Genshiken Nidaime: Victims, Villains, and Gender Relations among Japanese Otaku -- PART TWO

Introduction
Part One

Sexual Dynamics:  Hato
Hato Kenjiro is confused.  Supremely.  Other bloggers have commented that homosexuality and transsexualism do not manifest as they do with Hato--not even when a person is "in the closet."  Hato, in my opinion, has no idea who he is or what he wants.  Indeed, he's extremely troubled and not at all attached with reality.

Hato and his alter ego--based on Kaminaga

I don't even know where to begin with Hato.  Perhaps with the fact that he began to cross-dress as a girl and draw BL comics out of his infatuation with his upperclasswoman/elder brother's girlfriend (now fiancee), Kaminaga.  Hato seems to need a senpai upon whom he can fascinate.  The problem is, he's not really being himself.  Indeed, I, as a reader, don't know who Hato is.  He's cloaked in so many personas within himself, constantly struggling to figure out which one he is that it is ridiculous.

It doesn't bother me that Hato cross-dresses.  It doesn't bother me that he's trying to figure himself out.  What bothers me is that he isn't taking steps to actually resolve his issues but exacerbate them, and he's dragging Mada into the mix.

As Hearts of Furious Fancies notes, Hato doesn't wish he was born a girl.  He appears to be a female trapped in a male body, but none of the typical internal dialogue about being so is presented to the viewer.  Hato is in conflict but the whole why is really obscured and obfuscated.  We get a lot of factors involved in his conflict but the nature of it is one of self-denial on some level.  Hato wants to embrace his female side but that female side evolved as a sort of redirected infatuation with Kaminaga.  This woman invaded Hato because he couldn't express his feelings for her--she was his brother's girlfriend!  So, instead of just carrying a torch along like Madarame, Hato created her clone within his own psyche.  Hato tried to become her.

This is extremely telling.

Down this path has led madness.  Hato is a hot mess.  He doesn't want to be a woman because he was "born that way," Hato made himself that way.  It is a coping mechanism gone all wrong.  Hato's been conquered by a Kaminaga clone he created.  The poor guy is an emotional train-wreck waiting to happen.  He's got far, far too much baggage he needs to sort out before he is even remotely ready for a relationship.

Hato cannot even draw unless he's dressed as a woman.  This is not a symptom of a well person.  It hints at schizophrenia, multiple personality disorder, you name it.  Perhaps I'm bringing far too sober and serious an eye to this entire thing but there is a powerful subtext of dysfunction that has surrounded Genshiken from its very beginning.  In the first generation, it felt very supportive and accepting.  Ironically, Hato gains acceptance but it is as a female.  The moment Hato attempts to accept his male self and stop cross-dressing, the entire dynamic of the club changes.  The female-dominated space feels slightly perturbed.  The female characters react to this with varying levels of acceptance to silent disagreement but no one really actually supports Hato's choice... except Madarame.

Why?  Because Madarame got what he actually needed, something he's been missing since Sasahara graduated and went off to work.  Madarame got a friend, a male companion... a bro.

'Sup, brah?  Or not...?

Mada Needs a Guy Friend
Although it crushed Hato on some level, the fact that Mada had found a guy friend with whom he could relate had been a huge boon to him.  Mada has, throughout Genshiken Nidaime, been shedding the layers of belligerent, geeky otaku-ness for a more mature definition of self.  It appears that he's been growing a degree of self-confidence, baby-step by baby-step.  Interestingly enough, despite the stripping of his dignity after Saki breaks his heart and douses his torch for her, Mada seems to still be building himself up as a mature adult.  He's still confused and trying to find his niche in the world but he's doing it somewhat calmly and in a relaxed, laid-back manner in contrast to his former self.

Mada's maturity is accompanied by his loneliness.  His old friends are scattered, living their own lives, busy with their own attempts at finding jobs, livelihoods, and enter the adult, Japanese, workaday lifestyle.  His closest friend was ostensibly Sasahara Kanji, who rarely ever pops up in the manga anymore.  Through his arrangement with Hato (who gets changed at his apartment), Mada has actually gotten to know Hato as a guy and not as a cross-dresser.  Mada has found a companion in male Hato.  The thing is, male Hato and female Hato are different people outwardly (although inwardly they're conflicting poles of the same persona).  Mada can deal with male Hato as a male friend--something he desperately needs.  Female Hato only confuses Mada more at first.  Gradually, Mada comes to accept both as two sides of a coin but he feels far more comfortable and safe with male Hato.

Female Hato has finally announced his affection for Mada, exacerbating the harem situation in which Mada finds himself.  (Use of pronouns here is getting... sketchy... so I'm going to use pronouns based on biology).  The thing is, Mada is straight and Hato is trying to validate his own confused needs and desires by latching onto Mada and making him the object of his infatuation and a replacement for his former senpai.  This is not only unfair to Mada, it robs him of what he really needed--a male non-romantic, non-erotic, entirely non-sexual friendship.  Comrades.  Pals.  Bros.

What Mada Doesn't Need
Mada doesn't need to be a replacement for Hato's former senpai.  He needs to be Mada.  He doesn't need to be Hato's uke or seme either.  He needs to be Mada.  Mada is a straight cis-gendered male.  (I swear to God, I'm going to burn my Genshiken tankobon if Shimoku is so gauche to magically turn Mada gay for Hato.  I think Shimoku is better than that--so far he's lampshaded most of these manga tropes and the whole, "I'm not gay I just love you" guy-on-guy romantic arc is a definite fujoshi-manga trope.  Nevertheless, I've been disappointed by cheesy dei ex machinae before and that one would just infuriate me because it wouldn't be true to Mada's character.)

Hato Doesn't Know Who He (or She) Is
Hato can't really get true, honest support because Hato isn't ever honest with himself.  Hato hasn't really come to grips that his female persona is entirely fabricated as a coping mechanism.  He may have admitted it but he hasn't really done anything about it.

No, strike that, he has.  He rejects it, stops cross-dressing, tries to accept that he's a straight male who likes BL and still tries to hang out with all the girls.  He tries.  He gets and A for effort.  Then Mada tells him how happy he is that he has a male friend again.

POW!  Hato is crushed.  Kuchiki tries to "go gay" with Mada for Hato but that guy is such a clown that all it does is make everyone look and feel ridiculous.  In the end, Hato throws in the towel and starts to gradually merge himself with his Kaminaga-clone self and start seriously and deliberately indulging in--and exacerbating--his crush on Madarame.  The sexual tension continues to ratchet up and Mada is caught in the middle.  In the end, Madarame has lost a friend and gained a harem member.  Mada cannot entirely be himself anymore because of this.

What has me tearing my hair out is... why?  Why has Hato fixated on Madarame?  Is it because he is desperately trying to manifest himself in one of his BL fantasies?  Is it because he actually is gay and in love with Madarame?  There is the constant reminder through the manga that reality and fantasy are not the same but that doesn't seem to be stopping Hato from trying to create some sort of romantic relationship with Madarame.  And all this seems to belie the fact that Hato is not a transsexual.  He is comfortable with his male anatomy even though he's emerging as a female persona.

Or is Hato a personification of Genshiken as a whole?  If that is so, then Shimoku is saying something really twisted about what happens when male spaces convert to female spaces.

