telophase | (no subject)

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I was reading my page of "monitored" LJs - the users and communities I don't really read often, but occasionally (if you comment on my LJ you're not in the 'monitored' filter; that's mostly for those who I've friended to read every so often but don't consider them acquaintances).

Today, the author/artist of Peach Fuzz posted a mini-review of the Howl's Moving Castle movie (no spoilers) where she noted that she didn't have high expectations going in because she heard that the movie's heroine was an old woman. Quoted:

When I originally found out that much of the movie was about a girl in the form of a 90-year old woman, I had my doubts that she would make for a very likable or appropriate lead character. You generally expect your main character to be vibrant or youthful or energetic (not that the lack of dissuaded me from seeing it, obviously.)

I have to say that I don't think we have the same conception of what makes for a good lead character. Which probably explains why I don't like her manga and can't stand any of the characters.* What I look for in a lead character is depth. I like it when aspects of their personality or history are hidden, so you have to poke at them and peel them away to reveal what makes them tick and who they are. I like it when they have contradictions and paradoxes which turn out to make perfect sense once you dig deep enough. I actually loathe most genki-type characters, and they have to have deeper, more serious sides to them revealed early enough on to get me to like them.

Goku, Tohru Honda, and Naruto are characters that I wouldn't normally like if they didn't have their serious sides revealed early enough -- Naruto starts off in a cranky, prankster mood, and it's revealed that he usually shoves his doubts under a confident facade. Goku was played off of three not-genki characters before we started learning his tragic backstory, and he does show very deep currents of fear for what he's capable of doing. Tohru Honda is shown as very deliberately placing her negative emotions underneath her surface because she's got such an inferiority complex that she thinks she doesn't deserve any sort of happiness, and you get hit with that the moment the book starts, when she's living in a tent instead of imposing on anyone. If we'd met her before her mother died, I wouldn't have liked her as much, I think, because I think that her insecurites all stem back to that one issues.

There's supposed to be a meeting at work now - will come back if I think of anything, or a better way to say something. [ edit ] Cancelled, it seems. At least nobody's showing up to it. Not that I have anything else to say.

* I don't hold that against her, though, I am just emphatically Not Her Audience, and I enjoy reading her posts about learning how to be a professional mangaka. Caveat posted to head off any "If you don't like her, why do you read her LJ?" cries, although I think most of my regular readers are sensible enough to understand where I'm coming from without me having to spell it out.

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I have to admit that I picked up Fruits Basket on a lark. I figured that I would try an issue or two just to see if it was my sort of thing. Everything about the manga struck me as the sort that I really dislike, and despite all of that, it is compelling and an utterly fascinating read. I think you've hit it exactly. It's the depth of the characters, not just Tohru, but all of them, that really takes it up a notch.

Same here - FB ought to be something I despise, but I love it. Each character has their own darkness, and there's always the blackness of the curse and Akira underscoring everything they say, think, or do. And the characters are also rebelling against that, with Tohru as the catalyst for it. I think they probably get along with her because they see her darkness ~~and exploit the hell out of her for housekeeping duties but that's another issue entirely~~ and how she handles it. Which isn't the healthiest of ways, because of the extent to which she takes it, but it's better than the ways they've been handling it.

I wonder if the mangaka of Peach Fuzz has had any exposure to classic literature. Granted, it's entirely a value judgement on her part-- especially as it's her review of the movie, but that's such a superficial comment.

I'm with you, there. It's no surprise I really can't enjoy her work. I can't even tolerate it.

I'm wondering the same thing - most adventure books and movies aimed at kids have youthful, energetic characters, but they're not required, and there's plenty of kid's books that don't even have that. Wind in the Willows, anyone? Mole, Ratty, Badger, and Toad? All middle-aged Victorian gentlemen of one ilk or another. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Youthful, yes. Vibrant and energetic? No. Explicitly so, as a matter of fact, because he's been slowly starving to death. Grandpa Joe is far more of a memorable character than Charlie.

There's even two other Miyazaki movies - Porco Rosso and Omoide Poroporo which don't have youthful, vibrant, energetic main characters, and which are better than Howl (which is still good - even when Miyazaki fall flat, he's still damn good).

