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Chicks On Anime - The Perfect Man(?)

Quote:

A decent guy, not a slick bastard. A good guy, not a nice guy.

Call me crazy, but I always sort of lumped, "decent", "good", and "nice" into the same general category of behavior. What am I missing here, and why are "good" and "nice" mutually exclusive??

Hmm, interesting topic. I'm a guy and I sure don't know what the perfect man is but barachem's description seems to be pretty close to my own ideas.

I'm glad Paradise Kiss was brought up, I loved that series. I completely agree with Sara, though. I hate George and see him as a person who is ultimately selfish and not capable of a genuine love. At the least, he's more in love with his work than he'd ever be with a woman. And yet, that type seem to have their fans and I find myself completely unable to comprehend this.

Casey's mini biology lesson is news to me though. It seems to support my own experiences but I thought I was just easy.

LordPrometheus wrote:

Quote: A decent guy, not a slick bastard. A good guy, not a nice guy. Call me crazy, but I always sort of lumped, "decent", "good", and "nice" into the same general category of behavior. What am I missing here, and why are "good" and "nice" mutually exclusive??

In principle the adjectives decent, good and nice are overlapping, but in conjecture with men or women, their meaning gets more distinct.
A decent guy is someone who treats others with respect, while holding on to his own ideals.
A good guy is a man who tries to treat the other gender well, but will not be a slave to woman to get some booty or her affection and be hard to a manipulative woman if necessary.

A nice guy will latch onto a woman he knows well and endure all kinds of emotional mistreating in the hope of getting laid with her or getting her to notice him.
In the meantime she thinks of him as a nice male friend whom she'd never date because he's too dependent on others, especially her and she'll date all kinds of other men and go out with them, whether they be good guys to be with or not.
The nice guy will complain about her having eyes for other men and not him and still secretly hopes to swoop her away with his niceness.

I was once a nice guy who had his hopes set on a good friend of his, but some years made me decide to move on and this good friend is still a good friend.
Currently i'm not on the lookout for women, as most are vapid anyway.
Yes, the exceptions are there, but i'm desillusioned in having to spend so much time, monay and effort in trying set up a faintly possible relationship with a woman, who will most likely reject me.
In that sense i'll gladly take and keep my single life as it is and not worry about a potentially stressful relationship.
I wouldn't mind getting into a meaningful relationship with a christian woman, but i am not giving any effort in it due to what i've experienced with how most women, even christian ones, are.
Yet i'll try to respect them and other people as much as possible.

DomFortress wrote:

Your view of a "perfect man" has the word "dynamic" written all over it. And I for one, like that quality in a man. Because that's the kind of man with unlimited growth and potential. Who's confident enough in what he does, but also with enough sense of self-esteem, to be constantly aware of how he feels about what he does that defines him. And I can say this is the kind of man I'm inspired to be, am challenging myself to become, that hopefully one day, I can look myself with my mind's eye and say "yeah, I'm that guy."

Oh yes, i like your description of what you mean with "dynamic".
It's concise and to the point.
I hope to be dynamic, a man who does stuff, even if others don't see it, as long as he can see it.
I hope to see more about myself, challenge myself, grow beyond who i am now.

DomFortress wrote:

However, I have to disagree on your opinion about the gar type male character being purposely solitary macho loners, otherwise I won't be inspired to become someone like Captain Harlock, Roy Forker, Ryo Saeba, Coach Oda, Ozma Lee, Ramba Ral, Dozle Zabi, Noris Packard, and last but not least Kamina. I respect these fictional characters because they knew what it take to fight for what they believe in, and what they believed in are themselves, their comrades, and that which holds true to their hearts. They don't purposely distance themselves by becoming anti-social, it only seems to be that way because they held a much higher moral standings than the rest of the society do. And they do have people who agree and support them for being who they are and what they stand for, and they in terms form this dynamic relationship with those that they care about. They are capable of forming true relationship with those that they held dear, because they know the true wisdom of the word "quality over quantity" and thus, they're incapable of anti-social behaviors.

Ok, i'll agree with you on this kind of "gar".
I actually meant the Archer kind of "gar", where the character has stopped in his tracks and seems the pinnacle of manliness, all the while demonstrating that he has become dull and pointless and has rusted his skills, even though they're very impressive.
The bitter kind of "gar".

So, basically, what you're saying is that a good guy is a good guy and a nice guy is a sucker and/or insincere?

The one type of popular guy I never understood were the one's that were supposedly perfect. Like a guy from a magical girl show. Mamoru from sailor moon is one example. I never really cared for him. I thought he was creepy. Same goe for Aoyama from Tokyo mew mew and Syaoran from Card Captors Sakura. I do like him in Tsubasa though.

Well I was more saying he was a typical magical girl guy then calling him perfect.

Of course I'm talking about the same Syaoran from Tsubasa

Ah, this sort of topic gets my shoujo-manga-loving heart all a-flutter! (also... I know this column is "Chicks On Anime," but what about the vast realm of shoujo manga and its approach to the Perfect Guy? Anime is pretty limited when it comes to the shoujo-demographic... and yes, HanaDan and Fushigi Yuugi are "classics" but they're quite a few years old now and it'd be interesting to see how/if trends have changed with more recent popular series)

I took a quick look at my own collection of manga and tried to come up with an overarching trend that my choice of titles reflected. Of some 33 series, the terms "tragic" and "cool" each applied to at least 7 of the male leads, "girly" and "sweet" each got 5, and "hero" applied to 4 (others like shy/silent/oblivious/playboy/bully/wimp/prince/ninja/etc also entered in, but the first five had the most, and covered my favourite titles). Cool and tragic are hard to escape in shoujo manga, but I think the girly/sweet/hero labels are more reflective of my own taste in manga. Whatever that says about me... (though looking at the popularity of series like Otomen in Japan (with the first volume just arriving here), I know I'm not alone!)

Still, as a reader in my 20s, I'm very well aware that these "types" are highly unrealistic (though if I'm honest I'll admit that I've wished it otherwise on occasion), and I've had my fair share of thoughts of "This guy is adorable on the page, but I know he would drive me crazy if he were real!!" I don't think it's hurting anything to enjoy these stories as fiction. Teenage girls inevitably WILL fall for Tragically Beautiful Romance stories, but I'm pretty sure most of them grow out of it (or at least realize and accept it ain't gonna happen in real life, as they continue to enjoy it in books and manga)

zanarkand princess wrote:

Well I was more saying he was a typical magical girl guy then calling him perfect. Of course I'm talking about the same Syaoran from Tsubasa

I mean which Syaoran in Tsubasa? There's technically about three of them you could count...