The face of a true protagonist?
Males. You know, the things that are not female. In the real world, males consist a bit over half of the human population and in anime world, about 10%. Of course, this depends on the anime series but it is noteworthy how little portion of existence males have in anime. Not that I usually bother complaining – I’d rather see cute girls on screen any day – but I would like to share some thoughts about how males are typically portrayed in anime, especially in those popular in the vast otaku crowd.
My main motivation for this post comes from a certain blog post about a certain episode of True Tears and as one might expect, it was quite Serious Business. The author was obviously pissed about how “stupid” and “retarded” the main male lead was. The final catalyst was when I was visiting ANN for the weekly laughs in the form of the Godly Word of Teh Answerman. As usual, Mr. Bertschy was educating us about how males in “harem” series are blank-minded “nice guys” made so that the nerd crowd could find it easy to relate to these characters.
And guess what? I actually agree with Bertschy to some degree (although sure as hell not completely). It is the undeniable fact that harem series male leads are usually portrayed as something I like to call tabula rasa-males. These guys have nothing but “nice guy” attitude stuffed between their ears, with some bad habits which are sort of funny and completely excusable. This just happens to be the common nerd fantasy – to be the knight in the shiny armor and reap in the female attention from all directions of the wind. It is also notable that significant portion of so called harem series are adaptation from erotic visual novels, in which the design of a male lead is rarely too detailed due to understandable reasons – he’s the character who’s supposed to be the avatar of the player in the game world and the girls are the stars of the show. Not only is using a strong, detailed male character in an eroge-adaptation troublesome, but it will easily mess with the original storylines and thus make many people angry. Eroge adaptations are for the most part either service for the fans of the game or sort of advertisement to make more people to buy the games. The producers are not interested in listening to “What the fuck, this was completely different in the game!” or “What the fuck, this was completely different in the anime!” from their customers.
Is this a problem? Not really. Most of the time more bitching is caused when something new is tried out. Enter True Tears – a very loose eroge-adaptation in which the male character actually somewhat resembles a normal male person of his age. His love interest is quite clear from the start, he’s unsure in the emotional storm around him, gets confused and *OMG* makes mistakes. His attempts at the shiny knighthood fall flat and he ends up saying things wrong or make an ass of himself. He’s not a hero, knight or chosen one – just a normal dude who happens to love a certain girl and with little idea on how to deal with it.
Leaving aside the “OMG HE DIDNT CHOOSE TEH GIRL I WOULDVE“-bitching, the most common argument I’ve ran into is “He did this/that/whatever wrong and thus is gay and an asswipe.” This happens with pretty much any show in business, but with True Tears this whining has been unusually loud. First off, it was pretty damn certain who Shin’ichiro has hots for, why are you deceiving yourselves and raging on about why he should’ve chosen another girl? Get the game, play it, bone the girl you want and STFU PLZ. Secondly, have you even considered how ridiculous the whole “if he had done this or that like I would’ve” argument is? You are the viewer, you have a God’s Eye-view on everything on the show and you don’t have to be the one addressing the issues in the field and in the moment. Naturally it’s easy for you to be the hypocrite.
I dare to say that the more solid and detailed a male character is, the more louder this kind of wailing gets. The reason is simple – the vast crowd of nerds watching the show cannot fully relate to the character anymore or even understand his motives. Even greater example than Shin’ichiro in this case would be the infamous Itou Makoto from School Days who, no matter what your opinion might be about him, was indeed a unique character in the field of harem series. Nerds cried out in rage and agony, as Makoto was messing around like a rhino in a china shop but if you consider his actions, motives and feelings carefully, Makoto was actually quite realistic character. He was given the precious opportunity to stick his wang into a royal selection of females and I dare to say that it’s pure ignorance to claim that your average modern male in his age wouldn’t have done at least somewhat the same in his shoes.
It could be said that while Makoto’s actions were over the top to some extend, he was quite accurate portrayal of the male lust for sexual encounter at whatever cost, something nerds in their hypocricy cannot tolerate. Not that I wish to bitch about how shallow all animu males are – I certainly enjoy my harem anime despite what the main dude might be, but the series which rank as the top cast nearly always happen to have not only a good female cast but well designed male characters as well. Key/KyoAni is known for this and as you can see from the lead characters of AIR, Kanon and Clannad, a solid male lead can have a huge impact on the quality of the series . Sure the males in these series are quite niceguyish too but to much less degree than what is the apparent industry standard.
You know what I’d like to see? A male lead who’s a complete coward, thinks of himself and hurts people. Not because I like to see assholes, but because believe that a reality check might be in order not for just anime but many of the viewing audience as well. While Welcome to the NHK is not exactly a harem series, I think many of us and character designers could learn a thing or two from Satou Tatsuhiro and Yamazaki Kaoru. A complete failure at life, unemployed drug/porn/alcohol addict who lies to his parents and friends – now that’s something I can call a solid character.
All this ranting coming from a nerd sure is a big pile of hypocricy and so I’m not trying to present any excuses for myself. But I wish all this will give someone out there something interesting to think about in the dark hours of the day.