Continued in Part Three

Genshiken Nidaime: Victims, Villains, and Gender Relations among Japanese Otaku -- PART ONE

Introduction

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

The Harem Problem
The Harem is a common trope in Japanese manga and anime.  From Ranma 1/2 to Genshiken Nidaime itself, the harem situation is often used in a sit-com manner.  The thing is, Shimoku is turning this trope on its ear.  Since Genshiken and Genshiken Nidaime are "slice-of-life" and strive somewhat for a realistic depiction of otaku interrelations within the larger macrocosm of Japanese relationship dynamics, Shimoku is constantly struggling against the tyranny of trope and audience expectation.  What makes things more interesting is that the characters are genre-savvy.  They become aware of the harem situation and begin to take actions in accordance with this awareness.

Japanese society is predicated upon the maintenance of harmony between all the members of a social group.  The harem situation is humorous from a Japanese standpoint because it creates a uniquely Japanese problem--how to maintain the status-quo between members of one's social circle when a number of females are crushing on a single male (note that the reverse-harem situation is not unheard of--not by a longshot).  That status-quo is harmony.  Thus, how does one maintain that harmony, especially if one is the singular object of romantic affection?

To an American, this situation is easily resolved.  Who do you love?  Pick her (or him) and the rest just have to get over it.  This has happened constantly before my eyes in high school and college.  Sure the status-quo is disrupted and harmony broken but just as often than not, people find a way to recover and preserve the social circle without the sense of weirdness and alienation.  We're far more used to the boat getting rocked, even though (given the situation) such boat-rocking may often be seen as bad form.  We're more forgiving, especially depending upon the situation when the boat is rocked.  We ask ourselves, "Was the boat-rocker justified in doing so?  Do they have a good excuse?"

In Japanese society, so much social capital is based on maintaining tatemae, face, and an avoidance of shame, that harmony becomes integral to every single social situation.  Criticism is not well-received, even between friends (indeed, less-so than in American society) unless very, very serious social and linguistic precautions are taken.  Hurting someone else's feelings is a moderate faux-pas in American culture--in Japanese society it is a grave offense.

What does this have to do with Genshiken Nidaime?  Simply put, Madarame has been placed in a situation that is far, far beyond his capabilities of handling.  And he knows it.  The poor guy is in so far over his head that it is a serious problem.  While Shimoku may be playing with the harem idea and its lampshading for laughs, the situation that the character finds himself is potentially destructive and could result in his alienation from anyone and everyone for whom he cares.  The stakes are incredibly high for Madarame and this is no laughing matter.

Mada's Dignity
Put simply, Mada has none.  Mada has no tatemae.  Mada is stripped, weak, and open.  Vulnerable.  These things are absolutely dangerous in Japanese society.  As my friend once said, a girl won't even admit she likes a guy but instead frame it as a double-negative: "I don't not like you."  There's always that shield, that barrier, that (to crib from Anno Hideaki) A.T. Field (you see what I did there?) between two people in Japanese society.  Trust is paramount in being able to reveal honne.  Unfortunately, Mada has no tatemae.  He has no defense.  He's honne to everybody.

Dousing the torch.

The most poignant moment is when Mada is shot down by Saki.  He's crushed on her since very early on in Genshiken.  She was always with Kousaka and Mada came off as this creepy otaku guy who masturbates to cartoon porn.  He'd go off on long soliloquies (much to Saki's annoyance and disgust) in order to push her away as a form of self-protection.  This is a defense-mechanism.  Girls aren't yucky and have cooties but instead are this mythical creature that exists somewhere else, somewhere where the guys are handsome and athletic, in shape, tall, cool, attractive and completely and utterly unlike the guys in Genshiken.  Many geek girls complain about how they're perceived and treated by geek guys but what they don't understand is that none of these guys have any idea how to relate to actual women.  Tanaka and Sasahara both manage to make the adjustment and get girlfriends but that step actually helps them overcome their situation and begin to view women in a much more egalitarian manner.  It is through their relationships that they achieve that maturity.  Madarame gains no such advantage.

Let's all celebrate the destruction of a man's dignity.

To overcome his social dysfunctions and his romantic disabilities, he cloaks himself in a tatemae intended to reinforce the disgust of females.  In doing so he exercises a degree of choice, of free will.  He cannot get a girl to actually like him but he can make her find him repulsive.  When given a choice between "do nothing and fail" and "do something and fail gloriously" Mada chooses the latter.  So long as failure is his conscious decision, he can exercise agency and is therefore empowered.  He is not a victim of social prejudice and misunderstanding.  While this refusal is empowering in that it allows him to keep his own sense of dignity through an act of free will, it is a hollow victory, a Maltese Falcon ending where Sam Spade surrenders love because he cannot bring himself to trust.  It's not healthy but it is what he has.

All of this comes crashing down when others gradually clue into his crush and orchestrate his "confession" of love to Saki.  I almost cheered when instead of confessing he attempts to maintain his dignity by saying "you had a hair sticking out of your nose."  Bravo, Mada!  You already know you don't have a shot with her, accept it, move on, and keep your dignity!

But I'm an American.  The Japanese don't approach things in that manner.  Mada would have continued to carry a torch for Saki and not been able to move on.  This I realized in retrospective.  Mada needed to be shot down.  I may be wrong in seeing this as a part of the Japanese character--as an American, I'd have told Mada to get over Saki and move on.  Perhaps Mada needed to be shot down because he is Mada, or perhaps because he's Japanese.  I am not sure where the one starts and stops, blends into the other, etc.  I'm not Japanese so my insight here is limited.

Anyway, Saki shoots him down and leaves him with no illusions.  Mada must douse the torch.  Now he can grow and move on.

And he's met by all of his supposed friends and... .  I found the reaction absolutely repulsive.  Again, maybe it is because I'm an American and not Japanese but Sasahara's sister does her utmost to utterly humiliate him.  She cheers that he got his heart broken.  No one stops her, no one says anything about it and his male friends don't come to his rescue in any way.  They don't extradite him from the situation as quickly as possible and get him into a new situation where he can a) get his mind off of what just happened and b) rebuild his dignity.  Mada even attempts to go on a repulsive diatribe and it falls flat, fails to restore his defenses, and just ends up making him look ridiculous.  As a result, Mada's dignity is utterly demolished, eradicated, and any real sense of agency or control, any capacity for free choice and self-empowerment, has been entirely nullified and stays nullified for quite some time.

What really bothers me is how his guy friends all mentally and emotionally just sort of check out when this happens.  They don't try to rescue him at all.  Frankly, they should all drag him off someplace away from Saki and Keiko.  They should take him to a baseball game, movie, or maybe even an izakaya where they can get him drunk and talk about anime and manga--anything to get the poor guy's mind off of the fact that he's been both humiliated and heartbroken.

This has set up a situation in which others can exercise choice and empowerment at Mada's expense.  This dynamic seems to have been utterly missed by every commentator and blogger I've read.  Mada is utterly and completely objectified by everyone around him (with, perhaps, the exception of Sue, which I'll address further below).

Love Among the Ruins of Mada's Dignity
With everything above considered, it should come as a sudden shock, both to reader and to Mada himself as a character, that there are a number of females (and one very confused and confusing male) who are crushing on Mada.  At face value, none of them are good choices for him.  Let's run through the list briefly.

It gets worse...

Angela Burton:  The blonde bombshell.  Well-endowed, exquisitely beautiful, the pinnacle of physical perfection.  Korean men speak of having a "white horse" at least once in their lives and if there is a Japanese equivalent, then Angela is the Platonic ideal of the "white horse."  She's ferociously attracted to Mada in a very predatory manner.  The phrase "virgin-breaker" comes to mind--the fantasy "first-time" for a young guy who has no sexual experience.  She's American (and so, stereotypically "slutty"--perhaps American girls have a reputation in Japan for being "easy" or something).  She doesn't speak Japanese but seems to understand it well enough.  She's also a complete bull in a china shop when it comes to Japanese social dynamics.  She has no concept of wa--harmony--and barrels her way through social situations that rocks the boat so hard as to nearly capsize it.

