Alishba Rahim, 2024

Abstract

Digital Girl World is a teaser and trial episode showcasing the viewer’s attempt at survival after being transported into a horrific version of PNCA. Your only ally, a young, hyperfeminine girl named Nami helping you find a way out of this liminal space PNCA. Can you trust this girl? She looks sweet, but something about her feels…off. Through a merging and contrast of hyperfeminine and retro horror game aesthetics, internet-core and analog elements. I will create a narrative that reclaims hyperfeminine women’s sense of autonomy in the horror genre. The genre is a psychological horror, animated as a visual novel.

In the plot of the teaser, after the viewer is transported into the liminal space PNCA, they are immediately chased by shadow people. There the viewer meets Naami, who helps you out by solving a puzzle, which unlocks the elevator, allowing both Naami and the viewer to the next floor. Naami then introduces herself and informs you that the school creates puzzles depending on what the shadow people and the environment want. The two process to explore the floor, and stumble upon a Monster door that wants something to eat. Naami guides you along with a puzzle, unlocking a locker that reveals a still-beating heart. Naami fills the heart with blood and feeds it to the Monster Door. After the door is satisfied, the elevator door opens, indicating the puzzle is solved and the two are free to go. The viewer feels relieved that someone as reliable and totally not suspicious as Naami is there by your side.

The core of my thesis is merging a retro horror-game aesthetic with hyper-femininity to reclaim women's sense of autonomy in animation by recontextualizing traditional feminine traits. Most media depict the 'girly girl' as vain, unintelligent, and basic. Someone who has not earned their agency. This correlates with how the interests of young girls are seen through similar lenses of lesser value. Instead, misogyny encourages both men and women to invest their me with traditional masculine, interests/fields/appearance, which are more respected and important in society. This is especially relevant in horror movies, where the hyper-femme girl who is neither the ‘succubus’, ‘femme fatale’, or ‘final girl’ is treated to be insignificant and weak—the victim.

This is all exemplified through Digital Girl World’s main character Naami. A smiley and sweet feminine girl, with an ‘off-side’. The goal for the future is to create more episodes where Naami’s true nature gets revealed before it is too late for the viewer to do anything about it. Therefore, crowning the girly Naami as undefeated, forever more. In the plot of the teaser, after the viewer.

Link to Digital Girl World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnUi2lI2H44