Where Did the “Gentle World” Come From?――Innocence, Everyday Life, and the Practice of Maintaining Fiction

Introduction: The Strange Comfort of VTuber Fiction

Why does nothing dramatic happen in so much contemporary Japanese pop culture—
and yet it feels deeply engaging?

This question becomes especially sharp when we look at VTuber culture.
There is often no clear plot, no decisive conflict, no final resolution.
Streams loop day after day. Characters rarely “grow” in a traditional narrative sense.
And yet, viewers return—sometimes obsessively—not despite this lack of drama, but because of it.

The appeal of VTubers is frequently explained in simple terms: cuteness, parasocial attachment, or escapism.
While these explanations are not entirely wrong, they tend to miss something crucial.
What makes VTuber fiction compelling is not merely who the characters are, nor what stories they tell, but how the fictional space itself is maintained.

There is a peculiar sense of safety in these spaces.
No one is harshly judged.
No one is decisively excluded.
Emotions are allowed to surface, but rarely pushed to a breaking point.
Conflicts appear, but they dissolve before becoming irreversible.

In Japanese internet culture, moments like this are sometimes jokingly labeled “a gentle world.”
The phrase is often used ironically—especially when a story resolves itself too conveniently, or when characters are spared consequences that would be unavoidable in a more “serious” narrative.
Yet the joke itself is revealing.
It points to a shared recognition of a certain mode of fiction: one that prioritizes emotional stability over dramatic resolution.

This article takes that recognition seriously.

Rather than treating the “gentle world” as a naive fantasy or a moral stance, I will argue that it is better understood as a practice—a set of techniques for maintaining fiction without collapsing into cruelty, obsession, or exclusion.
It is not an ideology that demands belief, but a way of handling emotions that might otherwise spiral into excess.

To make sense of this practice, we need to step back from VTubers themselves and trace a longer cultural trajectory.
This trajectory runs from the rejection of grand narratives in 1980s Japanese pop culture, through the rise of “endless everyday life” in anime, to a shift away from character-centered storytelling toward spaces and relationships that remain deliberately unresolved.

Along the way, I will introduce innocence as a provisional term—not to describe childlike purity or moral goodness, but to name a position before roles, missions, and narrative obligations are imposed.
This form of innocence is fragile and potentially dangerous, which is precisely why it has required increasingly careful techniques of containment.

VTuber culture represents one of the most explicit realizations of these techniques.
Here, fiction is not something passively consumed, but something collectively maintained—by performers and viewers alike.
The question is no longer “What happens next?” but “How do we keep this space from breaking?”

By asking where the “gentle world” came from, this article does not seek to celebrate it uncritically.
Instead, it aims to understand how such worlds became possible, why they feel comforting, and why they have always existed uncomfortably close to accusations of escapism, immaturity, or even madness.

The goal is not to defend the gentle world—but to finally describe it accurately.

Chapter 1: What Is “Character Attachment,” Really?

Before “Cuteness”: Characters as Narrative Functions

To understand where the “gentle world” came from, we need to begin with a simple but easily forgotten question:

What were characters originally for?

In early television anime, characters were not independent objects of affection.
They existed primarily as functions within a narrative structure.
Their personalities, designs, and emotional expressions were subordinate to the story they were meant to carry.

A canonical starting point is Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atomu).
From a contemporary perspective, Astro Boy may appear “cute”: small, expressive, vulnerable, and visually iconic.
His sister, Uran, might even look like a prototype of the “little sister character” so common in later anime culture.

But to retroactively label this as character moe would be misleading.

In Astro Boy, characters do not invite affection independently of the story.
Astro is not something to be admired instead of the narrative—he is the narrative.
His body carries ethical questions about technology, humanity, justice, and responsibility.
Uran’s cuteness functions within a familial and moral framework: she reinforces bonds, softens tension, and confirms the ethical order of the world.

