What is Neko?

They did (anime, manga, Japanese culture). Anybody who says otherwise is kidding themselves.

Jig, what was this neko 'philosophy'?

If one goes to a neko-centric shop in SL, one might be convinced that the "neko philosophy" has something to do with wearing used auto parts and using garbage for furniture. I don't understand all that, because I've seen a couple of cartoons with nekos in them and they dressed like Playmates. Maybe I missed the important cartoons.

I'll also point out that until SL I'd never heard of or seen male nekos - in the cartoons they're always female. For that matter, I'd never seen any of the other various types of hybrids, either. I think it's apparent that in SL, aside from certain attached bits, "neko" has developed into something a bit different from what it was in the anime cartoons.

Gee I didnt know they had Anime in Ancient Egypt

How did you find that old picture of me?

The Neko fetish, because that's where it started, is Japanese, and Japanese only. The word is Japanese, and the cartoony characters used are Japanese.

And the ancient Egypt had catgirls too, but at least they didn't make it into a sexual fetish to have a sexual fantasy about it.

That we know of. As Leonard Nimoy would narrate, "Why did the statue have breasts? Do we really know what lay in the minds of the ancient Egyptians? And why do they make me wear these pointy ears just to narrate these pseudo scientific cable shows?"

Hee, and for the synopsis of what I got from this discussion:

Oh I dont know.. imagine how many western school boys back in the 1940's (ie some 10+ years befroe Osamu Tezuka's stories) were looking at comics with pictures of Cat Woman on the cover under thier covers with flashlights.



and she was not the only "cat girl" in early western popular media







These and other examples all predate Anime cat girls.

Astroboy could technically be called a neko, considering he has cat ears instead of mouse ears to avoid backlash from Disney. =^-^=

I have a rl friend, in rl Colorado who rl raises rl mini-llamas. They are really adorable.

Treasure

Watch out, sunshine! That *almost* sounds like you're starting to like us.


It's more like snobbery..."Your Neko is not as good as my Neko because you don't follow the rules I think you should!"

Because cats, you know, are all about following rules.

What? Too old for that stuff??

Watch anime sometime. There's always at least 1 girl with cat ears or something similar (hair style).

And just like Star Wars fans, anime fans sometimes wear the outfits and accessories of their fav anime or manga. More popular simple choices are cat ears on girls. <- Fashion

Head to a Hot Topic, go to the hair accessories section. You'll find tons of hair clips made like cat ears. Same ones can be found at Walmart, Kmart, or Claires, etc. <- Fashion

And yes, you can get a tail to match too

Re: The Egyptian statue and Western comic books

That's not neko though, is it? Neko doesn't translate to cat girl. It's Japanese for cat. If people in SL called themselves cat girls/boys that would be fine. But you can't associate non-Japanese things with neko, because neko is a Japanese word

ETA: It makes sense when you think of the word neko in the context of popular culture. I swear. No, really. xD

Rule #1) Don't talk about the rules. =^-^=

sorry for bringing it up in that other post of mine in here..it was more just a question than anything..because when i came to sl my roomies all turned into Nekos and i never heard of it before..
and they were all really big into anime and i just thought SL had gotten it from people that liked Anime..
i know as much about anime or nekos as i see of them in SL myself ..
so sorry if my question stirred a bunch of stuff up..maybe i should have worded it a little better but i was heading out the door

neko have been around a long time before anime..

I'll note again, well I noted it somewhere, I was a cat before I had even heard of Nekos.

Well, you kinda two or three years too late logging into SL than when Nekos were in their heyday. But in those days, when minotaurs and goat-gods roamed our world, Nekos were a small group of avis who acted on instinctual desires. So violence and mayhem were respected and sexual desires were instantly gratified. Most of those Nekos have long gone. It was a release, a cosmic energy - using sl as a means to free teh real person. And we had great parties.
Nekos were banned on sims and we were "hunted" in Gor. It was fun. But we didnt wear clothes. Just teh full skin. About a year ago I was asked to leave teh forum shed thingie building because I was in my Neko skin and there were children present. Neko women have nipples and pubic hair (liek all cats). It was good in teh early days of sl. Imaginative and exciting - oh, and many Nekos were French and Swiss. I never met a Japanese Neko in SL. And yes, I know what Nekos are in real world. SL Nekos put a different flavour to it.
One kinda funny story I will relate is that my first partner in sl was a werewolf - a lycanthrope - with full flexi fur and everything else and my Neko friends were very angered tha I had shacked up with a Lyco who were meant to be sworn enemies of teh Neko tribe. Role play in those days extended across teh board and into teh sims. I was thinking about all that today - it was a great virtuality then. I think that has all gone now sad to say coz it was creative and exciting.

Oh of course, it was roleplay Why'd it die out?

Actually, Neko do have a mythological reference, but are nothing more than common house cats with a few supernatural powers. They are quite unable to transform.
The felines that *are* able to transform are actually Lycans, yes, you can have feline lycans as well as kanine lycans. But while feline Lycans were able to transform into humanoid forms, it was nowhere near human. More like a wherecat -for want of a better word.

Neko exists in SL as nothing more than a niche of an excuse to sell clothing to some poor sap with a few lindens. The fashion in of itself is nothing more than a mix of grunge, urban and punk (like i said before), so there is nothing unique about it except for having a pair of ears and a tail bunged up your backside.
What makes me cringe the most is neko who walk around on all fours. For some reason, bipeds walking on all fours always looks ridiculous to me. Yes, I suppose its nice that they have their own little community, but the branding commercially is incorrectly applied in order to make a sale. As for neko being part of Anime, they were never part of Anime. Perhaps Manga and some other cheap Japanese cartoons, but Neko have never been part of true Anime (See Ghost in the Shell, Running Bean, Akira, etc for true anime.).

you're trying to put a cat in a box people... don't do it

You wind up with major lacerations and a pissed off cat staring at you from atop the box

Umm no, there are many references to Bakenneko taking the form of humans (most often girls btw) to help or server thier owners.



Gee Glad to know Anime like "The Cat Returns" isn't "true anime" ... guess they should return that prize for excellence they won at the 2002 Japan Media Arts Festival huh?

Dont forget Japanese Language support was not added to SL untill ~2007. That kept the japanese population small in SL. Its exploded since then, I think Japan is now the 3rd or 4th largest country of origin.

Also I have met many native japanese Neko's here who are using 6'5" blond euro skined avatars and type with excellent english. Unless they volunteer the information as to thier home country I would have never known.

A child's cartoon.

That's a good question. Honestly, I think it was teh fact that we intermingle with human avis and we were very openly Neko. It just didnt meet teh approval of many. Men kinda liked us BUT women (of a certain age) really were put off. I remember a bloke who I friended being constantly on about the "disgusting" Neko things I did that offended his sense of human - he used to say "if you roll with the dogs, you'll catch their fleas" (hate that saying) or "serves you right if you get in trouble" (hated taht too.) He left sl coz it shocked his Christian value systems. Odd.
No, Zii, attitudes (despite yowls of proteest) have changed in sl and we are in barbie doll world now with a hint of housing estates and even education. Pretty soon we'll be getting health care and unemployment. We only need some bright spark to decide we need democracy and we may as well all go back to reality.