manic pixie nightmare girl

so friend you are going to be his stand-in wanna come with me you want to throw everything away and come with me the manic pixie dream girl exists solely in the favored imaginations of sensitive writer directors to teach brutally soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures the manic pixie dream girl is an all or nothing proposition this begins a bit of ground we have to cover about the term manic pixie dream girl before we continue that's the original use of the term i was quoting there coined in a review of the 2005 film elizabethtown as with any label it started as a convenience a way to call out filmmakers for utilizing female characters as simple tools for development for a male lead for making them no more than a simple fantasy rather than working to change the life they hated these main characters were rewarded by simply staying static by the entrance of someone who existed solely for that purpose as such it could have been an effective tool reductive as any label but a simple marker to say do better and the reason was because what we witness in media changes what we want to witness in the world around us i can speak from experience because of the prevalence of such characters i watched as others and myself at times fell for these kinds of characters not for who they were but for how they made you feel it was the thrill of someone whisking you away from your boring life and showing you how exciting the world could be all without you having to lift a finger they would just appear and everything would be better it felt like all you had to do was simply wait and your life would be perfectly fine somehow instead of making change you sit around waiting for someone to make it for you but the term originally coined to combat this trope grew into a different beast it became overused expanding into a vague definition that reduced better characters into worse ones and simplified the personalities of real people who were tossed under its weight now it wasn't about critiquing male fantasy but somehow praising the idea of not being like other girls wishing for a free spirit to be so but to realize they should settle down for you after all you are the main character in 2014 seven years after the initial review which coined the turn nathan rabin wrote an article titled i'm sorry for coining the phrase manic pixie dream girl in which she stated at the film site dissolve where i'm a staff writer my editor has gently discouraged me from using the phrase manic pixie dream girl in my writing less because using a phrase i coined reeks of self-congratulation but because in 2014 calling a character a manic pixie dream girl is nearly as much of a cliche as the manic pixie dream girl trope i wanted to cover this to lay a bass line firstly sorry nathan but because the internet is an algorithmic beast driven by search results i had to continue using the term and secondly we're not going to be talking about this romanticized idea of not being like other girls and we're not even going to be talking about femininity specifically as such i'm going to shorten it to manic pixie dream for our purposes here we're going to be talking about the unrealistic desire these characters are created to be motivated by what the realistic version of it would really look like and why we shouldn't hope for or even trust such a thing [Music] what i mean by this unrealistic desire is that the characters who truly follow the tropes are motivated solely to better someone who isn't themselves at any cost there's no better example of this in anime than your lie in april now to be fair i think it's a fantastic story it's rather simple at times but simple in the way of doing one thing really well it's propped up by surface level flowery pros at times but it includes some genuinely moving wisdom in addition to pure emotional gut punch and the utilization of classic music for supremely emotional moments it's a 9 out of 10 for me i can comfortably rate it that because i'm more like kosei than anyone else in the cast he's the typical character moved in these stories reclusive lonely cautious and reserved longing for something more but seeing himself as unable or unworthy of taking it in his case it's his past which is holding him back a mixture of love for playing the piano and the trauma of his now dead mother who forced him to do so his childhood friend and long-term unrequited love watery and tsubaki respectively flank his journey as the latter grapples with her feelings for kosei who himself struggles to accept he's fallen in love with watery's new girlfriend kaori she's unlike anything he's ever seen beautiful in a natural and unadorned way free-spirited but still successful at her craft full of conventional wisdom but in a completely understandable and simple way in short she's perfect and kosei stumbles upon her playing the melodica like something out of his dreams as coincidence pulls her into his life and changes him forever overcoming his trauma and as he says bringing color back to his gray world except it isn't a coincidence it was all planned one of the most frustrating aspects of your line april is that the universe literally revolves around kosei every character is motivated by him whether as a rival an inspiration a love interest the competitor who somehow made someone's brother work too hard literally everything keori is no exception as a child she's witnessed kosei playing the piano and ran home to her parents motivated to learn the violin so that one day she could perform a duet with him suffering from a terminal illness she dedicated her limited time to this goal alone reinventing herself as the girl that anyone could like only to realize that butting in a costay's life would hurt zubaki and so she decides to date his best friend instead content to only reveal her love and a letter after her death to protect the feelings of people she didn't know this is where everything starts to get a bit convoluted one performance changed her entire life and even as a child she stuck with it wholeheartedly she had one desire which was her love for kosei and despite that never fully acted on it to spare the feelings of someone she didn't even know she hides her life-ending illness from them as long as possible while actively working to heal someone else's wounds they jump off of bridges they light fireworks they perform mad duets as she's dying he's learning to live that's a supremely tragic and moving story but it's also the most unrealistic one ever she