While on the surface, Angela seems like the ideal rebound for Mada.  She's in Japan once every six months.  That nixes any chance of a real relationship.  If she wasn't so utterly carnal and sexual (i.e. "stereotyped" and "objectified") she might be a decent match for Mada.  As it stands, she's only around for a few brief issues and therefore never developed past being a stereotype or an object.  As she is, she'd actually leave Mada far more emotionally damaged and romantically broken than he already is.  To her, Mada is a conquest.  If there was any evidence that she actually loved and cared for Mada, an encounter between the two may have massive healing potential for his character.  However, there's no evidence that she, herself presented as an object/plot device/stereotype, views Madarame as anything more than an object in return.  To be treated in such a manner by her would actually do more harm than good.

Sasahara Keiko:  Keiko sees Mada as a challenge much as Angela does.  Humorously, the two of them become heated rivals for "who gets Mada" and both are roundly defeated by Sue (who saves both the day and Mada's sanity).  Whereas Angela is sexually aggressive, gazing hungrily upon the hapless Mada like a female mantis, Keiko is flat-out abusive.  She purposely gets his name wrong, calling him "Wantanabe," conveying the very poignant insult that he isn't even worth her learning his name.  Keiko has no respect for Mada and did much to not only orchestrate his "confession" to Saki but also to spearhead his humiliation and the stripping of the remaining shreds of his dignity in the aftermath.  Any relationship with Keiko would be abusive and further damaging to Madarame.

This leaves Hato and Sue.

Hato... confused...

Continued in Part Two.

Genshiken Nidaime: Victims, Villains, and Gender Relations among Japanese Otaku -- INTRODUCTION

A quick warning:

THIS IS AN ANALYSIS OF A WORK OF FICTION.  IT IS NOT ABOUT ACTUAL, FACTUAL, REAL-LIFE GENDER DYNAMICS.  If you disagree with my observations and analysis, please keep that in mind and don't make assumptions about my actual thoughts/ideas on actual, real-life gender relations.

I've always enjoyed reading Genshiken from its inception.  Currently, I'm reading the sequel, Genshiken Niidaime and I've watched as the years have turned and the club has changed as the "old guard" graduated and moved on (or tried feebly to move on) and a new "generation" of students has taken over the club and dominated it.  This post is primarily in response to a number of posts made on Hearts of Furious Fancies regarding Genshiken Nidaime in specific but for the uninitiated reader, I will give a bit more of an introduction to my thoughts, which I'm airing out here to help me organize them a bit.  After all, that's what this blog is really for--its my own personal soapbox from which I can think aloud and help organize my own throughts and ideas as well as keep myself somewhat sharp in an environment that can easily result in myself growing duller.

Genshiken is a Japanese manga about an university otaku club--basically geeks and dorks who are on the fringes of Japanese society.  The otaku boom/Akihabara boom last decade and the success of such stories as Densha Otoko brought a degree of sympathy for otaku and their corollaries (such as the hikkikomori, cf. Welcome to the NHK, for example).  The boom did not result in the superlative mainstreaming of this fringe element the way that the success of "fringe-demographic" films, such as the Avengers and related Marvel films, the Star Trek reboots, the Game of Thrones HBO series, The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit films, etc., mainstreamed American "geekdom."  The otaku was, is, and will always be on the fringe of Japanese society and the otaku hobbies must always be buried and hidden with shame from the steely gaze of Japanese culture, a culture which perceives strength in uniformity in ways American society does not.

The author and artist, Kio Shimoku, created Genshiken around 2002 and it ran in Afternoon until 2006--right smack dab in the middle of the otaku boom.  Through the manga, he explored the dynamics of otaku interrelations, friendship, and even romance.  His characters are all rather flawed and very much human.  The original run ended with the characters graduating from college and (hopefully) getting jobs at the end of their final year of college.  Genshiken Nidaime takes place after the old characters have graduated and the new circle is predominately female.  Whereas the first iteration of the comic had to deal with females invading a male-dominated space and disrupting the safety and security of that space with their femininity, their sexuality, and their own tastes in the erotic (which brought interesting levels of tension to the comic), the new generation is centered on a club that is now a female space, is female-safe and female-friendly, and the only male that actually fits into the group comfortably and contribute constructively only does so when dressed and acting as though he were a female.

There is a great deal of detail that I am leaving on the cutting room floor and this blogpost isn't entirely for the uninitiated.  I'm going to be throwing names out there so it may be useful to the reader to at least have read the wikipedia entries and maybe Genshiken Nidaime itself, if not the original Genshiken in order to be up to speed.

With this caveat and preamble, I'm going to dive into a sort of dialogue with Hearts of Furious Fancies spurred by this post on one of the main male characters' romantic attraction to heroic females.  Other posts have also given me a great deal of food for thought and after a few discussions with friends who understand Japanese culture far better than I, I've just gotta put my ideas down in print to see where things go.  So, let's jump right in with both feet, shall we?

Continued in the Part One.

Ruminations--Narrativism, White Wolf's EXALTED, and "Buying In"

For a year (with about nine months' of hiatus) I've been running an Exalted game for Luke and DJ.  Exalted was originally White Wolf's answer to D&D, released around 2001 with much fanfare.  For those of you who don't know, White Wolf arose in the late 1980s as an answer to the "dungeon crawl" model of D&D adventure.  It touted itself, through its original game and flagship line, Vampire: The Masquerade, as an edgy, mature, and literary role-playing system in which the aim wasn't to acquire loot and level up but instead to deliberately and consciously tell a story.  In a lot of ways this was a response to the growth of railroads in modular D&D game design (cf. Grognardia's ruminations on the Hickman Revolution) like the original Dragonlance modules.

The problems with White Wolf are legion, true.  If you subscribe to Ron Edward's theories on game design and implementation, White Wolf appears to be Story Now (a.k.a. Narrativist).  A lot of this comes down to application and the Storyteller System indeed has the trappings of Narrativism on the surface.  The games have a mechanic to enforce dramatic tension absent in most other role-playing game lines--Vampire has Humanity, for example.  Dramatic tension increases as player-characters lose points in Humanity and begin to succumb to the animal urges and wanton blood lust of the Beast within them.  Unfortunately, White Wolf as a whole and the Storyteller System as an engine fail to actually elucidate how, precisely, to run a truly Narrativist chronicle.  Numerous "stories" (read: modules) and "chronicles" (read: campaigns) have been produced for many a White Wolf line, the most noteworthy being The Transylvania Chronicles.

I both love and hate The Transylvania Chronicles.  Why do I love them?  Well, coupled with Transylvania By Night, a sourcebook (more properly, a toolbox) full of people, places, and objects with which the player-characters can interact, these books craft a wonderful setting and track the events of Transylvania through the late medieval period into the modern era.  What I hate is that The Transylvania Chronicles are a complete and total railroad--a set of encounters to navigate the players through and giving them little or no actual choice or agency in the long-run (the type of game a Typhoid Mary GM would run, cf DM of the Rings and So You Want to Write a Railroad?).  They are complete and utter pawns throughout the entirety of the campaign.  Granted, one of the major themes of Vampire: The Masquerade and its Dark Ages adjunct line is the power-relations between Kindred and their Elders, Childer and their Sires, young versus old, and how the frustrated childer are always oppressed and kept carefully in check by those vampires who embraced them.  However, The Transylvania Chronicles handles these themes artlessly, bullying the players into obeying their sires even after they've become Princes of their own cities.

