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ways_back_room2020-11-17 05:19 am
bjornwilde) wrote in ways_back_room2020-11-17 05:19 am
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Tuesday DE: Hot Takes
A new trend I am seeing online is No Nuance November. So tell me, what are some hot takes you have on your character's canon or do they have their own hot takes?
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-- The novels are great for lore, it's where most of the details about the Crests and the cosmology of the world of Digimon come from, and complete garbage for characterisation. The writer was so desperately in love with the idea of Taichi as a Flawless Superhuman Hero that they sand down all of his arrogance, insecurities, and problems with boundaries.
Nowhere is this more obvious than the Dark Masters arc, where the main conflict from the series is "Taichi and Yamato are both having breakdowns over seeing a load of their friends die, and Taichi's coping method of proclaiming that none of them actually mattered and they just died for his glorious destiny is directly clashing against Yamato's coping method of taking each death as a catastrophic failure that's directly both of their fault, and also they've both been mutually resenting each other for a while now, culminating in Yamato picking a fight to the death that ultimately ends in an inconclusive stalemate." In the novel, this is changed to "Taichi is sensitive to the grief of the rest of the group but knows they have to move forward, Yamato thinks that him giving the others time to grieve is a sign of weakness, and picks a fight that ends in an unequivocal victory for Taichi."
-- The novels are also bad at romance writing. Here be a hint for you, Kakudou, having a character's 'falling in love' moment involve momentarily confusing his love interest for his mother is ... weird. It's really weird. Please do not do this thing, Kakudou. I beg of you.
-- Fans have a tendency to try and boil down the characters to archetypes that they don't really fit that well. Taichi is not a Stock Dumb Shounen Boi who charges into danger, he's a highly intelligent kid who is simultaneously dazzlingly arrogant (in 01, at least, he's mellowed out a lot by 02 and Tri) and deeply insecure, and spends large chunks of the show struggling with freezing up when he's afraid and an inability to take risks. Takeru is not a Sweet Innocent Burden Who Doesn't Understand The World, he's a highly shrewd and perceptive kid who knows how to manipulate people, because he shares all of Yamato's social disadvantages and responds to them by manoeuvring people into protecting him, as opposed to his brother's 'stand my ground and be defiant' strategy. We see him do this both in small ways (fake-crying to get help in Tokyo) and big ways (using his time as a prisoner to start an uprising in an enemy army).
-- Mimi, a character heavily associated with Japanese LGBT imagery, who fantasises about marrying her female friends, and whose cool fun idea for a school festival is "I want to see girls in cheerleading costumes," might ... might ... not be straight. I'm just tossing that one out there.
-- Ryo? A bad character. The Adventure games he's from? Bad games! A lot of fans fell in love with him, but I put to you that a) He has the personality of a rock, b) His entire storyline involves everyone acting out of character, and c) When he shows up in Tamers in a studio-mandated role, he derails the story in all of his appearances as characters stop what they're doing to talk about how cool he is at length. I hate him, and I think we can all agree that's very brave and wise of me.
-- Koushiro/Mimi is a strange ship and I don't know why the writers for Tri were pushing it. They'd interacted on screen only a few times before, and it was largely with irritation on both of their parts at first, and then bemusement later.
-- I realise that it's meant to be his (nearly) lowest point, where Yamato's grief and resentment bubble over into Stupid Actions With Consequences, but unfortunately, Giant Bad Tree Man telling a young Yamato "Hey, you know that feeling where you can't stop thinking about someone, and it seems like they're a huge part of you, and you're constantly trying to see if they approve of you? That's hate. We call that emotion 'hate,'" and Yamato responding with "Oh wow, I never realised! You're so right," is actually deeply, deeply funny. Like, I'm coming back in to edit purely to hammer home how it's both genuinely quite tragic that Yamato is so bad at identifying his emotions and so prone to thinking the worst of himself that he can easily be convinced he hates his best friend, and hilarious that he falls for this line of argument from someone who a) Has already identified himself as a villain, and b) Is an evil tree.
Well, that was refreshing.
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So the Lupin manga was ... well. Rapey, violent, fetish-laden and cruel. It had it's fun and endearing moments, but it straight up ended with Zenigata killing the entire team and then realizing he can't live in a world without Lupin. This is the manga they looked at and said, "You know what? We need an anime for ADULTS!" So in 1969, they scraped some of the rape off, adjusted ome of the humor, and Lupin III, Part 1, was born. It was actually a rousing success, though some scandal over content and directors happened. In this show, Zenigata was mostly an asshole, obsessed with Lupin with very little of the warmth he has now.
Part 2 came out, and they upped the comedy and again decreased the sexual violence. This wa the run that defined Lupin for a lot of people. Its dub is famous for it's comedic tones and how weird and surreal it got, and how itt owned it, and the sub was just as weird. The quality of the run varied wildly, though once we got Miyazaki really at the helm (Studio Ghibli wouldn't exist without Lupin, you're welcome) things drastically improved. This is what define Lupin for MANY people -- Zenigata is a goofy, sweet bumbler who is also kind, compassionate, and dedicated. When he gets serious, he can catch the boys with eae, but mostly wants to play cops and robbers.
