1867: Golden Time

Started watching a new (well, new to me) anime a little while back after finally finishing Silver Spoon. It's called Golden Time, and I'm not entirely sure how I became aware of it, but it was in my Crunchyroll queue and had intrigued me, so I decided now was the time to check it out.

On paper, it's a fairly straightforward slice-of-life anime. Protagonist Tada Banri is starting his new life at university, and in the process meets a number of new friends, including the obligatory harem of potential romantic interests. Of the main cast, however, the most interesting — and the one highlighted in the show's opening and ending titles — is Kaga Koko, a strikingly beautiful young woman from a privileged background who has shown up at Banri's university in pursuit of her childhood friend and supposed love of her life Mitsuo. Mitsuo, meanwhile, wants nothing to do with Koko, having surreptitiously switched universities in an attempt to get away from her, but she wasn't about to let him escape that easily.

Central to the show is the developing relationship between Banri and Koko as the former tries to help the latter come to terms with the constant rejection she gets from Mitsuo. It's a troubled and unconventional relationship, and doesn't follow the usual tropes of anime romance stories, largely because Koko is such an unstable but delightfully fascinating character.

When Koko is alone with Banri, we see what is clearly the "real" her. She's frank, candid and honest, and willing to open up about her feelings — though she'll pretend that she's putting on a front to garner sympathy from others. Occasionally she lets some obvious, genuine feelings slip, however, such as in one of the early episodes where she complains to Banri that no-one will talk to her because she has the reputation of being "that rich, beautiful girl that is out of everyone's league". Banri consistently gives her the time of day, however, and quickly falls in love with her; she rejects him, however, and puts him well and truly in the "friend zone" with her constant and emphatic reiteration of What Good Friends They Are.

When Koko comes across Mitsuo, though, her whole personality changes. She becomes obsessive, jealous and irrational. When she sees Mitsuo with the adorably cute Chinami, whom Mitsuo has taken a liking to, she is extremely rude to Chinami; Chinami, however, is a lot stronger than she looks, and brushes off the torrent of abuse she gets, even going so far as to deliberately try and befriend Koko in later episodes. Koko claims to Banri that the person she is when she's with Mitsuo is the "real her", but it's abundantly clear that the complete opposite is true; the only person with whom she can truly be herself is Banri.

The other interesting twist in the tale, aside from the complex and difficult relationship between Banri and Koko, is the fact that Banri is an amnesiac. Prior to the events depicted in the show, Banri was in an accident that cost him all of his memories from before he turned 18 and left for university. He doesn't remember who he is, what his personality is or what his relationships with others were like. As the show progresses, he starts to uncover things about his past — and I'm only a short way in so far, so I'm not sure how far it goes, but it has a lot of potential to be very intriguing indeed.

Interestingly, Banri's amnesia is depicted not only by him struggling to recall things, but by a ghostly apparition of his past self that occasionally narrates short sequences. The ghost describes himself as having "died" the day of the accident, and that the current Banri is nothing but an empty shell. Again, things aren't that simple, though, as amnesiac Banri starts discovering ties to his past — and the fact that people whom he thought were strangers and new friends actually have a lot more to do with him than he initially thought.

There are two big things I like about the show as a whole: one, that it's constantly raising new questions and drawing the viewer in through Banri's journey of self-rediscovery; and two, that a lot happens in each episode. So often with slice-of-life anime, things just sort of pootle along for a while and nothing really happens; this is fine, so long as the characters are strong enough to carry this sort of nothing-really-happens story, but Golden Time sidesteps this style of slice-of-life in favour of something that, while obviously the stuff of fiction, is plausible, believable and emotionally engaging.

I literally have no idea how things are going to turn out by the end of the 24-episode run, but I'm looking forward to finding out. I'm enjoying the show a whole lot so far, and cautiously recommend it to anyone looking for a slice-of-life show with a bit more depth than many other offerings.

1860: Silver Spoon

I finally got around to finishing off the anime series I've been watching off and on for some time now: Silver Spoon. And I enjoyed it a whole lot — the amount of time it took me to watch the damn thing from start to finish was more a matter of time than the fact I wasn't enjoying it, I should add.

