"Defeat" in Romance Series: When Your Chosen Girl Loses [Spoilers Ahead!]

[Marcus H.]

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

In the end, it sorta made sense why the winning relationship seemed so underwhelming to me-- it's not really the most important thing. What's more important that all these three left as better people to face the future of which they'll find happiness; effectively everyone "wins" in the long run[...]

I don't think I can accept that. That basically means that if I misunderstand it, then I screwed up bad.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

I don't think I can accept that. That basically means that if I misunderstand it, then I screwed up bad.

I think it is extremely easy for all of us (I don't exclude myself) to get caught up in the emotions of the show and miss some of the thematic elements the first time around. I also find this is particular hard if you're watching a show from week-to-week because you forget details from one week to the next (I prefer to watch shows in batches partly for this reason). But usually, upon rewatch, knowing the ultimate destination, these threads and the related signs/hints become more visible and start to make more sense. (I know that when I first watched KgNE, I was pretty wrecked with emotion and didn't fully understand the story and the ending until I re-examined it and studied what was going on and why things went the way they did. Then, upon reflection, it made much more sense to me.)

While I don't think any opinions are necessarily wrong, I do think it's possible for people to misunderstand the plot and then get mad that the story didn't end in the way they were hoping for. In these cases, sometimes people offer objective-sounding justifications for their dislike that, in my opinion, don't really hold up to a serious analysis of the plot.

[Dawnstorm]

Heh, for what it's worth, I do think Shinichiro made a shitty decision, and I think the anime neither agrees nor disagrees with me, but the anime does agree with me on the point that it's his decision. I don't disagree with anything relentlessflame said, but the way it's phrased seems to ignore important developments... (He said he could write a paper on the show; so could I, but this is not the True Tears thread. )

So from my perfrence True Tears looks like this:

Best girl wins? Absolutely not.
Best couple wins? Probably not.
The couple that makes the most dramatic sense? Definitely.

[Poor Aiko. Does anyone root for her? ]

[monir]

Originally Posted by Dawnstorm

[Poor Aiko. Does anyone root for her? ]

Who was that again?

I agree that figuring out the thematic approach to a show pretty much breaks down the major oncoming plot points (including romance, pairing etc). ....

Originally Posted by relentless

While I don't think any opinions are necessarily wrong, I do think it's possible for people to misunderstand the plot and then get mad that the story didn't end in the way they were hoping for. In these cases, sometimes people offer objective-sounding justifications for their dislike that, in my opinion, don't really hold up to a serious analysis of the plot.

I must note one objection to the above... a good execution of the storytelling is just as crucial at selling the plot point which helps to dissuade a lot of those arguments against why it should have been done differently. There are few anime where I could see where the plot was going, but it was still difficult to take it in stride based on how it was laid out. True Tears was one of the exceptional anime in that regard where the story never wavered from what it wanted to do, how it was going to do it and then complemented the plot with well executed attention-to-detail to lay it all out. By episode 3 I already knew who the eventual pairing was going to be and then it just persisted with good reasoning toward the question "why that pairing?" Unfortunately not all anime stories that persist with the grave matter of romance tend to carry things out like True Tears, so the murmurs of dissatisfaction are louder in some stories than others.

So in an essence I can sometime muster more sympathy to the grumbling of a certain stories than others even if I was able to see what the plot had in store for us.

[Arya]

Well, despite I also agree that True Tears made it clear at the end of episode 3 which pairing would have been at the end, I could have never bet anything on it (say like I could with WA2 after the very very beginning of ep. 2).

Spoiler for True Tears:

And to me this unpredictability lasted even after episode 9 or 10 because as said Noe was pivotal for Shinichirou's growth as much as him was to her, but sadly for her in a different way. Thing this that usually should lead to a final pairing, because if two persons are able to grew thanks to each other, or they are very beneficial for the other, well, that is what makes a romance development works at its best in my book (and here is why I would be very disappointed if a certain couple would not happen in NnA). The fact is that in True Tears that development was set to work in the opposite way. As so well explained by Archon_Wing and then by relentlessflame. But I think that the writing never failed to make it clear, without being blatantly obvious (have you ever seen a chicken fly?) and never recurring to cheap ways to make it clear, say errors or mistakes done by the loser girl to give a "sound" reason to the final choice, but at the same time with the side effect of being detrimental to the character herself. Noe didn't do anything wrong. Nor Shinichirou and Hiromi.
And ultimately it's true what Archon_Wing said about how all these three characters became better persons thanks to the experiences they had and shared along the show.

On a side note for all the reasons written by Archon_Wing and relentlessflame I can't put WA2 on tier with True Tears, despite I loved that series (that is not ended yet, btw)

[Archon_Wing]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

Spoiler for True Tears:

OMG someone finally gets it!!!!! (Not that I'm saying you or others didn't get it before... just rare to see it so nicely summed up.)

