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liri
I established long ago that there is no second RK OVA. It's not real. Doesn't exist. So the thing I just watched was purely a figment of my fevered imagination; I don't know where it came from since I am normally not much inclined toward angst, but maybe it's hormones, or some strange chemical reaction between antihistamines and Cheez-its. Whatever it was, it's not real.
But... ::sniffle:: It's so sad!
Those of you who know me from my RK fandom days, don't worry - I haven't been taken over by a depressed pod person. I'm still mad at it. I just manage to combine grief and rage in a potent cocktail of needing scanlations this second. Or just scans. From that bonus chapter where Yahiko's got the sakabatou but he's still hanging around Tokyo, and so is Kenshin, and... argh. The grief part surprised me. I knew what happened - I had no real desire to see this OVA because of that. I was angry at it for ages because of that.
The manga had a perfectly good ending. Kenshin wasn't swearing he'd spend his entire life in a sodium-pentothal haze, free of all guilt, regret, and sorrow, just because he'd married Kaoru and passed on the sword and now the world was now full of rainbows and happy bunnies. Watsuki's ending, while unequivocally a happy ending, wasn't as unrealistic as all that. He still had his guilt and his memories. But you can have happiness too, something that doesn't seem to be possible in the OVA universe.
So I thought I'd watch this in a state of barely-suppressed rage. It was shaping up that way, in the very beginning, but then they started the flashbacks. Kaoru hanging back, nerving herself to attack, Kenshin and Kaoru cleaning the dojo and talking, the interesting re-staging of Kaoru's kidnapping just before the Jin-E fight (I guess they had the same problems I did with the boat magically motoring along while he stood up in it holding a struggling hostage) and most of all with the scene where Kaoru told Yahiko about her feelings for Kenshin. That last scene felt more in-character than anything else had so far, with Yahiko's facial expressions and "no sex between my parents!" reaction to the K&K relationship, and Kaoru's cheerful teasing. Those were the characters I'd known all along.
And then it started to lose me, with the Jinchuu arc. Where was the rest of the Kenshin-gumi in all that? Much as I sometimes act like RK is "Kenshin and Kaoru's Eternal Love (occasionally interrupted by swordfights)," the whole group's important, and they're all a part of his life; she may be the main reason he thinks of the dojo as home, but she's not the only reason. Enishi tried to destroy other things and people before he got to Kaoru. The object was to destroy Kenshin's entire life, and for Kenshin, unlike the young Enishi - hell, unlike the young Kenshin - that life consisted of more than one person. In the manga. In this, Kenshin and Kaoru appear only to have each other, and they're... all I can describe it as is "sinking."
Which is probably why it got me back - and got me sniffly, dammit, I didn't want any emotional reaction to this thing - when Sano hugged Kenshin, told him there was nothing more for him to do, and referred to Kaoru as "jo-chan." There really wasn't anything more for Kenshin to do, and that was true long before, which is why the OVA Does Not Exist, but it got me all the same. Sano's in character, at least, even if nobody else is, and it obviously breaks his heart to see his friend like this.
The ending... to my shame I was in fact slightly caught up in it, but once it was over I got mad. I don't like overblown angst. I started saying, long before, that the ailment in this was "Meiji AIDS," since apparently no one can catch it except Kaoru, and that because she has sex with him. I now think that what they actually died of was angst, since it doesn't match any actual ailment I know of - lesions, yes, creeping fuchsia full-body tattoos that hurt whenever you need to flinch dramatically, no. Not to mention the way that Kaoru talks like he has got the cancer because he's sad. And all her nonsense about "wanting to share his pain" rather than, say, try to do something about it - what happened to her? The OVAs did wrong by Tomoe, but they character-assassinated Kaoru.
Also? The Kenshin/Kaoru Nookie of Death wasn't even as explicit as the Kenshin/Tomoe doomsex. This was NOT what I had in mind.
I disliked the first OVA for a number of reasons - I wasn't particularly invested in the story, I didn't like what it'd done to Tomoe (not my favorite character, but far superior in the manga to her OVA incarnation) and without some humor in even the darkest chapters it just doesn't feel right. It was based on the darkest parts of the story, though, and it wasn't a disservice to them the way this OVA is to the rest of the manga. I preemptively hated this one because I didn't want to see this done to Kaoru, and because of the apparent attitude of the OVA-makers - "the manga had a happy ending! We need to do something about that."
Because forget redemption or atonement - if you have any kind of trouble in your past there is no way you can ever be truly happy again, and by the way, everyone who ever loves you will either die or just end up unhappy because they cared about you and you are Tragic and Doomed so they get to miss you when you're gone. As you will be soon, because, Doom. "Smiling to hide his sadness" in-fucking-deed. I'd like to counter this with the way it was phrased in the manga, but since the only translation I have access to is Maigo-chan's, I probably shouldn't. Never mind competing canon, go for common sense - why the hell can't people just smile in spite of, or in addition to, any kind of painful past or personal unhappiness? Real people manage it all the time, yet fans seem incapable of applying that reasoning to the characters. Is it that difficult a concept?