In other words, whatever “cuteness” exists here is embedded.
It does not escape the gravitational pull of meaning, purpose, and resolution.

This is a crucial distinction.

Later forms of character-centered enjoyment depend on a separation between character and narrative—on the possibility that a character can be enjoyed without reference to plot progression, thematic resolution, or moral outcome.
That separation simply does not exist yet.

When “Cute” Was Not a Destination

In this early phase, television anime functioned as a device for telling stories with direction.
Episodes moved forward. Conflicts were resolved. Growth, sacrifice, and ethical clarity were expected outcomes.

Characters were evaluated according to how well they fulfilled these roles.

Even when viewers felt attachment, that attachment was mediated through narrative necessity:

• Characters were loved because they were heroic.
• Protected because they were fragile.
• Remembered because they symbolized something larger than themselves.

What was not yet possible was to linger.

There was no cultural room for staying with a character’s presence alone—no mechanism for repeating affect without progressing the story.
Emotion was something to be processed, resolved, and put to rest.

This is why it feels inaccurate to say that early anime lacked “cuteness.”
Cuteness existed, but it was not a destination.
It was a transient quality on the way to something else: growth, justice, tragedy, or closure.

The Absence That Would Become Visible

Seen from this angle, what later generations would call “character moe” does not emerge as an addition, but as a subtraction.

Something has to disappear first.

Specifically, the assumption that:

• every emotion must be justified by narrative logic,
• every attachment must serve a larger arc,
• and every character must eventually be used up by the story.

Only when these assumptions begin to loosen does it become possible for characters to stand still—to be appreciated not for what they accomplish, but for how they are.

This shift does not happen all at once, nor does it announce itself with a clear theory.
It begins as a discomfort: a sense that stories are asking too much, explaining too much, deciding too much.

What emerges next is not yet “everyday life,” and not yet “moe” in any recognizable sense.

It is, instead, a growing desire for a position before narrative obligation.

In the next chapter, we will see how this desire takes a visible form in 1980s Japanese pop culture—particularly in works that deliberately refuse seriousness, responsibility, and grand meaning.

This refusal will not appear as an argument, but as an attitude.

And at its center stands a figure who was long treated as a joke, a deviation, or even a problem—
but who now looks increasingly like a turning point.

Chapter 2: The 1980s — Distance from Serious Narratives (Azuma Hideo)

The 1980s: Taking Distance from Serious Narratives

By the late 1970s and early 1980s, something in Japanese popular culture had begun to feel heavy.

This heaviness did not come only from politics or economics, but from narrative expectation itself.
Stories were still expected to mean something.
Characters were still expected to grow, decide, overcome, or sacrifice.
Even rebellion—especially rebellion—was often framed as morally serious.

From this perspective, the emergence of parody, lightness, and apparent frivolity in the 1980s has often been explained as fatigue:
a withdrawal from responsibility, a refusal to take things seriously.

That explanation is not wrong—but it is incomplete.

What was being rejected was not seriousness as such, but the assumption that there was only one legitimate way to be serious.
The “serious narratives” of the previous decades—historical progress, ideological struggle, moral clarity—were themselves highly selective.
They left little room for ambiguity, detours, or lives that did not fit a predefined trajectory.

To step away from those narratives was not necessarily escapism.
It could also be read as a different kind of commitment: a refusal to accept inherited meanings without question.

Parody as a Method, Not a Joke

Much of 1980s parody culture has been described as cynical or ironic.
But irony alone does not explain its persistence or emotional pull.

Parody here functions less as mockery and more as distance.

By exaggerating tropes, flattening drama, or refusing emotional payoff, parody creates a gap between the viewer and the narrative demand to care in the prescribed way.
It does not say, “nothing matters.”
It says, “this does not have to matter like that.”

This distinction is important.

The parodic stance allows characters to exist without immediately being absorbed into meaning.
They are present, expressive, sometimes charming—but not obligated to justify themselves through growth or resolution.

