II. The Many Faces of Profundity

Aspires to be someone who gets people off.

Editor’s note: He’s done it.

0. Introduction

When we express our admiration for certain anime, we invariably reach for phrases such as “deep in meaning,” “rich in significance,” “thought-provoking,” and “thematically ambitious.” Very often, we go on to explain which “profound” themes these works express: “This work is a hymn to human nature,” for instance, or “This work uses a gripping story to make us reflect on the meaning of war.” Similar critical expressions take many other forms: interpreting an anime through various theoretical resources, explaining how its story illuminates or echoes reality and history, showing the influence it has exerted, and so forth. For convenience, I will treat expressions with this family resemblance as expressions of “profundity.”

It is difficult to say exactly what the profundity of these works consists in. We know only that “profound” is the opposite of “shallow”: the former invites us to examine a work from various angles and at various levels, while the latter generally implies that the work does not merit particularly varied analysis. Fortunately, examples are easy to find. Many of the excellent works selected by anime-fan communities belong to this kind. The Ghost in the Shell series is an ideal example. After the Hollywood live-action Ghost in the Shell came out, many fans of the original anime accused it of failing to understand the meaning of the 1995 film. Cowboy Bebop, a perennial presence on all sorts of rankings, is another example. Some critics have given existentialist readings of this story of wanderers in space; others think it aptly mirrors the meetings and partings of life as it is.

Precisely because the works described as profound are often excellent, this category deserves particular attention. Yet many reviews show that we call a highly diverse range of anime profound. This article’s main purpose is therefore to try to sort out which aspects of anime “profundity,” as we use it, refers to at a fairly basic level. I will use familiar, representative works as examples. I will show that profundity in anime criticism points to at least four overlapping aspects: layers of meaning, unusual narrative structures, grand themes, and particular kinds of imagery. On this basis, I think the question most worth discussing about profundity as a critical category is: why is profundity a category of anime criticism, and why does it count in a work’s favor?

1. What You See Is Not What You Get: Layers of Meaning

Let us begin with some of the most common cases. Here, profundity refers to meaning that is obscured or hidden. Such cases are common even in our broader use of language. With literary texts, for instance, we may say that a passage expresses the author’s “inner meaning.” In art criticism, we expect the critic to “interpret” what an artwork “expresses.” In conversation, we may think someone’s words “have a deeper meaning.” Anime obscures or hides meaning chiefly through images. This is most apparent in the symbols and metaphors anime fans enjoy interpreting.¹

Not every symbol or metaphor, however, is enough to constitute the quality we call profundity. In “Friends, Let Us Clarify the Problem of Rationalization in Anime Criticism”, I noted that anime often uses symbolism or metaphor to express even the simplest plot developments. Most symbols and metaphors used to express simple events need not possess any particular depth. Consider the example I gave there: in episode 12 of The Familiar of Zero: Knight of the Twin Moons, the twin flowers wither in Louise’s hands, symbolizing Saito’s death in battle. Usually, neither this event nor its symbolism requires further interpretation. There are two reasons why we regard such symbolism as needing no interpretation: we have already reached a consensus about what “the withering of the twin flowers” means, and the symbol’s meaning is a matter of “what you see is what you get.”

These two reasons are connected in a sense. When we reach a consensus that “p symbolizes q,” and that consensus involves our cultural background, the meaning of the symbol p becomes obvious. Nevertheless, these reasons do refer to two distinct possible situations:

(A) There is no consensus on what symbol p in an anime means, but its meaning is obvious to each individual critic. A logically rigorous connection between an anime’s symbol and the meaning behind it is almost impossible. Understanding a symbol’s meaning is often a process of intuitive apprehension on the part of the person experiencing it. In this situation, critics keep attempting new interpretations and finding ways to demonstrate that theirs are better. Many anime fit this description, especially works famous enough to be repeatedly interpreted or “overinterpreted.” The best-known example is probably the Neon Genesis Evangelion series. Its works teem with religious and psychological imagery, and the story itself is considerably open-ended. It has therefore repeatedly provoked disputes among anime fans for more than twenty years. Perhaps its most frequently discussed scene is Shinji Ikari’s attempt to strangle Asuka at the end of the original series’ concluding film, The End of Evangelion. Why does Shinji try to strangle her? Why does Asuka say “How disgusting”? Is it even Asuka who says “How disgusting”? What is the deeper significance of the cross-shaped EVAs in the scene? What theme is the sequence itself trying to convey? Looking back over more than twenty years, unless we take a particularly author-centered position, we can see that interpretations of this scene are still far from any consensus. To a critic holding a particular interpretation, however, the scene’s symbolic meaning is often obvious, although developing it into a written reading requires continually digging up evidence from within and beyond the work.

