Before I get labelled as some Yan­dere the­o­rist like meflo­raine: no, I’m not a Yan­dere expert. Heck, I’m not even a Yan­dere fan, even if Kaede from Shuf­fle sits on my MAL top 10 favorite char­ac­ters or that I tend to like a lot of yan­dere char­ac­ters or that I argue for them when— okay not help­ing my case.

Of all the char­ac­ter archtypes lying about out there, Yan­deres seem to be the most mis­un­der­stood and hated, far more than even the most sadis­tic vari­a­tion of tsun­deres. Obvi­ously, I can’t judge other people’s pref­er­ences on the mat­ter, but I always felt like peo­ple are tak­ing Yan­deres the wrong way. When most peo­ple think of yan­dere they instantly think of “they will mur­der you! Nice boat style!” Uuu­uuu— I feel bad for them already. After all, they just wanted to be your bestest friend for ever and ever and ever. That box­cut­ter busi­ness? It’s not going to hap­pen unless you cheat on or betray them, and in some cases you might be just a bit deserv­ing of what’s com­ing… I mean, Makoto (School Days) sure does.

But even then, it’s not quite that sim­ple. I knew that Yan­deres (and Yan­gires for that mat­ter, see their MAL club for word break­down) were on the extreme ends, but even I didn’t quite under­stand the issue involved until I read this TIME mag­a­zine arti­cle on Bor­der­line Per­son­al­ity Dis­or­der. Yeah, psy­chol­o­gists once thought of this as a fatal dis­ease, how’s that for you sick-girl Moe lovers, not to men­tion all the Dam­aged Goods and Katawa Shoujo fans.

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Okay, fair reminder. But Japan, you just love to remind us… (Uwasa no Midori-kun by Ikeya­mada Go)

When was the last time a shoujo manga lead char­ac­ter was strong and capa­ble, in more than just an emotional/supportive sense? Okay plenty of times, scratch that. When was the last time they were strong and awe-inspiring with­out being foiled by some­thing else, such as comedic ridicule or con­sis­tent over­shad­ow­ing and shel­ter­ing by an even more GAR male? I’m pretty sure I can count my encoun­ters using just my fin­gers here. The key words here aren’t the ‘GAR male’, as I’m quite fine with the pres­ence of awe­some guys who are even bet­ter than the hero­ine; the key terms are ‘over­shad­owed and shel­tered’. I under­stand that being pro­tected and saved by the clas­sic knight-in-shining-armor is quite roman­tic, but some­times, they really do overuse it.

Doesn’t look like it’s a rare feel­ing of annoy­ance either, as I loled when Hyper Par­fait yelled out:

A CHAPTER WITHOUT KAZUMA PROTECTING FUMIKO!!!! *CELEBRATES*… I’m so sick of her being pro­tected. So Sick. SICK.

Well yeah, I agree, espe­cially given that Fumiko from Faster than a Kiss was sup­pose to be one of those strong delin­quent type char­ac­ters in the first place.
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Netto first got me think­ing when he reported the eroge indus­try to be in a state of peril, but I’ve been put­ing it off until this past week­end, when I (finally) fin­ished Per­sona 4 and got started on my UK ver­sion of Agarest Wars. As one might guess, those two games are very much on the topic here.

Tears to Tiara Visual Novel on the PS3 (those graph­ics aren’t bad at all)

The bound­aries between JRPGs and Visual Nov­els has always been blurred. After all, IGN recently iden­ti­fied the JRPG “talk­ing card­board cutout” tra­di­tion in their Top 10 Ways to Fix JRPGs, and the most rec­og­niz­able image of Visual Nov­els has got to be that win­dowed screen­shot of bishoujo char­ac­ter CGs atop a class­room back­ground with dia­logue box beneath it. Not to men­tion, there are Vis­nov pro­duc­ers like Alice-soft (Rance) and that branch of Leaf/Aquaplus (Tears to Tiara, Utaware­ru­mono) who seems to spe­cial­ize in import­ing RPG ele­ments into their Vis­novs. But com­bin­ing JRPG and Vis­nov ele­ments goes far deeper than just the graph­ics corner-cutting of pre­sen­ta­tion or the addi­tion of a basic com­bat system.

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As a hob­by­ist world­forger, Lelangiric’s post and Eternal’s con­tin­u­a­tion on how the mechanics/setting of anime tends to fall short of expec­ta­tions actu­ally ticks me off a lit­tle bit. Not quite because of their view­points, but because mod­ern Japan­ese ani­ma­tion, and much of recent scifi/fantasy in gen­eral, are a rather poor gauge on mea­sur­ing the lit­er­ary val­ues of set­ting cre­ativ­ity. But then, that’s also par­tially our fault as the viewers…

Expo­si­tion start: acti­vate lec­ture mode! (and who remem­bers this old yet remark­able anime?)