PR eventually gets a young girl as foil, but not until halfway through the movie and she's never the main character. OP flashes back to her childhood a lot, but you never forget that she's 27 now and leading a boring life as an office lady.

Oh, Wind in the Willows. My daughter has a picture book adaptation of the most heartbreaking/warming part of the book for me-- when Mole wants, needs to go home again-- and it almost makes me cry even in that form. So much love for that book.

I read and re-read that book as a kid and strangely have very little memory of it. I remember somewhere near the beginning, when Mole gets lost and stumbled upon Badger's home, and scraped his shin on the doorstop-thing, and I had *no* idea what it was and was fascinated with why someone would keep this razor-sharp thing on their doorstep. XD

And there's bits I remember here and there, especially the "Piper at the Gates of Dawn" chapter.

I don't remember it particularly well, either, until I read that excerpt and bits just flooded back. I still couldn't recount the plot for the life of me. There's boats and a motorcar though!

And something about Toad dressing up as a washerwoman to escape jail, and weasels or stoats or something taking over Toad Hall.

And the fact that everyone seems to assume that I should find Toad a beloved character contrasted with the reality that I can't stand him and much prefer Badger, Ratty, and Mole.

I liked the others better too. Last year or so I read a really interesting article on Kenneth Grahame-- apparently his son was severely manic-depressive, and the author had had manic depression in the family and saw a lot of it it in Toad, and in his friends' support of him through so many over-the-top things. I usually don't like that diagnosis fictional characters decades later thing, but it worked in that article.

Me too! I think that chapter was very influential for several writers-- Charles de Lint refers to it, for instance. I also love the chapter where Rat almost sails away with a Water Rat, and Mole has to stop him.

I'm going to have to get a copy and reread sometime soon (I don't know what happened to my copy from childhood). I can probably skip all the Toad stuff that I don't like. XD

You can read it on-line chapterized here: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/GraWind.html

Or d/l a plain vanilla etext here: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/289

Oh good. I do have to back up my PDA today; I'll just add that. ;D

Goku? [*]

Maybe I should reread Wind in the Willows. All I remember is that I don't think I particularly liked it. OK, I do remember something about Toad dressing as a woman.

Omoide Poroporo? [*]

The Gensomaden Saiyuki manga/anime version of Son Goku from the Journey to the West story. He's a bubbly, happy, always-hungry teenager who just happens to have been born from the earth and imprisoned in a cave for five hundred years as punishment for something that he doesn't remember. And who turns into a mindless fighting and killing machine if his power limiter is broken. He's the guy in the icon on this comment.

Omoide Poroporo, which I've seen translated as "Only Yesterday," is another Miyazaki movie, about a 27-year-old office lady who takes her vacations in the country working on a farm. This particular vacation, she goes to the farm, thinks a lot about one particular summer when she was a kid, and makes a decision. That's it. It's as low-key as Record of a Yokohama Shopping Trip, and as compelling. It's one of teh movies that Disney has the rights to, but hasn't released on DVD yet, although there's a fansub out there somewhere. I've seen it in incredibly low-quality, grainy fansub and if Disney doesn't get their act together soon, I'm going to have to find the DVD fansub.

It's as low-key as Record of a Yokohama Shopping Trip, and as compelling.

Well, I'm sold. Will keep an eye out for it in the future.

:) It's one of that genre I call "nothing happens," where there's no action plot and no real events, per se, but the story is fulfilling and angaging, and you grow to care about the characters and want to see them happy.

I had the same concern.

It isn't because I think protagonists have to follow a certain model! Literature can be about anyone it pleases. But this is anime, where the main character is almost always the most beautiful. Disney movies do the same thing, with two exceptions (Beaty and the Beast, the Hunchback of Notre Dame), and they even go a step further by making all the villains ugly. Western movies do the same thing! It's a visual shortcut, like rain. A pretty face doesn't guarentee a likeable character, but it does make it easier to like a characer.

That said, this is Miyazaki and I should have had more faith. I'd like to point out that Sophie was by no means an ugly old woman. She was cute.

XD I don't like it's being shallow to expect anime to be pretty.

Pretty (http://carnage.fanfic.org/porco6.jpg)? XD

I was going to offer Cpt. Harlock as a counter-cute example, but you know, the eye-patch and the scar really work for him. :sigh: And they don't look half bad on Emeraldas either.