"I want to dry your tears. And now, I can." Noe's entire role in the story from Shinichirou's point of view is to be the muse that gets him out of his funk and helps him realize what he needs to do to realize his life goals -- which include, as we were told from the start, trying to make Hiromi happy. And meanwhile, Noe's whole situation with Shinichirou, and the pain she experiences in the process, is enough to finally break the stone wall of her emotions and get her tears back. Hiromi has to overcome some trials while Shinichirou gets his act together, but her main role in the story is basically to wait for him to figure out who she is to him.

All this is why I say: if they wanted to change the ending to True Tears, they'd have to change plot developments much earlier in the story. Otherwise, it'd be a different story entirely.

Well, you were tired of what you perceived as "I don't like what happened, blah!" style complaints in this thread so I went with something that works. While going over what doesn't work to people is somewhat useful at times, I think it's more effective to actually discuss something that does work even if people ranting is more humorous and we have all those "butthurt" jokes.

As for realizing it, I think a lot of people may have come across it but weren't able to bring it to focus because it fell outside the realm of expectations and wasn't something one would ordinarily look out out for. So yea, I definitely thought it was brilliant because it took advantage of something the audience takes for granted.

Now, I don't deny that the romantic aspect is a compelling part and it's not unreasonable to take that focus but it is somewhat unfortunate that there was all this nice storytelling and many were stuck on one aspect.

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

I don't think I can accept that. That basically means that if I misunderstand it, then I screwed up bad.

You can only learn by admitting you made mistakes. One's opinions of a show can be dynamic and ever changing. It doesn't just end when you enter a number into MAL or vote in an AS impressions thread. A lot of shows have aged well over time when I unearthed stuff I didn't notice before. And a few got worse, but hey, that's life.

[Fireminer]

Hmm... A simple question: Have anyone see a Masterpiece anime that leads to this situation? Putting the main character into choosing mutiply love choice?

For me:

Code Geass: No

Death Note: No

Fullmetal: No

Berseker: No

Rose of Versailes: Like Fruit Basket below

Fruit Basket: Not really, since it's a girl

Macross: Yes

Evangelion: Shinji will run away before making that choice.

What I meaning is, how many romance anime are there is deserved to go into textbook, into history? I always feel there is something in Romantic materials that anime couldn't illustrate, unlike literature or music. Love in anime... It misses the Thirst for Perfection. Seldomly do we see a character becoming better through Love - Last time I saw is was in Ghibil movies.

Without Ideals to Bonds, Roads to Travel together, Aspects to Perfect, the only role of shipping is for self-perfection - A.K.A you don't saw the character as a human, as your friend.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by monir

I must note one objection to the above... a good execution of the storytelling is just as crucial at selling the plot point which helps to dissuade a lot of those arguments against why it should have been done differently. There are few anime where I could see where the plot was going, but it was still difficult to take it in stride based on how it was laid out. True Tears was one of the exceptional anime in that regard where the story never wavered from what it wanted to do, how it was going to do it and then complemented the plot with well executed attention-to-detail to lay it all out. By episode 3 I already knew who the eventual pairing was going to be and then it just persisted with good reasoning toward the question "why that pairing?" Unfortunately not all anime stories that persist with the grave matter of romance tend to carry things out like True Tears, so the murmurs of dissatisfaction are louder in some stories than others.

So in an essence I can sometime muster more sympathy to the grumbling of a certain stories than others even if I was able to see what the plot had in store for us.

Very fair, and I can agree with that.

If you're going to have an argument about storytelling execution, I think the first question you need to ask is: what was the author trying to accomplish through the plot? You can usually get big hints of this as you go (particularly since many anime follow the "essay style" of writing: say what you're going to say, say it, then say what you said), but it's easiest to see this when you get to the end and you can tie the start and the ending together.

In the cases where the execution is weak, even in retrospect, the path toward the conclusion is convoluted or needlessly obscured. Of course, I'm not talking about plot twists that are necessary to keep things interesting. But even plot twists should contribute in some way to the central themes and develop meaningfully towards the conclusion.

I can definitely think of romantic anime where, along those lines, the execution may have compromised the author's message to some degree, or at the very least made the author's message look a bit callous or shallow. Sometimes this has to do with weaknesses inherent to the adaptation -- particularly trying to cram way too much content into too short of a time frame. Sometimes, it may betray the fact that story really didn't even all that cohesive of a theme/message in the first place, and was just taking the viewer along for the ride.

But, by the same token, I can also think of cases where others have accused a story of these very sorts of things, and I just can't agree based on the way I interpreted the central themes/messages. But perhaps this is because I can be a bit more forgiving of certain obstacles so long as I can see how all the pieces fit together -- as I believe you pointed out before, once I see what the author is "trying to do", I tend to focus more on that and subconsciously dismiss or minimize things that might distract. This makes it a bit harder for me to be sympathetic to certain arguments because I've fixated enough on the pattern that it's hard for me to not see it. But, in then end, this is why the perspective of other viewers is valuable, even if I can't necessarily always quite follow the other arguments all the way through.

