Forum - View topicThe Tragic Girl in Anime
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Sahmbahdeh
Posts: 713 |
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Unfortunately, I'm not a huge fan of either of these shows. That said, SAO actually takes a far more original and bold approach to its situation, whereas YLIA plays its trope entirely straight. SAO also managed to do it in less run-time, while maintaining its emotional strength. For these reasons, I consider SAO's use of the trope superior.
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Vaisaga
 Posts: 13240 |
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I think the hardest hitting one for me was spoiler[Yuzuki] from Hell Girl season 3.
spoiler[She was actually the main viewpoint character, the one we followed for the whole season as she gets wrapped up with Hell Girl related events in her town. She's a good girl who does her best to stop people from pulling the string, but she never succeeds. It isn't until the very end of the series we learn that she was actually dead the whole time. She was a happy child once until her father, a bus driver, was involved in a fatal accident due to bad brakes. Her family was ostracized as murders because of it, causing Yuzuki's sick mother to take her and flee. Her mother eventually dies and Yuzuki returns home, curls up with her teddy bear, and dies too. She gets made into the new Hell Girl but abuses her power and is about to be sent to hell herself. Thankfully Ai steps in to save her, and I only hope that her soul went to Heaven afterwards. If there's a Hell, there must be a heaven, right?] |
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invalidname
 Contributor Posts: 2482 Location: Grand Rapids, MI |
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I do quite like how this trope is handled much differently in ef - a tale of melodies. This is one of those rare male examples, where the accomplished violinist (hey, that trope too!) Kuze is dying of a conveniently obscure terminal illness and has decided to "settle his accounts" before dying, therefore having no time for the affections of manic pixie schoolgirl Mizuki, who is fairly obsessed with him. The trope inversions here come from the fact that it's the healthy character (Mizuki) who's trying to give sickly Kuze a reason to live, and that she is arguably the protagonist of this arc, being the driver of the plot and the primary POV character (which is quite unusual for these seinen romantic dramas). The novelty almost makes up for the extreme skeeviness of a high school student infatuated with a man many years her senior. It is no small relief that Mizuki and Kuze's relationship is the only one of the four in ef that we don't see consummated on-screen. |
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Gin-No-Ji
 Posts: 28 |
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megumi sakura from school-live, a moe series in an apocalypse setting. she truly did everything she can for her students to live instead of purely surviving in an apocalypse, even after spoiler[her deathspoiler[ she remain a voice of reason for the main character yuki, who is cheerfully oblivious to the apocalypse as she mentally blocks out disturbing images, and yuki imagines the deceased teacher megumi to be by her side, giving her the much needed support in dreaded situations] ]
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Fronzel
Posts: 1906 |
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I remember the villain in Soultaker had some serious illness that meant towards the end of the series she didn't even have the strength to sit upright.
That show makes no sense, though, so I can't offer any opinion on how it affected the story. |
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Treeborn
 Posts: 729 |
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Im hesitant to call SAOs approach bold. I mean, didn't every single character in SAO season 1 end up looking like that?
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Zin5ki
 Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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Part of my initial exposure to anime involved a marathon viewing of Kanon. Makoto's arc simply entranced me, rod, line and sinker.
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Vaisaga
Posts: 13240 |
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Personally I wanted Kuze to hurry up and die already because all he did was angst about it instead of making better use of his time. |
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7jaws7
 Posts: 705 Location: New York State |
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I think spoiler[Homura Akemi could be the best example of the "already-dead tragic girl" given what happens to magical girls in that series. She also ends up unintentionally pushing Madoka into fully developing, which is ironic considering she was trying to do the opposite.
Madoka Magica is fascinating in that you could also interpret it so that Madoka is actually the tragic girl, who also pushed Homura into a better character by the end of the series.] |
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EmperorBrandon
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 2216 Location: Springfield, MO |
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The intro note should include spoiler[Clannad], which is also majorly spoiled in the article.
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Angel M Cazares
 Posts: 5507 Location: Iscandar |
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WARNING: Minor spoilers
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For as much as I consider Sword Art Online an ineptly written story, the Yuuki arc was well written and pretty realistically showed the effects of having a terminal disease. I will only question SAO's decision to portray a young girl having AIDS in a developed country like Japan as highly improbable. That scenario becomes even more far fetched when you consider that SAO's story happens on the future, when you assume that medicine will be so advanced that children with AIDS should be very, very unlikely. As far as which show handles the tragic girl better, SAO is the winner over Your Lie in April. Kaori is infected with the cliched "anime disease" (someone in the forums said that Kaori has ALS); using the anime disease card is pretty lame and lazy writing. And for as sad and tragic as YLiA's finale was, I still find it very optimistic. |
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EmperorBrandon
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 2216 Location: Springfield, MO |
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I agree with this one. Maybe not the hardest, but it's at least one of them. One of thing things that gets to me the most about her story, though, spoiler[was her friendship with Akie. There are lot of examples of people rather chillingly unfairly condemned to hell (going all the way back to the first season with that episode of the nurse, but the third season particularly hones in on it in a number of cases), but with her... That scene where Yuzuki came across Akie when she was still alive, while she was completely shunned by everyone else, and got a brief moment of kindness from her... That always hits me so hard, as does rewatching the first half of the series with those two interacting knowing what's coming. I do think that Yuzuki is fine as far as her afterlife (though the show is only implicit on what that entails for either destination to the very end) is concerned thanks to Ai (also a wonderful scene in the last episode with them), though it's still bittersweet, with an emphasis on bitter, to me.] |
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Lemonchest
Posts: 1771 |
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I suppose Natsuboogie Rendezvous would be one of those rare tragic dead guy anime. Of course, because it's a romance story, the character whose development is motivated by the ghost is not the widow but the young guy who wants her to move on & hook up with him. Went to some weird places, that one.
Now Ghost, Ghost was a good movie. |
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Minos_Kurumada
Posts: 1186 |
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Yuuki got AIDS from her parents, one of them got infected before marriage, infected the other party and obviously the 2 daughters. AIDS at birth can be avoided, however, this is only true if the doctors know the mother is infected and prepare the proper procedures. And, even in the odds of the baby not getting infected during birth, breast milk contain AIDS, so, if the mother doesn't know that she will infect the baby with her milk. Another important thing: SAO starts in 2022, that's 6 years from now, we don't have an AIDS cure and Yuuki was 14 at her time of dead so... |
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Gina Szanboti
Posts: 11601 |
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@ Lemonchest: From what I recall of Natsuyuki Rendezvous, you've got that backwards. spoiler[Ryousuke was the catalyst for both Rokka and Atsushi to move on.]
@ 7jaws7: How are we supposed to know what you're spoiling?  You have to leave something uncovered to give us a clue as to whether we want to read what you think.
Not a cheat, in this case. More an illustration that people's minds are not bound by their illness (unless they are). If Stephen Hawking were given access to SAO's VR gear, you can bet he wouldn't be in a wheelchair in the virtual world. Btw, it gave my inner grammar police a thrill to see "different tack" used correctly for once. Most people think it's "tact" because they don't realize it's a nautical term. 
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