The basis of harem is pretty simple — one guy, a lot of girls, and plenty of rabu-rabu hijinks in-between. This, unfortunately, is as easy as saying that the basis of shounen is this guy who discovers a drill-shaped key his inner powers one day and goes on to pierce through the heavens save the world. Or saying that the basis of shoujo is throwing one girl into the midst of 10 or so pretty guys and having her come off with her one true love, or that the basis of slice of life is that NOTHING HAPPENS.

what Konata said about tsunderes having twintails was true

What really happens in reality is a whole lot of lazy writing, because while you can infuse tons of humour in slice of life to make the everyday-life part easier to swallow, tons of humour in shoujo to make it a whole lot palatable (when you’re laughing it’s easy to forget the close-ups of girly men framed with flowers), and a good dosage of manliness in shounen to forget that you’re cheering on a souped-up version of the Saturday morning superhero cartoons you used to watch sans tight spandex, the same doesn’t really work here.

Why so? For starters, the premise of harem requires that you balance your suspension of disbelief as precariously as a trapeze artist would during a performance. While slice of life gets its namesake from an overt depiction of realism and shounen compensates for an unrealistic setting with realistic characters, harem for the most part is depicted as having a realistic setting with unrealistic characters. The story isn’t so much about a resolution, emotions, or character development as it is looking forward to the “true girl” ending, which is where the audience starts to leave in droves.

It’s this skewed perception of harem I have that I’ve brought with me while starting on Myself; Yourself. The base ingredients were there, definitely, but episode 06 has been the tipping point by which I now consider it to be less harem and more of an eclectic mix of school life and comedy with harem overtones. I gather this mostly from the way in which M;Y has been going about things — rather than having the protagonist go out with a succession of girls before settling on his one true love, it’s been taking the Clannad approach instead.

I’ll be using Clannad as a point of reference to shows like M;Y and kimikiss this season because harem as we know it, if the new crop of shows are anything to go by, is dead. You heard me right. Clannad’s approach is best described as synchronous, which is in direct opposition to the asynchronous method used by most harem; instead of presenting each girl’s arc individually with next to zero development on the rest, what happens is that each arc seems at this point like it’s going to have little bits of development for each girl while the main arc ensues.

Take the following analogy: if Clannad is hyperthreading then kimikiss is dual-core processing. Clannad’s character development isn’t true multitasking because it still has a main focus while the other girls are developed bit by bit, if Fuuko’s arc is anything to go by. kimikiss, on the other hand, is truly synchronous because we view the lives of three characters at the same time. There isn’t any pause or girls put on hold while the guys cultivate a relationship with their first choice, and we’re instead shown three separate narratives that take place simultaneously.

Then there’s M;Y. While it would be pushing it to call M;Y synchronous like Clannad and kimikiss, Hinako’s development in episode 04 and 06 have made me realise that it’s far from the norm. Typically, harem’s attributes are best described as sexist; the girls are levels to be conquered, toys to be played with before being discarded in the name of forwarding the plot — while shoujo might not be better off in terms of male glorification, at least they never stoop as low as harem does when it comes to objectifying a character. This innate trait can be best described as annoying because the level of schadenfreude displayed by bloggers who’re covering Da Capo II this season seem nothing short of sadistic, to the extent of them wanting DCII to “hurry up” with the first girl, Koko, who’s apparently still hanging in there so far.

the level of shock value that this scene had to me was like Naru kissing Keitaro all over again, in case you were wondering

I bring this up because Minako’s development in M;Y is more of like a red herring than anything — you usually don’t go out of your way to develop a side character twice after building up what looks to be the next Higurashi cum School Days. Loli characters are mostly there to titillate and contribute next to nothing to any story with even the slightest hint of harem in it. Their presence is an ambiguous mixture of ecchi, slapstick, and stereotypes milked for all their worth, and M;Y’s way of handling this often-abused archetype was definitely admirable. You could say that their effort seems to be paying off, because this episode was made excellent as a result.

One thing I’ve noted so far is how they haven’t been pulling punches with using her as a character, whether in a romantic situation or in terms of situational/physical humour. Any love that a loli character has for a protagonist is usually reduced to comedic, miniscule proportions, because we all know that girls at such a young age can’t possibly like anyone seriously. Hinako destroys this long-held idea by immediately asserting her love for Shuusuke in a serious manner, even going to the extent of confessing to him not long after; jokes and situations that seem positively scandalous in an anime setting and even more outrageous in real life are also utilised.

This is already revolutionary for the fact that Hinako hasn’t been reduced to a 2D caricature representing her age and the fetish attached to it exclusively; what episode 06 made better was how it developed her as a character even more than I expected it to, which was a pleasant surprise. M;Y’s narrrative technique, for one, isn’t lazy in that it doesn’t harp on her non-existent family or expect us to feel sorry for her from a mere scene or two illustrating her situation at home. Instead, the viewer develops a sense of gradual understanding of her from the kiss that she gives Sana at the end of the episode.

The kiss here is all the more significant due to it her being a loli, which means that any notion of her being romantically attached to Sana is non-existent. It signifies her value as a character that isn’t just reduced to token appearances or a specific episode; the realism is there because instead of her acting like we’d expect a token loli character to do, she turns that expectation on its head by having her kiss the male protagonist, who is supposed to be off limits to lolis as we all know.

I think it augurs well for M;Y as a whole due to how it shows that it isn’t afraid to break usually predetermined character boundaries instead of forwarding the storyline. Characters like Minako aren’t introduced merely to contribute comedic/romantic value to the show, but are instead there for the sake of contributing to a fuller, better, more realistic story. My response towards M;Y was initially lukewarm, that of a sceptic, and somewhat cautious, but now that I know better I’m pleased to admit that I’m looking forward to m33w’s subs every week.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 5:20 pm and is filed under Anime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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