acts on no desire for her own sake instead turning it into a way to better the lives of people around her literally what remains of her life is making others want to live theirs and she only receives a pale copy of what she ever wanted dying satisfied that at least she got that i can't speak for those suffering from such illness and their outlook on life but doesn't it feel wrong to expect someone in such a harsh situation to be able to behave entirely unselfishly would any of us blame her for saying i love you to the person she did does she really have to respect the feelings of another girl who never acted on her own the pinnacle of the manic pixie dream expects them to be perfect all for someone else which rejects the fact that humans just don't do that we can see other characters like this in anime and all media across time i'm also a fan of anno hana but i recognize it's another series where the women exist solely to make the men happy menma is literally a ghost who's bound to the world because she can help gin to move past his issues the only reason she exists is for the rest of the cast to move past their own mistakes a truthful message of needing to move on and one beautifully crafted but which relied on a character being solely invested in the betterment of others even when that means the end of her existence as it is gurren lagan is one of the greatest anime ever produced and despite its zany nature one which tackles meaningful subjects amazingly a big part of its great message on leadership which took three videos to cover is due to nia who fills in comedy as a mistake by telling others to believe in more than just heroes but at the end of the day nia's defining trait is a belief in simone and a desire to make him better than he was entering at his lowest point and when that's done when simone has become the best he can be she disappears he does as well but he makes the choice to do so she had to because it perfected his character the recently released bubble is just a condensed version of these with a woman who's given life exclusively to heal someone whose touch also kills her now well more rare the trope can be reversed to male characters i was born in the 90s so naturally i love final fantasy 10 and while tedis has more to his character than simply making someone better a large part of his desire is to show the sheltered yuna a world she's never known pulling and pushing her to break the cultural binds of her life and once this job is done he disappears with you not allowed to now live a life she never imagined she could have and he's literally a dream made by the wishes of other people what we see in all these examples is a character who enters in a sudden and mysterious way changing the stagnant life of someone else through the pure desire to do so and then disappearing once they've done to allow the main character absolute freedom the first and third points aren't something i'm going to contest these are simply the causality of a world as vast as ours the middle one is where i want to explore some truth to do that i want to look at fully cooling at least in 2000 it predates the term manic pixie dream but provides the necessary counterpoint to the idea of being so heavily invested in someone else it starts the same as any of our other stories the main character is at a low point board with the static depressing nature of the world around them wishing for change but afraid to take the necessary steps to achieve [Music] naota is somewhat content in this despair as mamimi the girl in love with his absent older brother now uses him as a physical outlet for her frustrations but just as he's about to tell her off this behavior the dream or nightmare begins and suddenly haruko rides in yellow vespa ss-180 left-handed as a regular rickenbacker electric base all these beautiful specifics and clubs naota over the head from that moment on this boring town where nothing happens is full of this kind of specific life and energy robots start to emerge from nalto's head they terrorize the town try to destroy it with orbital strikes all while he and haruko work together to stop them she tortures him forcing him to be jealous sticking him in situations he hates where he might die but he falls for her anyway she teaches him how to live how to exist outside of the shell he had locked himself in as he says the proof of an outside world for him is her existence and all the while this seems to be her only reason for being there she's drawn to nalto saying he's special that he's the only one for her she isn't lying but she isn't telling the whole truth her obsession with bettering nalto is simply the means to another end her true goal is to track down adamusk a legendary space pirate she's fallen for naoto just happens to be better for this because his brain is the only one she can manipulate into calling these monsters which also make adamus appear closer as well yes i know it makes no sense but that's what the anime is so for this end she teaches him how to live to grow strong but with the added cost of a lot of pain she disappears without a trace once there's a hint of adamusk appearing again only to use naota for the final step of the plan and knowing this he goes along with her getting one last hint of the good times that made him fall in love and then he ruins her plans he sends adamus far away with his newfound power she helped to develop she's pissed he's in love and she leaves once more confirming her desires never actually laid where he was the general structure of horuko follows the pattern sudden entrance development of another and exit but what makes fully cooling much more truthful is why that development is occurring in the prime example of your line april it's strictly for kosei's sake kyori exists for him alone in foley coley it's for haruko's sake even if she's still doing it for love that love is an undefined nothing adamusk is nothing haruko exists solely for haruko she's not helping someone else to do it she's helping and hurting someone else to help herself this is how human beings function an unconventional idea that's thankfully becoming more recognized is the fact that being selfish to a degree is healthy my realistic expectation for others that is how i measure if they're a good person within the bounce of our current systems in society is that they act selfishly in a way that's best for others we need shelter food and water and the only way to get those things is taking from a limited pool but a good person only takes so much as