indigozeal | Entries tagged with the cat who...

This one didn't work out all that hot. I filled it out a while ago and left it hanging around for some reason.

1. Bruno (Animamundi)
2. Ghaleon (Lunar)
3. Helen (Clock Tower)
4. Gotts (Clock Tower)
5. Morris (Lunar)
6. Dyne (Lunar)
7. Latona (Lunar)
8. Bad Girl (No More Heroes)
9. Odd Bunsen (Cat Who... series)
10. St. Germant (Animamundi)

( Cut )
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Dain, Lunar: Like Ghaleon, more old news, but I'd be remiss not to talk about him when I had the opportunity. I love Dain. He's not smart, but he is wise, and I've never encountered a better or more endearing personification of unconditional love. This entry isn't much more than a declaration of affection, but in the respect of eschewing analysis for pure emotion, it suits its subject well.
(Bonus reflection: Stop teasing TnK Dain about his nose! What's wrong with his nose!? His nose is just fine! Stop it!)

Dixie Cousins, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.: A while ago, I made the unfortunate decision to revisit the Scream movies, which only cemented my conviction that stretching out "hey, we're pointing out how stupid the thing we're doing is before we do it" to film length even one time, much less three, is not a viable form of entertainment.
Anyhow, this endeavor had finally dwindled down to Scream 3, when I was distracted from the first attempted fake-out by trying to figure out from where I recognized the opening-act victim's girlfriend. I finally hit the IMDB, where I was floored - Dixie! Of course! Kelly Rutherford; she was Dixie Cousins! It's sad that Brisco County is so far from my mind (and that Kelly Rutherford got such a limited, thankless role, however bad the movie).
Dixie's role in the program is one of my favorite examples of smart storytelling. Dixie was a dance-hall girl who early on was slotted as the "bad girl" love interest for the adventure-western-comedy-sci-fi program's hero (Bruce Campbell - yes), poised opposite the fresh-faced daughter of the recurring mad-inventor character (John Astin) who appeared in the TV-movie pilot. TPTB, though, saw that Rutherford had such presence onscreen and such chemistry with Campbell that the daughter was never seen again and Dixie was bumped up to female lead. Nothing was wrong with the daughter character per se, but the show saw no use pretending that Dixie's behavior was borne of genuine malice rather than playfulness or in spending time on false posturing that they could on meatier stories; seldom do you see a program so swift and confident in identifying its strengths and willing to eschew convention so freely.

Daniella, Haunting Ground: The woman from my default icon, a supporting character in the meant-to-be-Clock Tower 4 title Haunting Ground, Daniella is memorable for one remarkable scene that signifies her definitive break from reality. The setup in brief: Daniella is a created being deemed unworthy by her creator; she can never rise above her hollow existence as a emotionless puppet. Her awareness of her lack of the spark of life leads her to develop an unhealthy envy of the protagonist, who is a flesh-and-blood, home-grown Real Girl. This mania reaches a head during the heroine's stay at Daniella's castle home: one morning, when the heroine wakes up, she finds Daniella standing by her side, staring covetously at the functional womb she herself lacks; the maid flatly and robotically informs the girl of her inexpressible bitterness that she is "not complete." Daniella then turns and calmly, unblinkingly beats her forehead against a mirror until it shatters, whereupon she takes a shard to use against the girl as a weapon. That is commitment to your insanity. That is an Argento-level fusion of art, violence, and character illustration.

Derek Cuttlebrink, The Cat Who...: There's this old Archie story I remember about Betty quitting the band because she didn't feel she added anything of value - "I just stand up here and shake the tambourine! Big deal!" At the gang's next, Betty-free concert, however, the audience is predictably unenthusiastic about the change-up - despite the band lacking only a tambourine, it's just not the same without Betty. Derek's the Betty to Moose County's Archies; he's seldom of practical use in Qwill's investigations and his activities never really have any relevance to the plot, but the books wouldn't be the same without Qwill dining at the site of his latest underachieving restaurant job and receiving a cheerful visit from his carefree universe. I thought he made a cute couple with the similarly breezy and sunshiny yet more self-directed young heiress-turned-independent aspiring businesswoman Elizabeth Hart, where Derek's world grew a little bit without betraying his core character, but then Elizabeth was killed off in the final books' "I woke up today and hated absolutely everything" stretch with nary a bat of an eye from Derek. I've no idea what poor Elizabeth did in LJB's eyes to warrant such a summary execution (or what Derek did to get such a character assassination), but the E's have passed us, haven't they.

