telophase | (no subject)

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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).