Feel the Sprouting: The Lucrative Lures of Sprout
Saturday, September 20th, 2008Today, a friend of mine asked me “Hey, is Tears to Tiara any good? I saw one of the figures from that game and was curious.” It was all I could do to hold back the flow of bile in my throat as I explained, as calmly as I could, that Tears to Tiara was a flaming piece of crap when it came out for the PC, and in its shiny new PS3 version, is a good-looking piece of crap.
I could spend hours talking about the many flaws of Tears to Tiara, but that would be ignoring the larger issue at hand here: using moe to push the merchandise of a crappy product on people. Tears to Tiara is but the latest example of this. Shining Tears and Shining Wind have also lured friends of mine into playing execrable games with drool-inducing character designs and exquisitely crafted merchandise. It’s a tale of woe often repeated in fan circles: “I started watching [X series] because [Y image] was really cute, but I might as well have stabbed myself in the eyes with a cattle prod and saved myself some pain.”
The phenomenon extends to music, too. With the boom in seiyuu fan clubs these days, companies know they can make their money back if they attach a popular voice actor/actress to the project and pump out some halfway decent singles. Mizuki Nana (a wonderful, wonderful lady whose voice can pierce the heavens) and Hirano Aya (who belches her way through songs and really needs to take a few years off so she can learn how to sing) exemplify the moe music industry, releasing hit single after hit single to the delight of everyone who rakes in the royalties. Companies will use any excuse possible to try and attach these two ladies to their projects so they can write music and guarantee sales.
Amusingly enough, an upcoming anime called White Album, based on a 10-year-old visual novel from the same company that made Tears to Tiara, casts Mizuki and Hirano as the idol singing heroines. It’s guaranteed to make oodles of cash from whatever CD singles are released, no matter how good or bad the show is. The funny part is, it’s from the same company that produced Tears to Tiara. Draw your own conclusions on remake milking.
So anyway, the point of this little Statement of the Obvious is: Be Careful. The moe industry is ready and willing to sink its claws into your wallet through any avenue it can, and if you want to avoid wasting your time, you need to start being a smarter consumer. Read reviews. Ask your friends. Use them as cat’s paws (God knows I use the tastefully named Richard Kim to gauge the relative quality of products often enough).
And above all, remember that you can enjoy the merchandise without feeling obligated to waste your time and money! You can save yourself a lot of grief if you can learn to say “hey, that’s a nice toy” without attaching an “I wonder if the source material is any good” to it all the time.