Silver Spoon is an interesting anime because although it technically falls in the "slice of life" category, it eschews the usual "high school harem" situation that genre usually favours, instead presenting an uncompromising, realistic, educational and non-judgemental look at the world of agriculture.

Now, you may not think that sounds like a particularly thrilling premise for an anime, but it really works. At least part of this is due to the fact that the protagonist Hachiken is put in much the same situation as most members of the audience when they start watching Silver Spoon: he's bewildered, doesn't know much about agriculture and is frequently surprised, distracted and horrified by some of the things he finds out. Over the course of the show's two seasons, both the audience and Hachiken go on a journey of discovery and learn a lot about the sometimes harsh truths that members of the agricultural industry have to deal with every day.

The show doesn't shy away from matter-of-factly explaining about how livestock is reared only to be sent to the slaughterhouse — and how animals that aren't "good enough" are treated differently — though it doesn't resort to shock tactics like actually showing the slaughtering process. (There is plenty of poo, though, and the occasional cow giving birth — though again, you don't see full gory detail; it's mostly about Hachiken's reaction rather than shock value.)

It also doesn't shy away from depicting the grim realities many modern farmers face: rising debt levels, ranches having to close down due to insufficient business, and children of long-standing farming families feeling forced into taking over the family business when they're barely out of school. There's a nice degree of drama to the whole series, delivered in an interesting, compelling and occasionally heartbreaking manner through Hachiken's interactions with his classmates, all of whom have ended up at the agricultural high school in which the show is set for different reasons.

The show's run is currently for two seasons, and while the second season does wrap up on a satisfying, suitably "final" feeling episode, there are still plenty of unresolved plotlines to explore that I believe have been covered in the manga the show is based on. Hopefully we'll get the chance to see a third season someday, because it really did turn out to be one of the most surprisingly enjoyable anime series I've had the pleasure of watching for quite some time. It's witty, it's funny, it's heartfelt and it has something to say without beating its audience around the head with The Message.

If you're looking for something a little bit different from your usual fare to watch, I can highly recommend checking it out.

Check it out on Crunchyroll.

1853: Waifutine's Day

The whole "waifu" thing is something I find quite interesting.

For the uninitiated, a proud declaration that someone is your "waifu" (or, optionally, and possibly spelled differently, "hasubando") is something oddly peculiar to fans of Japanese popular entertainment. It goes far beyond simple attraction to the physical depiction of a character — particularly since it's very rare for anime- and manga-styled media to have unattractive characters, particularly female ones — and instead is to do with how the character is depicted: usually a combination of artwork, animation, voice acting and writing.

I say it's peculiar to fans of Japanese popular entertainment because you simply don't see it happening with Western entertainment. People might be sexually attracted to someone like, say, Doctor Who's Amy Pond; people might be attracted to the intelligence of someone like Deep Space Nine's Jadzia Dax; people might simply want to hang out with someone cool like Robin from How I Met Your Mother (yes, these are all examples from my own personal tastes; please feel free to replace them with your own choices, including gentlemen, if you so desire) — but it's pretty rare for someone to proudly and simply declare that one of these characters is their "waifu" (or just plain "wife") and develop a borderline obsession with them. Among other things, it's seen as creepy to have an obsession with a "3D" person, whereas when it comes to "2D" characters, pretty much anything goes as far as most people are concerned, since they're not "real people" in the first place.

Perhaps it's to do with the contrast between animation and live action: in Japanese popular media, we get animation covering all sorts of subject matter and for all ages, while in the West, with a few exceptions like Archer, The Venture Bros., South Park and a few others, animation is still seen very much as children's entertainment, and live-action is seen as more appropriate for adults. The thing with animation is it depicts a heavily idealised perception of reality where pretty much everyone is physically beautiful and completely visually distinct from one another, and a lot of characters fall into easily definable, easily categorisable tropes that people can latch on to and identify as being appealing to them.

In this way, the declaration of a "waifu" could be argued to be a distillation of a person's individual tastes. It's rare (and undesirable) to pigeon-hole real people into neat tropes like tsundere, kuudere, ojou-sama and the like, since real people are complex; meanwhile, it's expected in anime and Japanese games. These characters are deliberately exaggerated interpretations of particular personality traits; in reality, everyone might have a bit of all of these tropes in them, whereas when we're talking about animated entertainment, one of these tropes tends to be the defining characteristic of a particular character. In other words, by declaring a particular character to be one's "waifu" you are effectively nailing your colours to a particular personality trait's standard and declaring that this, above all others, is something you find appealing for whatever reason.