Hee. :) Yup - the characters that are supposed to be not cute I often find quite cute. In the interviews with the artist and author of Death Note published in the recent hiatus, the artist said that when he was designing L, he asked the writer if it was OK to make him not good-looking, but weird and quirky. And you know? I am all about L. I think quite a lot of us are. Yet he's supposed to be not cute.

L's not supposed to be cute? Hmm. Maybe we're making the word "cute" do too much work here.

If characters are cute = really young, simplified design, big-eyed, then they tend not to appeal to me as much, partly because I read them as being too young for *me*, and I'm vaguely discomfited by thoughts of cradle-robbing.

Older, quirkier (even disfigured) characters, are easier for me to keep sorted out in my mind, and the age/quirks/disfigurements hint at rich backstory.

There's probably a translation issue here, too - I don't know what the original Japanese said, and I know that there's subtleties to "kawaii" and I'm sure plenty of other words in the same area that we're not getting. I know that he's not supposed to be traditionally good-looking, in contrast to Light, but that succeeded in making him far more attractive to me, because I really don't go for traditionally good-looking.

When I was a TA, I always learned the names of the non-American students, and the annoying students first, because they stood out in my mind, whether it was for an unusual name, a nifty accent, or because I ~~CURSED THE DAY THEY WERE BORN~~, er, had issues with their behavior in class. I feel sorry for the sea of generic frat boys who I always mixed up, because I couldn't ever keep them separate until they finally stood out as individuals in some way.

Oh yeah - I'll point out that

minakokenshou wasn't apprehensive about Sophie because Sophie was ugly in her old-lady form, it was because she wasn't young and energetic and vivacious.[1] It's a personality thing, rather than an appearance thing.

[1] Also note this was before she saw the movie, when she had a few assumptions about what a 90-year-old character would be like - old-lady Sophie is certainly energetic enough when it comes to eradicating cobwebs and tormenting Howl.

Yeah, I saw that. I thought she'd only chosen unfortunate adjectives. She knows that Sophie isn't really an old lady; wouldn't her objection to someone who only looks old be, well, that they look old?

If she really believed that old-looking people must act old too, that says something about expectations based on appearence. I mean, in this case Sophie's appearence and personality are connected, but that didn't necessarily have to be true.

...except that in a lot of visual mediums it is. You see?

Dunno what her thought process behind the adjectives were. :) I got the impression that she had the idea that successful stories were successful in part because the lead characters were spunky, vivid, and bright (er, in a personality sense, not necessarily intelligence), which makes them more accessible. Which I solidly disagree with; that's only one type of character.

What I was really assuming was that she was referring to stories for kids in particular, because I think it's incredibly obvious that adult stories usually run to less-genki-type protagonists (Madame Bovary, anyone?). However, kids can handle much more complex and/or less enthusiastic characters than that - Bridge to Terabithia, The Phantom Tollbooth, My Side of the Mountain, hell, any of Daniel Pinkwater's books.

All of whose protagonists are young in body if not at heart. (Except maybe Daniel Pinkwater--I don't know who that is.)

I've read another YA fantasy book where the (young) female protagonist is cursed to be old. The Changeling Prince (http://www.vivianvandevelde.com/bookDetail.cfm?BookId=27) by Vivian Vande Velde. The age doesn't affect the heroine's perception of herself, only other people's perceptions of her. Although I shouldn't even be comparing; it's primarily an adventure/romance and VVV isn't making any statements.

I've forgotten my point! It was probably just that Howl's Moving Castle is an unusual book and I was afraid that would work against the movie (it didn't).

Honestly, I'm interested in seeing Howl's Moving Castle just *because* it has an 'old woman' in the lead (well, that and the whole 'Must see everything Studio Ghibli does' thing). However, this brings something to the forefront I've never actually noticed before.

That something? I just don't see a lot of movies with non-youthful-looking women in the lead (I may be wrong- and I'd love to be wrong here). Yes, there'll occasionally be the 40+ actress, but she's always plastered with makeup (or, in video games and animation, looks like she merely a twenty year old with a few wrinkles around the eyes, if any).

