Fanfiction, Personal Narrative, and What Dragon Age II Does Right

It probably isn’t fair to say that people have reached a consensus about Dragon Age II, but it does seem like the most fiery battles have more or less run their course by now (there’s that silly optimism again).

For those of you don’t keep up with gaming news, DAII was the 2011 sequel to 2009’s much beloved Dragon Age Origins. As you have likely surmised from those two dates, an 18 month development cycle wasn’t enough to really capture the scope of the first game’s epic fantasy (by which I mean there are like six environments, and you will see them a lot), leading to much hair pulling etc. It’s not all doom and gloom, though – DAII also has its small but passionate share of defenders. And with Dragon Age Inquisition coming up this fall, it seemed like a good time to throw my two cents into the ring. Plus, I spent the time I should’ve used going over Kill la Kill this week working on a new unified Origins/Awakening/DAII save file, and the editorial had to come from somewhere.

As is often prudent with divisive subjects, let me clear out a baseline: while I’m more than happy to acknowledge the lion’s share of mistakes the game makes, particularly in terms of some niggling glitches and the time-constraint damage to the gameplay (the ‘six rooms’ problem, the fact that there’s not so much a difficulty curve as an increased spamming of trash mobs); it’s still a game I’m quite madly fond of, and I find that the strengths shine all the more brightly in the face of the poor mechanics.

The End of Adolescence, the Beginning of Agency; or, I Know Why She Turns into a Car

Back in the early 2000s, with the anime boom in full swing and the market of availability much smaller, there were two easy go-to moments for ‘Anime is Weird.’ The first was End of Evangelion, Hideaki Anno’s psychological acid trip through alienation and the ruminations of mortality. The second was ‘The One Where That Girl Turns into a Car,’ aka the climactic third act of The Adolescence of Utena. It was one of those scenes that exist to be taken out of context – not that familiarity with the material helped a whole lot anyway. Or does it?

For those of you not familiar, Revolutionary Girl Utena is the story of Utena Tenjou, a transfer student who transfers to Ohtori Academy in search of a prince. When she was a child her parents both died, and that prince appeared to her and gave her a ring, saying that if she retained her nobility as she grew then they would meet again. Inspired, Utena decided to become a prince herself. She finds, however, that her ring is also the symbol of a dueling game at Ohtori, with several students vying to become the owner of the “rose bride,” who can grant her fiancé the power to revolutionize the world. Winning the bride, Anthy, almost by accident, Utena is sucked into the duels and the layers of conspiracy behind them, and finds herself growing closer to Anthy without really knowing her at all.
Let me put forth a crazy idea, gentle readers: the Utena movie is completely straightforward. When viewed through the lens of visual metaphor that defines the series before it, there might be no other solution but for our pink haired protagonist to turn into a supped up racer. Follow me down, I can explain this one.

MAKE THIS HAPPEN: Petshop of Horrors

We’ve collecitvely that Pupa is thus far a hideous disappointment, right? I know I was a bit crushed to find that the alleged “dark and disturbing gorefest” translates out to “four minutes of poorly exposited insanity, an exploding dog, and a giant censorship bar.” But then, I knew going in that the project was helmed by Studio DEEN, so shame on me for hoping.

But watching my dreams for an enticing and atmospheric horror-tinged anime go up in smoke did put me in mind of a long held dream of mine. You see, there’s a wonderful candidate out there for a modern supernatural-horror anime, if only the modern studios would think to tap it. That story, friends, is Petshop of Horrors.

“What? That terminally 90s looking OVA with the man eating rabbits?” said absolutely no one, because I’m fairly certain that bit of trivia’s been lost to the annals of time.

Allow me to bring it back for you

 

A consummate portrait of the era, isn’t it? The broad shoulders, the somewhat grainy visuals and shading-light palette, the candy colored blood. But wait, hear me out. This strange little footnote of animation is based on a manga absolutely crying for an update.

