Tokihiro Uno, Imagination in the Zero-Zeros, Chapter 1: The Raising of the Problem – From the Nineties to the Zeros / The Other Side of the "Lost Decade" Chapter 1 The Raising of the Question – From the Nineties to the Zeros / The Other Side of the Lost Decade

Translator's Foreword: Halfway through the translation, I learned that there was a traditional version of the first three chapters of the translation (master's thesis), "Uno Tokihiro's "Imagination of the Zero Years" translation plan", but after careful reading and comparison, we believe that some of the translations are debatable, we will continue to carry out our own translations, but from chapter 1, section 5 to chapter 3, we will make more references to the traditional translation, and I would like to thank the translator of this version, Li Huifen.

Translator: Phaedo, Chai Lairen

Proofreader: Man Gillan

Rooftop Japanese Corner provides proofreading collaboration help, welcome to join rooftop Japanese corner for volunteer translation!

<h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > chapter 1</h1>

< h1 toutiao-origin="h2" > the question raised – from the nineties to the zeros/the other side of the "lost decade"</h1>

In the middle of notepad, draw a dividing line

I would like to think again about the story (Monogatari).

That's because to think about stories is to think about how each of us relates to the world.

This book focuses on the 00s, that is, the domestic culture of Japan from 2000 to 2008, especially the stories of novels, movies, manga, TV series, animation, etc., and traces the changes in its imagination.

The fabric of the world in which we live has changed over the course of a decade. The spread of the Internet and mobile phones, the fluidization of the labor market symbolized by the structural reforms carried out by junichiro Koizumi's cabinet, the suburbanization of local cities symbolized by large shopping malls, and the globalization that underpinned these, the united States, which has been responsible for the "environment" of the world today (the "environment" of the world since the "911 Incident and the Koizumi Reform" in 2001, have had a huge impact on our worldview and our imagination of nurturing new stories.

Through thinking about "stories", we can think about the changes in the world and its new structure at the same time, and in turn, the exploration of the structure and changes of the world can also lead to the charm of the various stories that arise from them. In other words, we may be able to get a clue to the question of "how to live and why to die in this era". We can gain a lot of inspiration by combining stories and the world and engaging in a reciprocating movement of thinking.

Unfortunately, there is little cultural criticism in Japan that is commensurate with the changes in the world since the new century (since 2001). Those who are now called critics have not been able to keep up with the changes of the new century, and are still confined to the framework of more than a decade ago, invisibly erasing the changes of the times. It can be said that the "criticism" in Japan in the past decade has not been renewed and has not been renewed, and has not been placed in place without any progress.

I would like to explain directly the purpose of writing this book. The first is to destroy the ghosts of the nineties and make them quickly withdraw from the scene, so as to truly face the "present" of the zero and zero, and finally to think about the imagination of the coming 10s.

Today, the approach of criticism has long been abandoned. It is not surprising that most of the "criticisms" or "commentaries" in Japan today are violent people of all kinds, who are insensitive to the changes of the times and have a dull sense of smell. They talk about part of the imagination of the domestic culture of a decade ago and bring it up as something cutting-edge. And the criticism that really faces reality is far behind in both time and space.

But criticism still has its role. As long as man is an animal capable of thinking, criticism as a prop of thought will not lose its possibility. If the criticism is not taken seriously, it is only because the prop is poor in performance and level of its makers. One of the purposes of this book is to explore the possibilities of criticism. Well, bring it up!

I was ready to draw a line in the center of the notepad, as Haruki Murakami had done. The right side will line up the things of the past that will be buried correctly, while the left side will depict the new things that run alongside them and eventually complete the transcendence.

Buried on the right is the "imagination of the past", which dominated the Japanese cultural space from 1995 to 2001, while on the left is the "modern imagination" that began to sprout from 2001 until it grew into a symbol of the present era.

To be clear, I am not drawing a line to affirm the latter and deny the former. The times are indeed moving towards the latter. Today, even as the zero-zeros draw to a close, lazy critics are content to critique the "imagination of the past," and the lines I have drawn are meant to catch up with the reality of our lives. Moreover, the latter is not a negation of the former, but rather an imagination introduced by the former as a premise. It was the reflection on the "imagination of the past" of the 1990s that developed into the "modern imagination" of the 1900s. Now is the time to test the "modern imagination" and explore its possibilities.

