There’s something which connects a lot of the stories I’ve read in the past week. Is it a tone, or mood? Or is it a theme?
I guess it would be this situation of a hopeless guy meeting a female component in life, a piece of the puzzle. Let’s look at the culprits:
- Toradora!
- Character comes off as a hard-delinquent, but actually very good. He befriends Taiga, a great, naive female character, yet he still cannot manage to accomplish the goal.
- Black God
- Keita, the male, lives in some sort of dream existence where he can bum money from the girl who raised him. Kuro is the female, and she’s quite lively and strange. Keita looks to have a future in galge, but his trustworthiness is questionable.
- Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge
- What can I say, Yamamoto needs a girl friend, instead he finds a bishi and escapes from his regular life by risking his own. He can’t defeat his lack of change, or score a date.
- A Certain Magical Index
- Touma sucks at super-hero school, and a chibi-loli-nun futon thing winds in his life via balcony. I’m not sure what drives him, but he’s just getting by.
It could be me, but these guys are in a sense, stuck. Dandy, but I seem to get this down vibe with these characters, like they are the unformed clay waiting for the story to shape them. Some may look at unformed clay with a keen eye, but I feel it is lonely; yes, a raw glob of clay is lonely. Though I can’t verify that these characters are lonely, I can say they are mostly alone. In other words, they aren’t party boy Kurosaki Ichigo.
I guess here lies the separation between external (Ichigo, Bleach) and internal (above) character development. Whatever the case, the great point is female focus. Characters are so much more dynamic in the presence of an opposite sex, in RL as well.
Basically, I need a little more diversity in the moods of simultaenous media, I’m feeling a bit annoyed when dealing with these male protagonists. Perhaps some high school shoujo or simple, funny ecchi in the mix will do. At least on the anime side of things, Keroro never disappoints.
