*sigh*
I’m not mad, anime. I’m just…disappointed.
Even if I don’t watch a ton of anime, I do read
about it on anime blogs. It’s vicarious
living; true, it’d probably be better for me to experience as many shows as
possible firsthand instead of being influenced by others. Still, posts and reviews are a good gauge of
a show’s quality, so I can avoid wasted time or unpleasantness. The same goes for previews -- and it just so
happened that previews for a show called Occultic;Nine
crossed my path.
I don’t know every anime under the sun, but I know
enough about it to link Occultic;Nine to
other tales with semicolons jammed into their titles -- Steins;Gate and Robotics;Notes,
for example. I’d heard some good things
about them, so I thought, “Hey, maybe this could be a thing. I should check it out.” Ah, what blind naiveté! For you see, the story of nine people dealing
with the occult, murders, supernatural mysteries, blogging, intercommunication,
and the impact of the internet have barely registered as a story in the eyes of
some. Posts, reviews, comments and more
across the board have been fixated on one thing. Or rather, two things.
So there’s this character named Ryoka Narusawa,
and as far as I can tell, she’s just a slot or two below top billing (which in
turn goes to fast-talking blogger Yuta Gamon).
Very few opinions I’ve seen have been able to get past the size of her
chest -- which to be fair is an absolutely legitimate concern, and I’ll get to
that in a second. But it almost seemed
like people were willing to dump on her, and Occultic;Nine at large, just because she’s busty. You know the drill: it’s just stupid
fanservice, it completely ruins the show, it’s otaku bait, et cetera et
cetera. Seeing it scribbled all over the
place didn’t sit right with me.
I’m not exactly what you’d call a breast
sommelier, but I tend not to share the usual reaction people do when confronted
with a busty character (i.e. acting like she’s an affront to their deity of
choice). A busty character is still a
character, capable of carrying all sorts of meaning and impact in a story. Beyond that, it’s an element of character design
that can help her stand out, as well as give her persona specific points to
rally around and develop from (how does she feel about her looks, how do people
treat her, and so on). And beyond that?
Looking a certain way isn’t a crime in the real world, so we shouldn’t
judge or hate because there are no repercussions to slamming fiction. It’s the first step on a slippery slope.
And if you know me, then you also know that I’m
also in the trade of writing improbably buxom characters. Not all of them are, of course, but some --
some I’ve already made up, some I’ve got in dormant files, and some I plan to
write in the future. I’m not backing
down on that front, because they’re more than just objects to be lusted over;
I’m pretty confident that they’re all characters with distinct personalities,
arcs/progression, and a heaping helping of agency. Granted I’m in a better place because
story-crafting strips away some of the immediate audiovisual responses, but if
I’m doing my job right, my characters will stay striking and memorable from
start to finish -- because of how they look, or act, or anything.
As a guy (and an afro-headed featherweight), I
don’t have much of a horse in the race when it comes to defending women of any
shape or form. But whenever I see a
rejection of a female character just because she looks a certain way, I end up
seeing it as a challenge. It makes me
want to prove the naysayers wrong, and make sure that we can keep the creative
canvas as wide as possible. And that
brings us back to Ryoka.
And thanks to her, I ended up putting my foot, my
leg, and 42% of my pelvis in my mouth.
It’s been a good while since I’ve seen a character
in anything that’s so spectacularly annoying.
Her presence in the show is utterly deal-breaking, irrespective of her
bra size. She’s supposed to be in her
first year of (Japanese) high school, so that’d put her at around 16; despite
that, virtually every scene she’s in has her acting like an infant. But Ryoka is that special breed of anime
infant -- a manufactured, cloying childishness -- that makes her seem incapable
of knowing where she is at any given moment.
She’s a squeaky-voiced teenager (one pushing toward adulthood, mind) who
speaks almost exclusively in sugary songs, with the random dancing and goofing
around to match.
Her infantilization helps create a GIGANTIC tonal
clash with the rest of Occultic;Nine. This is a whose first episode ends with a
discovered body -- scalped and left to rot inside a university office -- but it
gets crammed into the last few minutes.
