[Ricky Controversy]

Originally Posted by Triple_R

Ricky... Kirino is the female lead of this and a protagonist. We're not talking about The Joker or Lex Luthor here. I don't get any sense that the viewer is supposed to dislike Kirino, or that she's simply some sort of obstacle for Kyousuke to overcome. For the drama of this anime to be effective, it helps for the viewer to feel sympathetic with Kirino. And I'm sorry, but moral assessments are obviously going to factor in to how sympathetic many of us feel for a character. I mean, it's obviously easier to feel sorry for a character who's going through hardship when s/he's doing nothing wrong than it is to feel sorry for a character who's going through hardship when s/he spends most of his or her time being mean and nasty to other people. For a lot of us, a character like that going through hardship is called "karma" or "poetic justice".

You misunderstand me. What I'm saying is troubling is the way people are critiquing the story as a whole just because they would do X or Y differently than Kirino. In short, people are displaying a stunted capacity for sympathy because their critiques are all coming from their own position, external to the whole situation, ignoring the fact that Kirino is a teenage girl with a hobby seen as perverse or dangerous by many, with difficult feelings towards a brother who was never there for her until recently. Does that give her a bye for her actions? No. But the way people dismiss her shows none of the sympathy crucial to good story/recipient interface.

Yes, I agree with you here. But she shouldn't be angry/resentful towards him all the time, imo. Because that can make it harder for the viewer to sympathize with her at all.

She hasn't been so far, though. Sure, she has been brusque with him, but she has also had her grateful, vulnerable moments. Her tone is often harsh, but what she says and does displays gradations of feeling that often aren't angry or resentful at all. Let's be realistic here, at the outset of the series, she and Kyousuke hadn't had any kind of relationship in years. It finally resumes under panicked, stressful terms, and all she knows is that, in being hard on, she has finally focused his attention on her. A middle-school girl in that situation is probably going to stick to what she knows works: in this case, railroading him.

Again, I am not agreeing with or condoning her actions, but that's not a prerequisite of sympathy. It's enough to be able to parse it out in your head, and I feel like people are showing a very superficial awareness by holding on to Kirino's every harsh action and saying "It's about time she apologized!" and that it "Wasn't enough" when they're perfectly willing to cheer Kyousuke on without any reference to the fact that he ignored his little sister for most of their lives. If you're going to question Kirino's development and persona, question Kyousuke's. If you're going to laud Kyousuke's victories, laud Kirino's, because a real understanding of the story puts them both in the "you made a mess, let's start cleaning it up" bin.

Speaking personally, I just want some balance in Kirino's character. I want somebody that I can sympathize with; not somebody who's behavior is so bad that I find I actually want her to take a fall (which is how I felt about Kirino back in Episode 8, just like Kuroneko did).

Again, there really is plenty to sympathize with. I don't exactly see how wanting someone to get taken down a peg precludes you from also understanding where they're coming from. We've all had to get knocked down at various points in our lives to learn our lessons, so the only reason the two couldn't be reconciled is if we expect everyone to behave like socially-accepted adults, regardless of age and circumstance. Of course, I grew up with rather distant older siblings myself, and it can have a big impact on a lot of things.

I have to strongly disagree.

Most teenage kids do not act as bad as Kirino as acted through out most of this anime. In fact, I didn't know a signal person in my high school (when I attended it back in the 90s) that was anywhere near as bad as what Kirino has been through out most of this anime.

In fact, it could easily be argued that Kirino's level of mistreatment towards Kyousuke is unrealistic.

Which raises the point that you probably didn't know them half as well as we're being allowed to know Kirino. It's not like anyone Kirino goes to school with has known about this part of her personality. It's a frustration she's only able to release to people she trusts/cares about (Kuroneko/Saori/Kyousuke) or the object of the bulk of the frustration (Kyousuke). Everyone at school knows her as this shining star of perfection. For such a person to be highly repressed to the point of volatility when she's letting herself be vulnerable is actually very realistic.

Kirino is not the standard for teenage girls. Not at all, from what I've seen in life.

Again, in her own way, she is. We're just getting to see the parts that we usually don't see in polite society.