Justifying my Occasionally Garbage Taste

[atelierpenny]

Or, Penny tries to explain why very unpopular endings to fiction do not always ruin the entire experience

Or, Sometimes it's actually up for interpretation I swear
Or, coping to a near unhealthy degree

this essay will spoil the following works:

I Like Bats (film from 1986)

Kurau Phantom Memory (anime from 2004)

A Midsummer Day's Resonance (game from 2002)

Now and Then, Here and There (anime from 1999)

in order. A section break will be placed between each discussion.

I recently watched the film I Like Bats, a silly name for a rather serious film about societal views of sexual promiscuity. The ever-gorgeous Katarzyna Walter plays Izabela, a vampire struggling with her condition. Vampirism in this film is a clear stand-in for sexual desire. Izabela's mother acts like her daughters condition never exists. Izabela seeks out psychiatric help, and in the facility she has some killer lines. “I’m a nymphomaniac. When a man likes variety, he’s a Don Juan. Women… are put in clinics.” Her words are reminiscent of The Book of Margery Kempe, a manuscript written in the sixteenth century. Kempe struggles with guilt about sex to the point of psychosis, seeing Jesus judge her for the way she lives her life. Her husband takes great issue with a vow of chastity Kempe makes, saying that he would need to cheat on her to maintain happiness in their marriage. Unfortunately, I Like Bats really fairs to deliver much in the way of relief and understanding to most viewers. Izabela falls in love with her psychiatrist after months of killing her victims during sex. Once she is married, she is able to see herself in the mirror and her mother is more opening and understanding with her than in the past. This awful ending, implying loving monogamous sex with a man turned her into a “real woman” rather than a monster, goes against the excellent themes built earlier in the film. However, I don't think it is as black and white as the film initially presents itself, and that's for two reasons. Izabela's “cured vampirism” shown in the mirror is contradicted by bats (which follow her throughout the film) smashing the mirror she sees herself in for the first time. Her husband holds her and prevents her from breaking down, but she is clearly shaken. The psychiatric institution, which also acts as her traditional Christian marriage via her husband, has far from “cured” her as they claim. She is merely shoved in a box where she can appear to conform before those she interacts with on a daily basis. A second, more interesting decision showing an unclear ending lies within the child she has with her husband in the epilogue. Once her child is a toddler, she uses her vampire fangs to kill a family friend of Izabela. While this really muddies the initial metaphor at first, I view it as more of an addition to the metaphor. Her child is more of a part of her haunting her, just as she was for her own mother. Her own mother, implied to be a former vampire herself, tries to hide her past from her daughter rather than embrace it. It is possible she won't do the same, making greater peace with her past than her family ever did.

Kurau Phantom Memory has an extremely clear reason to point to for its troubled ending. The show was clearly rushed under troubled production into the ending. After various arcs where Kurau's relationship with her clone/situationship/sister and her estranged father develop in a very satisfying and natural way, the show kinda nosedives. Two random monster of the week dudes (whom my girlfriend and I termed “the blowjob brothers”) are fast-tracked into being the main villains of the whole damn show. The last episode has our protagonist settling down and getting married to a nameless faceless man who never appears in the series after losing their memories. Christmas, Kurau's partner, lives on sadly until she finds out that aliens like her found a new world they can live in after lifetimes of oppression in our universe. A new younger Kurau then pops out of Christmas' chest and they embrace, ending the show. It is about as unsatisfying to watch as it is to have described to you. Some dialogue tries to explain away this choice coming out of complete nowhere but it doesn't work that great. Watching this back it seems so clear that they had something specific in mind, and upon finding out they couldn't finish the story in time, the writers triple backflipped into something resembling the ending they intended. I think the arc with the main two girls is pretty much done around episode 17 or so, and I wouldn't say the last seven episodes are a waste of time or anything. Recurring villain Ayaka gets an amazing story in this ending. If I ever show the anime to other people, I will probably lightly spoil the ending just so they know what to expect. I do not think the ending is paramount and there is still so, so much to enjoy in this. I just can't recommend it in good faith without this asterisk. Witch Hunter Robin, another show written by the same writer, has a very similar problem of needing more time to finish what it wanted to say, so it seems this is a problem for this author. But writing is hard and shit. I can appreciate some good writing even if it isn't all the way there.

