About Vive Le Weeb

Mission:

To cultivate a deeper appreciation of our favourite manga and anime series by interpreting how their historical, mythological, folkloric, or pop-culture inspirations underpin the key themes and character arcs of these stories.

How We Started:

My friends and I are both anime/manga lovers and huge history/culture nerds. We found ourselves frequently discussing these topics day in day out. These discussions helped me realize that I could contribute something to the larger weeb community.

More importantly, it seemed like no other source had really occupied this space yet. There were sources talking about how a manga/anime conveyed its core themes and character developments in a compelling way, and there were other sources that introduced the historical, mythological, folkloric, or pop-culture elements within these manga/anime series. But no one put the two together.

Thus, I am setting out to illustrate why the inclusion of certain historic, mythological, folkloric, or pop-culture elements in a manga/anime are crucial to conveying key themes or character arcs. More and more people are getting into manga and anime. In other words, they are becoming weebs. So what better way to celebrate this trend than to show just how cultured we weebs can be? Vive le Weeb!

Important to Note:

I am limited in my analysis by my lack of understanding of the Japanese language, and I am not a literary/art critic by training or education. Nevertheless, I’ll try to incorporate as much robust research as possible and draw my own conclusions based on English translations of the subject matter. In the end, this project is purely driven by my deep interest in the intersection between manga/anime and history, mythology, folklore, and pop-culture, and to share that interest with the world.