This is not Narrativism.  Heck, for most imaginative and intelligent players, this isn't even fun.  Indeed, Ron Edwards argues that playing these sorts of White Wolf games can actually damage your brain, causing emotional trauma that inhibits your ability to comprehend and appreciate stories.

White Wolf lacks a defined mechanic for the very social contract that needs to take place before the players even sit down to play.  As a Narrativist game (or at least, a game that claims to be Narrativist in nature), Vampire: The Masquerade, its fellow White Wolf lines, and its successors (such as Vampire: The Requiem), really require rules for establishing the game's Premise even before the characters are rolled up.  This is something I've only recently realized through playing Exalted.  The various Storyteller Guides and Storyteller chapters of the book are rife with ideas on how to incorporate themes into the story, weaving mood and premise, thematic elements, and other literary concepts into each chronicle.  This is great... but there is no such advice for the player.  Instead, all the player gets is advice on how to roleplay a convincing vampire from Clan Tremere in its attendant splatbook.

What is required is for the Storyteller System is a mechanic or section where the players and Storyteller sit down together, before the characters are even created or the first statistic is jotted down, and decide in concert, what the game's premise will be.  And by premise, I don't mean "the quest to kill the dragon" but rather some sort of situation that will 1) resonate with everyone at the gaming table as a reflection on the human condition and 2) will be resolved through 2a) the choices the characters make and 2b) the Storyteller's fair adjudication of the setting's reaction to those choices.  This not only gives the players agency as characters, it explicitly makes them the protagonists of the story and the narrative resonance of the game's subsequent themes is doubly poignant because they are going to identify with their characters more than they would with the protagonist of a book.  The problem is, do they "buy in" to this sort of social contract about the game?  It requires the players being extremely proactive in deciding some very, very major aspects on the tone, theme, and mood of the game and may even weigh heavily on some fundamental elements such as time and place.  It demands that the GM/DM/RM/ST/etc. effectively cede control of a huge amount of creative authority to the players before the game has even begun.  It also demands that the players actively keep these themes in mind when creating characters and role-playing those characters' decisions.

Take, for example, the Eberron game I mentioned in my previous post.  Let's assume that we all sat down together and together we created an idea for a game like the one I had proposed.  Now, let's assume that the players all agree to the various tropes, setting details, tone and mood, time period-appropriate behaviors and speech, and dramatic themes.  If the players, then, failed to create characters that satisfied these genre-specific elements nor evoke the necessary atmosphere or role-playing required to capture and explore these elements, then the failure of the Eberron game to get off the ground would not have been my fault (as it actually was) but 100% their fault.  In this sense, the players must "buy in" not only to the campaign's style but also to the concept of Narrativist play as a whole.

How does this translate to a game like Exalted, which I've been running for some time?

Last Winter and Spring, I ran a game for Luke and DJ in which they started out as unExalted mortals.  The game was extremely challenging and the lethal nature of Storyteller System's combat resulted in the players having a profound respect for their own mortality and an awareness of just how fragile life is.  Near the end of last year's games, they finally Exalted, imbued with the Essence of the Unconquered Sun.  As Chosen of Sol Invictus, they are closer to being divine, similar to demigods of Greek myth.  They heal faster, they can fight with insane moves like characters from a wuxia martial arts movie or an over-the-top anime, they can use magic powers to speak other languages and punch down buildings, live for about five thousand years, and they can even soak lethal damage (as opposed to just bashing, like a mortal can).

The hiatus allowed me some time to get a breather and figure out how better to run this new sort of game and deal with all the new thematic elements and dramatic tension.  The "Limit Break" mechanic now functions as a source of dramatic tension--each character's highest Virtue (Compassion, Conviction, Temperance, or Valor) is matched with a Virtue Flaw (haughty arrogance, for example, with high Valor and low Temperance and Compassion; a character with high Conviction and Valor but low Compassion might have a Flaw in which they are willing to do anything to achieve what they see as the Greater Good, even if it means being an absolute murderous genocidal monster).  This can lead to some fantastic role-playing and some incredible drama if done properly and, frankly, has worked better as an inspirational guide and personality metric than D&D's Alignment system ever was (at least, in my personal experience).  When a character acts against their highest Virtue they have to roll dice--if they fail, they can act as they wish (the Virtue fails to force the player to act in character, essentially) but if they succeed they must either act in accordance with their Virtue or they must tick off a point of Limit and spend a point of Temporary Willpower to act against their own character.  If too many points of Limit are acquired, the character has a Limit Break, during which they have a meltdown of some sort appropriate to the Virtue (they may go completely berserk and kill everything around them or they may collapse into a sobbing puddle of tears, for example).

With that in mind, let me summarize a bit of the last few sessions now that we've started the game back up.  Luke's character, Ren, is trying to make the opium trade in the city go out of business by essentially creating his own syndicate, bullying, bribing, and buying up all the small-time dealers in the slums and 1) forcing them to sell only to those of whom he approves and 2) taking a substantial cut of their profits--if they refuse to comply, they most likely wake up in a crate or box in one of the haunted and ruined sections of the city (effectively a death sentence).  Ren uses the profits he gains to build an orphanage, the youth of which he intends to raise as his own small army of spies, assassins, and Batman-style vigilantes.  The payments are made through a dropbox in a ruined building, from which an old beggar retrieves the money and drops into another dropbox for a small fee, which is then retrieved by one of the orphanage workers.

Ren gets word that a new opium merchant has moved into town.  After digging around, Ren and Dekland (DJ's character) find out that one of this secretive, anonymous merchant's distribution centers.  Ren wants to start destroying the competition and, once he has total control of all of the city's opium distribution, cut it off entirely and destroy it while setting up safeguards that the drug will be kept out of the city thereafter.  Hence, Ren wants to take this up-and-comer out.  So he and Dekland concoct a plan to infiltrate one of the distribution centers (a bathhouse for nobles) with Dekland disguised as a slave working there.

Dekland is a soldier and is used to following orders so it seems like a good idea.  However, he's not a slave-soldier but an honorable, highly respected soldier in his homeland so his demeanor comes off as "uppity" to the managers and paid staff at the bathhouse.  This creates dramatic tension.  They start putting Dekland into situations where he's tempted to fight back (his highest Virtue is Valor, which means every time he backs down from a challenge or has to run away, he has to roll against his Virtue).  Finally, they begin to openly mistreat, abuse, and beat Dekland, forcing a couple of rolls for his Valor.  Dekland snaps and begins to beat the everliving crap out of these guys, forcing Ren to come in and help him.

In this way, the system works well--dramatic tension is heightened through a situation in which, in D&D, wouldn't have nearly as much dramatic tension because there is no such associated mechanic enforcing players to deal with the various side-effects of their character concept.  By statting out Virtues and their attendant heroic flaws, methods for dilemmas are introduced that can be mechanically resolved but also give the players the necessity to make meaningful choices because of those mechanics.  DJ could have spent a point of Temporary Willpower and ticked off a point of Limit (bringing him closer to a Break) or he could cut loose, drop all pretense of disguise and infiltration, and just wreck house.  DJ weighed the various consequences and was happy to let Dekland give in to his nature.  Skulls were cracked with big, meaty fists.

As the story progressed, Dekland and Ren made their way through a series of tunnels that night beneath the city and burnt down six out of seven different bathhouses--all containing hidden opium dens.  This made waves.  The merchant, furious that half of his distribution centers were destroyed (he also owned a number of bodegas in the city but the bathhouses were the most profitable), as well as his hub, set his two henchmen after Ren and Dekland.  The henchmen called on connections and contacts, greased a few palms, and ran across one of Ren's slum dealers.  The two henchmen began tracking them all down and killing them.  Then, they tortured and killed Ren's homeless drop-off man (who managed to warn Ren that he was being followed before he was captured, so Ren could tell his orphanage workers to lay low and not make any more pick-ups lest they be next).

