiliar with anime (another good example would be when characters turn chibi). It’s another thing that makes the art style of anime/manga unique, but at the same time it can have the negative effect of alienating non-fans.
May 30, 2010 at 7:05 am
Another one that seems to bug people is nosebleeds. Canne wrote about that, actually… which I see you’ve already read.
I think I made a mistake by saying we understand “naturally,” though. We’ve been trained by exposure, of course, like most other things. Thanks for reading.
May 29, 2010 at 5:58 pm
This makes me wonder what Kuroko sees when she enters the 11th dimension.
May 30, 2010 at 7:09 am
Well, if we go by what the video says, Kuroko enters a realm well beyond human comprehension. But that’s assuming we follow Newtonian physics, and not the modern notion of spacetime being intertwined in three-dimensional space, in which case Kuroko teleports through a plane that runs adjacent to a plane running adjacent to a plane… etc etc. Like a nightmare tesseract. It’s still well beyond human comprehension, actually. Let’s just call it handwavium.
May 29, 2010 at 8:59 pm
Honored that you quoted my link, and even sparked a blog post out of it.
Another animated movie I’d suggest trying out is Cool World. This one actually talks about 2d characters attempting to become 3d, as well as the effects of a 3d person turning into 2d. Unfortunately, it doesn’t talk anything about how these characters can perceive each others’ dimensions. Just that there are severe consequences in the interaction.
Your random anatomy grab is actually incorrect, in the literal sense, as you’re still seeing depth. It’d be more of a cross section, really. And Taka’s dad is partly right – the flatlander technically wouldn’t be able to see anything, as its vision is technically blocked by the line of his own nose. It can’t see “up” because that would be a 3rd dimension though.
We really are 3d spheres looking at a 2d world. If you think on the 4th dimension for a moment – time, we are not able to perceive our entire lives all at once. We only perceive a given moment.
For 2d, they aren’t actually moving. It’s a series of frames played back in succession that we as 3d people are able to perceive frame by frame. If a drawn cube is animated rotating, we perceive it as 3d on a 2d plane. It’s still 2d, but our perception of it isn’t. We know that it has “depth”. The cube on the other hand, has absolutely no awareness that it is changing over time, or that it even has depth, since it’s only able to perceive itself – the current frame.
Actually, that brings up another issue. We live in the 3rd dimension, but we are only “perceiving” the 3rd dimension. Think of it. What we see is merely a series of photographic projections in our eyes which our mind perceives one after another to give us a sense of 3d perception. If I were to hold you perfectly still in front of a window, you would not know if what you were looking at is 3d, or a photograph unless you moved.
In that sort of argument, technically our wanting “2d girls to exist in the 3d world” is literally happening already. We just get single frames of them.
May 30, 2010 at 7:12 am
Ah, Cool World… Kim Basinger screaming “I WANT MEN!” still haunts my childhood memories.
You’ve managed to blow my mind yet again with that eye movement business. This is true; we perceive a series of two-dimensional images, which get combined in our brain to allow us to experience three-dimensional space.
I’m… actually not sure where to take this conversation. It’s getting a bit over my head.
But I’ve been enlightened! Thank you!
May 29, 2010 at 9:05 pm
Oh, the rest of your article reminds me of the other perception between anime and non-anime people – social perception!
My blog post from several years ago:
http://radiantdreamer.wordpress.com/2008/03/01/are-you-a-hentai-otaku/
May 30, 2010 at 7:12 am
Social perception, yes. Precisely that too.
Great article.
May 30, 2010 at 5:20 am
Isn’t this one of the best reasons why a lot of titles try to answer the questions about the phenomenon of anatomical curiosity? Humans have the tendency to explore the how and why of things. And since the two-dimensional world is but a fictional reality that they can only dream to feel or live in, it only makes them strive further into trying to “simulate” what they want to feel in the form of deviating conceptualizations on the two-dimensional plane.
May 30, 2010 at 7:15 am
I caught your comment on Google Reader about ero-manga and cross-section cuts. VERY interesting direction (and addresses two of my anatomical pet peeves in the genre: cervix-breaching and male seed flowing like unto a glass of dynamically poured milk), but I don’t think I’d want to put any samples of said work on a blog post of mine.
Thanks for reading!
May 30, 2010 at 8:58 am
“For example: Where a non-anime fan will see characters with giant sweat drops and pink ovals on their faces, an anime fan will process those cues as embarrassment and nervousness. We understand such visual language naturally, and that in itself is pretty interesting.”
