Anime and Character Relationships · 2:55pm Aug 26th, 2015
[This may or may not be the first part of a series examining how pulp-art anime deal with the fact that they're often saddled with repetitive or non-existent plots. Read on at your own peril, geekiness may ensue.]
It may have come to your attention, if you're following me, that I am in fact a massive anime fan.
Well, that or if you looked at my avatar long enough to realize it's quantum levels of goofy and features characters from my favorite sound novel of all time, Umineko: When They Cry* cosplaying as characters from a series of independently-made bullet hell shooters. I think that might qualify as quantum geekery.
You can also blame me for this story existing at all, as I dragged my boyfriend through the entirety of Fate/Zero and then somehow came up with like. More than half of the concepts in it. And basically all the Blueblood stuff. And the scene where Rainbow Dash informs Fluttershy of the proper way to approach history.
You can basically blame Pokemon for getting me into the entire concept, Digimon for producing two and a half shows with high enough levels of quality that they stuck with me through my entire childhood and sort of defined what a good kid's show was going to look like for me for years afterward, and a whole host of quality stuff and not-so-quality-stuff I've been exposed to throughout my life for making sure my interest never fades. And you can blame my critical and storytelling fascination with it on the simple fact that anime gets away with telling very simple stories in very weird, interesting ways. A sports-team-makes-the-grade story can be mutated into a skeleton plot that results in a series about kids who fight each other with plastic robot models. Tie-in marketing for a virtual pet line can get turned into a surreal adventure story with a well-rounded ensemble cast. Revolutionary Girl Utena can...
...Can be Revolutionary Girl Utena at all, I guess.
Basically, anime is marketed to a hungry series of consumers who crave the style over the substance of what they're watching quite often (as evidenced by the success of K-On and its three hundred million knock-off brand followers- remind me to talk about why Yuki Yuna Is A Hero is both the most frustrating thing I've ever watched and decisive evidence that even the people who profit from this shit are getting tired of making it). The upside of this is that as long as a show is based on something studios know the audience will watch regardless and includes enough obvious "this is an X genre series' to draw in its crowd, it can get away with telling some very surprising stories.
Enter stage left Blue Exorcist**
I'm going to talk about this show not because I've been watching it recently, or even because it's been weighing on my mind- it's because in a little while, I want to delve into a completely different show I just watched and explain exactly why its existence bugs the ever-loving shit out of me. But to explain exactly why that show fails, I have to explain how Blue Exorcist succeeds.
There is nothing revolutionary about Blue Exorcist, in theory. I mean the worldbuilding is very interesting on some levels, borrowing elements from Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and Shinto to create this weird pan-religious community of exorcists and demons, but that's not really what I take away from it. It's also got fluid animation and a gorgeously good soundtrack but- again- that's not what I take away from it.
I take away the single most heartfelt core character relationship in the entirety of bog-standard-super-kids-fighting-dudes shows. Ever.
Blue Exorcist in brief summary: Rin Okumura is an ordinary Japanese teenager... okay, not really. He's got a bad temper, gets into fights without thinking about the consequences, and as a consequence of that is completely and utterly loathed by most people who talk to him. He's terrible at studying and worse at following through and as a result he hasn't made it into a high school yet*** or held down a job. His younger brother, meanwhile, is well on his way to studying to become a doctor and is about to head off to a prestigious private school. After yet another failed attempt to get himself a job, Rin has an encounter with a demonic creature and is informed by his adoptive father, a priest, that he is the son of Satan. Shenanigans happen, and Rin eventually winds up a student exorcist and discovers that his younger brother and father both kept secrets from him- namely, that they were actively exorcists, and both knew about his demonic side. Character drama ensues, as does lots and lots of fighting.
What makes this series special is how frank its character studies of Rin and his younger brother Yukio are. Yukio is often drawn as slightly taller than Rin in order to convey his differing level of maturity, and dresses neatly at all times. Rin barely manages to keep his uniform straight, and typically has more of a relaxed, slouching posture. Aside from those nice little bits of detail, their attitudes towards each other and the world around them are completely different. Rin is aggressive, wanting to charge into situations and solve them with the most direct method possible, which clashes with Yukio's caution and emphasis on personal responsibility. Rin's approach often wins out in a surprising number of situations...
...and yet.
The series is sympathetic towards Rin and doesn't want to waste its time judging him, but it won't make excuses for him either. His actions have consequences that actually follow through. More than once throughout the series he unthinkingly says things that deeply hurt other characters, and they aren't instantly resolved. More than once his aggressive tactics actually end up getting him hurt. And even worse- more than once, it's brought home to the viewer that as much as Rin's demonic side and sense of justice get him into trouble and make it hard for him to hold down those part-time jobs he was trying so hard to pick up, he's also very lax about certain sorts of responsibility and doesn't really consider the impact his actions might have on others. It's a nuanced portrait of a character, and while Rin's development isn't exactly fast and he doesn't necessarily become a different person and fix all his issues by the end of the series, his personality's real enough that you could forgive him if he stayed the whole show as a static character.
And the thing is? The A-plot of Blue Exorcist has jack shit to do with all of that. This all happens in the background throughout episodes where Rin and his friends have to fight off a pair of ghouls while on a training exercise, an episode where Rin has to kill a flower demon, a fight on a roller coaster at an amusement park between high-level demons, and the Vatican's concerns over whether or not it's a good idea to let a known son of Satan live at all, let alone train as an exorcist. Hell, it happens in between other characters getting their own short arcs as well, establishing that Rin and his brother aren't the only people in this universe who matter.