Now, bear with me on this point. Think of male actors. Sean Connery. Morgan Freeman. John Wayne. The weathered look goes far for guys. Now, I'm not going to say this is is some scheme or anything- damn it, Sean Connery looks better (IHMO) nowadays than when he was playing James Bond. But why are we, as a society of happy media-ingesting people, able to accept that, and not, say, a woman who actually has that same rough sort of beauty? Is it society, or is it just the way we are?

*coughs* Damn, got on a tangent on a comment thread. @_@ Going back to Howl's Moving Castle, I know that this age is a result of a curse, not actual time, but I think it's something completely new, and I, for once, am ready to go see it.

Oh, bah. Just saw that comment that what Minakokenshou was commenting on was personality, not appearance. I shall go hide in a corner now.

Eh, digressions are perfectly OK. :) I'm not a stickler for keeping people on-topic, unless I want to make sure they understood what a point was. :)

Oh, yeah. And you'll get movies where older male actors are romantically paired with much younger actresses -- think Harrison Ford/Anne Heche in Six Days Seven Nights, or Sean Connery with just about anyone. Not that it doesn't happen in real life (Humphrey Bogart, 44, marrying Lauren Bacall, 20, with a very successful marriage), but it's usually looked at a bit oddly.

I think it's our youth-obsessed society exaggerating a few natural characteristics - in general over human history, women have been at the peak of their fertility in their 20s, while men, who are fertile from puberty until death, for the most part, have been at the peak of their social, financial, and political power and success when they're older, in ther 40s, 50s, and so on. That's certainly an incredibly simplistic explanation - that men look for women who can give them children and that women look for men who can support them and their children - but it's one aspect of a complex set of social values that has been seized upon and exaggerated by our society, I think.

And, dude, Sean Connery just ages like fine wine and cheese. XD

Lj ate my comment.

But basically, I was agreeing with you. XD And I agree. Sean Connery just looks *good*.

hmmn do kids 'really' want bubbly stuff all the time, doesn't explain the HP phenom. I love HP, but I always think it's a bit dark for children. Then again nothing seems to phase kids these days. Well, I thought my stories were dark and most people are like 'aww it's cute and sweet' O_o

I agree with you on that. I think a strong character - like Sophie, in "Howl" - is good no matter what age or sex. I personally usually like characters less if they're "genki" or "cute", but more if they seem to be one of those, but are much deeper than at first appearance. Thus, Naruto himself is a character I love, because despite the way he acts, he actually does have the burden of having been hated by so many people for no reason - and now that he has friends, the fact that he doesn't take them for granted as so many anime characters do makes me like him even more. I like many characters for traits based on what I would like real people for, and I think there are many people who don't. There are, of course, the fangirls who say "I like [for instance] Sasuke, because he's so cool and keeps himself away from everyone!" but to me it's more of "I don't like Sasuke because he acts like an asshole." This isn't bad, I don't think, I just don't understand only watching anime to idolize things you would hate in real life.

I just realized I am beggining to rant, so I shall stop now.

...

You know, you say you have nothing against me personally, but this isn't the first time you've verbally attacked me on your livejournal and jumped to conclusions*.

For the record, I was totally cool with your disagreeing with me on my livejournal (well, less of a disagreement, and more of just a big misunderstanding). I like honest feedback. But don't you think it's a bit tactless to go and publicly pick apart on your LJ what amounts to a quick comment, intended just for the people on my journal, and hardly what I'd consider a "mini-review"?

By quoting only half of what I said, you inadvertently (deliberately?) muddled my message, and then you twisted my words to mean something entirely different by following up with an essay about character depth--something I wasn't even talking about. I don't think my intended message was all *that* hard to understand. God forbid, I had some apprehensions about a movie starring a character taking the form of an old lady. Are you going to jump to the conclusion now that I have something against old people?

And then, when a couple people followed up to your post with the same concern I had, sub_divided, for example(http://www.livejournal.com/users/telophase/174502.html?thread=1297318#t1297318), you asserted that, no, no, that's not what minakokenshou meant at all. Because you can read minds, obviously.

For example: "minakokenshou wasn't apprehensive about Sophie because Sophie was ugly in her old-lady form, it was because she wasn't young and energetic and vivacious.[1] It's a personality thing, rather than an appearance thing." I'm sorry, but at what point did I say any of that to you? You're representing what *you* believed to be the case as cold, hard facts.

