Emotional Weakness vs. Emotional Dependency

What is eternity doing tonight? has become Mega Megane Moé. For the latest posts, please change your links accordingly. Anime girls are apparently the polar opposite of superviruses. They don't evolve resistance to disease but rather become more susceptible to it as they go on.

The disease today is, moreso than any harem lead, a lack of an ability to stand on their own, a sort of AIDS affecting the brain. Perhaps it's too much of a blanket statement to say that all anime girls are affected by such an affliction, but certainly in some harem anime it seems we're getting less and less real believable female characters and more and more one-legged props.

At least, it seems so, that many of the haremettes today just aren't capable of standing on their own.

Now I would enjoy being a knight in shining armor just as much as the next guy, but the extent to which characters are becoming socially or mentally, well, retarded, is sort of ridiculous.

It's part of the reason why I'm not getting into Clannad perhaps as much as other Key/KyoAni works, that from Kanon to AIR to Clannad the relationships have become increasingly one-sided. Certainly KyoAni's latest work has some merit in the vast amount of nonstandard (i.e. male) characters and their hilarious antics, but it really feels the harem itself leaves something to be desired.

(yeah, Kanon and AIR get spoiled.)

Now, I'm not going to be the first to call the girls of Kanon anywhere near realistic, but they certainly seemed to have a reasonable level of backbone, in that all of them were able to live relatively normal lives without Yuuichi.

Everyone still had, in classic style, a connection to him, of course, but if we removed him from the equation, it's still relatively plausible that they would still be able to survive. This is likely in part due to a strong supporting cast; Nayuki has Akiko, Mai has Sayuri, and even Shiori can sort of look to Kaori in a sense.

Ayu and Makoto are more questionable, but both their characters aren't complete pushovers. Makoto has the typical energetic tsundere disposition, and while Ayu is certainly a whining taiyaki-munching machine, she doesn't convey what I see in some Clannad characters as a sense of hopelessness.

My main example would be the seeming main character, Nagisa; or even extend it to the whole Furukawa female side. Both she and her mother take criticism in a manner that can be described as 'extremely poorly', with both being reduced to tears (or yeah, fainting) with only the slightly offhand remark.

Additionally, Nagisa is hardly the social type, with a soft voice, a weak body, and a lack out outgoingness so much that one has to wonder if her classmates even know that she exists. As such her meeting with Tomoya is brimming with a ridiculous amount so-called potential for emotional development into an outgoing person, which should be mildly heartwarming to some.

But, the question is brought up that, if Tomoya and Nagisa never happened to meet, what would become of her? Would she still stand under streelights at night, sit alone in the courtyard, and sing random stuff about a Big Dango Family if she remained what appears to be friendless?

It's sort of silly, and taken in that context it almost seems like an act; the standard "oh noes, I am a lonely girl, please help me and make me fall for you, etc" gig that goes down really too much in anime. People like that are really too much of a suspension of disbelief for me - it's just too much of the stars aligning, too much of Chance Encounter Occurs. People just aren't this helpless; either they take care of themselves emotionally, "take care of themselves" physically, or, more likely, have at least a few people they can count on.

Same goes for the childish characters like Fuko as well. Yes, she's adorable. Yes, she's funny. And yes, she makes Ayu looks sane, for God's sake. I've seen her dubbed "retard moe" by many, which is scarily accurate. Her childish, loli-like demeanor may be attractive, but one has to wonder how someone like her got into university in the first place.

Kotomi could go either way, seeming to be the typical idiot savant. An IQ of 190, as typical, has nothing to do with your social competence, as shown by her book-cutting, lunch-offering, uber-spacey demeanor. Again, it's an interesting personality that leans more towards blatant escapism than a plausible character.

Either that, or maybe I need to start going to empty libraries more often.

To be fair Clannad is only in its 3rd episode and I might be missing some of the depth to the characters that will come later, but at this point the characters seem a bit more unrealistic than usual.

Kanon's characters, as mentioned, seem better suited to standing on their own because, while they do have emotional weaknesses, soft spots to speak, these flaws don't overtake the rest of their character.

For example, while Shiori is, yes, "deathly ill" and yes, she does sit around waiting in the courtyard like Nagisa did, it feels like something she did more on her own accord rather than just showing up and moping, "Man, I really hope Yuuichi shows up to make me happy." She goes out and does things, goes out and tries to be strong, tries to make the most of her time.

This sort of attitude is what personally makes the Kanon characters, if not more realistic, more appealing, in that they aren't overly reliant on others, that they fight, they give their all and
they aren't, in a sense, pushovers.

AIR is, as it seems, somewhere in between with its lead character of Misuzu. While she does have a form of Magical AIDS that affects her character strongly (think how she always breaks down when trying to make friends), she is the outgoing type that wants to make friends, that doesn't wait for people to come to them, that pushes herself to the limit to do so.

Sure, there's a large break of disbelief in her befriending of a random, older traveler that she doesn't know, but somehow it seems better than it the situation were the other way around.

Perhaps it is a personal belief but I've always found these characters with the positive outlooks more appealing and more interesting than the passive ones that almost seem like quitters. It may be a lower tolerance for whining and almost manufactured drama, or it may be the inherent appeal in rooting for the 'underdog', the Little Mac fighting against the odds, but there's something about overly weak characters that really rubs me the wrong way.

But now, what about the rest of you; how do you like your haremettes? Is this perceived 'helplessness' in characters something that actually is desirable? Is reading these personalities as such not taking into account the whole situation?

Suddenly I'm beginning to see the appeal of tsunderes, with the hard exteriors and the soft interiors (innuendo not included) that really show they can be characters that stand up for themselves.

-CCY