[Haak]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

Spoiler for True Tears:

OMG someone finally gets it!!!!! (Not that I'm saying you or others didn't get it before... just rare to see it so nicely summed up.)

"I want to dry your tears. And now, I can." Noe's entire role in the story from Shinichirou's point of view is to be the muse that gets him out of his funk and helps him realize what he needs to do to realize his life goals -- which include, as we were told from the start, trying to make Hiromi happy. And meanwhile, Noe's whole situation with Shinichirou, and the pain she experiences in the process, is enough to finally break the stone wall of her emotions and get her tears back. Hiromi has to overcome some trials while Shinichirou gets his act together, but her main role in the story is basically to wait for him to figure out who she is to him.

All this is why I say: if they wanted to change the ending to True Tears, they'd have to change plot developments much earlier in the story. Otherwise, it'd be a different story entirely.

Spoiler for True Tears:

For the record, this is actually what I meant when I was talking about superficial stuff. Imo, I felt the whole "getting tears back" felt far to vague and didn't necessarily mean she had to "lose". At the very least, I thought it could have still gone a number of ways that could've still been interpreted as breaking down her emotional wall and "getting her tears back". I don't recall much about Shinichirou's goals, though it probably wouldn't have mattered to me since I felt at the time that his relationship with Hiromi ultimately depended on whether or not they were really blood relatives.

At the end of the day it's highly subjective anyway. Like I said, it's about weighing up to what extent the narrative themes justify the end result. I guess ultimately I was never really sold on the narrative elements enough to justify the elements that I felt were forced, and others felt nothing was forced so the narrative themes were perfect justifications, or felt they were good enough anyway.

Originally Posted by Archon_Wing

As for Haak's note about True Tears, I definitely felt that was a contrivance that almost feels like it was waved away. And not to mention the double whammy of

Spoiler for TT:

Shin's Mom, I don't hate you anymore, but I'll be damned if anything comes out of this.

The problem with Hiromi is that we really don't hear her internal thoughts enough. The first few episodes did a beautiful job of being subtle about that but past that all her struggles are external and we really don't see how much she grows besides being better at playing ball and doing moe stuff like wear glasses. It's certainly nice to see her taking the initiative eventually but I think it's just harder to imagine why she cares so much about Shin. I guess that's a problem with a lot of anime of this type and something like White Album 2 handled much better.

I feel this and the melodrama post episode 9 to really drop the value of the series and thus was emotionally disconnected with the ending.

But I realized there's a moment of brilliance that at the end that gives it the small edge over good series like White Album 2. (Well, that and True Tears made better use of its stills, but that's another story!).

Spoiler for True Tears, turn the chessboard around:

If you play the series assuming Noe is the center, then the story suddenly makes a whole lot more sense. The normal expectation is the Harem Lead Guy will be the center of the universe and the end result is going to focus on the "winner" and their lovey dovey interactions as prescribed by OP. But True Tears doesn't actually do this. If you are expecting that kind of "boy meets girl" and then romantic struggle and resolution then it did happen. But is that the point to these characters? They had a host of other problems too. Noe couldn't feel sadness, Shinchiro felt aimless, and Hiromi felt overly restrained.

If one takes the view that Shinchiro and Hiromi were going to get together eventually after the restrictions were lifted and Noe's place was to spur all of this into action while establishing her own existence that changes everything. If we changed the narrative to no romance between Noe and Shinchiro and she was merely playing cupid to the other two, I'd imagine it'd be a lot less controversial but also less interesting. But sometimes it doesn't work like that, and feelings do get in the way.

True Tears did not leave its non-winner to hang and dry, to be forgotten as some episodic occurrence. Well, I know this narrative excludes A, but sometimes you need to break a few eggs to make an omelette. There's a reason why Noe takes center screen at the end, and that's because she was the last to overcome her troubles. In the end, it sorta made sense why the winning relationship seemed so underwhelming to me-- it's not really the most important thing. What's more important that all these three left as better people to face the future of which they'll find happiness; effectively everyone "wins" in the long run although one party has to endure a lot more alone. That's the sad part. In any case, that's a pretty subtle subversion. Now, isn't that more interesting than a silly shipping war?

Spoiler for True Tears:

I also liked the fact that Noe was still very much the focus of the story and the narrative didn't just shaft her out of the picture for convenience. I reckon that's partly a left over of her initially being the end girl though it doesn't really make a difference either way.

Originally Posted by Marcus H.

I don't think I can accept that. That basically means that if I misunderstand it, then I screwed up bad.

Well then too bad.

[Marcus H.]

Well then too bad.