And a miracle is what it will take

Love and the Apocalypse: Asuka, Kaworu, and Gendered Expectations in Romance

Every fandom that’s managed to lure a sizable base has a shipping war or two under its belt. It’d be laughable to call Evangelion an exception, though it does offer the distinction of having enough spin-offs that the major relationships have all gotten their day in the limelight. And while you can find a following for just about every combination of characters, the heat is really on when it comes to Shinji. Those fights get ugly, and fast. And Eva being what it is, interpretation enters into things more often than not. It could be said that there’s three distinct levels to every conversation: what the relationship in question is, what it could potentially be, and how it’s represented by fan expectations. It’s the last one that I wanted to take a quick look at, using the two ‘endgame’ options Kaworu and Asuka (with no offense meant to Rei fans), because it reveals some pretty interesting things about audience expectations. And besides, what better way to start the year before the alleged Third Impact?

The Ethics of Reinterpretation or, A Defense of Dubs

A word, if I may, about dubbing. I would truly like to believe that we now live in an age where near-instant streaming, dual language physical media existing as the norm, and an increased sense of globalization intermingling cultures freely with one another, means that we can at last move past the torrential debate of whether subtitled or dubbed programming is more worth watching. But I also like to think we live in a basically ordered universe powered by some manner of beneficent entity, so my idealism blinders are rather strong.

While there’s many an argument on both sides that amounts to little more than shrillness disguised as a desperate bid for legitimacy, the best case I’ve heard against dubbed performances is that they’re disrespectful to the original intent of the director or the performer. And, while I think there’s some shades of grey to the statement, it’s something I’d like to parse a bit – because while there will always be paycheck-scumming performances, there are just as many where the actor put their heart and soul into their part of the final product. Is it then disrespectful to those actors to make the original language track a sort of ‘second choice’ when the show comes to foreign shores, an extra that the casual viewer might not even think to turn to?

Do You Ever Wonder What Time It Is? Modern Media and Storytelling

Part of me is convinced that someone on the Adventure Time staff is a fan of Red vs. Blue. It’s more a gut feeling than what one might call ‘empirical evidence’ or ‘substantiated by a single shred of proof.’ Both are blazing successes, of course, characterized by a short and loosely linked episode format, but it’s the narrative style that I want to talk about today. In the bizarre mental land that this theory lives in, both shows are sterling examples of the new-narrative for internet long-standers (okay, AT is on TV, but it very much lives in the comedic stylings of the internet).

Back in 2003, RvB started a serialized comedy show and released it onto the wild west of the internet, hoping to attract consistent viewership with the idea that you could come back to one place on the internet each week to see an ongoing story. Well, duh, you might say, but this was back in the day when one-shots were the big thing – even stuff like Homestar Runner just had a core set of re-used characters without any particular interest in narrative. Rooster Teeth’s machinima (stories filmed using videogame engines) project was doing something pretty unusual for the medium at the time – I’d go so far as to say they were pioneers on the subject of narrative machinima (not the first, but formative for sure, not to mention an early work that’s still going). It worked, too. As the story goes, the first episode had more than a million downloads within the first week. It wormed its way into many a heart, though the decade spanning duration of the series means that you tend to find fans who stopped watching around the first three seasons and others who fell in around the sixth (the eleventh just finished airing).

As far as the content of the narrative it, uh…starts a little on the light side. It is a consecutive narrative, in the most basic sense – events that have occurred remain in continuity, and there’s dramatic climax from one season to the next (boy did they love their cliffhangers in the early days). It’s just that those plot events tended to be with a comedic focus, with the stories pursuing what Burnie found to be the best reaping ground for jokes than any kind of deep world building or character introspection. The first five seasons, known collectively as The Blood Gulch Chronicles, more or less stayed that way aside of a surprisingly bittersweet conclusion. When it started up again, things took a decidedly more plotty turn, if one that was content to move at its own pace.
How about Cartoon Network’s current darling, Adventure Time? It’s well into its fifth season now, and I at least would’ve never guessed from the outset that the deeply, deeply weird little piece of surreal children’s media the show started out as would later weave in an apocalypse and plentiful gut wrenching. What is it about the appeal that speaks to so many, and inspired such a similar trajectory?

