apprentices & comparisons

[kaigou]

We can blame this entire post on ivoryandhorn.

First: apprentices. It's a long tradition (West and East) of apprentices going through the chop wood, carry water period before ever being allowed to touch any tools of the trade. In the West, the real learning doesn't seem to start until one becomes a journeyman, having graduated out of the simplest practices and general grunt-work of the apprentice. A long way to say: I'm willing to accept that apprentices do grunt-work and are often just barely a step above slaves -- what gets me is when stories treat such extreme apprentice-abuse as funny.

This has been bugging me about D.Gray-man, which to be honest I'm only watching because there's little else right now that has my attention, and watching means moving away from the computer. In other words, it's a mental break, although I don't particularly care for the fact that I'm taking quite that much of a mental break. (I mean, honestly, is the entire first season nothing but freaking filler? I don't think I would've made it past about the fourth episode if I hadn't read the manga and knew it'd be getting better... well, sort of.)

Anyway, the manga implies a lot about Allen's time as an apprentice, while the anime goes into considerably more detail and flashback. Both treat Allen's experiences as a kind of joke, though Allen himself (at least in the manga) seems to withhold purposefully any further details, preferring to let any discussion pass with a hand-wave/smile rather than go into detail (where, it implies, he might not find it so easy to pretend like it was nothing). The anime-version, however, treats the entire thing as funny, in the narrative, I mean: other characters both reinforce the "it's so funny" as well as outright undermine Allen's own obvious reluctance for the telling and dislike of what he's telling. I might even be amused by the irony of a female character basically telling the male character right up that the male character's impression/understanding is wrong (because normally it's the other way around: male --> female )... if I weren't so annoyed by the narrative treating outright abuse as somehow a source of amusement, even of admiration!

Because honestly, I can't see it as anything else: you take a child, for crying out loud, and you accept some kind of responsibility for that child, and then you proceed to treat the child like your own wage-earning slave, and this is supposed to be a positive form of apprenticeship? By whose standards, exactly? Someone who does that (and all the other things Allen's master does) is not a master, he's a damn leech. At least in the manga, Allen is given the dignity of just not talking that much about it; in the anime, however, he gets nearly an entire episode to go into what is clearly life with a major bully... and at conclusion, his female peer laughs and says of all that horrible treatment, "oh, clearly he felt some affection for you."

To me, that sounds a little bit too much like, "he treated you like crap and that shows he loved you." That's a sick message. The manga doesn't hit that button quite so hard (or so often), but the anime underlines it further by having every listening female go starry-eyed over tales of the master, despite Allen's obvious discomfort in recalling the bad memories. Wow, another message I could do without: "who cares if he treated you like a slave, he's so good-looking!" Like abuse is okay if the abuser is really a charmer.

It does seem to me that mangaverse-Allen doesn't speak of his apprenticeship for several reasons. One, because no one likes to feel like they were taken advantage of, used and discarded -- and there's no doubt in my mind that he was. Another reason for keeping silent is his ambivalence about his former master: he has a strong -- and perfectly reasonable, if you ask me -- dislike of the man, yet this is also someone very powerful and respected in their Order, and of crucial decisive power against the Big Bad. Who is Allen, against that? A kid, really. In the manga, he mentions his past when something happens that's relevant (such as cheating at cards to get them out of a tight spot) but otherwise he does seem to be victim-blaming, subtly, whenever the topic comes up about his former master with someone of higher rank than him. In other words: he's at least smart enough to know he can't complain, that his perspective would be dismissed (as the anime comes right out and does), so it's better to just pretend like none of it matters.

It's not in the text explicitly (not that I've seen, at least, but maybe I can keep hoping it'll be addressed eventually) but it definitely adds a subtext for me. And it's one that's pretty freaking sad. I mean, sure, Izumi was harsh on the Elric brothers, but there's being a tough master who trains the student hard (like Izumi) and then there's just being a bully, a leech, and an abusive asshole, all three of which are nothing better than the abuse of power over someone without any.

Second: hard choices. This is where Fullmetal Alchemist/Arakawa has a lot to answer for, because she (like other good writers before her) has ruined my ability to let some things go by. This particular instance, we're talking about hard choices: her characters can make them.

