Forum - View topicDo you hate Sae Kashiwagi?
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HaruhiToy
 Posts: 4118 |
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This is old news -- Peach Girl -- which is something that I have been watching from Netflix and is clearly outside my demographic. No matter how hard I try I can't be a 14 year old girl. Yet the story is actually somewhat better than I expected.
Apart from being highly melodramatic I can find a few good things to say about PG. Aside from that the whole plot revolves around a) how diabolically clever and outright mean Sae Kashiwagi is and b) how resoundingly stupid and naive Momo and and Kairi can be to fall for everything that Sae does. A few months back we had a thread on Light Yagami -- it was clear from that the real value of a good anime is how much emotion a character can evoke from the audience. Does anyone think that Sae is in the same category or at the same level? |
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PetrifiedJello
Posts: 3782 |
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Damn. I finally met someone with balls enough to have actually watched Peach Girl. Personally, I can't get past the fugly art the series uses. It's worse than the designs of Initial D, in my opinion.
Certainly explains why there are 128+ views and no comments (aside from this one). |
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ShinobiX
 Posts: 889 Location: NY |
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nope there was 1 extra. Probably many like mine too. Got deleted.
I laughed at the thread LOL...because its Peach Girl. Fine you want me to be more constructive? It's already been established that Peach Girl is a mediocre, rip off, unpolished, piece of work. Peach Girl is nowhere near the prestige of animes like Death Note. Put it bluntly, the comparison is stupid and inconceivable. Also, its hard to compare animes of two diff. genres. What would hve been more appropriate is if you compared Sae, to the Sae clone in Ichigo 100%. Not a psychopathic killer who of course will emit more emotions than a jealous high school brat. |
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Richard J.
 Posts: 3367 Location: Sic Semper Tyrannis. |
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I bought the freaking LE with a pink purse! I watched this series and loved it! (Well, I am a former soap-opera watcher! No, really.) Personally I don't hate Sae at all. In fact, she's my favorite character from the series. Of all the characters she's actually the most developed and clever, has the best character arc going from bitch to semi-decent person with Yandere tendencies and frankly she's the smartest. There's nothing quite as fun as watching her screw with people. (Also her explanation of the Wounded Gazelle Gambit was just wickedly awesome. Frighteningly true as well.) Sure the series is a melodramatic and over-the-top sequence of bad decisions and dubious thinking but that's the point! It wouldn't be such a soap-operish fun fest otherwise. Since I didn't feel hate toward Sae, I may not have exactly the kind of opinion you're looking for but I do agree that "the real value of a good anime is how much emotion a character can evoke from the audience" more or less. Clearly I don't place Sae in the same level as Light because I don't hate her but also because she actually grew as a character. Light kinda just devolved as the series went on, becoming less and less interesting to me. I found the side characters much more appealing throughout that series. If the series had been from Light's father's perspective, I think it would have been better. I think what matters is the kind of emotion the series and characters overall evoke in determining the subjective value of an anime. I mean, objectively, Peach Girl is average at best but subjectively I'd rate it much higher personally because it's so much zany fun and I love watching the characters make bad decisions then try to fix them in equally dumb ways. I can understand someone hating Sae and if you hate her a lot, but you kinda like hating her, then I'd say that the series is subjectively better for you than it might be for others. As long as you enjoy feeling that negative emotion, then you're enjoying the series. Did that make sense? |
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bravetailor
Posts: 817 |
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Peach Girl follows a fairly typical shoujo logic in that everyone in the story makes dumb decisions and get weak-kneed over matters of the heart/lust.
Sae is the best character in the show simply because she is unrepentantly evil in a world of idiots. I almost wished she stayed evil throughout, I didn't buy her turnaround one bit, and it's completely ridiculous that Momo would have anything to do with her after everything she did. But that's shoujo logic for you. I think Suzuka (from er, Suzuka) is probably a more hateable character than Sae though. It may be one of the only anime where the character the show is named after is basically a complete bitch with almost no redeemable qualities. But then again, the show is accurate in saying that many guys go for girls like that. BTw, Death Note is not exactly a masterpiece either. Also, I prefer villains who are consciously evil over fundamentalist crackpots. |
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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It was actually the art that kept me from watching this for years. I first saw it in a sampler DVD that the U.S. Newtype used to print. I suppose the artwork is supposed to appeal to a sort of valley-girl demographic. Overdone makeup and overly-cute clothes an all that. But you do have to give them credit for coming up with a mouth design that at least looks like a kiss could really happen. But as with most anime whose artwork doesn't appeal to me, if the story is there I will keep watching it. In this case I realized the story was not there and it was only the bad guy (gal) that kept things moving along. Of course I kept hoping that she would quit it just long enough for Momo to get laid, and then she (Momo, that is) might calm down a bit develop some sense of perspective. As for balls -- well I am more the Kairi type than the Toji type. Always willing to look in on what the other sex is up to in case the silly little critters need help. |
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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I don't see where Suzuka really deserves that. I didn't really like her that much myself but she never seemed to mean harm to anyone. Remember it was Yamato that was interested in and pursuing her not the other way around. Left to herself she would do nothing but go to school, track practice, and spoiler[brood about her dead love interest.] The only way she is really the "bad guy" is if you posit that all girls must respond to the guy who comes on to them and to not do so, (which she did) is an active bad act. I've known guys who think like that the same as I have known girls who act like Suzuka. In that relationship I can't see how you cam blame anyone but Yamato for Yamato's frustration. In comparison Momo was serial date raped. |
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bravetailor
Posts: 817 |
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I didn't have a problem with her turning Yamato down, I hated him too. But Suzuka could barely handle even a casual conversation without making negative remarks that were unnecessary. And the show seemed to imply that she was always like this, not just because she was struggling with the past. I howled in laughter when they showed flashbacks of Suzuka when she was younger...I was expecting a cliche' where she used to be nice and mellow...but she was still a bitch back then! It was at that point I knew the show was purposefully making Suzuka as unlikeable as possible. 
See, I think I dislike bitchy people who THINK they're right rather than people who know they're wrong but are evil anyway. Just personal experience, but I can respect someone who at least knows they're petty and evil, but I seriously can't tolerate people who think they're right all the time. Which is why I can't really hate Sae. She's bad and she knows it, if you're like Momo and you trust her every time she puts on a cute face, it's your own damn fault because Sae has always pretty much been an open book. |
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Richard J.
Posts: 3367 Location: Sic Semper Tyrannis. |
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I think you're being a tad harsh on Suzuka though. I got the impression she was so negative as something of a defense mechanism, you know, one of those people who puts up lots of metaphorical walls with barbwire because they're actually scared of letting themselves care about someone's opinion, thereby giving that person the power to hurt them. Or I'm projecting and Suzuka really was just a bit of bitch. I think the source material supports both character interpretations.
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HaruhiToy
Posts: 4118 |
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You guys now have me thinking I am going to have to eventually pull the DVDs off the shelf and look at it again. By my measure it seems like she is a more successful character than I had thought to invoke such different perceptions. Just for the record, most guys that have a GF that is a knockout, they like having them more than a little bit bitchy -- to everyone but themselves. Right? |
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