Quote:
Originally Posted by Quadratic
Er, I consider him to be portrayed as one of those "tragic handsome bad boys".
As Yume Hanabi understood, if we replaced Taichi with an uglier guy, a lot more people would (probably) be up in arms over his actions (with respect to the whole love triangle issue, which is really the only place where Taichi's ugly side comes up).
His 'creepy' factor is dependent how good looking he is while being possessive.
Better looking -> knight in shining armor  .
Uglier -> monster, kill it with fire  !
Anyway, this isn't really about bashing Taichi (despite how humorous it is to do), it was about comparing Taichi and Sumire and how bad is she really doing on her introduction. |
I don't think this is true. A recent example is Haru from Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun. He is genuinely possessive, violent and creepy and he was disliked a lot for that. Being handsome didn't give him a free pass.
In fact, Taichi himself was highly criticized at first (the girlfriend scandal...) so I find your argument rather fallacious. We don't like Taichi because he's good looking. We like him because he's a well-written character who has evolved a lot throughout the first season. As a straight male, I couldn't care less about his looks anyway. I can confidently say I like him for who he is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hyperborealis
Finally, the anime does a lot of work to show how Sumire's motives develop within the episode itself, mainly via her reaction to the title poem. She understands the poem as an inspiration to seize the day, to live now before youth and beauty fade. Then, after her conversation with Taichi on the train, she makes the poem a reason to reject his advice to sit passively and wait for some guy to choose her, insisting instead "I want to have a choice, too! / I... / don't want to write poems about regrets!" At this point Sumire's motives for chasing Taichi have everything to do with being the kind of person she wants to be, a woman who can choose and act for herself. We are supposed to respect her for the way she incorporates the various meanings of the poem into her life. And we are supposed to admire her for the strength and independence of character she manifests at this moment. At the episode's close Sumire's motives are anything but shallow.
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Sumire has indeed already started to move in the right direction as you so eloquently put it, but for me and others, this isn't quite enough yet to make us forget about her earlier actions. Currently, I only see it as an indication that she has the potential to become a great character. This is a good beginning and I have no doubt I'll eventually come to like her but she still needs to prove herself through action rather than words. This may happen as soon as the next episode.