So, because of Ren and Dekland's actions, an innocent man died and a number of other not-so-innocent drug dealers died.  Ren's highest Virtue being Compassion, he was pretty upset that his actions led to the death of the old homeless guy.

We can see a number of themes developing from this but the big premise that comes to the fore is that actions have consequences, good deeds often come with a high price, and power and responsibility go hand-in-hand.  I never planned for these themes to happen--they just emerged.

The thing is, I've failed at running a Narrativist game.  This was more Simulationist.  If it was Narrativist, DJ, Luke, and I would have sat down together and hammered out those themes as the central theses of our story.  It would have been a deliberate, not an accidental, exploration of those themes.  I had not initiated these gaming sessions with the intention of having Ren's entire network slaughtered in response to his actions.  I had no idea that it would happen.  I simply rolled for the various stages of the henchmen's investigations and decided what they were most likely to do given the results of their rolls and their particular motivations and personalities.

Running a Narrativist game is something I've never done and am not sure how to do effectively while still preserving a realistic set of consequences.  I think, instead of considering what would be realistic, I would have to react to player choices with the guideline "what would make a good story given our game's overarching premise?" instead of "what would realistically occur?"  Right now, we're just Ouija Boarding, essentially acting as though Simulationist play will yield Narrativist play "without any specific attention on anyone's part to do so."  Currently, I'm running Dekland's quest for his previous incarnation's tomb--something he requested as a story arc.  While this is a step in a Narrativist direction, I'm still in control of where it is, what is there, who is there, what he'll encounter, etc. while he only controls when he goes there, with whom he goes, and (to a degree) how he gets there.

I did warn DJ and Luke that, being Exalted, they're going to be much more like Hercules, Achilles, and Odysseus.  There's going to be a lot of death and tragedy around them.  Hercules killed his entire family.  Achilles lost his best friend/lover (depending on your interpretation) and died after defeating the only man who had a hope of matching him in combat, and Odysseus was away from his wife for twenty years fighting a war and sailing around (not to mention directly and indirectly getting every single member of his crew killed).  They were on board with that but they weren't explicitly involved in the creation of that concept.  It was great that they got to experience it first-hand as players but they were not fully co-authors of the tale.  They didn't craft the overarching premise of that story with me.  They didn't consciously "buy in" to the Narrativist take on the story.

Gaming and Taoism -- A Reflection on Alexis' Recent Posts at Tao of D&D

Yes, it's true, I'm not dead even though I've not posted in, like, forever, and my readership has probably moved on to greener pastures (not that I had a lot of readers with which to begin) but school has been tedious and stressful and I find it not coincidental that getting a Masters in Multicultural Education and a teaching certificate has atrophied by cognitive capacities.  It is a daily struggle to keep myself sharp in a world where indoctrination is heavy.  I feel, at times, like I'm in a reeducation camp instead of a class.

That aside, I want to talk today about some of the things Alexis has been posting on his Tao of D&D blog.  Alexis is currently writing a book on how to be a better DM and it is frighteningly obvious that this will be unlike any other "How To DM" guide ever written and that it is terrifically well-researched, well-thought-out, and a product of years and years of personal experience.  Some of the things he's discussed on his website have been, heretofore, extremely challenging to anyone who would be a DM, GM, ST, RM, etc.  And frankly, Alexis' blog is full of advice and discussion that is unlike that of any other blog I've read, with the possible exception of Justin Alexander's The Alexandrian (although Justin Alexander hasn't been digging into practical advice for a while).  Alexis' advice is often brutally honest and direct--it challenges our preconceptions about what makes a good DM and what a DM's job is.

The more he writes, the more I reflect on my own experiences and the more I want to go into those reflections.  However, I kind of feel that doing so isn't necessarily a good thing to do in his comments section.  For politeness' sake, I try to keep my comments brief even though they do tend to go on for at least three full paragraphs.  I don't really have much to add to his considerations--he's been thinking about this a lot longer than I and a lot more than I.

To begin with, I want to reference Alexis' post entitled "The Sides of Power," in which he delves into a variety of approaches to the DM-player power spectrum and digs at which philosophy of the power-relationship is most beneficial to the gaming group as a whole.  The conversation and comments made me confront my own experiences and attempt to apply Alexis' ruminations to my own experiences and observations.

First, there is, most certainly, a sort of social contract that is part of any role-playing activity/event.  Now, The Forge and Ron Edwards have devoted a lot of head-space to this idea of a social contract in gaming, which ultimately leads back to its Enlightenment-era refinement by J.-J. Rousseau (although he is by-far not the ultimate author of the concept).  We're not going to really dig into the philosophical nitty-gritty of the idea.  We're going to try to keep it simple.

So, there has to be a basic agreement between players and DM/GM/RM/ST/whathaveyou (henceforth, we're going to keep it "DM" for simplicity's sake and to dovetail with Alexis' term-usage).  And this is a key point I want to address--what are you going to run is actually where this entire contract starts.  A couple people talked in the comments section about "buying in" to a campaign concept.  If they don't "buy in" then it won't be all that fun.  But, as Alexis has discussed in his post on fun in gaming, who is the game really for?  The DM?  Alexis asserts that no, it isn't.  It is the players' fun that is important, not the DM's.

And I have come to solidly agree with Alexis.  Yeah, I can have fun being a DM.  Frankly, I had more fun DMing The Forgotten Realms than DMing White Wolf's Exalted.  The White Wolf game requires a huge amount of preparation time.  Exalted requires me to build antagonists with Charms and abilities that will challenge my players without a simple, easy metric like D&D has but players have come to love White Wolf for its distinct lack of character classes and levels, the extreme lethal nature of the system's combat even late in the game.  Even if a player is an Exalt, unless we're playing with the standard "Extra" rules (severely weakening the mortal NPCs, the likelihood of a ten-year-old with a crossbow getting a lucky shot, blowing through the character's armor and killing him in one hit is still present, just like in reality.  Sometimes avoiding combat is much wiser than engaging in it.  Even with the "Extras" rule, the possibility still exists.  In D&D, if you're playing an epic-level character (roughly the equivalent of an Exalt), that ten-year-old has absolutely zero chance of killing you, period.  Even mages have far too many hit points.

I digress.  To return to the point about playing Exalted, I am essentially running what my players want to play.  I once tried to set up an Eberron game that was going to be centered on exploring Xen'drik, that setting's equivalent of Africa (a dark, mysterious continent).  I had ideas drawn from Indiana Jones, the Alan Quartermain adventures like King Solomon's Mines, Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kaine stories, the historical British Empire in Africa (the expedition to find Dr. Livingston, for example), Edgar Rice Burrough's Tarzan novels, Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness, and a whole host of other literary works.  Nobody "bought in" to the idea.  Nobody created the Big Game Hunter type ranger with a pith helmet and English accent.  Nobody created the intrepid explorer of the jungle.  Nobody created the daring archaeologist seeking ancient treasures amid trap-filled ruins.  I was annoyed by the players' lack of interest in the direction I wanted to take the campaign and the literary antecedents for it.  I toyed with the idea of creating pre-made characters for them to choose from but they rejected the concept outright.  So, I shelved the entire campaign and ran nothing.  I took my ball and went home.

