(![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
quietprofanity Jul. 15th, 2008 10:34 pm)
quietprofanity Jul. 15th, 2008 10:34 pm)"If you want Caitlin, then face Veronica, tell her, and be with Caitlin. If you want Veronica, be with Veronica. But don't pine for one and fuck the other. Man, if you weren't such a fucking coward... - Randal Graves, Clerks
If you replace "Caitlin" with the name "Madoka" and the "Veronica" with the name "Hikaru," you would have had the advice that Kasuga Kyosuke needed since about episode four. Alas, unlike Clerks, Kimagure Orange Road has no snarky friend that can knock out the main character's douche-nozzley problems in two hours. But Kasuga Kyosuke doesn't have a friend like Randal, and I was stuck watching this fucker for about 20 hours.
If you know anything about KOR, or at least KOR's reputation, you may be looking at my profanity-laden rage funny. KOR is an anime from the 1980s (something that becomes very clear when you see the characters' hideous clothes) that used to be, but no longer is, sold by anime distributor AnimEigo. AnimEigo is a unique anime distributor. While for quite long time about four or five companies seemed to trip over each other to get the latest release, AnimEigo's licensing seemed to have dried up before the big wave. At the time, this greatly confused me, but then I realized that AnimEigo is probably run by 60-year-old otaku who used to watch Macross while reading from a script in their hands and will still rant about how Disney totally ripped off Kimba the White Lion if you get them at the right moment.
Anyway, AnimEigo had the rights to KoR for about a decade but lost it a few years ago. After the license was lost, I scrambled to buy it, because my love of Urusei Yatsura and early Cutey Honey convinced me I wasn't too young to enjoy pre-Sailor Moon anime. The fans and promo art of the characters drawn in soft-focus also seemed to sell this anime as a dramedy, a nostalgic look at youth with a few of the bumps along the way. Sort of like The Wonder Years with psychic powers.
What I got was a mediocre, bullshit sitcom with destructive ideas about sexual harassment that I think people only love because they were younger and stupider back then and its now coated in a thick layer of nostalgia. If I had only bought the first DVD, maybe the first two DVDs, I would never have bothered to seek out the rest. But I watched the whole thing. Because I BOUGHT the whole thing. Because I spent MORE THAN $150 ON THE WHOLE THING and I needed penance for being so stupid.
(Okay, well, not the whole thing. I haven't seen the OVAs and the movies. And I won't. A sneak at a free scanlation told me the end of the anime was similar the end of the manga and the only thing I really missed was Kyosuke's "She likes women but she's not gay!" cousin* and I really can't imagine spending $60 on that.
* Apparently the cousin has a crush on Madoka similar to how young girls in Japan get crushes on female impersonators, so says the manga artist. I'm cool with that, although when I came across a Web site where a fan had a little defensive rant to the tune of, "How DARE you say Akane is gay just because she has a crush on a girl!" I had to snicker.)
So, back to my main point ... that's why I watched the whole TV series even though I didn't like it. And I'm spending all this time talking about it because any other mention of this show I see on the net is overwhelmingly positive unless they're talking about Hikaru. So let me count the ways I can be negative.
1.) I want to punch ALMOST every character in the face
Seriously, starting with the main character and ending with the wacky grandparents who showed up in that "Rumiko Takahashi-sensi needs to squeeze six more manga volumes out of this cash cow" way. And here are the reasons why:
Kasuga Kyosuke
Kasuga Kyosuke is the main character of the series. He's 14-years-old, just moved to the new town ... the name of which I can't remember but its by the ocean and has a "Kimagure Orange Road" and some big staircase in it. Anyway, he has a casual encounter with a nice girl who turns out to be the school delinquent (Madoka), but gets involved with the girl who seems like the school delinquent but is actually a squealy fangirl (Hikaru). And now he's so "indecisive" he can't make up his mind. Oh, how wacky!
Maybe I'm a jaded ex-teenage geek girl but I really did not like this guy. Mostly because I did not buy the back of the box's claim that he was "indecisive" and that the story is at its heart a love triangle. It's established from early on that Kyosuke loves Madoka, wants Madoka, would molest Madoka if he was left up to his own devices, etc. However, he is "officially" with Hikaru, a girl he clearly does not love for pretty much all of the anime.
Why? 1.) Because he once saw her in a swimsuit and it made him happy in his pants and 2.) He never tries to tell Hikaru he doesn't like her -- most likely because that would be mean. Possibly as mean as continuing to date someone who you never liked and OH WAIT ...
The latter is the part that really gets up my ass, especially because the show never calls him out on his bullshit. His relationship is played as "the geeky guy besieged by a stronger, lovesick woman" anime trope, and this only works if a guy is at least making a CURSORY effort to set things right. Kyosuke decides to solve his problem by basically lying. He'll never tell Hikaru he doesn't want to date her, but he'll mumble something about them not REALLY being a couple when anyone else asks him about it. He plays his two best female friends against each other. The most egregious example was when he tried to plant the long straw for Madoka so they would go on a hike together but he acted like he wanted to go with Hikaru. He chases a girl when he's pretending to date her best friend and ... yeah ...