In this way, I will simply record the migration process from the "imagination of the past" written on the right side of the note that should be buried to the "imagination of the modern" on the left.

1995 "The Imagination of the Past"

The world has undergone drastic changes in these decades.

Since the 1970s, Japan has experienced a process that can be summarized as a consumer society and the social mobility that accompanies it. In the process, the "grand narrative" as the prescriber of values loses its role (i.e., the progression of the postmodern situation). The "grand narrative" refers to the traditional and national-state ideology called post-war democracy, or the Marxist value system that rooted the life of the individual in history. As I ponder the past forty years of Japanese society, it can also be summed up as the process of moving forward in a world in which there are objects but no narratives and stories (the meaning of existence and the value to be believed in).

To give an example, forty years ago, in the late 1960s, until the end of the "season of politics," society was arguably "narratives and stories even without objects" compared to modern times. Although materially poor and socially unfree, the society itself is more orderly (order づけ得る), the "grand narrative" is more functional than it is now, and the discussion of "the meaning of existence" or "trustworthy values" is easier.

From "a society that is not free but warm (easy to understand)" to "a society that is free but indifferent (incomprehensible)"—society begins to change step by step in this direction. That is to say, as the price of freedom and affluence in consumer society, the circuits that have been given to people to narrate and stories have collapsed and become unreliable. The most accelerated period since the 1970s was around 1995.

This "around 1995" change has two implications. That is, the problem of "politics" (the perpetuation of the Heisei Depression) and the problem of "literature" (the mobility of society symbolized by the Sarin Incident on the Tokyo Subway). [Translator's note: It means that literature and writers have to face the trauma of the Tokyo subway Sarin incident]

The former refers to the dissolution of the so-called "Heisei Depression", which began with the collapse of the bubble economy, during this period – meaning the disillusionment of the economic growth myth that underpinned the postwar Japanese social space. This also means that Japanese society, which believes that "if you work hard, you will become rich", has begun to fall into the situation of "even if you work hard, you will not be rich".

This emblematic event of social unrest was the Tokyo Subway Sarin Incident, triggered by Aum Shinrikyo in 1995. The fact that the suspicious transcendence symbolized by Lord Shiva, the god of the Order—the intolerable "free but indifferent (incomprehensible) society" of young people attracted and attacked—became a landmark event that spread in Japanese society at the time and that society could not give "meaning" and "value." What can be seen from this is that Japanese society, which believes that "if you work hard, you can find the meaning of survival", has begun to slide into the world of "even if you work hard, you can't find the value of survival".

As a result, the second half of the 1990s became the era of the lowest level of reliance on social self-actualization in postwar Japan's history.

As a result of the dramatic decline in the number of people who believe in social self-actualization, people no longer associate "do something" or "do something" ("~する", "~した") things (behaviors) to self-identity, and "as what" or "not to do something" ("~である", "~でははない") things (states) to self-identity – this way of thinking has gained dominance. In this way, people no longer pursue self-actualization and its results, but instead pursue the recognition of self-image = role. In the face of the problem, it is not "to change the situation through one's own actions", but to solve the problem by "considering how to make yourself accept the reason for (this situation, Nade させる)".

I use the term "imagination of the past" to refer to the imagination of the Japanese imagination, which is set against the backdrop of Japan's low trust in social self-realization in the second half of the 1990s.

This representative work of "imagination of the past" is the TV animation Evangelion, which was screened between 1995 and 1996.

This masterpiece by animation writer Hideaki Anno not only decisively influenced the cultural landscape in the second half of the 1990s, but also became the beginning of the third wave of animation in the following years.

Let's briefly introduce this work. The protagonist of the work is an ordinary teenager named Masayoshi Tsurugi, who is one day summoned by an organization in which his father is the commander to serve as the pilot of the huge humanoid weapon "Evangelion" developed by the organization to fight against the mysterious enemy "Apostle" who is trying to destroy humanity. Like previous radish animations, "Driving Robots" (ロボットに乗って活躍すること) is recognized by society symbolized by the image of a father, alluding to "growing up through social self-realization".