More time is given to Ryoka acting like an idiot baby; there’s a brief
flashback that shows how she and Yuta met, and what could’ve been a good way to
characterize them both ends up becoming an excuse to have her chirp her way
across a playground…and give Yuta a chance to lodge her face in her chest. Most damningly, she never feels like an
active participant in or reactive to the story.
She may pass on information to help Yuta get where he needs to be, but
she acts as if she has no stake or interest in anything going on. Also, she has a working ray gun for some
reason.
I still believe -- and firmly -- that big breasts
don’t automatically equal a bad character, but execution is important no matter
what she looks like. Indeed, Ryoka’s
chest is absolutely a problem here.
Given the GIFs above, you can bet that it leads to some more tonal
clashes with the overall story. But from
a visual standpoint, she’s a mess. She
has to be one of the most disproportionate anime girls in recent years, with
breasts that -- depending on the scene -- are either as big as her head, bigger
than her head, or devour the majority of her torso. For a medium that basically has every reason
to tweak styles and dimensions, anime as a whole is much too wary of altering
any part of the figure besides bust size -- and so we get Ryoka, who looks like
she has the frame of a K-On! girl but
the figure of one of the girls from Eiken.
Voltech pro tip: if you don’t know what Eiken is, DON’T GOOGLE IT. You won’t like what you find.
Anyway, there’s just something unsettling about
the character. While she’s hardly the
worst example out there, she has a childish face -- big eyes, small nose,
gaping (if vacuous) smile at all times.
The bigger issue is that the juxtaposition of Ryoka’s childish qualities
grinds against her mature qualities. Her
official profile may peg her at 16, but she comes off as six or younger -- so
basically, it means that I’m forced to watch (or confront, maybe) a show with a
giant-breasted kindergartener. So I hope
you’ll forgive me for tapping the hell out.
To be fair, it’s not as if Occultic;Nine is an absolute wash because of one character -- and
indeed, it’s hard to write off the whole show because of one episode. There’s always the possibility that Ryoka
will get fleshed out in the weeks to come; honestly, I kind of expect that to
happen in the wake of the sheer nothing she’s
offered so far. Beyond that, there’s a
mystery that needs solving, supernatural elements that need uncovering, and the
nine characters need to have more interaction than just having their names
flash onscreen for half a second. The
potential for some good content is definitely there.
But DAMN, this first episode makes a bad
impression. I don’t think it was
apocalyptically horrible or the prelude to an unsalvageable mess, but there are
problems here that didn’t have to exist.
For starters: whose bright idea was it to compress 400 pages of source
material into 23 minutes? It leads to a
situation where they not only have to cram in a dozen fractured scenes with
barely enough context, but also have to force several of its characters to talk
at warp speed. There are some good
scenes and moments mixed in there -- an investigator named Touka struck my
fancy -- but there are also moments that seem like they were there to be
“artsy” or “deep”…and just end up annoying the crap out of me. But since the whole first episode’s basically
on fast forward, I guess there’s no point in worrying about it.
Things will get exponentially better once people
can get a firm grasp on what’s going on -- which by extension means that
they’ll get better once the show calms the hell down. But you read the title of this post, didn’t
you? This is about characters, and right
now there’s no better show to turn a skeptical eye on. Ryoka doesn’t feel like a character to me;
she just feels like an assemblage of attributes designed to get the cheapest,
most immediate thrills from an audience.
And sure, maybe that’s the point.
Maybe it’ll turn out that she’s a traitor, or the one behind the murder,
or all set to pull a Gone Girl-level scheme
on the others. But as she is, I
sincerely doubt it. Even if she’s
better-handled in the source material, it’s no stretch to assume that the anime
adaptation decided to distort the character (such as she is) for their unholy
machinations.
And to what end?
I don’t want to assume the worst, but
I’ve already done that before. So I
guess the dark specter continues to hang over the industry, and every creative
medium out there: in the worst case scenario, characters aren’t being made to
advance through stories, evolve over time, or offer audiences some bold new
ideas. They’re only made to fulfill
mercantile functions. To pander. To be products. To satisfy as well as a bag of chips pulled
from a vending machine. In the worst
case scenario, characters become commodities.
