ホーム
"Letters from the New York Otaku"
By David Cabrera
#61 – 30 Rock, Guest-Starring Kumiko-chan the Dakimakura
I think it's time to talk harshly about the Cool Japan idea again. Not because we enjoy it, but because it is necessary. I'll teach you an American slang phrase in exchange. “Real talk.”
Real talk, the most widespread, mainstream exposure moe and modern otaku culture have gotten in America in the last decade was as a third-string plot line-- maybe five minutes total-- in a single episode of a fairly popular network comedy.
30 Rock is a sitcom created by Saturday Night Live writer Tina Fey, in which she plays a more dysfunctional, neurotic version of herself (Liz Lemon) working on a show that happens to look just like SNL. In this episode, celebrity guest star James Franco, playing himself, enters into a sham relationship with Liz's friend Jenna in order to cover up for a dangerous secret.
“Liz, are you familiar with Japanese moe relationships where socially dysfunctional men develop deep emotional attachments to body pillows with women painted on them?”
“I am not, James--”
“NEITHER AM I, LIZ.”
Of course, as we find out later, Franco is a dirty liar. “I'm the actor James Franco, dammit, and I'm in love with-- and common-law married to-- a Japanese body pillow!” He calls her Kumiko-chan.
So, to cover, James and Jenna enter into a carefully orchestrated fake celebrity relationship. She's to exit his apartment in a particular men's shirt on a certain day. “Your hand feels like a pillow that's been in the microwave,” he says to her. He kisses her passionately-- when he feels like there are paparazzi around waiting to snap a picture. The big joke, of course, comes when Jenna realizes that she's in a relationship that is actually more artificial than the one that James Franco has with a pillow.
Ultimately the two non-lovers have a fake fight-- “you're being so not like a pillow right now!”-- and both of them come to terms with the fact that their lives are a lie right now and they can't handle not being themselves. Franco hits the NYC clubs with his beloved Kumiko-chan, and he doesn't care who sees.
The punchline of the episode is that antisocial Liz has a crisis, goes partying herself, runs into Franco, and winds up in a threesome with him and the pillow. In the morning, she calls her Kumiko-tan.
Anime itself isn't brought up, nor is the idea of a 2D complex: rather, there's a joke about how Franco suspects Kumiko-chan might be jealous of his ottoman. The word “moe” is defined as above. It's not accurate, no, but a man with a furniture fetish might be funnier than an otaku.
This might be the first and only time mainstream Americans ever hear about this far-flung side of the subculture, and the show doesn't ever stop to say it didn't just make this up. Most viewers likely just thought the body pillow was another joke. I mean, a pillow with a picture of a cartoon woman on it! That couldn't be real life, right?
Truth, yet again, is stranger than fiction.
30 Rock, Guest-Starring Kumiko-chan the Dakimakura
2012年6月15日(金) 22時33分
《animeanime》
注目ニュース
I don't know how it is in Japan, but here in the States, the whole idea of packaged video appears on the way out.
My friends and I often say to each other that it's a wonderful thing we weren't born ten years later, in the age of Youtube, because kids like us would have shared a million awful videos
In the old days, when people were trying to figure out just what to call the stuff these tapes they got from Japan,
Have you guys heard the Animetal USA album? (http://animetalusa.com/) It's been a while since it came out, but it's really impressive!