Who was at fault here?  At first, I thought it was the players.  Then, I realized, after reading enough of Alexis' blog, that it was actually my problem, not theirs.  I had the issues here.  I provide a service for the players and my reward is satisfaction at running a game in which they have tons of fun and continually come back for more.  At first I didn't understand entirely what Alexis was getting at.  Now I do.  My fun takes a backseat to the players' fun.  When it dawned on me why I DM and why Alexis' argument is spot-on, I remembered this entry in my record of the old Forgotten Realms campaign.

When I revealed (using Maptool) that the stream had spilled them out at the waterfall, the players cheered in triumph. Yet another seemingly hopeless situation turned into a victory by the PCs.

They cheered in triumph!  I remember it clearly. They had escaped with their lives.  There was backslapping, laughing, fist-pumping.  They had escaped a challenging situation, cheated death, and lived to fight on.  If the campaign had been easy, this escape wouldn't have caused such a strong emotional reaction.  Similarly, if it had been too hard, they'd have become frustrated and felt it was pointless to play.  The strength of the challenge and their ability to overcome was rewarding and that translated to them having fun.

So, it isn't so much the players buying into the DM's idea of a campaign that is important.  It is the DM buying into the players' concept of what would be fun to play that is important.  My enjoyment is derived from the players having a good time and going home hungry to play more.

This led me to thinking about the power-relationship between DM and players.  Alexis discusses a number of them (many of which are dysfunctional or abusive to one or the other).  All of these are indicative of somebody playing out their own deep-seated mental issues in game.  I've long observed that role-playing games are a great way of psychoanalyzing another person and discovering if they're a completely horrible jerk, a functioning psychopath, etc.  Watch how they relate to the other players or the DM.  If they're the DM, watch what they do with the game and how they treat the players.  Personal issues will emerge and play out in game--often to the detriment of the fun level for everyone else involved.

The Forgotten Realms game was also a point in which I realized that group dynamic between players is more important than the concept of "buying in" to the DM's vision of a game.  I went into the Realms game with no overarching narrative in mind.  Let's throw the PCs into a huge sandbox and see what they do.  Here's a few modules--hooks for you guys to start with.  Pick one.  Let's run with it.  The result, at least for Luke, DJ, and Shaun, was fantastic.  Other players who came in and out had trouble.  At first I wondered if I wasn't running well enough.  What I realized, however, is that the players had preconceived notions of what they wanted from the game--notions they either didn't communicate or weren't metacognitive enough to understand they wanted (or worse, so cognitively dissonant about what they wanted that there was no way to please them without deeply analyzing and perhaps overthrowing the entire endeavor).

One of my players wanted to play a True Necromancer.  However, his character was basically an all-around jerk.  He became upset that all of his spells and abilities gradually turned him into a lich and that in the Dales he'd generally have to walk a very, very tight rope or get burned at the stake.  I threw him a few hooks with the Cult of Jergal, a neutral god of death, that he could have followed.  However, he was growing angrier that the populace as a whole would have feared him so severely for riding in on a pale horse with a skeleton army everywhere he went that they'd have tried to exterminate him.  The kicker is... if he had handled his situation differently none of those things would have happened.  However, he was dead-set on being an angry teenager with skeleton minions than someone who could have performed a vital function in society (i.e. tending to the dead, ferrying souls to the afterlife, stamping out evil necromancy, etc.) as a servant of a neutral deity.  Yeah, he'd be feared and been an unsettling person to be around (have you ever seen Departures?) but so long as he didn't act like a threat or like he held everyone around him in absolute contempt, he'd have found a place in the Dales and actually perhaps become a powerful political and social force there.  The problem is, he wanted to play his character a specific way and not deal with the consequences.  More accurately, he was angry that the consequences didn't accommodate his personal fantasies and desires.  In addition, he was only around for about half of the sessions.

The result was, he never really meshed with DJ, Luke, and Shaun.  So, even though he scrapped the True Necromancer character and rolled up an elven archer, he still never really fit in.

Vetting players to ensure they'll fit the party dynamic is hard.  It's also something I'm not sure Alexis has tackled (or even if he believes such vetting is necessary).  I actually have no idea what his take on this is (I haven't found posts on player-group-dynamics yet).  Most people are, as I've said, not very metacogitient and most people also suffer from cognitive dissonance.  Therefore, deducing what they want from a game can be problematic.  Alexis does discuss spoiling players (here) and catering too much to players who whine about class limitations, etc. (here), players who don't support the party against the DM's monsters/villains/etc. (here), sociopathic players (here), and more.  He's got a definite handle on what makes a "bad player."  What I want to know from him (if you're reading, by any chance, Alexis) is whether or not there's a way to decide if a player should even join your game in the first place or if eliminating a player from the game (as opposed to a character) is a bridge best crossed when the player's behavior makes it optimal for the enjoyment of the DM and everyone else.

While the game is primarily about the player's fun, if the DM is becoming actively insulted and frustrated by ignorant players who have no respect for the time and effort the DM puts into creating interesting events, NPCs, scenarios, locations, and materials with which the PCs may interact, then there is a definite problem with the player and it is not the DM's fault.  Boot the guy (or gal).  (Yet two more awesome posts by Alexis here and here.)

Considering I work, am applying for a teaching certificate in two states, and taking education classes--combined with running a bi-weekly Exalted game that requires much more time and effort to prep than a D&D game--I don't have the time to even want to deal with problem players, let alone have them disrupt the precious little time I get to game.  While Luke, DJ, and I are only three, one DM and two players, and we're seeking a third player, the scheduling conflicts make our preferred additions difficult to implement.  There have been suggestions but I'm frankly sick and tired of taking risks on players I don't know for certain aren't going to cause problems and kill immersion.  I put far, far too much of my free time into my games.  It takes work.  In fact, it is taking me more work than ever before to prep for Exalted.  Plenty of players don't get that, I think.  It would be so easy to wing it, make stuff up on the fly (even though I still have to to a small degree) but basing all of the game on arbitrary DM fiat breaks all of the tension and suspense.  I don't care if they'll know or not, it isn't fair.  I'm not reffing the game, I'm controlling the narrative.  No, the DM's job is not to make the game his story.  It's a collaborative effort and the PCs are the main characters.  They should have narrative agency.

Retrospective: 超時空要塞マクロス (Super Dimension Fortress MACROSS). Part Two.

Introduction.
Part One.

To continue with my analysis, today we're going to be discussing the theme of war in Super Dimension Fortress Macross.

THE SPACE WAR
The entire frame in which the personal drama takes place in Macross is the overarching drama of a sudden and incredibly destructive war between humankind and the Zentraedi.  The shadow of the Pacific War stretches forth from the Japanese psyche to loom heavily over the series.  The tremendous loss of life, property and infrastructure from the firebombings of major cities and the destructive atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are reflected by the bombed-out buildings on South Ataria Island, the destruction of a city due to a barrier malfunction, and eventually the annihilation of almost every population center on the planet during an orbital bombardment (see this video, which is taken from the Robotech adaptation).

The YouTube video here (fast-forward to about 2:00), although from the film Do You Remember Love? and not the series, reflects the sense of defeat and futility against the inexorable Allied advance in the later years of the Second World War.  In Macross, the enemy is an indescribably powerful force, nigh unstoppable, a literal race of giants to be compared to the proverbial "sleeping giant" that Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku warned that Japan had awoken at Pearl Harbor and "filled with a terrible resolve."  This defeat had an incredible impact on the Japanese psyche, much more profound than the American experience in Vietnam.  In a sense, the entire society took on that proverbial "thousand-yard stare" of a shell-shocked survivor.  Other films, such as the original Gojira, Akira, or Nihon Chinbotsu (Japan Sinks) explore this sense of destruction and national annihilation--something that, ironically, is very much a revitalized concern with the worsening of the ongoing Fukushima nuclear catastrophe.

