What I'd thought/hoped the show would say is: no, you don't have to suffer forever for the sins of your parents and/or because society says you're worthless. If society doesn't value you, find individuals who will care about you regardless, form relationships with them, and value each other. Like, I see what you're saying and I think that would have been an awesome message, and if I had thought the show was ever going there I guess I would be disappointed...but the show outright announced in the first episode that it was going to be "blah blah Galactic Railroad BS." It was said from the start that people were going to die for love and their sacrifice would be glorified by the show. I thought it had been foreshadowed for a while now that both Ringo and Kanba were gonna make the sacrifices (I'd thought Ringo would die saving Shouma) so...overall I felt like the show did exactly what it said on the tin? XD; Whether the execution was good or not is another matter, but...
It wasn't two people just for Himari and only Himari's life. The reboot was needed primarily to stop terrorist attack part deux (which was all Kanba's fault in the first place). And terrorist attack part deux and all of Kanba's questionable choices didn't have to do with the parents' sins. That was Kanba making bad life choices in order to save both Himari and Shouma's lives.
I think my view of the family is a lot different from what you've written here but a lot of that is because of the novel (and so many of the ideas in the novel are just not there in the anime or really vague). It wasn't a happy, chosen family who got screwed over. The siblings themselves for the entire series consider the family to be "fake." They lie to each other constantly and fake their feelings in order to live in the house together.
Is it really a family if you can't be yourself in what is supposed to be your home, and you lie out of fear you won't be loved unconditionally?
It wasn't like "society doesn't value us, so we'll form a bond and value each other." They had been rejected by society as a trio, so they were trapped in their fake family the parents had formed. It was not a choice (or rather, they didn't remember the truth of choosing each other 9-10 years ago). And living in the fake family, lying and hiding their feelings out of fear of rejection by the only people they had in the world, was another kind of pain and punishment in itself. The "fake family" falling apart was an inevitability, when it was such a source of pain for everyone beneath the surface.
So the finale was, to me, showing the Takakuras becoming a real family for the first time. Where all three kids finally saw each others' true feelings, and decided to love and accept each other anyway. Those bonds weren't forged and the chosen family wasn't real until the finale and those acts of sacrifice demonstrating the kids' acceptance and love for each others' real selves and personal choices. Which was something Ringo had already been able to do a while ago for the Takakuras. That whole idea of "I've seen the real you, I've seen you at your worst, and I still love you."
tl;dr continuednyonyoDecember 25 2011, 06:54:44 UTC
So the twins' and Ringo's storylines were all the same in the end: they were all people who wanted family on their own terms, not caring for anyone else's feelings except their own. But they all learned to finally get over themselves, pay attention to the other person's feelings, and learn to love them anyway. The Takakuras couldn't do for each other what Ringo had done for them until the very end, and the sacrificial deaths were required storywise not "so Himari/Ringo could live and we can reboot" but to prove the twins were finally capable of loving someone else. Just like it was needed for Ringo's character arc for us to see she was ready to sacrifice her life for someone else, and wasn't the most black-hearted girl in the world anymore.
I guess the main issue is I don't really see the show's setup as a "system" here in the same way Madoka was, where the ending just felt so unbalanced and unfair to me and like it wasn't proper equivalent exchange?? XD; With Penguindrum the sacrifices felt so ingrained to the character arcs and necessary to show character growth. If they hadn't happened I feel like the show wouldn't have worked or proved its point.
...so, the themes worked for me in that sense, but the series as a whole, the jury's still out for me. I definitely loved the show from a production standpoint but I don't think it works on its own, at all. The show and the novels are two halves of a whole. And for the beginning of the show, the novels generally solved most of my issues with the anime. So I don't even feel like the show is finished for me, yet, until the third novel comes out.
But I definitely think the anime is a bit of a hot mess and I think Ikuhara's weaknesses as a storyteller are really obvious where they weren't with Utena, since he generally stuck to writing the cracktastic scripts there, and so his ideas mostly filtered through someone else's scripts to get more organized. Which I think is also why the novels work so well.
tl;dr I REALLY NEED POST-SERIES FANFIC AND FANART WITH LESBIANS NOW
I thought it had been foreshadowed for a while now that both Ringo and Kanba were gonna make the sacrifices (I'd thought Ringo would die saving Shouma)
Of course, it totally was! The Galactic Railroad homage was clearly advertised! (I also thought Ringo was going to bite it.) But I guess, like I said to zoesque above, I feel like Ikuhara is talking out of both sides of his mouth, because the conjunction between the Galactic Railroad homage / "sacrifice YAY" business and what I see the show saying about family, about living together, about the value of sharing your life with someone--which in my book is not the same as dying for someone!--that's where I feel like there's a disconnect. I guess sharing a life can mean sacrifice, but it's aggravating to me that 2 out of the 3 kids don't get to take what they've learned and do anything with that knowledge in life. They just move on to the afterlife or w/e.
The reboot was needed primarily to stop terrorist attack part deux (which was all Kanba's fault in the first place).
...Yanno, I got so caught up in the personal aspects that this part--stopping Kanba's attack--was lost in the shuffle ahaha. Of course you're right.