In this sense, parody becomes a preparatory space.
A place where narrative gravity weakens enough for something else to appear.

Azuma Hideo as an “Incident”

It is within this cultural atmosphere that the work of Azuma Hideo appears—not as a solution, but as a disruption.

Azuma’s characters often seem strangely unmotivated.
They do not pursue goals with urgency.
They do not symbolize ideological positions.
They do not strive to complete arcs.

This absence was precisely what made them disturbing.

At the time, Azuma’s work was frequently dismissed as:

• too light,
• irresponsible,
• unserious,
• or dangerously detached from social reality.

Especially controversial were accusations that his characters refused moral framing altogether.
They appeared without sufficient justification—neither punished nor redeemed.

But this reaction reveals something important.

What was being rejected was not simply content, but a way of existing within fiction that no longer centered narrative obligation.

Innocence as a Provisional Position

Azuma’s characters do not argue against seriousness.
They simply fail to recognize its authority.

They stand before roles are assigned, before meanings harden, before outcomes demand explanation.
They are not heroic, but they are also not transgressive in a classical sense.

To describe this stance, we can tentatively use the word innocence—with care.

This is not innocence as purity, immaturity, or moral goodness.
It is innocence as pre-assignment.

A position before:

• mission,
• responsibility,
• ideological alignment,
• and narrative necessity.

This innocence is not defended through argument.
It is expressed through tone, pacing, and refusal.

Importantly, this innocence is fragile.
Left unmanaged, it can collapse into irresponsibility or exploitation.
This fragility is precisely why it provoked anxiety and hostility.

But it is also why it mattered.

Azuma’s work makes visible a desire that had no stable language yet:
the desire for a place where emotion could exist without being immediately mobilized toward meaning.

From Attitude to Form

At this stage, innocence exists only as an attitude.
It belongs to characters, creators, and perhaps viewers—but not yet to the structure of the work itself.

Stories still move.
Episodes still end.
Time still advances.

What has changed is the weight placed on that movement.

The next step will be decisive.

If innocence is to survive beyond isolated characters or parodic gestures, it must be implemented.
Not as a moral stance, but as a structural feature.

In the next chapter, we will see how this happens through a radical shift in form:
the emergence of the “endless everyday,” where narrative progression slows, loops, or disappears—
and where innocence is no longer a property of characters, but of the world itself.

Chapter 3: The Endless Everyday — Explicitly, Beautiful Dreamer

If innocence could not survive as attitude alone, it needed a form.
That form appeared most clearly—not implicitly, but decisively—in Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer (1984).

This film does not merely contain an endless everyday.
It constructs one, then refuses to explain its escape.

A World That Refuses to Move Forward

At the level of plot, Beautiful Dreamer is deceptively simple.
Time loops.
School days repeat.
Events fail to accumulate.

But this repetition is not accidental, nor is it comic filler.

What the film dismantles is the basic contract of narrative progression:
that time must advance,
that experience must transform characters,
that something must be learned or resolved.

In Beautiful Dreamer, time does not betray the characters—it protects them.
Nothing pushes them forward.
Nothing forces them to become “someone else.”

Repetition as Critique, Not Comfort

It is easy to read repetition as coziness or nostalgia.
But Beautiful Dreamer makes repetition strange.

The longer the loop continues, the more visible the artificiality of narrative time becomes.
The viewer begins to sense that what is suspended is not merely chronology, but obligation.

Why should tomorrow be different?
Why should growth be mandatory?
Why should meaning require accumulation?

By refusing these assumptions, the film exposes them as conventions rather than truths.

Innocence Moves from Character to World

Here, innocence undergoes a decisive relocation.

It is no longer a trait of specific characters.
It is not something Lum, Ataru, or anyone else personally maintains.

Instead, innocence is embedded in the structure of the world itself.

The world does not punish stagnation.
It does not reward development.
It does not demand narrative justification.

In this environment, innocence does not need to be defended.
It persists automatically—because the system itself supports it.