Dietrich Troy, Spy Fiction: I'm glad the letter D got postponed until I got the chance to meet Dietrich - "Or 'unbelievable,' as the ladies call him. All the android ladies." After a while of watching supergreatfriend's LP of Spy Fiction, the Metal Gear Solid clone Swery developed before Deadly Premonition, it began to feel like a bit of a slog - supergreatfriend was doing his best, but the game simply seemed unremarkable. Then comes the second ending, and the scene on the bike where one character is two at once, and the confrontation where the villain explains to his only two friends his reasons for killing the good man he could have been, and, well, the game's remained in my memory for longer and more favorably than Deadly Premonition, which was memorably daring and endearing most of its play length but, in my view, crashed in the last act. The whole incident stresses the importance of ending well.

A side note: It's interesting to reflect how both York and Dietrich (and Billy, for that matter) are awfully fond of using pop culture to shield themselves against the harshness of the world. Both young parental desertees in Spy Fiction model their very disparate plans to set things right on the same creaky spy show.

I suppose I should be grateful that The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and Hiroshima are on this list of "Around the World in 100 Books" at all, but that they're being beaten out by Shogun and Memoirs of a Geisha is rather disheartening.

ETA: Michael Crichton's Congo is on the list. Oh, God. "But it has a country in the title!"

Actually, let's try to rectify this a bit.

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is the allegedly true story of a teenage farmer's son in Malawi who brought electricity to his village using grit, scavenged refuse, and a grade-school science book forty years out of date. The author's experience is remarkable, particularly when contrasted against the tale of a famine sparked by drought and exacerbated by a corrupt government. Memorable not only for its portrait of a young genius determined not to let poverty cripple his education, but for its portrait of a nation of poor farmers uninsulated by technology or infrastructure from an unforgiving environment who are forced to use every bit of their ingenuity to survive - some who succeed, some who fail.

The populist in me rails at Under the Tuscan Sun, the memoir of an extraordinarily rich American who buys an overpriced manor in Tuscany for renovation, but the suffusion of gorgeous prose and the tale's essential good-naturedness wins me over. Frances Mayes is privileged, but she here wants little more than to share the good times family and nature blessed her with in Tuscany - the sun-drenched walks amidst reams of wildflowers; the beautiful struggle to coexist with a home overgrown with an Eden of verdant life; the family Christmas shopping trip to a cozy Florence and the holiday dinners prepared with her children. Mayes has money, but she knows that nature, not man, is king in her part of Tuscany, and the pure sensualism in her words makes Sun a unique love letter to the earth, the Mediterranean, and life. (The book is nothing like the paint-by-numbers rom-com movie.)

I've never been to Michigan, but enough folks have informed me that Lilian Jackson Braun's The Cat Who... series and its little town of Pickax ("400 miles north of everywhere") are a reasonable enough simulacrum of upper peninsula life. Ostensibly a series of mysteries, the series thrives instead on its rich supporting cast and examination of the network of family ties, traditions, and old wounds that knit the residents of an isolated and somewhat backward northern town into one large, albeit not always happy, family. Points for the lack of treacliness, something so many authors in the cozy genre overlook; the big-city reporter protag is as frustrated as he is pacified by the place, charmed by the quality of life and close personal connections yet frustrated by the inertia and insularity. Yet you wanna live there anyway.

Considering the love he gets, I'm surprised there isn't any Bill Bryson on the list. I'm a Stranger Here Myself, besides being one of the funniest books I've read, is a lovingly wry and vibrant celebration of the U.S. in general through a hilarious series of essays that try to explain various curious aspects of the country to British newspaper readers. His defense of Thanksgiving, his junk-food binge after years of being stranded with disgustingly healthy English supermarkets, his rundown of U.S. holidays... "It's Presidents' Day. I know. I can barely stand the excitement either."