At the risk of sounding like a hippie or pretentious (I worry, this could go either way! xD), I think that’s one of my favourite things about anime/manga: the visual language imbued within the medium transcends culture and race and language in the typical sense. Like you said, for fans, these cues are things that can be understood instinctively but I also feel like they’re quite easy to pick up on for fans who are starting out. Anyway, even though some series require a bit of knowledge of Japanese culture (if only a little, to understand some jokes),or knowledge of the Japanese language if said series isn’t subbed, the visual cues are things that are accessible to anyone with just a little bit of immersion in the medium. It’s great because people can be brought together, seeing and understanding the same things on screen. We can communicate without speaking a word or even without having a seiyuu speak a word. And I love that. (On the topic of this, I’d be interested to know if one’s background determines what one thinks of the visual cues upon first seeing them.)
As always, thank you so much for the post! I think this is one of my favourites of yours yet: there were so many great ideas here and I wish I’d have been able to comment on more of them than one, haha.
May 30, 2010 at 9:11 am
I suppose we’ve come a long way from the days when onigiri would be translated as chocolate cake.
But I brought up that point because I’ve heard it a few times from non-fans, and even some fairly involved fans– “What’s up with those pink circles on their faces all the time?”
I’m glad you liked this entry! If you want to comment on more than one point, of course, I’m perfectly fine with more comments.
Thanks for reading.
May 30, 2010 at 9:35 am
That’s quite interesting to me, that it doesn’t really compute even for some of the fairly involved fans! Of the few RL fan friends I have, some have commented on the intrusiveness of the sweat drops, etc. (one in particular likes the art to be as “realistic” as possible so avoids Clamp works like the plague) but most seem to make the connection between the cue and what it means pretty easily. Though I certainly can’t generalise – like I said, I don’t know all that many fans outside of the internet. xD
Oh! It wasn’t that I was cutting down what I wanted to say for length, I just didn’t have anything interesting to say to the other points, haha. I always feel very comfortable commenting here, no matter how long or inane what I’m saying is. Which is fantastic.
May 30, 2010 at 4:52 pm
The 2D vs. 3D argument has always reminded me a bit of Gulliver’s encounter with the Brobdingnag giantess in Gulliver’s Travels. Even though all of the flaws he notices are ordinary characteristics of an average human being, her body disgusts him because all of her surface flaws are amplified and extremely obvious. I realize that the tone of the Travels is entirely satirical, but I think the point still stands: 2D characters are often more attractive because the ordinary flaws aren’t there to be noticed, or they’re of a scale that makes them cute (like Gulliver’s opinion of the minute Lilliputians). I’m not saying that all 2D enthusiasts are trying to avoid the flaws attached to 3D human beings, but there’s no arguing (for me) that even a rough sketch is often more enticing than a real human figure: it’s all the right shapes without the underlying defects… or the attached costs.
May 31, 2010 at 10:51 am
Gulliver’s Travels!
That’s a brilliant connection.
Thanks for stopping by.
… Really, though, great stuff.
May 31, 2010 at 1:23 am
Since you’ve mentioned Tatami Galaxy, I simply must point out that even in that 2D universe, Watashi and Jougasaki also impose human capacities on an object that has none (a love doll).
I think the reason for our attraction to 2D is similar to theirs: they may not be able to love, but they do not come with the faults that being human arrives with. It’s a fair exchange to quite a few.
May 31, 2010 at 10:52 am
The increasing advancement of love dolls in Japan is quite the subject in itself.
But I think you’re right; we’re able to take in an image that we find aesthetically/sexually pleasing, minus all the warts and bad breath we would have to accept in the the third dimension.
May 31, 2010 at 2:53 am
…Eh, I didn’t bother reading through all of the comments, sorry >_>
…Anyways, the thing is, we are three-dimensional objects. /However/, we perceive the world 2-dimensionally. How?
Well, imagine it this way. If you were a flatlander (I think they actually say this in the book) your eyes’d be in front of you, looking sideways. What would you see? A line. You wouldn’t see a cross-section or anything, you’d see a constantly changing line (in this way the video is incorrect). A line is one dimension underneath 2-dimensional, right?
In the third dimension, we see things as a plane. That’s one dimension underneath 3-dimensional, so it fits in with the previous progression.