And it doesn't even have to match how you feel in the "real world". I'm crazy about tsundere characters in games and anime, for example, but if I was confronted with someone who was that bitchy and mean to me in reality, I'd be quite uncomfortable. (Although if you listened to Andie and I insult one another on a daily basis — without meaning any of it, I might add — you might question my assertion here.) Likewise, something like the yandere trope can be extremely compelling — your favourite, even — in fiction, but something you would absolutely want to stay the hell away from in reality. (And with good reason; if you're not sure what a yandere is, I'd urge you to go and play School Days through a few times; if you hit the "Bloody End", then you'll soon figure it out.)

On a vaguely related note, having now completed three out of the four endings of Akiba's Trip on the Vita, I'm fairly confident that Rin will be my waifu from that particular work of interactive entertainment. And I will fight anyone who doesn't agree she is best girl! 🙂

1805: Christmas is Over

Well, it's the evening of Sunday December 28, and I'm counting down the hours until I have to get up at some ungodly hour in the morning and trudge all the way to work. (Okay, I drive most of it, but there's still an honest-to-goodness half-hour trudge at the other end, which I'm really not relishing in the current cold weather.)

The Christmas break has been nice, and the fact I'd spent the previous few months at work, away from home (as opposed to working from home as I was previously) has made me appreciate it somewhat more. I've enjoyed the time off, I've enjoyed having the opportunity to just relax without the pressure to "do" anything, and I've enjoyed having the time to indulge in some favourite games, TV shows and anime without time commitments.

I finished the Hanzou story in Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus today — that's one of the four stories in the game. I enjoyed it a lot; gameplay-wise, it's a significant improvement on the first game thanks to its jump to 3D, and its narrative is interesting. Throughout the course of the story, we learn some new things about the main cast as well as get introduced to the newcomers in this particular installment: the girls of the Gessen shinobi school, and the new members of the Hebijou school that Homura and her gang hailed from in the original game before being exiled following the events at Burst's finale.

My initial reaction to the Hanzou story was that I was slightly disappointed there weren't more of the visual novel sequences giving background on the girls and how they were feeling about various things — but on balance, I think there was a good amount. The game didn't try to do too much: it introduced one major plot/background point per character through several of these sequences peppered throughout the course of the entire narrative arc, and the rest of the story was delivered through snappy but enjoyable talking-heads sequences that were just about characters talking to one another, not narration. It worked well, and it teased just enough information about the Gessen girls to make me want to find out more about them: fortunately, I can now do just that by playing through their story, followed by Hebijou and finally Homura and her friends in the Crimson Squad.

I also, as we saw yesterday, made a start on Final Fantasy. I'll be writing more about that as I make more progress through it, though with my intended creative writing project in January this will likely be over on the Squadron of Shame forums rather than here.

I've also watched some anime for the first time in what feels like months; I've been continuing with the farming-themed series Silver Spoon, which was recommended to me by some anime-loving friends, and I've been reminded what a good show it is. It has an enjoyably understated plot about a teen boy feeling somewhat out of his depth in an agricultural academy, and some appealing, entertaining characters who occasionally reference recognisable anime tropes without being defined by them. There's one character in particular who looks like he would be more at home in a series like Dragon Ball Z, for example, so seeing him mucking out cows and working with chickens is rather entertaining, to say the least!

Anyway. Early-ish night for me tonight due to the aforementioned Danger of Work bell tolling, so I'll sign off there and simply say I hope you all had as restful and pleasant a Christmas as I had, and are looking forward to a good new year.

1576: Angel Beats: Gone Before Your Time

Looking back on recent entries, it occurs to me that I never summed up my final thoughts on the anime Angel Beats!, so let's rectify that right now, shall we?

Angel Beats! was an excellent show, tragically cut short by a not-insignificant degree: about 7 episodes, to be exact. What ended up as a 13-episode show was originally intended to be explored more fully across a larger number of episodes, but it never got the opportunity; there is supporting material in other forms of media, apparently, but the anime itself leaves a significant number of unanswered questions and rushes through its latter half at a disappointingly rapid clip.

