With each passing episode, “Dantalian no Shoka” increasingly grates on my nerves. Dalian is bossy, dismissive, condescending and irritating. Still, the worst thing about this anime isn’t even the petulant, insufferable blob we call a heroine. This series’ biggest offense is the other characters’ bizarre ability to tolerate the infuriating Dalian. And it’s really strange how we’ve come to accept these horrible characters in our stories.
I was watching “Seinfeld” recently and it struck me that the Kramer character was so utterly annoying, I couldn’t understand how anyone could be his friend. About a week later, I was watching seasons of “King of the Hill” and, likewise, Peggy Hill’s arrogance and self-aggrandizement makes me wonder how anyone could have a functional relationship with such a woman. But you know what? The examples I’ve given are from comedy series. Although it’s baffling how anyone could ever associate themselves with a Kramer or a Peggy Hill, at least we can laugh at them.
What purpose does Dalian serve? What’s the point of continuingly plying her gullet with sweets and cream? She doesn’t — I’m pretty sure — make the audience laugh. She doesn’t offer any philosophical insights. She’s just an adorable-looking loli with a shit attitude, but we call it tsundere and, somehow, that makes it okay. It would be one thing if she ever got her comeuppance, but for all his bravery and lack of overall wimpiness, which you might expect in a typical anime male, Hugh is a bit of a doormat with his partner.
Why can’t we just have Hugh go from episode to episode, solving his silly “Phantom Book” mysteries like a lone detective? Why do we always need to add a shoujo to everything? Are we afraid that it’d be too gay if an anime wasn’t about a girl for once? Or are we such manchildren that it instantly bores us if a story lacks a pretty, young thing shrieking at everyone?
Honestly, I couldn’t even watch more than eight minutes into the third episode before pausing the video to write the preceding paragraphs. Dalian was just sitting there, insulting some nice girl’s clothing and intelligence. To put it bluntly, the fact that neither Hugh nor the new girl told Dalian to shut the fuck up took me out of the story that much. At that point, I realized I didn’t just dislike Dalian; I disliked every single person who withstood her abuse. Only the burglars in the second half of the episode bothered to stand up to the bratty girl, but unfortunately, they were the “bad” guys.
Not quite children of the corn
Not only did this side story go nowhere, those oh-so-monstrous kids in the hut didn’t strike me as anything special. So a whole bunch of children think they’re smarter than adults?
Whoop-dee-fucking-doo, that describes just about every single teen out there. Growing up, we all thought adults were dumb as hell. But of course, this anime acts as if knowledge has managed to corrupt the unprepared and unworthy yet again, blah blah blah.
What a stupid ending
The runtime on my video was already at the 17 minute-ish mark, but Hugh and Dalian were still tied up and bound to a chair. With so little time left in the episode, how did these two to get out of their latest predicament? By having a giant cactus plant eat the perpetrators. The plant also had petals shaped like pages from a book. Sadly, I am not joking:
I’m getting tired of this anime as the weeks go by. Although it isn’t just plain boring like “Blood-C,” the anime is getting dumber by the second. We’re only at the third episode, but it feels as though “Dantalian no Shoka” has lost most of its momentum.
But that’s the rule of the modern Tsundere Loli: Characters NEED to withstand her bitchery so that the characters will give them a lot more pity and love when she goes all sad, soft, and cute.
The sad part is that no main character has yet truly object nor have broken the rule, because they think that it might possibly break the plot and end the anime.
Oh, we wouldn’t want that. An anime about scary books is such a killer concept!
Maybe if we can just remove the tsundere, maybe we can save this plot yet!
This whole codification of female characters in order to pigeonhole them into overdone stereotypes (that just aren’t interesting) needs to fucking stop. It’s been pissing me off for several years now. Archetypes are supposed to be observed organically, and not because a large group of manchildren demand it so.
