Cruel Angel Theses

The beauty’s in the little things — this is the basis for the “12 moments of the year” series. For those who watch or read for “resolution” rather than “moment”, bad endings ruin their enjoyment of a series. Those who watch them for “moment”, however, don’t bat an eyelid at an ending less than satisfactory. This is why there are those who balk at the prospect of starting on an incomplete series, and also why those who go with the flow and survive on a month-to-month or week-to-week basis come out richer as a result.

Kodomo no Jikan is one of those. I’m not sure that an ending, assuming that KnJ ends eventually, will be one of KnJ’s strengths, even though I’m convinced that Kaoru Watashiya will have it all figured out like she has her main characters. What I’ve discovered this year while reading the manga is the clarity and strength of the messages that she delivers through her art, astute observations of pathos and empathy that are inevitably overshadowed by the pervasive fanservice she employs. For those who care to look beneath the surface, however, there’s gold to be found. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

also, the anime sucks by virtue of it being censored to hell and back, so it’s recommended that you actually pick up the manga or wait for the DVD raws unless you enjoy censorbars and random animal sounds

KnJ was one of those manga that I picked up for curiosity’s sake. I had started reading it way before the Seven Seas controversy, and no thanks to the lack of scanlations, coupled with it being licensed meant I had to read it by means of raw scans. I’m glad I did, namely because I rest easier at night knowing that a publisher’s moral panic had no role in getting me to read what I now consider one of my all-time favourites.

For starters, its achievements in the realm of manga are nothing to scoff at. In a mere 32 chapters, it’s done more than what other manga-ka can barely muster in 300, covering each and every one of its main cast effortlessly with breadth, depth, and a warm fuzzy sheen that those who draw mainstream seinen fodder can only aspire to.

How is this achieved? Watashiya does so by having her characters go through predicaments and situations that humanise them far beyond their basic, two-dimensional archetype; while the same could be said of any and every manga-ka out there that’s ever fleshed out a character of theirs thoroughly, she does all of that and more by paying special attention to the moment.

In this blog once I tried to flesh out the idea of emotional honesty, only to have commenter after commenter going up in arms about the choice of terminology. Debating on semantics is really irrelevant for ignoring what the argument has to say in favour of going after the style in which the argument is delivered, so if you’re one of those who disagreed with me back then, I request that you at least try to make sense before hounding me again over the connotations of the term. Implied meaning isn’t as relevant as the real meaning I attach to a word, and the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy.

The conclusion I’ve come to after further thought on why I used “emotional” and “honesty” together is simply this: the disparity between a situation represented in fiction and reality. As an example of this, cheating on or lying to your partner is a bad thing. A manga that is emotionally dishonest would represent it as a good thing, going all out to cast infidelity in a justified, positive light while disregarding the conflicting turmoil within that comes as a result of two-timing your loved one.

Perhaps “sugarcoating” would be an acceptable alternate. Another example of this in practice would be murder. In order for a character in fiction to literally get away with murder without the emotional baggage of some sort, excuses have to be made for him. He would have had to have a dark, emotionless, violent past of some sort that somehow turned off that switch we have in our heads that says “it’s wrong for you to kill” — failing which, the suspension of disbelief breaks, and you have nothing more than a B-grade offering on your hands.

In what way does this relate to KnJ? Unless you’re one of those emotionless bio-clone soldiers, it’s likely that you find parental neglect to be a sad thing. I assume it’s the reason why otaku in both Japan and the rest of the world find Clannad to be equal parts sad and moving — your familial relations can’t be all that great if all you do is watch anime and read manga all the time in front of your computer. Yes, I’m speaking for myself here, too. The way in which it dares to say “family is important” and illustrate exactly why it’s important elevates it above its peers, especially in this day and age where parents are too quick to leave their children at home in order to earn more money at the expense of their emotional wellbeing.

It’s been going from strength to strength since its conception, and one particular chapter that I found immensely moving was the 28th, in which (among other things, a re-enactment of that Vicks VapoRub copy pasta) Usa discovers that Renji, of all people, understands what she’s going through. As she says, “How can he possibly know how I feel?” But he does. The sight of two broken individuals, two characters who have been in unimaginable pain and neglect reaching out to each other was a moving scene, and one I think will be hardly matched in a manga this year in terms of intensity and raw emotion.

The accomplishment here was a major shift in the perception of Usa as a character from that of the stereotypical oppai megane dejikko variety into a rounded character with justifiable emotions. While she has had development (of the character, not physical variety, you perv) previously, it wasn’t until this point that the reader actually gets to know her as a person and not just “Rin’s best friend”. This major insight into her psyche helped my understanding of her greatly, and I consider it to be among the many great moments that KnJ has shown so far.

Character development aside, it was also a great moment for its earnest simplicity in which the lines were delivered. There was no waxing lyrical and no harping on any theme that might have been present; unlike a certain series which shall not be named, it didn’t come off as contrived or something meant to be taken as “sad’. Who doesn’t want to be loved and feel loved? Watashiya did an excellent job of reminding us how everybody needs somebody, even if the somebody mentioned here is a young girl caught in the grip of early puberty.

While I will not attempt to make a case for Usa’s character not being a fanservice tool (as today’s re-reading of the manga has enlightened me considerably), Watashiya has proven with KnJ that any manga-ka can have their cake and eat it too when it comes to the neverending debate on the merits of fanservice in a work — you just have to know how to expose, and when to enclose.