Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Scum's Wish
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NeverConvex
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While I think this would be a reasonable way to write her, I don't think this is how she has been presented to us. I also don't think this explanation is inconsistent with how she has been presented, so that this is certainly a possible characterization of Akane, but that's where my problem is rooted; presenting a character with limited explanation and outrageous behavior, forcing the audience to build an explanation of her psyche that justifies her behavior, seems like poor story-telling / characterization to me (at least when it's done consistently over many episodes; certainly doing this more rarely can be useful in other ways, e.g. as a key part of a narrative hook). Characters who behave in very deviant ways require extra in-world evidence of who/what they are to make them feel real, and I don't think we've been given that. That's not to say there isn't merit to positing a reasonable profile of Akane like you've done here. I think your personality profiles have been well-considered and well-written. And building them can be fun - it may even lead us to a similar place as the author's understanding of the character. But I don't think the ability of the audience to conjecture a reasonable explanation of a character's personality is a good substitute for the story presenting that character's personality as reasonable in the first place. I think it undermines a story's verisimilitude when the audience is forced to develop involved conjectures that step well beyond the available in-world evidence to build a reasonable picture of a character, and I think that's the case for Akane in Kuzu. |
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Blood-
 Bargain Hunter Posts: 24093 |
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@ Gina Szanboti: No, I don't think that observation of Akane is quite right. Again, she was pretty explicit - and I have no reason to doubt her - that the enjoyment of having a man choose her over another female is seeing the pain this causes the other female. THAT'S the tasty treat for her. You could argue that this need to be "superior" to another female masks some sort of inner insecurity, I guess. It's pretty clear that she views Hanabi's onii-chan as a boring loser. The only value he holds for her is that he is something she can rub in Hanabi's face, something she can use to cause another female pain. What a friggin' cow.
By the way, I found Jacob's review of episode 7 quite good. My frustration with both Moca and Hanabi is the same. Even though they are very different people, they suffer from the same afflication: if they can't have the person they "love," nobody else will do. I suppose you can argue that Hanabi's resolve to confess to Onii-chan, rack up the rejection and then try to build something real with Mugi is an indication she is growing out of that infantile straitjacket, but I wonder how genuine it is. I found Jacob's explication of Moca's character quite persuasive, but for me it underscores a weakness of the show that I touched on earlier. This show loves to have the characters tell us directly through inner narration what their deal is. Everything we learned about Moca in episode 7 could have been conveyed with more ... dare I say ... elegance ... than the straight up, "hey, y'all, here's my deal" method used. For example, seeing Moca smugly enjoying her "elegant" breakfast with a spot of marmalade on her cheek spoke volumes of the distance between her princess self-perception and her childish reality. The funny exchange between she and her father whose belly-scratching, t-shirt and underwear reality pricks her elegant fantasy had the same effect. All those SHOWED us her deal without having to hear her perfectly on point inner voice. I wish the show did this more often. |
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Lifesongsoa
Posts: 34 |
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Fair enough, what you are saying makes sense to me and I don't want to say you are wrong, though I do feel a bit differently about it. Having reasons for examining characters like this is part of what I love about psychologically driven stories or twists in stories. If it were all explained for me I wouldn't be having as much fun. Part of it is the anticipation I think? I probably have the rest of Akane's role in this story figured out aside from maybe the tone and theme of the ending. The anticipation would be lost if I had enough pieces to be confident all my expectations are correct. Right now I don't. I will admit that much of my conjecture about Akane is based off what I expect her role in the narrative to be. I guess for me the question will be how complete the picture of her is by the end of the story? If Akane were the protagonist of the series I'd probably agree with you completely. I don't want to go off on a tangent, but I will say that I didn't need to try too hard to get into Akane's head. I processed the things I'm writing up fairly quickly as Akane made a certain intuitive sense to me. At first I started examining her behavior more closely because friends were confused by it and then I started having fun and it turned into a full blown profile. Then I joined in here and started sharing. I never really felt confused by her myself though if that makes sense? It's not that hard to become a terrible person I think, especially when no one corrects you for it and you feel like no one ever will. Akane is only one step past that I think. If Akane had some tragic backstory I except it would lessen her role in the story. I'd have a harder time finding her detestable if she did. For the moment I'm fairly confident that detestable is how we are are supposed to feel about her. I suspect that by the end of the story Hanabi won't feel so good about beating Akane and will continue to draw parallels between herself and Akane until that point. When we piece together all the angles on Akane I suspect we will have what we need to say more definitively how she is. If not I'll be as disappointed as everyone else I think. The character who confuses me the most is Mugi. I think I've probably followed his role and motivations so far in the story, but there is nothing intuitive about making sense of him for me. |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2487 |