A Trip to the Beach is the most problematic title on this list, a tale of U.S. expats who decide to live their dream and try to make it as upscale restaurateurs in the Caribbean nation of Anguilla. The authors are extraordinarily unrealistic at times (they're disappointed the monthly rent for a seashore restaurant pad reaches in the OMG high three digits) and have a frustrating lack of self-awareness regarding their ugly-American behavior. Yet Anguilla has a uniquely weird history, the troubles the authors face in restaurateuring are entertainingly oddball (ridiculous importing difficulties!) and dramatic (hurricanes!), and the tale's a weirdly satisfying combination of sweeping romantic fantasy in an island hideaway and kids-camping-in-the-backyard hey-we're-out-on-an-adventure with the cushioned protags trying to make it in their little outpost. The restaurant staff, though underappreciated by the authors, somewhat redeem their employers' rich-white-person POV; they insist on being well-rounded, true-to-life human beings whose stories help develop Anguilla into a real nation instead of a theme park.
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Idol, Magical School Lunar manga: Whenever I sit down with a piece of Magic School media, I think, "All right! A chance to see Idol again!" Then, if it's not the manga, I suddenly remember and think to myself, GodDAMMIT. Idol is Lunar's second-best villain: a bereaved husband and father who wants to protect a child that's not even really his beats the baddest and most foreboding God of Doom any day of the week. Idol's cool-headed and pragmatic, capable of hugely cold violence, yet heroically self-sacrificing; he's beaten into violence by atrocity yet has come to his ultimate position on mazoku-human relations through logic and necessity. The choice of a character in his position as an antagonist makes sense for a tale of child heroes. The MSL mangaka wasn't the best, but Idol was a huge gift she gave to Lunar that it never really got the chance to utilize fully.

Iason, Lunar: Strolling School: Odd sentence, but I find the game's portrayal of Iason's chauvinism refreshing - it's a small sidenote, it's never treated as anything but dismissively ridiculous, and it's pushed aside once Elie passes his test. Iason's a jerk, but not a jerk that poisons the well, and really not even much of a jerk at that rather than an otherwise OK fellow who somehow got to holding a couple seriously stupid beliefs. (This subplot is expanded to an entire chapter in Magical School Lunar, where it's dragged out to an obvious conclusion. I don't think that institutional prejudice is "dismissively ridiculous" - in fact, those kind of "harmless," unquestioned assumptions by gatekeepers to power are often the most damaging - but in a setting like this, I think the capableness of girls is better illustrated by getting on with the heroines' awesome adventures rather than acting out the kabuki of a hackneyed plotline, no matter how valid its point.)
(ETA: Hmmm. I'm rereading this, and if someone else had written it, I'd be rolling my eyes at the perceived excuse-making. To rephrase: not OK with Iason being a chauvinist; impressed with how the game throws it in without ruining the mood or character and still making it clear that Iason's totally wrong.)

Ignatius, Lunar: Genesis/Dragon Song: Cripes, this is shaping up to be another all-Lunar entry. Anyhow, I actually got excited when I saw Blatant Ghaleon Rip-off #1 there in some promo art; I looked at the angling of the eyes and the height of his forehead, factored in the game's time frame and how long mazoku tend to live, and I...I thought there was a possibility he might have been a young Rouj. Don't look at me like that! IT WAS POSSIBLE!

Iris Cobb, The Cat Who...: A very odd statement here, but Iris is somewhat of a counterpart to Clavis in her franchise: she was replaced (by Celia, as Shiozawa was by Tanaka), but it wasn't the same, and even though the series continued to produce worthy installments in the original's absence, something was missing that in retrospect kinda signaled the beginning of the end. I'm not sure The Cat Who... suffered as much from the blow, not immediately, anyway - it produced some of its best installments after Iris's passing, which was given due reverence and a book-long rumination - but it was the first instance of replacing a substantive, multifaceted character with a thinly-drawn, flatly cheery knockoff, a trend that would steal much of the heart from the series in later installments.

Isaac, Under the Rose: I've been reading through Akari Funato's Under the Rose Vol. 1 lately and having a somewhat mixed reaction: this is a great storyteller and artist (and, man, are her expressions in this thing off the hook; this is perhaps the most painstakingly-drawn manga I've seen) telling a story I'm not much interested in reading, due to personal prejudices against the Victorian era and the book's Game of Thrones-type treatment of its characters where no one's really bearable and the most objectionable types of all are the ones safely ensconced atop the food chain. It's wearing a bit better - I'm honestly intrigued in the denouement of the mystery, the "accidental" death of the mistress of an English count investigated by one of her children, and there's a character who's Vheen Hikuusen's Morris with a different haircut.
Anyhow, thirteen-or-so-year-old Isaac is one of the few characters to be somewhat consistently likable. As one of the count's bazillion children, his lives more or less in the shadow of his hot-blooded twin, Not Draco Malfoy. Isaac's more thoughtful than most here, though; he responds to the maelstrom of his household by devoting himself to more solitary pursuits (woodworking, baking, horses) instead of his family sport of Ruining Other People's Lives, and he's near-always attempting to do something constructive whenever another of his father's considerable brood barges in to turn everything tits-up. Every so often, however, his brothers and half-brothers will finally provoke him to an exchange of blows, which, considering how far these jerks can push, just means that, y'know, Isaac still has a heart. (The best way to approach this manga, really, is to treat it as a Victorian Arrested Development and marvel at how shamelessly, amorally horrible the characters can behave. How I imagine Arrested Development to be, anyway; I've never really seen it.)
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As B is done but not typed up.