I hate to be one of those people who say "I prefer an honest jerk to a polite person who lies," because I say anyone who acts like a jerk ISN'T a good person and we don't need to restructure our sense of morals for them. But I have to say Kasuga Kyosuke really made Moroboshi Ataru look like an awesome boyfriend. Not that Ataru was honest, but at least he wasn't leading anybody on with false hope because he was afraid of hurting their feelings.
Now, if you watched the show and liked Kyosuke, you may think I'm making too much of this. After all, young men haven't really worked out their issues of how to treat a woman yet and he isn't mature yet. And he's nice on the inside!
Except he's not. He kind of has that problem Arima did in Kare Kano, where he can only make a firm decision by tapping into his inner dick. And he never does it for the important things, either. Like in the early episodes where he wasn't able to kick those two fucking losers who insisted they were his friends early on to the curb, but he was able to tell his sisters that they couldn't go to the aerobics class because PERVERTS could look at them. Oh, and how he said Madoka shouldn't smoke because she wouldn't have healthy babies. (No, Madoka, that wasn't cute.)
Oh, and I didn't watch the movie but I was YouTubing and ... I mean, REALLY. Dick. Come on.
Hikaru
I really wish I could be more charitable to a character who seems like a punching bag for the fans and the creators. There's something kind of sad in how she seemed to have decided Kyosuke was her boyfriend and ignored pretty much everything else to the contrary because she was so set on believing it. (Even when it was staring her in the face, like how Kyosuke accidentally called her "Madoka" at the concert.)
But ... she makes it hard. The character is really obnoxious, and it seems like around the midway point the writers stopped caring about her and emphasized her obnoxious traits - especially her laugh and overall obtuseness because we all know Madoka is the winner, etc. She's really a jerk to the one guy who does like her. She centers her life around Kyosuke, too, which bugs me.
Her voice actor is also REALLY annoying, especially when the character laughs. Not that this usually matters to me but ... doesn't help.
Yuusaku
Yuusaku is the guy who likes Hikaru. Maybe he's the guy she's really supposed to be with. After all, he shows his love by threatening Kyosuke with violence and insisting he's really the one for Hikaru and following her around and ... UM, JAPAN, STALKING IS BAD, OK! I don't care that Yuusaku and Hikaru were childhood friends, either. He acts like a dick.
Not that Hikaru using him for menial labor, sometimes to do something to impress Kyosuke, is any better, but still ...
Kasuga Manami & Kurumi
These are Kyosuke's twin younger sisters. Manami is the smart and responsible one who has taken on all of the absent mother's menial labor instead of the father ([long-suffering sigh] At least she's not 12, I guess ...). This is partly because she has glasses but mostly because Kurumi is one of the dumbest anime females EVER.
Seriously, how many times does Kurumi have to be told that using her powers in public is a BAD IDEA before she gets the point? And why does she wander off with strange men? And why does she talk to the disgusting otaku perverts when she's naked? What is WRONG with her? I could say she makes Sailor Moon look smart, but that's both a cliche and unfair to Sailor Moon (which is also a cliche, but it's so true here). Kurumi should be glad she has superpowers, because if she didn't she would have been mowed down by a passing bus when she was six.
Oh, and apparently in the manga, Kurumi wants Kyosuke to be with Hikaru. Like I said: dumbest anime female EVER.
Komatsu & Hatta
Let me not mince words: I fucking LOATHED these characters. FUCKING loathed these characters. I hated every minute their stupid, unfunny, creepy asses were on-screen. I don't know why ANYBODY tolerated them, especially the twins, who they kept hitting on, and even more especially Kyosuke, who really should have dumped their dumb asses.
Now, I know I've been progressively turning into something of a cranky feminist, but I do want to say that I DO understand that Japan has a "pervert" character trope. (Or more like a common trait, since Happosai from Ranma 1/2 is nothing like Kairi from Peach Girl is nothing like Ataru from Urusei Yatsura, is nothing like that co-worker douchebag in Koi Kaze, anyway.) I also DO understand that the sex farce-y slack-jawed drooling has as little to do with actual sexual harassment as slapstick has to do with actual violence. I mean, if you can't understand why Lupin literally diving out of his clothes as he pursues Fujiko is funny, you're some kind of robot. The evil, non-Wall-E kind.
But, at least in my experience to make the pervert character work he (I've never seen a girl version of this character ... although a few canon lesbians have come close. Or is an overtly sexual female character like Ryoko from Tenchi Muyo the female equivalent? I don't know ... DEBATE IN THE COMMENTS!) have to have some core of decency or, failing that, be so far out there that the audience loves to hate them as they laugh at them.
I didn't feel EITHER with these characters. They acted like total jerks the whole time -- never did anything nice for anybody, outright tried to exploit Kyosuke at one point when they realized he had superpowers and perved over Kyosuke's sisters WHEN HE WAS RIGHT THERE! And lots of the time their presence was just tolerated because "Hey, it's Komatsu and Hatta! That's what they DO." But WHY ... okay, so sometimes annoying people worm their way into your friendship group. We all knew a girl like that in High School. (I'm still kind of frustrated that she's in my picture of my core group of High School friends ... right in the middle where we couldn't cut her out, too. I forget who took the picture but they were like, "I'm sorry [NAME] is in it." Oh, don't look at me that way. You know you've done it to SOMEONE.) Still, if we had the money to go on a group skiing trip or into the secluded mountains to see someone's grandparents, WE WOULDN'T HAVE INVITED HER. But these fucks are there ALL THE TIME, being not funny and creepy.