The siblings themselves for the entire series consider the family to be "fake." They lie to each other constantly and fake their feelings in order to live in the house together.
Yeah, the anime didn't demonstrate this to me to an extent that I understood the situation as being unbearable for them. There's a certain amount of lying and faking of feelings that goes on in every family, or at least most families, which is tempered/counterbalanced by mutual love and support obv, and tbh it looked to me like the trio were in the normal range (at least until Kanba decided to become a terrorist). And as you say, the point at the end is that they were, right--they really were a real family!--they just didn't understand it as such.
So the finale was, to me, showing the Takakuras becoming a real family for the first time.
I can definitely see this--at least in the sense that they're perceiving themselves as a family for the first time, or perceiving their love for each other--but that's why it's so frustrating to me that the boys have to die ahaha. Like, just as this revelation occurs--just as they finally really truly perceive/rediscover this unconditional love that they actually had for each other all along even though it got lost somehow along the way--then they die? The family ends just as it became real? I mean okay, that's where the ~heartbreak~ is supposed to come from, the part that's supposed to make the audience weepy--but it doesn't make me feel weepy, it just pisses me off. XD;
I guess where I see the link is "unconditional love of a family." Which the show chose to use the Galactic Railroad self-sacrifice as its way of illustrating it.
Living together and sharing a life together with someone does not necessarily add up to loving someone unconditionally. A shared life is something that can be beautiful in and of itself (and for the Takakuras it was!), but it's still "only the shape of a family" if everyone involved is placing conditions on their affection. "You have to act the way I say, or I won't be your family anymore!" isn't a loving family, it's being selfish and controlling. You had Kanba who was obsessed with playing the role of overprotective big brother to the extent of not caring whether Shouma or Himari actually wanted to live or die themselves, refusing to grant them a choice. Shouma letting the family dissolve because he thought his personal morals were more important than Kanba or Himari. Himari choosing to walk away from Shouma and save Kanba because Masako told her WHEN HE BLOWS TOKYO SKY-HIGH IT WILL BE ALL YOUR FAULT, and then trying to play on his feelings for her to manipulate him into ending the plot (except oops, he didn't care about her feelings at all!)...
So my interpretation was: no, they weren't a family all along, they were just a shape. They weren't a family who loved and accepted each other unconditionally until the finale, when all three finally were able to stop trying to control each other and go, "You can make your own choices, and I will love you anyway, even if it's not what I want."
I mean I see the frustration that the family ends right when it becomes real, but on my part "UNSELFISHNESS AND LOVE AND AUTONOMY FOR EVERYBODY!" is the main thing I ended up taking away? And it's the autonomy that was what I found affecting more than anything else. Kanba returning the memory to Shouma and allowing him to make his own informed decision on whether to sacrifice himself or not, even though that was the last thing Kanba wanted, even though Kanba wouldn't change his mind about the attack and Shouma had said he'd never forgive him... The self-sacrifice isn't that interesting to me on its own aside from it being the show's barometer of how the love is unconditional, it's how none of it could have ever even happened in the first place if Kanba hadn't finally offered Shouma a choice.
Like, I see what you're saying and I think that would have been an awesome message, and if I had thought the show was ever going there I guess I would be disappointed...but the show outright announced in the first episode that it was going to be "blah blah Galactic Railroad BS." It was said from the start that people were going to die for love and their sacrifice would be glorified by the show. I thought it had been foreshadowed for a while now that both Ringo and Kanba were gonna make the sacrifices (I'd thought Ringo would die saving Shouma) so...overall I felt like the show did exactly what it said on the tin? XD; Whether the execution was good or not is another matter, but...
It wasn't two people just for Himari and only Himari's life. The reboot was needed primarily to stop terrorist attack part deux (which was all Kanba's fault in the first place). And terrorist attack part deux and all of Kanba's questionable choices didn't have to do with the parents' sins. That was Kanba making bad life choices in order to save both Himari and Shouma's lives.
I think my view of the family is a lot different from what you've written here but a lot of that is because of the novel (and so many of the ideas in the novel are just not there in the anime or really vague). It wasn't a happy, chosen family who got screwed over. The siblings themselves for the entire series consider the family to be "fake." They lie to each other constantly and fake their feelings in order to live in the house together.
Is it really a family if you can't be yourself in what is supposed to be your home, and you lie out of fear you won't be loved unconditionally?
It wasn't like "society doesn't value us, so we'll form a bond and value each other." They had been rejected by society as a trio, so they were trapped in their fake family the parents had formed. It was not a choice (or rather, they didn't remember the truth of choosing each other 9-10 years ago). And living in the fake family, lying and hiding their feelings out of fear of rejection by the only people they had in the world, was another kind of pain and punishment in itself. The "fake family" falling apart was an inevitability, when it was such a source of pain for everyone beneath the surface.
So the finale was, to me, showing the Takakuras becoming a real family for the first time. Where all three kids finally saw each others' true feelings, and decided to love and accept each other anyway. Those bonds weren't forged and the chosen family wasn't real until the finale and those acts of sacrifice demonstrating the kids' acceptance and love for each others' real selves and personal choices. Which was something Ringo had already been able to do a while ago for the Takakuras. That whole idea of "I've seen the real you, I've seen you at your worst, and I still love you."