This is further added when you realize how you can paint pictures, and they look exactly like what you’d see (er, photographs would be a better analogy in this case). It’s 2-dimensional, you know that, but it’s the same thing you see, so you can assume that what you see is 2-dimensional.
Thus now we realize why anime is perceived like it is; for it is in reality three-dimensional, viewed 2-dimensionally. A film and an anime are basically the same thing, right? Yet the people in the film are “three-dimensional” and the people in the anime are “two-dimensional”… It doesn’t make sense.
Thus we can finally conclude that our perceptions of things are in effect one dimension underneath your own dimension, and thus even though anime is “2-dimensional”, it’s actually a 2-dimensional /perception/ of a 3-dimensional reality.
Of course, it’s not reality so :/ w/e
May 31, 2010 at 10:56 am
Quite all right! Comments before yours have brought up similar points, but none I think with such a head-spinning and interesting conclusion.
Thanks for reading! If you don’t mind, I’ll be dropping by your blog and checking things out for a bit.
June 1, 2010 at 10:38 pm
As long as you don’t die of boredom; currently having a substitute author anyways ._.
May 31, 2010 at 3:51 am
Hmmm, all I can think about with this inter-dimension mixing is the notion of tensors and tensor transformations; that which is independent of any given dimension system.
May 31, 2010 at 10:57 am
Looking up tensors now… Oof. You people and your hidden math genius!
This looks way over my head.
But I shall try! You never know what might get a good future blog post. Thanks for reading!
May 31, 2010 at 12:57 pm
[...] “Feeling Our 2D” (Because 2DT Can’t Possibly Blog About Cervix-Breaching) [...]
May 31, 2010 at 1:20 pm
Attention: Everybody should read this! (Unless you’re sensitive to pornographic images.) It’s great!
June 1, 2010 at 12:24 am
That video ended theatrically beautifully, no? Sure brought a smile to my face.
That vid does a mighty good job at ultra-simplifying things into interaction between very conceivable variables, but suffers in clarity because of this. the 5th (if I remember correctly) and the 9th dimension were simply used to make the definitions of the dimensions below them applicable to the planar folding mentioned so many times throughout. Still, can’t really cram the entire universe, every single possible reality of that universe, then every single possible variant to every single possible reality of that universe topped with an equivalent to depth between these variants, then folded, all into a single video…
And even then I can’t describe my understanding of the 10th dimension in words.
And of course, as creatures with such limited minds that are only capable of inferring the fourth dimension with the third, what better way to fascinate ourselves than to discuss the machinations of the second! Only you and a few would draw connections between quantum mechanics and our favorite form of titillation, 2DT
How our minds perceive things always seems more a matter of trickery than reality – making our brains ‘think’ what we’re seeing, hearing, tasting or feel look, sound, taste or feel that way. Which is suitable; our senses evolved from our predecessors in a manner which allows us to perceive just enough to survive. Which would mean that flatlanders’ abilities to seduce us with sexual symbols not even of the same plane are all a matter survival instinct, the need to procreate, and the urge to rid ourselves of the hormonic sensations that trouble us and force us to seek procreation. If this sophistry of mine were to be true, then would that not mean that the next step in human evolution, grown hand-in-hand with technology and birth control, will actually be physically incapable of feeling arousal by ‘hentai’?
Also, is it really a matter of classical conditioning, I wonder? At first it would make perfect sense; sexual characteristics are the stimulus attributed to a flatlander. The reptilian complex kicks in, person is aroused. Slap sexual characteristics onto a pillowcase and that too is thusly explainable. But how about the ‘extreme fetishes’? Rape, guro, scat, etc? Whereas what propelled one in the previous case is the survival instinct, the same cannot be said for the fetishes. Would it then not be more a matter of complexes and personal inferences? Guro arouses because of that attribution of extreme violence, taboo and ensuing emotions to the extremities of sexual arousal (at least, that’s how I think it works; not much of a fan myself), unrelated to repeated exposure to that pairing of stimuli, and thus unpertaining to conditioning.
Well, that’s what I say, but it’s probably different for different people. Still, I recall the Venus of Willendorf; if Azuma were correct, then it would mean that anybody would be able to become sexually aroused to it, no? But for such a thing to be possible, I feel there’s a definite need for a certain degree of cultural background, which would immediately digress from classical conditioning.
Regardless, the Ningyo-sophistry-o-maton is now turning furiously. I HAVE to write a post about this.