But the story didn't go on like that. In the second half, Shinji begins to refuse to drive Evangelion, autistic back to his inner face (heart), no longer pursuing social self-actualization, but pursuing the existence of being able to unconditionally acknowledge his self-image. Here, he abandons the social self-actualization of "do something/do something" and instead explicitly chooses the self-identity established on the basis of the recognition of the self-image (role) of "doing something/not doing anything".

As a result, Shinji's state of mind of "squatting at home" (引きこもり) = the desire to be recognized no longer based on social self-actualization became the spokesperson for the Japanese social atmosphere in the second half of the 1990s, supported by many consumers. This work also decisively influenced Japanese culture in the 1990s.

In EVA, it also depicts an opaque world in which "no one knows what is right and no one knows how to tell", in which if you associate with others and act in a certain identity (何かを成そうとすれば), you will definitely make mistakes, stab others, and stab yourself. The depiction of this despair is also very important.

In this game, Shinji pilots Evangelion on the orders of the commander's father (Society), resulting in the disability of not only his friends, but also the killing of the like-minded enemy teenagers. And his father's organization itself, with its religious background reminiscent of Aumism, is depicted as a kind of opaque thing that appears suddenly and completely unaware of the whole picture.

That is to say, in this worldview, the presupposition (symbolized by the father) society itself is opaque and fanatical "wrong" existence, and obedience to it is bound to stab anyone, just as the "wrong (intermediary) father" of the helpless young man exerts the function of directing believers to carry out terrorist activities. In this way, the work promotes a denial of theological ethics, that is, since "if you make a choice (if you engage in social activity) you will definitely hurt anyone", then "choose nothing (out of society) to do autistic squatting" or "do nothing".

The low level of trust in social self-actualization that exists here = the infiltration of the worldview of "even if you try, it doesn't make sense" has further developed into a more reinforcing worldview of dislike of social self-actualization = "Who will be hurt if you try".

EVA is a symbol of "past imagination" in every sense, including its low trust in social self-actualization, a psychological outlook on life, and an ethic of "don't do it." This work brings together the cultural context of the otaku animation culture in Japan that has developed independently since the late 1970s and the cultural context of the aforementioned nature of the 1990s, and has become a masterpiece of symbolizing the era, and at the same time, it has largely defined (guided) the story culture after the Japanese nation. The tendency to "squat at home with autism", and the ethics of "not doing..." derived from this, are two of the characteristics of what I call "past imagination". The "squat/psychologicalism" represented by EVA is also widely shared by other stories from that era, the second half of the 1990s.

The popularity of psychological suspense novels in the United States, and the trend of vulgar psychology that functioned as a background for them, from the 1980s onwards, further overheated at this time. His works include a series of television dramas by Shinji Nojima and the (later) "Fantasy Winter Literature" represented by Ryu Murakami, Yami Sakurai, and Taguchi. There is also The lyrical worldview of Hamasaki, which Shinji Miyadai evaluates as an "AC(adult children) system"—among these worldviews that represent the japanese works of the second half of the 1990s, these stories, like Evangelion, have nothing to do with social self-realization such as "do something/do something", but revolve around the recognition of the self-image of "doing something/not doing anything".

The infiltration of the worldview of low trust in social self-actualization = "Even if you work hard, there is no meaning in the world" has led to the decline of the growth story that includes the upbringing novel and the story of social change, and instead, writers and consumers are more willing to choose to pursue self-image - "true self" and "past trauma" - the confession of the inner \ spiritual aspect of the story.

"Modern Imagination" in 2001

However, around 2001, this "autistic squatting/psychological" model began to gradually dissolve. To put it simply, the events of 9/11 in the United States, the series of neoliberal "structural reforms" in the cabinet with Junichiro Koizumi as Prime Minister, and the consequent infiltration of the consciousness of "grid society" made it possible to "squat at home" as in the second half of the 1990s, and a certain feeling similar to "sense of survival" (サヴァァイヴ) spread widely through society.

As far as the structure of the world and society is concerned, that is, the "political" aspect, in Japanese society since the Koizumi structural reform, there is still the belief that "the world is opaque and wrong, so let's do nothing and squat at home!" "Such an idea cannot survive." The current Japanese secular theory holds that the failure to become a loser in a society of grid difference is entirely due to the choices they make and their own responsibilities.

Moreover, this "game" is something that we cannot escape from living in the modern age, that is, there is no choice to "not participate". As long as we live in a world of capitalist economic and legal systems, we are already in this game at the moment of birth.