(B) Another situation is also possible. We have reached a consensus about the meaning of symbol p in an anime, but that meaning is not obvious to most people. A critic’s interpretation has won most people’s assent and thus become a consensus. Such cases usually involve the context of interpretation: the historical background of the work’s setting, for instance, or the historical circumstances in which the work itself appeared. Sometimes, of course, they also involve differences in what viewers attend to. Some viewers may have studied the art of animation more closely than the ordinary viewer, enabling them to identify a symbol worth interpreting in a fleeting image. Neon Genesis Evangelion also provides examples of this situation. For most Chinese viewers before 2000, such specific social contexts as the rise of otaku culture, Japan’s bubble economy, and the Tsutomu Miyazaki case were quite unfamiliar. They could not immediately interpret the series’ themes in relation to these particular circumstances of its creation. When someone introduces these contextual factors into an interpretation of Evangelion, it is easy for that reading to gain acceptance and become a consensus among fans.

A and B are not mutually exclusive; they may even describe different levels of the same case. In A, profundity is constructed between different critics’ interpretations, and each critic’s position is equal in principle. In B, profundity is constructed within a binary structure of critic and ordinary viewer. The critic has a stronger grasp of contextual factors and a capacity for appreciation; ordinary viewers often lack comparable powers of appreciation and have not learned about the relevant context. This gives the critic’s interpretation of a symbol some degree of priority, making consensus easier to reach. Of course, the consensus in B may not exist among critics themselves. A seemingly agreed reading such as “The themes of Evangelion relate to such-and-such an aspect of 1990s Japanese society” may be contested or endorsed by other critics.

In general, the profundity attributed to anime in our critical expressions very commonly refers to layers of meaning. These layers are achieved through metaphor or symbolism: symbols and metaphors within the work obscure or hide meaning itself. Yet not every metaphor or symbol qualifies as profound. Our critical expressions often impose a further requirement: either critics find it difficult to reach a consensus on a symbol’s interpretation, or the interpretation a symbol ought to receive is not obvious to ordinary viewers, or both. At the heart of layers of meaning as a face of profundity is the interpretive richness of certain aspects of a work. In this sense, we may be unable to specify which properties necessarily make an anime’s symbols or metaphors profound. We can at least say, however, that a “dead metaphor,” whose interpretation has become fixed and rigid, necessarily cannot possess profundity.

2. What You Expect Is Not What You Find: Unusual Narrative Structures

In a few cases, the way a story is told can itself lead someone to write, “This anime has tremendous depth.” It is hard to make general statements about the stories told by works of this kind, but we have plenty of words to describe them: “mind-bending,” full of reversals, unexpected, suspenseful, and so on. For the moment, I will call this feature an unusual narrative structure. As with the profundity of layered meaning discussed above, not every unusual narrative structure produces what we ordinarily call profundity. Usually, mind-bending developments, reversals, suspense, and unexpected turns give us, at most, a sense of surprise—as in most detective or mystery anime. In a few works, however, when the anime engages with certain grand themes, the unusual structure of the story itself can exhibit profundity. I will discuss grand themes in the next section. Unusual narrative structure does indeed need to work with particular story content to display depth. Yet with themes repeatedly treated throughout anime history, straightforward narration often fails to elicit a judgment of “depth.” We therefore need to discuss unusual narrative structure separately as one face of profundity.

