I'd like to see some general opinions on moe from the people of the forum. "What do you think of moe series?" "Do you like moe series, or do moe characters attract you more to a series?" Things of that sort, I guess.

Moe is a bit hard to define properly, as it means a lot of different things to different people, but very broadly it is more or less "cuteness". An example of a moe character would be something like Asahina from The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi. I'll also be using the term "moe series", which is more or less a series fueled by moe(think K-ON!).



As for my own opinion:

I've been reading manga and watching anime for the better part of two decades, even before I could speak, and this is a growing "genre" (if you can call it that) that has really begun to explode in the last ~10 years, and even more particularly in the last 4-5.

My problem is not so much with the idea of the moe character within the typical manga or anime series, but with their growing prominence as a focus of manga and anime series. In my perception of things, I see less series with intricate, quality stories, and more of those which lack any sort of plot or development at all, or those whose purpose is displaying moe characters but wrap themselves in a thin veil they try to pass off as a plot.

K-ON! is an example of the series with no plot or development, which serves no purpose other than allowing the views to watch the moe antics of moe characters.

Strike Witches (which is more lolicon than moe, honestly) is an example of such a series, but thinly veiled with a "plot", though it is painfully obvious that the focus of the series is the panties of the protagonists.

To Aru Majustu no Index (light-novel aside, it had a very different feel from the anime) is another example of the second, where much of the focus seemed to fall on the females of the series, rather than the plot of the series...and this formula worked so well with the first manga series, that a manga spin-off series(To Aru Kagaku no Railgun) was made in 2007, and is now being animated.

The list of these sort of series goes on and on, and is only growing faster and faster.

I guess my complaint is that more and more of these series are being made, and less of "real" (I can't think of a better term at the moment) series, with distinct stories, or "real" points of focus (comedy, parody, history, etc.)...examples being series like Dragonball, One Piece, Berserk, Astro Boy, Captain Harlock, Gundam, Hajime no Ippo, GTO, etc...the sort of series that attracted me toward anime and manga as a child, rather than the aimless or episodic styles of American-made animation or comic books.