Asatte no Houkou: Air done right, or You should be careful what you wish for
’cause everyone of us has the devil inside
Imagine this: On a dark and cloudy full-moon, your 12 year-old adopted little sister gets turned into a busty babe; to top that off, your 24 year-old ex-girlfriend now has the body of a pre-pubescent girl, now child-like both in appearance and voice. Awesome, right? Well, only when presented in an improper context, surely, for Asatte no Houkou is proof against that ridiculous fantasy as far as fictional ones go.
I picked this up out of a striking sense of curiosity at the blending of what would be otherwise known as two opposing elements — slice of life, and fantasy. It’s an interesting struggle in theory, because one element should usually end up overwhelming the other if not played correctly, and although Manabi Straight! managed to get through it unscathed, it was more of a slice of life cum sci-fi feature than anything, which wouldn’t do for a proper comparison at all.
The problem with mixing genres is that the dilution that accompanies it leaves a lot to be desired. An ideal world would have the end product possessing all the good traits and none of the bad, yet there’s so many things that can go wrong, like the fantasy being overemphasised at the expense of good old-fashioned character development, for instance, or the slice of life aspect not gelling together with the fantasy. Then there was how it seemed a lot like Air.
It invited comparisons due to its pervasive, prevalent Summer aesthetic (which reminds me — if Kanon had a Winter thing, and Clannad looks like it’s a Spring thing, does this mean that the circle will be complete if Little Busters does an Autumn?), but that was thankfully about all it resembled, for as the pace picked up it struck me why I found Air inherently repulsive, even more than Kanon.
Here’s the thing: A good story doesn’t tell you what to make of it. I’m in the middle of reading planetarian right now, and I’m not enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would due to how it’s being presented — again, following Key’s custom, you’ve got your bewildered guy thrust abruptly into the presence of another girl with an idiosyncratic personality who has understandably got some tragic backstory/circumstance/problem that you’ve got to empathise with, who also dies Like All True Key Heroines Do.
What follows is then formulaic and repetitive. You either swallow it hook, line and sinker, and let the whole setup drag you along unwillingly like a master pulling his dog along for a walk, or you don’t bite and end up only liking select parts, or loathing the whole thing altogether. Ultimately, it’s a product of such patronising quality that it annoys me — take the following metaphor for example. If a good anime is like a mild-mannered, understanding, and wise tutor that encourages you to solve problems on your own, then a Key anime is like a short-tempered, annoying, and impatient tutor that beats you over the head with a ruler, saying “GET IT? GET IT?”
Should the endgame of an anime be to wring particular emotions out of its audience, or should it allow its audience to come to its own conclusions? AnH was a good example of the latter, surely, due to its multiple perspectives that helped me gain a clearer view of what the story was all about. While it’s by no means uncommon to have the climatic moments come during the middle or close-to-end parts rather than the end, I found Iokawa’s backstory in episode 08 to be one of the more moving scenes. Instead of showing me what seemed like just another generic runaway story, AnH took the path less taken and made Iokawa’s decision to leave seem a lot more reasonable as a result, revealing another angle to her that would have been lost otherwise.
A large part of the show deals with the loss of innocence in the face of experience — Iokawa, now having the body of a 20 year-old, is treated accordingly. Obvious puberty symbolism aside, it tackles the issue of her desire to not be “a burden” to her adopted elder brother, Hiro, any longer; her wish, however, is as out of reach as would be the case for a 12 year-old, both figuratively and literally, as Iokawa’s physical stature is somewhat diminutive (she looks like a 7 year-old more than anything).
The events that happen proceed to jolt her back to reality in their unreality, in a rather ironic twist of events. Faced with this surreal overnight growth, she now realises that growing up quickly isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. People stare, and pay attention, and take notice of her more often than would have happened if she hadn’t grown up. Yet there’s so many things that she still doesn’t know like filling out a resum, purchasing furniture, or going to the post-office, that it’s rather painful to watch. Behind the mature exterior still lies the same old Iokawa, whose timidity is now further emphasised through her circumstance.
Cue Shouko. While Iokawa’s undeniably the main character here, Shouko’s role wasn’t anything to be scoffed at, either. Surely, she can be seen as a character to fall back on assuming Iokawa doesn’t appeal to the viewer all that much, but her value lies in how she’s more than just a failsafe. Rediscovering innocence through a child’s perspective after shrinking down to Iokawa’s height, Shouko’s backstory was more than just filler or acting as setup for Iokawa; she answered questions and gave depth to Hiro’s otherwise stock, sullen, and stoic character.
Back to what I said about AnH being “Air done right”. It’s a pity that Air isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, because for all of my contempt it definitely had a premise with potential. While AnH, like Air, drives the characters towards conflict and resolution through its fantasy elements, it doesn’t use it like a crutch like Air did. Neither did it have characters with fantastic circumstances or unbelievable predicaments that were hard to swallow and even harder when it came to suspension of disbelief, for despite all their shapeshifting Iokawa and Shouko remained as characters with human emotions that I could relate to, and that’s all that really matters.