Even in the question of the individual's way of being, i.e., "literature", such as the refusal to social self-actualize, the seeming "nothing to ask for", the pursuit of an unconditional acknowledgment of one's existence, such an attitude that "if one chooses one is bound to make a mistake, then one chooses nothing" does not actually hold up.

Around 2001, the structure of what can be said to be essential in the postmodern situation, which was hidden in the 1990s by the impact of invalidating the system of the past, was finally exposed. The essence of this is that in the face of "small narratives" (which are essentially unfounded) that cannot take root in the "big narrative" of history or the state, people can only choose them as their core values, and thus bear their own responsibilities.

This imagination that produces a "sense of survival" is the "modern imagination" that I write on the left side of my notebook. The line I led began in 2001.

For example, Hiroharu Takami's 1999 novel Battle Royale can be said to be a precursor to this "zero-zero" model. In the novel, a class at a high school suddenly begins to "kill each other" one day at the request of the government, and this shocking unfolding can be said to have foreshadowed the "atmosphere" of the new era in advance. （？ This work, like EVA, depicts, to an opaque, untrustworthy society. Still, if in Battle Royale, you're bothered by "don't do anything because the world itself is wrong" and "don't think about making a difference, just seek an understanding of your self-image." "If you think like this, the result will undoubtedly only be killed immediately." Young people in the 1995s were able to resonate widely with Makoto, and by the 00s, young people were already thinking differently. This is because you cannot survive (without changing your mind). In this way, from this period onwards, society's existence as "nothing will be done for you" is gradually rationalized and accepted as a premise. In this premise, stories and the imagination they contain began to revolve around the question of "how to survive."

In this way, if you squat at home with "Autism, you will be killed, so try to survive on your own!" Such works of a certain "sense of survival" with a certain "determinational" tendency became a major trend in the first half and middle of the 000s. Examples include the follow-up to Battle Royale, Yusuke Yamada's game of Real Devil (2001), which also depicts the protagonist's involvement in a ridiculous survival game, Kamen Rider Dragon Rider (2002), 13 Kamen Rider battle royale games, the teachers and students of Miyo High School who were shocked by their special learning methods and decisive outlook on life, and the manga "Dragon Sakura" (2003) by Noriko Mita, who began to target the University of Tokyo "in order to survive". Although it belongs to the ERO game, it has gained record popularity to the point of being ported to PCs and home consoles and being popular with young people (?). The fanatical support of Fate/Stay Night (2004) and the high-rated TV series "Queen's Classroom" (2005), which ironically directed the decisive outlook on life in Dragon Sakura, are representative of the popular works of the times. Although it had a great influence on the surrounding culture and subsequent works, it was largely unnoticed by critics.

In the literary and artistic world, this "sense of survival" was also enthusiastically sought after by the young sensibilities of teenagers during this period. For example, Shirayo Iwan's work "Wild Boar Makeover" (2004), which has been adapted into a TV series, and the group of works influenced by Lisa Toyama's "Back of wanting to Kick" (2003 Wasagawa Prize-winning work), both choose students as protagonists, and use the narrow interpersonal relationships of their classes as themes.

If there is a common denominator in the worldview of these works, it is the "sense of survival" that is widely shared in the classroom, a space full of harsh self-consciousness struggles. The same feeling exists in light novels. A series of works such as Kazuki Sakuraba's "Presumptive Girl" and "Candy Bullet", which have attracted attention since 2005, and one of the debut works of a ki ra, which also won three light novel newcomer awards in 2005, have the same theme.

This imagination characterized by a culture of survival in the first half of the 1900s was actually an acceptance of the "social opacity" feared by the "autistic squatting" mentality of the 1990s. In the post-9/11 pig-like society, the positive idea of "survive on your own" in such a "battle royale" environment began to spread. Thus, the childish nineties-style attitude of "squatting at home" in pursuit of the recognition of "one's own love" has been completely absorbed (織り込みみみ) and overcome by reaching out to the other.

These nineties ideas of "society is wrong so don't participate" and "participating in the wrong society will hurt others so don't do anything" = The world-weary and powerless view of the "imagination of the past" has been absorbed and processed as a "premise" by the "modern imagination" that has emerged since 2001 and overcome.

