Personally, I think alot of the criticism's thus far voiced for Anohana on this thread, much like most of the critisizms I have seen of various anime over the years, are very much cookie cutter criticism. The same old analysis stick that shows get beaten to death with time and time again.
And once again, I have come to the same old conclusion on the subject. The manner with which you consume media play's a big part in the end result. Not in a 'emotionally manipulative' way, but just how much life a person is willing to give something that dosent actually exist.
First, lets start with the characters. Given the type of show that Anohana is, there isn't a whole lot of mechanisms to drive large bouts of character development, nor was there the time frame to drag development out progressively, so where does this development occur?
That development is up to the viewer and how it is they see the character. For example, do they see Yukiatsu as a cluster of lines and pixels who has a weird fetish and conforms to the 'love to hate' trope, or do they see him as an individual with his own thoughts and motivations who's burdened by his own ghosts of the past?
Thats how the difference will be found. You cant watch a show like Ahohana by just watching it on a screen and staying detached from it. Even if you dont invest your emotion to the point were your going to cry at the ending, you still need to invest enough to understand WHY the CHARACTERS would.
One more point to be made on the subject. The disconnection between writer and reader, which is something to always be taken into account. The writer and the characters are one, so the writer knows all their internal motivations, were as the reader does not. As such, its the role of the reader to find these motivations. While one can argue that its the writers job to make those plain, then the show gets bashed for unrealistically rapid development, and so cant win either way.
27-Jun-2011 07:50:26
- Last edited on
27-Jun-2011 07:52:21
by
Jesse B77
