Premise 1: Tsukihime, one of my personal favorite visual novels - and one I would highly recommend to anyone who wants some real sad girls in stuff, except with stronger characters and hundreds of times more action scenes - is apparently getting a remake of sorts. To use a colloquialism, much bricks were pushed out my rectum.

Premise 2: There has been more than a fair hint that everyone’s favorite no-luck heroine, Satsuki Yumizuka, might finally have her arc and story ending in said remake, mainly because 1) she’s listed as a “heroine” in the scan, 2) there’s not much else to add, and 3) Sacchin fans are probably standing outside Type-Moon headquarters right now with pitchforks right now demanding it. If this is true, I might push out enough bricks to build a house. Not like a apartment, but like a three-story mansion with twenty rooms, all filled with brick furniture and brick technology and brick refrigerators filled with brick food and drink. And, of course, a meido…made of brick. In fact, twin maids.

Needless to say I am a mild fan of Satsuki Yumizuka and being able to see her true ending, hinted at in the spin-off game Melty Blood (which worked things in the typical Nasu way by going off an ending which at the time didn’t exist), would be quite the experience. But I can’t help but feel a bit pensive about this development, in part due to something I’ve been brooding.

It was something I read on a fellow blog, or perhaps on a forum, about the popularity of side characters. Side characters, or at least characters without a defined story, tend to be quite popular, sometimes more popular than some of the main characters. Think of Kanon’s Akiko Minase, the Itsuki / Mayumi comedy duo in Shuffle!, Yukine of Clannad. Or, going outside of the visual novel genre, any of the Lucky Star minor characters, Wilhelmina / Margery / whatever yuri bait from Shana, hell, I even have soft spots for Hamaji (H2O) and Sakura Sae (sola).

But is there any logical basis behind this greater appreciation of characters left out from the big dance? I think there’s definitely a sort of bias going on here, one that might end up dimming the ranks of the Sacchin supporters if such a route ever comes out.

The irrational support of side characters is something that almost seems to stem from that age-old industry buzzword, moe. Defined in it’s most vague terms as ‘a feeling of wanting to protect something’, person after person has tried and probably failed to narrow the definition down to a specific quality or characteristic.

By it’s nature of course moe isn’t something that can be exactly defined; it’s similar to trying to define ‘cute’ in that some people might find certain characteristics attractive while some find others repulsive; except in the case of ‘cute’, and especially with ‘hot’ (internet notwithstanding), the views line up a lot more.

Moe runs the gamut, essentially, but IKnight a while back swung down his hammer of words and hit the nail as probably as close to the nail as it’s ever going to get in summarizing moe as something that induces a sort of ‘false superiority’ in the viewer.

Even with the purest of intentions, the feelings of ‘wanting to be there for the character’, as I would put it, imply a sense of being better than said character, whether it be being physically stronger, mentally superior, or simply less prone to walking into metal poles. (A contest that I, admittedly, would lose.)

It’s easy to relate this back to the fandom of side characters in what could be called a sort of ‘fourth wall moe’. While most moe traits result from something more tangible, i.e. glasses, clumsiness, monosyllabic catchphrases, this type of ‘urge to protect’ occurs because said character gets shafted by the storyline (or, alternatively, the writers). It’s kind of like why people like to know bands no one else does, or why people like to be elitist and write big long thousand-word essays on frivoulous topics (oh dear…), in that they like to feel like they are the only one there, the only one who understands.

I feel a lot of support for the side characters is that knee-jerk ‘counterculture cool’ reflex, that sense of pride from liking something that no one else likes. Satsuki might be a sweet, adorable character on her own, but she’s even better when all the other fans flock to Hisui, Akiha, Arcueid; y’know, characters with actual stories. If Sacchin was just like everyone else with a storyline and an ending, a large part of her fans might flee, screaming ’sellout’.

What I mean to do is to question the reason why many side characters are adored. They should be worshipped on their own merit, rather than on their lack of exposure.

But there’s another side to this argument. This lack of exposure produces another side effect, in that a quite one-dimensional at times picture is produced of the character, and this is a different issue.

Quite simply side characters sometimes just exist as cutouts. Akiko is the generic permanently happy MILF with unintentionally deadly cooking. Itsuki’s the Harem Runner-Up and Mayumi the Harem Reject. Hamaji exists to make us alternatingly laugh and want to go Oedipus, jabbing sharp objects into our eye sockets.

There’s nothing wrong with that - they can produce some easy laughs with their exaggerated personality, they are easy to use and (more often than not) easy on the eyes - but really, would I pick any of these characters over a main character?

They’re hardly fleshed out. Out of the four characters I mentioned, the prime achievement of all of them combined is getting hit by a car - basically being a passive pawn in an overarching event. We never do get to see their other side, the serious personality that comes out when the chips fall the wrong way, their story, their philosophy. That’s why a Sia - someone who seems to be all fun and games but has a legitimate conflict - will trump a Mayumi, why Sayuri tops Akiko, why I actually ended up feeling sympathetic for Yui’s character.

And that’s why I take my fandom of Sacchin lightly, because I don’t know if I’d really be a fan of her if I knew her true story, and I don’t know if this is the same of many of her adorers. Maybe it’s wrong to say this about her because she really did have the semblances of a story, a short moment that would invoke tears in the most stonewalled heart. But if that moment were nullified, if that story was continued, could it have the same impact? That’s my question to the Satsuki arc.

I suppose one of the good things about canvassing for side characters is that it does help to flesh them out a bit in their own way, when the fans contribute to a character’s cause and campaign for their recognition. What just worries me is sometimes, the hype just snowballs out of control and threatens to overtake the status of the character, as in the sad case of Sacchin, internet meme.

I have this feeling that if Satsuki had been a main character from the start, she wouldn’t be half as popular as she is now.

No doubt after her arc Satsuki’ll be a better character, but a vastly different one than the Sacchin we’ve all grown to expect and pity. That’s probably a improvement, but the hype will be a tough bar for Type-Moon to clear cleanly.

-CCY

(This probably all boils back to ‘Change BAD!’, as I cling to my out-dated notions of the greater-than-life Sacchin)

—

Afterword:

Four score and -19 years ago … er, that would be one year ago, Mega Megane Moe began life on, of all things, Yahoo! 360, as What is Eternity Doing Tonight?. Needless to say in a matter of days it was on Blogspot instead.

It’s been a long way from the short, episode-centric posts of the original Eternity to the often incredibly wordy analyses of M3, but it’s been an enjoyable ride all the way and it’s greatly helped keep my writing skills alive and improve my appreciation of anime as a whole. The discussion that the community can produce really does wonders for understanding and experiencing.

So, uh, yeah, I’ve got nothing funny to say, so let me just shout 1year GET and make the best wishes for the future of this blog and the anime community as a whole. Thanks for your readership!

If you liked this post, try...

• May 17, 2008 -- Harem Personality Quiz: ask your blogger what harem anime is right for you!
• July 9, 2008 -- [Rapidfire] The Touhou Conspiracy, Part I: Analyze it slowly! Yukkuri
• July 3, 2008 -- Memorializing Makoto: School Days, one year later
• June 25, 2008 -- Eating Your Cake Too: Shippers Anonymous and the curiosity of desire
• June 15, 2008 -- [Rapidfire] Shuffle! returns, selling out, Howl’s Moving Castle and emotional connection

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Analysis, Tsukihime. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.