This Week in Anime - Parasocial Overdose

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This season's Needy Girl Overdose picks up where Perfect Blue left off in its discussion of parasocial relationships. Lucas and Coop discuss.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News Network.

Crunchyroll streams Needy Girl Overdose, Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show, and VTuber Legend.
Netflix streams Cosmic Princess Kaguya!.
Serial Experiment Lain is unavailable to stream stateside.

Lucas
Coop, being on the anime writing beat more or less necessitates that we be aware of new media and trending digital culture. While these forms of entertainment don't necessarily need to be tied together, their rise to global prominance in a similar timeframe has seemingly forever linked the two. Though this connection is bolstered by the fact that people just keep making anime about the kinds of parasocial relationships that the internet has made far more common!

While our TWIA cohorts Chris and Sylvia explored the growing trend of content creator-focused anime awhile back, how would you feel about going live and breaking down for chat the similar, but decidedly darker, trend of anime that focus on parasocial relationships?

Coop
Let's get uncomfortable, Lucas.

Thinking back on that simultaneous "rise to global prominence," it really was something else to be on the bedroom floor of hololive's English-language debut in the summer of 2020. It was novel to watch a performer employ a sort of digital kayfabe as they just played games, sang songs, or chatted along with the audience. Gwar Gura's cover of Tatsuro Yamashita's "Ride on Time" has stuck with me over the years, especially because it introduced me to City Pop as a whole.

But six years on, it's clear to see that a large chunk of VTubing has slid right into the same rat race for attention and clicks that comes with all new media. Not to mention that the extreme attitudes around pursuing a career in that field occasionally make me go, "Something smells fishy." But while I'm picking apart the system in my head, there are other viewers who deeply celebrate their favorite personalities. Sometimes, the resultant connections make for legitimately life-changing moments for the better...and unfortunately worse. Horrifically so.

I know what you mean. At the risk of riling people up, this is where I'd like to share that I don't really like livestreaming as an industry or streamers as a pundit class. While I'll be the first to admit that streaming can be a means for otherwise ostracized people to form communities and that independent VTubing can be both a means of expression for marginalized folks and a way for them to supplement their income, the vast majority of the streaming landscape and business is harmful to individuals on every level of that process and society at large. Quite simply, I think the world would be better off if Twitch as a platform didn't exist, as the company routinely and algorithmically boosts the voices of some of the most hateful and misinformed people in the world today, many of whom only reached this level of success thanks to the financial backing of wealthy bad actors.

But we're here to talk about ANIME, not social politics. The reason we're talking about anime as it relates to livestreaming/VTubing today is that the medium keeps being exactly correct about the ways that streaming gives way to celebrity obsession that leads to a bunch of other toxic and isolating social shenanigans.

While this might come across as a bit reductive, Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue absolutely nailed this parasocial phenomenon in 1997 and is only made more correct in every year that follows. While subsequent anime media that have explored this topic have done so through an iterative lens or otherwise new perspective, it's all building upon this Perfect Blue-print.

Stripping away the microphone stands, the RGB fan lights, and the racing chairs, Perfect Blue leaves you with the messy, primal essence of what it's like to be a public figure. Dealing with a stalker is terrifying, but it becomes existentially so when it affects your perception of reality. Mima decided to try her hand at acting, but there are many people who still see her as just an idol—and they want it to stay that way. This friction pushes Mima to take a job that'll shed that idol image, but it haunts her almost immediately. Without giving the whole blue bag away, Mima finds herself eventually able to say "I'm just me" without any strings attached to that statement. She's not this angelic idol, actress, or anything else. She's just herself.

And then there's KAngel in almost direct opposition.

Dude, I really wish I knew that Needy Girl Overdose was based on a game of the same name (changed to Needy Streamer Overload for the English release) because, as far as I can tell, that is a management sim where you're helping a socially maladapted girl that's prone to depressive episodes become a streamer with 10 million followers. While the game is very obviously a satire of streaming culture and a parable about how people should not put chasing fame above their own well-being, it also means that this anime is kind of a sequel to the game and set to explore the aftermath of a person destroying themselves to become famous!

From minute one of episode one, this anime understands how deeply wrong and disturbing much of this space is and how there really aren't any great off-ramps once people have fallen down any part of this parasocial pipeline. Even just the little details in this show, like characters being introduced with their follower count (and therefore supposed value) in their bios, do a great job of setting this cynical, and more accurate than I think anyone wants to admit, tone.

Kache pretty much nails it (no pun intended) with her introductory monologue.

© WSS playground / NEEDY GIRL PROJECT	© WSS playground / NEEDY GIRL PROJECT
© WSS playground / NEEDY GIRL PROJECT	© WSS playground / NEEDY GIRL PROJECT

Seemingly sharing the spotlight with the titular streamer, Kache's just trying to get by in a world that's commodified all these data points. But more than that, it seems she's fighting with herself on whether she even deserves better (she does). Perhaps she shouldn't talk to a whole cabal of shameless streamers about her serious life business.

