Forum - View topicINTEREST: Domestic Girlfriend Creator Comments on Backlash From Overseas Fans
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capt_bunny
 Posts: 364 |
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I was thinking the same thing. Except the fact that Japan REALLY likes to use Twitter. It is toxic but kinda agree on using another social media to talk to fans or anything. |
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kotomikun
Posts: 1205 |
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I've see a lot of Twitter insults, and don't think I'd describe any of them as "jocular." But maybe he's just trying to sound diplomatic.
This show's nowhere near being on any list of stuff I'd consider watching, but I don't get why people would go after this story in particular. Schlocky melodramatic-slash-steamy romance plots are a dime a dozen; though most of those come from that section of the bookstore with half-naked people on all the covers. Maybe this one just has more internet exposure because it's an anime. The takeaway here, I guess, is that both Twitter and this manga are things you shouldn't get involved with unless you understand what they're about. |
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Adamanto
Posts: 154 |
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Japan likes using Twitter because the kind of garbage you're talking about doesn't really happen in Japan. Japanese people don't rudely tweet @ people they don't like and chew them out like this, that's a western phenomenon. That's why Sasuga complained about western fans in this news story; Japanese fans just don't do this kind of crap, and Japanese creators aren't used to Twitter being like this because they don't interact with westerners much there. |
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Brent Allison
 Posts: 2444 Location: Athens-Clarke County, GA, USA |
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I'm not an expert on genres and marketing in the Japanese manga industry, but I assume that there will always be some sort of market for comics featuring forbidden romances that involve character development and plot progression over time. There aren't many universals across human cultures, but the fascination with forbidden romance seems to be present at some level, at least in developed and hierarchical societies.
I never read it, so I have no idea. As for Twitter, I am very thankful my job does not rely on my having an account. I would likely be more in touch with other anime and manga scholars, but I'm short-tempered when it comes to provocative news and have weird and dumb opinions about things. I would hate to be in the entertainment industry where that's a job requirement; folks in that position have my sympathy. 流石さん、僕の同国人は、本当にごめんなさい。君の漫画は、ありがとございます。 (You never know, she might be reading this.) |
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bennyl
Posts: 123 |
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It is hilarious to me that people believe fandom entitles them to narrative control. You can debate the narrative, question if the situation was realistic, did or didn't meet expectations, did or didn't stay true to the characters, but the story is the author's. In a serial, the journey is always more important than the destination.
Frankly, I love dumpster fire endings. They subvert expectations. The "bad" or neutral ending to many animes drew me to the genre. In the end, nobody gets what they want and nothing is completely resolved. It doesn't get more realistic than that. |
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tsundereikemen
 Posts: 57 Location: France |
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I've never read nor watched the series but endings usually have a lot of factors. Like depending on characterizations. I saw someone here mention Rui was 'useless' or something and I'm not sure that's really a good example but let's say that spoiler[if Rui didn't really develop much as a character and her relationship doesn't develop much outside of what her and the MC keep doing to each other (and I know the MC has always loved Hina) so there's a high chance it would end against Rui. Not saying with Hina but just not with Rui.]
Like there's also the fact that in Japan, culturally they're more prone to choose the loving and wife-y female character. spoiler[So if Hina was that kind of character then her winning was also pretty obvious.] Unless you want a twist. Unfortunately most male western fans only like a waifu to win coz she's cute or like how assertive she is. Very different reasons but usually very small reasons that make them scream their heads off if their side loses lol (this is just what I got from years of being in ship wars and shipping fandom) Although same can be said about female Western fans except they usually shit on the female characters and are unfortunately more toxic than male fans. They do however do the same thing and can eventually attack authors when they're unhappy about endings (see Bleach). |
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Godaistudios
Posts: 2075 Location: Albuquerque, NM (the land of entrapment) |
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So after reading the whole thing, my issue isn't that he wound up with one or the other, but that it was badly written to get to the end. Characters that had grown and developed became caricatures as plot devices to finish the story. All the work over the years became a dumpster fire because the author decided went with cheap, lazy, and forced.
If you want to tell a good story, earn your narrative. Build the world and develop your story to get to the ending you want. But if you make characters act in ways that betray the growth you put in them because "the plot demands it," your work suffers. Ultimately Sasuga Kei crapped on all three of our main characters here, treating them all like garbage, so even if your chosen girl was the one who he wound up with, she's more like a consolation prize. It's a hollow victory because it was badly written. And if your chosen girl wasn't the one at the end - it's because the author decided to retcon the past character development - to make it nothing - because "the plot demanded it." That said, some reports indicate that the author received death threats. That's an unacceptable response. I understand how we get emotionally invested into characters, watching them grow and change. Entertainment has that affect on us. You can go back decades and see the news rags of the past that would talk about the popular series, their characters, how the story was going etc. I get being angry with the author, but polite criticism will get you much further than what she's been subjected to. Last edited by Godaistudios on Thu Jun 11, 2020 1:04 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Ming Yi
Posts: 216 |
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This isn't uniquely a "western" phenomenon as much as you think. Japanese creators and celebrities do get harassed on social media too. |
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AJ (LordNikon)
 Posts: 514 Location: Kyoto |
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any series that ends this way with MC's head not stuffed in bowling bowl bag on deck of sailboat is good ending.
