This Week in Anime

Parasocial Overdose

Lucas
Coop, being on the anime writing beat more or less necessitates that we be aware of new media and trending digital culture. While these forms of entertainment don't necessarily need to be tied together, their rise to global prominance in a similar timeframe has seemingly forever linked the two. Though this connection is bolstered by the fact that people just keep making anime about the kinds of parasocial relationships that the internet has made far more common!

While our TWIA cohorts Chris and Sylvia explored the growing trend of content creator-focused anime awhile back, how would you feel about going live and breaking down for chat the similar, but decidedly darker, trend of anime that focus on parasocial relationships?

I know what you mean. At the risk of riling people up, this is where I'd like to share that I don't really like livestreaming as an industry or streamers as a pundit class. While I'll be the first to admit that streaming can be a means for otherwise ostracized people to form communities and that independent VTubing can be both a means of expression for marginalized folks and a way for them to supplement their income, the vast majority of the streaming landscape and business is harmful to individuals on every level of that process and society at large. Quite simply, I think the world would be better off if Twitch as a platform didn't exist, as the company routinely and algorithmically boosts the voices of some of the most hateful and misinformed people in the world today, many of whom only reached this level of success thanks to the financial backing of wealthy bad actors.

But we're here to talk about ANIME, not social politics. The reason we're talking about anime as it relates to livestreaming/VTubing today is that the medium keeps being exactly correct about the ways that streaming gives way to celebrity obsession that leads to a bunch of other toxic and isolating social shenanigans.

While this might come across as a bit reductive, Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue absolutely nailed this parasocial phenomenon in 1997 and is only made more correct in every year that follows. While subsequent anime media that have explored this topic have done so through an iterative lens or otherwise new perspective, it's all building upon this Perfect Blue-print.

Dude, I really wish I knew that Needy Girl Overdose was based on a game of the same name (changed to Needy Streamer Overload for the English release) because, as far as I can tell, that is a management sim where you're helping a socially maladapted girl that's prone to depressive episodes become a streamer with 10 million followers. While the game is very obviously a satire of streaming culture and a parable about how people should not put chasing fame above their own well-being, it also means that this anime is kind of a sequel to the game and set to explore the aftermath of a person destroying themselves to become famous!

From minute one of episode one, this anime understands how deeply wrong and disturbing much of this space is and how there really aren't any great off-ramps once people have fallen down any part of this parasocial pipeline. Even just the little details in this show, like characters being introduced with their follower count (and therefore supposed value) in their bios, do a great job of setting this cynical, and more accurate than I think anyone wants to admit, tone.

Maybe this story and its themes need to be a sledgehammer! Perfect Blue came out nearly thirty years ago, and people still keep chasing this idea of celebrity and influence even if it's at the expense of their own physical and mental well-being. What makes Needy Girl Overdose the breakout hit of the season for me personally is how overt it is in its themes, and how it's practically shaking a viewer and screaming at them that this parasocial celebrity shit is bad for them.

And, to my earlier point about these works iterating on Perfect Blue, I love how the principal characters in Needy Girl Overdose have turned this kind of toxicity into a part of their identity, making any concerns about their wellbeing an attack against them. As the internet was still in its nascency when Perfect Blue came out, this element of fandom culture isn't present in that work, and I appreciate how Needy Girl captures this tribalistic development right out of the gate.

Yes, we absolutely should revisit Lain...if for no other reason than to make the actual show be the first thing that pops into my mind whenever it's mentioned, instead of one of the best AMVs ever made.

But you're right to bring up the Lain influences on Needy Girl Overdose! While both are overtly playing in the same sandbox, I love the aesthetic juxtaposition between them. While Lain's surrealism is largely grounded in the aesthetics of hard science fiction, Needy Girl's version of the internet is a persistent girliepop. They both frame these worlds as a form of escapism, and how this escape and the harm it can bring have become more celebrated over time is apparent in even just the visuals of these works.

While Cosmic Princess Kaguya didn't hit as hard for me as it did for other folks, there is something to be said about how the work blended classical Japanese culture with modern Japanese digital culture. For all of the faults present in digital culture today, it's here to stay, and the sooner we start thinking about it within the context of broader culture and history, the better. After all, a big part of how harm in digital spaces is generated stems from treating them like big, unknowable things, rather than an invention and extension of the human condition.

I actually really loved how the way people treat the internet and social media is literalized in last year's Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show as cosmic horrors like Cthulhu. We're made to think these spaces and the problems they create are all-powerful and unknowable, but really, things like parasociality and toxic communities can be defeated by individuals being decent people and by groups of people genuinely caring about each other.

Oh, absolutely! One of my favorite more recent writing projects was a series of interviews with independent VTubers for Yatta-Tachi and repeatedly, folks who participated stressed the need to keep content creation fun and personally fulfilling. Anything that's turned into a chore or something unnecessarily competitive will inevitably become a harmful cesspool, but if you make an effort to be positive and constructive in these efforts, you can create a genuinely uplifting community.

I couldn't agree more! I believe firmly that social media, and the internet more broadly, is supposed to be fun and a positive force for society. If you want the dopamine hit of "numbers go up," go play an RPG and don't burn yourself out chasing internet clout and follows from accounts that might not even be real. Whatever fulfillment people think will come from chasing online success and fame has to come from inside themselves first, before that external validation can even become tenable. Otherwise (and this meme will prove that I'm an older person on the internet who has done this internal work already), you're gonna have a bad time.