I AM glad that the last frame of them had the girls using Jingoro the cat to rip their faces up, but still.
I wasn't that fond of Jingoro the cat, by the way. He was cute in the beginning, but the gag of him running away while Kurumi or grandpa used their powers on him quickly got old. I thought Kazuya was OK when he first showed up, but when he turned out not to be the magical McGuffin kid that propelled the main trio into more seriously dealing with their problems and the show decided instead to fall on its head and thought it was Urusei Yatsura, I kind of resented his presence. Grandpa and Grandma I already said why I didn't like them.
So I said I wanted to punch ALMOST every character in the face? So, who DID I like? Well, DUH.
I'd feel kind of bad saying the only character I liked seems to have been every 1980s otaku boy's masturbation fantasy, but I've already declared Lum the greatest anime female ever, so this stuff doesn't get to me. (Well, until you get the lesbophobic bashing of Hikaru. Then I have the association cooties.)
But honestly, if Madoka wasn't in this show, I would have given up on it around the first episode. I like Madoka because despite how the myth around this show tries to paint her as this whimsical anime female ... the mystery that is woman ... why is she warm to me one moment and cold to me the next? This meta-Madoka emerges and you realize that she's the only one in this garbage of a show that resembles a decent person. Ninety-nine percent of the time when she's mad at Kyosuke, it's not because of some sort of Akane-catches-Ranma-at-the-wrong-moment misunderstanding, but because Madoka ACTUALLY SEES THROUGH HIS BULLSHIT. I don't think she was doing some long-suffering, I-won't-date-Kyosuke-because-it-would-be-cruel-to-Hikaru deal (and if the movies contradict me, they are WRONG, because I actually watched all this bullshit and saw what was on the screen and will not accept them lying to me.) she did it because dating someone who didn't have the stones to commit to her because he's a fucking coward would have been DUMB ON HER PART. Plus, she's basically on her own -- her parents off in America and her sister being all centered around being a newlywed. Madoka's not going to tether herself to a guy who doesn't have the bravery to be with her.
Since she's the main focus of the show, she made everything a lot more tolerable. She also had a lot of good character traits. She actually thinks about other people (a RARITY in this show), she can kick the crap out of anyone, etc. Also, I kind of like how she outright fucks with Kyosuke's head a couple of times throughout the series. More on that later.
But despite all that (segueing back to the main list of why I hate this show in 4 ... 3 ...)
2.) So why WERE Madoka and Hikaru acting like they had reversed personalities in the first episodes?
For that matter, why did Madoka become a delinquent? Where did she learn how to fight? Why didn't she teach Hikaru? How DOES Madoka feel about her parents? What's going on here? You raise a mystery in the first episodes and then NEVER SOLVE IT. What the fuck? That sucks.
I want to chalk it up to lazy writing. It also may be explained in the manga. But the cynical, cranky feminist in me wonders if someone just didn't care.
Maybe it's just me, but sometimes I get the feeling that in many romances written by men, the focus doesn't turn outward toward women, but inward toward the men themselves. The women are kind of a catalyst for the man's own self-discovery or a man learning to give himself up to love or whatever. Kind of like how There's Something About Mary was really about whoever Ben Stiller played. Kimagure Orange Road has its eyes on Madoka, but it's really about Kyosuke learning how HE can learn to earn a hot girl like Madoka.
Women's romances, on the other hand, seemed focus on one partner helping the other partner -- many times with the woman somehow saving the man emotionally, bringing out a change in him, etc. You know, the whole concept on which Twilight was founded ... although also Jane Eyre and Buffy and Sailor Moon and Gravitation. This concept isn't foreign to men's media, Midori Days did something like it near the very end, but usually men are physically saving women, unless, like Kyosuke, they'd never be able to do that.
I guess to some extent Kyosuke might have done that in that he got her to stop smoking and start being a better student, only using her gang powers for good. But since he did it in the most sexist way possible ("If you do that, you won't be able to have healthy babies." - Oh yeah, he went there. That's not a paraphrase), and never really showed much of an interest in WHY she was the way she was, I'm not very excited about it.
3.) The show started thinking it was Urusei Yatsura
I mentioned this earlier, but yeah. About half-way through the show it got SERIOUSLY goofy and sitcom-y. Since the humor in the show was (to me) only occasionally amusing this REALLY didn't work.
Now ... this should probably be a separate entry ... but often I felt like the characters' psychic powers were really under-utilized, because they weren't used to help create the character so much as they were used for gags and sitcom situations. I actually sometimes forget about the psychic powers in the show because it figures so little in the development of the actual characters.