Few works embody profundity in this sense. But creating suspense, reversals, and mysteries is so common in anime today that we can still find positive and negative examples. One negative example may be DARLING in the FRANXX, among the most talked-about anime of the past year, 2018—perhaps the most talked-about of all. Admittedly, DitF has become something of a joke among anime fans today. Last year, however, it generated enormous discussion both of its story and of the controversies surrounding it. Aside from the real-world controversies across major video sites and social media, its abundance of mysteries and reversals was crucial to that discussion. We can still glimpse the fervent digging into details and interpretation of the story in certain “Brahmin” communities of self-appointed anime connoisseurs. Does the posture used to pilot the machines contain an accusation from a feminist perspective? What allegorical meaning lies in the contrast between the barren earth and the lush botanical garden? Do the “Papas,” an absent yet constantly invoked entity, symbolize omnipresent patriarchal repression? These ideas and imaginings, more exciting than the anime itself, amply illustrate the claim that “the appeal of an original anime lies in its unpredictability.” Yet although some viewers repeatedly invoked “Start with a bicycle; finish with a planet-destroying warship” to shore up their faith in a “god-tier episode” coming to the rescue, the anime finally arrived at a somewhat embarrassing ending, to most people’s laughter and merriment.

In all fairness, DitF is not an irredeemably awful work. At least its distinctive worldbuilding was initially engrossing, its combination of beautiful girls and giant robots had a look of its own, and certain episodes were outstanding. Nevertheless, it disappointed many viewers’ initial expectations of profundity. From the outset, DitF posed enormous mysteries that could not be ignored. More importantly, most of these mysteries themselves implied a picture of the world fundamentally at odds with common sense; some even faintly resonated with important real-world issues. Why do giant robots called Franxx require adolescent boys and girls to pilot them in such an embarrassing posture? This is fundamentally different from the “Who killed them?” mystery of many detective stories. In the latter, although we do care who the murderer is, we care more about how a brilliant process of deduction establishes that a particular person did it. In the former, the answer itself means everything. If DitF’s piloting method really does contain a latent echo of feminist thought, then at least that mystery itself brings a kind of profundity into view. As we eventually saw, however, the various mysteries and reversals in DitF failed to meet our expectations of profundity in a grand narrative.

Of course, some excellent works do exhibit the profundity that unusual narrative structures can bring out. Satoshi Kon’s films often do so. If his twenty-first-century works Millennium Actress and Paprika delve into motifs with strongly humanistic associations, Perfect Blue tells a more ordinary story of a character’s growth. Whether in rousing mainstream adventures or niche favorites steeped in otaku sensibilities, the passage from inexperience to maturity is a staple of commercial anime. We seldom claim particular profundity for a story such as “After hundreds of episodes of adventures, Naruto Uzumaki finally becomes the Seventh Hokage.” In Perfect Blue, however, a way of telling the story full of surprises makes it possible for us to say, “This anime has tremendous depth.” I am not equipped here to analyze in detail how the film acquires its depth—readers can find many thorough interpretations on anime-criticism platforms and independent channels. But I think its difference from the negative example of DitF lets us glimpse how an unusual narrative structure can indeed display a profundity worth interpreting.

In general, DitF builds numerous mysteries that seem to involve grand themes but disappoints viewers’ expectations of them. Perfect Blue, by contrast, tells a mystery story whose outline appears clear, using a dazzling array of techniques, while leaving latent logical space sufficient for viewers to analyze and interpret it. Within those spaces, readings from different angles can connect with grand themes in the real world. At first sight, it is precisely within this logical space full of possibilities that unusual narrative structure becomes one of profundity’s faces in critical expression.

3. Facing Metaphysics: Grand Themes

The third face of profundity is more obvious than the first two. In everyday conversation as in criticism of literature and art, profundity’s standard manifestation always lies in the subject itself. “Greens are up to seven yuan per half-kilo today.” For most people, the vegetable prices discussed in this sentence certainly do not qualify as profound. We would at least need “The price of greens is a knock-on effect of the international trade situation” to count as offering an insight. And if we can say “Behind fluctuations in vegetable prices lies the pervasive anxiety of modernity,” then we can label the statement thought-provoking. This somewhat tongue-in-cheek example maps neatly onto the standard form of profundity in anime. “A giant robot defeats hostile, unknown life-forms” is a story with little profundity to speak of. “The giant robot symbolizes a prehistoric civilization’s self-destruction, and the hostile, unknown life-forms are that civilization’s descendants” brings the story, at least to some extent, into a profound theme: reflection on modern civilization.