This is a crucial shift.

Earlier forms of “lightness” were fragile because they depended on personal detachment.
In Beautiful Dreamer, lightness becomes systemic.

The Suspension of Evaluation

Another radical feature of Beautiful Dreamer is the weakening of judgment.

Conflicts do not crystallize into moral conclusions.
Actions are rarely fixed as right or wrong.
Even the question of whether this world is illusion or reality remains unresolved.

What disappears is not meaning, but finality.

Evaluation is endlessly deferred.

As long as nothing is finalized, characters remain unclaimed by narrative destiny.
They are not forced to “mean” something.

They are simply allowed to exist.

Not Escape, but Structural Refusal

Calling this escapism misses the point.

Escape implies fleeing from reality into fantasy.
Beautiful Dreamer does something more unsettling.

It reveals that reality itself is already organized by narrative expectations—
and then removes those expectations.

What replaces progress is continuity.
What replaces transformation is coexistence.

The central question shifts from
What will this become?
to
Can this condition be maintained?

This shift matters.

Because once storytelling becomes about maintaining a condition rather than completing a journey, the center of gravity moves again—
away from narrative resolution,
away from character arcs,
and toward something else entirely.

Preparing the Next Split

Beautiful Dreamer does not end a movement.
It opens a fork.

In the 1990s, this logic will split in two directions:

• One path returns to destiny, uniqueness, and world-saving narratives.
• The other radicalizes everydayness, pushing “nothing happens” into a stable format.

That divergence—between narratives that must matter and narratives that refuse to matter—will clarify why, eventually, place rather than character becomes the key unit of meaning.

That is where we turn next.

Chapter 4: 90s — World-Type vs. Everyday-Type Narratives

The 1990s — A Split Between Saving the World and Refusing It

The logic introduced by Beautiful Dreamer did not simply continue.
In the 1990s, it split.

One path doubled down on destiny.
The other radicalized everydayness.

Both paths inherited the same problem:
how to deal with meaning after the collapse of grand narratives.

They simply answered it differently.

---

Why Stories That “Save the World” Returned

At first glance, the resurgence of world-saving narratives in the 1990s seems paradoxical.
If the 1980s questioned grand stories, why did stories about fate, choice, and singular responsibility come back so forcefully?

The answer lies in pressure, not nostalgia.

As social narratives lost their authority, fiction began to shoulder a new burden:
to produce meaning that reality no longer guaranteed.

This is where “world-type” narratives emerge.

In these stories:

• The world is fragile
• Collapse is imminent
• Only one choice, one subject, or one decision matters

Meaning is no longer distributed—it is concentrated.

A representative example is Neon Genesis Evangelion.

Here, the world does not merely need saving.
It demands justification.

The protagonist’s inner turmoil is no longer incidental—it becomes cosmically relevant.
Personal indecision is scaled up into apocalyptic consequence.

What matters is not comfort, but necessity.

Someone must act.
Someone must choose.
Someone must bear the weight of meaning.

This narrative structure restores seriousness—but at a cost.
It turns subjectivity into a bottleneck.

---

Mission, Choice, and Uniqueness

World-type narratives rely on three tightly linked elements:

1. Mission — There is something that must be done
2. Choice — Someone must decide to do it
3. Uniqueness — Only this subject can do so

These elements reintroduce gravity into storytelling.

But they also reintroduce exclusion.

If one person matters absolutely, others matter relatively.
If one choice defines the world, alternatives vanish.

World-type stories solve the problem of meaning by forcing it.

---

Everyday-Type as the Other Answer

Running parallel to this intensification is a quieter, but equally radical move.

Instead of amplifying stakes, some works remove them entirely.

No mission.
No destiny.
No necessary transformation.

This is the consolidation of what would later be called “everyday-type” narratives.

In these stories:

• Nothing needs to be achieved
• No one must grow
• The world continues regardless

What matters is not outcome, but continuation.