Let me explain briefly. Lum is an alien who has superpowers, ergo, she ACTS like an alien who has superpowers. She doesn't understand things -- not that she's dumb, but she will say things that could make sense to someone who isn't drenched in Earth culture, like assuming "I can get married!" means an automatic marriage. She also incorporates her flying powers into her basic movements and her anger results in electric shocks flying and yeah ... this is basic shit, but you can't think of Lum without thinking that these traits are an essential part of her character.
I never got the feeling that any of the Kasugas had their psychic powers incorporated as a part of them. The narrative TOLD us that they had to be discreet and were under threat of being hunted by their neighbors and everything, but it rarely affected their actions (especially Kurumi, because she's stupid).
And the psychic powers became the driving force of the show for the LAST HALF of the second episodes, so it basically became gag central. It got so bad that sometimes the gags were changing the nature of the show -- like the episode where TWO Kyosukes showed up at the New Year's Eve party due to some time-slipping. And then the credits roll. Since the show had NEVER been treated as an "everything is reset with the next episode" show, this was inexcusably dumb.
Actually, it got to the point where the other characters seemed to have selective senses when it came to the whole psychic powers thing. It ... I don't know. It's hard to explain. All I can say is I've watched a LOT of superhero shows that stretched the credibility of others' disbelief, but this was really bad. Especially with the two Kyosukes episode.
4.) That FUCKING ending
I'm getting tired and don't really want to spoil it, but I'll just say that 1.) it sucked 2.) Kyosuke a chauvinist, sexist dumbshit and 3.) predestination paradoxes can suck it, especially if they're being used to prove that two characters who are OBVIOUSLY intended for each other are OBVIOUSLY INTENDED FOR EACH OTHER BY FATE.
[sigh]
So ... that's why I hated it. But don't let me let you leave thinking it was entirely without merit. Here are some of my favorite episodes.
1.) That episode where they go to the beach and Kyosuke carries Madoka on his back while she screams to be let down but Kyosuke just laughs and he keeps piggy-backing her along the beach as the sun goes down
... Why couldn't the show have had more romantic moments like this, seriously? Why did have to be about psychic powers? Why couldn't Kyosuke have kept his dickery to normal-boyfriend level dickery? I mean, seriously. It was such a nice moment. WHY CAN'T SHOWS BE ABOUT STUFF LIKE THIS?
2.) The episode where the gang is going after Madoka but beats up Hikaru instead
Because it actually incorporated Madoka's past. And actually PASSED BECHEL'S LAW and had the two best friends talking about their own past. WHY COULDN'T THE WHOLE SHOW HAVE BEEN MORE LIKE THAT?
3.) The episode where Kyosuke kept switching back from going to the pool with Hikaru and studying with Madoka
Yeah, it was idiotic, but Kyosuke actually punched Komatsu in this episode. WHY COULDN'T HE HAVE DONE THAT MORE OFTEN?
4.) The episode where Kyosuke hypnotizes Madoka and has Madoka be his slave ... although he can't bring himself to ask her to take off her clothes or grope her even though he really wants to ... but actually Madoka was faking all along, ha ha
Actually, I kind of hated this episode and felt like it was skeevy, but I really have to admit I didn't see the end coming. Madoka will fucking cut you in your sleep, yo ...
5.) The episode where Manami decides she's tired of being the unpaid maid and gets a crazy new look and has adventures but these girls try to beat her up and she loses her contact lenses but its OK because Kyosuke who is wearing glasses and has a scratchy voice because he ate Kurumi's super-hot suit saves her. And then Manami, who now can't tell because she can't see and his voice or different that it's really Kyosuke, falls in love with her brother and Kyosuke realizes how sad it is that Manami goes along with the housework decides to play along and goes on a date with her for the day
BECAUSE IT HAPPENED!!!! I DO NOT MAKE THESE THINGS UP!!!!
The end.
And for sitting through that ... Anthrophromorphic Multi-Racial Lesbian Couple. YAY!
If you replace "Caitlin" with the name "Madoka" and the "Veronica" with the name "Hikaru," you would have had the advice that Kasuga Kyosuke needed since about episode four. Alas, unlike Clerks, Kimagure Orange Road has no snarky friend that can knock out the main character's douche-nozzley problems in two hours. But Kasuga Kyosuke doesn't have a friend like Randal, and I was stuck watching this fucker for about 20 hours.
If you know anything about KOR, or at least KOR's reputation, you may be looking at my profanity-laden rage funny. KOR is an anime from the 1980s (something that becomes very clear when you see the characters' hideous clothes) that used to be, but no longer is, sold by anime distributor AnimEigo. AnimEigo is a unique anime distributor. While for quite long time about four or five companies seemed to trip over each other to get the latest release, AnimEigo's licensing seemed to have dried up before the big wave. At the time, this greatly confused me, but then I realized that AnimEigo is probably run by 60-year-old otaku who used to watch Macross while reading from a script in their hands and will still rant about how Disney totally ripped off Kimba the White Lion if you get them at the right moment.
Anyway, AnimEigo had the rights to KoR for about a decade but lost it a few years ago. After the license was lost, I scrambled to buy it, because my love of Urusei Yatsura and early Cutey Honey convinced me I wasn't too young to enjoy pre-Sailor Moon anime. The fans and promo art of the characters drawn in soft-focus also seemed to sell this anime as a dramedy, a nostalgic look at youth with a few of the bumps along the way. Sort of like The Wonder Years with psychic powers.
