Last week’s episode prompted me to post and to wonder (or perhaps to predict) if this show was going to be, as they call it, a train wreck. To be fair to the show, it’s only 1/6 of the way through, but that does mean that the first story arc is complete, and I can at least say that this story arc was an unqualified train wreck. That being said, I can’t help but grin from ear to ear as I write this. I have to give it credit. Plenty of shows have sucked and been unwatchable, but it’s rare for one to still make you want to keep watching.
The phrase “so bad it’s good” comes to mind. This is a phrase used appropriately to describe movies moreso than TV shows. When you’re spending a 90 minute stretch to watch something, the phrase makes a lot of sense. But when you’re watching something week in and week out, if something is bad, it’s just bad. It’s a rare breed that can still entertain for such a long period of time, not despite, but because of how bad it is. Amagami SS is one of those special shows.
So why was it so bad? I could point to the extremely poor pacing, which saw almost nothing happen the 1st 2 episodes, followed by a bizarre 3rd and then a 4th that hit us with more shit than the 1st 3 combined. I’ve already written on the awfulness of the 3rd episode and its misogyny, on which the final episode of this arc happily builds. Then there is the 4th episode by itself, which was crammed so full of cliches – not the good kind – that I’m still in awe and wonderment at the enormity of the feat.
Let's look at this abomination one more time, shall we?
Really, if I were to write about every little thing, this post would go far too long. Suffice it to say, I got a good laugh out of the revelation that Junichi and Haruka had met before, at an important moment of both of their pasts, which was also intricately tied to Haruka’s actual dog. And the laughs just kept coming, from somehow sticking a swimsuit scene into a Christmas Eve setting to having Haruka surprise Junichi with the dream date, hotel room and all.
But the moment that sticks in my mind, that offended my sensibilities too much for its own good is just when Haruka came out of the bath, upset that Junichi didn’t try to peek at her. This is, to quote @8C from Twitter, “misogynistic idealism.” The same can be said about the 10-years-later gag that they pulled immediately after. We are never shown the actual difficulties of the romance – the parts that are interesting – and are told that, as soon as you get the girl – or rather, as soon as the girl gets you – everything will be hunky dory from then on. Your “work” is finished.
It doesn't matter that the central theme of this show is Christmas, god damn it! We're gonna have a swimsuit fanservice scene!
Anime in general and especially visual novels such as the one on which this show is based are known for their misogyny. Visual novels get away with this because most of them are wish fulfillment porn anyway. Anime shows get away with this because they tend to be pretty absurd comedies, where multi-dimensional characters and realistic relationships aren’t needed.
But those things are needed in a somewhat serious romance story like Amagami SS. It just doesn’t work when the climactic, super dramatic moment is dependent on the girl acting like what a “misogynistic idealist” believes she should act like. Or if the build up to that involves the girl fulfilling the guy’s weird fetish of being a dog. Let me quote chaostangent from an astute post he made after only the first 3 episodes had aired:
These are not even characters but amalgamations of the most tired, staid and all-round tedious aspects of archetypes that have mutated into a hideous, cringeworthy diorama of what sociopaths believe realistic or dramatically engaging human interaction is.
And yet, I must laud Amagami SS for being so bold in its adaptation of a visual novel. Most anime adaptations of visual novels tone down the obviously misogynist and wish fulfillment fantasy aspects in favor of creating a story better suited for the medium. Not Amagami SS. I have not played or read any of the source material, but I’m confident that this anime has embraced its heritage fully.
It took me a second viewing to connect this scene and the previous one and notice that Junichi was hiding an erection here.
That’s why, despite the show’s insurmountable flaws, I enjoyed this first story arc of Amagami SS. Most anime shows tread that misogynistic line shyly, afraid to reference the fact that it’s an overarching theme in so many works in the medium – there’s an entire genre devoted to it – all the while partaking in it. Amagami SS outright celebrates it, and, most importantly, it does it without a hint of irony. In a way, it is a reflection of the expectations of the current otaku community at large.
This is a show that is fully aware of the path to failure that it’s marching down. And far from despairing it, it revels in it, inviting us, the viewers, to join in as well. I won’t be joining it, but I’ll happily look from afar at what other droplets of idealistic misogyny lies in its path.
Girls love it when you try to peek on them while they're in the bath. It almost always leads to a confession and then sex.
The whole “wish fulfilling” rant is completely silly to begin with. Why do people watch action shows? Space operas? For _realism_?? Wish fulfillment is a fundamental aspect of any form of fiction. Pretending that this is a bad thing that this show is guilty of is pretty stupid.
This train of thought has potential. In the minds of many, there’s good wish fulfillment and there’s bad wish fulfillment. Light sabers and X-Wings good, kissing knee pits bad. But WHY, is the question.
So, lvlln, does this mean you won’t be covering the other arcs? I’m curious what you might think of Kaoru’s.
Well, as I wrote, I’m greatly enjoying this train wreck. I plan to write on at least each of the arcs.
As for why light sabers and X-wings are acceptable, it’s because in Star Wars, these are things that make sense given the characters, setting, and contex. We actually get to see Luke as a character who grows and suffers throughout the movies. The so-called wish fulfillment scenes aren’t enjoyable to him. He’s putting his life on the line in order to do what he believes is right for the galaxy. Hell, his family gets killed, and his own father chops his hand off. That said, I don’t think Star Wars is a particularly good piece of fiction either.