I also say "seemingly" because Needy Girl Overdose is almost like a concussion. It's going to hit the viewer over the head with a sledgehammer and leave them to put the pieces together on their own. This approach isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea (or white can of Monster).

Maybe this story and its themes need to be a sledgehammer! Perfect Blue came out nearly thirty years ago, and people still keep chasing this idea of celebrity and influence even if it's at the expense of their own physical and mental well-being. What makes Needy Girl Overdose the breakout hit of the season for me personally is how overt it is in its themes, and how it's practically shaking a viewer and screaming at them that this parasocial celebrity shit is bad for them.

And, to my earlier point about these works iterating on Perfect Blue, I love how the principal characters in Needy Girl Overdose have turned this kind of toxicity into a part of their identity, making any concerns about their wellbeing an attack against them. As the internet was still in its nascency when Perfect Blue came out, this element of fandom culture isn't present in that work, and I appreciate how Needy Girl captures this tribalistic development right out of the gate.

Heck, about a year after Perfect Blue's release, Serial Experiments Lain explored how someone's online persona could tangibly affect the world around them. The fighting over internet cred, the tribalism involved, and the terror of that all manifesting in real life sit at the core of that series alongside many, many other interpretations of its narrative. Needy Girl pulls an intriguing trick by blending the ideas of both titles and straining them out through a modern sifter. In the later stages of Lain, the title character is seen as a god (and might actually be one), but that perception follows KAngel from the first frame she appears.

By the way, I think we're probably all due for a Lain revisit by now.

Yes, we absolutely should revisit Lain...if for no other reason than to make the actual show be the first thing that pops into my mind whenever it's mentioned, instead of one of the best AMVs ever made.

But you're right to bring up the Lain influences on Needy Girl Overdose! While both are overtly playing in the same sandbox, I love the aesthetic juxtaposition between them. While Lain's surrealism is largely grounded in the aesthetics of hard science fiction, Needy Girl's version of the internet is a persistent girliepop. They both frame these worlds as a form of escapism, and how this escape and the harm it can bring have become more celebrated over time is apparent in even just the visuals of these works.

And if we're talking hyper pop, it's worth mentioning that I'd thought of Cosmic Princess Kaguya! a time or two while watching through Needy Girl's premiere—especially with all the streamers with stylish personas running around. I couldn't help but see this series as something of a dark reflection of that film.

By the way, Sylvia and I talked a fair bit about Kaguya earlier in the year if you'd like to check out our further thoughts on the film. Much, much, much less cynicism there.

While Cosmic Princess Kaguya! didn't hit as hard for me as it did for other folks, there is something to be said about how the work blended classical Japanese culture with modern Japanese digital culture. For all of the faults present in digital culture today, it's here to stay, and the sooner we start thinking about it within the context of broader culture and history, the better. After all, a big part of how harm in digital spaces is generated stems from treating them like big, unknowable things, rather than an invention and extension of the human condition.

I actually really loved how the way people treat the internet and social media is literalized in last year's Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show as cosmic horrors like Cthulhu. We're made to think these spaces and the problems they create are all-powerful and unknowable, but really, things like parasociality and toxic communities can be defeated by individuals being decent people and by groups of people genuinely caring about each other.

Necronomico was also one of my standout favorites of last summer. Well, at least after the subtitles were revised and taken over by an actual person, but that's a Lovecraftian can of worms for another column.

For all the criticism we've brought up regarding the figures in these spaces, there are folks with actual backbones (and they don't just give off the appearance of having one) peppered throughout this digital hellscape. And we have to admit, even as critics, we're both occasionally running in that same rat race. So, it's not all doom and gloom despite the aforementioned "larger-than-life" personalities who wield an often ruinous amount of influence.

Oh, absolutely! One of my favorite more recent writing projects was a series of interviews with independent VTubers for Yatta-Tachi and repeatedly, folks who participated stressed the need to keep content creation fun and personally fulfilling. Anything that's turned into a chore or something unnecessarily competitive will inevitably become a harmful cesspool, but if you make an effort to be positive and constructive in these efforts, you can create a genuinely uplifting community.

Though brusque in its delivery, I hope at the very least that Needy Girl pushes some viewers to reconsider their relationship with internet personalities on all levels—from influencers to VTubers and critics such as ourselves.

There's way more to life than just leaning into a gimmick, indulging unhealthy delusions, or bending the rules to get the bag. Just as your interviewees told you, it's got to be personally fulfilling and fun. Cynically engaging with anything just for cash and influence isn't worth it. It's about the love of the game, kids.

I couldn't agree more! I believe firmly that social media, and the internet more broadly, is supposed to be fun and a positive force for society. If you want the dopamine hit of "numbers go up," go play an RPG and don't burn yourself out chasing internet clout and follows from accounts that might not even be real. Whatever fulfillment people think will come from chasing online success and fame has to come from inside themselves first, before that external validation can even become tenable. Otherwise (and this meme will prove that I'm an older person on the internet who has done this internal work already), you're gonna have a bad time.