The Zentraedi have a powerful galactic armada far beyond comprehension.  Their resources are immeasurable and twice in the series (the second occasion being Earth) a mere fraction of their total military strength bombards a planet's surface into barren, cratered desolation.  The ignorance of the U.N. Spacy regarding the power of the Zentraedi matters little, in fact, throughout the entire series.  From a military standpoint, the Earth is an insignificant backwater.

The strange truth where both Earth in Macross and Japan in reality have power are not through military might but through culture.  How poetic, then, that Macross would have such a phenomenal impact across the Pacific in the very nation which had bombed Japan's cities.  Although this indubitably stretches the metaphor far, far beyond the intentions of Kawamori, if the Zentraedi are a sort of stand-in for the United States and the Earth for Japan, then anime in general is music and Macross in particular is Minmay.  Animation has perhaps done more to foster positive feelings towards and interest in Japanese culture throughout the West than any number of 19th century linguists and scholars ever achieved.

There is much more to the conflict than a mere metaphor that explores Japan's experience with war, destruction, and rebuilding.  Although I will go into greater detail about the following in a future post, allow me to briefly discuss the impact of warfare with regards to the society of the Zentraedi species.  The Zentraedi also represent a society that is, in some ways, more of a mirror for Japan's own than of any Western nation.  Japanese society is infamous for being very homogeneous (although I would argue that Korean society is more so).  The group takes precedence over the individual, who must submit their own feelings and desires to the group in order to attain  和 (wa--social harmony).  To a Westerner, this may sound quite oppressive but in reality it is a common feature of all societies--Japan simply exhibits a more defined and elevated manifestation of the concept.  Those in Japan that tend toward individuality or sub-cultural interest (especially otaku) can find themselves socially ostracized for expressing their uniqueness.  "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down" is a common proverb attributed to Japanese society.

The Zentraedi are a reflection of an extreme version of this group-identity.  Hierarchy is paramount.  The Zentraedi are cloned, not bred.  Each clone is genetically engineered for a singular purpose in the military hierarchy of the species (officer, soldier, pilot, adviser, fleet commander, etc.).  Their entire purpose is to fight.  The culture and society that created them has long since gone extinct and only relics persist (such as the gigantic ship-producing facilities).  No engineers or scientists are to be found in the ranks of the Zentraedi, so no new technologies are developed and nothing is ever repaired (although the ships themselves seem somewhat capable of "healing" damage given time).  Nor are there entertainers, poets, writers, philosophers, or artists of any sort.  The entirety of Zentraedi "culture" is geared towards military conflict.  Their entire existence is predicated upon conquest and battle.

Macross does not simply spoon-feed the viewer with a "war is bad" theme.  Kawamori produced a narrative that is far more complex than that and wrestles very deeply with the occasional necessity of war juxtaposed against the stupidity and ignorance of blindly choosing war without considering its consequences.  Characters like Lynn Kaifun are very representative of anti-war movements (especially anti-Vietnam War protesters) during the mid-to-late 20th century.  It is ironic that Kaifun, for all of his posturing, is a master martial artist that does not hesitate to use his skills to subdue rowdy customers and stars as the hero in a wuxia-style martial arts action film.

Kaifun is disingenuous and self-serving.  He despises the military and accuses soldiers of being "warmongers."  He exhibits no gratitude towards the pilots or officers who sacrifice their lives in order to protect the Macross and its precious cargo of civilian refugees.  It is clear to the viewer that Kaifun is both ignorant with regards to the realities of the conflict against the Zentraedi and is uninterested in being properly informed.  His mind is made up.  His relationship with Minmay develops in very unhealthy ways and he grows into a very disappointed, alcoholic and abusive person.

Macross' depiction of Kaifun is not-at-all flattering.  He is not the stereotypical heroic hippy that swoops in and disabuses the characters of their "evil, capitalist notions" and single-handedly dismantles the military-industrial complex of the U.N.  (The Zentraedi cannons are far more effective, more's the pity.)  Hikaru and company are engaged in an existential conflict--survival is the reason they are fighting, not economic gain, resource acquisition, or imperial power.  He serves as the foil to Hikaru on three levels--with regards to Misa, Minmay, and the war itself.  Through Kaifun, Hikaru's heroism is enhanced.  Kaifun possesses all of the traits that would make him a hero but he chooses to persist in naive idealism, assuming that the characters prefer war as opposed to their true desire for peace.  When Kaifun says, "War is not the answer, it only serves to strengthen those in power," we may recognize that he's right, but we know that his reasoning is flawed and his personal agenda is highly suspect.

The war was not chosen by Earth, Captain Global, or the U.N. Spacy.  This war arrived at their doorstep and they choose to fight because there does not appear to be any option of surrender.  Indeed, their ignorance of the enemy makes any option of surrender highly dubious and so they persist in fighting.  Ignorance is a powerful weakness and every opportunity Global and his crew have to learn more about their enemies is seized.  When Misa, Hikaru, Max, and Kakizaki escape from Britai's flagship, they return with a great deal if information that eventually leads to the hope that a peace may be brokered between the two.

Kawamori demonstrates that war may be necessary at times in self defense.  Learning about one's enemy, however, may plant the seeds of peace between the two.  Doing so, however, may threaten the established hierarchy.  The current U.N. Spacy high command is loath to consider peace talks because of their trump-card--the Grand Cannon in Alaska.  Similarly, Boddole Zer realizes the threat that human culture presents to the Zentraedi and seeks to annihilate the Earth and destroy those Zentraedi exposed to culture in order to preserve their strict militarized existence.  Both are blind to what is really best for their own species because they cannot see past their own fears and vested interests.  This is a very common problem with political authority--from the Roman Republic to the Japanese military government during the early 20th century to modern American politics.  Kawamori doesn't shrink from this and paints these characters as understandable but still tragically blinded to their own catastrophic failings.

The consequences are tremendous.  Victory is achieved for the Macross but the cost is nearly total extinction coupled with the near-total annihilation of all life on the Earth's surface.  What is both surprising and brave of Kawamori's vision is that Macross continues on after the eponymous vessel lands on the devastated Earth like Noah's Ark (in a crater instead of on a mountain) and disgorges humankind upon the surface to resuscitate and repopulate the world.  Instead of ending here, though, the narrative forges ahead, giving the viewer the full scope of the consequences of victory.  These consequences give value and meaning to the triumph against the Zentraedi.  Reconstruction is not easy and no one gets the Hollywood ending.  Life goes on and everyone is forced to rebuild and readjust--especially the Zentraedi.

The most tragic victims of both the war and the eventual victory of the Macross and her allies are the Zentraedi.  The readjustment that the Zentraedi are forced to endure is tremendous.  Although many come to enjoy their new cultured lives a sort of existential ennui sets in for many of them.  Since battle was all that they knew and was their purpose, without a commanding hierarchy over them providing direction and a strict chain of command, many of the Zentraedi become disgruntled and listless, turning to violence and raiding as a means to try and reachieve their lost sense of purpose.  Many of them become a sort of "lost generation" in the post-Great War sense.  Even though rebellion will result in death, that death in battle seems preferable to a meaningless existence.  I am reminded of reading about the many veterans of war who returned hope with severe cases of post-traumatic stress disorder and am certain that Japan's own experience with Pacific War veterans discharged after the United States' victory and the horrific price Japan paid in defeat deeply inform Kawamori's depiction of the Zentraedi after the Space War concludes.

This also leads into a discussion regarding the value of individuality and the responsibility for each person to choose their own purpose in life and to pursue it, and will be touched on in greater detail in future posts.