For the life of me, I can't recall where the point was in FMA -- at 108 chapters and a while since I read 'em all, it's blurring at the edges -- but I'm almost positive that there was at least once (and possibly a few more times) where Edward, and Alphonse, have to make a choice of one versus many. I can see the scene in my head, but all I can recall is that Edward (and Alphonse backs him up on this) is aware that someone right in front of him could use his help, but it'd come at the cost of a greater cost elsewhere. Hmm, I think at least one instance was in the Briggs chapters, where General Armstrong sends the brothers away, and then a similar kind of choice when trapped with Scar while Kimblee was hunting them.

Each time, Edward would express frustration that his hands were tied (and I seem to recall Mustang reacting the same way in similar situations, but ultimately making the hard choices as well) but that doesn't stop him from choosing the many over the one. Arakawa's characters are human enough to regret the loss, but dedicated and determined enough to accept that as the cost of victory. Even Gen. Armstrong does the same when basically ordering her men to sacrifice her for the sake of their survival.

While watching/reading, I'd taken this as a just part of a great story, and didn't really break it down into its pieces. Watching DGM and yet another filler episode (le sigh), I realized I was watching a scene play out that I've seen in multiple anime. I've seen it in American stories, too, though a little less common (perhaps because I don't tend to watch military/political American entertainment, but possibly it's less common in American stories because the conflict is ultimately of orders/principle over individual, and American stories do tend to value individuals over broad principles, when the chips are down).

Anyway, we have hero-character (main or secondary), and we have local though minor threat of some sort. We have locals who can't defend themselves and must ask hero for help. But hero has orders to either protect someone else, go somewhere else, be off doing something else. Whatever version we get of that "something else", it nearly always comes with a label that says "if this is not done, lots and lots and LOTS of people will be hurt and/or die" (and not just some ten to fifteen people in a small village). That's common writer-path, to raise the stakes in the choice, and I don't have an issue with that. Nor do I mind when the hero sticks to his guns (so to speak) and insists he must follow orders, no regret shown, just stoic dedication to The Work.

But wait, what's this, a child? (Me: *groaaaaannn*) Yeah, some kid toddles up, whines or begs or cries or does something particularly childlike (and, I presume, 'cute') like offer the hero plenty of ice cream if he agrees, or her favorite doll, or some other 'huge payment' (in a child's eyes, at least) for his help. Naturally, the hero is unable to refuse the child! Naturally, the hero drops everything and helps these helpless people. And the story sees this as good. Meanwhile, I'm kicking the screen and saying, "oh, yeah, I'm sure those ten thousand other people slaughtered in that brutal massacre because you weren't there on time, Mr Freaking Hero, really think that's damn good of you."

Now, I get that we could all wish that someone capable of protecting us would, in a pinch, protect us if we're standing right there. But the comparison to FMA made me realize how much this kind of maneuver undermines a variety of things: like any implication that there's a military or other formal structure, hierarchy, where orders are to be obeyed if lives are to be saved. The soldier on the field cannot be as informed as a general; the general's duty is to make the hard choices and the soldier's duty is to obey, even if that means shouldering sometimes a little of that hard choice in saying, "I'm sorry, I wish I could stay and protect you, but if I have my orders, and the cost of not following them is a whole helluva lot bigger than the cost of just you six people." Harsh, and not something anyone wants to hear, but sometimes very true.

It also undermines the character's strength, to me, because it's taking the easy choice: oh, let's not look like a bad guy in front of a small child, of course we'll help, even if it means we'll be late to the battlefield where our assistance is desperately needed! One thing I did adore about BtVS was that there were several times when helpless passerby accosted Buffy, demanding she protect them -- and if she could, she did, but if she couldn't, she didn't hesitate to tell those bystanders that they were on their own. Her strength was significant enough that only she could take down the Big Bad, so that's what she had to focus on -- otherwise, she'd be saving a few pennies while losing a dozen pounds.

It's easy to feel sympathy for someone hurting right in front of you, and I can see how a writer might fear that creating a character capable of saying "no" could turn audiences off. It's a double-whammy when it's a woman saying the word, which is why both Buffy and Gen. Armstrong are particularly notable, for being female characters not just strong enough to fight, but strong enough to be willing to lose the small fight if that's what it takes to win the big one. Usually female characters don't even get that option -- usually they're the ones playing the role (like in DGM) of pressuring a male character, in what amounts to encouragement to forget the greater fight/good in favor of this little fight at front and center.