It felt like watching fanfic in a lot of ways. All those fandom tics, up on screen... "He uses the -dono suffix with her, therefore he is keeping his distance and doesn't really love her!" Well, he calls her just Kaoru when he says goodbye and leaves for Kyoto, an addition in the OVA. "She's clingy!" So she lets him run off for years at a stretch because he's impregnated her and there's nothing more she can ask of him. Obviously he can have no desire to stay at home with his wife and son. "She doesn't understand him!" So they have her angst about how his smile's not real, but she loves him so she's staying with him anyway, and angst at other times about trying to take on his pain. "He can't love her as much as he loved Tomoe, because his love for Tomoe was Deep and Tragic!" Kaoru, who never appeared to have this issue outside of fanfic, has internalized it here, and they address it by making Kenshin and Kaoru's love Deep and Tragic too. Because, you know, coping with grief, finding some kind of happiness, building a life together - that's inferior to dramatic sorrow.
And then there's that final bit with Kenji and Chizuru. Giving the son a happy ending doesn't make up for destroying the lives of his parents, OVA-makers! Chizuru, of course, is a Watsuki character - the name and design came from an extremely Kaoru-like character in one of the stories he wrote as a run-up to RK. I can't decide whether to say "Oedipus ho!" or to applaud them for the reference to the actual SOURCE, which they'd been blithely - okay, angstily - disregarding up until that.
Visually, it's nice; for some reason I never appreciated that about the first OVA, but I noticed it here. I liked the visual parallels - Yahiko finding Kaoru in bed when Kenshin left for Kyoto and again in the present, Jin-E and Enishi kidnapping Kaoru, Kenshin coming out of the woods after Jin-E and holding the ribbon much as he did in the previous OVA when it was Tomoe held hostage. Kaoru and Kenshin both keeping windchimes up at their separate homes. I really liked the fight scenes. But that's not my Kaoru, dammit, and it's not my Kenshin either. Taken as a sequel to the first OVA, it works. It's just that neither one is recognizable as RK all the way through.
Dear GOD, this thing was onto its third page when I pasted it into Word. Not by much, but.... Yeah. So there you go, Sev. A truckload's worth of RK opinion.
Edited to add: I really can't explain why I rented it, knowing as I did that I wasn't going to be pleased. Just wanted to see for myself?
But... ::sniffle:: It's so sad!
Those of you who know me from my RK fandom days, don't worry - I haven't been taken over by a depressed pod person. I'm still mad at it. I just manage to combine grief and rage in a potent cocktail of needing scanlations this second. Or just scans. From that bonus chapter where Yahiko's got the sakabatou but he's still hanging around Tokyo, and so is Kenshin, and... argh. The grief part surprised me. I knew what happened - I had no real desire to see this OVA because of that. I was angry at it for ages because of that.
The manga had a perfectly good ending. Kenshin wasn't swearing he'd spend his entire life in a sodium-pentothal haze, free of all guilt, regret, and sorrow, just because he'd married Kaoru and passed on the sword and now the world was now full of rainbows and happy bunnies. Watsuki's ending, while unequivocally a happy ending, wasn't as unrealistic as all that. He still had his guilt and his memories. But you can have happiness too, something that doesn't seem to be possible in the OVA universe.
So I thought I'd watch this in a state of barely-suppressed rage. It was shaping up that way, in the very beginning, but then they started the flashbacks. Kaoru hanging back, nerving herself to attack, Kenshin and Kaoru cleaning the dojo and talking, the interesting re-staging of Kaoru's kidnapping just before the Jin-E fight (I guess they had the same problems I did with the boat magically motoring along while he stood up in it holding a struggling hostage) and most of all with the scene where Kaoru told Yahiko about her feelings for Kenshin. That last scene felt more in-character than anything else had so far, with Yahiko's facial expressions and "no sex between my parents!" reaction to the K&K relationship, and Kaoru's cheerful teasing. Those were the characters I'd known all along.
And then it started to lose me, with the Jinchuu arc. Where was the rest of the Kenshin-gumi in all that? Much as I sometimes act like RK is "Kenshin and Kaoru's Eternal Love (occasionally interrupted by swordfights)," the whole group's important, and they're all a part of his life; she may be the main reason he thinks of the dojo as home, but she's not the only reason. Enishi tried to destroy other things and people before he got to Kaoru. The object was to destroy Kenshin's entire life, and for Kenshin, unlike the young Enishi - hell, unlike the young Kenshin - that life consisted of more than one person. In the manga. In this, Kenshin and Kaoru appear only to have each other, and they're... all I can describe it as is "sinking."