Way to put salt on my wounds, Haak. Fortunately, I don't actively pick up romance series because God knows what would have happened if I joined the White Album discussions. I think my head would turn into mush.

[Sackett]

Originally Posted by Fireminer

Hmm... A simple question: Have anyone see a Masterpiece anime that leads to this situation? Putting the main character into choosing mutiply love choice?

What I meaning is, how many romance anime are there is deserved to go into textbook, into history? I always feel there is something in Romantic materials that anime couldn't illustrate, unlike literature or music. Love in anime... It misses the Thirst for Perfection. Seldomly do we see a character becoming better through Love - Last time I saw is was in Ghibil movies.

Without Ideals to Bonds, Roads to Travel together, Aspects to Perfect, the only role of shipping is for self-perfection - A.K.A you don't saw the character as a human, as your friend.

Maison Ikkoku. I repeat, Maison Ikkoku. Godai definitely changes significantly over the show and he does have to make a choice.

Cross Game and Touch are both also masterpiece romance anime. Although they aren't as "multiple choice."

Kimagure Orange Road is usually considered a romance masterpiece and it had a strong love triangle.

[GreyZone]

Originally Posted by Fireminer

[...]
What I meaning is, how many romance anime are there is deserved to go into textbook, into history? I always feel there is something in Romantic materials that anime couldn't illustrate, unlike literature or music. Love in anime... It misses the Thirst for Perfection. Seldomly do we see a character becoming better through Love - Last time I saw is was in Ghibil movies.

Without Ideals to Bonds, Roads to Travel together, Aspects to Perfect, the only role of shipping is for self-perfection - A.K.A you don't saw the character as a human, as your friend.

When I was reading this, I for some reason immidietly had to think about "The World God only Knows"

[Fireminer]

Yeah, I could see Keima getting warmer and more caring to this world. But then again, he isn't in love.

Yet. Hope it's Haqua.

[kresslia]

I just don't get butthurt. I don't think I've ever been unable to predict who would end up with who in a show, anime hits you over the head with the main couple.

Like lol Gundam SEED. Let's get Kira and Fllay to hook up, but make sure to couple him with Lacus in every. single. opening!

[germanturkey]

i love it. jump into this thread, see the two most discussed shows are True Tears and White Album 2, which are both top 5 romance animes in my opinion. the ship i go for rarely loses out, so i guess i'm fortunate enough to not have to deal with the losing emotions.. the ones where i have gotten them wrong (and full on know it) are:

Clannad - Tomoyo and Kyou were both definitely better
Honey and Clover - Ayu (oh god, so tragic)
Code Geass - Shirley
Guilty Crown - Hare

also: that hug scene. the first time i watched it, i paused it and clapped for a minute. something similar happened in White Album too.

[Nightbat®]

Heheh, this thread reminds me a little of the Shuffle "storm" that hit a few years ago
Was funny to see a portion of the membership go to battle with each other over their favorite

[Traece]

More often than not I think that when a heroine loses their battle for love, the ensuing backlash is more projection than disagreement with the plot. Someone briefly touched at this earlier, and I agree with what was said. It's not about the writing, it's about the viewers. Viewers want to see the girl they like the most get the man (ironically, I might add, for several reasons). Sometimes the girl is the better girl (sometimes literally every other girl is the better girl. Y'all know who I'm referring to), and thus people think she was the most deserving. More often than not though, the focus shifts to the winner and that serves as the indication.

Currently D-Frag! is like this for me. I want the girl I like more to win, but I know she wont. I'm not bothered by it though, because I know that the writing supports the choice being made. There's nothing outlandish here, except for my personal preference. :P

[Tenzen12]

There is one motion in anime I can't never agree: In most time winning girl means girl with most issues. If you have strong girl who support protagonist whole time and emotional cripple who need depend on others you don't have to think twice who will win.

Same goes for damsell in distress I still waiting (probably pointlessly) for anime where protagonist safe kidnapped princess and ask her for to be bridesmade of his fellow female warior who helped safe he ass.

Whenever I see this motion it count as "Defeat romance" for me as I always considered love to be partnership insteed babisiting.

[Kirarakim]

Originally Posted by Sackett

Maison Ikkoku. I repeat, Maison Ikkoku. Godai definitely changes significantly over the show and he does have to make a choice.

The choice is always obvious for Godai, he only loves one girl throughout.

If anything Kyouko makes more of the choice but again there is never any doubt who she will choose.

So I don't really think Maison Ikkoku has love triangles in the traditional sense, those love triangles were more road blocks for the end couple which you know from the first chapter.

[germanturkey]

Originally Posted by Kirarakim

So I don't really think Maison Ikkoku has love triangles in the traditional sense, those love triangles were more road blocks for the end couple which you know from the first chapter.

this is the case with a lot of shows. most people are just too stubborn to see it.