And that's disturbingly refreshing. I've always heard that neutral masks and blank slate characters work because they're the easiest for an audience to identify with, but making a cast full of vibrant personalities seems to work just as well. Hell, look at My Little Pony. Look at how many creative types in the fandom see themselves in Rarity, or how many bookish types see themselves in Twilight, or how many competitive sorts see themselves in Rainbow Dash. It is very easy for an audience to identify with a strong character concept- perhaps even moreso than with a weird, blank slate that may not conform as much to the general everyman as the writers think they will.
In fact, full disclosure: Rin is me. I think out of every form of media I've ever consumed, I've never really identified as much with a character as I have with this doofus. He's far more brash than I am and I'm a terrible cook, but I identify with his constant struggle to be mature and just-as-constant failure, his jealousy of younger siblings who are going further in life than he is, and his occasional massive crush on a friend that totally isn't going to work out (just saying, dude, Shiemi's got a thing for mature, older-looking guys with glasses). Even now that I've had a lot of time to grow up since the first time I watched the show and matured and learned simple things like "how not to be an asshole while at my job", I feel encouraged when I watch him go through the same things.
This is a great example of how to take a bog standard plot that doesn't really have anything impressive going on and making something more out of it by focusing on the relationships between characters. It's a writing technique that I feel applies far beyond anime, and kind of sits in the back of my mind every time I sit down to edit or write or... anything, really. It's worth sacrificing novelty of plot for the fidelity of characters.
Almost every time.
I bring this up because next time I blog, I'm going to talk about a show that has the same lack of engaging plot as Blue Exorcist, but does much less with its material.
[If you're interested in watching it, Blue Exorcist is available to watch legally online through Crunchyroll, and is available on DVD from Aniplex of America. I suggest purchasing the hell out of it. I haven't yet seen the dub so I have no idea what the level of quality is, but the Japanese cast are all entertaining as hell so it's worth viewing with subtitles.
*Variously referred to as Umineko No Naku Koro Ni, When the Seagulls Cry, That Spiritual Sequel to Higurashi That is Somehow More Confusing, and The One With BEATORIIICE
**Also referred to as Ao no Exorcist because some fans can't get their heads around the fact that translations are often more elegant when talking about titles.
***High school in Japan is more like mini-university than it is here in the States or elsewhere. You actually have to pass application exams to get in, and consider your options carefully. Most kids still end up going, but it's not unheard of for poor students to bypass it entirely and head into the workforce early.
[Note: I realized that I had accidentally, at one point, said Yukio was Rin's OLDER brother. That has been edited. God damn you show, well played.]
nice blog.
I still haven't gone down the anime wormhole yet. I think I'll start with cowboy bebop.
I remember getting pretty involved with Ao no Exorcist, until the last couple of anime episodes made me not care so hard as to leave a terrible lasting impression. But yeah, everything surrounding Rin's Characterization was gold, as well as the supporting cast.
By the way, your comment about vibrant characters made me remember why early Naruto was so good. Too bad it eventually devolved into the Sasuke pity party and b-rate dbz fights of the later chapters...
While I don't like Ao no Exorcist, the characterization of main character was pretty good. Boring as fuck, but you could really tell the characters personality. That can't be said for side characters taught.
If I wanted to watch something like that, I would watch some soap operas. When you find some good ones they have a ton of character interaction and stuff, since that's what they are based on. You gotta short taught 9000 of "the maid is daughter of father that abandoned her as a child, and she is having sex with him behind his wife's back" bad ones, but when you find good one you probably be watching for about 3 years(till they run out of ideas).
3350793
Twenty-six episodes of consistent storytelling vs. God Knows How Long? Yeah, I like Blue Exorcist as much because the team knew when to cut it off rather than try to adapt the entire manga as I do for its strong elements.
Sorry to hear you didn't like the side characters in Blue Exorcist as much, though I'm surprised to hear that you felt like they weren't fleshed out well. Shiemi's painfully passive as a character in some ways but she's pretty well fleshed out in her own right, Yukio has a strong characterization to rival Rin's even if I don't identify with him as much, and even Bon and some of his friends got bits of character sprinkled around. Really, what made the series such a treat was that it just refused to make Rin the center of the world even when he was the center of the story.
3350772
Oh christ the finale. Yeah, it was pretty much a "we need a big finale scene" cop-out in some ways- but to be fair, it did actually allow for the participation of every single character in solving the major issue and it had some of Mephisto's best dialogue.
Naruto was never quite as good as Blue Exorcist at drawing characters, but I agree that it worked much better as an ensemble cast story that just happened to star this one misfit and his two friends than it did as whatever the hell it mutates to roughly about the point that we resolve the Gaara and Get Tsunade arcs.
3349788
Bebop is a great starter and legendary for all the right reasons. That said, if you want to go off the beaten "established classics" path and look at more recent shows, Attack on Titan also lives up to its hype quite well, Madoka Magica and Fate/Zero are both worth examination because of the almighty power of Gen Urobuchi backing them, and Revolutionary Girl Utena-
-okay that one's just plain surreal but it is by far my favorite thing. And isn't remotely recent, but hey, you can own it now.
3351301 The use of powers as part of characters was bad, and the showing of dialogues between side characters as exposition bored me to death. Since the characterization was intertwined with it, it got lost for me. Also they were extremely forgettable.
3351459
I appreciate your feelings and I respectfully disagree with your assessment. Good luck with the soap operas!