Despite this aspect, however, it's still a great show, and shouldn't be passed up on just because it has stuff "missing". On the contrary, it has the feel of a great, unfinished work of art about it, and one can't help but wonder if, on a different worldline, the world was ever graced with a full 20-episode run of Angel Beats!

But enough about what the show doesn't have; what it does have is a whole lot of personality. Like Clannad, which a lot of the same people worked on, Angel Beats! features a combination of light-hearted humour and tearjerking scenes that will put your heart through a wringer. The juxtaposition of the two elements is, I feel, even more considerably pronounced than it was in Clannad; while Clannad had a few silly characters — Fuuko and, at times, Kotomi being probably the most obvious examples from the main cast — Angel Beats! has a lot more in the way of self-consciously silly, slapstick scenes. There's a beautiful sequence in one episode, for example, that sees the main cast attempting to create a distraction in class — a distraction that is achieved by, of all things, several cast members' chairs being equipped with small rocket engines that send them blasting off into the ceiling. The sheer unexpectedness of this sequence coupled with its deliberately melodramatic presentation — when they're blasting off, they do so in slow motion, accompanied by the heartfelt, tearjerking main ending theme to the series — makes it genuinely hilarious.

But then, often within the same episode where something ridiculous happened, there'll be at least one moment that will have all but the strongest souls in tears. These moments normally revolve around the series' central concept of the afterlife's inhabitants being "obliterated" and reborn as soon as they find true peace; rather than presenting a character's obliteration as the dramatic, over-the-top moment suggested by the word "obliterate", some excellent direction tends to mean that they just disappear — they're there in one frame, then the moment the camera angle changes, they're gone. Simple, beautiful — and often heartbreaking.

I know that some people aren't a big fan of how the whole series ends and while I agree to a certain extent — the last few episodes are very rushed, and the show both introduces and shows an antagonist the door with alarming rapidity — I found the actual finale to be a wonderful way to wrap up the whole series. Despite the obviously missing content — most notably, a number of main cast members lacking backstories — there was a satisfying sense of closure to the final scenes, and I was both impressed and surprised to note that the show didn't exactly end up in the place where I thought it was going to go when I first started watching.

And that's a real strength of the show as a whole. Most things about it start out as a mystery, and you're given a gradual drip-feed of information as the series progresses. By the end, you feel like you have a good understanding of at least the cast members positioned as the "main" characters; it's a shame that distinctive secondary characters such as TK (a blonde guy who speaks entirely in Engrish bastardisations of American clichés) remain completely unexplored, however.

I'd love to see a "director's cut" one day that features the "missing" episodes. I'm not sure it'll ever happen, even with the show's good reception and popularity, but it's certainly a nice possibility.

1555: Rebels Against the God

Having finished To Love-Ru a few days ago, I decided to jump into another show I'd heard of but didn't know much about: Angel Beats!, a show from P.A. Works and Aniplex, with a story and character design from two members of Key, the folks behind Clannad. (I mention this because the latter aspect is particularly noticeable; the show has the same gorgeous, well-animated style as Clannad, though thematically it's rather different.)

I'm only three episodes in so far but I'm very interested to see more already simply because the premise is so unusual. Unfolding in the afterlife, the show follows the exploits of a group who call themselves the SSS — a group of people who are attempting to resist a non-specific "god" to prevent themselves from being "obliterated" and subsequently reincarnated. Each of the characters clearly has their own story to tell about how they died and why they don't want to give up and accept their fate; three episodes in, we've already seen a couple of them, and I predict there will be quite a few tearjerking scenes before the end.

Like Clannad, though, Angel Beats! doesn't rely purely on wringing out your tear ducts until you can't cry any more. In fact, even more so than Clannad, there's a heavy dose of humour to the proceedings, and it's often rather black in nature. In the second episode, for example, the main cast are attempting to find their way to a hidden base from which they can procure weapons and supplies for their fight against what appears to be God's representative, an emotionless young girl called Angel who constantly thwarts them with her mysterious, seemingly supernatural powers. Along the way, it becomes apparent that the "anti-Angel traps" that had been set along the route have been activated, and one by one the group gets picked off in a series of gruesome manners. One guy gets crushed by a rock; another drowns; another is sliced to ribbons by being too big and muscular to duck under an arrangement of laser beams. In most shows, this sequence of events would be a horrifying tragedy, but since all the characters in Angel Beats! are inhabitants of the afterlife, we're quickly reminded that something that would kill you in reality will merely inconvenience you for a few minutes if you're already dead. I sense this is something that's going to come around again in the future.