they can actually utilize society is an act of tempering our raw natural selfishness into a different form for collaboration as such we act for ourselves while considering others it's looking at the classic internal conflict of am i really a good person if i'm only helping others to make myself feel better and saying yes you are a good person because that's what society demands when survival is not guaranteed this is where fully coley takes a trope and turns it into something that can actually be experienced haruko may be an alien from some unknown corner of space but she acts as people actually could and would when they enter your life randomly her actions are clearly selfish stressed by the fact that just as naoto is about to make a change on his own telling off mamimi she interrupts him and uses his desires for her own sake the fault of naoto's brand of mindset which wishes for change from an outside source is that it fails to recognize that source will have its own desires outside of producing change that shifts in his life are simply a byproduct people don't exist for others no one pops into your life after seeing you from afar because they intuited some unexpressed desire and sought to correct it for your sake they pop into your life because just like you there's something they want they're chasing an edemask love is selfish like anything else as i've said in videos before it's asking someone else to dedicate a part of their limited time to you alone it can only be a selfish act because you want them the most we can do as with anything else is to minimize how much that selfishness will hurt others we yield and temper it in an agreement we've dubbed a relationship sometimes we're selfish and sometimes they are if someone enters your life even with the best of intentions they have a selfish reason for why that is it's not just you would you be with someone who doesn't make you feel positive we can't supersede their reason with our own desire to be changed both because it disrespects them and also because it only opens us up to be hurt and haruko is an example of just that she's not acting just naturally selfish but very actively she manipulates naoto in service of something else everything she did was a harsh imitation of the perfect manic pixie dream just as naoto brooded about his boring life she changed it she forced him into situations where he had to grow where we had to confront his fears and the pressures of change which come from the transition to adulthood she recognizes the trope she seemingly fills and takes advantage of the desire which spawned the trope in the first place this is why i say we shouldn't hope for or trust such a thing but that trust is an internal one we shouldn't trust our own desire to be changed without self-effort because when you look at how haruko feels this role it was dangerous it was only manipulative it was a clear mismatch there was nothing about this that looked good the only way this could be taken as her acting for his sake is if you ignored the many many obvious signs if you trusted your own desire more than her she's an awful person and is at fault in this situation but that fault could only arise because of the lackluster will of our brooding main character if you let people change you without your own input they'll probably do it for the worse because there's no incentive for them to do it for the better to fit with a theme of the channel recently this is a topic which i'm discussing as an excuse to throw my own sadness onto the internet in a way which feels palatable watchable and makes me seem special i recently had my own experience with this kind of dual faulted nightmare now before we go any further i'm not calling the person i had this experience with a trope they're a human being one with a past and personality as rich and deep as anyone they have reasons for acting why they do i was not and will never be the center of their universe i was simply something which existed in it for a reason they chose and was forced out of it once more once that reason was gone i respect that because i respect the human will and in making this i'm solidifying that it is the past there's a chance to watch this and it's probably for the best our story starts on my birthday this year i hated it i always have and until i stop hating myself i always will i've also very quickly reached the stage of adulthood where planning is impossible because shitty work schedules have forced my friends to exist as people only on opposite days further feeding the system of depressed worker drones were designed to be so especially on a monday night and after three years of a stagnant social life from trying to be a responsible [ __ ] member of society i found my options as an extreme introvert who wasn't willing to put in any effort were to get drunk alone or do nothing i was pretty content to do both it would keep me from thinking about myself as desire for some change to come and sweep me off my feet to somehow meet someone who would magically and instantly introduce me to all new people who are somehow free and free from the chains of adulthood only this time it kind of happened that morning i opened one of the confidence builders masquerading as a dating app and tried to fulfill that not so secret purpose of it i did i set it down i moved on content to never follow through on any of that already minimal effort just a flick of the thumb the other side followed through for me though i am attracted to you let's hang out that's the message i got a sign i really ignored an embarrassingly minimal amount of follow-up later and i was heading to a bar i'd never been to i sat on a bench nearby and waited a few minutes later greeted by a loud hey looking over at someone who was excited to meet me a feeling i have never and probably will never understand i joked about how it was just like a movie scene we got tacos and drank talking about bad id photos i accidentally showed it was my birthday and we walked around talked about all the great movie scenes we could have in front of some of the stores this ice cream place that was lit up blue and would have been perfect they lent me some books from their car we went somewhere else to drink more and eventually scurried off to a late night bakery just before they closed to get whatever they had left a couple cookies in hand and four hours later than i planned to be out we walked back to my car where they insisted i'd blow out their lighter and make a wish for my birthday i said i did but that i couldn't