Retrospective: 超時空要塞マクロス (Super Dimension Fortress MACROSS). Part One.

Introduction.
Part Two.

The Macross

Let's begin an analysis of Super Dimension Fortress Macross in earnest, beginning with a broad overview of the plot.

Fair warning.  In this analysis THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.  If you haven't yet seen the series, you have been warned and this analysis is written with the assumption that the reader will proceed upon his or her own discretion.  If you have seen the series, by all means, please continue reading.

PLOT OVERVIEW
The series opens with the crash-landing of an alien warship on South Ataria Island in a remote part of the western Pacific Ocean.  Earth is in the midst of a world war but the appearance f this alien vessel quickly unites mankind under the auspices of a powerful United Nations, which forms the U.N. Spacy.  Over ten years, the ship is rebuilt and remodeled, its technologies reverse-engineered, and is christened the Macross.  To support the massive undertaking of repairing and examining the ship and its technologies (including a spacefolding FTL drive), an enormous city springs into existence surrounding the vessel and occupying most of the island.

The story begins in earnest with the celebrations to launch the vessel.  It is here that we are introduced to most of the characters that will dominate the narrative.  Captain Bruno J. Global, an Italian submarine captain who had fought for the United Nations during the unification wars and whose appearance exemplifies the "Mustache Pete" stereotype.  His first officer is First Lieutenant Hayase Misa, a Japanese woman whose father, Admiral Hayase Takashi, was Global's superior during the wars.  Her coworker, companion and close confidante is Claudia LaSalle, an African American bridge officer.  The leader of the Skull Squadron, Roy Focker, is a heavily drinking, smoking, womanizing, American cowboy who started out as a stunt pilot before joining the United Nations forces during the U.N. Wars.  He is in a romantic relationship with LaSalle and hosts his young friend Ichijyo Hikaru, the son of the air circus owner for whom Roy flew before the wars.  Ichijyo Hikaru is introduced as an energetic, brash Japanese pilot of age 16 with a record of seven championship awards for stunt piloting.  Finally, Lynn Minmay is a 15-year-old, half-Chinese, half-Japanese girl from Yokohama who moved to South Ataria Island with dreams of becoming a star.

Britai's flagship

The celebrations and launch preparations are interrupted by the arrival of the Zentraedi, an alien race of giants who are searching for the crashed vessel since it is identified as belonging to the Supervision Army, an enemy force with whom the Zentraedi are at war.  Their commander, Britai Kridanik, orders an assault to capture the vessel, brushing aside all orbital defense platforms encircling the earth and bombarding the island before launching ground and air attacks.  Hikaru and Minmay are immediately swept up into the events and find themselves, along with many of the survivors, as refugees aboard the Macross when a space-fold operation goes wrong.  The Macross, with its precious cargo of civilian refugees, then battles its way across the solar system back to Earth.  Once it arrives, the crew and refugees alike must navigate the complexities of government policy and military command that wants to mitigate the impact of the alien attacks on Earth and use the vessel to distract the Zentraedi away from the home planet.

Left-to-right: Lynn Minmay, Ichijyo Hikaru, and Hayase Misa.

Throughout the story, interpersonal drama unfolds in the form of a love triangle between Hikaru, Minmay, and Misa.  Hikaru is initially attracted to Minmay who, although she finds herself drawn to Hikaru, is ultimately career driven and extremely capricious due to her youth.  However, the 19-year-old Misa and 16-year-old Hikaru, despite the intense dislike the two have for one-another, gradually find solace in companionship.  As the series progresses, years pass and they grow older and more experienced and mature.  As they age, Hikaru gradually detaches himself from Minmay and finds in Misa a more sophisticated and meaningful relationship.

THEMATIC DEPTH
What sets Macross apart from other "real robot" anime?  Mobile Suit Gundam arguably has a sophisticated plot full of intrigue and illustrative of the horror of war (especially involving advanced robotic technology and futuristic weaponry).  There are a great deal of similarities between the two, as well.  Hikaru appears to be much like Amro--both are excellent pilots who become leaders.  Both the Macross and the White Base are iconic vessels that serve as major targets for the enemy to capture or destroy.

Mobile Suit Gundam

The similarities are mostly surface.  Macross actually subverts many of the elements that are prominent in Mobile Suit Gundam.  In addition, Macross isn't as unambiguous about war.  Where Mobile Suit Gundam simply depicts war as bad, Macross demonstrates how war can often be unavoidable.  Nevertheless, Macross still tries to provide a positive message by exploring how misunderstanding and lack of communication can create military conflict and give methods by which negotiation can lead to peace.  Mobile Suit Gundam is far more pessimistic in its outlook.

The characters in Macross are multifaceted.  It is difficult not to care about them and find oneself deeply engaged by the narrative.  Actions have consequences.  People live, love and die.  They are beautifully, wonderfully flawed in the most human and believable ways.  Characters have real motivations that go beyond simply winning the war.  Unlike Mobile Suit Gundam, the characters of Macross have lives outside of the conflict.

The war against the Zentraedi is a catalyst for much of the drama but it is by no means a mere situational MacGuffin.  It forces characters to analyze themselves and become more introspective.  It provides a vehicle for experience.  They change, grow, and develop as people.  Kawamori Shoji invested a great deal of time and effort into creating these characters, their needs, desires, hopes, and motivations.

The narrative of the series is also challenging to the viewer.  There is no clear-cut good-guy/bad-guy dynamic.  Kawamori refuses to spoon-feed the viewer with a morality.  Instead, he uses the themes to make the viewer think.  One may not agree with the choices certain characters make.  They mess up, fail, fall down and occasionally some don't climb back up.  There is heroism and sacrifice, tragedy, foolishness and tunnel vision, blind ignorance, love, appreciation for beauty, loss, and triumph.

THE HERO
Ichijyo Hikaru is the hero of the tale.  He starts out as a kid.  Although he is an experienced air-show pilot he is unready to deal with the realities of air-combat and warfare.  Nor is he prepared to pilot a transforming mech.  He stands out as a protagonist because he, like us, is thrown into this conflict.  The viewer can identify with him very quickly.  He's not "the One," a Newtype, or the Kwizatz Haderach.  He's just a kid who gets swept up by events far beyond his control.  Hikaru is forced to adapt and grow in order to survive.  His journey becomes our journey through the series and we experience the story, the love, the loss, and the lessons vicariously through him.

He stands in direct contrast to Amro in Mobile Suit Gundam.  Amro is a Newtype, a sort of psychic whiz-kid at piloting robots.  Amro's alter-ego is Char Aznable and the two engaged in one of the most legendary feuds in all of anime.  Enraged at the destruction the Zeon forces are wreaking, he jumps into the cockpit of a Gundam, barely glances at the instructions and immediately starts piloting in a combat situation.  He is entirely untrained and untested, yet he successfully defeats the enemy Zacks.

View the scene here.

Hikaru's first experience is quite the opposite.  In fact, it's terrifying.  Hikaru is absolutely overwhelmed.  He ended up piloting a Valkyrie fighter entirely by accident and ends up escorted to safety by his mentor, Roy Focker.  Even this escort barely rescues him and he is instructed to transform in order to avoid colliding with the Macross.  He may have the skills and training to fly a plane but he is entirely incapable of piloting a bipedal robot, crashing into buildings and causing a lot of damage.

Amro is special by having an innate talent.  Hikaru isn't special.  He's entirely mundane.  He's a human.  The fact that he becomes an ace fighter pilot is not through virtue of being a Newtype like Amro but a result of hard work, training, courage, and willpower.

Next time, we'll take a look at the circumstances of war and its impact on Macross as a major theme.