And last, it bugs me because it's manipulation, especially when the narrative is pushing the scene as one where I'm expected to sympathize with the child and/or her family and/or the idiot bystanders. Between the description (literary or graphical), the setup, and the reaction of the hero's foil-peers, it's all pushing hard on the "feel sorry for these helpless innocents! be impressed when the hero is willing to step in and defend them (often while refusing any payment at all)!" and so on. Which maybe used to work, but now that I see what's going on, it not only doesn't work anymore, it backfires. I keep thinking of Gen Armstrong in FMA and her hard choices, and my respect for her character (and Arakawa for writing her) grows exponentially, while the character in the storyline right in front of me loses respect by the word.

(This was another thing BtVS did well: it cast bystanders as slightly incoherent, near-hysterical, panicked shrieking NPCs who were almost certainly bound to be burdens in any fight, because Buffy'd be expected to not let them get hurt, while the panicked bystanders ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, easy pickings for the bad guys. That behavior puts any defender in the position of defending herself and bystanders from the bad guys and defending the bystanders from their own stupidity. Who the hell smart would want to sign up for that?)

Other thoughts as they come, again, with all blame due (for once, not on Duo) to I&H.

Comments

[wilhelminabenedict]

I remember feeling like in the manga Allen's trauma was acknowledged as trauma, but that may be because all the other manga I seem to read treats trauma like a total joke.

[kaigou]

The sense I get (at least as of, uhm, ch110 or so, I think) is that the manga's narrative does the laugh-because-otherwise... kind of reaction, because of the other characters' awareness of the power-issue. So they follow Allen's lead, and Allen seems to prefer (at least, so far) to just pretend like it's nothing. So not entirely a joke so much as a common victim-reaction of "no, it's no big, whatever, I survived, I'm fine now" (combined with what appears to be mild to very strong terror at the notion of having to interact with his master ever again).

Plenty of storylines treat apprentice-abuse as funny -- FMA does, to some respect -- but very often these stories also show the master/teacher genuinely caring for and wanting the best for the apprentice (FMA, even Rurouni Kenshin, now that I think about it). So I'm used to scenes where apprentices groan and moan about abuse, paired with scenes that show the complaints aren't entirely accurate (or not nearly as horrible-total as the bitching might lead one to believe) ... while Allen's version is the total flipside: his complaints are so soft as to be almost non-existent in the manga, comparatively, while what the reader does see is stuff that definitely deserves to be called out with a loud voice.

The anime for DGM, however, does seem to treat it all as a complete joke. What gets me is that doing so requires a near-total blindness to the scenes played out only seconds before. It felt like the writers, well... to put a really fine point on it, that half may've felt uncomfortable enough that they wanted to play it all for laughs while the other half saw the trauma as genuine trauma, and the result was one majorly schizo-episode. "Fine, we'll write both!" and the result is that the story hits you hard with unquestionable demonstrations of abusive very unfunny behavior, and then turns around and declares it's all a joke. Makes me distrust the writers, to be perfectly honest. Makes me feel like if they can't handle this part of the story, what bigger part won't they be able to handle, as well?

[branchandroot]

*thoughtful* The text-argument that the individual is more important does seem to be a theme of its own in anime/manga. The most egregious examples I can recall are from Clamp (no surprise), but I've seen it come up elsewhere, yeah. Seems like shows that are focusing intensely on the interpersonal relations, to the exclusion of any political plotline, do that the most. And they usually validate that path by letting the hero save both the one and the many, but... not always.

[kaigou]

Seems like shows that are focusing intensely on the interpersonal relations, to the exclusion of any political plotline, do that the most.

Which makes sense: the lesson of the interpersonal story is that the individual matters the most; the lesson of the political story is that you must sacrifice the one for the many. I just get annoyed when the two get mixed up, and we get an interpersonal lesson in a political story. Oddly, I don't mind it the other way around, since that in itself can also be a sort of anti-lesson for the interpersonal story (that sometimes the individual must still be set aside for the good of the many) -- that can count as a hard lesson, which come to think of it is how Arakawa plays it, as does Kishimoto.

It's the interpersonal lesson in a political story that comes across like having the cake and eating it, too, like you say. Even if the story manages to make it work, it still (usually) requires a great deal of contortion, story-wise.

[ivoryandhorn]

Equivalent exchange~ I blame you for fic, you blame me for meta, it's all good.