Clavis, Angelique: The definitive mental image of Clavis I have was, oddly enough, taken from this Clavis/Julious fic I read once, from a scene where, after a bit of dithering between he and Julious, he somewhat timidly but chivalrously disrobed, took the initiative, and advanced unclothed, that dark, all-enveloping curtain of hair moving with him as he walked, enveloping and...well, never revealing, actually. It was not only a striking physical image but aptly defined Clavis as an inwardly, quietly strong yet sadly vulnerable presence inherently loathe to self-disclosure. (Oh, dear, I've confessed to reading a slash fic and must therefore surrender my membership in the Serious Gamers club.)
Anyhow, it's tempting, and at least partially accurate, to mark the loss of Kaneto Shiozawa as Clavis as the start of Angelique going downhill. It's perhaps not true, wholly - Shiozawa passed away during the Trois era, which was the franchise's artistic peak. Yet Tanaka's Clavis, while not bad per se, is soft and "wet" in the Japanese sense, overtly emotional, without Shiozawa's sarcastic bite that came from a lifetime of bitter experiences. Shiozawa Clavis was the franchise's heart, and without him, a significant part of its specialness was lost.
(That said, I don't think we can write off seeing good things from Angelique again entirely. I'm typically dour about continuing a franchise past the creator's interest, and great things aren't coming from the LoveLove Tenshi social game, surely, but the Six Knights of Dark Love title is an intriguing idea that would never have been produced under the original regime. It's a cliche to say, and one often voiced by those who were never buying what a given work was selling in the first place, but the franchise did need handlers who'd be rough enough to break it a bit, instead of letting it be mummified in doilies.)

Celes, Final Fantasy VI: Celes is a drip. So is Terra, even more so, but we're not to the T's yet. Celes's whole character arc is "stop insisting on personal independence and be content as a helpless damsel in distress." The backlash to the mostly female party/awesomeness of Faris in FFV must've been huge, since it takes three whole installments for FF to stop treating its female characters like crud despite placing them in higher-profile roles. Though we're not yet up to pimping out the entire female cast with FF6, we do get an FF with females in the lead who are nonetheless so spineless they're invertebrates. Anna would laugh at them. So would Amy. Well, maybe not laugh at her, but at least express contempt in her general direction.

Celia Robinson, The Cat Who...: I don't dislike her, and she's good when well-used (as in her first appearance in Went into the Closet), but I've never really warmed to the idea of Celia as a full-fledged supporting character like Braun thinks I should have. She's a bit too thinly drawn for the series at its best, too fatuously jolly - she can be like an old joke told one too many times. The series, when it was getting on, often introduced new characters that were shallower shadows of ones previous, and even though Celia was introduced when the series was still in its prime, I can't help but think of her as a knockoff of the multifaceted Iris Cobb.

Cecil, Final Fantasy IV: Call it the Rayne effect: I like Cecil way better when the narrative's not pushing him at the expense of other characters. For Cecil, that's been ever since the recent FFIV resurgence, where Kain and Golbez are compelled to atone endlessly more for their envy of and desire to surpass King Harvey despite their perceived inferiority to him than for their actual misdeeds. (This has kind of wrecked Kain's character in the modern FFIV follow-ups, where he suffers thoroughly wretched fates and is smeared as weak-willed and incompetent, but After Years is kind of self-wrecking in the first place. Shame about Dissidia, however.)
If I ever do get Dissidia, though, I'm still playing Cecil first. (But only because I don't think you can play Kain first.)
(Also: that recent Trading Arts statuette of Cecil is lovely and insanely detailed for the price. It's a small comfort in the age of Square's great selling-out, but it's a joy finally to see quality character merchandise after such a long drought.)