There isn’t much to complain regarding AnH as far as I’m concerned. Minor annoyance of changing from 4:3 to 16:9 raws halfway aside, you might want to watch something else and not marathon it all at one go for the pace is certainly a bit slower than most — but then again, this is slice of life we’re talking about, a pretty fine specimen at that. Martin and Hidoshi got it right when they said that it’s all about the journey and not the destination, for yes, Iokawa and Shouko do change back to normal at the end, but that wasn’t really the point of it all, was it?
It’s obvious from the scant minute or so that’s dedicated to showing peekaboo glimpses of the now-restored girls back in their respective lives, and as the credits roll and the camera pans in on a picture frame of Hiro and Shouko, now with a smiling Iokawa in the middle, you know they’ve done something right. I give it a 8 for sheer effort and vivacity.
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Pardon me for asking, but there’s something in your posts like this that I still don’t quite understand entirely. How exactly would you say a show “forces” you to feel a certain way? After all, coercion that works according to what you yourself desire would no longer be coercion. If you expect and allow a show to make you feel a certain way, would you still see it as “telling you what to make of it”? Likewise, if you go into a show expecting and resisting the emotions that you know it could implement, wouldn’t it be so easy to say that it’s trying to force you to feel a certain way? How exactly do shows differ in their ability to “tell you what to make of it”? I’m assuming, of course, that we’re all intelligent beings capable of thinking and interpreting for ourselves. Thus, it’s hard for me to comprehend how a piece of fiction can override one’s own ability to interpret and process. I’m not saying you’re wrong by any means; I’m merely wishing to understand you a bit better.
Your metaphor in particular really bothered me. My first thought was disbelief at the inversion of roles present in your analogy; the show should never hold mastery over the viewer. But ignoring that, the two tutors you described can be differentiated either by their words to you or their actions towards you. Since I’m having a hard time imagining any show trying to coerce you physically to do something, I’m assuming it’s the former. But what is the equivalent of the tutor’s words to you? Some possibilities that I can see include the story events, the characters, and the pacing.
Part of me wants to think that you’re referring to story events. After all, you do complain, reasonably so, that Key’s story elements are more fantastic and unbelievable, as opposed to Asatte no Houkou’s more mundane events outside of the whole body-switching thing. It seems you would prefer stories that are more character-driven rather than plot-driven, would it not? I agree that this is oftentimes a good thing, but how do you define a character-driven story? Personally, I measure this aspect by how many real decisions a character makes, how in-character and believable those decisions are made, and how much impact those decisions have. However, in analyzing a story in this fashion, I do make a note to allow some leeway for initial circumstances. This is probably why I’m not as adamant against unbelievable plot devices as you are. I’m not interested in how the characters got there, no matter how unbelievable “there” is (although of course there should be limitations…). I’m much more interested in what the characters do once they are already “there”.
On the subject of characters, I sometimes get the feeling from your posts that you prefer characters that are more “normal”, ones easier to relate to. While I certainly can’t make a case against your personal preferences, I personally do like unique or quirky characters. But ignoring that, how would you define a character with “human emotions” for you to relate to? I can imagine two schools of thought: the more conservative “believable” and the more liberal “in-character”. I personally would also lean towards the latter (within reason), as I prefer not to “use” a character by imposing my own societal viewpoints, but would rather “recieve” a character for what they are and judge their actions based on their standard provided (terms shamelessly stolen from Hidoshi). You’re familiar with the concept of “New Criticism” in literature, are you not? I like to apply such a method for guaging characters too, so that I can evaluate them on a more reasonable, less arbitrary basis. Of course, this doesn’t always translate to my personally liking a character, but then again, what character is universably likable? After all, I do tend to think that some of the best characters are also quite controversial…
Lastly, pacing. I think I place more emphasis on this as the substance of a show, since I do recall you yourself once saying that pacing correlates more to style than to substance. I don’t think you’re necessarily referring to this, but hey, I could be wrong…
Anyway, pardon me for my long-winded diatribes, but I just don’t really understand how a show intends to make you feel one way or another. To me, it just seems to be dangerously encroaching on intentional fallacy, and you don’t seem like the kind of critic to emphasize that. I’m sure you’ve got plenty of good critiques to dish out, but I just feel that that’s a weak way to criticize a show. Sort of like calling a show “overrated” when you could be talking about its plot inconsistancy, lack of character development, or poor production values. It’s fancy rhetoric, to be sure, but I’m not quite recieving the substance behind it all.
Anyway, I hope you would enlighten me. ^_^
I absolutely love Air, for while objectively it isn’t perfect, the atmosphere of the series weaves a spell that made it both compelling and addictive for me. AnH, on the other hand, was excellent at first, but lost steam towards the end when the pacing slowed to a crawl and the plot related events became painfully contrived. I would try the manga but after reading spoilers it sounds rather unpleasant.
I think it’s commonly held that Key already did autumn when they were with Tactics. The game is called ‘ONE’, IIRC, and is about what happens when you suddenly stop existing for everyone else.
