Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - A Sister's All You Need...But Is It Really?
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Juno016
 Posts: 2397 |
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Just to end the argument of whether Sagarasou is a male or female, he has pictures of himself at Yankee Stadium on his twitter. He's a guy. He also talked about how nice the women's bath looked in a ryoukan in another early photo (when they had closed the men's baths for construction and had to do sex-based shifts in the women's bath).
And for the record, Kantoku (the artist) is also a guy. I met him in a tapestry shop in Nagoya during his exhibition. =P |
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JacobC
ANN Contributor
 Posts: 3728 Location: SoCal |
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Yeah, and for the record, this "manga author is actually a woman" obfuscation is old as dirt, almost always groundless, and comes up whenever an author with a not-easily-verifiable gender creates something that gets criticized for being gross in some regard. (Notable recent examples being Death Note and Konosuba, in both cases highly likely to be written by men, but somebody on 4chan will kick off the narrative that "they're actually female" to try and delegitimize criticism of their writing.) Ignoring that this doesn't actually change the core criticism of the work in question (it's gross no matter the gender of the person who wrote it), but it should basically always be treated as a lie unless you have evidence to the contrary, because people are so fond of this tactic online. |
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relyat08
 Posts: 4125 Location: Northern Virginia |
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I try not to assume too much in general, so I don't think I'll do that. Even though, without proof, I was at least 99% sure this was a dude based on their writing anyway. Glad to have it cleared up regardless.
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15519 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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I see the problems people have between Itsuki's reaction to Nayu, and Nayu's character in general, but I kind of feel like at least from my perspective, they are kind of missing the nuance here.
Is it so surprising that some girl who was in huge bout of depression and isolation could strangely be inspired by a light novel ecchi imouto book? Because I think it is actually by following that thread that you kind of begin to really understand the characters rather than the idea she just turned into a sex obsessed otaku dream girl. Why was Nayu depressed and how did Itsuki's book help her out of it? Well I don't think we have had a straight out answer in the normal dialogue in the show, whether in flashback or dialogue. But we can maybe make some guesses about what maybe it could be in Itsuki's story, with a protagonist and his little sister. And having seen quite a lot of sister anime, I think that I can actually make a pretty good guess, maybe not sound unique to the genre, but it is probably the unquestionable acceptance of someone, to stand by them for who they are. And specifically I think it is along the lines of a little older guy standing up for a younger girl, and with help of in universe mention, he actually has a bit of a female audience that stand for that. I think that between the lines, we find that Nayu probably felt that no one would like her for who she is, accept her through any quirks that she had, and there was something about the story he wrote that touched her. But why did Itsuki turn her down? The common opinion seems to be that he felt inadequate as a writer next to her, that he would feel like lesser if he was with her, but I think that is actually kind of missing some subtleties. Nayu apparently wrote that story coming off of inspiration of Itsuki's story helping her, and I think that it is most likely that some part of that would show up in hers. The girl who after writing her own story decided to then pledge love to a guy she had only read the story of. I think Itsuki may have actually seen these feelings Nayu wrote in, that her interest in him from up to that point was not really healthy, but some idea she made up. It would practically be taking advantage of her. Why does Nayu act like this? Well, I think there actually might be a mix of not figuring out whether healthy or not. that I think she maybe put on (to became) the pervy character in trying to emulate his ecchi light novel, something decidedly not healthy, and more of a reason he should not reward. The other, I think she may have had a genuine sexual awakening, an embracing of parts that possibly separated her from people before, but now she can say whatever she wants without being ostracised, as long as it is not hurting anyone. And at this point I think it maybe started as the first, and has kind of moved into the second, she is not just saying perverted things to get his attention anymore, but that she finds it fascinating, she take pride in her bare self. Nayu has actually kind of built an actual relationship with Itsuki, not based on fiction ideas, but actual experiences. And they with her friends they just roll with whatever dirty ideas she has. Weirdly I only just now kind of realised a comparison character of Nayu for Haganai, it is Rika. Rika is actually one of the most interesting characters of Haganai, because it is kind of easy to mistake her as a perverted character just meant to excite male readers, but there is more depth to her. Rika had been kind of isolated from peers, and it comes from a clear problem with social norms. Her perversion seemed to come from what she had access to, an escalation of otaku stuff, and I think it became clear that she was doing it out of a sort of desire to be accepted, especially by Kodaka, but also as an identity. The second season especially moved with Rika being outed in putting in way too much work into being accepted by the group, unhealthily, and the sort of background story of her trying