Also I haven't seen the anime and thus have nothing to say except if you have more D. Gray-man related thoughts, I will be a very happy I&H and gleefully accept blame for them all. :X

[kaigou]

Well, you could sum up the anime like this:

First ten episodes: really, we're not a total rip-off of at least three other shonen anime, and we're not even mentioning that OTHER better series that also has a teenaged-kid who's sensitive about his height who has a mutant/non-natural arm. Not mentioning it at all! Look! Haley's comet! A demon!

Next ten episodes: wah! did someone get the license plate on that speeding plot line? everyone okay? great! let's all go for filler ice cream!

...thirty-something episodes later...

Ep 48: why are we going to China, anyway? What? That's where the plot is? Really? This story actually has a plot? Dude! Full speed ahead! ... with frequent stops for, uhm, more filler.

ep52: OMFG IT'S PLOT.

and that's where I realized I was too bored after fast-forwarding through filler to have the energy to even be excited about actual plot development.

In between doing the math, though, and realizing that the mangaka may have a world map but she's got absolutely no clue just how BIG the world really is, and that this is not the 2-month on-foot trek from Kyoto to Tokyo. I mean, really: the characters start somewhere around what appears to be northern Italy, head through Bulgaria and cross at the Bosphorus, make plenty of side-treks to deal with demons somewhere around Uzbekistan, manage to cross into Nepal, and then head into China from there and the next thing we know they're at a port city in China and ready to sail towards Japan.

Just from Italy to Nepal is somewhere in the neighborhood (non-crow-flying) of about 5,000 miles. (I actually took crow-fly measurement of two distances on the E7, compared to the actual E7 distance, and figured out an additional % to add if the person's following footpaths/roads rather than going direct.) For a series that always always shows these characters walking (dude, at least Ed and Al got to ride the freaking trains most of the time), and given that a person in really good shape (and with relatively clear roads) can manage about 4mph -- which is in itself a very good clip, really -- but for only about 8 hours a day, it came to around SEVEN FREAKING MONTHS OF WALKING. And that's not even counting time off for all the side-trips of chasing demons and getting lost in various parts of the world!

At which point I figured, if the series had any clue, we'd get to episode53 and:

*good guys arrive*

*bad guys are nowhere to be seen*

*good guys check script*

lenalee: it says here the final battle was eight months ago!?
allen: we MISSED it!?
anime_krory: this is all my fault! *emo*emo*emo*
manga_krory: *kicks anime_krory's ass*
lavi: blame the mangaka! if she'd just let us ride the train, we could've made it!
noahs: *laugh and laugh and laugh*

...because the noahs might use a stupid umbrella to travel, but it's still faster than walking.

[tiercel]

There's at least one season of Sailor Moon where the entire plot arc is about the good of the one vs. the good of the many, where Our Heroes refuse to accept that anyone has to die at all. Which is great if you're a magical girl, but doesn't work that well in reality. I feel like I see that idea a lot in anime/manga, actually; where a character refuses to accept that they can't save everybody, and since it's fiction, they do save everybody, and it aggravates me kind of a lot.

Maybe I should just stop watching magical girl shows.

[kaigou]

Maybe I should just stop watching magical girl shows.

That might help.

(heh)

Then again, the genres I mostly prefer are either strongly philosophy-of-war/political, or heavy on the folklore. With the former, the predominant lesson usually is sacrifice of the one for the many; for the latter, it can be a crapshoot.

[hokuton_punch]

... I feel slightly bad that this post is making me want to read D.Gray-Man, of which I read one chapter and watched - hm - maybe 6 episodes before getting bored of filler. Definitely sounds like the manga is better (although I do thank the anime for providing me a very interesting screenshot for an icon).

[kaigou]

I would have to say that in this case, the manga is considerably better, but with the caveat that this isn't saying much. The mangaka has a lot of good ideas, but not enough experience as a story-teller (or her editors aren't strong enough in terms of guidance) to keep the story tight and balanced. And her fight scenes are, without a doubt or exception, the absolutely most incomprehensible EVER. As in, you really honestly truly do not know what's going on -- and much of the time, you can't even tell who's who. It's all very pretty but it's really just a pretty hot mess, when it comes to fight scenes; in a nutshell, the mangaka just can't choreograph at all, so she can't seem to visualize the fight enough to illustrate segments that make any sense.

The one value of the anime is that the medium forces the fights to become comprehensible... but that's about the only value. Sadly.

[dragonhand]

I gotta freaking finish the FMA manga. *whaps head against doorframe, then brightens* But I'm kinda stoked not to be blamed for this! Woo!