Everyone’s just lazy — lazy writers, lazy audience. It’s like we’re playing ad-libs. We have a tsundere rubric and we just fill in the random scenario. Tsundere character in space! Tsundere character as a cowgirl! Tsundere character goes to hell! Actually, I wish…
This sounds like Gosick. I don’t like either of those shows, You no what ticks me off about tsunderes. those always angry eyebrows they have. It’s a very lazy way to tell your audience,” Hi I’m a tsundere.”
I’m told that “Gosick” becomes quite decent in the second half. As a result, the second half is on my HD but I just haven’t touched it.
Yeah, I agree with you on Dalian.
The tsundere character type is horribly overdone in anime, and actually seems to be getting worse in recent years (Dalian here, Kirino in Ore no Imouto).
One of the worst was “Occult Academy.” The girl was just so mean, I couldn’t really finish watching the series.
Why can’t we just have Hugh go from episode to episode, solving his silly “Phantom Book” mysteries like a lone detective? Why do we always need to add a shoujo to everything? Are we afraid that it’d be too gay if an anime wasn’t about a girl for once? Or are we such manchildren that it instantly bores us if a story lacks a pretty, young thing shrieking at everyone?
I KNOW! I hate how anime can’t have a show about a guy or group of guys without throwing in a girl as well! Why can’t there be shows with all male casts and shows with all female casts?
And i don’t really like tsunderes, either. Well, at least the tsun part of them. I never thought of them being cute or moe, I just thought they were annoying. Like Dalian. Yeah, she’s cute. So what? That doesn’t excuse the fact she’s a bitch to everybody.
I can’t really remember the last all-male show. Cromartie and Hetalia?
Ehhh, I didn’t really like Hetalia. To me it was just a bunch of guys (and a couple of girls-see, it wasn’t an ALL male cast!) talking about war and…stuff. Oh, and the fact that the Holocaust wasn’t even metioned or referenced really bugged me.
I have no idea what Cromartie is. Is it any good?
I don’t really know much about Hetalia. I just heard it was popular because people like to make the countries fuck each other like bunnies.
Cromartie is just a silly comedy series. You either laugh or not. I thought it was okay, but nothing to rave about.
Ok, thanks.
See Kaiji for an all-male cast. Season 2 is airing now.
I haven’t seen the first season and there’s too many episodes at this point to bother catching up. I have a big enough backlog of old shows as it is.
Hakuouki, Uta no Prince-sama, Tiger and Bunny, No.6
It took me less than a minute to enumerate.
Wait, is this supposed to be a response about the last all-male show? Because, uh…
Female lead with reverse harem, female lead with reverse harem, has characters of both genders, has characters of both genders though the dudes are the primary focus and it’s kind of early to predict how long that will last.
Honestly, I feel like it’s better that they semi-ignore her than for the main guy to act all “you’re so mean~” or even acknowledge her. I mean she’s totally unnecessary. Pretending the guy is carrying around a talking coffin full of books would deliver the same effect to the show.
Also, I couldn’t help but wonder at the end of the half with the hyper-enlightened kids…”Okay….why do I care? Was that all to show that the main character has absolutely no realistic thoughts about the evil possibilities of the book, ’cause I think we already knew he was the fricking good guy.”
Whoa, a KizukuKanshi comment out of nowhere. I thought you had long stopped reading the blog.
Re: Dalian, I’m just of the mindset that you confront jackasses and she’s definitely a jackass.
The end of the first half was just baffling. I know some shows divide themselves into two stories, but that wasn’t even a story. It was more like a side note.
I hadn’t stopped reading, I just was actually not watching any of the shows you were blogging about for some time. Therefore, if I’ve got nothing to say from what I’ve seen of a show, I won’t say anything.
Also, another effective method of dealing with jackasses is to ignore them till they calm down or go bother someone else, but the main problem seems to be that they don’t even acknowledge the fact that she’s a jackass.
I really can’t stand the way anime over uses stereo types as a character base to the point where it is self referenced in many of them. It just makes for shallow characters that you care nothing of cause there’s not much more too them then what’s been copy/pasted. This was the episode where I just stopped watching. I stopped because it was just boring and I didn’t feel the need to come back week after week. The only reason I finished blood c was because I downloaded all the episodes at once and watched them then and there.