By and most in today’s series, we don’t have ‘set­ting’. More pre­cisely, we have a very much watered down ver­sion of ‘set­ting’ which is far bet­ter enti­tled ‘premise’. The dif­fer­ence between these two? A set­ting attempts to round out the details behind all the pri­mary con­cepts and mechan­ics it intro­duce. It goes beyond just those two ini­tial lines of con­cep­tual expla­na­tions and seeks to reflect the cast’s under­stand­ing of their World to the audi­ence, with­out inhi­bi­tions or con­ve­nient cutouts. On the other hand, a premise is a set of con­cepts and mechan­ics sim­ply handed to the audi­ence with min­i­mum scrutiny, and the viewer is expected to accept it in order to make the story work. ‘Premises’ can be upgraded to ‘set­ting’ through sto­ry­telling, but with­out intri­cate detail­ing and/or in-depth analy­sis, it will always remain what is it: merely a premise, a set of ideas and foun­da­tions, not a World.

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A recent post by Sat­ur­nity and some fol­low up enlight­en­ment by Shance of Rain­bow­sphere made me real­ize just how neg­a­tive much of the anibl­o­gos­phere is to the con­cept of anime/manga clubs and other sim­i­lar orga­ni­za­tions revolv­ing around Japan­ese Mod­ern Visual Cul­ture, to the point of estab­lish­ing that “the first rule of anime club is don’t go to anime club”.

I once thought the same way. For my first two years at col­lege I walked into my anime club only once each year. Then changes took place. Maybe it’s because my think­ing is dif­fer­ent, or my goals have changed. But before I knew it I devel­oped a cer­tain pride to my anime club: CAINE at the Uni­ver­sity of Vir­ginia (the Comics and ANi­ma­tion INtel­lec­tual Explo­ration club). Why? Because we’re not the anime club, we’re not the manga club, we’re Genshiken.

You think those peo­ple are weird? So are you.

Dis­claimer: the fol­low­ing are obvi­ously my per­sonal tastes and I do not intend to insult any animu/mango club out there that runs suc­cess­fully in a dif­fer­ent way: it all depend on the audience.

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Toradora is the sec­ond series in my win­ter catch-up blitz, and it left me speech­less. There is no excuse why I did not pick this show up, even if it aired was dur­ing my the­sis semes­ter. And I call myself a romance-drama fan? *rage@self*

The show sucked me in as early as episode 2 (if I had only watched 1 more ep back then!). By episode 19 (Christ­mas Eve Fes­ti­val), it was already com­pet­ing for my top spot for anime in both the romance (Clan­nad, ef) and drama gen­res (Kanon, DC2SS). Two episodes later when Taiga uncon­sciously voiced her love, it crushed its com­peti­tors and moved onto con­sol­i­dat­ing its posi­tion. By the time the epi­logue rolled, I was left a com­plete emo­tional wreck: happy and rejoic­ing for the cou­ple, but also utterly drained. I had long lost track of how many times tears were brought to my eyes or how many min­utes I was left sob­bing loudly before the pro­jec­tor screen.

[ Shit shit SHIT, I don’t know what hap­pened but some­how I hit the pub­lish but­ton while work­ing on the draft right before going to sleep. That was not sup­pose to hap­pen. I hur­ried to fin­ish and re-published this, will add pic­tars once I get back. This is a dis­as­ter >_< ]

Kita­mura gets my Most Valu­able Char­ac­ter award

Look­ing back to com­pile my thoughts, I was left won­der­ing just why Toradora! destroyed my other beloved romance/drama series so hand­ily, from Kimi­nozo to Shuf­fle! to Clan­nad . It only took me a minute to real­ize that the oth­ers were almost all Visual Novel adap­ta­tions (do Japan­ese guys love cry­ing more than girls or some­thing?). It took me much longer to pin­point just what aspects of the stan­dard Visual Novel sto­ry­board­ing rou­tine caused it to be so out­classed by a light novel series.

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Read­ing Eternal’s review on the themes of Fate/stay night has got­ten my brains crank­ing again regard­ing this epic sto­ry­line that Nasu (and Urobuchi in Fate/zero) have envi­sioned and brought to life before us. Eter­nal high­lights how the three paths of Fate/stay night — Fate, Unlim­ited Blade Works, Heaven’s Feel — are brought together to con­cep­tu­al­ize the ques­tion of “what is the def­i­n­i­tion of a hero”. Although, this same com­par­i­son may be made to sev­eral other themes within the Fat­e­v­erse. To broaden out the scope, one can say that Nasu’s writ­ings are a crit­i­cal analy­sis by sto­ry­telling on “the def­i­n­i­tion of ideal within dif­fer­ent scopes of black and white”.

Typ­ing this reminds me of the days when I played Fate/stay night before it was trans­lated, rely­ing on a dic­tio­nary and lots of guess­work… result­ing in migraines and a desire to never do so again.

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