to discover her own identity, into the finale where I think we see that is far more sensitive to the relationship of her friends regardless of her social problems. I think that this somewhat makes it into Nayu's character, that her perversion is actually window dressing to the character she is underneath. She desires acceptance, she is not normal person and she has probably felt isolated because of it before, until now, she has found herself part of a group, and she I think has tried to embrace her weird side to give her worth within the group. But without saying that it is a case of Nayu's character just standing out, I think it is important to also think it is somewhat compounded that everyone around them is also affected by their own problems. Miyako is feeling directionless, Haruto I think is having his problems of feeling self worth from his work, Chihiro I think has something about family, and Itsuki.... That is the next thing, what is Itsuki's deal? Based on the recent episode that showed him losing his mother, I think that has something to do with why he is so obsessed with little sisters. Might sound like a weird connection, a mother problem into a little sister obsession, but I maybe think it comes in from two areas. An anxiety of being looked after by a female figure that he lost, that he instead makes himself the figure, that will express the love the dedication he feels lost, and wishes to express. But who knows, maybe I am just looking at it weird. |
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Yuvelir
 Posts: 1596 |
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I usually enjoy reading this Week in Anime because, both with good and bad series, it offers some jolly and creative commentary as well as valuable insight. There's nothing of that in this column, which is just mean and cynical for the sake of it. But I was expecting it, the side commentaries in the Animegataris one (a series which honestly I find way more self marturbatory than this one) showed the intent.
So this just came across as annoying to read. But a deal of that comes from me thinking that this anime is actually good. Not great or revolutionary, just good. Specially coming from Eromanga-sensei, which was a long trip on self-validation for everything and anything an author might write, with no rhythm or reason and very clearly banking on OreImo's success; the contrast with ImoSae is stark. While fanservice is just fanservice and there's no doubt that it's put in place for its own sake (and playing with the show's self-awareness, in a similar way to SaeKano as was compared earlier), I was left surprised by how much sense it makes in the series. In most cases, the fanservice scenes are well integrated with the show's narrative, making sense within the context of the scenes as a precursor or a consequence of the events or dialogue. Something that surprised me is that while the series doesn't treat with the greatest respect, it still treats them with care. In the midst of all the ludicrousness, "skinship" and sex jokes, the show makes an effort to remind you that these characters are people, that they are more than puppets to look sexy or funny on screen. Because people usually have several sides to them and can be on different moods. Speaking of them, something that I particularly enjoy is the age range of the characters. Being young adults living on their own (mostly) lets us watch them hanging out in ways that you don't see from the average anime highschooler, with all this drinking, providing for themselves... and board games. I don't know what is it about college age that makes board games good again. And for crying out loud, how are more serious and deep scenes a DETRIMENT for the series even if they come right out of the fanservice ones? Shouldn't that been commendable, that the show can manage both? That it has them at all? It looks like an attempt at denying this anime of any good merits by brushing them off to the side, which IS contrary to this column's usual heart. (Sadly this seems to have peaked at Haruto's episode and we have been in a bit of a dry spell ever since) As for Nayu and how she was incomprehensively saved by MC's novel, Micchy and Jacob seem to be (purposedly?) missing two key points: 1.It is outright stated that the grotesque and disturbing imouto fantasy at the beginning of the first episode IS NOT what Itsuki's novels are usually like. It's what happens when he's left unrestrained without an ounce of common sense. His Magical Academy series is supposed to be an average battle harem series with a hint of uniqueness and originality stemming from Itsuki's quirks and fetishes (which is what Haruto so much envies). 2.Like it or not, people and specially teenagers aren't moved by great works and the most carefully written novels. They're moved by stuff that is actually within their reach, that usually means generic pulp novels that are specifically targeted to them. A teenager being touched by a LN aimed at teenagers just makes sense: they're commonplace and they're made to speak to them directly. We see that happen in the anime fandom constantly, I myself was moved to tears by Blood+ back in the day and how many people do you see on a daily basis feeling inspired by generic shounen manga like Naruto? Of course, in Nayu's case there might be abit more than that, but DuskyPredator already went at it deeper and in more detail than I intended. |
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Calsolum
 Posts: 899 |
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point 1: I actually completely forgot about that. Yeah, his editor would probably strangle Itsuki(or himself) if he somehow managed to sneak that sort of crap past him and get it published. Hell, the whole publishing company would've probably been shut down. point 2: Ah very true, teens tend to like teen stuff and so forth. I mean sure you can have a lot of people who would like things that are outside of their age group but more often than not they would be within it or then they'ed have to readjust the classifications. |
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