Episodes end without resolution.
Characters return to the same emotional register.
Time advances, but meaning does not accumulate.

At first, this can look empty.

But structurally, it is a refusal to make significance compulsory.

---

“Nothing Happens” as a Decision

Importantly, “nothing happens” is not a lack of craft.
It is a choice.

Everyday-type narratives decide that:

• Growth is optional
• Conflict is temporary
• Evaluation is suspended

This does not eliminate emotion.
It redistributes it.

Rather than rising toward climax, feeling spreads horizontally—across moments, gestures, shared time.

What replaces narrative payoff is tone stability.

---

The Moment of Realization: “Everyone Is in the Same Mood”

At some point, a strange realization emerges.

The differences between characters begin to matter less than the atmosphere they share.

Personal traits fade into the background.
What dominates is:

• Rhythm
• Distance
• Safety
• Non-interference

The question is no longer who a character is, but how they coexist.

No one intrudes too deeply.
No one judges decisively.
No one is expelled from the group.

This is not harmony by agreement.
It is harmony by design.

The world itself enforces moderation.

---

From Character to Condition

This is the crucial transition.

In world-type narratives, meaning is carried by characters.
In everyday-type narratives, meaning is carried by conditions.

Not personality, but environment.
Not development, but maintenance.

By the end of the 1990s, the groundwork is laid for a further shift:

If what matters is no longer the hero,
and not even the story,
then perhaps what truly functions is something else entirely.

Not character.
Not narrative.
But place.

That realization marks the next stage.

Chapter 5: Not Characters, but the Place That Functions

By the time everyday-type narratives fully settled in, something subtle but decisive had changed.

The question was no longer
what kind of character is this?

It became:
what kind of place allows this character to exist unchanged?

This shift marks a structural transformation.
Meaning is no longer carried by individuals—it is sustained by the environment itself.

---

Characters Are Not Innocent—The Place Is

It is tempting to say that everyday-type works feature “innocent characters.”
But this is misleading.

The characters are not especially pure, kind, or virtuous.
What is different is that no one is required to become otherwise.

No one is singled out.
No one is forced to stand apart.
No one becomes an exception.

This produces a strange equality—not through sameness of personality, but through sameness of pressure.

Or rather, the absence of it.

What makes the space feel gentle is not who inhabits it,
but the fact that nothing sharp is demanded of anyone.

---

The Disappearance of the Exceptional

In world-type narratives, meaning concentrates around the exceptional subject.
Someone must be different. Someone must decide.

Here, exceptionality dissolves.

There is no chosen one.
No definitive viewpoint.
No moral center that others orbit around.

Everyone remains ordinary—not as a value judgment, but as a condition.

This is why growth arcs quietly vanish.
Growth would reintroduce hierarchy.

---

Atmosphere, Tempo, and Safety

What replaces character-driven meaning is atmospheric regulation.

Everyday-type worlds carefully manage:

• Distance — no one intrudes too deeply
• Tempo — nothing escalates too quickly
• Tone — emotional spikes are smoothed out

This creates a sense of safety that does not rely on trust or agreement.

It relies on design.

No one judges harshly.
No one delivers final verdicts.
No one is expelled for failing to perform meaning correctly.

Crucially, this safety does not require explicit rules.

It is enforced tacitly—through rhythm, framing, and repetition.

---

No One Pushes, No One Pulls

What defines these spaces is restraint.

Characters do not push each other to change.
They also do not pull others into intimacy.

Relationships remain lightly connected—close enough to coexist, distant enough to avoid friction.

This balance is fragile, but persistent.

The result is a world that continues not because it progresses,
but because nothing destabilizes it.

---

The Emerging Unease

At this point, a quiet unease begins to surface.

If this space feels comforting,
what exactly is being protected?

Is this a shared value system?
Or is it a technical solution?

The gentleness here does not come from belief or morality.
It comes from maintenance.