 

The Lich is not funny

BUT WEREN’T THEY TRAGIC: Verisimilitude to Melodrama in Five Easy Steps

For those of you who haven’t read Paradise Kiss, you’re missing out. It’s been reprinted in the last few years, you see. It’s a beautifully told slice-of-life story about adolescence on the brink of responsibility, and the screw ups you make trying to find a life outside of what your family’s expected. For those of you who haven’t watched Paradise Kiss…you should probably just read it.

ParaKiss, as the title is sometimes shortened, is penned by Ai Yazawa of Nana fame. She’s often praised (quite rightfully) for her superb hand at writing well rounded female characters and real-world relationships. The five volume manga tells the story of Yukari, a girl who’s spent her life trying to please her mother’s demand for academic success despite the fact that it’s neither easy nor interesting for her. One day she’s snared by a group of teens from the nearby performing arts school, who beg her to be their model for the school’s upcoming fashion show. She’s totally uninterested…until the group’s handsome leader George puts it a bit more persuasively. Yukari finds herself in a whole world of firsts, questioning whether the romantic world of fashion is truly what she wants to do with her life, or if it’s just a way to hide from the real world. The story is intimate and raw, and its overarching metaphor of the fashion club as the main characters’ lives – beautiful, apparently effortless garments made from thankless, toiling work in an unknown basement coalesced behind a creative spark and an attractive front face – is a surprisingly effective punch to the gut. This is no ‘lives of the rich and beautiful.’ Yukari definitely has lucky breaks based on the people she knows, but that only gets her in the door, while her work ethic carries her forward. Nor does her beauty signal all well on the romantic front: she’s emotionally immature, in way over her head with the distant and issue-laden George, and the story isn’t afraid to show the shallow ugliness that can come from a self-centered outlook.

Okay now, pop quiz, everybody: what are the major movements of a romance story? You have the initial, usually chance, meeting; always tinged with some kind of strong fascination, whether or not they think they dislike one another. After a courtship or familiarizing period of varying awkwardness (about 2/3 of the way through the story) the couple will get together in some manner – this can be sex for an adult aimed story, or a more chaste form of physical/emotional intimacy. In the third act the relationship will be tested by the outside world (circumstances or a rival) and/or the characters own flaws that have ruined relationships in the past. However, the new couple’s love is strong enough to overcome these factors, and there’s a happy ending. It’s a rock solid formula, one that’s flexible enough to accommodate multiple premises and character types while still offering the reader a sense of comforting familiarity.

Problems usually come up when the fantasy collides with a sense of reality, and the latter’s likely to give out long before the former. This, I think, is what’s at the heart of a lot of romance-related cynicism. It’s not just the predictability, but the fact that without careful plotting and writing the stories are much faster to fall into cliché than in genres with more varied constructions. Paradise Kiss the manga is masterful about its approach to the archetypes of romance, marrying them to the extreme verisimilitude of adult slice-of-life. Yukari’s tempestuous relationship with George follows the roadmap, for the most part, to a T. They’re drawn irresistibly to one another; there are concerns about a virginal versus experienced partner, intimations of another woman and George’s bad-boy emotional issues. It’s a set up for the kind of happily ever after that would have a brooding man with too many abs on the cover. Only…this happens instead.

