"Nice Boat"The phrase "nice boat" has popped up recently in the 2ch/4ch
meme archipelago. Since it seems to be a rare case of a cross-language barrier meme (it has appeared both on English blogs and as an inside joke on a recent anime premiere), I figured to track down the source.
It wasn't hard to locate. The September 18 broadcast of the final episode of the anime
School Days was preempted by its broadcaster due to a recent axe-murder in Kyoto wherein a daughter violently killed her father. Instead, the station showed a montage of tranquil nature scenes, titled "NICE BOAT." Thus, the meme.
So why was
School Days preempted? Now we get into weirder territory.
School Days was a
moe harem drama, and like much of its ilk was based off a
bishoujo dating sim. This particular game was notable for its
ero-guro content: many of its multiple endings featured members of its cute female cast committing suicide, murder-suicide, plain 'ol murder, and everything in between. Speculation had run rampant that the anime version would end in a similar fashion; speculation that proved true when the episode was finally aired and about 90% of the cast ended up knocking each other off in a gory spectacle. Clearly, the network didn't wish to draw comparisons between the teenage girls killing each other on screen and the ones at it in real life; thus, the preemption.
Ero-guro is not a new thing in Japanese entertainment; one can look to
Urotsukodji as even a recent example of the sub-genre. However, its recent hybridization with
moe appears to have briefly returned it to the mainstream- at least as mainstream as
moe gets. Numerous recent series- notably
Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, Shuffle and (arguably)
Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei have all trafficked in the juxtaposition of saccharine-sweet doll-girls with blood, gore, and swinging nooses.
Certainly
ero-guro is not the only
moe subgenre racing for the bottom. The noxic spectre of lolicon has been creeping into the mainstream of late- witness the blowback to the underage fanservice-heavy farce
Moetan, and the uncomfortable debate that begins whenever the topic of
Kodomo no Jikan starts up. It is as if the subculture is toeing the sleeping lion's tail, seeing how hard they can trod before the inevitable backlash begins. It's not a comfortable sight to watch.
In the meantime, though...