Part 2 was the series that made it to Adult Swim, so most Americans think of this series first, and definied Lupin for a generation of American viewers.
Part 3 went in the same vein, just with a far more stylized animation.
During this time, a lot of movies, specials, and oavs were released. Lupin gets a TV special almost once a year. They normally stay true to a Part 2 vibe, though they raise the stakes and the bumbling on Zenigata is definitely reduced. In fact, some movies show him as quite strong, confident and capable. Now these are all of varying quality - the 90s were a particular dark age for bad Lupin films, slathered in the homophobia and transphobia of 90s Japan - but for the most part, they're pretty consistent on characterization.
Then came The Woman Called Fujiko Mine. This 2014 series came out of left field, with Sayo Yamamoto (Yuri on Ice!) and Takeshi Koike. This was a feminist deconstruction of the Lupin franchise, a love letter to the series while also exploring the construction and breakdown of Fujiko Mine, and women's stories and how they are viewed in relation to the men in the stories. This was the first series to focus on a character that was not Lupin. (Later to be followed up by the LA Zenigata-Keibu series on Japanese Hulu.)
Zenigata in this series is a call back to this. We're intially given the impression that he's a deeply corrupt cop who takes advantage of a caught thief for both sex and leverage against Lupin. Later, as we often do in TWCFM, we find out that the perception of men do not align with the actual reality (Fujiko initiated the sex, and uh, pegged him, and manipulated him from the get go) of the situation - she was in total control of the situation.
This is where Zenigata stans are divided. A lot hate the TWCFM's Zenigata and hate what they did with him, from the style of animation to his behavior. I feel like they discount the nuance for the kneejerk reaction of 'this was an early Zenigata in the vein of Part 1/Manga' and even then, he's still toned down. Ultimately we find out that he is compassionate, upright and moral, but has been struggling to find his way. I believe like the Lupin that we meet in that series who starts a complete and other trashbag (or so we believe) and ends up calling with his cutest face "Fujiko-chan!"
The "adult" line of Lupin the IIIrd (versus or Lupin the 3rd, used to visually separate the far more violent and sexy line of films from the far more family friendly main line) softened this Zenigata's edges, but not by much. The series for these films aren't done, and Zenigata would be next in line for a Zenigata-centered film so... Can't wait for that personally.
TL;DR -- Fans of the comedic Zenigata of the 70s and 80s got real mad that there's a series closer to the manga and they hate this character as he was written in it when he's a completely valid interpretation and they don't want to read to deep into his nuance and story, and that makes me sad.
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The new round of Avatar stans that we've got are going "Azula Did Nothing Wrong" and "Azula Redemption Arc Now" are super frustrating -- the entire point of the parallels between her and Zuko is how narcissist parents create monsters in their own image, and that she's bought fully into the lies she's been fed. She's currently trying to kill her brother and has victimized children to get to this end. To try and give her redemption arc at this point would:
A: Invalidate Zuko's long struggle, since Azula would never put in the work like he did, as she believes she doesn't need to - everything came easy to her
B: Ignore that abuse has consequence -- cycles get repeated, and Zuko broke out of that when Azula she was unable.
She's sick. Likely never to get better. Some people just don't change their ways, even when presented with logical evidence that they're wrong. Azula was raised without empathy, and empathy is learned. She's way past the age where you can really teach it to her.
And here we are some Zenigata Being A Dick examples...
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Every female troll who shows an attraction or attachment to another girl is a lesbian, according to a bunch of the fans. The fact that it was stated on-screen at least twice that bisexuality is the norm for trolls doesn't matter because ONE (1) main character, Kanaya, genuinely is a lesbian as confirmed by Andrew Hussie (and one additional side character, Elwurd, probably is because her name is Elwurd but I'm uncertain if that was confirmed in a more unambiguous way), and thus since varying sexualities exist on Alternia there's no need to infer that most of the characters are the type of queer that's vastly more common on their planet than heterosexuality and homosexuality both, we can just go ahead and assume the majority of them are exclusively gay.
And this happens in a world where compulsory heteronormativity has no reason to exist in any familiar form, because as I said, Alternia is literally a planet of bisexuals! Amatonormativity would naturally be an even bigger problem for them than for us because trolls canonically have to procreate with red and black partners when they leave Alternia or else be killed, and I could see troll society having a problem with not respecting a troll's disinterest when they aren't interested equally in both binary genders, but it would actively go against canon to say that forming romantic relationships with the same binary gender is considered less valid or acceptable. A gay troll might conceivably be hassled for being "too picky", but not for only being interested in "the wrong gender". There's not much reason for a young troll girl to fool herself into thinking she's bi instead of gay and that she reciprocates attraction from boys when she actually doesn't, unless she's really insecure about her ability to find any romantic partner or about whether she's "normal"; pressure to earn the approval of society by dating guys specifically is not a thing. And neither of those motivations really seems to apply to Vriska or Terezi, the most prominent examples of this deeply irritating phenomenon.
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Also, please stop killing Viv. It's dumb.
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