The knee scene turned out to be but a small problem in this arc. The main issues are that Haruka is not a believable character and that Junichi “wins” with no effort. In fact, it’s Haruka who does all the heavy lifting. These scenes don’t make a whole lot of sense given what we’re shown about these characters and serve as meaningless fanservice. And fanservice is just fine in little chunks, but when they make up the core of a somewhat serious romance story, things fall apart, as in Amagami SS.
That is a false dichotomy. Works need not be only realistic OR pure wish fulfillment. Of course, wish fulfillment is a part of many works of fiction, but it is certainly not a fundamental part of the.entire medium. The key is that works can still have believable, charismatic characters who go through the bad things where we sympathize with them AS WELL as their moments of triumph where we wish we were them.
Amagami SS eschews the former for having just the latter. Which, again, is fine in a dating sim where that’s the whole purpose. The main character is a stand in for yourself, and mere avatar. The other characters are designed to fulfill your fantasies, without regard for how they actually are as a character.
And that’s the fundamental problem with Amagami SS. It tries to tell a romantic story in a semi-serious manner, but it gives us one that is barely passable by visual novel standards.
In what way do you consider this story arc to be mysogynistic? You’ve labelled a number of scenes as being mysogynistic, but you never actually elaborate on why those scenes suggest that the story writers have a hatred of women.
I believe the key here is the phrase “misogynistic idealism.” Haruka is not a fully – or even partly – formed character. She is the image of what a man would fantasize an ideal woman to be like. When faced with a downright bizarre fetish, she not only accepts it but ends up enjoying it. She’s aggressive, requiring barely any effort by Junichi to woo. Despite saying “no” to him twice, her “no”s actually mean “yes.” In fact, she’s the one who woos him in the end. Basically, her reactions to Junichi are entirely too convenient, the way a “proper woman” should act, rather than the way an individual would act.
Of course, this is hardly unique to Amagami SS. In fact, I would be hard pressed to name an anime that doesn’t fall into the same trap. Even shows with relatively strong female figures like Bakemonogatari or The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya are guilty of this. But few other shows rely so heavily on the drama created by the character interactions. Nor do they have the main heroine follow the misogynistic ideal so closely, at the complete expense of any other character trait.
To be fair, Junichi isn’t a fully formed character either. I’d say that the focus is less on fleshing out the characters themselves as it is on how they explore both their budding emotions and the boundaries of their relationship.
Keep in mind that the knee kissing was never a fetish to begin with. Haruka’s clearly not comfortable with kissing Junichi on the lips in that scene in much the same way that she’s not comfortable seeing him as a lover at the time. They aren’t simply trying to be creative – there’s a certain awkwardness present as they try to define their relationship.
Once he does kiss her, of course, he obsesses about it, and subsequently gets turned down every time that he asks her to do it again. It’s really only at this point that you could call it a “fetish”.
While I can’t speak for any individual guy’s concept of an “ideal woman”, if you define it broadly, in the sense of “yamato nadeshiko”, you’ll find that none of those traits really apply to Haruka. Qualities like “assertiveness” (or in Haruka’s case, perhaps “decisiveness”) tend to be more associated with traditional male gender roles than they do female gender roles. But that’s just my opinion.
If the female character is protrayed as aggressive, that may not qualify as woman-hating (misogyny). After all, most feminist arguement is that female is placed at a subordinate position as someone who obeys, not someone to chase another.
Haruka may be portrayed as a hunter in this last episode, someone who is both older and more powerful in the relationship. I would imagine this to be the opposite of traditional woman-hating/female-sterotype views. It may be the ideal woman for some man, but being the ideal does not make it woman hating.
Otaku culture has expanded and added to the pigeonholes that women can be put in, beyond the classic submissive stay-in-the-kitchen image. Heck, look at the most popular of them, the tsundere. Such a female character clearly doesn’t fall into the classic ideal woman stereotype. But she is still a victim of a misogynistic ideal, limited by what the writer has deemed a good female should act like. Yandere, deredere, little sister, older sister, etc.; there’s more than I could possibly list off the top of my head. Humans are a very creative animal.
Haruka is clearly not the classic ideal woman, but she is defined by character traits designed to trap her into a a role that a male audience can handle and fantasize about. Her actions are not those of a human, but of the idealistic image of one, designed solely to give the protagonist a happy ending. The real kicker was the immediate cut to “10 years later,” showing none of the difficulties that a couple faces, and rather showing that, as soon as the girl’s in love with you, it’s happily ever after for you.
Again, Amagami SS is hardly the only anime guilty of this kind of thing. On the contrary, these roles have become so ubiquitous in anime that it’s the rare show that comes along that doesn’t blatantly disrespect women in some way. Or rather, make that many ways. It’s just that few shows celebrate it so openly and so shamelessly.
It’s always interesting to me that people, including me, find enjoyment in trashy stuff. Such blatant fan service and cliche plot is, in theory, something that offers little. However, looked at another way, aren’t all anime simply fictional fantasies to satisfy our desires? The fan service and ridiculous situations are no different from deep works that offer mind masturbation.
Of course, the main purpose of any entertainment medium is to entertain. Works can go about doing this in a multitude of ways. Some might make you think or impact you emotionally, while some can be simply trashy.
But I do think the so-called “deep” stuff are more than mere mental masturbation. The ones that succeed make us think a little more about ourselves, and perhaps help us learn something we had yet to realize about ourselves and the human condition. They give us something that stays with us going forward, more than just memories of being entertained. That’s what trashy entertainment doesn’t do.