Or how about when you said that I "had a few assumptions about what a 90-year-old character would be like." I clearly stated that I knew the premise was a girl taking the form of a 90-year old woman, so how could you say matter-of-factly that I was assuming anything about Sophie's personality?

I would appreciate it if you would stop representing your assumptions about me as facts.

* http://www.livejournal.com/users/telophase/153863.html?thread=1141511#t1141511
This part being the most important: "which was released to nowhere near as much acclaim as they'd hoped" How do you know how much acclaim I was hoping for? For the record, I'm *extremely* happy with the success of the CD. We went through multiple printings of it, it was carried through stores like Animenation, and distributed by Diamond. I don't think that's too bad for a self-published CD.

P.S. You keep talking about how much you hate my Peach Fuzz book ("Which probably explains why I don't like her manga and can't stand any of the characters"), but you've previously admitted to having never even read it ("I really don't want to pick up the book"). And no, the RSOM entry doesn't count. A number of people who disliked the RSOM entry turned around their opinions completely after reading the book--there is, after all, quite a time elapse between the hastily put together short story and the graphic novel. I can understand you're not being my target audience, but going back to your most recent post, how can you sit there and talk about how I apparently don't know how to write characters when you haven't even read my book?

You cannot make a public post and then get offended when the public debates it, or does not agree with you, or holds opinions different from your own. The people who read my blog understand that reviews are opinions and I do not need to punctuate everything I say here with "It seems to me..." and "In my opinion..." or "I may be wrong, but...". That sort of thing is assumed here, because the people who read my blog are reasonably intelligent, educated people who are used to debate in the public arena. Nobody's going away from here and citing me in articles, nobody's going away from here and holding me up as an authority.

I don't even think I convinced anybody of my opinion who already held an opinion different from my own. And, yes, I respect that. I was arguing from my interpretation of your words - which I am under the impression that I explicitly said at least once - not in order to attack you, but to elicit interesting discussion about the subject.

I also happen to hold strong opinions about what I do and don't like in manga, and I'm not going to sugarcoat them. I'm willing to discuss them, and I'm willing to be convinced otherwise if the argument is strong enough.

I went over to your journal and politely disagreed with you there, IN ORDER TO find out what you meant by it. I haven't posted a follw-up here yet, and I have not replied to you there yet, because I haven't had the time to formulate a reply. You meant something that wasn't what I took your words to mean, although I think we still have a bit of disagreement about characterization and lead characters.

This part being the most important: "which was released to nowhere near as much acclaim as they'd hoped" How do you know how much acclaim I was hoping for? For the record, I'm *extremely* happy with the success of the CD. We went through multiple printings of it, it was carried through stores like Animenation, and distributed by Diamond. I don't think that's too bad for a self-published CD.

Sorry; going by my memories of reading your webpage and the newsletter you sent out in the months after it was first released, I seemed to recall mention of disappointment in the number of stores who ordered it after it was solicited, which is what I was referring to. Perhaps I remembered wrong. It certainly seems it picked up significantly after that, which I either never knew or misremembered. I stand corrected. Yes, I do admit to being wrong when I've been corrected. I hold a higher opinion of people who correct me politely, but even when that doesn't happen, I still appreciate it.

I have recommended your book to others in the past who I thought would enjoy it, including to the YA librarian in a local system who was developing the graphic novel collection at the time, and I will continue to do so. I have read enough of it standing in the aisles in front of the manga shelves that I feel quite solid in my opinion that you do not write characters and stories, at least in this book, that I like. They do not have the sort of depth that I prefer, and I do not find them interesting. This doesn't mean that others don't - I am very solidly a character person in my reading preferences, and other people prefer plot, or worldbuilding, or theme, or great explosions. I took your surprise at the very idea of an elderly woman being an "appropriate" lead character to indicate that we have different ideas about what makes a successful and appropriate lead character - for one, I think that the best lead character is utterly dependent on the particular story - which would explain why I bounce off of yours. Just like I bounce off of the characters of many other mangaka and authors.

Just to let you know, I've posted a pointer to the renewed debate (http://www.livejournal.com/users/telophase/177948.html) in my LJ, and it looks like there may be some discussion starting up there, too.

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