Cyclical Narrative, Reboots, and Fear of the Unknown, or: Kaworu and Homura are Time Travelling BFFs

If you don’t like it, do it again. Rewrite it, reboot it, or remember a time when things were better than they truly were. The world’s in an uncertain state all over and the art of humanity is ever ready to reflect its maker’s mental state: in this case, a desire to start over in the face of our mistakes. And boy, have there been a lot of spins on the time travel formula as of late. It’s not as if there weren’t any before (Back to the Future and Star Trek’s seminal “City on the Edge of Forever” spring immediately to mind), but the tone has definitely changed. The message of the two stories above, for instance, is overwhelmingly a case of ‘don’t change the past, because even with good intentions you can’t possibly comprehend what you’re doing.’ There’re stories like Donnie Darko, which explore a theoretical happier occasion only for it to collapse as reality reasserts itself. And there are time loops like Groundhog Day or Wolf’s Rain, centering on a character or group’s growth pursuing a goal (and usually having a motivational shift of varying degrees due to said growth). It’s the last one I want to talk about, because I seem to keep tripping over it these days. There’s discussion of spoilers for Madoka and Evangelion below, so tread with care.

Yeah, this again

Shinji Ikari Must Die (But Not for the Reason You're Probably Thinking)

It would seem that the Rebuild of Evangelion is determined to be a mirror reflection of its parent series. Now, I know what you’re saying. ‘An action packed, visually impressive series that builds up traditional expectations only to blindside the audience three quarters of the way through with depression and subversions? I’m not even sure whether you’re describing Evangelion or Rebuild!’ And after a fashion, you’d be right. Like the Mirror verse Spock, it can be pretty hard to differentiate until you hit upon the obvious beard of thematic difference (and isn’t that a muddled simile). As the lead in might suggest, be aware of spoilers for 3.0 and beyond.

Well, this will be interesting

All Twilight Needed was a Bloodbath

The fact of it is that we exist in a post-Twilight world, whether you’ve bitterly resigned yourself or not. It’s not just the epidemic of sexy-monsters, which might’ve reached its peak with the cavalcade of WUT that was sexy zombie flick Warm Bodies, it’s all the insidious little tropes that come along with it: the main character who’s been made as bland as possible in order to better assist reader insertion, protagonists who switch between being infuriatingly passive and actively awful people, love triangles crowbarred into the plot contrivances-be-damned, and prose so purple you can feel HP Lovecraft stirring in his seafood-proofed grave.

For the record, I am fully supportive of Stephanie Meyer encouraging reading. That’s a wonderful thing, even if it came gift wrapped in a double edged sword of terrible role models. And to be doubly fair, these aren’t just problems that exist in YA fiction or even American fiction (more on that in a minute). But it doesn’t change the fact that I came out of those books wanting to murder the three main characters as violently as possible. Instead, we had to make do with a stomach churning happy ending with no actual climactic conflict (except in the movie, which promptly took it back), cream cheese and jam placenta eating, and a really creepy subplot wherein the spurned love interest decides he can just wait for her kid to turn legal (via being magically werewolf enslaved). This gnawed at me for a long time – me and the thousands of other authors who were spurred by the call of action ‘if SMeyer can get published, then ANYONE can do it.’

Years later a revelation came unto me. Acidic, stewing loathing is not the answer, my friends. School Days is. If there’s any genre more saturated with unpleasant people and tired genre tools than YA fiction, it’s romance anime. There’re a few good ones out there, really good ones even, but most fall into the same cookie cutter scenarios played out by paper dolls on sticks. Nowhere is this worse than the Harem genre. Behold: an ‘everyman’ type character, the audience surrogate, is thrust into an unlikely scenario where they’re surrounded by sexy specimens of the (usually) opposite sex; all of these mysterious beings are head over heels for the main character despite this person having no distinctive redeeming qualities or even memorable personality traits; and the potential love interests pretty much exist for the audience to ogle them, with the camera lovingly spending time on whatever was pegged as the marketable appeal. Sound familiar?

Harem anime (or any anime with a harem component) generally range from the benignly idiotic (Tenchi Muyo, Sword Art Online) to the jaw-droppingly exploitative and brain-dead (High School DxD, Ah My Buddha), with a few on the side that manage to twist something creative and heartfelt (and poke fun at) the concept (Ah! My Goddess, Ouran High School Host Club).

