It is so not tennis
May. 25th, 2006 12:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
branchandrootYou know, I'm starting to wonder whether Konomi really doesn't like heros. Or, at least, not shounen sports heros.
I mean, Our Hero started out as a villain, and seems to be going back to his origins, really.
And the Hero School, Seigaku, is getting no development whatsoever. It's like Konomi doesn't really know what to do with them, or how to do it.
Rikkai gets development. Fudoumine gets development. Kirihara and Tachibana have storylines that are far more like proper hero types. Or, more to the point, like proper samurai hero types, since that's the kind of story tenipuri really is. They grow out of their total bastard-ness and insecurities and psychological hangups and gain...
...okay, the only way to put this precisely is to say they gain true swords. I'm sorry, but this just /isn't/ a sports manga.
Tezuka, well, as best we can tell, he's already there. And Ryouma... for a while it looked like he was progressing in that direction, but Konomi seems to have lost track of that thread. Ryouma's struggle is with his pre-existing talent, and that's a totally different shape than /any/ kind of shounen hero.
And this would be so damn much more explicable if Konomi had just given the boys swords! I mean, all the tropes and character types and lines of struggle would match then! As it is the fact that they're in modern schools and fighting with tennis racquets runs severely against the grain of actual character action and development. It's so totally against its own grain that it actually fascinates me for that reason. Tenipuri is one of those brilliantly, utterly flawed stories that makes case studies for future generations to ponder.
And for the life of me I can't tell whether Konomi is at all aware of this. I'm inclined to doubt it, actually.
When you add the anime to the manga, and take into account the way the anime writers have made valiant attempts to turn the story into a shounen sports anime, it gets even more interesting. I do wonder a bit whether to descent into total crack, in the anime, is an expression of the anime team's growing madness and despair at how the story itself is resisting them for reasons which might not be immediately obvious. It would be so much fun to see one of the arcs done over in proper, matching, samurai-story style; that would be an appropriate 'revenge'.
*eyes the AU bunny sneaking around the underbrush with trepidation* Um... that wasn't quite what I had in mind...
I mean, Our Hero started out as a villain, and seems to be going back to his origins, really.
And the Hero School, Seigaku, is getting no development whatsoever. It's like Konomi doesn't really know what to do with them, or how to do it.
Rikkai gets development. Fudoumine gets development. Kirihara and Tachibana have storylines that are far more like proper hero types. Or, more to the point, like proper samurai hero types, since that's the kind of story tenipuri really is. They grow out of their total bastard-ness and insecurities and psychological hangups and gain...
...okay, the only way to put this precisely is to say they gain true swords. I'm sorry, but this just /isn't/ a sports manga.
Tezuka, well, as best we can tell, he's already there. And Ryouma... for a while it looked like he was progressing in that direction, but Konomi seems to have lost track of that thread. Ryouma's struggle is with his pre-existing talent, and that's a totally different shape than /any/ kind of shounen hero.
And this would be so damn much more explicable if Konomi had just given the boys swords! I mean, all the tropes and character types and lines of struggle would match then! As it is the fact that they're in modern schools and fighting with tennis racquets runs severely against the grain of actual character action and development. It's so totally against its own grain that it actually fascinates me for that reason. Tenipuri is one of those brilliantly, utterly flawed stories that makes case studies for future generations to ponder.
And for the life of me I can't tell whether Konomi is at all aware of this. I'm inclined to doubt it, actually.
When you add the anime to the manga, and take into account the way the anime writers have made valiant attempts to turn the story into a shounen sports anime, it gets even more interesting. I do wonder a bit whether to descent into total crack, in the anime, is an expression of the anime team's growing madness and despair at how the story itself is resisting them for reasons which might not be immediately obvious. It would be so much fun to see one of the arcs done over in proper, matching, samurai-story style; that would be an appropriate 'revenge'.
*eyes the AU bunny sneaking around the underbrush with trepidation* Um... that wasn't quite what I had in mind...
