Quote:
Originally Posted by Swampstorm
This is an interesting question, especially since the concept of "winning" someone's heart is often an integral part of romantic stories. But the problem is this: you can't make someone love you. What's more, the real love in a relationship shows itself in the feelings you freely give to another person, not in the feelings that you want to see given in return (even if it does make you feel good).
Another problem is that this line of thinking is that it objectifies the other person; by this principle, if you push the right buttons and make the right choices, they're bound to fall in love with you. In reality, it isn't your effort, but rather their choice, that determines whether your feelings are reciprocated. Love isn't a 1P game.
This is where a lot of romance series fall short, as they usually try to capitalize more on the wish fulfillment aspect of a crush, rather than developing how the characters care for each other. This seems to be a point in which the Macross series that I've watched consistently set themselves apart.
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This is a great post that encompasses a lot of what I've felt about this subject for a very long time. I've never paid much attention to shipping wars into shipping wars because the one who "wins" doesn't really win. Instead, he/she is just the character who the love interest cared the most for. And so in that context, a lot of the arguments about who should end up with who lost a lot of their power.
In terms of anime, I came to look at relationships this way starting with the love triangle in Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. There, it was entirely a matter of who Bakayuki invested more in, and who he could afford to lose the least; and not a matter of who needed him the most. In a twist of ironies, what work is it that first awakened this idea in me? It was none other than SDF Macross (no bonuses for guessing which love triangle
).
Oh, and I know I'm being anal, but please pretend that there are people reading this thread who know nothing about the other Macross shows, and have never come across the endings and story points in them. This thread is for Macross Frontier, so no spoiler tags are need for that show, but I'd appreciate them for everything else Macross (unless they are points that were specifically brought up in Frontier's run).