The world naturally does not show "right values" or "meaning of existence" = "premise", because because this "premise" is depressed and autistic and squatting in the house cannot survive - so the "modern imagination" is the attitude of choosing to think and act on its own in order to survive. Even if you "make a mistake" or "stab someone else", you must choose a certain position of your own - here, absorb what is ultimately unfounded, and choose a specific value on top of it "deliberately "あえて") - this is the decision to do.

Zhen Si could not stop the Night God Moon

If the work that can embody the "imagination of the past" of the 1990s is "EVA", what is the work that embodies the imagination of the 000s symbolized by the survival system?

Here, considering both the influence and the content of the work, it should be counted as the manga "Death Note" (2003-2006) by Obata's original work and Ken Obata' drawing. Death Note has a small number of volumes up to the end, because it is older for readers, and on the surface, its number of distributions (sales) is not too large, but considering the rate of increase in circulation and the influence of Media Mix on "people who generally don't read comics, it can be said that it occupies the position of "Evangelion of the Zero-Zero Era".

A brief introduction to the contents of Death Note. The protagonist is called Night God Moon and is a student. One day I picked up the "Death Note" that Death had dropped. After obtaining the "Death Note" whose name would kill him, the Night God Moon began to use it to punish vicious criminals all over the world and become the "God of the New World". Mercilessly killing those who hinder him (even those who are innocent), Moon realizes his ambition step by step, until the famous detective "L" appears with the same brilliant mind and decisive worldview. The story then begins with the showdown between Moon and L, and begins with a battle royale that includes other people who hold Death Notes that appear later.

The Night God Moon, like Zhensi, is even more distrustful of "society" than Zhenji. During the battle, Masayoshi gradually develops a sense of distrust of society (father) and confronts him with a self-enclosed posture. From the prologue of the story of ordinary high school life, The Night God Moon has completely distrusted the existing society, and even dismissed her father, who is a high-ranking police officer. Only as a teenager, Moon began to consider a concrete plan for social reform after gaining power, and after receiving the Death Note, this plan began to "advance and expand". If Makoto was affected by the collapse of the past society and began to close himself off, the Night God Moon accepted the collapse of the existing rules of society as a "natural situation" and was ready to reconstruct it with his own strength. This is also why this work is the embodiment of the "sense of survival" of the zero and the "sense of survival" that arose in the face of this "sense of survival".

In this sense, Death Note, which belongs to the Evil Party Romance (ピカレスク・ロマン), is an excellent story about the perception of reality. Don't get me wrong, Death Note is by no means an affirmation of the Night God's moon-like ideas, nor does it let go of its self-conscious decision-making stance. In the play, he sometimes portrays the Night God Moon as a hero, and sometimes ironically describes his delusions. A large number of characters have proposed their own ethical views, none of which occupy a privileged position in the play, and whose legitimacy can only be justified by political triumphs, and which are only "small narratives" in this way. Determinationism is a subject from which we cannot escape (for example, there are some people in reality who support the violence of the Night God and Moon and believe that his thinking has its correctness), how to think about this subject, how to face it - this is the theme of this work.

Similarly, the situation of "society (adults, fathers) is not doing well enough, does not provide us with the meaning of existence, and does not teach us what is right (rules)" = the imminent "radical postmodern situation that Japan finally entered in the second half of the nineties", the correspondence between these two works is also the contrast between "negative face, self-isolation" and "acceptance of reality, action". Of course, as the trend of the times changes, the latter will become more and more conscious. Then in the zero-zero era, the imagination of the latter is also supported by many young people.

This contrast between the "autistic squatting" of the nineties and the "determinationism" of the 00s can be found in the magazine Weekly Shonen Jump, which serialized Death Note. Yoshihiro Fuken's "White Book" serialized in "Jump" from 1990 to 1994 can be said to be the best embodiment of his "past imagination" in the 1990s. Simply put, Youyou White Book is the destroyer of the tournament system (トーナメントバトル・シスステム) that underpinned Jump in the 1980s. In the White Book of Youyou, strong enemies continue to appear and are defeated by the protagonist one by one (インフレな) performance technique (ドラマツルギー) until the novella is still used. But in the second half of the story, the author suddenly begins to act as if he were criticizing the tournament system, until the martial arts conference that has been going on in the play is skipped and a rather grudging ending is inserted. This approach to the end of "White Book" seems to foresee consumers' tiredness with the "jump"-style tournament system, and the resulting "cold winter season" when Jump magazine was suppressed by competitors in the 1990s.

