Sunday 2 May 2004

Pic of the day: Multi, the robot girl from the otherwise highly realistic anime To Heart. What gives?

"Entfremdung" in anime

It's been almost 30 years since high school, so forgive me if some of the literature classes don't quite stick. I think it may have been Berthold Brecht, but I only know for sure that it was a German writer, who deliberately introduced scenes in his screenplays where he "broke the fourth wall" as we say in the comics milieu, reminding the audience that this was just a play. My teacher referred to this as "Entfremdung". I guess a literal translation would be "alienation", but that for some reason means something more sinister in English. (I find it disturbing that in this language, being a foreigner is cause for hostility, thus alienation – the process of becoming a stranger – also means becoming an enemy. Even the more moderate "estrangement" is very negatively loaded.)

Anyway, we're discussing some good anime (Japanese cartoons). The Japanese make cartoons for many other target groups beside kids, and especially the high school / college age audience has a lot of quality anime to choose from. (Or perhaps it's just that this segment is more likely to be translated since students have so much time on their hands. More about that later, God willing.) While looking back on some of my favorite anime, I realized that only one of them (Boys Be...) does not have any supernatural or science fiction element at all. Only one anime is such that I think to myself: This could really have happened, here in our world. Given that I have around 250GB of anime lying around, enough for weeks of non-stop watching, that says something.

To Heart was one of my favorite love and friendship anime, and very realistic. I could even live with the slightly psychic girl they introduced. After all, her level of supernatural activity was so moderate you could probably write it off as coincidence if it really disturbed you. I'd say it was approximately like my mother, who would also sometimes have warnings about things that were about to happen. I can live with that. But then came the robot.

Not a bad word about Multi, the friendly robot girl. She is one of the most popular characters, but for me she kinda broke the series. Suddenly it was very clear that this did not after all happen in a world like our own. It is one thing when this is made obvious from the outset, but suddenly being roused well past the middle of the series and told: "This is not even meant to be true" is a rougher experience. At least for me.

***

Of course, I am the guy who loves stories about magic and superheroes to the point where I play them online. So it seems outrageous for me to demand realism. I don't really, either. All I ask is consistent worldbuilding. Design a world that can be identified from the outset, at least roughly. I don't mind a world where robots mingle freely with humans, like in some of Asimov's stories or the anime Chobits. I don't mind a world where magic works, either just a little or a whole lot. I don't mind if people can fly and project energy beams and force fields. But I do mind if the world jerks violently sideways during mid- story. What would you think if you came to page 500 of Tolstoy's War and Peace and suddenly one of the minor characters started to leap tall building in a single bound? You would probably not be amused.

This works both way, for the record. I believe Superman would lose a lot of readers if he decided to become Clark Kent full time and live the rest of his life as a star reporter and family man. Or what if Lucifer decides that bummer, evil isn't all it's been hyped to be, I'll go back and ask God nicely to forgive me and put this stupid episode behind us. Somehow I don't think so.

So the only explanation I can find for such sudden style breach is to remind the viewer that this is a work of fiction, please react accordingly. Don't be an otaku and live in an imaginary world, it's just entertainment and there's a life waiting for you when the anime is over.

Or perhaps they just goofed up. Because I see a lot of people go "Love Multi!". Oh well. I'm rooting for Akari (the girl next door) all the way though. ^-^