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Kyo Hisagi
Posts: 259 |
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It was one of the worst endings I've read in my entire life, but no fictional story deserves this anger, backlash and threats. It's the real person we talking about, what do you want, lynch her? What are you, 11? Come on. Just don't support the author, it's that simple. Imagine hundreds and thousands started to threaten end your life because they didn't like the way you work? Sounds kinda scary and uncomfortable, isn't it?
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Melicans
Posts: 627 Location: Canada |
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Nothing but disgust for the people who threaten and harass under the veil of anonymity. In the end it is the author's story, and the ending should be as she wants it.
Was the ending terrible? The choice made in the end was not the one I would have preferred, and I think overall ran contrary to the direction the story headed in the second half; but in the end I think it was the way the ending came about that gave it such a sour taste to lots of people, even to the fans of the 'winner'. It is not so much even the events that transpired to cause the ending; rather, the way the characters acted after those events occurred - spoiler[particularly Rui] - seemed completely unrealistic even in the context of this fictional universe. spoiler[I was with the story up to Hina getting smashed by the car and ending comatose, even though it didn't show the repercussions for the perpetrator. I was with the story for the realistic timeframe and timeleaps following that, and even the rather cliche reason Hina regained consciousness (which felt like an echo of I''s in its execution)]. But what took me away from it in the end and left me feeling disappointed in the conclusion was spoiler[Rui's decision to break off the planned wedding because of a secondhand conversation she overheard at a distance from around a corner]. That more than anything else was the moment that killed it for me, running contrary to her character and connections with Natsuo throughout the story. Kei Sasuga may write it melodramatically, almost soap operaish at times, but the characters she wrote and the feelings and interactions they portrayed through the story always felt real and genuine. So for her character to make that decision, it felt more like an unrealistic, long-lasting, and misplaced 'survivor's guilt' than anything concretely rooted in her personality. I'm not surprised that it ended like this; nobody should be if they read her previous work, GE. And if I had to say if I'm looking forward to her next story... yes, of course I am. There are ways of expressing dissatisfaction, and to harass the author to the extent that she has to speak out about it... it's just disgusting, quite frankly. I hope it doesn't put her off work as a mangaka, because her stories have human touches and qualities that other series often miss. |
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5925 Location: Virginia, United States |
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@Melicans
I haven't gotten that far yet. spoiler[Not yet to the wedding part]. Have to agree with you, throwing a whole spoiler[wedding out the window for some misheard, out of context, faraway conversation] is not realistic. |
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Godaistudios
Posts: 2075 Location: Albuquerque, NM (the land of entrapment) |
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I don't know if you have read the final chapter (277) yet but it's spoiler[Rui's reasoning that makes this all the worse. That 2-3 page conversation with Hina is that she came to the decision because she could never "beat" her sister. She had already been shown to throw off that inferiority complex earlier on in the series. She had been shown to grow and develop into her own woman, with confidence and maturity she didn't have before. But since the "plot demanded it" Sasuga betrays her character by making her a caricature of herself. It makes Natsuo look bad because it treats him with an insincerity with not only his love for Rui, but towards how he perceived his relationship with Hina. He showed character growth to move forward multiple times throughout the story, including moving on from her when he gave her his ring genuinely recognizing the relationship he did have with her was over. It really did become a familial love on his end - that was written anyway - so he no longer was looking at her like a lover. This even moreso when she was in a coma for several years - so this idea that he would marry her out of love when any emotional connection to her is a shallow one fails to make readers believe that he married HIna because he loved her like a wife. As such, Sasuga fails on the "show, don't tell" by having Natsuo offer up his dialogue that makes it seem like he's talking himself into believing it's love. It's more like because Rui turned him down that HIna became a consolation prize. As to Hina, she really had no character growth. She was a woman who kept on having bad things happen to her to make the reader feel bad and connected to her - but she herself remained pretty static. She was always looking to the past which was symbolized in her being unable to get rid of the rings. The first time we see her finally start to move forward was in her blessing Rui and Natsuo's marriage and secure that marriage when she decided to stop the tabloid. So Sasuga ultimately betrayed Hina here as well as it made her ability to grow and change meaningless.] So that's my breakdown.The characters became caricatures of themselves. No way to explain that without the huge spoiler tag. GE did have some issues, but from what I can recall, I don't remember the characters betraying themselves in the way we saw demonstrated here. Last edited by Godaistudios on Sat Jun 13, 2020 12:41 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Melicans
Posts: 627 Location: Canada |
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That's exactly it, and written far more eloquently than I could have. I do think Hina continued to have growth after she returned (this is so far back it isn't even worth spoilering), but it was learning to be a sister - to Rui too, not just Natsuo. She didn't end up following and achieving a dream like Rui did, but she still had her milestone moments in her own plot progressions. They were intertwined but separate character stories, and Hina's was about adapting from romantic to familial love. All that growth was thrown out in the final four chapters, with each character regressing. |
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SilverTalon01
Posts: 2417 |
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I liked the anime version precisely because it was a hot mess. |
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