Ten years after the release of The White Book of Youyou, which is the "rule breaker", the phenomenon of Death Note, which can be called the "re-constructor of rules", as the "facade" of Jump magazine, which has once again become the hegemon of juvenile magazines, can be said to symbolize the changes that have taken place in this decade.

As mentioned above, the possibility of the idea of "squatting at home" in the nineties is probably a wonderful, in the form of "do not do...", which in some sense denies theological morality (モラル). In a postmodern situation where it is not clear what is right, if something is done, it is inevitable to "get something wrong" and "stab someone else."

So sometimes the morality of "do nothing" or the attitude of "doing nothing" is also a choice, and the way of hesitation, confusion, and stagnation in thinking works—so Makoto Tsuneyoshi refuses to open EVA, Kobayashi rejects EVA, Kobayashi rejects the volunteer exchange that has been supported at that time, and criticizes this volunteer exchange that is bound by simple and simplistic left-wing justice. Like the TV version of EVA, Kobayashi's "New Populist Manifesto SCIC", which was published in 1995, can also be said to be an excellent variant of the "autism at home" matter at that time, that is, the "reality" of 1995.

However, Kobayashi's "morality" of "On War" showed a rightward trend, and the movement that absorbed the flow of cultural studies in the left camp also moved closer to the same determinationism as the right-wing–in such a zero-zero era today, can the "morality" of the "No. Rather than do it and then do it wrong, do nothing" stop the Night God Moon-style decisionism?

The author dares to assert that this is not possible in principle. For, as we have seen, the decisionism of the 00s was conceived as the result of the introspection of the autistic squatting in the nineties. Consumers of The Night God Moon and its active works will scoff at the old generations wielding the rusty imagination of a decade ago. "Say such stupid and sweet innocent words, you can't survive!" So they are actively taking on the sin of hurting others while stepping forward.

Yes, the problem has moved on to the next stage. Zhen Si could not stop the Night God Moon. For Masayoshi's choice of "instead of doing it and then doing something wrong, it is better to do nothing" is only a function of the decision of a fool who has no conscious awareness of the existence of the game. Instead of returning to the Makoto = retreating to the nineties, overcoming the determinationism of the zero zeros = stopping the Night God Moon, how can this be done? This is the problem we must solve in the face of the unavoidable difficulty of decisionism, the mobilization game since 9/11 = the zero-odds of battle royale.

However, the criticism that can answer this question has not yet existed——。 This is because the most influential critic of the 1000s, especially in the second half of the past five years, Higashi Hiroki, and his commentators under his influence, have not been conscious of this change and have ignored the past.

World System – "The Undead of the Nineties"

Japan's consumer society in the first half of the 1980s gave a turning point for criticism in Japan.

In the form of the new wave of humanity and the new student school, it has been a critical discourse centered on high culture, and it has also affected the subculture centered on the culture of young people. The criticism of what Japanese writer Osamu Hashimoto called "security in the 1980s" of a certain multicultural nature—from the second half of the 1980s to the first half of the 1990s, the activities of writers such as Tsunaki Asaba, centered on "Treasure Island," the new human generations of Shinji Miyadai and Hideshi Otsuka in the 1990s, or the activities of subsequent generations such as Tetsuya Miyazaki, Hiroyuki Yamagata, and Seiichiro Minoru Inaba—took on the heavy responsibility of criticizing this type. The speeches of these people have made it possible to accurately capture the changes of the times by connecting the critical speeches of the past centered on high culture with the subculture, expanding the horizons of criticism.

However, these subcultural criticisms have stalled for a long time. That's because after The Higashi Hiroki who entered the circle in the late 1990s, there were no new whole people to be amazed. The criticisms that unfolded from the late 1990s to the first half of the 1900s, carried out by Higashi Hiroki, did produce leaps and bounds. However, on the other hand, Higashi Hiroki's vision focused on the otaku culture of the second half of the 1990s and the various cultures under its influence, and the vision of subcultural criticism was greatly limited.

