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your thoughts have summoned this post from hell so, as i pray... Home > Archives > 2009 > August > 14 Where Onani Master Kurosawa takes us, and why it’s differentThere’s a manga called Onani Master Kurosawa, abbreviated in turns with the initialism OMK and the schematic diagram OGC. It seems to be doing well on the popularity scales right now, with a high rating on MangaFox and everyone in the aniblogosphere forcing each other to read it. ‘Circle jerk’ is a term derisively thrown at the ‘sphere every time its members get together and read/watch/comment on something collectively, but now it could be used descriptively rather than derisively. OMK is a story about a guy who steals people’s shit and ejaculates on it. Hooked yet? No, you’re not, because you’ve already read the manga. Because I’m slowpoke.jpg on this and the entire ‘sphere has already gasmed to Kurosawa’s bathroom stall antics a million times. And yes, yes, I know: the story was never about the fapping. The fapping was a metaphor for being antisocial. Thanks, Gunsguru! Amazing, the wisdom you pick up in forum threads. But interesting to me are neither that the story featured fapping nor that it wasn’t about fapping. Interesting to me is the extra story that Emergency Exit has been translating (by the way, EE, thanks!). In the space of a few well-delivered paragraphs, it takes us somewhere no other manga ever has. Somewhere where I can stand tall, point my middle fingers at the words printed on my t-shirt[1], and sing a bad country song[2]. In the manga, Sugawa was a ‘typical’ ‘tsundere.’ I have these words in quotes because I don’t believe in them. OMK is atypical; what business does a typical character have in it? Furthermore, ‘tsundere?’ Really? Recall the only wiki article on tsundere that had jp meyer referenced: there is little that doesn’t fall in the category of tsundere. It’s one of those words, like hikkikomori and otaku, that people try to ascribe a definite meaning to but fail miserably[3]. In this extra story, we see her true colors: she is a raging bitch of a woman. It’s easy to get into a certain mindset when reading manga. When characters act as Sugawa did toward the end of the manga, we ooh and aah and call them tsundere and for some of us that’s a plus. Also, keep Kurosawa’s perspective in mind: in the latter bit of OMK, everyone has the benefit of the doubt from him. He becomes very Akari-esque, very zen, treating everyone as well as he can, whether or not they may deserve it, and constantly making discoveries of how SUTEKIIIII the people around him are. Let’s face it. This is a twisted perspective. It’s no less naive than his earlier perspective (‘omg I can only communicate with people through jizzing to them’). And it’s this new, twisted perspective that allows Kurosawa to fall into an verbally and emotionally abusive relationship with someone that we perverted manga-readers might smile at and call ‘tsundere-chan.’ Do you know what tsundere really is? And I don’t mean a bit of shyness. I know some people who react mildly violently to things that embarrass them, but that’s different. Sugawa rages—
Tsundere? Tsundere. And what’s tsundere? I like OMK because unlike in shows like Suzumiya Haruhi, wherein there is a disgustingly violent ‘tsundere’ that people nigh worship, it should be apparent to everyone that Sugawa is completely batshit. While Haruhi might be loved for her eccentricity, her insane abusiveness is so obfuscated by layer after layer of moe bullshit that almost no one sees her for what she really is. OMK — where’s the moe? OMK — where’s the blind worship? OMK — you can see Sugawa. She is naked before you, a hysterical bitch, displaying every reason why tsunderes medium-wide should be rounded up and sent to the chemical showers of fiction. I have always tried to shed light on the faults of tsundere, but here I am fairly sure I will get across. For one thing, Kurosawa is way more relatable and sympathetic than Kyon (Kyon does nothing but inspire jealousy in me, jealousy for his sarcastic wit; I can not relate to him at all, he is too perfect) and every weak harem lead (humans are stronger than they), so surely readers of OMK feel the pain of a man dealing with the unreasonable. We sympathize with Kurosawa in his ordeals, and wish him happiness. And his happiness is being denied him by a woman who froths at the mouth at the slightest slight. OMK shows us the true way: tsundere is the cancer killing /utopia/. Footnotesthese notes are like lelouch's head to the boot of this post's suzaku
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it is moist & delicious meta and it's not even a lie! 18 ResponsesLeave a Comment |
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lelangir said:
The Kyon is a false-insert while Kurosawa is a true-insert
lolikitsune said:
@lelangir: it’s because kyon doesn’t jizz on everything !
