Forum - View topicThis Week in Anime - Is Rent-a-Girlfriend's Kazuya Bad or The Absolute Worst?
|
Goto page Previous 1, 2 Note: this is the discussion thread for this article |
| Author | Message | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
TexZero
Posts: 585 |
|
|||
Eh i didn't find that nearly as bad as the other characters faults. Sure it was awkward to say the very least but the Grandparents as a whole were probably the most enjoyable side characters to me. |
||||
|
||||
Kilgamayan
 Posts: 275 Location: Location, Location. |
|
|||
|
This is probably going to be a bit all over the place because I'm not really sure how to write this or if I even have the right to write this.
Growing up, I was teased by my family about romantic pursuits. Not constantly, and not actively malevolently, but it was still there, and it happened enough that I eventually started buying into it. High school was spent largely not caring about romantic pursuits, but when university hit, so did "wow, it would be nice to have a girlfriend". The problem is that it came with the feeling of "why would any girl bother?" How much of that was due to standard university-age insecurities and how much was due to the aforementioned teasing, I can't say, but it was most certainly some combination of the two. R-18 content ended up being the solution (and a super-easy one at that for someone that lived on-campus), since it satisfied a need to see hot girls without imposing myself on a real-life human being that deserved better than me (or risking embarrassing myself to a tremendous degree). I say all this because I found Kazuya relatable to a degree. His family situation seems much worse than anything I experienced, with constant malevolent reinforcement that he isn't good enough to be a romantic partner, so it's not surprising to me at all that he ended up like the way he did as a university kid. (Frankly, I'm amazed he and Mami hooked up, even if it was only for a month.) Now, as mentioned in the article, there is a gap between self-awareness and self-actualization. The question then becomes how to bridge that gap. In my case, the self-actualization came from being lucky enough to make friends that saw good characteristics in me and would call me on my BS whenever I was being a hurtful dummy but were still my friends and didn't think less of me for being a hurtful dummy because I tried to no longer be one. I think this is what Kazuya needs as well, and he's not really getting enough of it, or at least not in a way that will help him fix his underlying issues. At most he has Chizuru(!) and the goateed friend that beat the piss out of him on the beach, and neither of them are really helping him in the "dude, you have massive issues with interacting with and objectifying women" way that he needs to overcome - and I really hesitate to use this word because I don't know that I'm allowed to call it this given it happened to me as well but I don't really know what other word to use - his trauma from having his family crap all over him his entire life in regards to his worthiness as a romantic partner. (Really, Chizuru often makes things worse, but she's also in a uniquely uncomfortable position with the involvement of her grandmother, so it's hard to outright blame her.) No one else has yet done him any favors, or shown much of an ability to do him favors aside from maybe Sumi just by virtue of existing with her personality in his orbit. Maybe Kazuya get the help he needs in Season 2! I haven't read the manga so I don't know where things are going. But he has been shown to have positive qualities as a human being and has had flashes, at least, of wanting to change and fix his core romance issues, so the seeds for meaningful change for the better are definitely there. What bothers me about all this is the sheer number of people that seem to think that Kazuya is irredeemable garbage that doesn't deserve help bridging the aforementioned gap and should just be chucked aside and forgotten about for the sake of everyone else. That feels to me like people saying I should have tossed to the side and left to rot. Granted, it is no individual's responsibility to take him by the hand and fix him, just as it was no individual's responsibility to the same for me. But my friends helped me grow as a person and get better without grabbing me by the hand and dragging me through the actualization process, and I believe that the same could happen to Kazuya in the future. It's just personally sad to see people write the character and the franchise off before they get the chance. A couple of additional notes: * Mami is an excellent character with completely valid feelings. She was/is clearly still working out how she actually feels about Kazuya, and he did strut into the friend group with a new girl only a month after the break-up. I'd probably be pissed too! * If anyone is actually curious, I have since gotten very happily married. I hope the same for the Kazuyas of the world some day! |
||||
|
||||
|
Kuzu
Posts: 145 |
|
|||
Yea, this article seems weirdly self-indulgent in dunking on Kazuya and patting themselves on the back about it. A lot of people in regards to this series in fact. I cannot say that I relate to Kazuya or people like him, I was taught to love and respect myself from a young age and take pride in what I can do, even if I don't always do so.So while I did get the occasional feelings of wanting a SO, I never let those feelings dominated me. I guess most of the feelings here come from having to deal with a lot of Kazuya's in real life; one of the most frustrating things to deal with is seeing someone make a pity party for themselves, but never do anything to dig themselves out of the hole they dug themselves in, and people don't feel personally responsible for "playing therapists", so it's easier to just throw people like that aside than let them drag you down. So on that level, I get why people don't like Kazuya; he embodies the most frustrating aspects of people that we all probably have to deal with, so it's cathartic to just dunk on him and be done with it. On the flipside though; people can only improve when they have somebody either pushing them or pulling them along, especially those with