Ramblings of an OmniNerd

Really, Karin? - Romantic vs Familial Love in Chibi Vampire

2009-03-20T03:56:35Z

Okay, so I finally actually made an account on MangaFox. Just so that I could kinda yell about some stuff that was pissing me off.

Actually, no, I wasn't really yelling. More like discussing at length.

Karin ending spoilers ahead

(for a little context, Karin (Chibi Vampire in the US) is a manga about a vampire girl, Karin, and it ends with her basically becoming a normal human and living with her human boyfriend. Her family erases all of her memories of being a vampire and, of course, of them (her family).)

My opinion, as posted:

Quote:
Originally Posted by [ other user ] View Post

Even though she said, "I can't choose!", she did.
She chose Kenta, not her family.

Therefore, she ends up with Kenta but she can never see her family again.
(end quote)

See, that's exactly why I dislike the ending so much. It's essentially saying that Karin's romantic love for Kenta is more important than her familial love for her family. I mean, the mangaka presents this as a happy ending - a little bittersweet, but ultimately happily ever after. Karin is made to forget the family she has grown up with, who have shown again and again throughout the manga how much they care about her, and will never see them again; this should be a tragedy, not a small bump on the road to her and Kenta's happy married life. But after some (well-deserved) tears on Kenta's part, we're all expected to accept the regrettable but unavoidable means to attaining a good life for Karin. Yes, she has given up her family, but she has everything she needs: the love of her boyfriend, with whom she can build a perfectly blissful life.
Which is simply not true; despite our culture's** insistence that your romantic partner is the most important person in your life and to find true love is to find true happiness, a boyfriend, or even husband, cannot replace family.
So I guess what I'm saying is that her memory being wiped doesn't bother me as much as the fact that the ending is ultimately presented as happy even though this has happened.

Besides, to go back to that quote, Karin doesn't choose Kenta over her family, her family does. Not only is her love for Kenta paramount, but she doesn't even get to decide that it is. It's such a given that her family decides on their own that the memory wipe is "for her own good."

Plus, it just seemed somewhat unnecessary to me; is the fact that she has family who are vampires really that traumatic for Karin? What exactly is she gaining by forgetting about them? Ok, so she doesn't have to try to juggle her nocturnal family with her human life. Great. But...somehow, I'm not seeing how this memory wipe is inevitable for to have a happy life. I know it's supposed to be, but I'm just not seeing it.

Some people have mentioned that it would've felt odd for the manga to end on an entirely happy note. Now, normally I'd agree - I tend to be a big fan of stories that go for the fittingly bittersweet, or even straight up sad, ending over the artificially perfect one. But if Karin's mangaka had wanted to make the ending a bit more realistic rather than happy, she could have not made Karin magically turn human through the power of the kiss with Kenta. Aside from being cheesy, that didn't really make sense. Coming up with a less deus-ex-machina way of dealing with Karin's puchuke status would have been, in my opinion, a better way of achieving this not-100-percent-happy ending people are talking about.

**To be fair, I'm American, and I'm not sure how this sort of thing goes in Japanese popular culture. I think that family is more emphasized there (isn't there a tradition of wives caring for their mother-in-law's?), but since I am not familiar enough with the culture I don't think I can really accurately bring all of it into my reading of the manga...
But at any rate, I think a lot of the people here on this forum reacting to the ending aren't Japanese and have had similar cultural experiences to me, so this still stands as a reasonably viable response to people who feel the ending is justifiably happy...

Oh crap, that turned out waa-ay longer than I meant it to. Uh.

OH NOES THE STUPIDITY

2008-12-30T07:57:50Z

I...actually cried today upon reading someone's post on Baka-Updates's manga forums. Seriously, this person's grasp on reality was so astoundingly terrible that it brought literal tears to my eyes. Okay, so there was this thread on the "I'm Looking For" subforum titled "Romance with dominant females."

The third post down, someone recommends Inuyasha.