What I got was a mediocre, bullshit sitcom with destructive ideas about sexual harassment that I think people only love because they were younger and stupider back then and its now coated in a thick layer of nostalgia. If I had only bought the first DVD, maybe the first two DVDs, I would never have bothered to seek out the rest. But I watched the whole thing. Because I BOUGHT the whole thing. Because I spent MORE THAN $150 ON THE WHOLE THING and I needed penance for being so stupid.
(Okay, well, not the whole thing. I haven't seen the OVAs and the movies. And I won't. A sneak at a free scanlation told me the end of the anime was similar the end of the manga and the only thing I really missed was Kyosuke's "She likes women but she's not gay!" cousin* and I really can't imagine spending $60 on that.
* Apparently the cousin has a crush on Madoka similar to how young girls in Japan get crushes on female impersonators, so says the manga artist. I'm cool with that, although when I came across a Web site where a fan had a little defensive rant to the tune of, "How DARE you say Akane is gay just because she has a crush on a girl!" I had to snicker.)
So, back to my main point ... that's why I watched the whole TV series even though I didn't like it. And I'm spending all this time talking about it because any other mention of this show I see on the net is overwhelmingly positive unless they're talking about Hikaru. So let me count the ways I can be negative.
1.) I want to punch ALMOST every character in the face
Seriously, starting with the main character and ending with the wacky grandparents who showed up in that "Rumiko Takahashi-sensi needs to squeeze six more manga volumes out of this cash cow" way. And here are the reasons why:
Kasuga Kyosuke
Kasuga Kyosuke is the main character of the series. He's 14-years-old, just moved to the new town ... the name of which I can't remember but its by the ocean and has a "Kimagure Orange Road" and some big staircase in it. Anyway, he has a casual encounter with a nice girl who turns out to be the school delinquent (Madoka), but gets involved with the girl who seems like the school delinquent but is actually a squealy fangirl (Hikaru). And now he's so "indecisive" he can't make up his mind. Oh, how wacky!
Maybe I'm a jaded ex-teenage geek girl but I really did not like this guy. Mostly because I did not buy the back of the box's claim that he was "indecisive" and that the story is at its heart a love triangle. It's established from early on that Kyosuke loves Madoka, wants Madoka, would molest Madoka if he was left up to his own devices, etc. However, he is "officially" with Hikaru, a girl he clearly does not love for pretty much all of the anime.
Why? 1.) Because he once saw her in a swimsuit and it made him happy in his pants and 2.) He never tries to tell Hikaru he doesn't like her -- most likely because that would be mean. Possibly as mean as continuing to date someone who you never liked and OH WAIT ...
The latter is the part that really gets up my ass, especially because the show never calls him out on his bullshit. His relationship is played as "the geeky guy besieged by a stronger, lovesick woman" anime trope, and this only works if a guy is at least making a CURSORY effort to set things right. Kyosuke decides to solve his problem by basically lying. He'll never tell Hikaru he doesn't want to date her, but he'll mumble something about them not REALLY being a couple when anyone else asks him about it. He plays his two best female friends against each other. The most egregious example was when he tried to plant the long straw for Madoka so they would go on a hike together but he acted like he wanted to go with Hikaru. He chases a girl when he's pretending to date her best friend and ... yeah ...
I hate to be one of those people who say "I prefer an honest jerk to a polite person who lies," because I say anyone who acts like a jerk ISN'T a good person and we don't need to restructure our sense of morals for them. But I have to say Kasuga Kyosuke really made Moroboshi Ataru look like an awesome boyfriend. Not that Ataru was honest, but at least he wasn't leading anybody on with false hope because he was afraid of hurting their feelings.
Now, if you watched the show and liked Kyosuke, you may think I'm making too much of this. After all, young men haven't really worked out their issues of how to treat a woman yet and he isn't mature yet. And he's nice on the inside!
Except he's not. He kind of has that problem Arima did in Kare Kano, where he can only make a firm decision by tapping into his inner dick. And he never does it for the important things, either. Like in the early episodes where he wasn't able to kick those two fucking losers who insisted they were his friends early on to the curb, but he was able to tell his sisters that they couldn't go to the aerobics class because PERVERTS could look at them. Oh, and how he said Madoka shouldn't smoke because she wouldn't have healthy babies. (No, Madoka, that wasn't cute.)
Oh, and I didn't watch the movie but I was YouTubing and ... I mean, REALLY. Dick. Come on.
Hikaru
I really wish I could be more charitable to a character who seems like a punching bag for the fans and the creators. There's something kind of sad in how she seemed to have decided Kyosuke was her boyfriend and ignored pretty much everything else to the contrary because she was so set on believing it. (Even when it was staring her in the face, like how Kyosuke accidentally called her "Madoka" at the concert.)
But ... she makes it hard. The character is really obnoxious, and it seems like around the midway point the writers stopped caring about her and emphasized her obnoxious traits - especially her laugh and overall obtuseness because we all know Madoka is the winner, etc. She's really a jerk to the one guy who does like her. She centers her life around Kyosuke, too, which bugs me.
