Gemini of the Meteor - Part IV
**This is the same rant critique that I originally posted on Blogger; since I never use Blogger, it made no sense to leave it there.**
Plot 2: Suou
Plot 2, which pretends to be the main plot, centers around Suou. Suou’s plot almost works; one of the main reasons that it doesn’t is because she is actually two different characters.
Character 1: Suou as coming-of-age, magical girl transformation story heroine
If we forget that we’re actually watching a seinen anime, this story isn’t bad. A preteen girl is forced to run from home after her father is killed and her brother goes missing. She discovers a magical ability within herself as she and her faithful talking flying squirrel companion journey across Russia and Japan on a mission to find her family and her place in the world.
This almost works, because Suou has a realistic goal and motivations. She also experiences typical life-journey events: a boy is interested in her for the first time (although this actually doesn’t play a role in the plot), she gets her first period, she finds her long-lost mother.
It even fits into the DtB universe: the truth she discovers about herself is that she died in an explosion years ago, and she exists now as a copy that her contractor brother created, with implanted memories. That’s a fun twist! …But it fell a little flat, because we didn’t know what Shion’s ability was beforehand, meaning that this twist came completely out of left field, which makes it more of an ass-pull than a true twist.
The major thing that ultimately prevents Suou’s character #1 arc from working is that, once she discovers that she is in fact a construct, she isn’t given the chance to come to terms with it. She has a sweet one-on-one with Hei, in which he tells her that she’s real to him - and then she dies. And is reborn on the new world, with new memories, and her journey to get there was pointless. Not allowing a character to come to grips with a truth they discover about themselves is a cardinal sin of storytelling. It’s an easy out, and completely unsatisfactory.
Character 2: Suou as contractor
This is another reason why Suou’s character #1 arc didn’t work. Making her a contractor defeated the purpose of her self-discovery journey, because it was too distracting. Suou’s contractor arc was essentially the same as Hei’s arc in S1, except she was never very contractor-like. This was explained away by the fact that 1) she was a flawed copy, and 2) traveling with Hei and July changed her.
These explanations were terrible, because 1) if that’s true, why make her a contractor in the first place. Were we supposed to guess the truth because of her unusual behavior? We didn’t, because we didn’t know about Shion’s ability; and 2) this was the plot of S1: Amber, Bai, and Yin all changed because of their interactions with Hei. We don’t need this plot repeated yet again with Suou. Even the “Hei saves Yin despite her being a doll” subplot was repeated with Suou saving July. And then needing to be saved by Hei. Yawn.
Another major problem with the Suou as contractor character was her role in the plot. She had none. She didn’t change the outcome of Plot 3; she wasn’t even necessary. She served to bring Hei to Tokyo; but Hei being in Tokyo was not necessary to Plot 3, and this was a terrible contrivance in Plot 1 that could have been got around without Suou. Her power was stupid - a giant gun gets pulled from her chest while she’s all pink and sparkly? (What do the other characters see when she uses her ability? I’m picturing them all witnessing that awful transformation sequence). Hei’s ability was central to the plot of S1; Suou’s, not so much. So why?
Hei training her as an agent was, again, pointless, because these were skills that Suou neither needed nor used in any meaningful way. Having her journey to Tokyo on her own would have led to better character development. Having her take up with Hei, learn to hurt and kill people to survive, and then on her own decide not to use those skills would have led to better character development.
You could say that she did go to Tokyo on her own; once separated from Hei and Mao, she actively tried to find her mother. The problem was, this was completely inconsistent with her identity as a contractor, and only made sense in the context of character #1.
All in all, Suou (either Suou, but not both) could have made an interesting story set in the DtB universe in a spin-off or fanfiction context, but as a plot central to S2, she failed.
Plot 2: Suou
Plot 2, which pretends to be the main plot, centers around Suou. Suou’s plot almost works; one of the main reasons that it doesn’t is because she is actually two different characters.
Character 1: Suou as coming-of-age, magical girl transformation story heroine
If we forget that we’re actually watching a seinen anime, this story isn’t bad. A preteen girl is forced to run from home after her father is killed and her brother goes missing. She discovers a magical ability within herself as she and her faithful talking flying squirrel companion journey across Russia and Japan on a mission to find her family and her place in the world.
This almost works, because Suou has a realistic goal and motivations. She also experiences typical life-journey events: a boy is interested in her for the first time (although this actually doesn’t play a role in the plot), she gets her first period, she finds her long-lost mother.
It even fits into the DtB universe: the truth she discovers about herself is that she died in an explosion years ago, and she exists now as a copy that her contractor brother created, with implanted memories. That’s a fun twist! …But it fell a little flat, because we didn’t know what Shion’s ability was beforehand, meaning that this twist came completely out of left field, which makes it more of an ass-pull than a true twist.
The major thing that ultimately prevents Suou’s character #1 arc from working is that, once she discovers that she is in fact a construct, she isn’t given the chance to come to terms with it. She has a sweet one-on-one with Hei, in which he tells her that she’s real to him - and then she dies. And is reborn on the new world, with new memories, and her journey to get there was pointless. Not allowing a character to come to grips with a truth they discover about themselves is a cardinal sin of storytelling. It’s an easy out, and completely unsatisfactory.
Character 2: Suou as contractor
This is another reason why Suou’s character #1 arc didn’t work. Making her a contractor defeated the purpose of her self-discovery journey, because it was too distracting. Suou’s contractor arc was essentially the same as Hei’s arc in S1, except she was never very contractor-like. This was explained away by the fact that 1) she was a flawed copy, and 2) traveling with Hei and July changed her.
These explanations were terrible, because 1) if that’s true, why make her a contractor in the first place. Were we supposed to guess the truth because of her unusual behavior? We didn’t, because we didn’t know about Shion’s ability; and 2) this was the plot of S1: Amber, Bai, and Yin all changed because of their interactions with Hei. We don’t need this plot repeated yet again with Suou. Even the “Hei saves Yin despite her being a doll” subplot was repeated with Suou saving July. And then needing to be saved by Hei. Yawn.
Another major problem with the Suou as contractor character was her role in the plot. She had none. She didn’t change the outcome of Plot 3; she wasn’t even necessary. She served to bring Hei to Tokyo; but Hei being in Tokyo was not necessary to Plot 3, and this was a terrible contrivance in Plot 1 that could have been got around without Suou. Her power was stupid - a giant gun gets pulled from her chest while she’s all pink and sparkly? (What do the other characters see when she uses her ability? I’m picturing them all witnessing that awful transformation sequence). Hei’s ability was central to the plot of S1; Suou’s, not so much. So why?
Hei training her as an agent was, again, pointless, because these were skills that Suou neither needed nor used in any meaningful way. Having her journey to Tokyo on her own would have led to better character development. Having her take up with Hei, learn to hurt and kill people to survive, and then on her own decide not to use those skills would have led to better character development.
You could say that she did go to Tokyo on her own; once separated from Hei and Mao, she actively tried to find her mother. The problem was, this was completely inconsistent with her identity as a contractor, and only made sense in the context of character #1.
All in all, Suou (either Suou, but not both) could have made an interesting story set in the DtB universe in a spin-off or fanfiction context, but as a plot central to S2, she failed.