As a result, the emergence of a new imagination for the Zero Zero, symbolized by the survival system, was almost ignored even in 2008, when the Zero Zero itself was about to end. In particular, important writers such as Miyato Kankuro and Kisaizumi say that most of the TV dramas that were born out of their birth have been erased, which shows that the criticism of the zero-zero era was seriously abandoned in the desert of this era and ignored. Needless to say, the imagination of ordinary literature, film, or television drama, and even the changes in otaku culture in the relatively large areas of Concern of Higashi Hiroki, have been erased to a considerable extent.

For example, in the 1900s, the work of anime writer Gokuro Taniguchi, who drew the imagination of the survival system to the world of television animation with works such as Infinite Unknown (1999) and Rebel Luluxiu (2007), was basically equal to non-existence.

As a result, critical rhetoric in Japan ignored the decisive changes that unfolded outside of Higashi Hiroki's vision, losing not only the breadth of criticism but also its freshness.

One of the purposes of this book is to restore the "breadth" and "freshness" of criticism that was lost because of the Higashi Hiroki, no, correctly speaking, because there were no new critics except for the Higashi Hiroki.

For readers who have criticized in the past, especially for Higashi Hiroki, I have sorted out the distinction between the "second half of the 1990s" and the "first half of the 1900s" in this paper, and I guess many people feel a sense of violation.

For example, Yuya Satomoto, who attracted attention for his depiction of the emotional entanglements of "autistic" youth, yuya Sato, who was obsessed with describing the problem of self-consciousness surrounding the recognition of desire in the second half of the 1990s, and their active Kodansha novel "Faust", was launched around 2003, and according to the above classification, the imagination of the nineties = "autistic squatting/psychologicalism" became a flower in the first half of the 1900s. Readers who have become thinking stopped under the influence of Higashi Hiroki probably think like this.

However, my argument is here. In conclusion, the first half of the 1900s and eras have shifted from "autism" to "determinationism", but despite this, in the critical circles, except for Higashi Hiroki, no other introducer can explore the story imagination in the subculture for young people, so the criticism community has been unable to keep up with the paradigm shift.

So, what is the modern imagination exalted by Higashi Hiroki and his degenerate imitators? That's the so-called post-· EVA Syndrome = "World System" refers to a series of works created under the influence of EVA.

What is a "World System"? According to Higashi Hiroki's book The Birth of Playful Realism: Animalized Postmodernity 2 (2007), "the small emotional human relationship between the protagonist and the object of love (you and me), which is not embedded in society and the middle layer, but directly connected to such a large-scale existential story as the 'world crisis' and 'the end of this world'", representative works include Makoto Shinkai's short animation "Voice of the Stars" (2002) and Takahashi's manga "The Final Weapon Girl" (2000-2001).

We live in a world where symbolism is lost, a sense of solid reality is lost, and hypocrisy is rife with things. It feels like a loop game if it's represented by structure, and a world system if it's represented by a story. - "The Tipping Point of The Pretty Girl Game +1" (2004), Higashi Hiroki, "The Intersection of the Pretty Girl Game and the World System"

Otaku men, who were in their early 20s and early 30s at the time, were fascinated by the beautiful girl game (GAL) that became popular in the second half of the 1990s under the influence of EVA, as well as the early Faust magazine in which Ryuhiko Yukimoto, Yuya Sato, or Maijo Wangtaro were active, and higashi Hiroki's speech gave them a lot of courage from it.

However, the establishment of such a perception in 2004 proved that Dong Haoji was no longer "new" but "old".

Let me explain a little about Higashi Hiroki's understanding. What does it mean to be a world in which symbolism has fallen, a sense of solid reality has been lost, and hypocrisy has been abounded? That is the world I mentioned earlier in the "ninety-five years." The "symbolic realm" referred to here can be thought of as something like society or history or a state.

"Like in the manga" events such as the Sarin Incident on the Tokyo Subway, a "manga-like" event occurred, leading to the loss of a solid sense of reality. Feelings like "this world is strange" have led to a decline in young people's trust in social self-actualization, followed by a psychology that seeks to acknowledge self-image = role setting. The reflection of such an "atmosphere" is the withdrawal of the middle layer of "society" and "history" that has become untrustworthy, and the "world system" that directly connects "one's own inner face" with the "world". Well, this is indeed a "new imagination", but it was ten years ago.