But whether it’s in the best or worst case, aren’t
they all commodities?
The answer to that is a resounding “Yeah, I guess so.” In case you haven’t heard, fictional
characters aren’t real; they’re the creations of men and women out to tell a
story. Or, to put in more practical
terms, they’re the means to help convince people to buy into a product (however
much of an artistic endeavor it might be) and fund the creator so he/she can
keep living. It certainly doesn’t help
that there are so many products to
consume these days. If a creator wants
to succeed, it’s a matter of standing out from the crowd -- which means that
there needs to be something to draw
in audience loyalty (and money).
As an example?
In the anime industry, it looks like a solution’s been found (however slipshod). Give the loyal otaku base something to fawn
over, and they’ll respond by spending whatever money they’ve got to keep a
story afloat. Or, alternatively, appeal
to a specific demographic with approved tropes and concepts, and enjoy the figurative
bouncy house they slide you into. It’s a
matter of giving the people the exact flavors they want, in the exact form they
want, in the exact packaging they want.
Don’t challenge them. Don’t upset
them. Just cater to their whims with the
commodities they’re willing to slap down cash to get. They’re hungry and need their chips.
So what’s more important when you’ve got such a
heavy burden to carry? What do you do
when you’ve got a show like Occultic;Nine,
doomed to compress huge amounts of source material into a dramatically shorter run? What happens when an anime has to win over
tons of fans in its first episode, and has to keep them hooked despite being
saddled with a mystery full of obtuse paranormal concepts? The answer this crew came up with -- and an
answer that plenty of other creators have come up with, too -- is to offer up
characters as commodities. As
tribute. Even if the source material
says or does one thing, the anime staff -- directors, animators, et al --
likely have enough leeway to render things as they see fit. It’s no small wonder, then, that the leading
lady of the bunch was played up -- went from “a busty high school girl” to
“BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOBS!”
I guess I really shouldn’t be that angry about
it. It comes off as a dirty tactic, but
it’s a dirty tactic that works. Wikipedia tells me that Occultic;Nine got its start as a light novel in August of
2014. How many people had heard about
(or cared about) the story in the time before the anime’s first episode,
preview trailers, or even announcement?
I don’t know. But in the time
since the first episode, the fan art has started rolling in. Featuring what? Featuring Ryoka, of course -- acting like a
child, in a state of undress, or with breasts as big as (or bigger than) they actually are in the show. I’d be lying through gritted, cracking teeth
if I said that that didn’t bother me.
First off, there’s not enough of the character to grasp in just one
episode, so the idea that she would get a wave of fan art regardless says bad
things -- either about the audience, or about the industry at large.
Second, doesn’t it come off as unflattering to
gear a character in such a way that the only thing they should care about is the size of her chest? Even if she does develop into a fully
fleshed-out character later on, the first impression given is that she’s an
elementary schooler in dire need of orthopedic underwear. The expectations have been set in a rut that
bores into the center of the earth, and it’ll be a hell of a time running that
back. They sold the character as a
product to be hungered for and consumed; now that the “fans” are satisfied,
what reason do they have to look for or enjoy anything else? If all they want to see are big boobs, and
all you’ve given them are big boobs, then why would anyone expect them to still
be hungry after their expectations have been met? It’d be like:
Anime
Studio: All right, we’ve gone to great lengths to convince you that there’s
nothing to this character besides a giant rack and the brain of a sugar-addled
toddler. Now just keep watching so you
can see what this character is really
about!
Fans:
Nah, that’s all right.
Studio: What? But we worked super hard to help bring this character to life! Don’t you want to see what makes her
tick? Don’t you want to learn about her
past, or her circumstances?
Fans: Nope.
Studio:
Will you at least keep watching if we make her breasts bounce 83 more times?
Fans: (beat)
Fans: You
play the game well.
I’m not a woman, but that doesn’t mean I’m
incapable of feeling bad for women whenever their gender gets shafted in
fiction -- which is still horrifically often, even today. On that note, it shouldn’t matter whether
you’re a man or a woman; when a character of either gender gets misused -- or
used solely as a pre-packaged, over-processed commodity -- then an audience
member can and should note that that’s a problem. They don’t have to write 4000-word blog posts
to do it, but as long as they unpack and recognize that anger, and the
understanding that something’s wrong here,
then maybe we’ll be better off.