One of the things I'm enjoying about the show so far is how it juxtaposes darkly humorous sections like the aforementioned — trust me, it is funny despite all the violence — with sections that are just plain dark. The sequence where leading lady Yuri explains her regrets from the latter days of her life is utterly heartbreaking, for example, as is the story of how songstress Iwasawa shuffled off the mortal coil and found herself in the afterlife. I'm pretty certain that the rest of the cast will have a similar tale to tell — with the final story undoubtedly being reserved for the currently amnesiac male protagonist, who is thoroughly confused by the whole situation he finds himself in.

The show's beautifully presented; aside from the aforementioned lovely art and glorious animation, the soundtrack is excellent, too. There's been heavy use of diegetic music in the episodes I've seen so far, with the lyrics often being relevant either to the specific situation the gang finds themselves in, or their overall situation in the afterlife. It can sometimes be a challenge to keep up with the two sets of subtitles running at once — one for the music, one for the dialogue — but it's worth attempting. (It's also nothing compared to the bizarre way the show handles teasers for the next episode: short clips from the episode of characters talking, all overlaid on top of each other at a more and more frantic pace until you can't possibly take any more.)

So that's that. At three episodes in I'm hesitant to say too much more at this juncture, but I've very much enjoyed what I've seen so far and am looking forward to watching more. I'm sure I'll have further thoughts when I have a few more episodes under my belt.

1540: Darkness

The focus of the new season is very much on what were previously secondary characters.

I'm finally on to the final (well, most recent) season of To Love-Ru, aka To Love-Ru Darkness, and it's been really interesting to see this show's evolution over time in several ways, even over the course of just a few years.

The first series of To Love-Ru came out in 2008 and was a fairly conventional episodic format in which each episode was largely self-contained. Motto To Love-Ru, which followed two years later in 2010, instead followed the "mini-episodes" approach of Ika Musume/Squid Girl. And To Love-Ru Darkness, which aired two years after that in 2012, returns to an episodic format, but with a much stronger sense of ongoing plot and frequent use of cliffhangers to close off each episode.

The atmosphere has changed markedly over time, too. The original series of To Love-Ru was rather silly, light-hearted nonsense that, as I've previously mentioned, was pretty undemanding fluff that you can watch without having to concentrate too hard — but it did close out the season with a spectacular two-part finale that brought things to a natural break, if not complete closure.

Motto To Love-Ru, meanwhile, was enjoyable but for the most part felt even more "disposable" thanks to its short mini-episodes. Over the course of the series, we got a better understanding of the various characters involved by simply seeing them in a variety of different situations, but there was relatively little in the sense of overarching narrative that advanced as the series progressed aside from the introduction and exploration of a couple of new characters. The season finale, meanwhile, was a big moment for several of the characters involved, but in a completely different way to the original show. Rather than being an overblown epic involving protagonist Rito battling against unfeasible odds in an attempt to prove himself as in the first season, it instead was a fairly low-key affair that, in contrast to the rest of the run, linked its three mini-episodes together and culminated in a long-awaited confession from Rito to lead heroine (and super-cute space alien) Lala — and an unfortunate misunderstanding as he attempted to also confess to secondary love interest Haruna (who is likewise super-cute, but not a space alien).

To Love-Ru Darkness picks up directly from where Motto To Love-Ru left off, in contrast to how Motto To Love-Ru assumed some time had passed between the first series, the first set of OVAs and the new season. And it has a noticeably different focus so far in the few episodes I've watched, too; rather than focusing on the relationship between Rito and Lala that was the centrepiece of both To Love-Ru and Motto To Love-Ru, early episodes instead explore the character of Lala's sister Momo, whose devious machinations sort of have Rito's interests at heart, but are fundamentally largely incompatible with the norms of Earth society.

