Alphabet meme, M

Mia, Lunar: The Silver Star etc.: Mia used to be one of my favorite characters in Lunar, but I kind of don't like her that much anymore. With time, I've come to care less and less about Silver Star's five ostensible main characters, whose own small character troubles seem self-involved and by orders of magnitude less interesting than the Ghaleon-Dyne ideological conflict on which the game is founded, and while Mia's the most tolerable and grounded - not to mention just the plain nicest - of the bunch, she does get dragged down by association. There's another part of the problem, though: she is, or at least is treated by the fans at large, as a reader wish-fulfillment character: she gets to be doted on by Ghaleon in what fan works are fond of interpreting as a half-parental, half-adult paramour way, and while I don't mean to be playing fandom police here, I've come to find the various expressions of this a bit creepy. The alternative is Funato's take on her as an empty-headed baby doll, which (rare for a Funato characterization for me) I find even less appealing. Also: I find Funato's manner of drawing her excessively sugary and yet at the same time unsettling. "It's got lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes..."

Morris, Lunar: Vheen Hikuusen Monogatari: Steelstrings has brought up how Vheen Hikuusen probably isn't better-known among Lunar fans due to availability. It's a pity, then, that Morris hasn't found a larger fanbase. I'm quite possibly his only fan, actually. The illustration of him sitting with the window open, sadly, slightly-sardonically and masochistically listening to the beautiful singing voice of the love he knows he'll never have, is one of Vheen Hikuusen's most affecting panels for me. For the bulk of the story, he seems suave and well-adjusted - a smiling uncle figure to his students, the mazoku group's liaison to the human community, kind of a...well, not a sybarite or hedonist, but almost there, someone who appears Teflon to life's disappointments - and yet in the end, you learn that he's been going through the same mental struggle as Latona, showing that you never really know everything that's going on with people.
But that is an aggravatingly condescending speech he gives about Latona in the end, in parts.

Mathias, Neo Angelique: Unfortunately, Mathias's story serves to illustrate neoromance's storytelling limitations: it's so often bent on being smotheringly fluffy that it cannot discern between negative emotions, which may or may not be justifiable, and wrongful actions borne of them, and it therefore considers the very state of having negative emotions to be evil in itself. It's telling that the miffing of Mathias's storyline in this manner was the turning point for the quality of the show, which until then had been going quite well.
Five thoughts on Mathias in general:
- This is indeed representative of the central tragedy of Mathias's character, but I can't envision him in any outfit other than his priest robes. They gave him a gold and green jacket-and-shirt combo on the cover of the Platinum Harmony CD, but even something that conservative doesn't work on him. When it comes to the robes, however, it's crucial that Mathias have all the various overlays and capes and whatnot. The whole ensemble looks beautiful, but the gown by itself looks like a granny nightgown. (And the gloves look like granny gloves. Never have the building blocks of an outfit looked so nice assembled and so dorky individually. And yet that's in line with Mathias, I think.)
- One of Neo Angelique's hallmarks was its thoughtful use of untraditional color schemes, and Mathias's own was among the best; it's a faded, worn version of Rene's palette. (Its pale pastels bring to mind Phantasy Star's Lutz, both he and and Mathias being self-sacrificing men with light, cool palettes dedicated to religious orders.)
- I want to get Mathias's ending in the game, but in an aggravating instance of visual-novel logic, it's inaccessible unless you've already gotten the ending for Rene, who, if you're partial to Mathias, is probably the character to whom you're least charitably inclined.) I am curious as to how Mathias's character is worked into the story of the game, which opens with Rene as already Head of the Order, as Mathias being forced out of the reins of power is the crux of his character arc.
- About Erenfried:"I did want to shake him and lock him in a cell for most of the first series, then Mathias did it for me, and all was well."I know that feel, bro.
- I have a hard time remembering these days if his name is spelled with one or two t's. Sad that Neo Ange's faded so from both my own and public memory, particularly when so much of its potential remained untapped.

Masami Eiri, Serial Experiments Lain: On further nomenclature debacles, I keep forgetting which is this man's given name and which is his family name. But regarding Masami:It speaks to just how smart Lain was that at the core of its labyrinthine, intellectualized jigsaw-puzzle conspiracy (the show midway through its run takes an entire episode to put everything from previous eps together in voiceover for the viewers so that they're up to speed for the big revelation) it put perhaps its most human character (besides ordinary schoolgirl Alice). Many villains present portraits of urban normalcy lapsed into madness, but Eiri is one of the best: his once-starched lab jacket, the last remnant of his time of respectable employment, wreathing his scarecrow frame like a cloak; his virtual body symbolically swathed with tape where it was in meatspace cleaved in three; his now-long and bedraggled hair that parts upon his debut to reveal a masterful smirk beneath, becoming a Sadako-esque symbol of weaponized submission and anonymity; his personal realm of a deserted suburban cityspace with scraggly telephone poles stark against a sickly orange sky; the backwards conversation he has with the heroine upon revealing himself; his diseased entreaties to her to "love me"; his impotent salaryman ranting of "I'll quit! I'll quit!" ground out beneath his breath through gritted teeth in the ending, which surely touches base with anyone watching. Lain didn't need a great villain to be great, but thank the Deus it got Masami anyhow.

Minax, Ultima: It occurs to be how Minax doesn't really get her due in the Ultima series. Perhaps it's because her installment is viewed as the "weird" Ultima, but her accomplishments are considerable - I mean, she actually won, conquering one planet and laying waste to another, and the good guys had to resort to time travel to stand a chance - and yet the series, just like the Britannians investigating the wreckage of Mondain's castle before Ultima II times, characterizes her as Mondain's less-powerful sidekick, his moll. Respect, people.
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