We might be in the West, but you wouldn’t know it by the looks of Dalian. No matter the setting, no matter the time period, it seems we are destined to watch the same, tired relationship dynamics between males and females. The bossy, diminutive shoujo with a shrill voice makes snide, dismissive comments left and right, but her partner will simply smile with the patience of a thousand Buddhist monks. Hugh’s like a pusher in tennis, or a counter puncher; he takes her barbs in stride — a smirk here and a knowing nod there — and eventually, inevitably, the shoujo makes a mistake. Oh, a blush here and a stammer there. Ah, the young dame has changed her hairstyle — I wonder why! — and the taming of the shrew has begun.
It goes without saying that men and women are complex creatures and their interactions can captivate and enthrall us. How might post-WWI men and women interact with one another? A show like “Dantalian no Shoka,” however, doesn’t dare to dream. You could take the characters Hugh and Dalian and plant them in any other anime series in any other time period and setting, and the audience would be none the wiser. Their character types are like swiss army knives; they are used in every conceivable situation, appropriate or not, and the result is artistic stagnation.
“But this is what the audience wants!” you say. “Tsundere characters like Dalian are what sells!” Let’s put aside the notion of commercial art vs. art for art’s sake — what I’m about to say is universal. Always capitulating to the needs and wants of the consumer will simply lead to stagnation. It doesn’t matter if we’re looking at a Van Gogh or a Kinkade painting — art should continually adapt and evolve. It can’t be held hostage by the whims of the people or else we, as the human race, can never challenge ourselves to be any greater.
Stray Observations
• “Dantalian no Shoka” is moving very fast compared to shows with similar tone and execution. Within minutes of the OP, we are immediately told by a generic anime character that a family is possibly cursed by a Phantom Book. By the end of the episode, we will have resolved the case. Granted, “Dantalian no Shoka” might not be a mystery, although it has mystery elements, but rushed stories like the one in this episode are destined to be side notes when it’s all said and done. Should we decide to follow this anime to its conclusion, we will hardly remember the events of this episode.
• The anime makes a half-hearted attempt to raise the nature vs. nurture argument at the very last minute, but with the death of the allegedly cursed girl, the argument becomes a footnote, inconsequential and unnecessary.
• Like some anime series, “Dantalian no Shoka” has a long, extended sequence it likes to reuse ad nauseum for episodes to come. The first time we see Hugh plunge his right arm into Dalian’s waif-like chest, it is something worth sitting up for and taking notice of. By the second episode, however, the same exact sequence gives off a completely different impression. There’s a self-satisfied sense in the way the anime trots out esoteric literary passages to defeat its opponent with “knowledge.”
• “A golem is much like a fetus in the sense that it lacks the capacity to make decisions, and [it] only responds to a rigid set of commands.” — I wasn’t aware fetuses could take commands.
“But this is what the audience wants!” you say. “Tsundere characters like Dalian are what sells!”
If people honestly say that, there argument more or less amounts to a blatant cop-out. What’s the point of watching a brand new show if it recycles the same old tired stereotypes ad nauseum? A sterile attachment to an overdone formula instead of branching out does indeed lead to stagnation, and worse, it gives rise to disinterest from the very outset.
Incidentally, this type of argument is the one you’ll hear frequently when another crappy harem series is subjected to criticism.
People will just say “it’s fun” and then the discussion ends. ‘Cause really, there’s no way to go from there.
This lackluster development of events seems to only apply to the beginning episodes of most shows like this. Hopefully we’ll soon see a much more satisfying and overarching plot.
Maybe. Dalian will probably remain unlikeable to me though. The pleasant girl in the weird, trippy world should have been on the outside and the petulant child on the inside.
Hmm, there are a couple of counterarguments I’d like to make here:
1. Huey is definitely not your usual anime male lead. He is a competent ex-pilot who carries a gun and isn’t afraid of using it, and he never panics.
2. Women act the same all over the world. You even cited “The Taming of the Shrew” which is a comedy by Shakespeare. Apparently, western tsundere girls do exist!
1. I am focusing on how Hugh acts with Dalian. It doesn’t matter whether he’s an ex-pilot or an ex-con — he acts around Dalian as you would expect an anime male to act.
2. When did I ever say Western tsundere girls didn’t exist? But did half of Shakespeare’s plays feature a tsunderekko? No. Did the Bronte sisters write about tsunderekkos? No. Is Madame Bovary tsundere? No. See, people do different things and this keeps stories fresh and interesting. It’d help anime if, y’know, the medium took this grand opportunity, i.e. an anime not in Japan and not in the modern time period, and tweaked the relationship dynamics between Hugh and Dalian a bit.
Dalian is just too typical for her own good, almost unnoticeable until the moment of her importance arrives. Again, at least it’s doing things better than Gosick, with Huey showing much less noticeable irritation before retaliating with unflappable, unreasonable kindness.
Ultimately, it added nothing that we haven’t seen before. While it did keep my interest, that was its greatest crime.
Plus, I only write these kind of posts when I feel like a show has potential. I like a few things “Dantalian no Shoka” is doing, but I just think the generic heroine holds the entire thing back.