Her voice actor is also REALLY annoying, especially when the character laughs. Not that this usually matters to me but ... doesn't help.
Yuusaku
Yuusaku is the guy who likes Hikaru. Maybe he's the guy she's really supposed to be with. After all, he shows his love by threatening Kyosuke with violence and insisting he's really the one for Hikaru and following her around and ... UM, JAPAN, STALKING IS BAD, OK! I don't care that Yuusaku and Hikaru were childhood friends, either. He acts like a dick.
Not that Hikaru using him for menial labor, sometimes to do something to impress Kyosuke, is any better, but still ...
Kasuga Manami & Kurumi
These are Kyosuke's twin younger sisters. Manami is the smart and responsible one who has taken on all of the absent mother's menial labor instead of the father ([long-suffering sigh] At least she's not 12, I guess ...). This is partly because she has glasses but mostly because Kurumi is one of the dumbest anime females EVER.
Seriously, how many times does Kurumi have to be told that using her powers in public is a BAD IDEA before she gets the point? And why does she wander off with strange men? And why does she talk to the disgusting otaku perverts when she's naked? What is WRONG with her? I could say she makes Sailor Moon look smart, but that's both a cliche and unfair to Sailor Moon (which is also a cliche, but it's so true here). Kurumi should be glad she has superpowers, because if she didn't she would have been mowed down by a passing bus when she was six.
Oh, and apparently in the manga, Kurumi wants Kyosuke to be with Hikaru. Like I said: dumbest anime female EVER.
Komatsu & Hatta
Let me not mince words: I fucking LOATHED these characters. FUCKING loathed these characters. I hated every minute their stupid, unfunny, creepy asses were on-screen. I don't know why ANYBODY tolerated them, especially the twins, who they kept hitting on, and even more especially Kyosuke, who really should have dumped their dumb asses.
Now, I know I've been progressively turning into something of a cranky feminist, but I do want to say that I DO understand that Japan has a "pervert" character trope. (Or more like a common trait, since Happosai from Ranma 1/2 is nothing like Kairi from Peach Girl is nothing like Ataru from Urusei Yatsura, is nothing like that co-worker douchebag in Koi Kaze, anyway.) I also DO understand that the sex farce-y slack-jawed drooling has as little to do with actual sexual harassment as slapstick has to do with actual violence. I mean, if you can't understand why Lupin literally diving out of his clothes as he pursues Fujiko is funny, you're some kind of robot. The evil, non-Wall-E kind.
But, at least in my experience to make the pervert character work he (I've never seen a girl version of this character ... although a few canon lesbians have come close. Or is an overtly sexual female character like Ryoko from Tenchi Muyo the female equivalent? I don't know ... DEBATE IN THE COMMENTS!) have to have some core of decency or, failing that, be so far out there that the audience loves to hate them as they laugh at them.
I didn't feel EITHER with these characters. They acted like total jerks the whole time -- never did anything nice for anybody, outright tried to exploit Kyosuke at one point when they realized he had superpowers and perved over Kyosuke's sisters WHEN HE WAS RIGHT THERE! And lots of the time their presence was just tolerated because "Hey, it's Komatsu and Hatta! That's what they DO." But WHY ... okay, so sometimes annoying people worm their way into your friendship group. We all knew a girl like that in High School. (I'm still kind of frustrated that she's in my picture of my core group of High School friends ... right in the middle where we couldn't cut her out, too. I forget who took the picture but they were like, "I'm sorry [NAME] is in it." Oh, don't look at me that way. You know you've done it to SOMEONE.) Still, if we had the money to go on a group skiing trip or into the secluded mountains to see someone's grandparents, WE WOULDN'T HAVE INVITED HER. But these fucks are there ALL THE TIME, being not funny and creepy.
I AM glad that the last frame of them had the girls using Jingoro the cat to rip their faces up, but still.
I wasn't that fond of Jingoro the cat, by the way. He was cute in the beginning, but the gag of him running away while Kurumi or grandpa used their powers on him quickly got old. I thought Kazuya was OK when he first showed up, but when he turned out not to be the magical McGuffin kid that propelled the main trio into more seriously dealing with their problems and the show decided instead to fall on its head and thought it was Urusei Yatsura, I kind of resented his presence. Grandpa and Grandma I already said why I didn't like them.
So I said I wanted to punch ALMOST every character in the face? So, who DID I like? Well, DUH.
I'd feel kind of bad saying the only character I liked seems to have been every 1980s otaku boy's masturbation fantasy, but I've already declared Lum the greatest anime female ever, so this stuff doesn't get to me. (Well, until you get the lesbophobic bashing of Hikaru. Then I have the association cooties.)
