Embedded attitudes and reader-clash

[branchandroot]

You know, I have to wonder whether there's been a serious disjuncture all along, between Konomi's attitudes toward violence/injury and the attitudes of a) the ani-writers and b) the US fans.

Right from the get-go, there are players losing their tempers and taking swings at each other right and left. With racquets. Serious attacks that, if they connected, would cause serious injury. Shinji, when Kuki insults Fudoumine. Kaidou, when Kamio rags on him about his nickname. Hell, even Echizen drives Sasabe-tou, knowing he hasn't warmed up, and when the idiot pulls a muscle merely points out it's his own fault for not warming up. When Akutsu and Echizen are actively and avowedly trying to hit each other with the ball, the ref doesn't stop them. Neither do their teams.

ETA: Echizen also nails Sengoku with that ball-onna-string and leaves him out cold in the dust.

Now, clearly, it isn't really acceptable to do things like that. Tachibana stops Shinji and Tezuka stops Kaidou. Everyone yells about how it's playing dirty for Atobe and Kirihara to deliberately play so as to injure the opponent... or, more precisely, the non-Regulars yell. The Regulars don't.

The thing is, it's never grounds for disqualification or even punishment within the team. Including within Seigaku. It seems, more or less, to be the price of doing business. Expected. More acceptable, in fact, to do within the context of an actual game than outside of it--it's people trying to concuss each other with racquets that get yelled at. Atobe's and Kirihara's playing styles are dangerous, perhaps shady--but just another playing style. Not cheating. Even Akutsu doesn't cross anyone's line until he does it off the court.

Yet this is not how the fans generally read it. Nor, I would say, is it really how the anime writers rendered it. And I have to wonder whether, myriad lovingly detailed panels of tennis-boy-ass aside, that's what keeps the manga in a shounen weekly.

Comments

[maeran.livejournal.com]

Aside from the fact Ryoma is actually a villain defeating even bigger villains not a typical shounen hero? XD I think I had a TeniPuri/Art of War essay-thing in the making a while ago, then dropped it. (I mean. Konomi. That's not a match, it's a BATTLE.) Also, not sure what it says about me that very little about the manga triggers anything for me, or maybe it's just culture. (Kind of like, a part of the "boy" thing that I vaguely knew about as a girl growing up in Korea, where violence is a part of the boy culture, and to an extent, accepted as a "cool" thing.) Plus, ours IS a culture that traditionally believes if the enemy isn't prepared, ALL THE BETTER FOR US YAY \o/, um.

It's a thought.

[branchandroot]

Totally. Though the funniest thing is that, at the start of the manga, Echizen is presented as, really, rather innocent and earnest. Still a snarky little bastard, but not in /any/ way malicious or nasty about it. Really, quite in sympathy with nearly all players except those who deface the game itself. Later on is when Konomi seems to have swung back more to his original idea of Echizen as a villain character. Man needs to re-read his own work.

if the enemy isn't prepared, ALL THE BETTER FOR US YAY \o/

*dying of laughter* That is so /totally/ the way most of these boys act! Which I can definitely emphathize with. *angelic smile*

[maeran.livejournal.com]

...Can I ask you a stupid question?

What color are Niou's eyes?

[branchandroot]

*makes a face* We don't really know. If you go with the manga-art-style trading cards, they seem to be brown like everyone else except Atobe. I don't think we've gotten a colored shot of his eyes outside of that. In the anime they're gray, so I tend to use that for writing purposes. *wry* The anime colors are more fun to play with.

[maeran.livejournal.com]

Anime colors are more distinctive, for one. (No way I'm giving up the rainbow colors from Seigaku! It's symbolic! Or something.)

Thank you!

[lakemonsters]

I think that the age-factor of the people reading and then writing about the manga should be considered. Orientation aside - I think it's reader-maturity that makes the difference in understanding the story behind the manga.

It is inevitable though that certain things could get lost in translation - because people have various purpose in reading the manga and the level of understanding of the story depends on that - it either makes the manga pure eye candy or something that's of value and worth reading each week.

[branchandroot]

*nodnod* And then, too, it seems as though the anime was a shoujo re-reading of PoT, which fans who started with the anime then read back onto the manga. And round and round we go. It's actually fascinating, in a reader-theory sense.

[nakatani-yuushi.livejournal.com]

Hmm, this is a really interesting thing indeed. Hell, even Echizen drives Sasabe-tou, knowing he hasn't warmed up, and when the idiot pulls a muscle merely points out it's his own fault for not warming up. - I've been thinking about that as well, and while Sasabe-tou, well, has it coming, Echizen's behaviour makes me wonder as well.

[branchandroot]

*vigorous nodding* For the most part, Echizen only does that to people who are presented in a /totally/ unsympathetic and unredeemable way. But causing people injury really is established as... well, permissible, right from the start. *wry* Maybe that's why Konomi wound up writing his villains as the heros--he secretly likes villains best.

[prillalar]

I hadn't really thought about it before, but the characters who play in an unsportsman-like way -- Atobe, Akutsu, Kirihara -- all come back later in some way to show us that they've been transformed by that match into someone who doesn't play that way anymore, but only in the anime. Akutsu training Ryoma, Atobe vs Sanada (and also Atobe vs Ryoma at the training camp), Kirihara at junior selection camp. None of that happens in the manga.

So not a sports series.

[branchandroot]

*wry* Totally not a sports series. *thinks* We do see those players change and advance in the manga... but it isn't /nearly/ as direct. There's nowhere near the same emphasis on redemption, which is what you expect from a sports story.

... gotta go download some more Slam Dunk so I can get that genre study moving.

[forochel.livejournal.com]

*grins* Very samurai, no? Has also been distracted by the panel of Yukimura shots by the side.

[branchandroot]

*giggling* Very samurai, really. And it makes Sanada's rather traditional discipline methods seem... well, part of the continuum.

*pets Yukimura layout* Need more Rikkai. Need more shiny Yukimura.

[forochel.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I wonder if Konomi got tennis (his idea of tennis, anyway) and kendou confused. And combined them together to form Tenipuri.

*agrees* Why the lack of Rikkai, why! I stopped reading after Atobe got shaved, because that was just vicious on Ryoma's part and the turn his character turn seemed too sharp to me. Uh, anyway, point is I feel that Konomi should show more of other schools and not focus on just Seigaku, because what he's shown of the other school dynamics is much too interesting to just leave untouched.

[branchandroot]

Yes! Yes, yes yes! He gives us these tasty, shiny groups of people and shows them in moments of stress and triumph and defeat and then just... drops them. It's really kind of distressing.

*sighs* I'm not reading either, right now. Just following summaries and waiting for something reasonable to happen. The crack has invaded the manga and I just can't face it.