self-esteem issues. So yea, sometimes you ARE required to play someone's therapist until they get their shit together. But it all depends on how much you're willing to put up with. I guess the biggest issue here isn't how (un)sympathetic Kazuya is, but how unrealistically patient everyone is with him. He literally stalks Chizuru for an entire day, and is rewarded for it? The least she could do was scold him over how inappropriate that was. And there's the fact that the reader is only really exposed to Kazuya's mindset and thought process, with none of his potential love interests really getting any insight themselves. We don't know why Chizuru signed up for being a rental girlfriend or why she's willing to put up with Kazuya's shit, why Mami broke up with him but can't seem to get over him either, or why Ruka is willing to accept the hand she's been dealt as essentially his side chick. It's just too one-sided on Kazuya's part, and the series just kind of expects you to accept all of these happenings. |
||||
|
||||
mabber36
 Posts: 73 Location: georgia, usa |
|
|||
|
"men bad, women good"
yawn |
||||
|
||||
Brent Allison
 Posts: 2444 Location: Athens-Clarke County, GA, USA |
|
|||
I don't think it's weird at all. Let's compare headlines if the post was instead written by someone with Kilgamayan's sense of nuance: Is Rent-a-Girlfriend's Kazuya An Annoying And Frustrating But Grudgingly Sympathetic Character Struggling to Overcome Previous Life Experiences And Current Social Barriers Like So Many Young Men His Age In Socially Atomized Postindustrial Societies Even Though We Really Cringe And Get Mad At A Lot Of The Stuff He Pulls? or Is Rent-a-Girlfriend's Kazuya Bad or the Absolute Worst? Few are going to read an article with headline #1 in the current online environment. The political economy of online journalism rewards polarization. That other anime-related current events site I won't mention knows the same thing and produces headlines that are the polar ideological opposite, but just as attention-grabbing. The situation (not just this article) is a call to schools to teach students how to ask questions so they can be more critical consumers (and producers) of online journalism. Even pairing news stories dealing with media related with dysfunctional young men with real-life stories like Kilgamayan's might be good pedagogy. Then we may see more nuance when readers reward it. *cough* There's a reason why many Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and VC's won't let their children browse internet news sites even if they're the ones creating and funding them. |
||||
|
||||
|
Kuzu
Posts: 145 |
|
|||
I feel like that's just underestimating the intelligence of your audience and concluding that they aren't intelligent enough to understand nuance. Like I get it, I really do. You guys are running a site and you need to get a certain amount of traffic, so click-baity articles that play into the public's feelings are the way to go. People hate Kazuya, so of course dunking on him would generate more clocks. I get it. But it would be kind of nice for some level of understanding beyond that; I mostly agreed with what the article was saying, and its not like I found this show all that good, but I got over dunking on Kazuya after like, the first episode but that's all anyone can seem to do about this series. |
||||
|
||||
|
Brent Allison
Posts: 2444 Location: Athens-Clarke County, GA, USA |
|
|||
|
If I seem less charitable towards most online journalism outlets and their audiences, 25 years of garbage in clickbait-garbage out comments have given me a dim, hardened view that's unlikely to change in the near future. I'm very thankful I have actual friends, or my view of the world would be equally grim.
|
||||
|
||||
|
lossthief
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 1406 |
|
|||
|
For all this bloviating y'all might be interested in my daily streaming reviews, where I go through exactly the stuff Kilgamayan mentions in their post. The short version is, I gave RAG plenty of room to explore and examine Kazuya as a flawed person trying to improve and change himself, and even praised the series a couple times in how it captured the cycle of self-deprecation and flagelation he displays.
My issue comes from how after episode 5 or so, the series stops doing anything to address those flaws, and instead spends most of its time either following pointless subplots (Ruka's whole thing) or actively rewarding his worst behavior (Chizuru easily forgiving him and giving him a gift minutes after finding out he stalked her for the better part of a day because he was jealous she might have an actual boyfriend). Maybe the manga does find its way back to actually developing Kazuya beyond just dunking on his worst moments, and maybe I'll happily eat crow when season 2 comes out, but for what the show did with the time it had this season it failed to do anything meaningful with the premise of "Kazuya is a guy who sucks and wants to change that" and that's pretty frustrating as a viewer. |
||||
|
||||
|
Kilgamayan
Posts: 275 Location: Location, Location. |
|
|||
|
Yes, to be clear, there are things the characters are getting wrong in how Kazuya needs to be handled in order to better himself, most notably how Chizuru handled being stalked for an entire episode and everything about how Kazuya is treating Ruka. The hope I am holding out is that everyone involved grows a little wiser and a little more mature and realizes that Kazuya needs his head screwed on correctly. I am happy to give them a little slack because I don't expect college-age kids to get this sort of thing correct on the first try. (No offense to anyone on this website under the age of 22.)
If the series does end with Kazuya bumbling into getting the girl of his dreams because the Rules of Anime dictate the male lead must end up with the target of his affection, though, and NOT because he grew as a person, then I will be as disappointed as everyone else at the lost opportunity for telling a good story about emotional growth. |
||||
|
||||
Yuvelir
 Posts: 1595 |
|
|||
I have no idea what this means and I'm too scared to ask. |
||||
|
||||
 |
All times are GMT - 5 Hours |
|
|
|
Powered by phpBB © 2001, 2005 phpBB Group