I kid you not. Inuyasha. And then they muse that there are "people who don't like this one as much though...=( " Hmm yes. I WONDER WHY THAT COULD BE

See, if you say something like that, no-one is ever going to take anything you say seriously ever again. Man. With people like this wandering around, it's no wonder manga is so sexist.

I actually am temped to make an account there, just so I can go around being snarky to everyone who makes stupid suggestions. "Why yes, user x, good call - having to be rescued every other episode is definately dominant behavior. You can tell she has the upper hand in the relationship by the way she's always gasping breathily and calling his name while she watches him fight. She's almost as strong as Kauru from Rurouni Kenshin."

the thread: http://www.mangaupdates.com/showtopic.php?tid=9428

Unless, of course, this user is actually just trying to screw with the person who started the thread. Because that would actually be kind of funny. Somehow, though, I doubt this is the case.

...

2008-08-21T00:15:59Z

I used to love nightmares, because I loved the feeling I got when I woke up and realized none of it was true. But these days, I keep waking from bad dreams only to realize that reality isn't much different.

Answers

2008-06-13T02:51:56Z

We're finally graduating. I can't believe it. Maybe I'll post something more about that later, but...Lately, I've been trying to find peace with myself about dance. Other things as well, I guess. It's hard.

I saw this children's book in a store once - last summer, I think. It was just a short picture book, only took a few minutes to read. It was about ballet. The beginning was real predictable and all: this young girl saw some dancers and fell in love with ballet, and put her all into after school classes. A lot like me. The girl was passionate, determined, and wanted to dance - I was sure the little book was going to end like any children's story would. The girl was going to succeed, going to be the star at her ballet school, maybe even going to become a real ballerina. But the book didn't go like that. The girl injured her leg towards the end of high school. She stopped dancing and went to college. But shortly after she graduated, she found herself alone in an open field; or maybe it was a beach, I can't quite remember. She was alone in this wide open place - and she took off her shoes and started to dance.

At first, the ending annoyed me; here was this piece of fiction, a fantasy - shouldn't it be inspiring? Shouldn't it tell me my dreams are possible, or at least let me live them through a fictional character? But then I realized that it was inspiring. It was more inspiring than any tale of perfect success could be. The book wasn't fantastic; it was real. A simple, real story, with a real message for people living real lives where perfect success just can't always happen. The girl didn't become a dancer. So few do. But she loved dance.

And eventually, she found joy in dancing anyway. Without a costume, without a stage, without an audience. Just with dance.

In the end - aren't we all dancing for ourselves?

Aerith's...Sacrifice?

2008-01-29T02:27:06Z

HUGE spoilers for FFVII if you haven't finished the first disc of the game. And live under a rock so much that you haven't gotten wind of the major plot twists just by hanging around on the internet. But hey, maybe some people are like that, so...don't say I didn't warn you.

I’ve noticed for years that when people talk about Aeris online – on FF fanforums, for example, or on Gaia – a lot of them will mention her “sacrifice,” usually in the context of it’s nobility and/or as a reason for her being a good and admirable character. This really bothers me, because Aerith’s death is not a sacrifice, at least not in the way they use the word. And it’s more than an issue of semantics; talking about her death that way is careless and demonstrates - as well as promotes - misunderstanding both of her character and of the role her death plays in the game’s story.

A key fact is that Aeris does not need to die in order to activate the holy materia. She gets killed by Sephiroth, and he happens to do it while she is praying for Holy. This doesn’t mean that her death is necessary for her prayer to be successful, or that there’s no way for her to pray without Sephiroth stabbing her. Perhaps even more importantly, Aeris doesn’t know she is going to die. She knows that Sephiroth probably wants her dead, but that’s a constant threat for anyone working to stop his plans. At no point does the game indicate that Cetra can predict the future; Aeris can’t know that when she goes to the city of the Ancients, she is going to her death. I don't doubt that Aeris would be willing to die for the planet, but as it is, she doesn’t plan on it. Of course, she does need to be dead to call the lifestream at the end of the game, but she can’t know that at the time of her death. Aeris knowingly puts her life on the line by opposing Sephiroth, and she dies while saving the planet. But that is not the same thing as dying to save the planet. A willing sacrifice would mean she needs to die to activate the holy materia, and knows it.