From preventing conflict rather than resolving it.
From stabilizing tone rather than asserting meaning.

This raises a crucial question:

Is this still a worldview?
Or has it become a practice?

---

From Narrative to Infrastructure

This is the turning point.

The everyday-type world no longer functions as a story.
It functions as an infrastructure for coexistence.

Characters enter it.
Moments happen within it.
But what persists is the environment itself.

The place becomes the protagonist.

And once meaning is relocated from characters and narratives
to the ongoing maintenance of a shared space,
a new cultural form becomes possible.

One that does not merely depict this structure—
but requires collective participation to sustain it.

That is where we turn next.

Chapter 6: Where VTuber Culture Emerges

At this point, the trajectory we have traced reaches a decisive threshold.

What began as parody,
then became distance from narrative,
then stabilized as everyday life,
and finally crystallized as a maintained place—

now crosses from representation into practice.

This is where VTuber culture appears.

Not as a sudden invention,
but as the most explicit form of something that had already been developing beneath the surface.

---

Fiction Maintained Together

Traditional fiction assumes a clear division:

• creators create
• audiences consume

Even when audiences emotionally invest, the structure remains intact.

VTuber culture disrupts this separation.

Here, fiction does not simply exist—it must be continuously upheld.

The performer acts as a character.
The audience responds as if the character exists.
And crucially, both sides understand this as an ongoing arrangement.

Seeing and acting are no longer cleanly separable.

If the audience withdraws participation,
the fiction weakens.

If the performer breaks the tone,
the place destabilizes.

Meaning is not delivered.
It is maintained.

---

Participation as a Condition, Not an Option

What matters here is not belief.

Viewers do not need to believe the character is “real.”
They only need to behave as if the space deserves care.

Comments that respect tone.
Reactions that avoid collapsing the fiction.
Shared restraint in moments of ambiguity.

These are not moral imperatives.
They are operational requirements.

The fiction survives because people cooperate—often tacitly, often intuitively.

This is not immersion in the classical sense.
It is co-management.

---

Why the Anime-Like Look?

At this point, we can return to the question posed earlier:

Why anime-style avatars?

Here, the argument made by Virtual Bishoujo Nemu becomes a crucial reference point.

Rather than understanding the anime look as mere aesthetics or fetishization,
it can be read as a value signal.

The anime-style avatar does not claim realism.
It does not compete with the physical world.

Instead, it announces from the outset:

This is a constructed space.
Handle with care.

The visual language communicates fragility.

Large eyes, simplified expressions, stylized bodies—
these elements do not demand belief, but gentle handling.

They invite a mode of interaction that avoids intrusion.

---

The Avatar as Participation Declaration

Wearing such an avatar is not merely role-play.

It is a declaration:

I am entering this space under these rules.
I will not force reality into it.

This is why the anime look persists even as technology allows realism.

Hyper-real avatars would reintroduce pressure—
expectations of authenticity, consistency, exposure.

Stylization, by contrast, protects distance.

It preserves the condition under which the place can remain stable.

---

What Is Being Maintained

By now, it should be clear:

What VTuber culture maintains is neither character nor narrative.

It maintains the place itself.

A place where:

• no one must fully reveal themselves
• no one is pushed to resolve contradictions
• no one is expelled for breaking immersion once

Mistakes are absorbed.
Slippages are forgiven.
Continuity matters more than coherence.

This is not because participants are exceptionally kind.

It is because the structure requires gentleness to function.

---

From Innocence to Practice

The “innocence” we traced earlier has fully transformed.

It is no longer a trait of characters.
It is no longer a mood of stories.

It has become a method.

A way of sustaining shared fiction
without collapsing it into belief
or exposing it to judgment.

VTuber culture makes this explicit.

It shows us that what seemed like a vague feeling—
comfort, softness, safety—

was in fact a highly developed cultural technique.

---

Toward Naming This Structure

Only now are we in a position to name what has been happening.