Lala, the centrepiece of the previous two seasons, doesn't even appear in a lot of promotional artwork for Darkness.

In short, Momo decides after seeing Rito make his heartfelt confessions at the end of Motto To Love-Ru that she, too, likes Rito, and decides that the best thing for everyone involved in the increasingly complicated love polygon situation they all find themselves in would be if Rito marries Lala, becomes King of the Universe and consequently no longer bound by the rules of Earth society, then marries everyone else that he has ever had feelings for or who has had feelings for him. She, in short, is firmly in favour of creating a harem of concubines for her beloved — a harem in which she, too, will play her role, of course.

Rito, thus far, is somewhat resistant to this idea, since being of the "perpetually confused protagonist" mould, he is still not quite sure what his true feelings are with regard to Lala and Haruna, let alone Momo (who keeps showing up almost naked in his bed at night-time, much to his chagrin), class representative Kotegawa (whom Rito has a habit of falling over into inappropriately), the extraterrestrial assassin Golden Darkness (who clearly doesn't really want to kill Rito) and, indeed, his own sister Mikan, who has struck up something of a friendship with Golden Darkness. Constantly yanked from one situation beyond his control to another, I can sense that this season is going to see some of Rito's toughest trials to date — particularly now that some new characters, such as Golden Darkness' "sister", have gotten involved.

In keeping with the previous seasons and OVA sets, the amount of fanservice has once again been ratcheted up, with the number of bare nipples and panty flashes in To Love-Ru Darkness having increased noticeably since the original (rather tame in comparison) season and even since the somewhat more suggestive Motto To Love-Ru. The show refuses to devolve into nothing but T&A, however; even amid all the clear and present fanservice, there's still an ongoing plot that, this time around, seems to blend the silliness of the earlier seasons with something that provides a bit more meat on the bones.

It's shaping up to be an interesting season, all round, and I'm looking forward to seeing where Rito's misadventures take him next.

1533: Motto

As a suitable means of switching my brain off when I need it (which is quite frequently at the moment) I've been continuing to watch To Love-Ru and am now onto the second series, Motto To Love-Ru.

I was interested to discover that this second series is structured rather differently to the conventionally episodic first season, instead adopting the same approach as Ika Musume (aka Squid Girl) by making each individual episode up out of three short stories rather than one large story that kind of sort of ties into the overall narrative. That said, narrative coherence is not a huge priority in To Love-Ru, since there are a couple of points throughout the series where things just evidently happen "between episodes" without explanation — or perhaps they just happened where I didn't notice. (Or, more likely, in the original manga, since it's not at all unusual for anime adaptations of popular manga to simply skip over chapters at a time for brevity's sake.)

The series remains enjoyably fluffy, however, despite the predictability of the protagonist Rito falling over at least once per episode either face-first into someone's crotch or with his hands on someone's boobs. Despite the occasional bout of fanservicey smuttiness — which gradually increases in frequency between the first series and the first set of OVAs, and then again between the OVAs and the Motto second season — the show remains consistently good-natured, with it generally being Rito as the one who is ridiculed and made to look an idiot rather than the rapidly expanding female side of the cast, most of whom tend to come off pretty well out of their various misadventures.

And as clichéd and tropey as a lot of those female cast members are, they all have their own appeal elements and twists on the usual formula. The stern, harsh class president Kotegawa, as you might expect, has her deredere side to go with all the tsuntsun, and predictably, it's adorable. Meanwhile, teen idol Run-chan's twist is that she turns into a boy when she sneezes — a side-effect of being an alien, naturally — while Oshizu is a ghost whose spirit has a tendency to evacuate her artificial body whenever she gets scared, such as when she sees a dog. (Naturally, one of the other characters has a dog, so this situation comes up quite a bit.) And then there's Yami-chan, aka Golden Darkness, who is all the things I loved about Ell from My Girlfriend is the President and then some. Also, she has hair that can turn into weapons and punch people. Hnnnnng, as they say.