Misunderstanding this is a real problem, because the whole point of Aerith’s death is that it doesn’t need to happen. Hers is not a tale of a girl who gallantly forfeits her life for the greater good, nor is it a tragic story of one who heroically dies so that her lover may survive. No, her death is more real than that. It’s sudden, it doesn’t save anybody, it might not even happen if the situation were just a little different – and that’s what makes it so sad. Because death isn’t noble. In reality, it’s terrible, no one wants it to happen, and when it does, it rarely fixes anything. But sometimes it happens anyway. And when it does, the survivors aren’t left admiring the scene and thanking the deceased for everything he or she has saved. They’re left shocked and empty, thinking up countless scenarios that might have ended differently. And that’s why it’s so important that Aeris doesn't save anything by dying. To refer to her fate as a necessary and willing sacrifice is to gloss over the realistic nature of her death and miss it's true impact.

Wooo, tangent. Didn't really mean to get so pseudo-philosophical in that last bit. Oh well.
Now I sound like I'm taking these games way to seriously XD Why does this happen whenever I sit down to write? Too many english papers, methinks.

Extra notes:

There is one line from a certain translation of "Maiden Who Travels The Planet" that reads, "When Sephiroth attacked her after realizing Aerith's intentions, the conditions for summoning Holy had been fulfilled," leading some to believe that death was indeed a necessity. However, this line could also simply be saying that by the time Sephiroth impales her, she has already finished the summoning - which she has, as Cloud and the rest of the party eventually discover in the game. "Maiden Who Travels the Planet" is only available in english in online, fan-made translations; awkard and even misleading wording isn't that surprising. A different translation goes, "The requirements were fulfilled before Sephiroth struck her, after realizing her intentions," and a french version I read specifies "Les conditions furent remplies avant que Sephiroth ne la frappe." Avant: before. Not after, not when.

Narutarded

2007-02-22T06:12:47Z

So, Naruto is kinda addictive. I know lots of people like it, and that’s totally cool. I've read quite a bit of it myself. I just wanted to write about something you guys have actually seen/read, since I usually rant about stuff that possibly only I watch…^^;; And I just like making fun of stuff. Or at least trying. It is not really fun to write about the fact that something is good.

Ok, enough disclaimer. *ahem*

So, it’s a village of ninjas. And I mean a village of ninjas. EVERYONE is a ninja. All the adults are ninjas. All the kids are trying to become ninjas. Literally. Apparently, “ninja” is the only viable job option in this world. Ninjas do everything. If you want your house built, you get low-level ninja to do it. If you want to eat, you go to a restaurant run by another low-level ninja. Why not just have carpenters? And cooks? That aren’t ninjas? No wonder all the kids think their lives will be over if they don’t become ninjas. Hell, what HAPPENS to the ones that don’t become ninjas, anyway? Do they get banished from the town or something? That's the deep dark secret of Hidden Leaf Villaige. They sacrifice their non-ninja children to their ninja god. But really, the market for actual fighting ninja’s can’t be all that big, anyway. Don’t countries have their own armies? There can’t possibly be enough ninja-essential missions to support, what, 3 or 4 large villages filled to the point of spilling with ninjas.

Also, ALL ninjas wear these big special metal ninja “forehead protectors.” ** At all times. Now, the only sort of job you want a ninja for is a secret one, right? Yeah, if I was on a mission and trying to be inconspicuous, one thing I'd be SURE do is wear a big thing across my head that shouts, “I’M A NINJA.” ...Oh wait no, that wouldn't be subtle, that would just be stupid.

**And by "forehead" I mean "random body part" and "protector" I mean "weird fasion statement."