40 Days of Anime - Day 9
Aug. 23rd, 2017 08:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jennaria09 -- name an anime character you absolutely hate.
Um. Okay, so here's the handicap: if I start watching a show and I react to a character like nails on a chalkboard? I stop watching the show. I can name you two instances where that absolutely happened! But...I don't know: I started in GUNDAM WING fandom, after all, and my point of comparison is the slash fandom's treatment of Relena, and I try to avoid wallowing in hate like that.
Anyway. My two instances are Katsuki Bakugo (from BOKU NO HERO ACADEMIA) and Yukari Tanizaki (from AZUMANGA DAIOH). The quick explanation: both of them give me the bad kind of flashbacks to middle school.
The long explanation: for Bakugo, no really, he gives me flashbacks to middle school. (I transferred to private school between seventh and eighth grade. Social problems my parents could tolerate, but when I came home with a big bruise on my arm, they took action.) I feel like bullying is a thing we see semi-regularly in anime, but Bakugo made me squirm. Wikipedia tells me that he doesn't 'win' - Midoriya is the main character, so of course he gets into Hero Academia and kicks butt and wins friends. But I still couldn't finish that first episode.
For Yukari - the irony is, I love the manga of AZUMANGA DAIOH. I found it funny and warm and adorable. And so long as the anime focused on the kids, I still found it funny and warm and adorable! But the teachers...yeah, they appear in the manga, it's not like the manga made them up. In anime, though, it felt like we were seeing her mostly through the eyes of her fellow teacher. Suddenly Yukari became Every Single Irritating Girl I Knew In Middle School, every instance of contagious embarrassment, distilled into a single person, and I couldn't keep watching.
I ran into this with Watanuki, from XXXHOLIC, as well - but with him, I could look at the manga and say, y'know, if I couldn't just skim him flailing and yelling, it would be annoying, so this makes sense. I didn't find Yukari annoying in the manga. I suspect, but can't prove without watching more of the anime, that this is because the anime focuses more on the adults than the manga does. Either that, or the text provides a distance (for me as a reader) that video erases. Which in turn argues that I should maybe try the BOKU NO HERO ACADEMIA manga instead.
In conclusion, middle school flashbacks still suck.
Um. Okay, so here's the handicap: if I start watching a show and I react to a character like nails on a chalkboard? I stop watching the show. I can name you two instances where that absolutely happened! But...I don't know: I started in GUNDAM WING fandom, after all, and my point of comparison is the slash fandom's treatment of Relena, and I try to avoid wallowing in hate like that.
Anyway. My two instances are Katsuki Bakugo (from BOKU NO HERO ACADEMIA) and Yukari Tanizaki (from AZUMANGA DAIOH). The quick explanation: both of them give me the bad kind of flashbacks to middle school.
The long explanation: for Bakugo, no really, he gives me flashbacks to middle school. (I transferred to private school between seventh and eighth grade. Social problems my parents could tolerate, but when I came home with a big bruise on my arm, they took action.) I feel like bullying is a thing we see semi-regularly in anime, but Bakugo made me squirm. Wikipedia tells me that he doesn't 'win' - Midoriya is the main character, so of course he gets into Hero Academia and kicks butt and wins friends. But I still couldn't finish that first episode.
For Yukari - the irony is, I love the manga of AZUMANGA DAIOH. I found it funny and warm and adorable. And so long as the anime focused on the kids, I still found it funny and warm and adorable! But the teachers...yeah, they appear in the manga, it's not like the manga made them up. In anime, though, it felt like we were seeing her mostly through the eyes of her fellow teacher. Suddenly Yukari became Every Single Irritating Girl I Knew In Middle School, every instance of contagious embarrassment, distilled into a single person, and I couldn't keep watching.
I ran into this with Watanuki, from XXXHOLIC, as well - but with him, I could look at the manga and say, y'know, if I couldn't just skim him flailing and yelling, it would be annoying, so this makes sense. I didn't find Yukari annoying in the manga. I suspect, but can't prove without watching more of the anime, that this is because the anime focuses more on the adults than the manga does. Either that, or the text provides a distance (for me as a reader) that video erases. Which in turn argues that I should maybe try the BOKU NO HERO ACADEMIA manga instead.
In conclusion, middle school flashbacks still suck.