I agree with your post generally. AIR, however, heh… didn’t “force” me to feel the same way as Asahou did. To me they’re categorically different because of the narrative focus. I suppose they are similar as far as plot devices go, but it seemed to me that AIR was following, by the book, the Key formula(tm). Asahou, OTOH, has a very distracting manga that it departed from, that focused on relationship and untangling the web of misunderstood feelings.
AIR was more about growing and realizing one’s feeling? We had Yukito turn into a bird, and we have a parallel story flashback. It’s as if they’re focused on telling us what happened rather than telling the characters in the story what happened.
Maybe that’s why it feels like being beaten.
Mirrinus:
I’ll admit I’ve been a little more vague on that than I’d have liked; basically, I now mentally equate Key stuff to a romance novel, and that’s the basis on which I made that statement.
The reasoning behind it is simple — it seems more and more clear to me that Key’s forte lies not in good story or solid characters, but the achieving of a mood, of which Kanon and Air are good examples; whether or not this is applicable as of late is still debatable, as I’ve got no idea of what Clannad and Little Busters are like, but if planetarian’s anything to go by it’s still smoke and mirrors if you ask me.
Why the comparison to a romance novel? Let’s take a look at a romance novel’s conventional structure, for instance. I’d justify my choice by saying that a romance novel’s all about the mood, too, since no one really reads a romance novel for anything else, hence its namesake.
Why even choose “romance novel” to begin with? It’s pretty simple — the story itself is a means to the end. Ultimately you don’t read a romance novel for the compelling story or memorable characters, but for the romance, since that’s where the author steers you to from page one. The packaging, the plot devices, the setting, the characters, all point to a single end, which is ultimately what it’s all about.
In the same way too is Key like a romance novel. If you’ll look at it this way — the average Key work is a means to an end. The characters don’t really matter, since they’re all there for one end, which is “mood”. This mood, sadly, relies on suspension of disbelief and wilful ignorance to real substance — mood is style, and can’t carry a story far, which is why I found Kanon to be so-so, and Air to be disgusting.
That is precisely what I meant by “forcing”. It’s a do-or-die thing — if you don’t appreciate Key’s emphasis on that mood they’re trying to achieve for a particular work, the magic is gone, and there’s nothing really going for it in particular. I don’t recall, Higurashi aside, any other anime that tries to wrench a particular emotion out of you — even Higurashi, for instance, despite being horror, still has very solid characterisation and an mysterious, intriguing story that stands on its own.
Regarding your query about defining “human emotions”, and character preference: I don’t know how to place “pathos” in your two imagined schools, so I’ll just set it aside from them. It’s very subjective for the most part, but the general criteria should be that it strikes a chord with me. I’d like to think that I’ve lived enough of a life (20 years) to experience the full range of human emotions (anger, betrayal, love, desperation, et al), and I use that as my yardstick on judging “pathos” — which is a rather sticky thing, but yeah. That’s as best as I can put it.
I’m not personally acquainted with New Criticism and the Intentional Fallacy, but Wikipedia is there for a reason, and I get what you mean. I’m afraid I’ll have to say no, I didn’t judge from intent, but more of implementation.
Pacing is more style than anything due to the flexibility of anime as a medium: Haruhi, for instance, showed that pacing is subjective. Is it really better rearranged, or chronologically? There’s your debate for you. It’s not any more or less of an anime when you view the episodes in either order, so that’s how I came to the conclusion that it’s more style than anything.
It’s great that you brought that up, in any case, so thanks for asking. Sorry for the late reply, again, been overwhelmed a bit by things.
It’s OK, np. I can understand where you’re coming from in comparing Key’s works to romance novels (even though I thought AIR’s romance was rather terrible, and didn’t care about it at all, lol). I don’t think I can agree with you completely on Higurashi, though; I really like the story, but I thought the characters were rather illogical and poorly handled (answered to by one huge plot device requiring a sizable suspension of disbelief), and even the story itself was butchered so immensely that a whole new original arc for the second season was needed to patch up all the TIPS left out. That series had far more of a problem with suspension of disbelief than any of Key’s works, IMHO (although the orignal games were much better on that regard).
I’m actually kind of interested in learning more about your tolerance for suspension of disbelief. Where do you draw the line? Especially since you can’t possibly use the same standard for each work (one can argue, for example, that the Transformers movie deserves far more suspension of disbelief than normal). After spending too many hours reading http://tvtropes.org/, it seems to me that every single piece of fiction in existance requires a fair amount of suspension of disbelief. Maybe a possible difference between the two of us is that I don’t demand realism, but rather internal consistancy, as evidenced by what I’ve said earlier regarding characters. And as far as that goes, Key’s stories do fairly well in keeping internal consistancy, or at least allow for plausible speculations. Sola, on the other hand, did rather fail at this.
I appreciate your response. ^_^
Let me get back to you on that one in the upcoming sola post. (: Suspension of disbelief is an annoyingly long and rambling subject, but I guess I’ve got to tackle it sooner or later.