       

No, he’s fine. Stop teasing us, show.

 

And then there’s School Days, which starts out playing itself as a romantic harem comedy and then takes an axe to the genre conventions with a gleeful bloodstained smile. I’m going to vaguely spoil the ending, just because without knowing how it’s going to come out no sane person would ever subject themselves to it. School Days stars first year high school student Makoto, who’s noted to have been a gentle and caring boy growing up. Presumably they tell us this repeatedly on the assumption we’ll buy it sight unseen. Makoto has a crush on Kotonoha, a shy and bookish girl who was cursed with large boobs and the ensuing teasing/staring/rumors of sluttiness that accompany them. Makoto’s childhood friend Sekai offers to play matchmaker. And, wouldn’t you know it, she’s got secret feelings for him. This quickly turns into a melodramatic love triangle seeking to outdo itself at every turn, eventually escalating into madness, requisite possible pregnancies, and Makoto sleeping with the entire female population of his class.

 

Pictured: advice not a single character will follow

It's More than Kick Ass - Samurai Flamenco and Deconstruction

[Note: This editorial was originally posted prior to episode 10. Thus, while I stand by most of the theory until proven otherwise, it does fail to bring the details of the most recent revelations into the discussion. I'd love to talk about it in the comments, though.]

Every last work ever written is derivative of something, and the 2013 Hero anime Samurai Flamenco is no exception. The problems start when that fact of fiction-writing is flung around as an insult. The flavor of debate this particular week is of the east-versus-west variety, not unlike when The Hunger Games was accused of being a Battle Royale rip-off for sharing superficial elements (and if that argument isn’t yet dead it should be, thanks to this articulately written article). That vicious battle of nerd subcultures has been seeing resurgence as of late, but in reverse. Many are the pointed fingers accusing Samurai Flamenco of being little more than Kick Ass The Anime. And on the surface, the reason for the comparison is obvious: both start with protagonists in realistic worlds who want to be like the heroes of their childhood fiction, become Totally Not YouTube sensations, meet female heroes with a more pragmatic and violent approaches to fighting crime, and eventually wind up over their heads when a threat much deadlier than petty thugs surfaces. The case isn’t looking good, is it?

But here’s the thing. Approach is everything. Kick Ass is a unique idea that is throbbingly pleased with its own cleverness, something that shows through every frame of its execution. The film (the comic being a rather more unpleasant Take That Fanboys creation) exists as a sort of hyper-real fantasy, one that pays its dues to the violence and nastiness of actual crime but just as often revels in them as a sort of spectacular, Sin City-esque carnival of gore (microwave guy, looking at you). At its heart, the movie is a fantasy dressed up in the clothes of real life, however many people they light on fire. And, pointed terminology aside, that’s fine. It makes it a unique fusion of escapist approach in an apparently naturalistic setting. Samurai Flamenco, from the position of the nearly-halfway point, seems to be taking a more meta approach of applying the trappings of fantasy to a realistic universe. It spends one quarter of its run developing realistic rules, reactions, and considerations for its world and characters, always prioritizing slice of life conversation and character development over Masayoshi’s heroic antics. It clearly wants the mundane to be at the forefront of the viewer’s mind, and it cements it there to blow it apart. When Nic Cage shows up in a fenced Batman costume it’s what we were all waiting for. When a guillotine gorilla shows up at a drug bust, the internet has to stop its head from spinning all the way around. And I think they did it on purpose.

I debated whether I should write this essay before the show was over, since criticism in media res more often than not turns out to be partly or wholly defunct rather quickly. But with the darker turn Flamenco has taken as of late and the uncertain grumbling among viewers, I felt a dire need to step in as its defense. This all makes total sense to me, because at the end of the day Samurai Flamenco isn’t Kick Ass. It has more in common with Puella Magi Madoka Magica.