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I guess the main issue is I don't really see the show's setup as a "system" here in the same way Madoka was, where the ending just felt so unbalanced and unfair to me and like it wasn't proper equivalent exchange?? XD; With Penguindrum the sacrifices felt so ingrained to the character arcs and necessary to show character growth. If they hadn't happened I feel like the show wouldn't have worked or proved its point.
...so, the themes worked for me in that sense, but the series as a whole, the jury's still out for me. I definitely loved the show from a production standpoint but I don't think it works on its own, at all. The show and the novels are two halves of a whole. And for the beginning of the show, the novels generally solved most of my issues with the anime. So I don't even feel like the show is finished for me, yet, until the third novel comes out.
But I definitely think the anime is a bit of a hot mess and I think Ikuhara's weaknesses as a storyteller are really obvious where they weren't with Utena, since he generally stuck to writing the cracktastic scripts there, and so his ideas mostly filtered through someone else's scripts to get more organized. Which I think is also why the novels work so well.
tl;dr I REALLY NEED POST-SERIES FANFIC AND FANART WITH LESBIANS NOW
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Of course, it totally was! The Galactic Railroad homage was clearly advertised! (I also thought Ringo was going to bite it.) But I guess, like I said to zoesque above, I feel like Ikuhara is talking out of both sides of his mouth, because the conjunction between the Galactic Railroad homage / "sacrifice YAY" business and what I see the show saying about family, about living together, about the value of sharing your life with someone--which in my book is not the same as dying for someone!--that's where I feel like there's a disconnect. I guess sharing a life can mean sacrifice, but it's aggravating to me that 2 out of the 3 kids don't get to take what they've learned and do anything with that knowledge in life. They just move on to the afterlife or w/e.
The reboot was needed primarily to stop terrorist attack part deux (which was all Kanba's fault in the first place).
...Yanno, I got so caught up in the personal aspects that this part--stopping Kanba's attack--was lost in the shuffle ahaha. Of course you're right.
The siblings themselves for the entire series consider the family to be "fake." They lie to each other constantly and fake their feelings in order to live in the house together.
Yeah, the anime didn't demonstrate this to me to an extent that I understood the situation as being unbearable for them. There's a certain amount of lying and faking of feelings that goes on in every family, or at least most families, which is tempered/counterbalanced by mutual love and support obv, and tbh it looked to me like the trio were in the normal range (at least until Kanba decided to become a terrorist). And as you say, the point at the end is that they were, right--they really were a real family!--they just didn't understand it as such.
So the finale was, to me, showing the Takakuras becoming a real family for the first time.
I can definitely see this--at least in the sense that they're perceiving themselves as a family for the first time, or perceiving their love for each other--but that's why it's so frustrating to me that the boys have to die ahaha. Like, just as this revelation occurs--just as they finally really truly perceive/rediscover this unconditional love that they actually had for each other all along even though it got lost somehow along the way--then they die? The family ends just as it became real? I mean okay, that's where the ~heartbreak~ is supposed to come from, the part that's supposed to make the audience weepy--but it doesn't make me feel weepy, it just pisses me off. XD;
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Living together and sharing a life together with someone does not necessarily add up to loving someone unconditionally. A shared life is something that can be beautiful in and of itself (and for the Takakuras it was!), but it's still "only the shape of a family" if everyone involved is placing conditions on their affection. "You have to act the way I say, or I won't be your family anymore!" isn't a loving family, it's being selfish and controlling. You had Kanba who was obsessed with playing the role of overprotective big brother to the extent of not caring whether Shouma or Himari actually wanted to live or die themselves, refusing to grant them a choice. Shouma letting the family dissolve because he thought his personal morals were more important than Kanba or Himari. Himari choosing to walk away from Shouma and save Kanba because Masako told her WHEN HE BLOWS TOKYO SKY-HIGH IT WILL BE ALL YOUR FAULT, and then trying to play on his feelings for her to manipulate him into ending the plot (except oops, he didn't care about her feelings at all!)...
So my interpretation was: no, they weren't a family all along, they were just a shape. They weren't a family who loved and accepted each other unconditionally until the finale, when all three finally were able to stop trying to control each other and go, "You can make your own choices, and I will love you anyway, even if it's not what I want."
I mean I see the frustration that the family ends right when it becomes real, but on my part "UNSELFISHNESS AND LOVE AND AUTONOMY FOR EVERYBODY!" is the main thing I ended up taking away? And it's the autonomy that was what I found affecting more than anything else. Kanba returning the memory to Shouma and allowing him to make his own informed decision on whether to sacrifice himself or not, even though that was the last thing Kanba wanted, even though Kanba wouldn't change his mind about the attack and Shouma had said he'd never forgive him... The self-sacrifice isn't that interesting to me on its own aside from it being the show's barometer of how the love is unconditional, it's how none of it could have ever even happened in the first place if Kanba hadn't finally offered Shouma a choice.
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