But honestly, if Madoka wasn't in this show, I would have given up on it around the first episode. I like Madoka because despite how the myth around this show tries to paint her as this whimsical anime female ... the mystery that is woman ... why is she warm to me one moment and cold to me the next? This meta-Madoka emerges and you realize that she's the only one in this garbage of a show that resembles a decent person. Ninety-nine percent of the time when she's mad at Kyosuke, it's not because of some sort of Akane-catches-Ranma-at-the-wrong-moment misunderstanding, but because Madoka ACTUALLY SEES THROUGH HIS BULLSHIT. I don't think she was doing some long-suffering, I-won't-date-Kyosuke-because-it-would-be-cruel-to-Hikaru deal (and if the movies contradict me, they are WRONG, because I actually watched all this bullshit and saw what was on the screen and will not accept them lying to me.) she did it because dating someone who didn't have the stones to commit to her because he's a fucking coward would have been DUMB ON HER PART. Plus, she's basically on her own -- her parents off in America and her sister being all centered around being a newlywed. Madoka's not going to tether herself to a guy who doesn't have the bravery to be with her.
Since she's the main focus of the show, she made everything a lot more tolerable. She also had a lot of good character traits. She actually thinks about other people (a RARITY in this show), she can kick the crap out of anyone, etc. Also, I kind of like how she outright fucks with Kyosuke's head a couple of times throughout the series. More on that later.
But despite all that (segueing back to the main list of why I hate this show in 4 ... 3 ...)
2.) So why WERE Madoka and Hikaru acting like they had reversed personalities in the first episodes?
For that matter, why did Madoka become a delinquent? Where did she learn how to fight? Why didn't she teach Hikaru? How DOES Madoka feel about her parents? What's going on here? You raise a mystery in the first episodes and then NEVER SOLVE IT. What the fuck? That sucks.
I want to chalk it up to lazy writing. It also may be explained in the manga. But the cynical, cranky feminist in me wonders if someone just didn't care.
Maybe it's just me, but sometimes I get the feeling that in many romances written by men, the focus doesn't turn outward toward women, but inward toward the men themselves. The women are kind of a catalyst for the man's own self-discovery or a man learning to give himself up to love or whatever. Kind of like how There's Something About Mary was really about whoever Ben Stiller played. Kimagure Orange Road has its eyes on Madoka, but it's really about Kyosuke learning how HE can learn to earn a hot girl like Madoka.
Women's romances, on the other hand, seemed focus on one partner helping the other partner -- many times with the woman somehow saving the man emotionally, bringing out a change in him, etc. You know, the whole concept on which Twilight was founded ... although also Jane Eyre and Buffy and Sailor Moon and Gravitation. This concept isn't foreign to men's media, Midori Days did something like it near the very end, but usually men are physically saving women, unless, like Kyosuke, they'd never be able to do that.
I guess to some extent Kyosuke might have done that in that he got her to stop smoking and start being a better student, only using her gang powers for good. But since he did it in the most sexist way possible ("If you do that, you won't be able to have healthy babies." - Oh yeah, he went there. That's not a paraphrase), and never really showed much of an interest in WHY she was the way she was, I'm not very excited about it.
3.) The show started thinking it was Urusei Yatsura
I mentioned this earlier, but yeah. About half-way through the show it got SERIOUSLY goofy and sitcom-y. Since the humor in the show was (to me) only occasionally amusing this REALLY didn't work.
Now ... this should probably be a separate entry ... but often I felt like the characters' psychic powers were really under-utilized, because they weren't used to help create the character so much as they were used for gags and sitcom situations. I actually sometimes forget about the psychic powers in the show because it figures so little in the development of the actual characters.
Let me explain briefly. Lum is an alien who has superpowers, ergo, she ACTS like an alien who has superpowers. She doesn't understand things -- not that she's dumb, but she will say things that could make sense to someone who isn't drenched in Earth culture, like assuming "I can get married!" means an automatic marriage. She also incorporates her flying powers into her basic movements and her anger results in electric shocks flying and yeah ... this is basic shit, but you can't think of Lum without thinking that these traits are an essential part of her character.
I never got the feeling that any of the Kasugas had their psychic powers incorporated as a part of them. The narrative TOLD us that they had to be discreet and were under threat of being hunted by their neighbors and everything, but it rarely affected their actions (especially Kurumi, because she's stupid).
And the psychic powers became the driving force of the show for the LAST HALF of the second episodes, so it basically became gag central. It got so bad that sometimes the gags were changing the nature of the show -- like the episode where TWO Kyosukes showed up at the New Year's Eve party due to some time-slipping. And then the credits roll. Since the show had NEVER been treated as an "everything is reset with the next episode" show, this was inexcusably dumb.
Actually, it got to the point where the other characters seemed to have selective senses when it came to the whole psychic powers thing. It ... I don't know. It's hard to explain. All I can say is I've watched a LOT of superhero shows that stretched the credibility of others' disbelief, but this was really bad. Especially with the two Kyosukes episode.
4.) That FUCKING ending
I'm getting tired and don't really want to spoil it, but I'll just say that 1.) it sucked 2.) Kyosuke a chauvinist, sexist dumbshit and 3.) predestination paradoxes can suck it, especially if they're being used to prove that two characters who are OBVIOUSLY intended for each other are OBVIOUSLY INTENDED FOR EACH OTHER BY FATE.
[sigh]
So ... that's why I hated it. But don't let me let you leave thinking it was entirely without merit. Here are some of my favorite episodes.
