The Characters We Like: Another rant
These days, it's been getting increasingly difficult for me to discuss characters in anime I like with other people. There are three obvious reasons for this. A) There are few people who want to do anything resembling discussing with me. B) There are few people who want to do anything resembling discussing anime with me. And C) There are few people who want anything to do with me, period.
But as unqualified this makes me in commenting about Singaporean anime fans and the characters they like, I'm going to give it a shot anyway, based on interactions, data and conversations with people from cons, manga shops, and various chat-line services like Facebook and Friendster. THIS IS ALL MY OWN OPINION AND SHOULD STAY THAT WAY.
Basically, I have come to this conclusion. A Singaporean likes an anime character that is: a) cool, b) cool and c) cool. This is not as redundant and repetitive as it sounds, strangely enough, because I needed those three different "cool"s to explain three different types of, uh, cool.
The first cool is cool cool, in the African American sense of the word. This means that the person has a "center", which they are rarely moved out of. Unflappable, calm, indifferent, accepting, are all words that come to mind. A good example of this is Zero from Vampire Knight. He's amazingly popular. Not only that, he seems to have only one goal and purpose in life - to get himself killed by a suitably phallic weapon in a sexually-stimulating pose with his sister/girlfriend/blood-donor, preferably one involving blood, lots of it, in lots of interesting places. This makes him all of the above, not to mention hot. It also means he can rarely be shaken, shocked or surprised, because he wisely adopts the attitude that whatever has nothing to do with sex, sisters and sucking (blood) can go fuck off. Cool and calm centre, definitely check.
The second cool is cool, as in, temperature. NO, I am not going to say this gives Lizard-Man from Soul Calibur a great start in the popularity polls. I mean cool in the sense that the person is cold. He DOESN'T care about you, or anyone, at least he doesn't until the fanfic writers get their hands on him and he turns into a milksop. Sasuke's overwhelming popularity, as evidenced by the large number of Primary school kids dressing up as him and marker-penning their faces, is a prime example. He will not help anyone. He will not go out with anyone. He has no friends because HE NEEDS NO FRIENDS. (Note how many of us also ignore that incident where he get himself riddled with needles protecting Naruto.) Unfortunately, he also suffers really badly in the fanfic department, where he does everything from ass-licking to making presents of stuffed bunnies. But until then he is as unfriended and as cool as those cucumbers come. (Oh no I can see what you're thinking and PLEASE STOP THINKING IT.)
The last cool is the strangest cool and the cool that is... uniquely Singaporean. It's a bit like the two above, a culmination of them if you will. It's that the cool person must be cool naturally. The coolness must be inborn. It cannot be worked on. There are no such things as 'coolness training courses'. Not to say that other fandoms of other countries don't like this sort of thing too, (Wolverine's a very bad guy who was always bad and bad, bad, bad) but in Singapore it seems to be really important. A good example is comparing a series where a character works to attain some level of competency in his chosen skill (be it wakeboarding, flower-arrangement, or tea ceremony) to a series where a character arrives on the first page loaded with guns and knowing exactly how to use them. Invariably the guy with the guns is cooler. Notice that Kobayakawa Sena, the fabled Eyeshield 21, only gets a "cute" at best while fangirls fawn over Shin, who had a whole page to his swirling-dust-and-cross-armguard-and-scowl entrance. Another good example is Ikki. People used to love cosplaying Ikki, resulting in high sales of wetlook black vinyl that made the Chinatown aunties praise the gods. But once they learned that he trained for his skill, that he put hard work and effort into it, BAM. No more Ikki cosplayers. He ceased to be cool. Other examples include Kira Yamato, any Trinity Blood character, and any Final Fantasy character. (Once you get into SOLDIER, you gain amazing powers at being emo and flipping out into other mans' pants. You don't really need to work, just sit there and get Mako pumped into you while groaning in a semi-orgasmic fashion.)
And from there, my problem becomes evident. I can't really talk about these people. There's very little room for discussion. When you grown and develop, I can discuss your growth and maybe point out where you slacked off, or made a mistake, but what happens when you never do that? What's there for me to talk about? Even when cool characters like Sanzo from Saiyuki develop, they develop from the "cool" basis, which requires you to first accept everything they have done as cool. Giving little room for new opinions other than "oh my god, he just got cooler."
And what's worse, sometimes the series insists the guy is cool even when I'm convinced he's a total wimp. For example, according to the moral code of Full Moon wo Sagashite, the universe has twisted to allow it to be perfectly morally upright and 'cool' for a guy to string a girl along without giving her a proper reply (The reply being "no I don't like you") because said girl is in love with another guy. Whenever I argue that this makes him pretty dastardly, I'm invariably assailed with 'in-text' examples of his goodness and kindness. You can't discuss much when the comic is loaded with bubbly hiragana saying things like "I... NEVER UNDERSTOOD... THAT YOU NEVER CALLING ME... AND BEATING ME UP WITH YOUR LEATHER WHIP... AND SEALING MY BODY AND SOUL AWAY FOREVER... MEANT.. YOU REALLY LOVED ME... AND THAT MEANT.. I WAS BAD FOR NEVER LOVING YOU."
