Database consumption
In essence, otaku culture and the postmodern condition are thought to have the following points in common: 1) As stated by Jean Baudrillard, it is no longer possible to distinguish between the original and the simulated, and thereby the in-between simulacra prevail in hyperreality, which parallels the difficulty to distinguish derivative works and media mix from the original works in otaku culture; 2) Jean-François Lyotard defined postmodernism as the decline of grand narratives (norms shared by society as a whole) and the emergence of many localized, little narratives (norms shared only within small communities), which corresponds to otaku culture's unique value norm that the fictional world rather than the real world is paid more attention to.
Informatics engineering expert Naohiko Yamaguchi[8] and art critic Takemi Kuresawa[9] believe the concept corresponds to a relational database.
Nonetheless, they surprisingly became a hit and were adapted into different media franchises, including anime and video games, ultimately ending up having a background story.
[note 2][4]: 126 In database consumption, characters like Di Gi Charat and Binchotan born without a story in the background may be given ones later on or become the subjects of derivative creations.
[16] Hatsune Miku, the image character of a speech synthesis software package released in 2007, despite lacking a narrative, gained high popularity due to her unique characteristics and has since been widely used in various derivative creations.
[21] In the latter half of the 2000s, works featuring "moe" characters with appealing charms and regressed narratives have gained increasing popularity, particularly triggered by the success of TV anime Lucky Star.
These works, commonly referred to as "slice of life" (日常系, nichijō-kei, 'daily genre'), are media content that precisely fits into the database consumption model.
DJs collect and reconfigure musical elements that make up original songs as materials to create derivative creations, which is considered paralleling to secondary creations like doujinshi published by otaku; Some also compared between "anime eyes" who enjoy moe elements in visual symbols to "techno ears" who enjoy repetitive techno melodies.
Likewise, a blog is flat, lacking a hierarchical structure commonly found in conventional websites, and a select shop displays and sells products, ignoring the unity (grand narratives) of brands.
On the Internet, in addition to blogs, "meme communication" (ネタ的コミュニケーション)[note 6] found on the online forum 2channel is similar to database consumption in that copy-paste, ASCII art, etc.
[30] There are also observations that the behavior of "characterizing" oneself, typically among young people in Japan, also refers to different types of characters that appear in pop culture, as in the database consumption theory.
[32] Hiroki Azuma himself cites the situation in Hollywood movies, where highly advanced visual effects are often paired with clichéd set patterns, as an example of database consumption outside of Japan.
[33] Sociologist Shinji Miyadai[34] and writer Hiroyuki Kagami[35] argue that the database consumption model cannot explain the popularity of mobile phone novel series, including Koizora which was a huge boom in 2006 and 2007.
On the other hand, critic Tsunehiro Uno says that in a society where database consumption has become ubiquitous, the national function of "literary style" (grand narrative) has since defunct and is now compensated for by expanding plots.
[37][38] Satoshi Hamano, a critic and sociologist, draws parallels between the "deep emotion" frequently mentioned by mobile phone novel fans and animalized otaku's "moe" in database consumption theory by Azuma.
