hontou ni sou omou?

Not to me at least, either by the Ken Akamatsu’s or Haruhi’s (’turn on’) definition of moé. Extremely dojikko (clumsy, goof ball, klutz) anime characters make me think of the Darwin Awards. Having just seen the second Ichigo Mashimaro OVA (waiting for the subs before I fanboy about Nobue-oneesama), it seems that Matsuri’s dojikko nature is part of her moé appeal. Likewise Konata thinks that Miyuki’s clumsiness makes her cute too. Kurumi, the Invincibly Moéless Girl in PPD!, seems to think so too.

I’d venture that proponents of dojikko moé would agree that the character already has to be a cute or pretty female. Thus doji-nature is, at best, a sufficient rather than necessary condition for moé. By Akamatsu’s definition, the causal mechanism could be stimulating the moé-feeling observer’s feeling of strength (relative to object of moé) and also the desire to protect said object of moé. I have no idea how this works in Haruhi’s definition.

Also is the degree of moé positively correlated to the degree of clumsiness? Miyuki doesn’t seem to be that clumsy. Is she clumsy enough to arouse moé? What constitutes a general threshold of clumsiness that, once crossed, makes a character irritating rather than cute, funny or even mildly entertaining? I guess I wouldn’t mind if it were a sideshow but it were used constantly and in a heavyhanded way to interrupt scenes in a series (think a parallel to clumsy loser harem male leads), it would be a big turn off for me.

Matsuri is the Champion compared to Miyuki. I wonder how she even got through a school day before Ana arrived? The Kururu reference was pretty enjoyable though.

Matsuri is so clumsy on a daily, routine basis that even Miu is stunned for once, her stick of strawberry pocky falling out of her mouth in disbelief. And her comment, ‘This isn’t a manga you know,’ is just the cherry on top that completes this scene; an acknowledgment that people are not this clumsy in real life and/or this kind of clumsiness, like huge eyes and almost non-existent noses, are only appealing in the two dimensional worlds of manga and anime. Even then, this particular fetish isn’t one of mine.

Afterall, the best oneesamas are cool rather clumsy. ;)