I call the subjects involved in this standard form of profundity “grand themes.” Without exception, grand themes arise from reflection on the real world. What the category includes therefore changes with its historical context, but we can still offer a few rough generalizations. At least in anime, I think grand themes share a certain distance from everyday life. They have a “metaphysical” quality in the popular sense of the word: they leave concrete situations behind to explore general humanistic concerns. Examples include freedom, emancipation, social equality, reflection on industrial civilization, relations between humanity and nature, subjectivity, alienation, the mind, and so on.² We not only acknowledge that a good treatment of these themes can enrich an anime’s cultural substance. Sometimes we even regard the courage to attempt such themes as an admirable expression of an anime creator’s artistic ambition or ability.

What grand themes encompass is, of course, as abstract as the concept itself. An anime cannot present an abstract theme as such; it must work it out through story and images. This face of profundity, I believe, needs little further description: a few widely accepted examples will suffice. Ghost in the Shell is the best example here. Anime fans often regard most works in the series as models of intellectual profundity, so much so that the live-action Ghost in the Shell film is seen as having lost almost all of the anime’s spiritual core by comparison. Take the 1995 Ghost in the Shell. Rather than the somewhat mysterious “soul” suggested by its English title, I think “mind,” a more naturalistic keyword, may better capture the grand theme the film confronts. In an age of sufficiently advanced technology, our bodies are no longer containers we cannot relinquish between birth and death; our senses no longer simply present the external world; our memories are no longer private possessions immune to editing. How, in such an age, should we understand the self as an agent? This perplexity is rooted in the excessive reverence for mind throughout the history of human thought and in anxiety about losing what makes us human. Particularly since the scientific revolution, people have often discovered that the gulf between human beings and artifacts does not seem so vast. This has prompted a search for an essence of “what makes humans human,” much as recent voices insist that computer programs can never have “genuine emotions.” Over this long history of inquiry, the conclusions have often returned to reverence for the mind. Something that seemingly can never be explained through natural mechanisms becomes the decisive distinction between humans and artifacts. The 1995 Ghost in the Shell, however, offers viewers a future that defies these wishes. On the one hand, sensation and memory, two of the most basic functions of the mind in natural human beings, can be artificially manipulated. On the other, the Puppet Master, an artifact made entirely of program code, develops a mind within its shell. All this strongly suggests the dissolution of the boundary between human beings and artifacts.

To my mind, the most intriguing detail here comes from the real world beyond the anime. Motoko’s merger with the Puppet Master seems to announce that the mind, traditionally identified with the human being itself, is moving out into the external world represented by machines. In the real world, it was not until three years after Motoko extended her mind into the network on cinema screens that Andy Clark and David Chalmers published “The Extended Mind” in 1998, one of the most influential contemporary papers in philosophy of mind. We may think commercial anime’s profundity cannot compare with a rigorously argued academic paper. Yet the imaginative treatment of the grand theme of “mind” in the 1995 Ghost in the Shell can resonate with some of the most creative academic work of the 1990s.³

An anime “deep in meaning” need not, of course, achieve the depth of engagement with academic questions. But a work confronting grand themes must offer some creative exploration of them if it is to possess a profundity worthy of praise. On the one hand, this exploration must go beyond most ordinary viewers’ views on the subject. On the other, an exploration that goes too far beyond common sense may fail to win viewers’ recognition of its depth, even if it is academically rigorous. People may even describe it in negative terms such as “feeding us shit” or “going off the rails.”