1.) That episode where they go to the beach and Kyosuke carries Madoka on his back while she screams to be let down but Kyosuke just laughs and he keeps piggy-backing her along the beach as the sun goes down
... Why couldn't the show have had more romantic moments like this, seriously? Why did have to be about psychic powers? Why couldn't Kyosuke have kept his dickery to normal-boyfriend level dickery? I mean, seriously. It was such a nice moment. WHY CAN'T SHOWS BE ABOUT STUFF LIKE THIS?
2.) The episode where the gang is going after Madoka but beats up Hikaru instead
Because it actually incorporated Madoka's past. And actually PASSED BECHEL'S LAW and had the two best friends talking about their own past. WHY COULDN'T THE WHOLE SHOW HAVE BEEN MORE LIKE THAT?
3.) The episode where Kyosuke kept switching back from going to the pool with Hikaru and studying with Madoka
Yeah, it was idiotic, but Kyosuke actually punched Komatsu in this episode. WHY COULDN'T HE HAVE DONE THAT MORE OFTEN?
4.) The episode where Kyosuke hypnotizes Madoka and has Madoka be his slave ... although he can't bring himself to ask her to take off her clothes or grope her even though he really wants to ... but actually Madoka was faking all along, ha ha
Actually, I kind of hated this episode and felt like it was skeevy, but I really have to admit I didn't see the end coming. Madoka will fucking cut you in your sleep, yo ...
5.) The episode where Manami decides she's tired of being the unpaid maid and gets a crazy new look and has adventures but these girls try to beat her up and she loses her contact lenses but its OK because Kyosuke who is wearing glasses and has a scratchy voice because he ate Kurumi's super-hot suit saves her. And then Manami, who now can't tell because she can't see and his voice or different that it's really Kyosuke, falls in love with her brother and Kyosuke realizes how sad it is that Manami goes along with the housework decides to play along and goes on a date with her for the day
BECAUSE IT HAPPENED!!!! I DO NOT MAKE THESE THINGS UP!!!!
The end.
And for sitting through that ... Anthrophromorphic Multi-Racial Lesbian Couple. YAY!
Tags:
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
Yeeeahhh, that movie clip makes me wonder why we have to see the breakup/aftermath from Kyousuke's POV when all it did was reinforce his coldness more than anything else...
Madoka probably subverted the Yamato Nadeshiko trope*. But as you lamented,
chauvinisticmasturbatory fantasies will be what they'll be regardless of actual context *cough*Ayanami*cough*EDIT: Or whichever trope stipulates Girl A must end up with Protagonist Dude and to everyone else: be mindful of FALLING ROCKS KTHXBAI
From:
no subject
Yeeeahhh, that movie clip makes me wonder why we have to see the breakup/aftermath from Kyousuke's POV when all it did was reinforce his coldness more than anything else...
See, the thing is I'm guessing to most fans that wouldn't register as "Here is Kyosuke being a dick" but "Aw, Kyosuke is doing what he has to do." I have a feeling they were watching the "What the creators want you to see" version and I'm watching some meta-version. (Slacktivist's Left Behind commentaries talk about this phenomenon a lot -- particuarly how the main characters are supposed to be brave, honest Christian manly-men but come off as narcissistic, misogynist creeps and how the writers' attempts at making one character look like an evil slut-woman actually make her more sympathetic.)
It was kind of interesting to NOT be wearing the same glasses as everyone else, but it gave me the expectation that Kyosuke would at one point have to look at himself and go, "Oh my God ... I've been a JERK." But that never happened.
Madoka probably subverted the Yamato Nadeshiko trope*. But as you lamented,
chauvinisticmasturbatory fantasies will be what they'll be regardless of actual context *cough*Ayanami*cough*Are you talking about others' perception or the show itself?
I actually didn't mind Madoka getting together with Kyosuke, by the way. Mostly because of those few moments like the beach run that suggested Kyosuke COULD get over his internal bullshit and morph into the good boyfriend. But the show's own lack of self-awareness about his dickishness and coward sides were frustrating.
From:
no subject
Just coming from a male perspective, though, I can maybe-relate to the depths of jerkdom the protagonist would stoop to in spite of better judgment. ^^; (Purely speculative: they might have been attempting the ULTRA-REALISM route. Not that it makes for good story telling.)
From:
no subject
SARTRE WILL SAVE US FROM THE BAD ANIME!
though I suppose you mean the conventional (misguided) wisdom vs. what's really going on.
Well, conventional wisdom AND authorial intent vs. what I see/what makes it to the screen. ... This is rather complicated.
I guess the best example is reading the reviews of Twilight. The author and fans see it as a love story but the critics see it as a borderline abusive relationship.
Just coming from a male perspective, though, I can maybe-relate to the depths of jerkdom the protagonist would stoop to in spite of better judgment. ^^; (Purely speculative: they might have been attempting the ULTRA-REALISM route. Not that it makes for good story telling.)
Actually, I wished they would have done MORE of it and not the bullshit psychic powers and love triangle malarkey. I mean, I've known guys who were kind of like Kyosuke and treating that sort of character with a recognition of his flaws would have been great. But ... they didn't. [sigh]