2011-10-26, 11:37 | Link #5021 | |
Working the bags...
Join Date: Mar 2009
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I don't think I've seen anyone saying they outright hate Medaka, only some of her actions at times. I could be wrong since I don't read every post... |
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2011-10-26, 11:53 | Link #5023 |
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Join Date: Oct 2011
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It's probably the "no emotions and no feelings" part that is most bothersome to some people. That at least is a matter of moral judgement. I don't really believe that Medaka is supposed to be seen as a totally emotionless sociopath -- she did cry for Zenkichi a couple times -- but these last few chapters do hammer home the fact that Medaka is Abnormal with a capital A.
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2011-10-26, 12:05 | Link #5024 | |
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When we see her express emotion, we like to interpret it through convention, but Medaka is abnormal. She's not only abnormal; she's the abnormal of abnormals. She's on an even more abnormal level. If it hadn't been for the early influence of Zenkichi, she would have only been recognizable as a nightmare to normal people. She's way different from us, and in many ways she can't come to a common understanding with us. Just because we see her have an emotion doesn't mean what is behind that emotion would be what we normally attribute to that emotion. |
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2011-10-26, 12:53 | Link #5025 | |||
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Simply put, the difference between Medaka's feelings then and her feelings now is in the fact that Zenkichi is no longer the only person hanging around her. She cared about Zenkichi then, because if he died it'd have meant she'd be alone. Zenkichi's lack of value to her now is as such his own fault because he allowed their relationship to coast along on that exclusivity. Because becoming accepted by other people was Medaka's goal, it was inevitable that Zenkichi could not always be the one and only person around her. It's not too late, however, for Zenkichi and Medaka to create a real bond. After seeing his behaviour after the Treasure Hunt, Medaka has discarded all of her previous assumptions about Zenkichi's closeness to her and what his ideas have done for her, erasing the last of his previous value. However, if Zenkichi gives his all to creating a real bond with Medaka now, there's no reason for Medaka not to respond (because that is still what she is looking for). In fact, Medaka's desire for a real bond with Zenkichi is the real meaning behind her encouragement of him taking a stand as a person opposing her and her willingness to see him grow. Last edited by Sol Falling; 2011-10-26 at 13:08. |
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2011-10-26, 12:59 | Link #5026 | |
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This manga started out with a character driven school life manga and they had contest challenges. Then it became a battle manga, but the catch was that the superpowers were based of personality traits making the characters development and plot super important. Now it has gone back to the start. The clock test was a contest challenge with some skirmishes mixed in. Now all we have been talking about is analyzing Zen and medaka and others characters,motivations, etc. Not, who is stronger, who beats who,who will fight who. If people want to do that they have to talk about plot and characters. This author is a boss. He got to write the manga he wanted after all. |
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2011-10-26, 13:16 | Link #5028 | |
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Zenkichi's value to Medaka was that he was a "Normal" person who wanted to hang out with her without owing her anything. The funny thing is, he still is the only "Normal" person who wants to hang out with her -- the five girls that devalued him are only there because Ajimu sent them in the first place. Zenkichi never bothered to create a real bond because he thought he and Medaka already had one. It's an understandable mistake -- he was two when their pseudo-relationship started and she never gave him a reason to doubt their bond until chapter 115. The problem is on both ends -- she's a messed up Abnormal who only has an identity based on a messiah complex that a two-year old unwittingly imparted on her, and he in many ways is still that two-year old boy with a hopeless irrational crush. Thing is, Zenkichi and Medaka both want a real bond. It's just that both realize that the only relationship Medaka recognizes as real is the kind between worthy adversaries. Medaka even told Kikaijima that she should have made Zenkichi her enemy from the start. It's the shonen convention of "defeated foes becoming friends and love interests", taken to an extreme like so many other shonen conventions in Medaka Box. Last edited by MD84; 2011-10-26 at 13:32. |
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2011-10-26, 14:23 | Link #5029 | |
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Only real times where they confront each other is long after their relationship is established and generally it's due to bralin washing or the villain physically forcing them, and on a rare occasion to protect someone else e.g blackmail. |
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2011-10-26, 14:57 | Link #5030 | ||||||||
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The manga then went on to show how she's awesome and unbeatable while entertaining the shounen jump demographic which is looking for larger than life heroes. Now comes the really interesting part, at least the part I'm hoping for.. The deconstruction! As for Ajimu, yeah, I have no idea what she's up to. Quite frankly, it's going to be awesome. Quote:
