Category: Final Denouement

March’s Final Denouement: Heaven’s Fury and the Defense of Sakura Matou

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It is no secret that I love Fate/Stay Night but there is one thing that gets my goat (to say it politely without swearing like a sailor who broke his arm.) I cannot stand people in the Type-Moon fan base who call Sakura Matou a slut. I know that it has mostly grown into a joke just like the controversy with Kannagi. This means most of the people saying it now are just doing it because they think it is funny not because they honestly care. But this whole attitude comes from a seed of true belief. There are people who brand her with the label of slut and that gets on my nerves.

I will admit that of the three main heroines of Fate/Stay Night, Sakura firmly ranks third on my list. But I find her a hard character to hate. If anything Sakura might remind me a little too much of myself for me to be anything but slightly uncomfortable about her. Our positive and negative qualities are scarily similar. But she has many traits that people who love visual novels tend to look for. She is shy, sweet, hard working, and loyal. In the normal ending of Heaven’s Feel she dies patiently waiting for Shiro to come home even though she knows that day will never come. Fans usually eat that up like chocolate, bacon, and Ambrosia flavored love. Sakura is strong with the moe side of the force which earns her points as well. And the fact that she is very buxom cannot be overlooked as well.

And yet people hate Sakura despite the fact that all signs points to her being a fan favorite. They call her a whore because her moe purity is broken when you learn she has been raped. She has been sexually assaulted for years by her brother Shinji. It is made painfully clear that Shinji has an abusive and dominating hold on her and all sexual activity between them is nonconsensual. The mere concept of blaming a rape victim for the crime committed against her angers me to no end. To punish her on top of that compounds my fury one hundred fold. While Sakura might come onto Shiro very aggressively in Heaven’s Feel I still find the accusation of her being a slut uncalled for. Since she is no longer a virgin she is no longer worth affection? Because she can be aggressive she is no longer worth affection?

People are free to dislike Sakura for any number of valid reasons. But if you hate her for being a “slut” then I feel free to dislike you. It might seem odd to get worked up about a fictional character but it is not so much the hate for the character that annoys me as much as the attitude towards women and sexuality that gets under my skin. I feel it is a sign of deeper sickness and misogyny in parts of the male anime fanbase that makes me ill. As long as it exists I will continue to complain when it rears its ugly head.

February’s Final Denouement: The mysterious use of screentone in OEL.

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Because of a random comment that occurred while looking at pages from King of RPG’s, I found myself taking a closer look at the use of screentone in manga the past couple of weeks. Essentially the comment was that something about the way OEL uses screen tone feels different from manga which it is supposed to be derived from. But what exactly was the difference, well, that required closer inspection, thus I type before you now.

Screentone use in manga I came to feel, or realize, was lending texture, pattern, the idea of color, or providing emphasis or deemphasis as it may be, and even creating mood. The characters themselves were often devoid of tone, except maybe a pattern on their clothing or perhaps their hair, with little shading.

And shading is where I started to feel the difference. Screentone in manga is used more flatly, whereas in OEL there is depth emerging. Characters in the foreground were not being given pattern with screentone, but instead were being shaded extensively with it in OEL. When screentone was showing up in the background of manga, it was more for pushing back the image in order to let the foreground characters pop. It was also lending a mood or feeling to the events occurring on the page. Contrastly in OEL, backgrounds were becoming less abstract with more of an emphasis on perspective. OEL is attempting to create a more multidimensional space using screentone as the central tool.

Randomly, I feel that digital screentone is still working the kinks out. This method is quite popular in OEL. I won’t say I can always tell when it is being used, but it can be easier to pinpoint. There is such a crispness to the lines when working completely on the computer that it becomes more obviously manufactured. There is a disconnect from the slight fuzziness that happens when scanning in a work of art.

Since all artists have their own styles and quirks there are always going to be exceptions and incidents here and there. But I think I have come to grasp some of the basic general uses of screentone in manga and OEL and the differences that can be seen. While I can’t say what has caused OEL to move in this direction, perhaps it is just a western emphasis on a more realistic aesthetic. The more I looked, the more I came to find OEL to have this emerging stylization even if only by accident.

January’s Final Denouement: The secrets of incest and childhood friends.

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My first Final Denouement comes from two commonly used tropes that seem to perplex people to no end. What is the dual appeal and popularity of childhood friends and incestuous siblings to Japan? I propose that while these are hardly the same fetish they both tap into a very similar cultural desire. This makes them oh-so-popular with the Japanese but very odd to the Western audiences.

Japanese society promotes a very formal culture. There can be countless barriers between casually meeting people let alone dating. How many times in anime and manga have you seen people be reluctant to use someone else’s first name despite having know them for the longest time? A recent Anime 3000 podcast makes it clear that while they are opportunities and venues to get to know people better in Japan, overall the Japanese tend to value and protect their privacy from strangers. These barriers are not strictly Japanese, it is just that they can be stronger and more culturally enforced in Japan.

Opportunities to circumvent these barriers are especially appealing to the socially awkward. A way to instantly have a connection to someone without having to go through the complicated social dance could be extremely appealing to someone who has two left feet with such matters. It would be an ideal dream to know someone that would let you bypass these social barriers. To be instantly on an informal level with someone that would easily promote a more intimate relationship is the magical appeal of the childhood friend or the sibling.

The childhood friend is a person you have know all your life therefore you can instantly talk to them as an equal. The childhood friend is known before the tricky politics of gender relationships have formed in your head. Before the wall that separates men and women has become concrete. So when both friends awaken to sexuality there is this open bond that formed naturally without any of the messy complications of adult relationships. The sibling exists in an even more familiar and barrier free existence. Incest also has the added taboo factor which might turn away some but actually attract others.

These two factors then become understandably attractive. The socially inept do not have to change who they are or attack a seemingly unbeatable foe. They just have to be themselves and can still connect with someone romantically. This is not totally running into a realm of fantasy but it is a wish for a simple answer to a more complex problem. I would equate it with wishing to win the lottery. Fun to think about but horrible to put any amount of concrete hope into.