Which is probably why it got me back - and got me sniffly, dammit, I didn't want any emotional reaction to this thing - when Sano hugged Kenshin, told him there was nothing more for him to do, and referred to Kaoru as "jo-chan." There really wasn't anything more for Kenshin to do, and that was true long before, which is why the OVA Does Not Exist, but it got me all the same. Sano's in character, at least, even if nobody else is, and it obviously breaks his heart to see his friend like this.
The ending... to my shame I was in fact slightly caught up in it, but once it was over I got mad. I don't like overblown angst. I started saying, long before, that the ailment in this was "Meiji AIDS," since apparently no one can catch it except Kaoru, and that because she has sex with him. I now think that what they actually died of was angst, since it doesn't match any actual ailment I know of - lesions, yes, creeping fuchsia full-body tattoos that hurt whenever you need to flinch dramatically, no. Not to mention the way that Kaoru talks like he has got the cancer because he's sad. And all her nonsense about "wanting to share his pain" rather than, say, try to do something about it - what happened to her? The OVAs did wrong by Tomoe, but they character-assassinated Kaoru.
Also? The Kenshin/Kaoru Nookie of Death wasn't even as explicit as the Kenshin/Tomoe doomsex. This was NOT what I had in mind.
I disliked the first OVA for a number of reasons - I wasn't particularly invested in the story, I didn't like what it'd done to Tomoe (not my favorite character, but far superior in the manga to her OVA incarnation) and without some humor in even the darkest chapters it just doesn't feel right. It was based on the darkest parts of the story, though, and it wasn't a disservice to them the way this OVA is to the rest of the manga. I preemptively hated this one because I didn't want to see this done to Kaoru, and because of the apparent attitude of the OVA-makers - "the manga had a happy ending! We need to do something about that."
Because forget redemption or atonement - if you have any kind of trouble in your past there is no way you can ever be truly happy again, and by the way, everyone who ever loves you will either die or just end up unhappy because they cared about you and you are Tragic and Doomed so they get to miss you when you're gone. As you will be soon, because, Doom. "Smiling to hide his sadness" in-fucking-deed. I'd like to counter this with the way it was phrased in the manga, but since the only translation I have access to is Maigo-chan's, I probably shouldn't. Never mind competing canon, go for common sense - why the hell can't people just smile in spite of, or in addition to, any kind of painful past or personal unhappiness? Real people manage it all the time, yet fans seem incapable of applying that reasoning to the characters. Is it that difficult a concept?
It felt like watching fanfic in a lot of ways. All those fandom tics, up on screen... "He uses the -dono suffix with her, therefore he is keeping his distance and doesn't really love her!" Well, he calls her just Kaoru when he says goodbye and leaves for Kyoto, an addition in the OVA. "She's clingy!" So she lets him run off for years at a stretch because he's impregnated her and there's nothing more she can ask of him. Obviously he can have no desire to stay at home with his wife and son. "She doesn't understand him!" So they have her angst about how his smile's not real, but she loves him so she's staying with him anyway, and angst at other times about trying to take on his pain. "He can't love her as much as he loved Tomoe, because his love for Tomoe was Deep and Tragic!" Kaoru, who never appeared to have this issue outside of fanfic, has internalized it here, and they address it by making Kenshin and Kaoru's love Deep and Tragic too. Because, you know, coping with grief, finding some kind of happiness, building a life together - that's inferior to dramatic sorrow.
And then there's that final bit with Kenji and Chizuru. Giving the son a happy ending doesn't make up for destroying the lives of his parents, OVA-makers! Chizuru, of course, is a Watsuki character - the name and design came from an extremely Kaoru-like character in one of the stories he wrote as a run-up to RK. I can't decide whether to say "Oedipus ho!" or to applaud them for the reference to the actual SOURCE, which they'd been blithely - okay, angstily - disregarding up until that.
Visually, it's nice; for some reason I never appreciated that about the first OVA, but I noticed it here. I liked the visual parallels - Yahiko finding Kaoru in bed when Kenshin left for Kyoto and again in the present, Jin-E and Enishi kidnapping Kaoru, Kenshin coming out of the woods after Jin-E and holding the ribbon much as he did in the previous OVA when it was Tomoe held hostage. Kaoru and Kenshin both keeping windchimes up at their separate homes. I really liked the fight scenes. But that's not my Kaoru, dammit, and it's not my Kenshin either. Taken as a sequel to the first OVA, it works. It's just that neither one is recognizable as RK all the way through.
Dear GOD, this thing was onto its third page when I pasted it into Word. Not by much, but.... Yeah. So there you go, Sev. A truckload's worth of RK opinion.
Edited to add: I really can't explain why I rented it, knowing as I did that I wasn't going to be pleased. Just wanted to see for myself?