redwoodalchan (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
redwoodalchan) wrote2014-08-10 11:24 pm
redwoodalchan) wrote2014-08-10 11:24 pm
Entry tags:
- anime,
- characters,
- fandom,
- heat guy j,
- meta,
- rants
On "Wangst"
This started as a response to a "Heat Guy J" review I saw on TVTropes, but it isn't limited to "Heat Guy J" fans (or else this rant might not exist...).
It's a bit messed up, really, if you think about it.
"Wangst," according to TVTropes, is a portmanteau of "whiny" and "angst" and is used to refer to characters who complain about their lousy deal in life for little to no reason or despite the fact that other characters are worse off. Emo teens are commonly guilty of it.
I guess as a preface to all this, while I do find wangst annoying I don't think it necessarily deserves the maligning it receives from some circles in and of itself, because it's something just about everyone is guilty of at some point. To me, where it really gets annoying is when we're expected to sympathize with it and not question it, especially if other characters are worse off. But a wangsty character is generally perfectly acceptable to me as long as it's clear that we're meant to disagree with him (I'm thinking of someone like Masao Murasako from "Shiki" here).
THAT BEING SAID, what really gets my goat about "wangst" is the people who call it in situations where no wangst has occurred.
The aforementioned "Heat Guy J" review was written by someone who most likely came to "Heat Guy J" thinking it would be an action-packed cyberpunk detective story, and walked away disappointed when it turned out to be a slow-paced, serious crime drama instead. Pretty much everything he said about it suggests this to be the case, but one thing about this review that I just couldn't get past was how he referred to Clair Leonelli as "a purple-haired, wangst-driven teenager with a lip piercing and a girl's name."
Except that no, Clair does not "wangst." Not ever. "Wangst" implies that Clair has no good reason to be upset, but he plainly and obviously does. In fact, let's run through the things he goes through in backstory alone:
-His mother died giving birth to him;
-He grew up with a father who abused him for years and constantly told him he was never good enough;
-He had virtually no friends except his father's old right-hand man and some kid his father picked up from the slums to be his friend;
-The abuse he suffered at his father's hands eventually drove him insane;
-His father is dead now, meaning he has to take over his company, but none of the other mob leaders like him or want him there;
And this is BEFORE the main events of the series, where he has to deal with his plans getting foiled by Daisuke and many more awful things! It really does seem like this guy hated Clair because he actually got upset every so often and wasn't a completely stoic, ruthless killer. Heaven forbid a mentally-unstable nineteen-year-old actually act upset or display any emotional vulnerability--that's all just a sign of weakness (even if, as Clair does, he eventually RISES ABOVE THOSE CHALLENGES and BECOMES A BETTER PERSON)!
But that's the whole problem: some people seem determined to call wangst for every little thing, even if the character in question has perfectly good reasons to be upset, or has genuine psychological issues. Look how many people who watch "Evangelion" turn around and call Shinji weak or wimpy for suffering from realistic clinical depression. Look how many "Shiki" fans bash Masao from here to high heaven for being an insensitive jerk (something he doesn't seem like he can help) while giving Natsuno a free pass for KNOWINGLY acting like a jerk. In fact, Masao is a good case in point here: he does genuinely wangst, at least at first, but it later becomes clear that at least on a metatextual level he actually does suffer just as much as the other characters if not moreso--he's the series' designated jerkass woobie, who's designed to have everything and the kitchen sink thrown at him (he's also not the ONLY character in that series who wangsts--both Megumi and Natsuno have their moments as well)!
It really starts to feel like a lot of these people dismiss as weakness anything but Legato Bluesummers levels of stoicism. The real irony here is that the only reason why Legato acts that way is because he is so screwed-up that even Clair would take one look at him and go "Glad I'm not you!" It's no accident that (at least in the anime) the only times Legato exhibits anything resembling true happiness are when he's killing people and at the point of death!
I guess as a preface to all this, while I do find wangst annoying I don't think it necessarily deserves the maligning it receives from some circles in and of itself, because it's something just about everyone is guilty of at some point. To me, where it really gets annoying is when we're expected to sympathize with it and not question it, especially if other characters are worse off. But a wangsty character is generally perfectly acceptable to me as long as it's clear that we're meant to disagree with him (I'm thinking of someone like Masao Murasako from "Shiki" here).
THAT BEING SAID, what really gets my goat about "wangst" is the people who call it in situations where no wangst has occurred.
The aforementioned "Heat Guy J" review was written by someone who most likely came to "Heat Guy J" thinking it would be an action-packed cyberpunk detective story, and walked away disappointed when it turned out to be a slow-paced, serious crime drama instead. Pretty much everything he said about it suggests this to be the case, but one thing about this review that I just couldn't get past was how he referred to Clair Leonelli as "a purple-haired, wangst-driven teenager with a lip piercing and a girl's name."
Except that no, Clair does not "wangst." Not ever. "Wangst" implies that Clair has no good reason to be upset, but he plainly and obviously does. In fact, let's run through the things he goes through in backstory alone:
-His mother died giving birth to him;
-He grew up with a father who abused him for years and constantly told him he was never good enough;
-He had virtually no friends except his father's old right-hand man and some kid his father picked up from the slums to be his friend;
-The abuse he suffered at his father's hands eventually drove him insane;
-His father is dead now, meaning he has to take over his company, but none of the other mob leaders like him or want him there;
And this is BEFORE the main events of the series, where he has to deal with his plans getting foiled by Daisuke and many more awful things! It really does seem like this guy hated Clair because he actually got upset every so often and wasn't a completely stoic, ruthless killer. Heaven forbid a mentally-unstable nineteen-year-old actually act upset or display any emotional vulnerability--that's all just a sign of weakness (even if, as Clair does, he eventually RISES ABOVE THOSE CHALLENGES and BECOMES A BETTER PERSON)!
But that's the whole problem: some people seem determined to call wangst for every little thing, even if the character in question has perfectly good reasons to be upset, or has genuine psychological issues. Look how many people who watch "Evangelion" turn around and call Shinji weak or wimpy for suffering from realistic clinical depression. Look how many "Shiki" fans bash Masao from here to high heaven for being an insensitive jerk (something he doesn't seem like he can help) while giving Natsuno a free pass for KNOWINGLY acting like a jerk. In fact, Masao is a good case in point here: he does genuinely wangst, at least at first, but it later becomes clear that at least on a metatextual level he actually does suffer just as much as the other characters if not moreso--he's the series' designated jerkass woobie, who's designed to have everything and the kitchen sink thrown at him (he's also not the ONLY character in that series who wangsts--both Megumi and Natsuno have their moments as well)!
It really starts to feel like a lot of these people dismiss as weakness anything but Legato Bluesummers levels of stoicism. The real irony here is that the only reason why Legato acts that way is because he is so screwed-up that even Clair would take one look at him and go "Glad I'm not you!" It's no accident that (at least in the anime) the only times Legato exhibits anything resembling true happiness are when he's killing people and at the point of death!
It's a bit messed up, really, if you think about it.