I came across an interesting passage in THEM Anime’s review of a 2023 anime series titled The Dreaming Boy is a Realist. The line and the review were authored by Allen Moody, who I quoted once previously in a New Leaf Journal article on review systems. I emboldened the key point of the quote:
Kei sits behind Wataru in class, is apparently much more social (Aika seems fairly reserved), routinely talks to Wataru despite Aika’s supposed annoyance with him, and in general seems a much more FUN person than Aika, and if I were Wataru I’d be asking KEI out instead. So once again, as in Miharu vs. Chitose in The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten, and Kukuru vs. Fuka in The Aquatope on White Sand, I felt the female lead was considerably less interesting than her friend. (Film critic Roger Ebert used to recommend against comparing the show you’re watching with the one YOU might have written, but I’m going to ignore that advice here.)
Allen Moody
We have two things happening in this quote. Firstly, Mr. Moody offers his subjective opinion on how he wishes things transpired in The Dreaming Boy is a Realist, specifically he suggests that things would have been more interesting (placing himself in the shoes of the 2D boy protagonist) if the view-point protagonist was interested in his taciturn love interest’s cheery friend instead. Mr. Moody cited to two recent anime series wherein he felt that an anime series had a female supporting character who was more interesting than the main female character. Secondly, and as a point of caution against his subjective take on the three anime he referenced, he then ascribes a sentiment to the late movie critic, Roger Ebert, that one ought not compare a show or movie that actually exists to the show or movie he or she may have written him or herself, before humorously dispensing with that advice.
Mr. Moddy’s description of Roger Ebert’s reviewing philosophy struck me as interesting, not least because it is in line with how I approach critical reviews. That alone would have been a good prompt for an article. But I knew I had to turn this idea into an article because I watched all three anime series that Mr. Moody used as examples. Below, I will offer my thoughts on the Ebert review philosophy before applying those thoughts to the three series referenced by Mr. Moody.
My Take on Ebert’s Take
According to Mr. Moody, “Roger Ebert used to recommend against comparing the show you’re watching with the one YOU might have written…” I begin by restating that I am not familiar with the particulars of the late Roger Ebert’s movie reviews and reviewing philosophy (nor am I a 3D people movie critic), so I will assume arguendo that Mr. Moody’s description is accurate. Should we avoid comparing shows – or more broadly books and other forms of media – to what we ourselves would have written? Or perhaps more broadly since I am not sure “you might have written” best describes how most people relate to media:
Should you evaluate a show (or book or other media) by comparing what actually happens to what you think should have happened?
I agree with Roger Ebert with one important qualification.
My great college English professor, who I have referenced in these pages before, exhorted us to understand the author’s perspective when reading and assessing a book. He used as an example The Scarlet Letter, where he criticized a tendency among English teachers and professors to suggest that Nathaniel Hawthorne intended for Hester Prynne to be the hero of his great work. Understanding Hawthorne’s position and agreeing with my professor’s take on Hawthorne’s view of the world is not the same thing as approving of it. He humorously noted that his wife agreed with his understanding of Hawthorne and as a result wanted to throw a copy of The Scarlet Letter at a wall. But there was an important lesson in that story. As my professor explained, his wife took the time to understand Hawthorne’s worldview, especially with respect to religion and morality, before expressing her disapproval.
Subsequent to taking that high school English class, I came across a quote in John Ruskin’s Seasame essay which I think perfectly encapsulates the view of my professor:
Very ready we are to say of a book, ‘How good this is—that’s exactly what I think!’ But the right feeling is, ‘How strange that is! I never thought of that before, and yet I see it is true; or if I do not now, I hope I shall, some day.’ But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours. Judge it afterwards if you think yourself qualified to do so; but ascertain it first. And be sure, also, if the author is worth anything, that you will not get at his meaning all at once;—nay, that at his whole meaning you will not for a long time arrive in any wise.
John Ruskin (“Sesame”)
I thought of my professor when I read Ruskin, and Ruskin was on point. Ruskin’s focus was on learning rather than criticism. If one’s first instinct is to find his or her own meaning in a work, he or she will miss the author’s meaning. Ruskin’s focus was on learning, and an obvious consequence of always substituting one’s own meaning for the author’s meaning is learning nothing from the author. But Ruskin also gets at literary criticism beginning with “Judge it afterwards…” In order to judge a work, one must “ascertain it first.” If one writes a book review based on the meaning he or she derived from a book instead of the meaning the author conveyed, it is a personal essay referencing a book rather than a review of the book.
I have written a good number of anime and visual novel reviews (we will expand the review lineup in the future). I approach every review of media with my professor and Ruskin in mind. I first try to understand what the author of the work means to convey. As my professor put it, I am interested in discerning how the author thinks people should live their lives in the world he or she presents. In assessing characters, I try to understand how the characters see the world around them. I am less interested in whether their decisions are wise than in understanding why they make their decisions. In honor of my professor, in reviewing a work, I try to discern whether the author knows why his or her characters make the decisions they make. (My professor panned Hamlet as “the most beautiful bad play ever written” due to his assessment that Shakespeare could not account for why a character made a certain decision, and similarly criticized Raicine’s Phedre for the same fault.)
I even apply these principles to some less serious articles about written and visual media. For example, long-time readers may be familiar with my series of articles on hair color in Japanese anime, manga, and visual novels. In each article, I try to understand how a character’s “unusual” hair color is understood in the world of the piece in question, looking for evidence in the form of flashbacks or how other characters see the hair color. While my hair color articles are usually presented with an appropriate touch of humor given the light-hearted subject-matter, the underlying analysis is consistent with my serious review principles.
