[dreamcastegirl]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

One of my big concerns for 25 is How Do You Walk Jiro Back From This.

Like everyone else, I've spent a lot of time thinking about this and feeling generally uncomfortable about it, but also... I think I realised that what I wanted and what the show tried to do with the character from here on in were maybe at odds from day one, and this was simply the apotheosis of that. In many ways, The Matter of Jiro has always felt like a case of wanting to have your cake and eat it; he's a cool, bad boy alpha male who doesn't play by the rules, what an engaging hero / he's a monstrous, predatory force of nature with little concern for the mores of human concepts of morality and/or social interaction, get out of his way. I would never wish to advocate for the latter in real life, but I absolutely do feel that it makes for a better story.

It interests me that there is apparently this beef between Kobayashi and Inoue, as, to me, Takayama from Amazons—who I am clearly an advocate of—feels to me to be another kind of Jiro in that they both seem representative of a certain masculine aggression that their shows struggle to frame within the context of "exciting superhero adventure show" whilst still maintaining the animalistic violence at the heart of their characters. In both cases, I think it is sad that the shows back down on the latter in order to accommodate the former, not because I want to watch dreary misogynistic misery for 42 episodes or whatever, but because I think there is a story that you can tell there about such people that does not make the concessions that both Amazons and Kiva do and yet still deals with these themes without delving into grotesquery.

I think this is what I like about the portrayal of Kusaka, you know? I don't like Kusaka at all, I think he's awful—and I think his presence absolutely raises the quality of what 555 is as a work. I also feel that the horror of Jiro's actions, the inhumanity of Jiro's actions, could have done the same for Kiva... but didn't, because Kiva always seemed to strive to find some middle ground between two depictions of a character that could not be reconciled, whereas 555 was more comfortable with presenting the ambiguity of a character of this caliber.

I don't quite know if I am making myself clear; how do I explain that I yearned for Jiro to be more monstrous, more inhuman, without sounding like I glory in nihilistic brutality? I'm not sure I have the right words. Perhaps it is the characters that I dislike, the characters who represent the opposite of my beliefs and feelings in real life that I am most interested in seeing depicted? Perhaps this is just a dreamcastegirl thing.

Gosh, whenever I speak up in this thread, I sound really broken. I promise I am normal in real life!