I'm not even going to pretend that To Love-Ru is anything more than fanservicey, switch-your-brain-off fluffy nonsense that is designed for pure entertainment value rather than attempting to say anything big or meaningful. It doesn't have the clever Lovecraftian references of the rather similar (but later) Haiyore! Nyaruko-san, nor does it have the clever self-awareness of other comedy anime. It's simple, it is, at times, sexy, and it is, at times, utterly stupid. And sometimes that's exactly what you need from a piece of entertainment. And thus I make absolutely no apologies whatsoever for enjoying it; it's a delightful accompaniment to my brain's boot-up sequence while I'm having breakfast of a morning, and it's likewise a pleasant accompaniment for the shutdown sequence of an evening before I go to bed.

Anyway. Once I'm done with To Love-Ru (the rest of Motto, followed by some OVAs, followed by the third and, currently, final season To Love-Ru Darkness) I will watch something a bit more intelligent, I promise. Maybe. Possibly.

Come on, I survived Clannad. I deserve this! 🙂

1527: Trope-ical Crush

The word "tropes" has taken on something of a pejorative meaning in recent years, but I find something oddly comforting about the use of common, established, recognisable tropes — particularly when it comes to Japanese entertainment. I also find it interesting that Japanese entertainment — both games and anime — is a lot more willing to fully embrace the idea of tropes as part of the medium's language rather than attempting to hide what it's doing.

Take the common character tropes, for example. In a typical "harem" situation (usually a male protagonist surrounded by female characters, one of whom is typically positioned as the "main" love interest, but the others of whom are optionally also either interested in the protagonist or the objects of the protagonist's affections) you tend to have your tsundere, your kuudere, your childhood friend, your "princess" type, your genki girl and, depending on how many characters are involved, numerous others. And yet the predictability of this type of cast makeup, for me, doesn't prove to be tiresome; quite the opposite, in fact. I enjoy being able to point to the various characters and say "well, she's clearly… and she's clearly…" because it provides a recognisable, established starting point for these characters that can then subsequently be built on over the course of the rest of the work.

Exactly how — or if — these tropes are built upon by the work depends entirely on the work in question. Some works embrace the established tropes wholeheartedly and make the characters into textbook examples of the character types they initially appear to be: a valid approach. Conversely, some works deliberately work to subvert the tropes they establish in their early hours with some surprising twists and turns for the characters: also a valid approach. And, for some archetypes, subversion of expectations is part of the trope itself: witness the tsundere, for example — usually frowning, overly defensive and, at times, somewhat aggressive — and how her character arc typically involves her "softening" and showing her deredere side. Or the yandere — quiet and meek, but with something seriously unpleasant festering inside that demure exterior. Knowing that at some point she's going to strike doesn't diminish the impact when it happens; if she's a particularly well-disguised yandere, it's even more shocking and surprising.

I'm a fan of tropes, then; I enjoy that feeling of comforting familiarity that comes about when I come across a new character and recognise their traits. And everyone has their favourites, too; for me, I must confess to having a soft spot for tsunderes, but I do also like a kuudere and there's always something heartwarming about a nice childhood friends romance. And the older sister "nee-chan" type. And a cutie imouto. And… Oh dear. (Essentially, I think I'm saying that my ideal anime harem would be made up of the cast of My Girlfriend is the President.)

If you'll excuse me, I'm off to bed to read TVTropes. (Warning if you're at work: settling down for a "quick read" of that site is a good way to lose a few hours.)

1517: The Misunderstood Fan

It can be a trying task being a fan of something at times. And by "fan" I don't mean "rabid, frothing fanboy/fanmadam" (thanks NISA); I mean simply someone who has a particular preference for something, and who will, in many cases, indulge in that thing to the exclusion of other, perhaps more "mainstream" things.

Since pretty much "coming out" as a fan of visual novels, anime and associated goodness around the time Katawa Shoujo was released, I've run into this issue a number of times. In the case of Japanese entertainment, the cultural rift between East and West means that some people are less than understanding about certain aspects of what our friends in the East produce.

And perhaps that's understandable in some cases; even as a fan of a broad spectrum of Japanese entertainment, I'll happily admit that there's plenty of content — primarily around the area where sex and violence cross over — that makes me uncomfortable, and so I deliberately choose not to expose myself to that sort of thing. ("Discovering" Urotsukidoji in my teens was quite enough, thanks.) It exists, though, and I can deal with that; it's simply something I choose not to engage with. (I also don't believe for a second that it's actually harmful — to believe as such is to show an alarming lack of faith in humanity's ability to distinguish between fact and fiction, and a similarly alarming willingness to believe that everyone is stupid enough to just want to emulate everything they see. Sometimes fantasy is just fantasy.)