It can be said that Higashi Hiroki's understanding of this world is completely unable to keep up with the post-2001 world, the world after the terrorist attacks in the United States and the structural reforms of Junichiro Koizumi's cabinet.

As mentioned earlier, the failure of the modern social image led to a low level of trust in social self-actualization, and as a result of the rise of psychologicalism, which was the cultural trend that emerged in the second half of the 1990s. And call it post· The emergence of the "world system" of EVA syndrome was also conceived in the process of the influence of EVA on the third wave of animation (1995-1999), the wave of beautiful girl games in the late 1990s, and the age increase of light novel consumers. The tipping point was the launch of Faust in 2003, and the abandonment of the "world system" route in the third issue of the magazine itself.

Thinking about it this way, the so-called "world system" is obviously in the post-1990s period of the second half of the 1990s. In the context of EVA, the cruel fact is that the "new imagination" advocated by Higashi Hiroki in the first half of the 1900s = the imagination of the world system has been surpassed by the "imagination of the past". During this period, works appeared in the world of pure literature and television drama outside higashi's vision, and works that accepted what Higashi Hiroki called "a world full of hypocrisy" as a premise, rather than exploring its possibilities. No, even higashi Hiroki's focus on otaku culture is no exception, and the trend has shifted to the aforementioned survival works such as Kamen Rider Dragon Ride and Fate/Stay Night. Naïve ideas like EVA's → "world system" that do not communicate with others (society) have become the imagination of the backward imagination of this era that "cannot survive" in a grim world.

As a postmodern allegory, the "autistic squatting/psychologicalism" of the nineties = the imagination of the world system is old and inadequate. The world system has passed, and new postmodern allegories depicting social images with small narratives are emerging in large numbers and continuing to evolve.

In the late 1990s, Higashi Hiroki championed EVA and the "sensibility of the 1990s" that underpinned the work, and continued to confront the commentators who possessed the "sensibility of the 1980s", such as Okada Doshio and Ueno Shunya, and won the support of young people. Then, in the first half of the 1900s, Higashi continued to support the "World System" on the perceptual extension line of EVA. In fact, when Faust moved from the World Center in 2005 to the Nasu Mushroom Center for Fate/Stay Night, higashi criticized the magazine's policy shift as "too hesitant to tell the story" and continued to support the World Department.

However, the flow of the times has not been so slow. In the past ten years, Higashi Hiroki has not been able to catch up with the times at all.

Unfortunately, however, in the world of modern Japanese subcultural criticism, there is no young intellectual enough to succeed Higashi Hiroki. However, the "sensibility of the nineties", whose shelf life has long expired and even stinks, should almost withdraw from the stagnant world of criticism due to the criticism of "the sensibility of the zero-zeros".

The term "world system" originated on the Internet in 2002 on anime review websites, but the imagination of "world system" can be said to have gradually lagged behind the times during this period. However, the "world system", centered on the "third generation of otaku", as a remnant of the imagination of the 1990s, continues to survive in specific types of cultural products such as beautiful girl games and some light novels, which consumers have begun to rapidly age, and Higashi Hiroki has introduced this as "the imagination at the forefront of the times".

Then, the criticism of the subculture, which is quite strange and alienated, received all the introductions of Higashi Hiroki without verification, so the old things of the past that had expired long ago were introduced as new things, and the real new things were not introduced, resulting in the "criticism" of the Japanese state completely unable to keep up with the times.

In the second chapter of the book, the author stops thinking about the criticism that arises from the examination of Higashi Hiroki. This is followed by a third chapter that traces the evolution of the imagination that gave birth to "stories" from the 1990s to the 1900s.

I suggest that readers who are highly concerned about the intellectual background in Japan covered by this book—that is, readers of the past "criticism"—should proceed to the second chapter, and other readers can read the third chapter.

In this decade, critics are really lazy! He even introduced and varied the imagination of the "autistic squatting" or "world system" that had been born ten years ago as a "cutting-edge thing", and regarded this different imagination as a retrogression to the pre-1980s and should be criticized and perfunctory.

However, the act of thinking and writing about things, if not more thrilling, is a disrespect to consumers. So I had to go beyond the undead, not only to transcend the decisionism of the zero-zero, but also to explore the imagination of the coming zero-year.