A former girlfriend and I had a strange day once that we called “Yuri Day”, in which we played a ton of short yuri visual novels all in one sitting while eating pizza. It was a good time. The second game we played that day was A Midsummer Day's Resonance, which caught my eye because it was old for a yuri VN and I like weird old stuff. The ending made my partner more than a little peeved, however. An interesting science fiction story in which three women are mysteriously connected via glitched cell phones becomes a quaint love story for our protagonist, who is shockingly turned down by her crush shortly after finding out the two exist in separate, slightly different realities where they can never meet. After a while, the glitch fades, and the protagonist becomes unable to contact her unrequited love. The end of the game plays a sound effect which sounds similar to the connected call sound effect which plays whenever the two call each other. This is confirmed in an epilogue... well, kind of. The author writes “does this mean the two are reconnected, I don't know” which is a bit of a slap in the face. If one goes in expecting a romance as we did, it is a really damn disappointing game. But I have thought about this story a whole lot ever since I first read it those years ago. Sure, back in the early 2000s when this sort of romance story was pretty much nonexistent in the novel game landscape, this was kind of a strange choice to make. The game is listed in many resources as a very early video game about lesbianism. But man, if this ain't how it is sometimes. So much of queer art is about the suffering of it all and I get how it can be tiring I really can. I just love sad ephemera like this and I can't help myself. I see my younger self so viscerally in Kurasawa's teenage thought patterns throughout the narrative. Every light heartbreak feeling like the end of the world, every connection feeling fragile within my hands. Sure, it seems really teenage and immature but I feel as if this game is telling me that even if much of the world gives a shrug or an eye roll or an I-don't-know to these lost, lonely feelings, that they are real and life shaping.

Ok. This is probably my seventh or eighth time trying to write something about Now and Then Here and There ever since I started writing essay things, video or written.

NATHAT's ending is actually rather loved by most viewers of this show. It looks brightly towards the future as the show ever does, no matter how cruel and fucking depressing shit can get sometimes. It's really nice. However, for most people there is a blemish on this show. And her name is Sara.

When asked what my favorite anime is, I typically say something that is not this show. I wouldn't say I am embarrassed that I get so much out of it or anything, but rather that I think it isn't very complicated or grand or insightful when compared to any other show I really love. I cannot talk about why I like it without bearing a rather uncomfortable part of my soul about it. A warning should be placed that Sara's story deals with rape and body autonomy. Though it will not be detailed, it is still a part of the discussion.

Sara Ringwalt is an American teenager who is captured and isekai'd into Hellywood, a battleship looking for water to power its pointless conquest across a barren post-apocalypse. She is taken due to her mild resemblance to Lala-Ru, the main girl and the only one who can use a magic stone to summon an infinite amount of water, a task she does not do for most of the show as she does not feel like humanity deserves a second chance.

Though it is made clear very quickly that Sara is not who they are looking for, she is not set free. Her first encounter with Shu, the plucky bright eyed protagonist sharing a prison cell with her, goes horribly several times over. Sara is terrified of anyone who comes remotely near her, attacking Shu outright several times and flinching at nearly every gesture. Sara is later taken away to be a personal slave for a high ranking military officer aboard the ship. After being raped several times by this officer, she fights back and kills him. Disguising herself in his clothes, she escapes the battleship into the desert where she walks off into the night. She cuts her hair short to keep in disguise, throwing it to the wind (in a scene that is stunning even without context).

Sara ends up in the care of Sis, a woman who runs the orphanage in the city of Zari-Bars. She hates nearly everyone involved with Hellywood, even Lala-Ru due to her inadvertantly causing Sara's predicament. She feels that she is unable to go on, attempting to take her own life at one point. Sis and Shu convince her to stay, and not blame the unborn baby for the pain she has been through. Sara decides to keep the baby after much hardship. In the ending when Shu is returning to earth, Sara makes a rather baffling decision to stay in Zari-Bars and help rebuilding efforts in the war-torn world instead of returning home.

I have heard a lot of shit thrown this characters way. Perhaps the most common criticism of Sara is that her decision in the last episode undermines her character arc about moving on past her hatred. Another common one is that Sara is some strange pro-life motivated storyline included by the writers. I wouldn't blame someone for hating this character for this or her irrational decisions and mean, flighty attitude.

Sara's keeping the baby remains in my mind as more of a metaphor to me. Obviously, it reflects her hatred of Lala-Ru who did not cause what she had to go through. When viewed as a metaphor, her going home would read like her getting rid of her traumas by going home like nothing ever happened. She wants to prevent anything that happened to her from happening to anyone in that world. I understand it, as someone who had to avoid physical contact for years for various reasons myself. As a symbol, a fictional character, her decision fits her story far more even if it reads poorly upon the real life social issues it evokes.

I am rather alone in this, as Sara remains hated. But whenever I feel like I am never going to get better, I watch this show. Even if it is late at night, or if I am better served resting in a healthier way, I will watch this show. Sara's story touched my soul, not in a way that healed it, but in a way that grew it. My therapist once told me that such deep, scarring pain is like a scratch on tree bark. It never goes away, the mark may even get bigger or become warped and changed. But by growing and reflecting, you can work to make your scars a smaller part of you.