Not as a universal value.
Not as a moral ideal.

But as a specific configuration of relationships,
practices, and expectations.

In the final chapter,
we will carefully introduce a term—
not as a definitive label,
but as a provisional name for this structure.

One that has circulated as a joke,
as a meme,
as a half-ironic phrase—

yet may describe this phenomenon more accurately than expected.

Conclusion: What Should We Call This?

At the very end of this trajectory, we face a familiar difficulty.

We have traced a structure.
We have identified its conditions.
We have observed its practices.

And yet, the moment we try to name it, something resists.

This hesitation is not accidental.
It is, in fact, part of the phenomenon itself.

---

Why It Has Resisted Naming

What we have been describing is not an ideology.
It is not a genre.
It is not a moral position.

It does not announce itself as a doctrine,
nor does it demand agreement.

Instead, it operates quietly—
through tone, restraint, timing, and mutual adjustment.

Most of the time, participants do not consciously reflect on it.
They simply act in ways that keep the place intact.

This is why it has rarely been theorized directly.

The moment it becomes explicit,
it risks collapsing into prescription or judgment.

And that would undermine the very conditions that allow it to exist.

---

Why It Is So Easily Misunderstood

When outsiders encounter this structure,
they often misread it in predictable ways:

• as naïveté
• as escapism
• as emotional immaturity
• as an avoidance of “reality”

But this misunderstands what is happening.

Nothing here denies reality.
Rather, reality is kept at a careful distance.

Not because it is false,
but because forcing it too close would damage the shared space.

What looks like softness is, in fact, precision.

What looks like kindness is often technical restraint.

---

Why It Has Always Been Close to “Madness”

This structure has long been associated with accusations of irrationality.

Why?

Because it refuses a core assumption of modern rationality:

That everything meaningful must eventually be clarified, judged, or resolved.

Here, unresolvedness is not a failure.
It is a condition of stability.

Contradictions are not eliminated.
They are contained.

Participants are allowed to be inconsistent, partial, unfinished.

From the outside, this can appear unstable—or even delusional.

From the inside, it is carefully managed.

What appears as “madness” is often simply
non-closure sustained over time.

---

So—What Do People Call It?

At this point, we can acknowledge something modest but important.

Many people already have a phrase for this state.

Not as a theory.
Not as a definition.
But as a half-joking, half-affectionate remark.

They call it:

“A gentle world.”

Usually with irony.
Often with laughter.
Sometimes with quotation marks.

It appears in moments where events are clearly contrived,
where outcomes are improbably kind,
where no one is punished for what would normally be a fault.

Importantly, it is rarely used seriously.

And that is precisely why it works.

---

A Name We Should Not Fix

To be clear:

This essay does not propose “Gentle World” as a formal concept.

It should not be stabilized, exported, or enforced.

It is better understood as a temporary label—
a placeholder that acknowledges something without freezing it.

A name that points,
but does not define.

The phrase survives because it remains light.
Because it can be withdrawn at any moment.
Because no one is required to agree on its meaning.

In other words, the term itself follows the same rules as the structure it names.

---

What This Leaves Us With

What we have traced is not a cultural decline,
nor a retreat into fantasy.

It is a shift in how shared spaces are sustained.

From narrative to atmosphere.
From character to relation.
From belief to practice.

VTuber culture did not invent this.
It simply made it visible.

And what appears fragile—
soft, kind, inconsequential—

turns out to be one of the most carefully engineered forms of coexistence
produced by contemporary digital culture.

---

Toward What Comes Next

This leaves open further questions:

• What happens when this structure is institutionalized?
• What breaks when it is scaled or monetized?
• And what kinds of conflicts arise when “gentleness” becomes an expectation rather than a practice?

Those questions belong to what follows.

For now, it is enough to say this:

What we call a “gentle world”
is not a place where nothing hurts—

but a place where harm is not allowed to define the entire space.

And that, perhaps, is why it had to remain unnamed for so long.