otou-san said:
And here I was going to make an inane “circle jerk” reference in my own post (which I probably won’t actually write)…
I think “tsundere” is, like a lot of terms, something that people use inappropriately because they’re used to watching things that don’t characterize any deeper than those kinds of archetypes. When they’re faced with something a little more “real,” for lack of a better word, they slap one of those labels on a character based on one or two traits or scenes. Besides — tsundere is a set of symptoms, not the root.
All that aside, Sugawa is far from tsundere, even in quotes. I don’t find her to be too sympathetic, but I’d rather she be unsympathetic than poorly characterized. Considering the amount of airtime she was given, the author did ok. She is just a weak girl: she bullied Kitahara because she weakly wanted to fit in and lacked confidence, then she repented because was too weak for her guilt, and then — here’s where my conjecture starts — she dates Kurosawa because she’s too weak to be with someone she doesn’t have a leg up on to begin with. And she’s still bullying him.
To me that at least implies a lot more depth than “I-i-it’s n-n-not as if I wanted you to jack off on my clothes.”
lolikitsune said:
As should be obvious, I agree with you. A lot of this post is tongue-in-cheek, and your observations are solid.
ghostlightning said:
So tsundere is the cancer killing /utopia/, and I wanted to respond to lolikit but I wanted to cool my jets first.
So I went down the stairs and switch the TV on, but something was strange. I somehow got that feeling that I was half-watching a match between two prefectures of no relation to me. I was half-heartedly cheering for the losing side and I somehow I got the feeling that I’d be hearing from
lolikitsune said:
Saatchi.
Pontifus said:
“it should be apparent to everyone that Sugawa is completely batshit”
Yeah. But then all teenagers are completely batshit. OMK does a good job of getting that across. I can see a teenage reader going with “tsundere” instead of “batshit” because teenagers think they’re perfectly sane (which only demonstrates their insanity).
There is much more to Sugawa than flat, stereotypical tsundere, I absolutely agree. But I’m sure someone’s going to come along and be all like “but but but Dr. Lolikit, in chapter 31 Kurosawa even says she’s tsundere, sorta.” I hope you deal with that person accordingly.
Oh, wait.
lolikitsune said:
@Pontifus: but Kurosawa is one of those teenagers, so his opinion doesn’t matter.
digitalboy said:
One more reason I need to get out my post about why the term tsundere sucks balls. Oh, but obviously I don’t know how to explain terms…..
oh, and it would have been more effective to link to this, since it’s far more relevant and recent: http://fuzakenna.com/2009/07/10/why-you-probably-arent-an-anime-otaku-but-something-else/
lolikitsune said:
grammar fuckup in the first sentence, didn’t read
digitalboy said:
grammar needs to die in a fire. Let’s follow the Japanese novelists who ignore it!
lolikitsune said:
@digitalboy: ah but all Japanese writing I’ve read (Haruhi, Shana, etc.) is absolute shit. Why would I follow in the footsteps of people who don’t know how to tell stories in the first place?
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digitalboy said:
Fuck those shitty novels, read some fucking Faust.
Sixten said:
For Japanese novels, how about some Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit?
Sol Falling said:
First blog/forumpost I’ve seen which has dumped (I don’t really mean it that strongly) on Kurosawa’s character development. Glad to see it.
I haven’t looked at the continuation yet, but as a narrative, the manga’s conclusion is fairly weak. Kurosawa may have graduated from ‘isolation’ but his new weak, self-degrading and approval seeking personality is little improvement. That so many people celebrate Kurosawa’s ‘redemption’ in turn with lavishing the manga as ‘relatable’ is a little unsettling: the world’s a bit bigger than this story paints it, guys. It’s good to see that someone else at least recognizes this.
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