I'm waiting in anticipatory glee for her to come back and do something nearly as perception shattering as killing someone because like she would have with Unzen if the council hadn't stopped her. I want that drama; I want that conflict. It would be beautiful, thrilling and entertaining. I want to get past this outer shell of the 'perfect heroine' and get into the meat of what is really going on here. You keep on coloring people as if they care about the same things they do. The reason why the majority of people are against Medaka in this is because of what happened, not because she beat up on their favorite character. That's why I'm tired of even having to read posts by hardcore Medaka fans. I'm looking for interesting things. A partially sociopathic Medaka who attempts to be good but is simply lacking the humanity is actually far more INTERESTING. I actually find her more interesting when she's wrong, because she's supposed to be always right! Every time someone starts a discussion on this topic, some Medaka-fan comes out and starts complaining that their favorite godlike character is being criticized. That is not interesting, just annoying. And the braindead comment you made about Zen fans? Please.... That's why the Medaka-fans are turning me off so much. Quote:
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Someone who loves everyone, who actually loves no one specifically. Someone who always believes in herself and believes in others, yet walks all over other people. Someone who is always right, but who pushes her position on others. Someone who believes that she is always wrong, but who has never been wrong. Someone who believes nothing is impossible for anyone, but in reality that only applies to herself. Someone who never needs or expects any loyalty, so she can never appreciate the value of loyalty or caring towards. Someone who values everyone equally, so that being her friend or ally means nothing. A person who strongly believes in the very best ideals, but messes them up or takes them too far in subtle ways because at some level she really is someone who can't form bonds with other people, at least partially a sociopath due to either her inability to have a genuine common ground with other people or because of something genuinely lacking (or perhaps having too much of something else) in herself. This is glorious. This is ingenious. This is interesting. Quote:
On a side note, I had been tempted to say something about all these 'Medaka fans pouring out of the woodworks' earlier in my response, but I thought that would be far too marginalizing and insulting. I see that you had no such restraint. Quote:
Zenkichi is not like everybody else. He helped her in the most significant way that anybody has ever been able to help her. He's spent the majority of 13 years with her. That's the vast majority of their lives. They're only 15! That's 13 out of 15 years! It's hard to display time like that and its significance in the medium of a manga, but that's really really significant. He's always loved and supported her. Then she's like, well, he's not that great anymore because he's having a crisis and I have other people now.. So, uh, yeah trash him. That's heartless. That's lacking loyalty or persistence. That's lacking acknowledge for what he's done and what his intentions have been. That's lacking the context of their history. And, that's the point. There just something so fundamentally wrong in what she did and her attitude that I shouldn't even have to explain it. And there's another issue. She's never really helped him. He doesn't have a debt to her. We could argue that he helped her, but not the other way around. He has been, as Munakata called it, her sacrifice. She kept him around, and did her best to make him stay around, until she didn't need him anymore. His life was not better or easier because he was around her, much the opposite. I feel like I'm trying to explain the basics here of human relationships. I shouldn't have to point this out. Nishio, through Kikajima, pointed this out. Nishio, through the children with flowers on the first page of 118, and the battered Zenkichi immediately on the next page pointed this out. Nishio through Munakata, describing how Zenkichi was different to the rest of Medaka's entourage, pointed this out. Medaka fans are ignoring this. This is not subtle or ambiguous. This is being yelled in our faces. As for bonds, I've mentioned this earlier. Medaka has no bonds. She's never had any bonds. She cannot have any bonds. Where I'm hoping Nishio goes with this is for Zenkichi to actually create a genuine bond with her by becoming her peer. But at the same time, that would require huge character changes in Medaka and I have no idea what the fallout from that would be. Quote:
The value Medaka used to see in Zenkichi is more abnormal. It had more to do with how he was an example of some ideal. The things that actually make him more unique, such as his love and loyalty towards Medaka, the time that he's shared with her and how he genuinely cares for other people even sometimes over himself.... Those qualities did not enter into her evaluation. She doesn't even understand them. That's something we've attributed to her via our interpretations of her actions that were never really there. She didn't even want to help him when he was mentally weak. She was just annoyed. That's pretty heartless. She didn't hit him from behind that first time because she was trying to reform him. She just did that because she wanted to and she didn't feel hesitant about hurting him. Zenkichi during that time was dealing with a personal crisis, set off by the parasite eyes. He was trying to prove to himself that he could overcome something with effort, with 'normalness', when he'd just lost what make him unique in comparison to all the other 'special' people; Essentially, he'd just lost one of the cornerstones of his world.... His reliance on effort and being normal. If he failed, he used to have something to still define