reveal it until the season finale to keep the viewers hooked and it was just a cover for the fact i didn't actually wish for anything honestly i didn't need to that day was the wish i'd been waiting for we sat in my car eating and talking and fulfilling human desire until the sun started to come up there's still a faint smiley face in the corner of my windshield drawn and the fog of a night of half drunken passion on a public street it was a night full of things i'd never done before things that weren't me someone who just moved to my city a couple weeks before was showing me places and things i'd never seen there the next few days where i was with them were a flurry it was i was in a club until it closed even though i hadn't sung or danced in front of anyone since fourth grade and i despised large crowds i almost got in one of those movie fights where someone mistakes you being pushed for you pushing them i sat at my city's overlooked drinking and boarding off requests for public indecency until the train home was on its last run i met strangers in front of a gas station at 2am who taught me that they put out of order signs on all the food kiosks when the bars make last call and then take them off 15 minutes later all these strangers were saying how we seemed like some long-term couple even though it had only been about a week it wasn't all things i liked but that was the point change had found me it was now fighting against my usually tame wills and what was most important about them to me was change i was ignoring the things which annoyed me about them because without ever realizing it i saw something about them that was more important to me than who they really were it was what they could do to my life change but there's an issue with falling for change eventually it's something else and you can't stop that fact or else it wouldn't be changed calls got shorter and text got more sparse and a mechanical weekly greeting would be followed by an excuse it was only a few weeks but i cried and cursed other people and said this is why i stopped trying after someone stole three years of my life in high school and college i called an extern friend who i stalled their life for years and cried about someone new to them which led to us getting in a fight about our failed relationship i cleaned this person's stupid apartment and drove them home and they got too drunk and then back the next morning to get their car even though i was on an hour of sleep and needed to work i did all these stupid things that made me uncomfortable i was trying for the first time in years some of it was for them i wanted to help their situation i'll stay mad about the effort directed for their sake but i can't be mad for all of it because i was trying with them for myself i wasn't always tempering the selfishness they sent me a message saying they thought i was attractive not that they wanted to change my life i saw how briefly people stayed in their circle i knew their life was constantly unsettled but they were free and in many ways suffering for it they did hurt me but i made that worse because it wasn't just some fun times slipping away to me it was this chance to finally live a life i secretly envied but was too scared to try on my own it's not a person that's an unrealistic expectation we harvest this desire that a free spirit is going to save us but then expect the very reason we called for them to cease we expect ourselves the grand main characters to be special enough to warrant them changing who they are to keep changing us because well that means we'll never have to put in the effort to continue changing ourselves but that's not how people are we enter each other's lives for our own realistic and selfish desires i entered theirs looking for a life-changing experience they entered mine looking for a fun night while they may not have handled things in a mature way i was the one who came into it with mature expectations i was the one who internally pressured someone else to change my world in the end there's nothing more than the random collision of two people who themselves are nothing more than the energy sent forth from initial conditions and other collisions along the way the manic pixie dream doesn't exist in reality and trying to make it so only reduces other people but that doesn't mean we can't find something positive in all of this i still hate being up to see the sun rise i still hate clubs and crowded bars i hate how my shoulder hurt from being crammed into the corner of my back seat but i like the face drawn in the windshield i like that i did something new i loved looking over the place i lived my entire life with a new perspective we can't change the selfish nature of a human being we can only change our expectations of it and then what we take from it all i love fully coli because it's much more representative of what i've experienced than other anime that toy with this type of character in most examples the main character is hurt by the pain of the past they're working through hurt by their own issues alone before experiencing a manufactured loss to punctuate the message the cost is only felt by them the toll is actually the one who changed them conversely naoto is working through the pain of his past and present alike which comes about from his desire for change it comes about from the fact he tried to ignore the obvious warning signs of haruko that she would have desires outside of him he learned how to swing the bat for a fee that was truly his he's not left with some romanticized love that somehow couldn't be he's left with a one-sided real one that never was and somehow someway he has to use that to shape his future on his own terms with his own hands the ending is him standing there proud and tall with a reminder of his experience looking forward to the future haruko couldn't change him for the better but the reminder of her in his own mind is something he can use to better himself life is a series of making mistakes and then dealing with the consequences as best as we can this is where he stands at the end that's where i stand now and probably where a lot of us are always standing all we can do after living through our self-created manic pixie nightmares is to choose what we do with those reminders that is real change

Channel: ProfessorViral

Views: 160,066

Keywords: FLCL, Your Lie in April, manic pixie dream girl, haruko, kaori, anime, manga

Id: zxSa8jddAK8

Length: 25min 46sec (1546 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 21 2022