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Yeah, I thought you might react like this, and I admit that there can be an appeal to having to puzzle out why a character does what s/he does. I think it's possible to strike a reasonable compromise, though - to share enough about a character's life and motivations for him/her behavior to feel reasonable and realistic, while at the same time leaving some elements of the character ambiguous or sufficiently unstated that they encourage investigation and analysis. I guess I just don't think Kuzu's really struck the right balance between these two goals with Akane; she currently reads as largely one-dimensional to me. Admittedly there may still be time to salvage this; if the story leans into giving her a few more layers and something like your description of her emerges from that, I'll probably retract these early complaints, though I still might whine that it's come later than it should. Mugi reads like an infatuated, jaded-but-self-aware young man to me. He seems to know what Akane is like but he fell hard enough for her that it doesn't seem to matter to him. Denied what he wants, he treats what romance is available as an idle distraction rather than an end-in-itself, and drifts from relationship to relationship without actively trying to invest in any of them. But there are cracks in this picture. Unlike Akane, he's not committed to actively using his romantic partners as playthings - it's just that his infatuation with Akane has crowded out his willingness to actively participate in other relationships. This transforms his behavior into a more passive version of Akane; where she actively manipulates men and refuses to invest in a relationship beyond its ability to validate her, he just passively fails to engage in any of the relationships he's formed, e.g. refusing even to initiate anything despite idly enjoying himself with the pretty senior girl. But he draws a line in the sand at actively using Moca, and seems to be slowly developing substantial feelings for Hanabi in spite of himself - the power of his infatuation to drive a lack of feeling for other romantic partners seem to be cracking. As this confusing change occurs, he also turns back to his old senior-girl flame, actively seeking her out; as she notes, this is the first time he's ever initiated something like this with her. On the whole he looks like a very realistic young person to me - torn between infatuation and budding, attainable romance, confused between what he thinks is right, what he wants, and what he can't have, and slowly losing his shell of emotional unavailability. |
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Lifesongsoa
Posts: 34 |
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I agree that he built a shell around himself and that it seems to be cracking, slowly, but it is cracking. Your explanation makes sense to me.
When I add in Hanabi's and Moca's influence on Mugi I start to get a clearer picture. Mugi is aware of and hyper sensitive to Akane's influence on him, but is still largely blind to how Hanabi is affecting him. Mugi is in love with the fantasy of being able to be something meaningful for Akane and he's aware that it's a fantasy, but he'd rather indulge in it than give up on it. If he really is self-aware confessing is the last thing I'd think he would do, except he is motivated by Hanabi to do it and not by Akane. Maybe it's just the way Mugi lets himself hang in limbo that is confusing to me? It should be obvious to him that isn't going to make it down to Akane. Maybe it and that is why his shell is cracking? The twisted irony of it all is knowing that it's Hanabi giving him the push he needs to dive in head first. If only we could trust Akane to turn him down... |
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2487 |
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Calling him self-aware may have been a bit much on my part. Both he and Hanabi seem complicated when it comes to self-awareness; they vacillate between, on the one hand, refusing to believe they could ever fall out of love with the objects of their respective infatuation, while on the other hand both seem quite aware that their infatuations are more immature obsessions than enduring love. They also both seem to recognize that their infatuations are likely to be unsuccessful, and - in small fits and starts - they both seem to be plodding towards the realization that they could grow to mean something substantial to one another. So I guess I think they're a bit of a mixed bag in terms of their degree of self-awareness, and their increasingly not-so-fake relationship with one another seems to be helping to improve them both in the areas where they're still a bit not so aware.
I was also mostly thinking of Mugi's awareness of Akane's true nature when I wrote that (recalling the brief soliloquy where he acknowledges to the audience that he knows how Akane is, right after he disingenuously defends her to Hanabi, pissing her off). So, self-aware wasn't really the right word for me to pick anyway - more like situationally/contextually aware in some sense. I read Mugi and Hanabi's increasing interest in confession similarly to you, I think. They both seem in fits and starts to recognize that they could build something substantial with one another, but neither of them is emotionally mature enough to just let go of their long-time romantic obsessions without an external push. Confessing just seems like the easy way to try and get that extra push, since both of them see their romantic infatuations as futile and fully expect to fail. And I completely agree that the central dramatic/romantic threat to that plan going forward is that we have no real reason to expect Akane to turn down a confession from Mugi, especially if she sniffs out that Hanabi has started to actually care about him. Far from it, in fact... |
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Gina Szanboti
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That's why I said "part" but you're right, it's probably a smaller part than I was thinking. Every time Akane comes up, Dolly Parton's "Jolene" keeps running through my head. 
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24093 |
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@ Gina Szanboti - although what you describe about Akane is not quite right with respect to her character, you have identified something I've seen noted before and actually have personal experience with. Here is one of many differences between men and women: if a man is interested in a woman, the fact that she is single and unattached is actually GOOD news. To a man's brain, that means she is potentially available and he doesn't have to deal with an already established rival. What I've gleaned from various female friends and other sources over the years, is that being a single, unattached male is NOT necessarily attractive to a woman. The reasoning being, "hmm, he's single ... does that mean something is wrong with him?" Whereas if he has a girlfriend, another woman has the "comfort" of knowing that he has been validated.