him. Which brings something out that may give more insight into Medaka's character, Zenkichi at that time was acting emotionally weak. Also, he didn't know everything that was going on. He was focused on his own internal emotional struggle. At that time, a friend would have tried to support him, especially a friend who had practically been handfasted to him for 13 years. She wasn't thinking about him. She was thinking about his value to her, when he needed someone to understand him. It was Ajimu that came to his rescue in her own strange way when Medaka tossed him in the wastebasket. Medaka's family is not special to her. Medaka's friends are not special to her. Her loyal friend who should be closer to her than family and she should be indebted to is not special to her. There is something wrong about this, something that clashes with our humanity. Medaka and Zenkichi have never understood each other. My pet theory is that they attribute something in themselves to the other person, which actually isn't the same thing at all. Zenkichi says early on that Medaka loves all of humanity like her family. Later Zenkichi says that he always supports his friends. Zenkichi equates Medaka's ideal to the loyalty and caring he has, but Medaka has no such loyalty to anyone. Everyone is equal. No one is special. Friends and enemies are alike. Even her family isn't special to her. Medaka has no bonds. In the same way, Medaka equates Zenkichi's caring with Medaka's ideals. And these two things are not the same thing whatsoever. And then they say ironically that they both understand each other the best when they don't understand each other at all. Even though they can often look the same, caring does not equal ideals. In fact, they may very well be polar opposites. They come from different worlds; they speak different languages. In many cases, I'm sure Zenkichi would support his friends even if they were wrong, but Medaka has no loyalty to anyone, just to her ideal of 'people'. Medaka would betray her friends as quickly as she'd support her enemies. Zenkichi would factor in his relationships to his friends. About Medaka wanting to form a genuine bond with Zenkichi, I can't say at this point. I don't think she even considers it a possibility, really. Her behaviors seem to suggest indifference to him being unique (different) in any way, which is a cornerstone of one of the ideals that she talks about. To her, it would be impossible for him, much less anybody else, to become 'unique' or 'special' to her. In fact, it might be appropriate to say that she denies the possible existence of such a thing. Last edited by sungreentakeo; 2011-10-26 at 17:37. |
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2011-10-26, 15:00 | Link #5031 | |
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2011-10-26, 15:49 | Link #5032 |
Anime Watchman
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Man...I haven't seen so many spoiler tags in one thread in my life! Lol! Sucks that I have to wait to comment on chpt. 120. I think its good that Ajimu and Zen are somewhat combining forces to take Medaka down. I'm just tired of her flawless personality and her perfectionist of I can do anything attitude. For me at least, its a little annoying. I want to see Medaka get seriously challenged this time around and...gasp, LOSE!!! Lol!
Throughout 120 chapters of the manga, there hasn't been one instance were it was thought like, damn, Medaka is in trouble here. It's just boring to me as I already know that she'll pull through with her crazy a$$ abilities and what not. I'm really looking forward to see her get physically and mentally beat down. |
2011-10-26, 16:42 | Link #5033 | |
I'll end it before April.
Join Date: Jul 2008
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2011-10-26, 17:42 | Link #5034 | ||||||||||||||||||||
The Mage of Four Hearts
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Age: 33
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It's exactly because she's different that she needs friends, more than a normal person does. It's the tragedy of her life that she's doesn't have any. Nobody is too strong for friends, everybody needs someone else, regardless of strength Quote:
There's something so fundamentally wrong with that, I shouldn't have to explain. Quote:
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Last edited by Endscape; 2011-10-26 at 19:32. |
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2011-10-26, 18:22 | Link #5035 |
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Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: USA
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This statement interests me, please elaborate how Medaka is Zen's victim? Based on the material that has been presented he has been dragged into whatever activities she wanted to do, so I suppose him not forcing her to do normal activities might be making her a victim but that seeems to be a stretch. If that is the case the most he could be considered guilty of is inaction by not prompting her to live a normal life instead of the abnormal one she pursued under her own initiative. How exactly has Zen abused Medaka?
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2011-10-26, 18:36 | Link #5036 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2009
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You guys sure love to write huge walls of text xD (In a positive sense of course)
Agreed. It's ironic that Unzen was the first person to figure this much from her in such a short fight and not someone close to her. It'll be interesting to go deeper into that side of her and especially if it has any connection to the "killed father" card that Najimi mentioned. |
2011-10-26, 18:50 | Link #5037 |
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Join Date: Sep 2010
Location: Europe
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The problem with Zen and it seems ,many have not realized this, is still like he was at age of 2.