Carlo, Deep Red: If I had a knowledge of Inform, IF mechanics, and actual willpower, I'd love to make a text adventure of Inferno and have Carlo as a secret character. I imagine his withering running commentary on events would be far more entertaining than that of the ever-outmatched Mark. (Such a reimagining would be the only way to get any good out of the miserable Inferno, anyway.) I've seen Deep Red once and didn't have an overly positive impression at the time (memory has been kinder), but I recall taking to Carlo the most out of the cast. For all his self-despise and cynical bile, he seems rather (half-drunkenly) avuncular to others. Life is shit, but Carlo doesn't hold it against you.
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You have to be "given" this meme, but I'm an antisocial loner who doesn't talk to anybody. I therefore claim it for myself in adapted form:

I will give a letter. Post the names of five fictional characters [beginning with that letter] and your thoughts on each.

No one's giving me anything, so I'll just take the twenty-sixth letter in the post from which I snagged this meme, which happens to be..."n". OK, let's do this:

Nick Bamba, The Cat Who... series: I always thought he was the best-realized of the Standard Issue Moose County Males and the one you'd most want as a friend. (Well, he's racing Roger MacGillivray on that - Nick has a slightly squirrelly/cowardly side to him - but he's still a good guy, and he's a more three-dimensional character.)

Nick-who-owns-the-A-&-G-Diner from Deadly Premonition: Let's give it to the man for taking the idea of pairing fruit chutney with meat and turning it into successful diner food, not to mention a cult sandwich. Other than that, he doesn't do much in the game except be a patently obvious red herring and a poor husband to the title's blandest character. I appreciate his chubby schlubbiness, though, which isn't often seen in games - at least without being ridiculously exaggerated or paired with buffoonish traits like sloppiness or a soft mind.

Nyx from Neo Angelique: Koei's songwriters don't really know what to do with his voice for his initial outings, it seems, as "Hidamari no Pureryuudo" is remarkably bland; he's best in the small, intricate turns - his solo in the bridge of the full-length "Silent Destiny," the "utsukushiku hibikiau" bit of "Home Sweetest Home." He's remarkable for being the first Angelique fellow, to my knowledge, whose LoveLove ending alludes, albeit obliquely, to sex between him and the heroine. I think he'd make a good Guardian of Darkness. I like him in a white jacket. I wish

sableblanc would pop up on

angemedia again. Other than that, I don't have much to say about the gentleman. (I guess that was enough, though.)

Niea from the Vheen Hikuusen Monogatari manga: I thought her hair was brown from the black-and-white inking in the manga, but that's apparently not (consistently) the case - while it seems to be more brown here, it's blonde here, and her mother's hair is blonde in color pics (though I wouldn't have pegged her as a blonde, either). Anyhow, I like Niea; she has some good little-kid dialogue that's curious and ha-ha misunderstanding without being too self-consciously cloying, and she brings out Ghaleon's softer side.

Nasch from Lunar: Harmony of The Silver Star Story: Nasch has never really fully worked for me. He's a bit too goofy - his hairdo, his voice (at least his English voice, which is a bit too cartoony), his exaggerated snobbishness. I could never buy him as Ghaleon's apprentice - though it's kinda-sorta explained retroactively through Vheen Hikuusen's past Rumacks when combined with Ghaleon's need for a capable dupe with a possible lingering vendetta against those who captured his brother's love/wronged his precious Dain. I wouldn't remove Nasch from Lunar by any means. (He's not totally obnoxious and incongruous with the other heroes, like Killy.) But I can't shake my reservations.
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All right, let's try more of a mix this time around.

Bruno (Animamundi)
Ghaleon (Lunar)
Helen (Clock Tower)
Gotts (Clock Tower)
Morris (Lunar)
Dyne (Lunar)
Latona (Lunar)
Bad Girl (No More Heroes)
Odd Bunsen (Cat Who... series)
St. Germant (Animamundi)

( Cut, cut, cut )
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Pick your 6 favorite fandoms and answer the questions (don't look at the questions beforehand).

1. Lunar
2. Phantasy Star
3. Angelique
4. The Cat Who... (I know I'm going to regret mixing anime/JRPGs and "real-world" works of fiction.)
5. Clock Tower
6. Final Fantasy IV

Not ranked, by the way. I had trouble coming up with six; it's so draining to be in even one or two fandoms.

( And *cut*... )
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