So if you asked me what I'd like, I actually wouldn't be able to answer. To discuss more, maybe. But about more things - maybe I should start talking about wakeboarding. Or flower arrangement. Or tea ceremony.
But as unqualified this makes me in commenting about Singaporean anime fans and the characters they like, I'm going to give it a shot anyway, based on interactions, data and conversations with people from cons, manga shops, and various chat-line services like Facebook and Friendster. THIS IS ALL MY OWN OPINION AND SHOULD STAY THAT WAY.
Basically, I have come to this conclusion. A Singaporean likes an anime character that is: a) cool, b) cool and c) cool. This is not as redundant and repetitive as it sounds, strangely enough, because I needed those three different "cool"s to explain three different types of, uh, cool.
The first cool is cool cool, in the African American sense of the word. This means that the person has a "center", which they are rarely moved out of. Unflappable, calm, indifferent, accepting, are all words that come to mind. A good example of this is Zero from Vampire Knight. He's amazingly popular. Not only that, he seems to have only one goal and purpose in life - to get himself killed by a suitably phallic weapon in a sexually-stimulating pose with his sister/girlfriend/blood-donor, preferably one involving blood, lots of it, in lots of interesting places. This makes him all of the above, not to mention hot. It also means he can rarely be shaken, shocked or surprised, because he wisely adopts the attitude that whatever has nothing to do with sex, sisters and sucking (blood) can go fuck off. Cool and calm centre, definitely check.
The second cool is cool, as in, temperature. NO, I am not going to say this gives Lizard-Man from Soul Calibur a great start in the popularity polls. I mean cool in the sense that the person is cold. He DOESN'T care about you, or anyone, at least he doesn't until the fanfic writers get their hands on him and he turns into a milksop. Sasuke's overwhelming popularity, as evidenced by the large number of Primary school kids dressing up as him and marker-penning their faces, is a prime example. He will not help anyone. He will not go out with anyone. He has no friends because HE NEEDS NO FRIENDS. (Note how many of us also ignore that incident where he get himself riddled with needles protecting Naruto.) Unfortunately, he also suffers really badly in the fanfic department, where he does everything from ass-licking to making presents of stuffed bunnies. But until then he is as unfriended and as cool as those cucumbers come. (Oh no I can see what you're thinking and PLEASE STOP THINKING IT.)
The last cool is the strangest cool and the cool that is... uniquely Singaporean. It's a bit like the two above, a culmination of them if you will. It's that the cool person must be cool naturally. The coolness must be inborn. It cannot be worked on. There are no such things as 'coolness training courses'. Not to say that other fandoms of other countries don't like this sort of thing too, (Wolverine's a very bad guy who was always bad and bad, bad, bad) but in Singapore it seems to be really important. A good example is comparing a series where a character works to attain some level of competency in his chosen skill (be it wakeboarding, flower-arrangement, or tea ceremony) to a series where a character arrives on the first page loaded with guns and knowing exactly how to use them. Invariably the guy with the guns is cooler. Notice that Kobayakawa Sena, the fabled Eyeshield 21, only gets a "cute" at best while fangirls fawn over Shin, who had a whole page to his swirling-dust-and-cross-armguard-and-scowl entrance. Another good example is Ikki. People used to love cosplaying Ikki, resulting in high sales of wetlook black vinyl that made the Chinatown aunties praise the gods. But once they learned that he trained for his skill, that he put hard work and effort into it, BAM. No more Ikki cosplayers. He ceased to be cool. Other examples include Kira Yamato, any Trinity Blood character, and any Final Fantasy character. (Once you get into SOLDIER, you gain amazing powers at being emo and flipping out into other mans' pants. You don't really need to work, just sit there and get Mako pumped into you while groaning in a semi-orgasmic fashion.)
And from there, my problem becomes evident. I can't really talk about these people. There's very little room for discussion. When you grown and develop, I can discuss your growth and maybe point out where you slacked off, or made a mistake, but what happens when you never do that? What's there for me to talk about? Even when cool characters like Sanzo from Saiyuki develop, they develop from the "cool" basis, which requires you to first accept everything they have done as cool. Giving little room for new opinions other than "oh my god, he just got cooler."
And what's worse, sometimes the series insists the guy is cool even when I'm convinced he's a total wimp. For example, according to the moral code of Full Moon wo Sagashite, the universe has twisted to allow it to be perfectly morally upright and 'cool' for a guy to string a girl along without giving her a proper reply (The reply being "no I don't like you") because said girl is in love with another guy. Whenever I argue that this makes him pretty dastardly, I'm invariably assailed with 'in-text' examples of his goodness and kindness. You can't discuss much when the comic is loaded with bubbly hiragana saying things like "I... NEVER UNDERSTOOD... THAT YOU NEVER CALLING ME... AND BEATING ME UP WITH YOUR LEATHER WHIP... AND SEALING MY BODY AND SOUL AWAY FOREVER... MEANT.. YOU REALLY LOVED ME... AND THAT MEANT.. I WAS BAD FOR NEVER LOVING YOU."
So if you asked me what I'd like, I actually wouldn't be able to answer. To discuss more, maybe. But about more things - maybe I should start talking about wakeboarding. Or flower arrangement. Or tea ceremony.