Obviously, I do not say in the literally sense, but in character and personality, and remained as it was (maybe a bit more seriously). I mean, many in the manga have referred to thisthing and one of those that mentioned this was medaka itself. It seems that Najimi in addition to complete what she wants with the Flank plan ,she want also make Zen to do the growth / change that he has not done so far in these 13 years. And after I realised this,I wonder how much Zen will change after the flank plan and how much his feelings will change accordingly on this. |
2011-10-26, 18:58 | Link #5038 |
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Join Date: Jan 2008
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I'm curious... why is everyone taking Ajimu's words as absolute gospel? Damn, but she's good (when a manga character can brainwash even the readers... )
Let's look at it another way shall we? I think the problem is everyone is applying real world standards to a shonen manga. Sure, beating someone bloody is a bad thing in the real world, but remember that this is a shonen manga, where you can get beaten bloody and be perfectly fine an hour later, and the entire cast practically knows they're in a shonen manga at this point. And in a shonen manga: Defeat = Friendship. Beating each other bloody = "Bonding"/Speaking through fists. Coming at an opponent with everything you have = Sign of respect. So in that light, when faced with Zenkichi's declaration, Medaka was just being consistent with her "shonen main character taken up to eleven" portrayal and paid Zenkichi the highest possible respect. What more do you guys want? The clock tower incident can also be seen in the same manner. After Zenkichi freaked out, Medaka hit him and looked at him coldly. Why? Because she was disappointed. Why was she disappointed? Because she had high expectations of him in the first place. And before you start saying that she had no right to be so patronizing, that's pretty much a given considering how Zenkichi always treats her more like a goddess than a friend and equal. So yea, everything Ajimu said could be true. Or it could simply be the case that Zenkichi's problem is not that he isn't "special" to Medaka. His problem is that he's chasing after a girl far and away beyond his league, can't quite keep up, suffers from a "mild" inferiority complex (which really hinders his progress btw), and is now having his insecurities played with by Ajimu. So far, we've only had Ajimu's word, and Kikaijima's take on the entire situation. There could be many other explanations. What I just wrote is probably only one out of many possible examples. So let's wait until we actually get to see Medaka's thoughts, or until the conclusion before passing judgement shall we? Last edited by telamont; 2011-10-26 at 19:58. |
2011-10-26, 19:33 | Link #5039 | ||||||||||||||||
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Age: 35
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Medaka is someone whose existence most blatantly demonstrates the tyranny which Ajimu is fighting against. Medaka is arbitrary perfection/victory in the absolute. So Ajimu's immediate objective is to artificially empower a human beyond the wall of Medaka's victory. Her ultimate intention is the impossibility of raising every human to that same uniform level. Medaka's perspective, in contrast, is one that flatly denies the existence of such absolute differences in ability. Despite being the singular embodiment of perfect victory, Medaka's own impossible objective is to prove that all humans are already equal. Beyond the delusion Medaka asserted to the Chairman when she was first invited into the Flask Plan, Medaka's position has evolved into an awareness of her own ability, but a belief nonetheless in the idea that effort and cooperation will allow a person to surpass any obstacle. Ultimately, Medaka's determination towards this idea reflects not any distanced philosophical belief, but a personal will arising from the experience and understanding she accumulated through her lifelong pursuit of relating with others. It says something that as their arcs unfolded I've become a fan of each of Medaka's "enemies", and remain so even after the fact. That is indeed the high level of discourse at which Medaka Box's narrative at its best operates. However, it is precisely this fact which makes the idea of Medaka herself being a "parody" ridiculous. She has withstood numerous deconstructions, each one more correct and compelling than the last. A character which can stand even with such substantial and compelling personalities as Unzen Myouri, Kumogawa Misogi, Ajimu Najimi can only certainly also be worth something genuinely substantial herself. Quote:
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Last edited by Sol Falling; 2011-10-26 at 20:00. |
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2011-10-26, 19:47 | Link #5040 |
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Join Date: Jul 2011
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°ロ°" Holy Cheese On Rye!!!! You people are writing freakin' Novels here!!!
@telamont: I really like everything you said XD and I really need to stop taking everything Ajimu is saying as undeniable truth! There's a reason she's the 'villain'! XD lol Thanks for your post :) |
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action, comedy, harem, nishio, romance, shounen, student council |
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