June 2, 2010 at 8:22 am
The biggest problem with the video is that it doesn’t account for the modern theory of spacetime. It only works under a Newtonian and slightly romantic conception of the universe. But it was a fun ride!
I have to admit, rape/guro/scat is beyond me. I recognize that it exists and that people like it, and I can see how that might happen, but I don’t grasp it myself. But what you mean is that we have to find some initial attraction in order to even want to train ourselves, right? On that subject, there was an interesting essay by a guro fan about how he got started, but I can’t seem to find it now. I’ll keep you posted.
The terrible thing about long comments is that I like reading them, but I always feel so guilty for not being able to match them.
Still, thanks for taking the time! Looking forward to your entry.
June 1, 2010 at 8:39 am
“Just think: We impose depth and human proportion on an object which has none, as if everyone else goes around with one eye closed, and we simply have the instinct to look with both.”
Ah, but the way Flatland is depicted is precisely what makes animation such an interesting medium. The animator has absolute control over how much “filling in” he must compel from a viewer.
This is where one gets into discussions of “realistic” – like you note at the end of your post, animators build up particular languages for communicating certain ideas.
An extremely detailed production like 5cm per second is essentially a smattering of colour, but configured in such a way as to give the illusion of depth. The opposite approach is to avoid the pretense of depth altogether… or, in more interesting cases, the use of rotoscoping – the rendering of a 3d object into 2-dimensional animation. Consider Trapeze, or the Tatami Galaxy.
At the very extreme end you have experimental works (of which the National Film Board of Canada puts out quite a few, and all for free viewing too!) that might even eschew traditional venues of animation altogether – sand painting, for example.
June 2, 2010 at 8:23 am
Compel. I like the way you put that. Reminds me of Shance Rainbowsphere’s post about cross-sections, except outside the context of hardcore porn.
Especially interesting that you should bring up 5 cm per Second. I’ve often thought of that movie as hyper-real, like the vivid color experiments of the Impressionists brought to Japanese animation. You’re right that it’s a very different sort of immersion from a show like Tatami Galaxy.
In fact, I notice that powerful use of color and exacting geometric standards is pretty much an anime movie thing. The only exception that comes to mind is Mind Game.
June 3, 2010 at 8:30 pm
I considered using the word “invited”, but really, there is much less choice on the part of the typical viewer. One can break up images into constituent parts and keep them clear of their symbolism, but this requires a good deal of practice – in fact, it’s one of the first things a budding artist has to learn.
“Photorealistic” animation is much more common in movies, I agree – the large budget allows animators to be more ambitious in realizing certain vistas. There are a handful of TV/OVA series that attempt this, though they are no longer as common – consider titles like Ergo Proxy, Witch Hunter Robin, Wolf’s Rain (which go towards the darker side of the colour spectrum), or some of the recent stuff by P.A. Works (which is possibly the most consistently impressive visual studio I’ve seen): True Tears. CANAAN, and Angel Beats.
June 6, 2010 at 2:34 pm
[...] for every time I’ve touched myself while staring at some 2-D girl, cats would be extinct by now. In this post, 2DT briefly discusses the topic of how we come to be attracted to anime girls, even though they [...]
June 8, 2010 at 3:10 am
No. This argument is wrong. Even normal porn is 2-D, on a screen. You’re flattening the 3-D images into a 2-D one. However, our depth perception skills are naturally good enough that we can figure it out.
Cartoon porn is the same except that instead of real bodies we have animated bodies.
June 8, 2010 at 8:14 am
This point came to my mind a while after I posted. The fact that we’ve been making anatomically accurate paintings for hundreds of years pretty much makes any statement I’ve made about otaku visual superiority fall apart.
But hopefully you’ve still garnered something useful out of the discussion. Maybe not two-dimensionality as such, but the general idea of being sexually attracted to abstractions.
As this is your first comment here, welcome!
Please feel free to comment again anytime.
June 8, 2010 at 5:56 am
[...] motivated to contemplate their place in our plane or the sexual mechanics of our subculture by 2DT’s post. Certainly the 2D vs. 3D discussion has been prevalent seemingly since planar conception – [...]
June 15, 2010 at 4:02 pm
[...] details are laid out for you to understand. The post by 2DT about the differences between the second and third dimensions. The post I wrote about spatial reality and how it creates the interconnected machinations of the [...]