Cruel Angel Theses

Daniel, as Britishly modest as ever, seems to be downplaying the ridiculous amount of literature he’s been recommending to me–all of them stellar–in our quest to produce something of value as would be befitting our internet identities. I’m his mutual bitch friend in that regard, no doubt about that. Our yet-to-be-publicly-named-project (for fear of it disappearing the same way things that go bump in the night do when given a name) has been proceeding at an excellent pace, albeit one marred by my digression into things like Mother 3, emulated GBA games, non-unreadable visual novels, acclaimed dead trees, and lots of interesting manga in-between.

It’s certainly true that the best people to collaborate with creatively are those who have tastes very much unlike your own, and Daniel has been steadfast in that regard, with a marked preference for /m/en in /m/achines when yours truly would rather watch something more contemporary. What we do have in common, however, is the shared love for a good story, or a ripping yarn as some quarters might call it. It’s this questioning of the form that we’ve been doing on and off, seemingly philosophical questions like “What makes a good story?” “What makes a bad story, for that matter?” “Why is this story good?”

Which brings me to the point of this post: A comparative study of Blue Drop (manga) and Library War (anime). It is fortunate that the differences between mediums matter little here; having undertaken the task of creating a fictional world from scratch, the burning question that I’ve been asking myself is this–How do I make a world that’s both fantastic and credible at the same time? Having just completed both aforementioned series recently, the answer, as all answers do, naturally revealed itself after prolonged introspection.

I would watch 26 episodes of a Shibasaki spinoff, even if Kasahara wouldn't be too pleased about it.

Library War, for starters, has a world that isn’t so much unbelievable as it is uncredible. Voice acting, after all, shatters the glass ceiling of believability into a million little pieces, and when an anime has a formidable cast with which to work with, Inoue Marina in particular, it isn’t a question of whether or not you believe that the characters believe in the world they live in (or even whether they believe in you who believes in them), but whether you believe that the world they believe in is believable, in that regard.

Wordplay aside, this is what I feel LW’s major weakness happens to be: It’s highly unconvincing in terms of oppression. Sure enough, we’ve the spunky little upstart with a BURNING PASSION for books, a gruff-yet-well-meaning instructor, and various other colourful, sparkly, and lovable characters, but to what point do we feel that they’re being subjugated by The Man, that the purpose of their coming together isn’t merely to let dear Kasahara cry and weep and bawl and become a better faster stronger woman at the end of it all?

Here’s the thing: We don’t. A friend of mine of the I-usually-don’t-watch-much-anime kind that I passed a copy of the show to said, “It’s like the whole library wars is a back drop for this love story. Didn’t you feel that?”, and I couldn’t agree more in that respect–while I certainly admire the way in which Iku managed to get me all teary-eyed (especially at the end, even if it was a copout of a Kanon 2006 ending) whenever she turned on the waterworks and could identify with whatever she was going through, the important things like Censorship and Book Burning and Sarah Palin Would Turn America Into This ultimately didn’t resonate as much as I thought they should have.

Oppression should be depicted with a capital O, and it’s not just oppression per se that we’re looking for when we turn to the fictional, it’s Oppression that we want to see–humanity at an all-time low, at its most whipped, raw, and confined with only vestiges of normalcy remaining. How is that present in LW? Sure, there’s some of that in how Kasahara almost doesn’t manage to obtain her favourite novel, but is that oppression, or an academic exercise in oppression? Is that truly subjugation, or subjugation present for the sake of filling in the blanks?

This goes on and on, and wears especially thin when you consider it in the bigger picture–my suspension of disbelief wasn’t broken at the end of it all, although it was certainly wearing well at the seams. Take for example the so-called “last moments” that the Kyoto Library taskforce exchange right before their last battle with the Media Cleansers; I knew for a fact that none of them would come out of it much worse for the wear (hey, no one died!), so where was the impact in a scene like that, if not inserted for purposes of parody or satire?

