Akebi-chan no Sailor Fuku - Vol. 8 Ch. 47 - I Know What it Means

[RNDM1]

@SuperOniichan Literally look it up. It's... not exactly an obscure expression.

 

[SuperOniichan]

@RNDM1 I still don't quite understand what you want to say

 

[RNDM1]

@SuperOniichan That's literally your personal problem.

 

[SuperOniichan]

@RNDM1 I like how salty you are instead of explaining or just saying "try to figure it out for yourself."

 

[RNDM1]

@SuperOniichan Because if you can't you literally aren't worth conversing with.

Rest assured I have much better things to do with my time than explaining the painfully obvious to the dull-minded.

 

[SuperOniichan]

@RNDM1 You continue to being salty for no reason. If you think that it has some kind of romantic sign, then firstly, this is not a tie, but a ribbon (which has its own meaning in Japanese fiction) and even isn't gift. And secondly, a tie is given to men in western cultures and this does not necessarily have a romantic or sexual connotation.

 

[Kafka]

@RNDM1 & @SuperOniichan you two stopped talking about the manga and started this slapfight between yourselves. Stop or else :T
I'll moderate the unrelated comments to the manga discussion, if you wanna continue you're free to do so on the general forums, DM's or somewhere else that it's not this chapter thread.
Danke,

 

[SveNo]

@RNDM1 ?

@Candymon In this case, there is a reference to an old Japanese ribbon tie / amendment meme that appeared in MariMitte and has since been often used for "female super duper friendship" vibes.

In western parlance, "tying the knot" is a metaphor for getting married.

 

[SuperOniichan]

In western parlance, "tying the knot" is a metaphor for getting married.

In Western. But in Japanese pop culture, this is a meme that dates back to the old MariMite scene of onee-sama tying her kohai's tie, which has been quoted for years in various media related to Catholic girls' schools. It may also carry homoerotic overtones like much of Class S, but trying to replace Japanese symbolism with Western one is just as rude and culturally insensitive as trying to see LGBTQ intent in any use of rainbow in anime or manga.

 

[SveNo]

In Western. But in Japanese pop culture, this is a meme that dates back to the old MariMite scene of onee-sama tying her kohai's tie, which has been quoted for years in various media related to Catholic girls' schools. It may also carry homoerotic overtones like much of Class S, but trying to replace Japanese symbolism with Western one is just as rude and culturally insensitive as trying to see LGBTQ intent in any use of rainbow in anime or manga.

I am not familiar with "MariMite" so did not make that connection when I read this chapter. And I do not think RNDM1 was trying to replace symbolism as much as simply making a silly pun.

If my search was correct MariMite was published in 2003, or just over 20 years ago. I don't consider that old, especially in a symbolism context, but that may be a reflection of my own age more than the manga's. Certainly the expression Tying the knot is much, much older than that. Anyway that meme doesn't seem to be widespread, so labeling missing the implication culturally insensitive is somewhat of an overstatement IMO.

 

[SuperOniichan]

I am not familiar with "MariMite" so did not make that connection when I read this chapter. And I do not think RNDM1 was trying to replace symbolism as much as simply making a silly pun.

If my search was correct MariMite was published in 2003, or just over 20 years ago. I don't consider that old, especially in a symbolism context, but that may be a reflection of my own age more than the manga's. Certainly the expression Tying the knot is much, much older than that. Anyway that meme doesn't seem to be widespread, so labeling missing the implication culturally insensitive is somewhat of an overstatement IMO.

Again, it's not about age, but about different cultures and attempts to see Western symbolism in Asian media. Even if we close our eyes to the fact that this is a fairly well-known cliché for those who are immersed in animemanga (for example, one anime this season already used a parody of this as a demonstration of the MC's adoration for all that fluffy wholesome girl x girl interaction), not to mention all-female and yuri bait/yuri, it would be strange to expect that Japanese media will play on Western metaphors. When people mistakenly tried to see the lesbian triangle in Liz and the Blue Bird it made much more sense, since unlike Western puns, LGBTQ terminology and symbolism is largely international.

This is why I call culturally insensitive, because people don't even think about the fact that foreign media may not share Western cultural clichés. But not to be hypocritical, if in English this term is quite serious and I unknowingly accused someone of racism or something like that, then I apologize. My implication was that this was a cultural mistake and not the result of offensive intent.

 

[SveNo]

I have to go AFK now, I have an evening class coming up, but I would very much like to continue this discussion if it is OK with you. It is so seldom a well reasoned exchange of wiewpoints come up in such a forum as this.