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Old 2007-12-12, 01:45   Link #1267
taelrak
Senior Member
 
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Hrm, for Hiroki, I think Elis summed it up pretty well...is painting really only that important to him that he would give it up at something like that? Get over it. Competition exists in the professional world.

The whole love triangle thing, whether taken independently or viewed as a metaphor for dream, is nice and all, but really. It's one thing to be crushed by the weight of reality in making an artistic dream come true--this is hard and talent doesn't always get you to the top. It's another to simply give up on that dream barely having gotten started on it and then fleeing in denial for what..2-4 years? If that was the case, he deserved to not ever achieve his dream.

I'm glad he broke it off with Kiri - even if it weren't for Elis. I doubt Kiri would've been happy in the long run marrying a guy who can't even take command of his own life and is living a lie all the time. She deserves better (so does Elis for that matter) .

I've also got to seriously question the hiring standards of an "elite art school" that hires a teacher on the basis of only his works throughout high school and who admits he will never paint again. I mean, I can accept that he probably was a genius at painting, probably even better than Yanagi if the implication of the anime is true (but this isn't proven), but still...he's flat out said he'll never paint again.

But I'll agree with the post above that his character development, albeit a bit bumpy, was a good thing, if slightly abrupt. The romance part wasn't a problem IMO - I actually saw a lot of hints that he would get back together with Elis towards the latter half of the anime. However, although it's always been obvious he would start to paint again simply because the plot mandated it right from the beginning, the anime gave no viable hints developing that aspect of his character right up until the end. THAT was the abruptness that I couldn't agree with.

Instead, they only developed half of the metaphor (the romance side) and used it as a stimulus to suddenly jolt him on the other side too (the artist/dream). By trying to tie everything (his dream, painting, his love life) together, the anime tended to marginalize particular aspects while simply trying to point us to the metaphorical link between each aspect to make up for it, and I don't feel it was wholly successful.

Last edited by taelrak; 2007-12-12 at 02:18.
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