4. Adults and Children: Particular Kinds of Imagery

The last face of profundity may be the most controversial. Many experienced anime fans may deny that it is genuine profundity at all. Nevertheless, similar references seem to appear in quite a few reviews, so I still think it belongs in our discussion. This face of profundity refers to particular kinds of imagery in anime. Once such imagery appears, people tend to regard the work as profound. Because it may include many disparate subcategories, I use only the vague phrase “particular kinds” to avoid being too one-sided. Following the approach taken with the other faces, however, I will explain this kind of imagery through a fairly typical example. I call this example “adult imagery.”

Adult imagery means just what its name suggests: things in anime that are unsuitable for children to encounter. Examples include depictions of sex or nudity, excessive bloodshed and violence, inappropriate elements of horror, and so on. Anime containing adult imagery readily come to mind, and most air late at night. Examples include the endless variety of accidental exposures in the To Love Ru series, the scene in Devilman where Miki is—, and the excessively brutal deaths of various characters in Mobile Suit Victory Gundam, although this work was reportedly aimed mainly at younger viewers. Adult imagery is not limited to particular events or premises, of course. A spare, refined visual style, for example, often has little appeal for children. Things with such an art style can therefore also count as adult imagery.

Few people would agree that this adult imagery embodies any profundity in itself. In practice, though, many anime reviews praise it for expanding a work’s intellectual depth. This view is often expressed through the rhetoric of contrast: adult material is set against material for younger children. Such contrasts are especially common in criticism of Yoshiyuki Tomino’s early work. Many robot-anime fans offer tongue-in-cheek praise for the ending of Space Runaway Ideon: Be Invoked: “The ending is wonderfully heartwarming. Everyone comes to understand one another. Japanese children were moved to tears in the cinema back then.” This teasing praise clearly contrasts the ending’s brutality with the fact that the main audience was children, hinting at the anime’s adult profundity. With some live-action special-effects productions, or tokusatsu, too, older viewers are constantly critical of their orientation toward younger children. This is particularly evident in disputes over the Ultraman series. Many viewers enjoy discussing its “dark” episodes and entries, regarding these “adult” works as showing a distinctive profundity. They tend to call works with lighter, livelier stories “childish,” or even mediocre.

The difference between children’s anime and late-night anime may allow us to make an initial argument for how adult imagery can become a face of profundity. Although more and more grown-up fans today are absorbed in anime such as Pretty Cure, children’s anime still almost never includes imagery depicting gore, violence, horror, or erotic scenes. These “deep, dark, and brutal” developments, on the other hand, are a common sight across late-night anime. Whether a work is children’s anime or late-night anime admittedly has nothing to do with whether it is good. Behind this general distinction, however, lies a presupposition: explicit gore, violence, horror, and erotic scenes are unsuitable for children. They are the preserve of adults—or at least of adolescents and older viewers. This presupposition, in turn, comes from an idea deeply rooted in common sense: we must not expose children to explicit gore, violence, and the like because their intellectual development is less complete than adults’, leaving them susceptible to harmful effects. For our subject of profundity, the key is this idea’s commitment to a sharp intellectual boundary between adults and children. If we really accept that adults generally have a higher level of intellectual development than children, then a general difference in profundity between children’s and late-night anime is also possible. I would formulate this argument, which is not formally rigorous, as follows:

• (1) Understanding profound content in anime requires sufficient intellectual development.

• (2) Children lack sufficient intellectual development; adults possess it.

• (3) Children are the main audience for children’s anime, so its content should be suited to their level of intellectual development.

• (4) From (1) and (2), it follows that children cannot understand profound content in anime.

• (5) From (3) and (4), it follows that children’s anime should not contain profound content.

If we assume that most producers of children’s anime follow the requirement in (5), then children’s anime can indeed be equated with an absence of profundity. By the same reasoning, late-night anime, whose main audience is adults, can possess profundity. This conclusion shows us that adult imagery’s becoming a face of profundity actually comes from a simple inductive inference. Adult imagery involving gore, violence, eroticism, and horror is the most conspicuous difference between children’s anime and late-night anime. Since late-night anime generally possesses a profundity that children’s anime cannot, that profundity must naturally come from the adult imagery.⁴

The argument above is, of course, only a conjecture about why adult imagery is a face of profundity. In practice, rather than consciously performing this induction, people simply treat adult imagery as a sign of profundity. They thereby draw a boundary between adults and children—or “us” and “them”—that appears to confer superiority in criticism.

