Quote:
Originally Posted by Sol Falling
It doesn't matter if the person themself can't or won't explain why they're in love with somebody. If it's a fictional story where you're expected to understand the character's motivations, then the author will give us the audience a rational explanation for that character's love to somebody. Including, yes, your idea that sometimes people just fall in love irrationally and don't think about it; the point is that the author has to actually explain that this is what he's doing to the audience.
Do you think that Nishio has purposely indicated that Zenkichi's just being irrationally in love with Medaka right now? Has he actually addressed the question of why he's in love with her? Or do you think this is just one of several possibilities which Nishio might use when he finally gets around to explaining Zenkichi's love for Medaka later.
In any case, I didn't say that love was factual or provable. I said that love is completely explainable from a rational perspective. Rational == logic. All this meant is that if you actually sat down and thought about it, you would be able to come up with logical reasons for why you (or anybody) were in love with anybody. Some of these logical explanations might include any basic knowledge you might have of evolutionary biology or psychology, or they might include ways in which you think that love makes sense due to the person's social situation or personality. You might come up with any number of possible explanations. In any case, you would go through a logical process of selecting the explanations/factors which actually seem most likely, and at the end of it you would be able to rationally say "this is why I believe this person loves that person".
EXAMPLE: "After logical consideration, this is why I believe Zenkichi loves Medaka. blah blah blah." Not an unreasonable activity at all to discuss Medaka Box as a manga.
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Again he doesn't have to explain it, you want him to but it doesn't have, it's actually more realistic if Zenkichi himself doesn't know that the reason isn't stated unless you want the narrator to explain or some other character, which would really be quite terrible. Simply lampshading how hard it is for the person to understand is enough as that is how it occurs in some instances in real life.
Sometimes all the logical reasons point you toward someone but you want someone else it happens. Story telling isn't about understanding characters it's about creating characters and just like in real life you won't perfectly understand someone typically good characters are the same while still being reasonable understandable unless they serve a different purpose.