flags, idols and yuri

let a hundred mikus bloom

27 Aug 2024

Hatsune Miku from Brazil and from everywhere

You’ve all seen her all over your timelines, in every anime art channel on Discord. Brazilian Miku, and not just her - all the Mikus who came before her or followed in her wake, donning either folk costumes or iconic modern outfits from countries all over the world. The idea of localizing Miku is hardly new – indeed, Poland was among the first, if not the first to have a Miku of its own, presented in a national museum, with a song produced for her to sing in Polish.

What’s new to me is seeing this in such a huge wave, in 2024, when the international community is in discord, with multiple major international conflicts ongoing, with wars over both territory and culture ramping up - and the dream of a truly interconnected and united world slipping away.

One notable national Miku was drawn by someone from Israel. Said artist, of course, immediately got jumped by people who hated to see Hatsune Miku associated with a violent, genocidal state. Which, in turn, made Ukrainians uncomfortable with the lack of such intense reaction towards depictions of Russian Miku… also associating in some way with a violent, belligerent state.

This was, of course, inevitable from the very start. If you want to have Miku represent your community, she inevitably ends up associated - more or less - with the opinions others may have on that community. Especially when the community we’re talking about is a state, a nation.

Some people resist this association altogether. They don’t want Miku to associate with any flag, any state, or any politics whatsoever. Miku is supposed to be everyone’s idol, after all, she’s supposed to like singing, leeks, cute things. But if she’s everyone’s idol, she’s kind of… nobody’s idol. She’s the same Miku for everyone, adrift - corporate - a safe brand.

Maybe that’s fair enough? After all, Hatsune Miku is ultimately a character to represent a suite of voice synthesis software… or indeed just one of the voices it can synthesize into singing. She is a corporate product.

And yet here we are, creating and retweeting Mikus from all over the world. Not just “our” Miku - after all, the trend popped off with Brazilian Miku - who became immensely popular worldwide. I’ve also seen various Mikus meet up and interact. I’ve seen a Miku against the backdrop of an Ukrainian city, where a bomb had just struck an apartment building. I’ve seen Mikus from neighboring countries sharing their cultures with each other.

In a way, Miku has partially escaped this brand-safe containment - kinda like the Dragon Ball Z cast (especially in Latin America). Some find it kind of stupid, maybe even silly - and it certainly is very silly when you have Hillary Clinton making tortured references to Pokemon or liberals evoking Voldemort imagery.

And yet, it doesn’t hit the same when Goku refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of the state of Israel, or when an incensed transphobe finds herself waving around, in the British Parliament, a picture of Lily Hoshikawa telling people like her to shut up - or when people invoke the Joker in Lebanon, Les Miserables in Hong Kong, the Handmaid’s Tale among feminists in the US, Argentina, Northern Ireland…1

To me, this is reminiscent of détournement - the hijacking of corporate imagery, to put back in the edge. Rather than subverting things like advertisements, this is more to enlist the heroes and symbols we look up to in the service of social movements we care about.

To be sure: I personally find associating Miku with Israel distasteful, but it’s really not about Miku herself. Remove Miku from this discussion and you will find I simply do not like that state at all. Israel has earned its reputation well enough, and it’s hard for me to be sympathetic to the artist. With Russia, at least, there’s the vague shared culture of Eastern Europe to refer to (or hide behind, as some would say) - one that suffers its despots and their wars and tries to slip by and survive.

And just as Miku can represent a state - she can also represent its people, and the struggles they face, including the authoritarian actions of their own government.

Just as nations disagree with each other, so do social movements, including ones that transcend national boundaries. The struggle for ownership of our pop-culture is a proxy of the struggle for ownership of culture in general - to tear it out of the hands of corporations, governments and people who sow discord.

Japan x Korea yuri

There’s another international exchange that prompted a fascinating trend. The story of a Korean girl gallantly covering a Japanese girl’s lap with her jacket, only to later comment online “anything for my precious kitten”, and the reactions of Korean women towards Japanese women disillusioned with their male compatriots, have left people with the impression that Korean women have INSANE rizz - and that’s what inspired yuri artists to imagine this coupling, between the charming Korean gentlewomen and the sweet, shy Japanese girls.

In the backdrop of this yuri trend is an intense, downright violent misogynistic rally among Korean men, who stand against the 4B movement and engage with impunity in a number of disgusting practices that violate the privacy, safety, health and life of women in Korea. Japan’s society isn’t that much less misogynistic, itself, even to this day - and so the women of two nations look to each other for solidarity, and perhaps even love.

Oh, and they invited China along as well! Which reminded me of the posts earlier on, showcasing comments from Chinese women trying to cheer up a girl after a terrible experience with a man. “You swan, he frog”.

Diversity and solidarity

What’s so exciting and fun about these trends to me is how they connect as much, if not more than how they divide. The world may be as it is, but the dream is alive. When so many people from all over the world join in on such trends, the outcome is truly diverse. We get a window into different places, different cultures, and a bond - whether through yuri or idols - that surpasses the borders powerful people set out for each other, and becomes a means of shared resistance to these divisions and a way to look past the flags, to the real shared conflicts and struggles.

Whom so many people reject, then, is those who cannot see past those borders - those who think their flag is the most important, and should trump someone else’s flag. Indeed, the flag is mostly there to identify - what really draws people in is the countless aesthetics that come along with it, a window into the real, material culture of each people and the hardships they face in their lives.

Let a hundred Mikus bloom.

-Wikt

  1. https://www.brut.media/us/videos/international/european-news/when-pop-culture-becomes-protest-culture ↩