5. A Digression: This Article’s Defense of Itself

The article has now explained four faces of profundity in detail. This may leave readers with some misunderstandings, so before going further, I think a brief defense on several key points is necessary.

The first question is: what is “the many faces of profundity” actually discussing? Readers must recognize that nothing above has addressed the question “What should profundity really be?” All my discussion concerns this question: in the most ordinary, everyday, non-specialist anime criticism on the Chinese-language internet, what aspects of a work do critical categories such as profundity actually refer to? The former question concerns how to guide our correct use of a critical category such as profundity—if the use of words can indeed be right or wrong. The latter merely concerns surveying and classifying the category as it occurs in actual criticism, adding, at most, some answers to the secondary question “How can this face count as a kind of profundity?” In discussing the latter question, I have made no attempt to offer advice on how we should use profundity as a critical category.

The second question is: is this classification of profundity into four faces itself reliable? Judged by certain necessary logical requirements, I do not think it is. A sound classification requires its subcategories to be mutually exclusive, whereas mine plainly may overlap. It should also exhaust its parent category, whereas mine clearly does not exhaust every use of the critical category of profundity. In this sense, I suggest that readers regard the four faces as follows: each is a family of instances organized around representative examples, with family resemblances between its members. This approach has another advantage: it lets us analyze structural connections among the four faces. Layers of meaning, for instance, make it possible for deeper meanings to be obscured, allowing profundity to emerge. Unusual narrative structures often hide the truth by disrupting a story’s continuity in time and space, and thus also obscure meaning.

The third question is: is it appropriate to analyze anime criticism about profundity without first discriminating among its examples? Some may argue that most anime criticism in online communities is “low-quality” and not worth further examination. It would therefore be inappropriate, as a method, to derive four faces of profundity from ordinary criticism indiscriminately. My defense against this objection is that, at least where profundity as a critical category is concerned, I am not sure there is a distinction between “good criticism” and “bad criticism.” The only question I discuss here is which aspects of anime we refer to when we use phrases such as “deep in meaning.” That question itself has no normative dimension. Only after determining exactly what “deep in meaning” means can we see whether a review has aptly explained, in its various aspects, how an anime fits the phrase—and thus distinguish a “good review” from a “bad review.” Clearly, I have not tried to fix the specific meaning of profundity as a critical category here. So even a seemingly ridiculous comment such as “I’ll say it again: shut up, you elementary-school kids. Don’t argue with me unless you’ve watched Tokyo Ghoul ten times. Can you even feel Kaneki’s pain?” is something I will try, as far as possible, to include in the inquiry.

6. Conclusion: The Mystery of Profundity

At its core, this article has merely collected and organized critical writing about profundity and presented it to readers. It has offered almost no illuminating insights into the category itself. To my mind, what profundity as a critical category actually means, and what it ought to mean, are not particularly difficult questions. The former requires more refined examination and analysis of texts; the latter requires only a consensus within a community. This does not mean, however, that no peaks worth conquering remain before us. To end the article, I will use the somewhat attention-grabbing phrase “the mystery of profundity” to raise a key question that might illuminate the subject.

My question is: why is profundity a critical category at all, let alone one that counts in a work’s favor? The question itself is somewhat puzzling. Let me clarify it this way. Take the confrontation with grand themes: the great majority of anime treat these themes with far less depth than academic research into them. If we think the pursuit of profundity in anime deserves praise, why do we not simply read scholarly works? If we think anime, through its art of light and shadow, displays an appeal unavailable to academic research, then why is profundity itself worth pursuing? Or, put another way, is the “profundity” we praise in anime genuine insight into particular themes, or merely a kind of self-satisfaction associated with profundity? Or again, do we as viewers regard profound anime as a purely artistic game, or as works informed by a concern for the real world?

I have no settled views on these questions yet. The outline of an answer does, however, seem to be gradually emerging: we should ask what fictional works of anime themselves mean to us. Whether profundity is a critical category worth pursuing depends, to a great extent, on our relationship with fictional worlds.