Because all the examples Mr. Moody presented concern from anime, I will note an extra layer that I consider particular to many anime series: Adaptation decisions (which, to be sure, are also relevant in many 3D people movies). A majority of TV anime series are adaptations of other works (see for example my 2024 and 2022 anime series of those years). An adaptation is an interpretation in and of itself. The team behind a movie or anime necessarily examines the source material and determines how to use finite resources to adapt it to a new medium. Ideally, they should also wrestle with the sorts of questions I believe everyone should in understanding a work. Most adaptations leave things out. Some even add their own twists (see e.g., my thoughts on the third season of the Sound! Euphonium anime, which I learned through the grapevine re-interpreted the underlying source novels on a late key story point). In understanding an adaptation, one should try to understand the adaptation in and of itself instead of beginning by comparing it to the source material. It is never a given that an adaptation takes the same position on every issue as the source material. For example, the anime adaptation of the Persona 4 video game devotes an episode to my favorite character from the game, Ai Ebihara. While Ai is recognizably Ai in the anime, someone who watches the anime alone will come away with all of the same conclusions about Ai as someone who plays through her route in the game, owing to the fact that the anime’s interpretation of Ai is largely comedic on points that the game portrays seriously. It is fair to compare an adaptation to the source and make conclusions about what it did right and wrong, but only by taking the time to understand both works in and of themselves can one understand why certain decisions were made in both.
(One can expand the adaptation point to understanding the influences behind a work. For example many great works of literature are far more intelligible if one is well-read in certain areas, and understanding what an author is drawing on is necessary in some cases to understanding what an author chooses to write. However, I will assess this issue as being beyond the scope of this article.)
A novel visual novel analysis example
Before considering Mr. Moody’s examples, I will call my own number and refer readers to my review of Wanderers in the Sky, the 2006 freeware localization of a freeware Japanese visual novel (also see my second critical assessment). (Note that I was careful to note that I was reviewing the localizations as final products, granting it is entirely possible one may come away with some different impressions from the original Japanese works.) I took the time to carefully read Wanderers in the Sky and make different in-game choices to ensure that I saw everything it had to offer. I ultimately found the work “well-intentioned,” but I did not much care for it. I most succinctly explained where I think it went wrong in my piece in which I ranked 29th out of the 31 visual novels I played and reviewed for a larger project:
Had Wanderers been longer or more focused in its short run-time, it could have been passable. But I came away with the distinct impression that there was at one time a longer story planned before Wanderers was cut down in length without meaningfully adjusting the story.
I offer my opinion on how Wanderers in the Sky could have been better. It is a very short visual novel – taking somewhere in the neighborhood of 15-25 minutes to see everything. I concluded that it simply tried to do too much – especially when the back-half of the novel threw characters with whom the initially amnesiac protagonist apparently had prior relationships at the reader in rapid succession. My view was that had the novel been less ambitious – more cognizant of the fact it was short – it could have cut down on the extraneous elements and told a more meaningful and focused story about its central theme – moving forward with the weight of loss and regret on one’s shoulders. But this opinion was based on my having carefully considered Wanderers in the Sky as it is. It was only by grasping its central point that I was able to give my view on how it could have presented said point more effectively. In suggesting how it could have been better, or what I think it should have been, I also fell back on my experience with undertaking the same study of similar projects – notably a much better freeware visual novel translation called Until We Meet Again, which managed to deliver a very similar message more persuasively in a piece of similar length. My comparison of the Wanderers in the Sky that is to the Wanderers in the Sky that I suggested should have been was the logical outgrowth of my effort to understand the Wanderers in the Sky that is and was only possible by first adhering to a hard version of the Ebert maxim before deviating from it.
On Focusing on a Secondary Character of the Main
Mr. Moody provided three examples of anime that he felt would have been more interesting had each focused on a friend of the most significant female character in lieu of focusing on the significant character. While I did watch all three shows he referenced, I will refrain from focusing on them since the only one I covered in detail on site was The Angel Next Door Spoils Me Rotten, and it should be obvious from my lengthy review that I do not think there is any way that it could have been the same show (for better or worse) had the overly-energetic Chihiro been the main character in lieu of Mahiru.
I will submit for those who have seen the three shows that I am inclined to agree with Mr. Moody with respect to The Aquatope on White Sand, which was (A) probably the best of the three shows he mentioned and (B) held back in my estimation by the fact that the main character, Kukuru, who was too often annoying and tended to regress in maturity level for the purpose of dragging things out, an affliction not shared by her close friend Fuka, who played a main character role in select episodes (I will however grant I am not sure Fuka was given enough personality to carry a 25-episode anime series as the protagonist). I do not agree with his assessment regarding The Dreaming Boy is a Realist, but that show is flawed enough to caution against any single quick-fix solution.
But setting the particulars of Mr. Moody’s examples, I thought about cases where those sort of “I would have preferred character B to character A” issues are interesting. I will tentatively submit that the issue is most interesting where giving one character a role over another would not require fundamentally changing the core of the work. A central character question implicating a tweak or different perspective on the same themes and ideas is more interesting than one that necessarily entails tearing the work down and starting over from scratch. Returning to Mr. Moody’s examples, I would, under my tentative take, opine that the idea of swapping the main view point character in The Aquatope on White Sand is the most interesting (by a long way) of the three scenarios Mr. Moody suggested since the show could have focused on the same scenes the extant Kukuru-centric version does but viewed from the more mature and interesting perspective of Fuka.
Of course, those are just my initial thoughts on the matter. I will think about some test-case analysis articles to further develop the ideas discussed herein.