I certainly have my misgivings about how well LW was handled in its transition to the screen, but I’m not going to second-guess the process. It works exceedingly well as a drama mainly targeted at girls, but as a dystopia intended for the general populace? Not all that much, I’m afraid. If I wasn’t so in touch with the more lachrymal parts of myself or had a penchant for the underdog with a strong sense of justice, I might have found it overtly melodramatic and/or lacklustre.

Compare this, then, to Blue Drop. While each of them can stand on their own (well, almost; the original goes with Maiorita Tenshi, while  Tenshi no Bokura should be treated as the other side of the same coin), the effect of reading all three manga is essentially holistic in nature, framing a larger picture of the events that take place for both the male and female population respectively.

This panel was not altered for humorous purposes.

Like Daniel, and as a guy who revels in his heterosexuality and manhood, I found Tenshi no Bokura to be the most chilling of them all, if only because of how it divided the characters along clearly visible lines like its predecessor, before deciding that clear division was overrated and proceeding to erase those previously-clear boundaries with fiendish glee. While other manga and anime would be content with asking you “What is real?”, TnB takes it a step further by asking, “What is male? What is female, for that matter?”

It does so by putting a series of theoretical scenarios in front of the reader, and doesn’t stop to harp on it or engage in didactic dialogues that might otherwise ruin this delicate balance. Instead, it forces the reader (the intended audience here male, obviously) to think about sexuality, gender, identity, and how the three sometimes come together in one rather loaded package that most people are wont to unravel casually.

In the short, short span of a single volume, the following issues among others are raised, with few answers to be readily found: Is a girl who once was a guy any less of a girl or any more of a guy? Would having sex with said guy be gay, or merely normal, even if the “girl” still possessed the mind and sexual preference of a guy? Is sexual preference physical or mental? What about guys who dress like girls? Are girls who like girls any less of a girl?

And so on. Crossdressing, transsexuality, homosexuality, and heterosexuality are all given face time, with none of them yielding more clear-cut answers than the last. For instance, the Arume–lesbian aliens with blonde hair and neon blue eyes–are currently bringing about the extinction of humanity due to their programs to condition women to have sex with them, and other women. To paraphrase one of the characters, “It’s unnatural.” But what is this supposed to be? What is unnatural–the act itself, or the Arume’s doing? Is this merely creative expression? Right-wing? Left-wing? Right-wing using left-wing messages? Your guess is as good as mine.

So the oppression portrayed here gets you thinking. Aside from what I’ve previously mentioned, there’s also a pervasive atmosphere of Big Sister that made me squirm in my pants, and not just because of Freud’s theory of males having a fear of castration has some truth to it–it’s because it showed me how fragile the male psyche is in terms of ambiguity, and its presence, whether in terms of having to resort to crossdressing, or being reassigned to another gender, is portrayed as humiliating and degrading for the guys.

The same can’t be said for the girls. In the original Blue Drop–a series of vignettes within the same continuity but different timeframe–the presence of the Arumes are portrayed as romantic with a tragedy slant, questioning the Japanese mentality of atonement and sacrifice for the greater good against a Juliet & Juliet backdrop. The story is girl-friendly, for in no way are the characters distressed or in pain bar the death of their female lovers, and this disparity between narratives becomes obvious; the invasion and the Arume are humanised, even romanticised, and as a result, the enmity between the sexes becomes all the more real for the male readers.

—

When all’s said and done, it isn’t so much the premise that matters as it is what the premise does for the characters, and if the premise is there for the sake of talking heads, or if it’s there because it can contribute to the story in a meaningful manner. If it’s unconvincing, weak, or ill-researched with a blatant disregard for the obvious, the premise wears thin and the viewer/reader (vieder?) gets distracted. A well-utilised premise, however, will strengthen the story just that much more, and determine whether it becomes a gripping and memorable trip, or a decent but forgettable experience that fades into the backdrop a year or two later.