Because let’s be real here: even though it’s
common for female characters to get shortchanged on the way to store shelves,
male characters can meet the same fate pretty handily. It’s not even remotely close to the same
thing (or frequency), but the guys can be commodities as well. Instead of trying to sell them based on attributes
or appeals, men are sold based on affects and ideals. What do I mean? Here’s a random sampling of images I’ve
stockpiled via this blog. See if you can
spot some trends.
To put it in broad strokes terminology, women are
supposed to be “hot”, while men are supposed to be “cool”. Men are portrayed as strong. Stylish.
Stalwart. They’re unflappable
throughout their day-to-day lives, and always capable of facing off against any
challenge. The portrayal is true
(enough) across the board, even with well-written characters or
non-commodities. The men are supposed to
be taken seriously so as to peddle the idea of strength, and woe to those who
would try anything different.
Can you get depictions of women who push strength or
idealization? Sure; it’s no stretch to
conflate the women on comic book covers with a more estrogenic take on
power. But there’s still a big
disparity, and one that seems fit to strip men of their characters while giving
women the worst parts of it. I mean, how
many people are chomping at the bit to praise guys like Marcus Fenix or
Kratos? Can you even call them
characters, or just vehicles for vicarious living and wish fulfillment? Where do you draw the line between an actual
character and nothing more than a cheap commodity designed to suck wallets dry?
I think that last one is an important question to
consider. Because at the end of the day,
all characters are technically
commodities.
Like all of the other parts of a story, characters
are tools. As much as people might wish
otherwise, they’re not real.
In-universe, they exist solely to help propel the plot train from one
station to another; that includes all the storytelling cargo built in. Out-of-universe, they exist as the anchors we mere humans need to form
an attachment. Would the Harry Potter books have become a
phenomenon if not for the presence, adventures, and progression of the titular
boy wizard? I have my doubts (even
though resident badass Neville Longbottom could’ve shouldered the burden, but
whatever). It’s hard for me to imagine a
single element more important than characters, so they need to be used
effectively.
Even when they are, it’s hard to ignore the fact
that they’re still just constructs -- agents of a creator’s agenda. That by itself isn’t a bad thing,
though. If it was, then buying any
commodity we have in the real world -- any food, any technology, any clothing,
any vehicle -- would count as a cardinal sin.
Commodities come in many shapes and forms, with the quality to match (or
at least consider). So it doesn’t just
come down to blindly scoffing at everything, or assuming the worst. You just need to be wary of what’s on the
metaphorical shelf.
Art and storytelling are basically the ultimate
con game, after all. Fictional media is
unreal by default, so it’s the mission of the creator to make it feel real -- to feel important, and
meaningful, and impactful. It’s all
about creating illusions; the better the creator is at building that illusion
of importance, the better the story will be.
By extension? The better the
creator is at masking the natural faultiness of characters -- the fact that
they are just commodities to be
bought and consumed -- the stronger the story will be.
That’s a rule I shouldn’t even have to spell out,
but…well, here we are. Some people get
it, and some people don’t. I’m not about
to give my blessing to the guys behind Occultic;Nine
-- not just because of Ryoka, but because there’s also a borderline braindead
idol randomly shoved into a serious TV broadcast to chirp at the audience. Will that show get better? Probably, but I can’t say I’m too eager to
stick around and find out. First
impressions are important, and theirs was not
great.
Did they learn a lesson? Will they?
Depending on the sales and recognition they receive from here on, we’ll
find out eventually. But for now, it’s
important that all of us -- you and me, fans and creators -- figure out where
we stand in the world of fiction. We
don’t have to tolerate subpar stuff when there are so many options to choose
from. Still, we don’t have to blindly
reject just because something is slightly below the ideal state. It’s no zero-sum game. It’s just a matter of making, understanding,
and enjoying the best stories possible.
So there you go.
And now I can go back to watching JoJo. I’m more than a little interested in hearing
just what the hell this “Yoshikage Kira” is all about.
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