My personal experience is somewhat related. Years ago, I worked with a woman with whom I became infatuated. Let's call her Rene (pronounced re-nee, not ruh-nay), because that's actually her first name. Being the straightforward sort, I let Rene know of my interest. Her initial response was that she was flattered, but not interested in anything other than friendship. Naturally, I was disappointed, but more than happy to have a friendship with her. Then another co-worker set me up on a blind date with a friend of hers. It went okay and a little later when a group of us were discussing the upcoming office Christmas party, I mused aloud about potentially inviting this other woman as a guest. Unbeknownst to me at the time, Rene discovered that the idea of me taking another woman to the party bothered her and the fact that she was bothered made her reconsider the just friends things. We started going out shortly after that. So that is my anecdotal evidence that women become more interested in you as a man if somebody else is interested in you. 
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JacobC
ANN Contributor
 Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Ha ha, holy shit. Yeah, no. No, there is literally no difference between how a man's brain functions in terms of deciding whether or not to pursue an unattached person or not. The decision of whether or not to cheat or to "steal" someone's man or lady or whether someone finds someone else attractive on their own merits or their perceived social status/desirability has everything to do with the individual personality and values of the person making that decision, regardless of their gender. Speaking as someone who has fully experienced the brain chemistry of both sex hormones being dominant in my head at different times and been perceived as both genders in public and in flirting situations, I can break some relative differences down to you in terms of how gender affects the brain, but it's nothing that extreme, and it's entirely based on the baseline of who you are and what your values are as a person before gender enters into it. Good lord, gender essentialism is such bullshit. Women are simply humans exactly like you, they think just like you in many different circumstances, and they often make decisions for the same basic selfish or altruistic reasons. There's no magic 8-ball to understanding the mysterious complicated working of the hyoomahn feemayul. |
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Lifesongsoa
Posts: 34 |
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That sounds about right to me. Mugi has a blind spot for how Hanabi is working her way in, but he seems to be doing a good job at reading other people? Maybe he has blind spot for how anyone other than Akane influences him? Hanabi's personality is straightforward I think and makes a good deal more sense to me than Mugi does. She has a strong sense of justice and a functional conscious. That was my read on Hanabi getting scolded by her inner child. It was telling her things she already knew and accepted. Hanabi is self-aware in a much more well rounded way than Mugi is I think. She's just afraid of losing everything. What Hanabi lacks is an awareness for other people. She thinks Mugi is in love with the "pure" persona of Akane, but he's trying his hardest to love the real Akane. She assumes Mugi to be straightforward the way Kanai is. She assumes Akane has a superiority complex and won't be interested in Mugi. She believes Ecchan is innocent in all this despite momentarily comparing her to Akane. Hanabi probably doesn't fully understand Kanai either. So far he seems to be as simple as Hanabi thinks he is. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24093 |
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@ JacobC - I can only report to you what some female friends have said to me. They have admitted that knowing another woman is interested in a man can increase their own interest in that same guy. I'm not necessarily talking about where a guy already has a partner. I've heard this kind of thing expressed a number of times whereas I have never encountered the same sentiment expressed from a guy. I have never heard a guy said, you know I never really thought about Sally but I heard Bruce mention he digs her and now I kinda see what he's talking about."
No, women are not humans exactly like men. This is not true physiologically and it is not true psychologically. It would be bizarre if, after thousands upon thousands of years of being raised and treated differently, there were no psychological differences between men and women. I'm not even going to get into the blindingly obvious observation that different hardware will of course result in different pyschology. If women are humans exactly like men, why are men so massively over-represented as perpetrators of violent crime? Hey, I think I'll go down to my local bath-house where loads of females are waiting to have free, anonymous sex with men. Or maybe I'll go to a bathroom where there will be a glory hole with a female waiting to have her vagina licked by an anonymous male. 
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NeverConvex
Subscriber Posts: 2487 |
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spoiler["If only we could trust Akane to turn him down..."
Soooo, this went about as badly as we expected. Next episode's gonna really twist that knife, I expect.] |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24093 |
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That was too be expected. It is to be noted that Mugi agrees with my assessment that Akane is a narcissist. Again, I find his clear-eyed understanding of her unrealistic in a 16-year-old boy, but no sense harping on the same point that I've already made a number of times before, I guess.
Interesting to meet a "rival" to Hanabi for Ecchan's affections. "Oh crap, our eyes met."  I think Long Hair and Moca should hook up, they are both comedic relief in this show.
But good on Mugi and Hanabi for following through on their resolutions to confess. Both showed remarkable courage for a pair of anime Japanese schoolkids. Not having read the source material, I have absolutely no idea where this is all going to end up, but I really hope it does with Akane lying alone and devastated in a ditch somewhere. (Does Tokyo have ditches? Maybe I'll ask Answerman.) |
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Lifesongsoa
Posts: 34 |
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Yep. Fantastic episode though. @Blood- The subtitles used "narcissist" but I think the Japanese word for narcissist is an English loan word that sounds about like narcissist does in English. Basically, we'd know if Mugi used it and he didn't. From what little I understand it sounded to me like he just called her a terrible, broken woman. I wonder if I can find someone who might give a more direct word for word translation of that scene... If I find one I'll share it. |
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Blood-
Bargain Hunter Posts: 24093 |
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@ Lifesongsoa - ah, interesting, thank you. As a non-Japanese speaker, I am wholly dependent on the subtitles.
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