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A pan-fandom problem?
Dec. 27th, 2004 08:58 amSpecifically because Meine Liebe is my anime of the moment, I think there’s the potential for it to be strickened with the curse of many a fandom.
The problem with Meine Liebe, essentially is that it’s a setup with five pretty boys, I suppose there’s one older man too who could be included but never mind, who are rather emotionally close to each other. Of course the fact that it’s based on an dating-sim might have something to do with that. The five main characters are broadly speaking, character archetypes to pick and choose from in said sim. Though the anime has done a rather good job of fleshing them out, giving them believable personalities and augmenting the various archetypes. Even their environment has been broadened into something a little more interesting, there’s a whole socio-political structure going on that presumably the game could afford to miss out on. Bearing in mind this isn’t Shoujo Kakumei Utena, where half the point was that they were confined to a specific environment. The boys in this series have not only the immediate environment of Rosenstolz to deal with but the wider; abet upper echelons of Kuchen society to contend with too. Again to contrast with Utena, where the only reputation of note seemed to be each individual's standing among their peers, there is the issue of family standing and reputation that would play a big part in the lives of these young aristocrats. After all, these boys aren’t Strahl candidates simply because they’re intelligent, they have both the capital and the backing to be where they are and that implies, no matter how unseen, that there is a larger support network out there somewhere, in this case being family and social strata beyond Rosenstolz.
So basically what I’m trying to get at is that it would be easy to fall into the trap of ‘Barbie-shipping’ in this fandom, it would be easy enough to just be piling pretty dollies on top of other pretty dollies in some abstract, sterile environment but by doing so you’d loose so much potential for a far more detailed and complex examination of all the characters concerned. As I said previously, Ohtori Academy is a closed environment and with reason, Rosenstolz is not.
The problem with Meine Liebe, essentially is that it’s a setup with five pretty boys, I suppose there’s one older man too who could be included but never mind, who are rather emotionally close to each other. Of course the fact that it’s based on an dating-sim might have something to do with that. The five main characters are broadly speaking, character archetypes to pick and choose from in said sim. Though the anime has done a rather good job of fleshing them out, giving them believable personalities and augmenting the various archetypes. Even their environment has been broadened into something a little more interesting, there’s a whole socio-political structure going on that presumably the game could afford to miss out on. Bearing in mind this isn’t Shoujo Kakumei Utena, where half the point was that they were confined to a specific environment. The boys in this series have not only the immediate environment of Rosenstolz to deal with but the wider; abet upper echelons of Kuchen society to contend with too. Again to contrast with Utena, where the only reputation of note seemed to be each individual's standing among their peers, there is the issue of family standing and reputation that would play a big part in the lives of these young aristocrats. After all, these boys aren’t Strahl candidates simply because they’re intelligent, they have both the capital and the backing to be where they are and that implies, no matter how unseen, that there is a larger support network out there somewhere, in this case being family and social strata beyond Rosenstolz.
So basically what I’m trying to get at is that it would be easy to fall into the trap of ‘Barbie-shipping’ in this fandom, it would be easy enough to just be piling pretty dollies on top of other pretty dollies in some abstract, sterile environment but by doing so you’d loose so much potential for a far more detailed and complex examination of all the characters concerned. As I said previously, Ohtori Academy is a closed environment and with reason, Rosenstolz is not.