The trouble comes when people start to assume the worst about an entire culture's output based on some of its more questionable or discomfort-provoking aspects, or even, in some cases, based on things they just think they know — the "lol Japan" approach.

Let's take the recently released Senran Kagura as an example. Here we have a game that explores and respects its characters in great detail — going so far as to give each and every one of them their moment in the spotlight in lengthy, well-written visual novel sequences — that also happens to feature characters with big jiggly boobs who occasionally flash their pantsu. Are the jiggly boobs and pantsu necessary? Of course they're not, but they don't detract from all the other good stuff that the game is doing — and frankly, what is there to be ashamed of there, anyway? Senran Kagura's cast is depicted to be a bunch of strong, independent young women who are more than capable of taking care of themselves and who are, above all, confident and comfortable in who they are and what they look like. (Those who have played it will know that the possible exception to this rule is Hibari, but her own character arc revolves around her coming to terms with her own inferiority complex; the end result is her accepting herself, flaws and all, and recognising that she doesn't have to go it alone.)

Admirable traits, I'm sure you'll agree, and so what does commentary about the game focus on? You guessed it; the jiggly boobs and the pantsu. And the aggression with which these criticisms are delivered is astonishing — take this outstandingly vitriolic takedown of the game that appeared not on someone's personal blog, but on the official Nintendo magazine's website. Or take the comments that habitually appear on any article about the game, which usually involve accusations of those who enjoy the game being "perverts" or, in more extreme cases "paedophiles". It's gross and disgusting, and it makes my heart sink any time I see it. And there's no point trying to argue your case against these people; they're people who have made their minds up about something, and have no interest in changing it.

For what it's worth, I'm firmly of the belief that there's not actually anything wrong with enjoying the fanservicey aspects of titles like Senran Kagura and its ilk; acknowledging your own sexuality is a healthy thing to do, and finding something that isn't real attractive does not necessarily say anything about your attitudes towards a real-world equivalent. Indeed, I'll happily admit to having been attracted to some Japanese titles purely by the fanservice aspect, whether it's video games or anime; in pretty much every single case, I've been pleasantly surprised to discover that beneath the often in-your-face sexuality of some works, there beats a heart of gold; in many cases, I've even discovered that the fanservice aspect is a lot "tamer" than a lot of people tend to make out, and the whole point of it is actually to tell an interesting story with some loveable and, yes, attractive characters. (There's also some stuff that purely exists to be sexy, and that, too, is both fine and can be enjoyable.)

Here's the thing: I, like, I'd wager, pretty much anyone else who enjoys anime and other Japanese forms of entertainment, am capable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality — and anime-themed entertainment is so obviously fantasy that I find it very difficult to take the more vitriolic criticisms of it seriously, particularly when they're delivered with such furious anger that it often becomes clear that the one raging has very little actual experience with the work in question beyond the most superficial knowledge — see that Official Nintendo Magazine piece.

I often find myself wondering if fans of other niche interests find themselves subject to similar scorn. Is one of my dearest friends, who is such a fan of heavy machinery (whether military or agricultural) that he describes his reaction to various hulking metal beasts in terms of how "tumescent" they make him, likewise a "pervert" for talking about things in this way? Of course not. Whether or not they really do make him tumescent is neither here nor there, and is nothing but his own business; his own personal interest in such things is something that is important to him, something that I respect and something that, on several occasions, has in fact led me to checking out things that I otherwise never would have explored for myself at all. An ultimately positive experience, in other words.

It's a pity that not everyone feels they can be open-minded about things not immediately familiar to them, and instead jump to conclusions without bothering to investigate them for themselves. It happens in all aspects of society, not just the ultimately not-all-that-important really fandoms of various forms of entertainment, and it sucks every time it comes up, particularly when I see it upsetting people I know and like. (Or when it upsets me which, I won't lie, it has done on a number of occasions.)

Live and let live. And perhaps, just once, ask your friend what it is about [x] that they like so much. Be willing to take a look for yourself and reconsider your opinion.

And if you still don't like it? Don't be an ass to people who do.