#sekaikei discourse

[centrally-unplanned]

Reading this good article w/ author Ken Maejima, literary critic who wrote the book "What is Sekaikei?", and really liked this quote:

When something is named as "strange," there are two possibilities. Either the work being named is strange, or the person naming it is strange. In fact, if you read a work that is named "Sekaikei," you will find that it is a rather straightforward coming-of-age story or love story. So, what is the reason why these works were seen as strange by the otaku? If we don't think about that, we won't understand Sekaikei. And in order to answer this question, I thought it was necessary to take the perspective of the paradigm shift brought about by the mega-hit "Neon Genesis Evangelion" (1995-96). Eva not only had a major impact on the works that followed, but also changed the way otaku themselves view works. In my opinion, this shift led to a movement in which certain works were labeled as "Sekaikei".

Essentially that the "era" of sekaikei should be understood as something that was happening at the consumer level as opposed to the production level; stories have always heightened emotional drama via externalized stakes, but Eva created a pursuit by 'literary' type otaku to build a new genre to cohere to their new identity. Of course its a mutual feedback loop, by the time you get to say Saikano it is a show deliberately being made to cater to an audience looking for sekaikei. But who is pulling and who is dragging has implications for what the genre means, what it reflects, and why it came about. I hadn't put this thought into words but I suspected it as a better frame. And "Either the work being named is strange, or the person naming it is strange", what a killer line!

Also the cover of the book is cute as hell:

....wait a second....

Is that...Daisuke Nishijima? The guy who wrote Dien Bien Phu, the *Vietnam War battle manga* I literally just started reading this week?

It is!!! Amazing, what a chad. And yes, if you are like "hey Ash his art style is a little Hajime Ueda-esque is that a coincidence" no, I found him on my Hajime dive and that is what triggered me to give the manga a try. Baader Meinhoff haunts me once again.