“What is a chibi?”

Chibi is a style of comic depiction deriving from Japanese otaku media in which characters have shrunk, deformed proportions & ordinarily featuring an enlargened head, futher smoothing/simplifying and infantilizing/neotonizing their appearance for the purpose of invoking 'moe'.

“What’s moe?”

Moe is a generic term denoting emphatic response expressed by otaku of fictional desire & affection towards elements and characters that express them, qualitatively regarded to the degree in which they evoke and embody moe through individual depiction rather than the whole work.

Moe elements are quite interchangeable and speak to animalistic consumption; feeling moe for a character can be broken up and rearranged into its constituent tropes without failure, leading to the hyperspecific yet broadly known plethora of animanga-archetypes we have today.

Whilst chibi is an element of moe, it is both an aesthetic style as a character trope: chibi can be used to overlay an existing character's moe for comic relief, endearment or nonsense, as well as exaggerated emotion in its doodling nature. Often, the hilarity of chibi lies in the dichotomy between its perceived cuteness—chibi is derived from Japanese 'to make smaller'—and the adult themes it expresses. This is in line with the feeling of moe itself, which is entirely adult in nature.

Ironically and fortuitously in respect, Milady's chibi aesthetic style blended with street culture as a literal avatar of Remilia's vision of the Net gave way to inspire and express positively deranged schizoautist high-energy posting in others as a self-determined form of moe.

Guest post by @ongestalte.